Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and the field director for his father's reelection bid, resigned abruptly Wednesday after a video linked him to voter fraud.
The video -- released earlier in the day by Project Veritas, a conservative organization headed by the Republican activist James O'Keefe -- revealed that the younger Moran had weighed options for helping an undercover operative cast votes on behalf of 100 people who allegedly weren't planning to vote.
"There will be a lot of voter protection, so, if they just have, you know, the utility bill or bank statement -- bank statement would obviously be tough ... but faking a utility bill would be easy enough," Moran says, apparently referring to options for getting around Virginia's voter ID laws.
Moran's campaign issued a statement confirming the congressman's son had stepped down.
"Patrick is well liked and was a well-respected member of the campaign team. This incident, however, was clearly an error in judgment. The campaign has accepted Patrick's resignation, effective immediately," the statement said.
The resignation comes just a day after Rep. Moran and two other Virginia Democrats -- Reps. Gerry Connolly and Bobby Scott -- had urged the Justice Department to launch an investigation into Strategic Allied Consulting, a GOP firm linked to separate allegations of voter registration fraud in Virginia and Florida.
Questions for anyone with the time to run them down:
1) what will Mr. Patrick Moran be doing Monday? He has left his father's campaign and no longer has a paid job. How will he spend his time? I'm afraid I know the answer but I don't want to appear too cynical.
2) what will Mr. Patrick Moran be doing in six months? Twelve months? Unless I miss my guess, he'll be employed by a Soros-funded NGO.
3) remember those folks at ACORN Mr. O'Keefe previously burned? Where do they work today? Who signs their checks? What are they doing in the two weeks before the election? I'm speculating that the nut doesn't fall too far from the tree.
The points are simple: first, that these folks are crooked through and through.
But more important, unless the conservative side has concerted follow through and an institutional memory, folks like Mr. Moran and the ACORN-ites will simply lay low for a short while and then pick up doing just what they were doing before. Someone else will be signing their checks but the job will be the same.
I applaud Mr. O'Keefe, and I'm especially happy with Prof. Jacobson's efforts at Legal Insurrection. But one thing the conservative moment needs is the ability to watch the people we've caught.
Leopards don't change their spots.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
@Fred
About 2) From seing many American movies from the sixties here is the answer I would like to "What he will be doing in six months?": Making big stones into little stones all while weraing a chain at his foot.
#4
I agree with Doc Steve that we need to keep track of these people.
But we also IMO need to change the environment so that they can't thrive. Serious Voter ID systems/enforcement would go a good way to doing that. Not a panacea, but an important element.
Watch our Project Veritas reporter being educated on how to properly commit massive voter fraud by the son of a sitting US Congressman. Patrick Moran, son of Congressman James Moran, discusses forging utility bills and impersonating pollsters, all for the goal of circumventing voter ID laws in Virginia and casting ballots for unsuspecting inactive voters within the state for Barack Obama. Patrick Moran holds the salaried title of Field Director for his father's congressional campaign, and assures our reporter that "committee" lawyers will defend his fraud if the forged documents "look good".
#2
Utility bills should not be identification. One could be an illegal alien and have an utility bill. Recently, there was a scandal at our local university where some students were obtaining really good forged identification with photo ID obtained from offshore internet sites. Just send a photo of yourself to the site and the rest is done for you. Even the local police had difficulty identifying the forgeries.
#3
A utility bill is all you need to register your kid for high school in Kaliphornia. They are prohibited by law from asking whether or not you are a citizen or legal resident. Guess it's the same with registering to vote. Kinda waters down the value of a citizen's vote, huh?
#1
When a campaign goes down to this level, it has lost and it knows it. Obama is desperately trying to be one of the cool kids and throw playground insults at his opponent. He is toast and he knows it.
#7
The Downfall video of his discussion with Axelrod, Plouffe, and Messina must be in the final stages. I can't wait to see hwat Stephanie Cutter says to Michelle.
Bullshit (also bullcrap) is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism BS. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English. It is a slang profanity term meaning "nonsense", especially in a rebuking response to communication or actions viewed as deceiving, misleading, disingenuous or false. As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings.
It can be used either as a noun or as a verb. While the word is generally used in a deprecating sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills, or frivolity, among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt, among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit as related to but distinct from lying.
Outside of the philosophical and discursive studies, the everyday phrase bullshit conveys a measure of dissatisfaction with something or someone, but does not generally describe any role of truth in the matter.
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/25/2012 13:03 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Once again, this Chump defines everything down. The presidency, the US, democracy, this campaign. What's left?
#13
He's losing and he half-knows it, but he can't believe it.
He's way too cool and too masculine for that older white guy to do this to him. Time to get out the even bigger Chicago guns, do a few driveby record unsealings and pop a cap into that Mormon's image. The damned guy's so old/uncool he doesn't even have scandals to exploit. Gotta be able to work that theme with Leno.
Time to turn the snark up to 11 and bring out the Hollywood Honeys to get the kids out to vote.
Aw hell, time to make up votes and get them into the system stat. What the hell did you think we passed early voting for, anyway?
#15
Timing may be a factor with these escapades. Early voting is already underway in many swing states. Hell, I voted last week. Wonder how many useful idiots wish they could change their vote now?
#18
You all still do not get it. The original interview was conducted in Rennaissance Florentine, this is the translation into Iowan so you backyard peckerwoods can understand it.
[An Nahar] Republican White House hopeful Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. More to the point, he isn't President B.O... said President Barack Obama I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody... 's campaign was "taking on water" Tuesday, as the rivals barnstormed across toss-up states while seeking swing votes two weeks before election day.
With their debates behind them, the candidates raced out of the blocks and onto the campaign trail, hoping to corral the most ballots from the shrinking pool of Americans still undecided in a race heading for a photo finish.
At a rally in Henderson, Nevada, Romney claimed he had the momentum, saying the debates have "supercharged" his White House bid and brought him that much closer to victory in November 6.
"His campaign is taking on water and our campaign is full speed ahead," he said. Four torpedoes amidships known as debates one through four will definitely force you to take on water.
The line was a clear swipe at the president's condescending comment during Monday night's debate when, reacting to Romney's repeated charge that the U.S. Navy was undersized, Obama mocked his challenger by saying that working with the military was not like playing a game of "Battleship."
It was a fitting jibe that marked the venomous tone Tuesday, when Obama warned a rowdy Florida crowd that they cannot rely on his "reckless" and elusive Republican foe.
Romney was riding a tide of campaign optimism, however, and presenting himself as a voice of change, as he sought to peel away the states of Nevada and Colorado from Obama's column.
"His is a status quo candidacy. His is a message of going forward with the same policies of the last four years. And that's why his campaign is slipping. And that's why ours is gaining so much steam," Romney said.
He repeated his argument later Tuesday in Colorado, where running mate Paul Ryan ...U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is the VP candidate of the Republican Party. He proposed an alternative to President B.O.'s 2011 budget and made himself the target of both Democrat and Republican verbal pies. Joe Biden made a fool of himself when they 'debated'... and 12,000 other people joined him at one of the more spectacular venues of the entire campaign: Red Rocks, the natural amphitheater above Denver which has hosted the likes of rock acts U2 and Coldplay.
"We're in the home stretch now, and I think the people of Colorado are going to get us all the way there."
At Obama's rallies, the president's beseeching tone and the new urgency in his appeals reflect his failure to sink Romney in the debates, as well as signs that it is the Republican, not Obama, who has momentum in the tight race.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
From the poll trends... looks like it.
Remember:
Don't get cocky and they can't cheat if it ain't close.
#2
Looking beyond the current tyrant, there is a great body of work to be done to rid our republic of the statist, Keynesian model. A difficult and potentially painful shift must take place from that of a society of entitlement, big government, and credit to one of savings, investment, and domestic production.
To fiscal and economic repair, I would also add that some new thinking regarding foreign policy and our involvement in feckless, overseas misadventures should also be undertaken. No one would suggest we overlay our fragile political process on the remote Yanomami of Brazil. Why would we assume anyone else is different and in need of our meddling or fixing? If "African problems require African solutions", as so often is heard is indeed accurate, why then do middle eastern problems not require similar ownership templates for resolution?
The sordid, ongoing disaster in Benghazi is a prime example of our attempt to picking winners and losers; a task we've historically not been good at. It is long past time to reign-in our arrogant, misguided agents of foreign policy in McLean and Foggy Bottom and return them to the vitally important functions of providing intelligence and conducting legitimate diplomacy. Furthermore, when asked to provide information to the HPSIC/SSCI and we discover a few short weeks later that they have withheld, obfuscated, and lied; those resposible should be immediately relieved of their duties and fired.
Stay at home, support our steadfast allies, and simply mind our own business. Make no loud threats or bold protestations, but rather where necessary, issue discreet warnings. Failing those, quietly and unmercifully smite those who would harm us at home or abroad, returning home without boasting or book writing.
Lastly, we should curb our headlong investment in failed diplomacy. If we are serious about peace and peace making, we should heed the warnings of Eisenhower and re-examine the industries of conflict, their benefactors, and obvious motives.
I hope and pray we finally up for the post-Obama challenge.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2012 9:45 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Besoeker
I think the first attitude that needs to change is that people think a home is a place to live in and that it's not good if places to live become less affordable.
#8
BP housing is as affordable as it has ever been. What planet are you living on?
Interest rates are as low as they ever have been; house prices are lower than they have been for a decade; anyone with a job and a pulse can buy a house.
#10
True, so let's rant about the unemployment, not the affordability of housing, which is not a problem.
Then we can focus on solutions for the actual problem, rather than whine about not getting the opportunity to smell the unicorn farts that have to be around here somewhere.
President Obama recently sat down with the editorial board of Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, for what his campaign stipulated would be an off-the-record discussion:
The Des Moines Register's publisher and I spoke with President Barack Obama this morning -- but we can't tell you what he said. Just four days before the Register's presidential endorsement is released, Laura Hollingsworth and I received a phone call from the president. He was calling from Florida, on the heels of a morning campaign appearance and about 14 hours after his debate with GOP nominee Mitt Romney at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. The conference call lasted nearly 30 minutes and was an incredibly informative exchange of questions, answers and an insightful glimpse into the president's vision for a second term. He made a genuine and passionate case for our endorsement and for reelection. Just two weeks before Election Day, the discussion, I believe, would have been valuable to all voters, but especially those in Iowa and around the country who have yet to decide between the incumbent Democrat and his Republican opponent. Unfortunately, what we discussed was off-the-record. It was a condition, we were told, set by the White House.
The Register's editors contrast this rigmarole from the most transparent administration evah with the access they were granted by Mitt Romney's campaign:
Romney appeared before our board Oct. 9. We literally met in a barn on a family farm owned by Jeff Koch, just west of Van Meter. We had a wide-ranging conversation in a little under an hour of access. He squeezed us in just before a campaign stop that spotlighted his agriculture policies. With the exception of one final question ("Why have you earned the Des Moines Register's endorsement?") his camp said the interview could not be videotaped, which has become our typical practice with politicians meeting our editorial board. But the audio was digitally recorded and posted on DesMoinesRegister.com.
That full audio is available here, by the way. With Iowa looking like a dead heat, an endorsement from a major newspaper could help tip the scales -- so after a protracted battle, Team Obama finally relented and agreed to allow the content of meeting to be released for the record. During that roundtable conversation, Obama predicted Latino voters would push him over the top in November because Republicans have alienated the growing demographic. The president was also asked about his decision to spend his substantial political capital, and exploit his large Congressional majorities, to aggressively push his partisan health care law, rather than in pursuit of other economic priorities.
Obama's answer? "Absolutely" no regrets:
QUESTION: "Some say you had a super majority in your first two years and had this incredible opportunity, but because of what you were talking about, as you were running, you had to go to get Obamacare done. Do you have any regrets taking on some of the economic issues, some of the issues that we're talking about for your second term, that when you had the chance, so to speak, during your first -- do you have any regrets that you didn't do that at that time?"
OBAMA: "Absolutely not, Laura."
Obama projects unflinching confidence that he was entirely correct to put jobs, economic growth, immigration reform -- everything -- on the back burner in order to jam through Obamacare. He's proud of his law, which raises government healthcare spending, hikes family premiums, adds to the deficit, rations care through an unelected panel of bureaucrats, exacerbates our doctor shortage, and boots millions off of plans they hoped to keep. All of these outcomes explicitly violate promises the president made during the national healthcare debate. Meanwhile, the nation's economic outlook remains bleak. That's not in spite of Obamacare; it's because of Obamacare, which the CBO estimates will destroy 800,000 American jobs. The Romney campaign blasts the president's answer:
"In the face of a struggling economy, President Obama took his eye off the ball, and spent over a year focused on passing Obamacare -- a massive government takeover of health care that cuts Medicare for today's seniors, raises taxes on millions of middle-class families, and impedes job creation. But rather than learn from this mistake, the President would do the same in a second term, implementing even more job-destroying policies that will cost the nation over 700,000 jobs. It's clear why Americans can't afford four more years like the last four years. As President, Mitt Romney's top priority will be fixing our nation's economy by creating 12 million jobs, higher take-home pay for American workers, and a more prosperous future for all Americans."
Obama demonstrates zero introspection or appetite for self-correction. He has no new ideas for the future. He has to be dragged kicking and screaming into on-the-record interviews with major newspapers -- while cheerfully appearing on MTV, Leno, Letterman, The View, "Pimp with a Limp," and the Daily Show. By what measure has this man earned four more years to carry out more of the same?
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/25/2012 00:00 ||
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President Obama doesn't give many interviews these days outside Comedy Central, so it caused a stir Wednesday when editors at the Des Moines Register managed to pin him down and even elicit some news. Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget "grand bargain" with Republicans that includes tax reform.
This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President's just-released 20-page brochure on his second-term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that's why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.
But the larger reason to be skeptical concerns Mr. Obama's answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy.
"Absolutely not," Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. "Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation."
Whoaaaa there, big fella. Mr. McConnell was then and still is the Senate Minority Leader, and in 2009 he had all of 40 votes. Mr. Obama could have pursued any agenda he wanted, and the Des Moines editors wanted to know why he didn't focus on the economy first. Yet Mr. Obama's instinctive reaction is to blame Republican obstructionism that never happened.
In those first days of progressive wine and roses, Mr. Obama managed to peel off three Republican votes for his stimulus blowout in February 2009. He got five Republicans for the trial-bar gift known as the Lilly Ledbetter bill and nine for an expansion of the state children's health program, both in January. That was some ferocious filibuster.
#4
No jobs -> No taxes paid -> No funds for Obamacare*
This isn't rocket science.
* Timmy and Bernanke can print the stuff but that just reduces it down to the old Soviet saying - they pretend to pay us [with funny money] and we pretend to work.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and the field director for his father's reelection bid, resigned abruptly Wednesday after a video linked him to voter fraud. 
[An Nahar] Republican White House hopeful 
President Obama recently sat down with the editorial board of Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, for what his campaign stipulated would be an off-the-record discussion:
