Right up front, let me tell you that I've heard about you DailyKos folks. In the days when I thought Fox News' Bill O'Reilly hung the moon, I wouldn't have sullied my browser by making a left turn on the information super highway that might bring me here.
Being a staunch conservative and clinging as I do to the party-line, it had not occurred to me until very recently to even acknowledge the existence of this website let alone blog here. My dainty mother would say, "Fly with the crows, get shot with the crows." which is reason enough to avoid places such as this. However, I've had considerable trouble avoiding liberal websites of late.
I've lately been afflicted with a bout of Patriotism - a chronic condition for which there is no permanent cure - which has rendered me helpless in my attempts to ignore the opposition. I'm of the opinion that, like many religious missionaries who brave the wilderness, snakes, bugs and quicksand - not to mention the slings and arrows of the natives - in exotic places in order that they might bring their theological message to the unenlightened, perhaps if I offer a non-violent, painless conservative idea or two, you might be swayed, or at least teeter a little.
I suppose we shall see as this experiment plays out.
To begin with I would like to say a few things about voter fraud and will look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.
Who knows, perhaps it is I who shall teeter?
Earlier this month, during an election in Washington DC, a young man affiliated with James O'Keefe (of the Acorn video sting of a few years back) entered a polling place in that city and asked the following question:
"Do you have an Eric Holder?"
The poll worker dutifully checked his roll book and quickly found the name of our current United States Attorney General, made the appropriate mark alongside the name and attempted to help the young videographer vote on behalf of Mr. Holder. Even though the young man protested that he had no identification proving he was Holder, the poll worker assured him that proof of his identity was not at all necessary.
"As long as you're here," the poll worker said, pointing to the voter roll book, "and you are who you say you are, you're ok."
It somehow did not matter to the man that this young fellow hadn't said he was anybody in particular, let alone the highly recognizable (we would think, anyway) Top Cop of the United States of America. (The video can be seen in its entirety at www.theprojectveritas.org Please view it in order to satisfy yourself that nobody attempted to defraud anybody.)
We are certain that the nice poll worker was simply trying to do his job. But, because there is no emphasis whatsoever on verifying the identity of a voter, an incident of voter fraud might well have happened if the young camera man had not retreated saying..."I'll be back before you can say 'Fast and Furious.'"
Mister Holder is quick to assure the rest of us that cases of individual voter fraud are not that common. Really? In a recent municipal election in my little Southern town at least two dead people voted.
You might wonder why the two insidious ballots weren't thrown out. The reason is simple. Once the ballot has entered the system, there is no way of knowing which ballot is the one the imposter cast. It is impossible to say with any certainty which ballots were the illegal ones.
Now, that may not mean much in national terms, but in a race where one or two votes can decide an election, two bogus ballots can lead to serious consequences. What's even worse, in my book anyway, is that even though we know whose election tactics have included such shenanigans in the past, we must still endure the next four years with this low-life law-breaker even though the results do not reflect the will of the electorate. Hiss! Boo!
Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said, "all politics is local." Since all voter fraud is also local, it seems goofy to pooh-pooh the importance of holding elections in which the integrity of the process is safeguarded.
The answer to this problem is, of course, Voter Identification. The good news is my state, Mississippi, voted last year to amend its constitution to make such identification mandatory. The bad news is, even though it is clearly the will of the electorate, we will be forced to wait for the United States Department of Justice to give us the official okie doke to proceed. (The DOJ has a short leash on Mississippi where, in our sad past, black voters were treated differently. As in states such as Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, voting matters must first past muster with Eric Holder and the gang before they may be implemented as a result of civil rights legislation passed in the last century.)