If only winning the election was going to be this easy.
- The Republicans want you to know that they are serious about voter fraud. This week they fired Nathan Sproul's Strategic Alliance Consulting, with which the RNC had contracts worth more than $4 million to register voters in key battleground states, after it was discovered that 106 out of 304 voter registrations submitted by one of SACs subcontractors in just one Florida county were bogus. The complaint of "BS registrations" has now been repeated in several other counties SAC was tasked with registering voters in as well. Yet, one can't help but wonder why suddenly the RNC has gone medieval on a company that it paid millions to this year despite knowing full well that Sproul and his company are notorious for voter registration shenanigans (usually involving throwing Democratic voter registrations in the trash) for a very, very long time. Can the RNC's new over-the-top public hue and cry about "voter integrity" be another example of "the best defense is a good offense", given the systematic efforts the GOP is making to suppress the vote of real, registered, Democrats in many of those same battleground states? Maybe, in the hullabaloo, the RNC hopes nobody is noticing the hypocrisy.
- France's Hollande government has just announced that its 2013 budget will raise taxes on France's 1 percent in order to reduce its deficit. Hollande's justification for this blatant attack on French job creators? The clearly socialist belief that the rich need to "make an effort" in a country where "big companies ... pay less than small companies and many pay no taxes at all." Humph. As if being rich isn't effort enough all by itself. Just ask Romney/Ryan.
- In another example of the sense of entitlement that Mitt Romney's 47 percent allegedly possesses, veterans, veterans' families, and veterans' advocates are failing to take personal responsibility for their lives, instead complaining publicly about the relentless, increasing backlog in the processing of disability benefits claims by the Veterans' Administration. With the increase in new claims outstripping increased personnel, the "VA Transformation Plan" has yielded only ongoing non-compliance with VA rules by VA's regional offices and an 8 month processing time for initial disability claims even under the VA's "Quick Start" program to (and a backlog of nearly 750,000 appeals due to service-connection and rating errors by the VAROs on top of that). No wonder that lawyers for disabled veterans are referring to the VA's promises to keep retooling its claims processing as "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."
- Registering to vote just got easier. With this little widget, you can fill out a registration form, print it off and mail it in ... or, if you're lucky enough to be in a state where you can register online, it will take you directly to your Secretary of State's website. Do it now! And share it with family and friends. Remember, as Rep. John Lewis said, voting is "the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union."
- Can't see or use the widget, above? The League of Women Voters rides to the rescue: You can also register to vote if you live in states that permit it at the League's Vote411.org website. The site also has state deadlines conveniently handy so that you can find your state's drop-dead voter registration date. So no excuses!
- No longer do paranoid students have to feel unsafe sitting in their University of Colorado lecture hall or dormitory, thanks to the mandate of the Colorado Supreme Court that students must be allowed to carry their concealed guns (be it your personal Glock, AK, Uzi or Noisy Cricket) with them while on campus. Yet the jury is still out on the impact on student learning from this change, where many of the professors at University of Colorado are spooked by the idea that one of their disaffected students might actually be strapped, and one day react badly to the free expression of ideas that is the hallmark of higher learning. Some professors have suggested that they may restrict the content of their lectures (or cancel them entirely) out of fear for their personal safety. Obviously, University of Colorado professors who are expressing fear, dismay and doubt about this new pedagogy called 'say nothing that might piss off a tetched student packing heat' understand that indiscriminate shoot-em-ups don't care much about classroom decorum (or even movie theatre decorum), facts obviously lost on the Colorado Supreme Court.
- The Romney campaign isn't the only organization that occasionally gaffes. Mother Jones originally reported that George Soros donated $1M to Priorities USA because the possibility of a Romney presidency "panicked" Soros into ante-up mode. This while polls in virtually all regions of the country show Romney neck deep in political quicksand. (Mother Jones ultimately had to retract the story on Friday morning as false; that didn't stop the MSM and right wing from eating the story up before then, though). A far more likely reason for Soros' largesse: Soros might have seen one of the over-the-top (but still funny as hell) get out the vote for Obama videos done by Samuel L. Jackson and Sarah Silverstein for the Jewish Education and Research Council. Equally likely? Soros got a heads up about the news that Mitt Romney is actually making George W. Bush look popular by comparison (if polls within the Republican party are any indication), and decided that he simply had to be a part of the schadenfraude.
- Another possible explanation for President Obama's steadily-rising popularity among likely voters: the Obama campaign's realization that the gamer demographic is not just a bunch of aimless folks living in their mom's basements, but an uncourted, untapped treasure trove of liberal votes. So, the Obama campaign is now focusing some of its special campaign efforts on gamers. (I just knew that the Dark Elf Shadowknight in my most recent EQ2 pickup raid who kept breaking the mezzes of my red-headed illusionist while slyly asking who she was planning to vote was the President. I just knew it.) The campaign's gamer love includes ads for the President's re-election being embedded into game menus themselves, and games that allow President Obama to virtually duke it out with Romney well in advance of Election Day. Clearly, the President knows that some of the greatest liberal progressives just happen to be gamers.
- Dying to know whether you're more or less liberal than President Obama, or more or less conservative than Mitt Romney? The Christian Science Monitor has the answer: two quizzes allowing you to compare your own views to those of the candidates on a variety of issues. Just in time for the Oct. 3 debates.