OpEd News; David Swanson

If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.

A McCain “win” will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and against their will, obstructed voter registration drives, falsely warned students against voting where they attend school, falsely accused community groups of voter registration fraud, falsely alleged the widespread existence of voter fraud, and encouraged supporters to falsely believe McCain’s opponent is a foreign terrorist through speeches, recorded phone messages, and flyers. Already in early voting in a number of states there have been cases of votes on electronic machines visibly flipping to McCain or McKinney when intended for Obama. We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people’s right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls — which we will be denied any access to unless they have been “adjusted” to match the official counts. [more at link]

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Newspaper endorsements – 124 Obama / 42 McPoot

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Obama-s-Shocking-Lands-by-Greg-Mitchell-081021-788.html

Why Obama’s Shocking Landslide in Newspaper Endorsements Really Matters // by Greg Mitchell

I hate to break it to y’all, but the original poster is probably right. This time around it will not be as easy for the R’s to steal the election, but several things have changed that mean it MUST be a landslide for us to pull this off:

1.Kerry lawyered up, too. Fat lot of good this did us. The media will be in full hue and cry for a concession “for the good of the country” after a close finish/McCain “stunner.” We’re already seeing the preludes to this in the framing of this “close race” despite the polls. Should it appear that this was a close win/steal for M/P, Obama will concede almost immediately.

2.Vote suppression is in full swing and, unlike 2004, and has had three solid years of DOJ manipulation, and has the HAVA smokescreen for R governors and Secretaries of state to enshrine e-fraud systems in every state.

3.As in 2004, winning most of the swing states will not be enough. BHO MUST win them all.

4.A sustained, coordinated Swiftboat-type character assassination is not necessary this time around. Given the racist and ignorant nature of the bulk of the electorate, for millions of American voters, BHO has a built-in SET of character flaws; his skin color and his Muslim name. Snowballs roll down hill, racists get to the bottom faster. M/P robocalls are the tiny snowball that can start an avalanche of hate rolling (a mixed metaphor, I know).

5.Real or not, the Bradley effect is already being invoked by the MSM, and will ultimately be the post-mortem explanation for the “stunning” victory of M/P. Despite false protestations, nobody will really doubt that racism and religious freakery dominates our country. It’s pre-fab, self fulfilling spin. It may work.

6.There’s still time for an October Surprise. As Saint Ronnie showed, they can be spectacular in their depravity and scope. Expect the unexpected.

We’ve got an uphill battle at best. Keep your guard up and spread the word. We need a landslide.

If so, that gives Obama the states Gore and Kerry won and McCain the states Bush won, and puts the final decision once again either in Florida or Ohio, and neither of those will be easy wins. Obama has a lead in Florida in many polls, but the GOP still controls the state, as well as the US Supreme Court, so a recount would be just as hard-fought as it was eight years ago. (Plus, there’s an anti-gay proposition on the ballot there like there was in Ohio in 2004, so the GOP’s base has a reason beyond voting for Pallen to go to the polls.)

Ohio is controlled by Dems but, as we have seen in the past weeks especially, it is also home to some of the loudest, most unapologetic racists in the nation. McCain is ahead, though not by much, in just about every poll I’ve seen.

The Republicans are even more desperate this year, because if the Dems take over the Executive in January, much could be revealed that has been kept secret, not just in the past seven years, but in the records from the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle admins that Bush II has sealed indefinitely. If those records are unsealed, and especially if they implicate St. Ronnie in the treasonous activities of his employees, it might well drive the stake through the GOP’s undead heart.

The 2004 election should have been a referendum on George Bush, who was then, as now, the Worst President Ever. I certainly wasn’t enthralled with Kerry, but he would have been a better president sound asleep than Bush has been at his meager wide-awake best.

In the last two weeks of the 2004 campaign, Bush/Rove unleashed the hounds — lying, stealing and fear-mongering — and it worked very effectively. Obama is a much better candidate than Kerry, and McCain is much worse than Bush. But, with two weeks to go in the 2008 campaign, I think anything more than cautious optimism for now is risky.