Category Archives: 2008 Election

Tom Brokaw, There’s A Lot About Obama We Don’t Know

Ever since Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, those of us on the political right have pointed out a few things about this candidate. His lack of experience, his nearly non-existent legislative record, and the the lack of public knowledge about just who the man is and where he is coming from. As has been written here many times, because he is, compared to his opponent John McCain, a relative unknown quantity, taking a look back into the man and his character and his life’s work becomes more important than it otherwise would.

So when it comes to Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw, why is it that they do not know more about Obama? Is it because they live in their own mainstream media cocoon? Is it because they choose not to look into Obama’s past out of fear of what they will find? Is it because they accept the Obama campaign’s spin that any revelations about him are ‘distractions’ by those extreme right-wing crazies? Maybe it is some of each?

Those of us on the Right have done the work of the mainstream media. We found out much of what the two men who should know, Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose, do not know about Barack Obama.

Understand the context here when it comes to the inquisitiveness of the media. Here are two media giants, one who has an audience and one who does not, wondering just who Barack Obama is. They are admitting that they don’t know a lot about Barack Obama. Folks, the election is three days from now.

Who would have thought that the American people could possibly elect a President that they don’t really know?

Within 24 hours, the world knew all about ‘Joe the plumber.’ We know about an insubordinate member of Sarah Palin’s cabinet called ‘troopergate,’ and her sister’s messy divorce. We know where Sarah Palin’s clothes came from and how much they cost. Yet, for the last eight months we still don’t really know a lot about Barack Obama? Credit the media for keeping us uninformed.

Below is a clip of Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw trying to figure out who Obama is. Note that neither of them asks the obvious question. Why?

Rush Limbaugh has the above audio clip and the transcript which is below.

ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.

ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don’t know what books he’s read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know.

Obama 30-Minute Ad, Pre-Buttal And Drinking Game

When Barack Obama’s 30-minute advertisement comes on tonight, be prepared to see him sounding like he is not a socialist. But pay close attention to the words he uses. Like when he speaks of ‘fairness’ and ‘sharing’ things, he is playing with your money and smacks of the same socialist dogma that he talked about in that 2001 interview. And when it talks of greed on Wall Street, replace ‘Wall Street’ with ‘Government’ and see how it fits. There is no point in hoping that he will accept any responsibility, either for himself or his party (Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines, Johnson, and others), for the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. That will be placed upon Bush and Republicans so be prepared for that.

I doubt also that he will distance himself from people the likes of William Ayers or Rev. Wright, his reverend for 20 years, or the former head of the PLO news media Rashid Khalidi. If he mentions it at all, it will be in the context of the McCain campaign creating a ‘distraction’ from the ‘real’ issues. If he again tries to minimize the importance of those (he will use the word) ‘associations,’ and not ‘alliances,’ just know that he is lying through his teeth and trying to keep up the charade that these are people whom he does not support or have anything in common with.

On the lighter side, John Feehery has a fun idea by making a drinking game out of Obama’s show tonight.

Each time Obama proposes a program that will expand government by a billion dollars, take a drink. My guess is that you will be pretty drunk in the first 15 minutes, and completely bombed by the end of the program.

Farifax County Will Count Military Overseas Ballots

As a follow up to this post, Military Absentee Ballots Rejected In Virginia of 3 days ago, the question of whether those 255 out of 260 ballots received would be counted due to lack of witness addresses, has been resolved. These ballots WILL BE counted.

According to an official at the Fairfax County Registrar’s office today, it was decided yesterday that federal law, which under these circumstances does not require addresses of witnesses, will trump state law that does.

Home Is Where Your Butt Is

Here’s a headline for the ages. ‘Judge rules Ohio homeless voters may list park benches as addresses‘ I get the point. Owning a home is not a prerequisite for voter eligibility, neither is having an address. You have to be of age, and a U.S. citizen (unless you live in California), and that’s it.

The notion of listing a Kenmore refrigerator box (the double door model) at the Interstate exit 10 overpass as an address is a condition ripe for voter fraud. And in Ohio no less.

Lawsuits like this one, driven by activist groups like ACORN, are not out to empower the homeless. They are out to create chaotic conditions that make it next to impossible to verify the validity or eligibility of a voter, and what better way to do that than to pick someone like this? Do you think that either of these two people 1) know who the candidates are and 2) know when election day is and 3) know where their voting precinct is and 4) give a dam about voting over finding food and a place to rest their head?

Absent a state issued photo ID, which Ohio and Barack Obama do not support, how can they be verified to be both a resident of the state and of age? Beyond all that, voting day should not be about rounding up the homeless, disturbing their sleep, hauling them to the polls, and asking them to vote for your candidate, maybe for a cigarette or a beer. That is an abomination of the electoral process. You’ve heard of push-polling? This would be push-voting.

Just because legal citizens have a right to vote does not mean that they have to, or that they even should. Choosing our elected representatives should be done by informed citizens making the effort on their own, and not by herders of the homeless like ACORN and community organizers.

One Party Rule

Howard Dean thinks it would be a good idea. Well, as long as it is the Democrat party in the White House and with a veto-proof Congress. Dean said, ‘Republicans had a chance to rule. They failed miserably. I think it’s time to give the other party a chance.’

This is the second time I’ve agreed with Howard Dean. I can’t remember when the first time was, it was so long ago. Republicans blew their chance in ’96 when they failed to convince voters that they should be in the White House. But at that time, I remember the media and the Left all up in arms at the thought. They were all on-board with the ‘checks and balances’ act. Saying that the sky would fall if the R’s had both congress and the White House. That a ‘balance’ was needed. For all practical purposes, balance became a synonym for stalling and gridlock, leaving more time for sex scandals. Back then, Dean and his party had no thoughts of giving the other party a chance.

I’ve always been of the opinion that for the country to see what either party is all about, let them govern as they may. In four years, they will be judged again. Democrats might get their wish this time. With Barack Obama, we  must rely on hope. So, one can only hope that whatever they do will be good for America and not do something that will take generations to repair. Have you heard his plan to fix Social Security? I haven’t.

Republicans, and more importantly, conservatives have their work cut out for them. They need to learn what Bill Clinton taught us in ’92. That the campaign does not stop after the election. It keeps on going.

link: Dean: One-Party Rule Would Rule

The Real Barack Obama

There is a plethora of information ‘out there’ about Democratic Presidential Candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) that, for whatever reason, you may not have heard or seen. Most of it is negative and has to do not only with the kind of people who Obama deals with and has dealt with over his entire political career and before, but also with what Barack Obama has in mind when he speaks of the kind of change he has in mind for our country, his ‘core beliefs’ if you will.

This is a recap of what has been discovered about Barack Obama that the mainstream media has chosen to ignore, for obvious reasons, but, because he is vying for the presidency of the United States, you have a right and a need to know. Please take the time to check it out before you go to the polls November 4th.

I don’t know where this tape was during the primaries, maybe it was ‘the tape’ that was referenced by Clinton campaign staffers but was never released. There is also a video tape of Rashid Khalidi that you will learn about which could also be what was called ‘the tape.’ I don’t know, but either one would have ended his run if it had been released before the Democratic National Convention.

The job of the President of the United States consists of only two tasks. To protect and defend its people, and to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. After you listen to this radio interview that Obama gave in 2001 to an NPR interviewer, you’ll have to ask yourself how this man could even put his and on the bible and take the oath. It is obvious that he feels the founding fathers erred in the creation of this country and its Constitution. And in this interview, he explores ways to fundamentally change it. Not protect it.

Barack is not a Socialist!

Then again, these records show otherwise:

Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the “Progressive Populist” magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.

New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.

Link To The November 1996 Progressive Populist Article

The Democratic Socialist Party of America published in their July/August Edition of New Ground 47 Newsletter.

The Chicago New Party is increasingly becoming a viable political organization that can make a different in Chicago politics. It is crucial for a political organization to have a solid infrastructure and visible results in its political program. The New Party has continued to solidify this base…[T]he NP’s ’96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude. Danny Davis, winner in the 7th Congressional District, invited NPers to join his Campaign Steering Committee. Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in 7th Subcircuit Court, explained that due to the NP she was able to network and get experienced advice from progressives like Davis. Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.

Link to the DSA article.

I guess he was lying to them, too…

Years later, Obama still believes that ‘spreading the wealth’ is where it’s at. Which is the anathema to the ‘American Dream.’ Here is where Barack Obama mounts his assault against Joe and middle class Americans.

Isn’t it amazing how the media is all over ‘Joe the plumber?’ Within 24 hours, we know all about this man’s personal and professional business. And for over two years now, the media is still not motivated to tell us about Barack Obama’s alliances with people who hate America, and his proclivity for supporting directions in education that promote socialism. But I will. Then there’s his working for and with ACORN, and so much more.

Looking at Obama’s foreign policy expertise. Beyond telegraphing that he would raid Pakistan’s tribal region, making an already shaky political situation even more fragile with a nuclear power, he is already trumped by Iran with his ‘no preconditions’ talk.

Well isn’t this just too rich? Iran has two preconditions of its own before it will engage in any talks with the United States.

  1. Get all our troops out of the Middle East
  2. End our support of Israel.

Well, I’d say that presents quite a challenge to the Democratic presidential candidate, who has already capitulated to Iran by saying that he would meet with Iran without preconditions.

Are we still believing that Obama is ready to lead?

Are we feeling any safer now? This also, btw, has not been reported by the mainstream media.

It’s not about Obama’s associations, it’s about Obama’s alliances.

By the time a person rises to the level of the leader of his party and becomes their nominee for the office of President of the United States, people already know a lot about what kind of person he is. Like John McCain, they know his history, his legislative background, his core beliefs, and his character. That is, until now. So when you have a candidate for the top spot that has limited legislative experience, no executive experience, and no public presence beyond a well delivered speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, knowing more about who our candidate is rises to a level that it would not otherwise be.

Critics of Obama, and I’ll include myself in this, are wrong when they bring up Obama’s ‘associations’ with unsavory people. Until I read Thomas Sowell’s article regarding who ‘the real’ Barack Obama is, I’ve come to the realization that it is not Obama’s associations that matter as much as his ‘alliances.’

From Thomas Sowell’s article . . .

Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his “past associations.” That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against “guilt by association.”

We all have associations, whether at the office, in our neighborhood or in various recreational activities. Most of us neither know nor care what our associates believe or say about politics.

Associations are very different from alliances. Allies are not just people who happen to be where you are or who happen to be doing the same things you do. You choose allies deliberately for a reason. The kind of allies you choose says something about you.

About the names that are part of Obama’s past and present, Sowell writes . . .

Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.

Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama’s election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers’ money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance- but an alliance is not just an “association” from being at the same place at the same time.

Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.

What we do know about the kind of politician Obama is, is not well-known. A testament to the effectiveness of his enablers in the mainstream media in reshaping and repackaging their chosen candidate. Ask yourself if this is the first time you’ve seen or heard this about Barack Obama.

The story of Obama’s political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates’ petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with.

Despite his words today about “change” and “cleaning up the mess in Washington,” Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates.

Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Barack Obama is also in tune with educator William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist that also taught at the University of Chicago. They both co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which calls itself “a public-private partnership improving education for 1.5 million urban and rural public school students,” it gave to some of the same groups — partnering with ACORN to manage funding for schools and giving over $1 million to the Small Schools Network.

Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, found the collaborative’s original application when going through Annenberg’s archives.

Asked to comment, Yvonne Williams-Kinnison, executive director of the collaborative’s parent group, the Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore said, “I don’t want to put more fuel on the fire. You can call us back after the election…. I don’t want to compromise the position.”

Wouldn’t you be surprised to find that the curriculum is more about turning the current educational system, and our culture upside down. It goes along these lines as written by Afrocentrist scholar Jacob Carruthers . . .

‘The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy,” Carruthers wrote in his 1999 book, ‘Intellectual Warfare.’ ‘Some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.’

And from Ayers himself . . .

“One of Ayers’ descriptions for a course called ‘Improving Learning Environments’ says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to ‘be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and…be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.”

So does Obama agree with Ayers’ view of education?

Presumably as keeper of the CAC’s purse strings, Obama paid attention to where the money went. His seal of approval would have been needed to fund Ayers or anyone else asking for a grant. So does Obama agree with Ayers’ ideas for reforming education? Because they are radical and extreme, to say the least.

Two years ago, Bill Ayers spoke at the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela. The event was hosted by none other than that great friend of the U.S., Hugo Chavez. Here’s more from IBD: “With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for ‘the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution…I look forward to seeing how all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”

So I guess Ayers believes the problem with education is that it’s “capitalist,” and that education’s purpose is “revolution.”

Since Obama helped provide the funds for many of Bill Ayers’ education reform projects back in Chicago, I have to assume he agreed with the principles behind them. I hate to think how Obama as President would “reform” education, and where he’d distribute our precious education dollars.

There are two more educators that the Obamas are familiar with. That would be Rashid and Mona Khalidi, co-founders of the The Arab-American Action Network, a virulently anti-Israel organization that strongly supports the Palestinian Arab terrorist movement. From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi was a director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. Later he served on the PLO “guidance committee” at the Madrid peace conference.

Rashid and Mona Khalidi became close friends of Barack and Michelle Obama during the time when both Barack and Rashid taught at the University of Chicago (1992-2003). At a lavish farewell party for Khalidi in Chicago in 2003, when Khalidi left his prestigious position at the University of Chicago for an even more prestigious one at Columbia University in New York, Obama gave Khalidi a glowing eulogy. He said that he and his wife Michelle had been frequent dinner guests of the Khalidis, and that the Khalidis had frequently babysat for the Obama children.

Here is more on Khalidi once he got to Columbia University by two writers who attended a conference on the Middle East conflict titled “One State or Two? Alternative Proposals for Middle East Peace.”

The “one state” solution is a euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish state – a trope of the most extreme rejectionist elements within the Palestinian movement and their allies in Syria and Iran.

In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia’s SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

Obama’s relationship with ACORN goes way back. And as a community activist and attorney representing ACORN in Chicago in 1995, he participated in worsening the sub-prime mortgage scheme that eventually brought down not only our economy, but the global economy. ‘Giving’ mortgages to people who could not pay them.

It is his relationship with ACORN and his political ambitions in Chicago that surrounded him with America haters like William Ayers and Rev. Jeramiah Wright, all driven by the socialist agenda of something known as the Cloward-Piven strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

  1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
  2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
  3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

ACORN’s voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

  • 1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
  • 2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
  • 3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.

Barack Obama ran ACORN’s Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven’s aspirations for ACORN’s voter registration efforts:

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation’s wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.

Look around at the state of affairs today in the economy and in voting registration and related activities and what do you see? Do you see Barack Obama or a Democrat administration trying to shore-up the voting process by something as secure as a photo ID? I don’t think so. Why?

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

And what caused the mortgage crises? The roots of it go back to a law called the Community Reinvestment Act, passed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, under pressure from a community activist movement that started in Chicago.


ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining”-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

And ACORN’s involvement in the mortgage crises is compounded, thanks to help from, guess who, Chicago lawyer Barack Obama.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

I don’t know how Barack Obama can say with a straight face how he has no ties to ACORN, how he so easily dismisses them as a community group that merely helps low-income people. He is clearly and deliberately deceiving you, and the media lets him get away with it. When he says that, he is telling just as big a lie as ‘I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.’ Barack Obama is not being honest with the American people about who he is and where he wants to take this country. Examining his character and his past is not a distraction from the ‘real issues’ as his campaign will have you believe. First, we need to know who he is.

related links:

National Review Online, The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape
Babalu Blog,Barack is not a socialist
American Thinker, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis
Discover The Networks, Cloward-Piven Strategy
Thomas Sowell, The Real Obama
FOX News, Obama’s Education Groups Funded Controversial Organizations in the ’90s, Tax Returns Show
OneNewsNow, Obama, Ayers and ‘Education Reform’
Family Security Matters, Barack Obama’s Anti-Israel Alliances
Sweetness & Light, Obama And ACORN – ‘It’s A Power Thing’
Chicago Sun Times, Strong, silent type

Is Mike Papantonio A Journalist?

I just saw Air America Radio talk show host Mike Papantonio tell Neil Cavuto on FOX that he was a journalist and went to ‘journalism school’ for four years. They were discussing the TV reporter that asked Joe Biden some questions that no one else has asked either him or his running mate to date. Predictably, Papantonio wants her to lose her job. That’s the way the Left handles tough issues when it concerns one of their own.

At any rate, according to Papantonio’s Bio on his BIG LAW website, he doesn’t mention a journalism degree let alone attending journalism school.

That’s another thing the Left is comfortable with, telling stories in order to support a point. Much like the entire picture of just who Barack Obama is and what he is all about. Like Papantonio, he is not what he says he is or who he appears to be.

 

Military Absentee Ballots Rejected In Virginia

Seems like Deja Vu of 2000 on election night down at the Court House, when hundreds of us were chanting ‘count every vote, every vote counts.’ That’s when Democrats sent their lawyers here to deny our military absentee ballots from being counted. Now, Fairfax County, in Virginia is rejecting 98 percent of the absentee ballots they have received, on a technicality that is of no fault of the voter. The ‘voter’ being the ones whose vote should count more than anyone’s, the ones who are actually fighting for that right.

Fairfax County Registrar Rokey Suleman is disqualifying an overwhelming majority of the military federal write-in absentee ballots received in his county on the basis that no address had been given for those witnessing the voter signatures on the ballots.

When asked how many ballots had been rejected, Herrity responded, “Out of the 260 military federal write-in ballots received to date, only five included an address for the witness. The other 255 have been set aside for rejection.”

The instructions say this in STEP 1:

Block 6: Provide any information that may assist the local election official in accepting this ballot or application.

Block 7: Sign and date in the presence of a witness. The witness must sign and date the form.

Then, STEP 2 of the instructions say to put the ballot into the security envelope. STEP 3, Submission Options describe where to mail the envelope.

Only in STEP 4 is there a mention about requiring the address of the witness, which says it was supposed to be put in block 6, which is actually part of STEP 1.

STEP 4: Follow-up

* Check the “Important Dates” section at the top of this page for deadlines.
* Registered Virginia voters can use the FWAB simultaneously as an absentee ballot request and ballot for Federal offices as long as it is received 5 days before the election. The FWAB Declaration/Affirmation must contain the residence address where the voter is registered in Virginia, the voter’s current military or overseas address, and the voter’s and witness’ signature and date. The witness must provide his or her printed name and address in Block 6.
* If you receive your state absentee ballot after submitting your Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, fill it out and return it. The state absentee ballot will be counted instead of the back-up ballot if it’s received in time.

If you use just a little common sense here, chances are good that the witness is not a resident of Fairfax County, or of the State of Virginia. Their current address is in the war zone. Are county officials going to call or write them to verify that the address they gave is correct? Would it not be logical to assume that they are not looking for witness’s war zone addresses?

I wonder if those instructions were written by the genius in Palm Beach County that made the butterfly ballot in 2000? Nevertheless, the instructions were misleading at the very least. Especially considering the ‘voters’ are in a war zone conducting the war and their ballots were not created by ACORN. Those ballots, all of them, should be counted.

links: Military Ballots Being Rejected in Virginia | Federal Voting Assistance Program