Bradley Effect? and Voter Fraud with a Twist to the Right

There's been a lot of talk about the Bradley Effect. If you don't know what that is, it's the phenomenon of white voters saying they will vote for a black candidate, but when they get to the booth, they, for whatever reason, don't. I was talking about this with Wifester the other day, and I told her that I believe we're going to see something a bit opposite. I told her that my prediction is that many Republicans will actually never say out loud that they are voting for Obama, but when they get in the booth, and their conscience weighs on them, they'll vote Obama because they know in their heart of hearts that he is the best candidate available to choose from. Then Colin Powell endorsed Obama, and I started thinking, you know, maybe I'm onto something here. This morning, CBS' Bob Schieffer confirmed my suspicions. He made it clear that behind the scenes, Powell's words echoed the criticism of many Republicans, saying, "What Colin Powell said yesterday and why it was so riveting to hear him, he was saying aloud what a lot of Republicans are saying privately."
Watch the video here, at the Huffington Post.

I sure hope that this is a pattern we will see continue to repeat over and over again until Nov. 4th.

In other news, all the voter fraud allegations have turned up an arrest. The funny thing( if there is anything funny about voter fraud) is that it was a Republican, working for a Republican group who was arrested. According to the L.A. Times:

SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.

Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.

The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP.

Nice. So when you can't get people to register for your party, you lie, deceive and use trickery. Interesting methodology for the party that proclaims to be the party of morals and values.
When, oh when will the Green Party and the Libertarian Party move to the forefront leaving these Republicrats and Democrins in it's wake?

Lipstick Makes Pigs Pretty!

I'm sure everyone's heard by now about the McCain side calling foul over Obama's use of the "lipstick on a pig" phrase. To place it in context, Obama was asked about his policy vs McCain's and he responded that McCain's was not any change, that it was the same ole' same ole. That's when he went on to say that “That’s just calling something the same thing, something different," and "But you know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can you can, wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after 8 years," he continued with "We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”
McCain-Palin spokesperson, Maria Comella, said in a statement "Barack Obama’s comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Governor Palin an apology."
Personally, I'm outraged at their outrage. I recall when Hillary Clinton proposed her health care reform plan, it was John McCain who used the exact same phrase, to quote him, he said "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." And no one heard Hillary demanding an apology for being called a pig. Why? Because she wasn't called a pig! She was smart enough to know that it was a jab at her policy, not her. She knew that he was saying her policy was no different than the current, which is debatable, but still... And last year, when John McCain was quoted as saying "It's all about withdrawal or not withdrawal, okay? I mean that's what it's all about. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." – John McCain, 2007...He was never called insensitive or offensive.
And again,in 2007, he showed he is no stranger to the use of this common phrase when he said "It gets down to whether you support what's being done in this new strategy or you don't. You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig in my view." – John McCain, 2007.
Even the Cheneys get in on the action of prettying up the pigs in their parts.
Dick, in 2004, said this of John Kerry, "Or as we say out in our home state of Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but it's still a pig." – Dick Cheney, 2004.
And not to be left out, Lynne Cheney got in on the piggy-prettying party in 2004 when she said "John Kerry tries to put a bunch of fancy, fancy talk...but there is nothing you can do to really -- to really obscure that record. You can try, though. And in Wyoming, we've got a saying for what it is when you keep trying to make something that's not so good look good, we call it putting lipstick on a pig." – Lynne Cheney, 2004.
Listen, all I'm saying here is all this talk about the stupid pig comment is silly nonsense. It's smoke and mirrors to distract people from the real issues. The real issues that Obama was trying to talk about in the first place. Health care. Employment. The wars. The economy. Education. It seems like Idiocracy is coming to America, and I thought that was just a bad social commentary. See, as long as people use this knee jerk reaction rather than stopping to pay attention to the full picture, the truth becomes occluded. We have to think, pay attention, educate ourselves, and not blindly trust what our corporate employers, news media, and politicians tell us. We have to take the time to understand the issues at hand, and where each candidate stands on those issues. Only then can we make an informed decision. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to see the debates.