I’ve done a bit of writing over the past couple of years about election integrity issues, election fraud, voter suppression and the "gaming the system from the inside" that has been the republican party’s modus operandi since 2000 when it comes to stealing elections in various forms.

And right on cue - even since the anti-voter voter ID laws that were recently passed in Indiana (and almost passed in Missouri), we are seeing, as my good buddy dday is referring to as the "new battleground" - that big bad boogyman of "voter fraud".

On a few occasions over the past couple of weeks, I have mentioned an initiative with respect to going on the attack against John McCain.  With that, I have created a Google Group called "Know Your McCain" and we are looking to gather information (old and new), create viral videos, write blog posts and use social networking to spread the message about how dangerous John McCain is.  

You can look for diaries with the tag "Know Your McCain", and some diaries will have the "Know Your McCain" in the title as well.  If you are interested in joining the Google Group or helping out with Facebook, please send me an email (address is in my profile).

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I’ll probably take some heat for this, but I am serious here, as the prospect of someone with anger issues, who holds grudges, doesn’t think about the implications of his words before he talks, is confrontational by nature and experience five years of torture (and the effects of it) being the President of the United States – especially now – is downright scary.

It sickens me to think that Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood were disqualified as choices for Attorney General because of nanny taxes and yet we get Attorneys General who believed in stomping on the Constitution (Ashcroft), approve of voter suppression and torture as well as lie to Congress and reporters (Gonzales) and who think torture is only torture if it is done to him, won’t prosecute or investigate crimes committed by the Executive Branch and now thinks that not all violations of the law are crimes (Mukasey).

Thanks for that last one, Senators Schumer and Feinstein.

Whether you look at the "regular" definition of the word "crime" or even the legal definition, you will find the most basic "violation of law" as part of the definition.

How can impeachment be off the table if there is proof that documents that linked al Qaeda to Saddam or documents that made the case for invading Iraq were forged by the Office of Special Plans/Doug Feith/Dick Cheney/Scooter Libby or whoever else may have forged them?  

How can impeachment be off the table if over 4,000 American troops were killed, tens of thousands more injured, not to mention all of the Iraqis who have been killed, displaced or had their lives ruined when intelligence officials spoke on the record about Bush knowing that Iraq had no WMDs, yet repeated this charge over and over and over and over?

Of course there were flat out denials of this by those close to the White House, as well as many rightist bloggers.  But they have denied other lies and actions that have been proven to have occurred (or not occurred), or said (or not said) when it comes to this administration and its’ enablers in Congress.

As John Edwards has become the issue du jour and too many people are salivating over whether his political career is over, we now have yet another hypocritical and needless diversion from what is really important.  Just like the recent overexposure of Paris Hilton and McCain’s passing the buck on his increasingly nasty and spiteful campaign, none of this means a damn thing to, oh, 300 million or so Americans.

But since it is a Democrat and since it has to do with sex and since the real horrors of what has been impacting many people on a day to day basis is getting buried and ignored just to create yet another diversion for people to either say "HA" or to get on their moral high horse (all while probably keeping their own skeletons in their closet), that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be called for the complete and utter crap that is really is.

Of course, if you want to talk about sex and politicians and the impact on their career, why not look at Larry Craig, David Vitter, Mark Foley and the years of covering up his actions, Newt Gingrich serving his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital with cancer and of course McCain’s tossing his first wife to the curb and having an affair with Cindy the heiress?  

How can I NOT spread the word about how great John McCain's ass backward policies will be for ruining this country for years, nay, DECADES to come?

I mean, all I have to do is sell out my soul, er, astroturf because there are no real McCain supporters out there, er, troll progressive blog sites, er, (swallows hard) proudly support a man who has done nothing really of note since coming back from Vietman, I mean, is hawking cheap crap on his campaign website if I promise to copy and paste talking points into blogs in the hope that even brainless people won't notice that I am a new user with no diary or commenting history.

Talk about an opportunity that can't be passed up....

Yes, this is another one of "those DE-AL diaries", which is only to support one of our own netroots candidates – a man who has done what I can only hope to be brave enough to do one day – and that is run for Congress as a proud progressive candidate.

That man, of course, is Jerry Northington, who is better known to some of us as Daily Kos and netroots community member, possum.

But Jerry isn’t just a netroots candidate.  He is a veteran, he is a veterinarian, he is a husband and a father.  He embodies the "better" aspect of the "more and better Democrats" mantra that we know all too well.  Don’t believe me, even if you didn’t miss the prior diaries in this series?  Then read on and be prepared to get your wallet ready to donate to his campaign.  You will be doing a great service to the future of the progressive movement.

On a few occasions over the past couple of weeks, I have mentioned an initiative with respect to going on the attack against John McCain.  With that, I have created a Google Group called "Know Your McCain" and we are looking to gather information (old and new), create viral videos, write blog posts and use social networking to spread the message about how dangerous John McCain is.  

You can look for diaries with the tag "Know Your McCain", and some diaries will have the "Know Your McCain" in the title as well.  If you are interested in joining the Google Group or helping out with Facebook or MySpace, please send me an email (address is in my profile).

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So much seems to always be made about Obama or Clinton or whoever else’s so-called "electability issues" – most of which turns out to be nothing more than a hunk of nonsense strung together from bits of polls, magnifying tiny segments of the population into a much larger group or whatever other themes that the Village wants to conjure up.

All the while, there has been no mention of the tremendous electability issue and problem that faces one John Sidney McCain.  

Seriously.

It’s long past time for people to not only give McCain a total pass on his outright lies, smears, "McCain moments" and other absolute nonsense that comes from his mouth but also to actively call him on it.  And if he isn’t lying, then he is goddamn near senile and shouldn’t be President for that reason alone, notwithstanding all of the other very valid reasons that he shouldn’t be President.

Over the past few weeks, he has really stooped to a new low – and just when you think that there can’t be a new low.  But yes, every day comes another outright fabrication, nay, lie – about his positions, about Obama’s positions, hell – think back to the primary season when he lied about Romney or Huckabee or whoever else.

It’s too bad that only republicans know how to use the word "liar" when it comes to their opponents, even though they generally are using it for opponents that didn’t actually lie (and usually, they are the ones lying).  But the fact remains that McCain is so power mad, so unhinged at the fact that he isn’t getting quite the fluffing that he feels he is due, his campaign has continued it’s collision course with the title of "most sleazy, dishonest and scummy campaign ever".

I’ll start by saying that this is a call to action continuation and follow up to my diary last week about starting to attack McCain.  And I’ll also say that the events of this past week were nothing short of stunning in the contrast between what can be accomplished by Obama and the potential for repairing our image around the world - and what would happen in terms of 4 more years of the same tired failed McCain/Bush/Cheney/neoconservative ideas and policies.

It floored me so much that I donated my first $50 to Obama’s campaign earlier today - more than I donated to Dodd’s campaign during his too short candidacy.

You have a friend or a colleague who has kids?  Or one that has grandkids?  Or is thinking about having kids?

Are they thinking that McCain is "moving to the center" (as I was told by a colleague earlier today)?  Are they considering voting for McCain because Obama "doesn’t necessarily have the right experience" or for some other nonsensical reason?  Do they believe the lies that McCain was "very against the war from the beginning"?  Are they unfamiliar with McCain’s "there will be more wars" comment?  Do they not know about his 100 years in Iraq comment?

If there is no other distinction that people can understand (or care enough about) – even though there are more distinctions than I can easily count to (and I am an accountant), it is this one: if McCain wins, he and his neoconservative buddies will ensure that there are more wars.  Enough of the "more wars" that not only many of us, but our children and grandchildren will be shipped off to fight..

One time is excusable.  Twice, maybe (but not if it is on the same thing in back to back days).  Three, four, five times?  That is the start of a pattern.  And when it is over and over and over again, well, I think that there really needs to be some further discussion on what has long since passed "pattern" and is now a big concern.

This isn’t like George W. Bush, who was clueless and needed to be coached on the foreign leaders’ names.  This is a man – a Presidential candidate – who has based a large part of his campaign on being more adept at foreign policy, on being more knowledgeable in world affairs, more, well, "everything" than Senator Obama when it comes to foreign policy issues.

I have just received an important clarification from CentCom regarding remarks that I made in my diary yesterday about John McCain.  It seems as though there was a misinterpretation and misunderstanding, so this necessary update and clarification was issued a few moments ago.

Please note the following changes in bold and/or strikethrough from the original comments that were "purportedly made" by me:

Before you say, "what the fuck???", hear me out.

It is clear that the corporate media is willing to ask John McCain the tough questions like "don’t you think that Obama is a flip flopper", and that his repeated gaffes, double speak, lies, pandering and outright crazy talk is not only being ignored but is being dismissed as something that he "didn’t mean" or that he "has enough credibility anyway" or is "no big deal" - when what he says and does is far, FAR worse than anything that Obama may or may not have said.

And yet, Obama still holds leads in every poll (even when the results or samples are skewed) and is doing a pretty good job of defending himself from the outrageous attacks and smears.  Hell, he beat back the Edwards and Clinton campaigns pretty soundly - which is a very impressive thing.  However and more importantly, by continuing to defend himself (or for us to spend so much time defending him), we are missing an opportunity to set the narrative on McCain and force him to go on defense.  And when McCain is forced to go on the defensive, we see the angry, unstable, hothead McCain that is being hidden from millions of voters..

I’m sitting here in Austin listening to Sam Seder interview Don Siegelman about the horrific actions that Karl Rove orchestrated in order to wrongfully imprison him for 9 months, and even though I knew some of the background, I am frankly shocked as I hear it straight from his mouth.

Once again, as Don said, "all roads lead to Rove", and here is yet another example of a gross overstepping of any legal or moral lines by Karl Rove - carried out by fellow republicans and more importantly, yet again against a prominent Democrat.

And just as Rove (yet again) has skipped out on testifying before Congress, and just as we see more "sternly worded letters" or "stern comments" by top level Democrats and "significant interest" in investigating Rove and his illegal acts - such letters will be ignored, such subpoenas will be mocked, such comments will be dismissed by republicans, and the story will not be covered nearly enough by the corporate media.

There have already been a few articles and discussions over the past few months about the "Bradley effect", which attempts to "explain" discrepancies between what white voters tell pollsters and how they actually vote when it comes to "non-white" candidates.

And even though a lot of these discussions end up with evidence that dismisses the theory, as the election season heats up, there will no doubt be more of a racial undertone (whether it is blatant or not), and as long as poll samples are intentionally skewed to help McCain, or likely Obama voters are being excluded from the polling samples - there will be more focus on the so-called "closeness" of this race.

This is something that has been on my mind for some time, yet I still haven’t quite figured out where I am going with it.  Over the past decade, this country has fallen from grace in a big way.  Granted, "grace" is overstated, since there were many stains on the integrity and hypocritical nature of what we say as opposed to what we do long before Mister Bush took office in 2001.

But even taking that all into consideration, the way that this country’s promise and opportunity was hijacked - not by "republicans" or "Democrats" or even "neoconservatives" per se - since 2001 makes one (or at least makes me) look at what has gone on and how much respectability has been lost and wasted by a combination of greed, money, arrogance and wanton disregard for the rule of law.    

With all of the talk about Phil Gramm's and by extension, McCain's campaign's comments about Americans being a bunch of whiners, most are focusing on the outrage as far as a reaction goes.  But the truth is, there is a large segment of Americans that ARE whiners.

That segment would be, ironically enough, republicans.

Think of an issue - think of the incessant whining on right wing talk radio, think of the direction of the debate and discussion over the past decade (or even more), and we can see just how much Gramm's comments ring true.

Who can forget some of the classic whining moments that prove Gramm's point?