Be INFORMED

Monday, October 20, 2008

Did John McCain Seek Donations From Russia?

   You just cannot make this shit up!

    From Russian News and Information Agency

UNITED NATIONS, October 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.

"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia's permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries," the statement said.

According to Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, the letter dated September 29 and signed by McCain, was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the UN, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador's title was not included in the letter, and was not clear why the letter had taken over two weeks to arrive.

Enclosed was a request for a donation of up to $5,000 to McCain's election campaign to be returned with a check or permission to withdraw the money from the donor's credit card until October 24.

Individual donations to candidates' election campaigns are capped by law at $2,300, and it is illegal to accept donations from foreign nationals.

McCain accepted the $84 million in public financing available to his election campaign, and consequently cannot accept private donations. However, the Republican National Committee is collecting donations that can be used to support his candidacy in limited ways.

Legal barriers aside, the request and the official response from the Russian mission appear even more confusing in the light of McCain's overall negative attitude toward Russia.

Last year he said the G8 should exclude Russia, citing "diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, [and] efforts to bully democratic neighbors."

On August 12, during the brief conflict between Russia and Georgia in its breakaway region of South Ossetia, McCain said he had told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili: " I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today, we are all Georgians.'''

The Gallup Poll daily tracking survey on Sunday showed Democrat Barack Obama leading McCain nationally by 10 percentage points, 52-42.

  Integrity? Honor? Honest?= John McCain? I think not! If this story is true, then it is pretty obvious that the McCain campaign is desperate. McCain asking for money from a foreign government, Russia no less, is a criminal act, I think.

   Another reason to keep this Republican gutter crawler away from the White House.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

An Arrest In GOP Voter Registration Fraud Case...

  so let's all just drop the ACORN bullshit and get to some real voter fraud, shall we? Naturally, this fraudulent practice is coming from the Republican side of the fence.

LATimes

By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 19, 2008

SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario late last night on suspicion of voter registration fraud.
State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California.

Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department comes after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by his firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM. The voters said YPM tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters. The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP.
Several agencies had launched investigations into Jacoby's activities, including the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which issued the warrant for his arrest earlier this month on felony charges of voter registration fraud and perjury.

  This gets even better folks as it seems that this is not the first time that this has happened. It looks as if Mark Jacoby has pulled this stunt back in Tampa Florida in 2004. this scam involved having students sign petitions for various causes and them having their signatures forged to show that they had registered as Republicans when they had not. One student was even asked if she would register as a Republican after signing a petition to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

St.Petersburg Times

Outside the USF library, Adrienne DeVore, 20, also signed a petition to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

"Can I check Republican?" the woman said. If she did, the Republican Party would help fund their cause, the woman told her.

DeVore, a sophomore, thought that was strange because she didn't think Republicans favored legalizing marijuana.

Her boyfriend repeatedly asked the group whom they worked for. One person told him the Young Republicans. Another said they worked for a company called YPM.

Young Political Majors LLC, or YPM, is a company registered by Mark Jacoby at a Town 'N Country residence.

Jacoby appeared this summer at the election office in Gainesville with a box of about 1,200 voter registration cards. Of those, about 510 voters had switched to the GOP.

Elections Supervisor Beverly Hill spoke with Jacoby and grew suspicious. She randomly called the Republicans to verify they wanted to switch. All of them said, "Absolutely not," Hill said. "They didn't even know they had signed a registration form," Hill said.

   So this sorry fuck got arrested this time around. Maybe after looking at some very long prison time, he'll spill the beans on some other illegal registration activities concerning the GOP and the higher ups.

  UPDATE: A little bit more on this can be found here, and here.