defrauding the public

“I feel like I am being organized to believe that Wade is bad everyone else is good. Now this new group is taking over and I am supposed to believe what they are saying.” -ACORN Board Member Monday, August 11, 2008

During the 2008 elections the general public got their first real look at community organizing. The topic seemed to spring up out of nowhere after the often repeated comments of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's remarks. This scrutiny allowed a glimpse into a world that mostly operates on the edges of society and likes to stay that way. Wikipedia reviews the different types of community organizers and ACORN is mentioned right after this entry:

“Grassroots organizing builds community groups from scratch, developing new leadership where none existed and organizing the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to act in the interest of their communities and the common good. It is a strategy that revitalizes communities and allows the individuals to participate and incite social change. It empowers the people directly involved and impacted by the issues being addressed.”

Community organizers spend long hours helping others, they open their hearts and really believe in what they are working towards. If ACORN were a case study of how this model can go horribly wrong, it would begin by looking at the current management situation. According to notes taken at the August, 11 2008 meeting titled Rebuilding ACORN’s Social Impact one attendee puts it this way:

“ACORN was built on issues coming from the bottom up and now it is coming from the top down. It isn’t clear where are projects are coming from. The staff have goals and the members have goals. ACORN was developed by the founders that these things would come from the bottom up. We have gotten away from that. We have to be trained that people do grow pass the speed bump, some people are still there, and that’s okay. We can work it out.”

When issues come from the top down there appears to be a disconnect between what the people want and what ACORN's staff want. The members in the organization are treated like extras in great “street theater” performances and ACORN manipulates their minority and low income members like puppets. Participants at this August 11th meeting were broken into groups and the feedback confirms the very issues that ACORN so vehemently denies in the press.

Group Five Feedback

• Theoretical structure of ACORN is sound but the actual way we do things is the problem.

• We need to figure out how to capture the people we registered to vote and get them more involved and to be dues paying members.

• In the past we made decisions based on financial need and not necessarily what the members wanted.

• Need to be more accountable to members and Be more focused on what is important to them.

• There isn’t just one way to fix things, we have to identify people who are doing good and the people are who aren’t and move from there.

The group goes on to address the need to “Stop Wade-isms, redefine what organizing means, stop selling things to members with talking points and manipulation.” August 11, 2008 is when this meeting occurred and ACORN has received much attention since then, but certain facts remain unreported. Almost six months after this meeting, Texas ACORN members were harassed by an ACORN organizer, who had to be physically removed from the meeting. As member Roslyn Dodge puts it:

FT. WORTH CITYWIDE MEETING HELD FRIDAY 1/30/08 WAS ATTENDED BY ACORN DUES PAYING MEMBERS AND ACORN 8 MEMBERS. FT.WORTH PRESIDENT, ROBERT SMITH INFORMED MEMBERS OF THE WRIT MANDEMUS, FILING OF CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AND ACORN 8'S EFFORTS TO REFORM ACORN.

ONE FT. WORTH MEMBERS ASKED WHY SHOULD THEY CONTINUE PAYING DUES AND CCI IS NO LONGER PAYING THEIR RENT/PHONE BILL........ THIS IS THE RETILITION OF THE DALLAS HEAD ORGANIZER , FIRED BY THE FT. WORTH BOARD IN 2008. FT. WORTH MEMBERS ARE PAYING THE RENT OUT OF POCKET.........THEY ARE COMMITTED TO THE COMMUNITY NEEDS WITHOUT INTERRUPTION.

THE MEETING RESULTED TO MEMBERS GETTIG FIRED UP ABOUT THE NEED TO REFORM. THEY SIGNED ON PETITION TO SUPPORT THE EFFORTS OF ACORN 8 TO REFORM ACORN.

THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE MEETING WAS THE INTRUSION OF ONE ACORN STAFFERS, FORMER FT. WORTH MEMBER, DERRICK RICHARDSON. HE SHOUTED STATEMENTS TO ROBERT SMITH, SAYING, " WE KNOW YOU ARE THE WHISTLEBLOWER" AND "YOU CAN NOT HAVE AN ACORN MEETING WITHOUT A ACORN ORGANIZER" . BEFORE HE WAS ESCORTED OUT THE MEETING BY SECURITY, HE STATED HE HAD THE RIGHT TO BE AT THE MEETING BECAUSE HE IS A MEMBER AND STAFF PERSON. BEFORE LEAVING THE ROOM MR. RICHARDSON SNAPED PICTURES OF MEMBERS.

At what point does ACORN, an organization that wants to bring power to communities, relinquish control? ACORN members are being told that organizers have to be present or they can not meet, does this violate their first Amendments rights? Organizers attend meetings in order to guide the members on the wishes of national staff, and encourages them to risk arrest or miss work for agendas that are clearly financial in nature. Case in point is the Sherwin-Williams campaign. The notes below are from a December 2006 report:

TAKING ON THE ISSUE OF LEAD PAINT & THE SHERWIN-WILLIAMS COMPANY

Our members care a great deal about this issue. Considered one of the most significant environmental health hazards affecting children in the U.S, many of our members have family or friends who are dealing with effects of lead paint poisoning. And over the last year or so, with legal actions against the paint industry finally getting somewhere, there has appeared an opening that may provide a way to pro actively deal with the problem once and for all.

Going into ’06 we were up to 14 ACORN cities receiving funds from HUD to work on lead paint issue. The internal discussion was that a number of cities would be doing local lead campaigns, and therefore layering on a national demand/campaign made particular sense. We would be building a base in a number of cities, raising money with the HUD funds as leverage, and winning local campaigns against landlords and cities. The national campaign would raise the profile of our work and might lead to resources to grow our work. ....

We knew going into this campaign that we faced a particular challenge in the current environment. They can settle with ACORN, but still haven’t gotten rid of their biggest problem – the city and state lawsuits. Over the last 6 months our primary strategy has been to demonstrate to Sherwin-Williams that ACORN has the capacity to compound their legal problems, primarily by getting more cities and states to sue. While right now there is a chance that the company’s legal problems will grow significantly, ACORN’s work could almost ensure that this would be the case. So, deal with ACORN to take out that factor, and they might hope to beat back the worst of what could come.

Sherwin-Williams hasn’t wanted to deal, so we now either give up or make good on our threat. The problem is, while we can get more state lawsuits moving, and these very well may lead to the homes in our neighborhoods being made lead safe, securing the final victory is in the hands of the AG’s and how do we benefit organizationally?

Luck would have it that the major CA lawsuit against the paint industry is being handled by the same law firm handling our Wells Fargo case – and they want to work together on the lead case. Over the last month we have been able to convince several major CA cities and school districts to join the lawsuit. In a potentially important precedent for our role in these types of cases, we are in the final stages of negotiating a seat for ALERT (ACORN Law for Education, Representation & Training) on the legal team for the case, which puts us at the table - and in the settlement negotiations.”

I don't care how ACORN tries to paint or spin this, it is quite clear that they are willing to leave some lead in the homes of poor minorities in order to get some type of monetary settlement for the organization. ACORN is playing with the lives of our children and using their parents as pawns in an elaborate shakedown scheme that - in this case - seems to be aided by a law firm. To do this they need members to go out and “perform” by protesting and disrupting meetings. Most organizers do this in order to intimidate the target into settling, and some members do not have a clue as to what is really going on.

Another example of the duplicity lies in ACORN's push to pass this stimulus bill. ACORN members have been bursting into housing meetings all month to stop foreclosures but what they do not know is that this PLAY was written in 2006 and that ACORN stood by and let its members suffer until the time was right. According to a report released in December of 2006:

“In 2006 we saw the cracks begin to form in the subprime mortgage market with foreclosures on the rise and hundreds of billions of dollars in ARMs resetting. All signs indicate that in 2007 things will be even worse and the system could rupture. We need to be right there when it does.”

ACORN contributed to the current crisis through its constant shakedown of banks and mortgage companies and when they realized that the jig was up, they began a plan to use members once again to make money for their political activities. ACORN has not mentioned the 5.2 billion dollars to its members and the protests are carefully planned performances for the media.

The ultra liberal, ACORN loving, Huffington Post wrote a glorious piece on Bertha Lewis, chief sheep herder, as she pulls one over (yet, again) on her trusting members:

“For three weeks now ACORN members have been aggressively pursuing a campaign to pass a bold, progressive Economic Recovery package in the new Congress. Working closely with allies like US Action, AFSCME, and the larger Americans United for Change coalition, ACORN members are taking a major role in building the coalition to pass this recovery package, and to create the context for it to be both stronger and more directly responsive to the situation facing working families across this country.”

ACORN has a track record of abusing its members and these actions are no different. The action alert posted here does not let on what ACORN's true stake in this bill is and that omission is significant. But of course, this is par for the norm in ACORN as their own notes illustrate:

“Notes from West Regional Meeting 8/15/08, Los Angeles

A lot of questions to be examined…why are we doing certain programs and services that are either not really needed by our members as a major demand and which do not really build us membership. Politics and 3rd party politics remains important and is underestimated in Bertha’s view.

Too many HOs (head organizers) and other staff do not treat or respect members properly, poor training, and modeling of Wade’s way of treating people poorly and in an abusive way, not respecting process or opinions.”

Amazingly this attitude also extends to African American staff members as well. A participant at the Monday, August 11, 2008 meeting show how much he cares about his workers of color.

“As a Political Director in my area I have to invest into the personal lives of the AA(African American) people on my staff. I show them the big picture and I stay on them to make sure they get it together. “

If this paternalistic attitude is not enough, yet another staff member at the meeting noted that:

“We bring in predominately White suburban organizers. We don’t hire out of the neighborhoods that we help. It puts off people in the community who can’t relate to the organizer. We need technical training and get people email addresses. Some Black people don’t know how to use email."

At least one staff member noted the challenges facing African American staff:

"As an HO I shouldn’t have to loan my staff money, checks are late, they are operating on a margin. YEYB(Year End/Year Begining, held in New Orleans every year) near Christmas, end of a pay period, at the ritziest hotel in town. You ask people to live on air and free water. It is disrespectful. We set up all these barriers and expect them to do the job. If you bring in people from the community, there family demands go up, ACORN doesn’t recognize it. They put the burden on people in ACORN who can pay a few bills or who have a credit card. The poor people in the organization can’t move ahead cause they are poor and can’t afford to move up in the organization."

...We send people out without the resources to do the work. We shouldn’t. People waiting on checks and still coming to work. It seems purposeful that it is being done to AA people whether it is or is not.

This Rebuilding ACORN's Social impact meeting was attended by staff, leadership and board members, these were not disgruntled employees saying this, but the very people now snapping pictures and threatening members.

Money will always win in the battle between member interests and ACORN management decisions, or as ACORN' own lawyer Steve Bachman put it in a December 2006 report:

“In 2006 we settled out the Liberty Tax case. We were unable to secure support for suing various of our right wing enemies. Year 2007 may see us involved in some productive class action litigation”

All evidence will be posted this week and will be available for review or download. Honestly, I do not know how any Senator in good conscience can vote to fund an organization that is defrauding it poorest constituents.

If it were a movie, the title would read ACORN Part IV: The Payoff. Unfortunately, its not a movie and the Association Of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is finally back in the news after a post election hiatus filled with strategically placed puff pieces on members barging into foreclosure meetings and disrupting proceedings. The proposed stimulus package will continue on in the Bush tradition of rewarding bad behavior. 

To refresh the minds of a public who may have missed the 1000+ a day pre-election blogs and articles, ACORN has continued on its storied path of “shady” voter registration tactics, intimidation and ultimately financial rewards.As the civil RICO complaint filed this month by the ACORN 8 illustrates:

“Moreover, through the investigation following the embezzlement and subsequent acts of concealment and retaliation; the complainants have discovered that ACORN has become the victim of its Senior Staff and Executive Committee members through the course of an association-in-fact enterprise and RICO conspiracy.The Defendants have engaged in these acts knowingly and intentionally with a common purpose of controlling ACORN its and its associated/affiliated entities and denying its membership the benefits of any true democratic process. Thus, there appears to be a pattern of misuse and/or conversion of funds,abuse of management authorization, concealment of assets and evidence of management collusion, throughout ACORN and related organizations.”

How can an organization that has pending complaints in 11 states have any access to money contributed by same taxpayers who they have misrepresented and used?

During the election cycle, ACORN was cited in at least twelve states on suspicious voter registration activities, and recently in St. Louis, MO a former ACORN worker was indicted. The real story has not been reported yet, the truth is that the voter registration fraud allegations are pure misdirection by ACORN. They welcome these type of allegation because it allows them to operate while holding up minorities and screaming about racial discrimination and voter intimidation. The Right seems to play their roles perfectly by lambasting ACORN in the press, and the general public doesn't know who to believe. While everyone is looking left; ACORN is making off with your life savings over on the right. This smoke and mirrors approach works well for ACORN whose Voter Registration activities range from the aggressive to the absurd as this excerpt from the Project Voter Voter Registration manual will show: 

TRAIN YOUR WORKERS NEVER TO SAY, “ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE?”If they stop you and say they are registered, ask “Oh, at your current address?” If they say yes, ask, “Did you vote in the last presidential election?” to make sure they haven’t been purged. If they didn’t vote in the last presidential, register them again.General Tips

• set clear numerical hourly expectations, retrain once, and then fire
• review numbers at the end of each shift with them, before they go out again and waste your money on another bad shift
• use the FT organizer job as an incentive for people who do well

ACORN main goal was never bipartisan voter registration, but to ultimately control our once democratic elections. During the November 27-29 2006 Political Operations Debrief Retreat at Petit Jean State Park, ACORN staff met to map out certain goals and among them was how to steal elections: 

“Leveraging of PowerWhat would it take to be able to determine who wins? Could we elect the next mayor of Philly, for example? “

In order to expose ACORN we must retrain ourselves to look beyond their antics in election years and review the overall criminal activities of the organization. At the current rate of expansion, ACORN could control elections in most major cities. As the concept paper entitled: Building Organization Off the 2008 Election Cycle states: 

“We think we can manage staff to get at least 60% of new registers to join as members. At this level we would have joined over 700,000 new provisional members in 2006. “

To explain how this works, ACORN takes money that was given to tax exempt Project Vote, and this “contract” allows ACORN to use the voter registration drives to collect personal information for possible solicitation purposes. A Project Vote Administrative Procedures manual even details the process of sending copies of the information back to funders. 

NOTES ON PHOTOCOPYING AND PACKAGINGYou need to mail copies to national at least once a week, with the proper national tally sheet adding up the copies in the package.PLEASE PLEASE you MUST include national tally sheets in the packages you are sending to National. Not just the batch cover sheets from the organizer's shifts, but the overall national tally sheet that tells us how many regs are in the package, how many emails, and how many phones. Contrary to popular opinion, I cannot just wave my hands over a cardboard box and know how many registrations with phones are in there.Please package your copies so that they will survive the shipping and won't arrive balled up in the corner of the box. Use rubber bands, use newspapers to take up extra space. Remember, these are going straight to the funder.

In order for the new administration to really achieve truth and transparency, they must be able to say no to ACORN's requests for payoff. How many victories has ACORN stolen from candidates by either tainting their election or claiming their victory? I call on all of the Senators from ACORN battleground states like Florida, Missouri, Ohio , Pennsylvania and Minnesota to publicly denounce these type of tactics that allow for the poor to be used and for then indicted.

For those who do not believe that there is an organized effort to deceive the public one only has to look at ACORN's strategy for dealing with or outright deceiving election officials : 

“You have to organize the registrar just like you would anyone else...It’s a good idea to stop by before you start your drive, letting them know you are interested in registering some modest quantity of people to vote and asking what the particular regulations are that you need to follow. There may be little quirks, like the fact that their data entry volunteer comes in on Tuesdays and they like to get the cards turned in on Mondays, and this will help you keep on their good side. I wouldn’t go in with a speech about class revolution. It will be more useful to you if they equate you with the League of Women Voters and have a vague sense that you do charitable things somewhere in the city.”

The excerpt was from Project Vote's own training manual, which also states that they must “Terrorize the contractuals.” Project Vote's Research Director Nathan Henderson James, states in his program evaluation of the 2006 voter registration program that ACORN was aware of training issues but chose to focus on goals instead. 

What were the major goals of the program?To register low- and moderate-income families, African-Americans and Latinos, and young voters in jurisdictions where increased participation by these constituencies would have a positive impact on the election-season policy debates. In 2006 the overall goal for registrations was approximately 600,000 cards.What goals were met? Which weren’t?Overall the program did not meet its initial goals, registering around 530,000-540,000 voters. In most states we failed to reach our original goals.What challenges stopped the program from meeting the goals it didn’t?Funding, first and foremost. After that, I suspect poor implementation of the program hampered its ability to meet its goals. Several cities were faced with bimbo eruptions related to accusations of fraud. Many of the programs also faced changes in the regulatory environment that forced us to curtail activities. FL, AZ, NM, CO, and OH were most affected by these changes.What areas of the program do you think were the most successful?Field implementation was strong despite the challenges noted above with significant numbers of cards gathered in several states including MO, OH, PA, MD, and FL. Our capacity to database these cards was much higher in 2006 than in previous cycles. The added elements of the EA program helped elevate the quality control program and the voter verification work. Site-based work continues to be very strong.What areas of the program do you think were the least successful?While I do not think that quality control was “least successful” it was certainly not as good as it should have been. Other weaknesses related to this were probably the training component for QC staff and the overall accountability of the programs to their QC responsibilities.

While Nathan's notes are enlightening, what is more amazing are the notes from the 2006 Voter Registration debrief held in November of 2006. 

...need to look at hiring practices, look at people and evaluate whether or not they will be able to get people to talk to them and fill out cards, need to be more professional; not being steady and consistent, sometimes have to ramp up on staffing because numbers have fallen behind;Ongoing training has to happen”

ACORN holds these indicted workers up and claims a conclusion to ALL allegations, when actually there is a standing policy to throw them under the bus and move on to the payoff phase. Sandy Newman of Wellspring Advisors and former director of Project Vote lays out how to get to this payoff phase with a simple plan that was targeted at liberal donors in a April 12, 2007 memo entitled:

RE:Preliminary Analysis of Impact of 2003-2006 Voter Registration Drives, and of Voter Participation Opportunities and Funding Needs for 2008

“For donors of tax-deductible funds, efforts to assist any candidate or party are prohibited. These donors may, however, fund efforts to reduce distortions in the democratic process. They may do so because they believe strongly in strengthening democracy regardless of the policy results it produces. They may also believe that reducing such distortions is likely to yield policies more in keeping with the interests of those whose representation in the electoral process has been inadequate. The fact that a donor may hold such a belief, or even that it may motivate giving decisions, does not cause a charitable contribution to be improper, provided that the donor intends that the actual work supported remain strictly non-partisan – that is, the work supported may not provide support or opposition to any candidate or party.”

It's interesting that Wellspring is one of Project Vote's major donors and Sandy Newman steers other money in Project Vote's direction. Newman founded Project Vote along with Zach Polett, who was also head of ACORN Political Operations. ACORN voter registration drives are intentionally partisan undertakings with the intent to replace elected officials with ACORN friendly candidates. This is once again the “wink, wink” approach to doing business. It all seems so legal on the surface.

 America has endured quite a bit in the last 8 years; and now that there is really a chance for reform, it would be detrimental to give ACORN access to such a slush fund. They are operating now at an estimated $100 million a year and causing chaos and division in many cities, I can only imagine what would happen if the had access to even a penny more, let alone a billion. 

The ACORN 8 and other whistleblowers are ready to testify on the Hill, we welcome that chance to expose ACORN, and stop this brazen attempt at giving more money this these poverty pimps. But it is up to our Senators to make the right decision and support the constituents; the moms; the teachers; construction and office workers; and the unemployed. Its time to give them their payoff: loyalty.

As many call a truce in political negativity for the Christmas holiday, some politicians and political wannabes wont be focusing on Santa or practicing any piety over the birth of Christ.

No,……. I am not talking about atheists.

Whatever they believe or do not believe is their business, not mine, and as long as they do not try to stifle my celebration of the holiday, their not celebrating it doesn’t bother me.

That is their business, not mine.

I am referring to a group of organized political mobsters who unlike Santa are not stuffing any gifts in any stockings or under Christmas trees. No, these organized criminals are stuffing ballots and playing the role of the Grinch.

Up north, in cold and snowy Minnesota, almost seven weeks after Election Day, Minnesotans are still counting ballots.

Folks in Minnesota are not especially slow or particularly uneducated. They know how to count. Its just that every time Board of Election officials finish counting a district or town, Democrats supporting ultra, leftwing, liberal, lunatic, comedian Al Franken for the United States Senate, keep finding more ballots that election officials seem to have missed. They either misplaced them, or forgot to bring them in the counting room, or just plain didn’t count some machines.

The sudden appearance of this continuous stream of ballots out of nowhere is hindering the process. It’s understandable. I mean after all, once you think you finished tallying up the votes in one district and find out that incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman won it by 115 votes, you would assume that it was over in that district.

No not in Minnesota.

In Minnesota just as one district is done and they move on to the next, new ballots from the town that they just completed pop up, out of nowhere. Even more surprising is the fact that all of the votes that mysteriously appear happen to be for Al Franken and it just so happens that the number of newly found Franken votes is just slightly more than the plurality of votes that Coleman previously won by.

Hmmm……that is really funny, you might even say miraculous. I mean it makes you kind of expect a burning bush to appear and communicate the final vote, which Al Franken will no doubt win.

But day after day, these miracle ballots appear. Most of them, if not all of them are found by Democrat officials. In one case 100 votes on one voting booth in a heavily Democrat town were discovered. All of the 100 votes were for Al Franken and even more odd was the fact that the time stamp on each of the 100 votes read November 2nd, 2008.

Election Day was November 4th, 2008.

Whoa,…….. now hold on here. Now its getting spooky.

I mean this is almost as miraculous as the Virgin Mary giving birth.

Maybe this guy Franken really is special. Maybe he is the “chosen one” who will walk on water, split the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and transform mankind.

Or maybe this guy Franken is simply as freakish as Frankenstein.

The circumstances surrounding the astonishing finding of votes, that are all for him, is funny. Much more funny than any of Franken’s offbeat humor and comedic routines.

I can’t wait for Saturday Night Live to do a segment on this situation.

That could be a truly hysterical skit. I could just see SNL cast members portraying blind election board officials counting ballots as liberal Democrat operatives keep passing them the same ballot over and over again and declaring it for Al Franken each time.

SNL scriptwriters could have a field day writing that segment. It would really be funny. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is not funny. It is sad. Sad but true.

Liberal Democrat operatives are stuffing ballots. They are counting illegitimate votes for Al Franken that they would never consider to be legitimate for Norm Coleman if the circumstances were reversed.

But true to form, liberal hypocrisy abounds. Hypocrisy reigns supreme in liberal la la land. These are the people who try to combat discrimination by implementing forms of discrimination.

They are the people who want everyone to pay their fair share, but refuse to pay it themselves.

They sit in private jets writing press releases that denounce some for speeding up global warming by driving an S.U.V. without thinking twice about how much more damaging their flight is than any S.U.V..

Liberalism is rooted in hypocrisy. So it should not surprise anyone to know that Democrats accept a lower standard for themselves than they do for Republicans. Just like Florida in the election fiasco of 2000 when Democrats wanted a higher standard for approving vote counts in some districts than in others. In 2000 they wanted higher standards in counties that Bush won and lower standards in counties that Gore won.

Then they decided that they didn’t want all disputed votes reevaluated and recounted, only some votes.

Let’s face it folks. Democrats are now in control. Total control. From the White House to the U.S house and the senate.

If Coleman wins this thing it will really be a miracle.

The way I see it, even if Minnesota’s liberal Democrat Secretary of State certifies Norm Coleman as the winner, the Democrat led Senate may refuse to seat him. Under senate rules, that is something they can do. It happened as recently as 1974 when in New Hampshire a Republican won a close election and despite certification of that victory, by the state of New Hampshire, the U.S. Senate called for a new election.

Democrats in the House of Representatives did the same thing with a close election in Indiana. Here again the Republican won. The state certified the Republican winner but Democrats refused to seat him. They ordered a recount and the Republican won again but by an even larger margin than before. Democrats still refused to seat the Republican winner. House democrats conducted their own recount, with their own standards and declared the losing democrat, the winner.

This stuff didn’t happen in the “old days”. It happened during the most recent past decades. And liberals haven’t changed very much in that time. If anything their hypocrisy has increased over time.

So it doesn’t look good for Norm Coleman.

Even if a preponderance of legitimate votes for him overcomes a preponderance of illegitimate ballots for Franken, liberal senate leader Harry Reid and his henchmen will probably ignore it and refuse to seat Coleman.

It may not get that far anyway. Minnesota liberals are pretty ruthless. They will probably spend Christmas falsifying any piece of paper that isn’t wrapped around a Christmas gift and submit it to blind Board of Election officials who will count it as a vote for Al Franken.

You have to remember that these are the liberal Democrats who, six years ago, did everything they could to prevent Norm Coleman from winning the first time he ran for the Minnesota senate seat.

Back then he was running against incumbent, liberal, firebrand, Paul Wellstone.

As popular as Wellstone was, the race between him and Coleman was tightening up. Then suddenly in a truly horrific and tragically sad turn of events, while campaigning, the plane carrying Wellstone, one of his sons and a campaign worker crashed and killed them along with the pilot of the plane.

As tragic as it was, Minnesota Democrats pulled out another corpse, Jimmy Carter’s vice stooge and a former landslide-losing, Democrat nominee for President in his own right, Walter Mondale. They asked him to fill the vacancy and become the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Wellstone’s place. He accepted and Democrats held a nationally televised memorial service for the senator.

As sad as the the occasion was, with the body of Senator Wellstone, his son and campaign associate still warm, Minnesota liberals launched Walter Mondale’s campaign to replace Wellstone in a spectacle as raucous and celebratory as the Democrat’s national convention.

Filled with music and cheerleading speeches, the event only lacked the traditional balloon drop.

The blatant disrespect for Senator Wellstone and the astonishing exploitation of his death actually ended up hurting more than it helped. Even non-activist, left leaning, Minnesota voters were appalled by the political spectacle.

It wound up making history. Up till then, Walter Mondale never lost a statewide election in Minnesota. In fact even when Mondale embarrassed himself and Democrats in his landslide loss for President against Ronald Reagan, Minnesota was the only state in the union to still vote for Mondale.

Well after turning the somber funeral of a sitting senator into a boisterous campaign rally, even Minnesota rejected Walter Mondale.

Liberals in Minnesota are still feeling the sting of that debacle. Walter Mondale won’t even show his face anymore and others are still bitter. That is why you can bank on their not spending this Christmas celebrating. They will spend it stealing. Stealing an election that they were not able to steal six years ago.

This Christmas, Minnesota Democrats have no visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, they have visions of ballots falling from the heavens. Ballots that are all marked in support of Al Franken.

So tonight, don’t be surprised if Santa is a little late to your house. Democrats will be forcing him to stuff ballots instead of stockings at Minnesota’s State Board of Elections headquarters.

If they are successful, all that the voters of Minnesota will find in their carefully hung stockings tomorrow morning will be a couple of lumps of coal.

Just before Christmas, there was an honest politician, a kind lawyer and Santa Claus traveling in the elevator of a very posh hotel.

Just before the doors opened they all noticed a five dollar bill on the floor.

Which one picked it up??

Santa of course, the other two don't exist!