Promoted. Originally crossposted from DailyKos at 2009-04-11 18:46:43 -0500. -- GH

If you don't know, there are 2 high profile races in November. The NJ-Governor is one of them, and Jon Corzine is behind in the polls by close to 10 points to Chris Christie. Christie is a Bushie fundraising ethically challenged former US Attorney in NJ, and a story is starting to bubble up now about something that could sink his candidacy. This is also over at Blue Jersey, where there is a whole lot more about Christie's background and cracks in his "ethical armor".

Thanks in advance for reading, and however you can help spread the word, it would be much appreciated. Please help this go viral. Not only will a Corzine victory deal a crushing blow to republicans in the Northeast, but a Christie win will be something that every single republican will point to as "evidence of a republican resurgence"

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Lately, republican Gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie has had to explain some very questionable federal monitoring contracts he granted to his former boss and the man who decided not to indict his brother for securities fraud.

While much of the focus on these cracks in Christie’s “ethical armor” has been on political contributions that smell an awful lot like pay-to-play, very little has been paid to a multi million dollar contract that Christie awarded to David Kelley – who just so happened to indict 14 colleagues/employees of Christie’s brother on criminal securities fraud charges while letting his brother avoid any punishment.

I’ve really stayed out of the Presidential candidate frenzy except for a few posts here and there which were critical of both Obama (and his supporters) as well as Clinton (and her supporters) over specific actions or accusations, so it is quite ironic to me that I would feel the need to write a diary about something that one of them said - let alone something that was most definitely not with nearly as much malice or disingenuousness as pretty much every thing that has come out of John McCain’s mouth.

Many of you know that the area of election fraud and election integrity is a huge one for me. And while I am not going to link to each of the 20 or so posts I have done over the past 2 years, they are easy to find in the link above.

It’s long past time to talk about this whole “election integrity/voter fraud/voter ID/election fraud/ballot fraud” matter in a very different way. Consider the following hurdles that have not been overcome when talking about the need for wholesale election reform:

• Talking about the hackability of voting machines doesn’t work because you can’t prove that they were, in fact, hacked in a manner that would show not just beyond-a-reasonable doubt but beyond-any-doubt-whatsoever (not fair, but true);

In upholding the Indiana voter suppression, er disenfranchisement, er “ID” law, the US Supreme Court’s decision contained the following head smacking passage (hat tip to BooMan and Adam B):

The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history. Moreover, petitioners argue that provisions of the Indiana Criminal Code punishing such conduct as a felony provide adequate protection against the risk that such conduct will occur in the future. It remains true, however, that flagrant examples of such fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists, that occasional examples have surfaced in recent years, and that Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor -- though perpetrated using absentee ballots and not in-person fraud -- demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.

Now, I have written a thing or two about election fraud and election integrity issues over the past few years, so I think that I have a bit of a perspective here.

The fact that the US Supreme Court has put the above statement in its opinion is stunning in and of itself. The fact that the discussion about “voter fraud” has centered on the “mysterious evil person who knowingly gives false information in order to vote (or vote in a different precinct)” (oh, the irony there) is one of the biggest problems in the overall area of election integrity.

This will be a short but important post. Some of you may know the excellent work that Cliff Schecter has done around the blogosphere, both at The Agonist, at Huffington Post, and other places. Some of you may have seen him take down and destroy right wing talking heads over the past few years on cable “news” channels.

And some of you know the fantastic work he has done researching and bringing to light the Real McCain.

For starters, a hat tip to Daily Kos community member Jay Ackroyd for pulling together a list of those corporate media talking meatsticks who attended John W. McCain’s BBQ lovefest at the beginning of March. I’ve put that list at the end of the diary, so we can all keep tabs on this.

So it has pretty much been adopted by many of those who still deny reality that the “decrease in violence” is the proof that the ill fated escalation worked. And it is also evident that John W. McCain has been a chief proponent and certainly the main beneficiary of this absolutely over simplistic and erroneous line of thinking.

But, buried in the hullabaloo of the latest Democrat to be in the cross hairs (due in large part to his own actions), as well as the obsession over the Clinton/Obama tit-for-tat is some news from Iraq that really does not bode well. I offer a bit of analysis, but more in the way of information as to the situation on the ground.

Clammyc is doing some original work here -- reporting on and interviewing candidates in the state and local races. Listen in! - promoted cho

It may come as a surprise to some, but Colorado’s 4th District was recently ranked by the Washington Post as a top 10 House race to watch, despite Marilyn Musgrave holding onto the seat for the past three elections. However, to those who know Betsy Markey, this is not really a surprise at all, especially when you consider that Musgrave’s vote total in 2006 (46%) was the lowest winning percentage in the entire country.

And you can hear Betsy LIVE today at 11AM Eastern/8AM Pacific talking to thereisnospoon and me on our BlogTalkRadio show.

Over the past 2 months, there have been a number of diaries written about Heather Ryan, the Navy Vet mom-turned Congressional Candidate who Senator Mitch McConnell had fired from her job on MLK day for the horrific crime of her and her 12-year old daughter daring to ask McConnell a question about the Iraq War during a campaign fund raising stop in Paducah, KY.

She is running against incumbent Ed Whitfield, whose most impressive list of missed votes would put the rest of Congress to shame (over 250 since 1997), and when he has bothered to show up and vote, he has voted with the republican party close to 90% of the time in the current Congressional term.

And you can listen to Heather talk to us LIVE on BlogTalkRadio today at 4PM Eastern/1PM Pacific by clicking on this link.

Since everyone is at least a bit familiar with John McCain’s record when it comes to strolling through a market in Baghdad with hundreds of his closest guards, or how he wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years (except when he flip flops on that).

But not that many really, truly know just how horrific his voting record is when it comes to the troops. And it is pretty consistent – whether it is for armor and equipment, for veteran’s health care, for adequate troop rest or anything that actually, you know, supports our troops.

This is chock full of links to the roll call votes, and the roll call votes have links to the actual underlying bills and amendments. I present this so that there is support and things that can be rattled off when saying that McCain is not a friend of the military. Feel free to use it as you want, but this can be tied into the “Double Talk Express”. But here is a very quick statement - John McCain skipped close to a dozen votes on Iraq, and on at least another 10 occasions, he voted against arming and equipping the troops, providing adequate rest for the troops between deployments and for health care or other benefits for veterans.

-- originally posted -- 2008-02-25 02:35:22

I haven’t seen this discussed much, but there is something that Matt Browner Hamlin pointed out earlier today that brings John McCain’s use of the public financing provisions to a whole new level (at least it would seem that way).

You see, McCain didn’t just “sort of pledge” it as collateral for a bank loan. He also used it to shortcut his way onto the Ohio ballot. So, to me (and I am just a dumb blogger), it would seem that either he is locked into the public financing or he can be ineligible for the Ohio republican primary and taken off the ballot. Now, since he pretty much has the nomination close to sewn up, it would seem to be smart politics to make himself ineligible for the Ohio primary. But the bigger picture here is the shenanigans that McCain is going through with respect to the matching funds in order to give himself either an advantage or stay in the race, and he is using campaign finance laws - the same laws that he claims to champion - in order to do so.

So much for his credibility, integrity and reputation as a “reformer”.

As the right wing extremists continue to try and paint this McCain lobbyist story as about sex when it is clear that even the Washington Post realizes that it is about the “anti-lobbyist’s” surrounding himself with lobbyists.

Meaning his trustworthyness, his double talk, his lack of character, his lack of, well, credibility.

This is the story. This what John McLobbyist is all about. As Red Wind says, he has the “straightest talk that money can buy. But it is more than just lobbyists.

The recent news about Rick Renzi, Arizona Congressman being indicted on land deals and other charges is telling on a few levels. You see, Renzi was, up until around noon today, a member of John McCain’s campaign leadership team (a co-chair, nonetheless). Interestingly, it appears as though Renzi either resigned from the leadership team or was booted from the leadership team right around the time his indictment was announced because Renzi’s name is no longer listed on McLobbyist’s website.

Some of you may have heard of Mark Schauer, although if you live outside of Michigan (like me), chances are that if you have heard of him, you don’t know enough about him - because there is a lot of good things to know.

If you are looking to take a brief break from the Presidential candidate wars, you can hear thereisnospoon and I interview Mark today at 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific on our BlogTalkRadio show.

There are some big things going on in Iran lately, and they don’t all involve ticking time bombs being set and sent over to Iraq, secret deals to help its enemies hop onto planes headed for the US so they can follow our troops home, pranks with short wave radio that are “proof” of instigating war in the Strait of Hormuz or selling nuclear secrets to Palestinian “terrorists” that can be used to wipe Israel off the map.

Now, all of the news is not great, as some of it will no doubt be used to trumpet the need to bomb Iran now, but that is really par for the course, regardless of what news comes out of Iran. But there have been a number of developments lately that will be ignored for the most part (or when not totally ignored, buried as a small column on page 24), mainly because it doesn’t fit the frame of evil brown people threatening to kill everyone so we have to kill them all first.