The danger that Obama poises is not that he himself will become a dictator but rather that he will put systems in place, such as socialized medicine, card check, tax supported community organizers, etc that create the mechanisms that some future totalitarian will use to control the population. Read Hyek.

We’re still some years away from that but the process is a long one. Right now, where something like German circa 1907.

The word is, “conspiracy.”

No, a swarm is the antithesis of a conspiracy. In a conspiracy, there is centralized coordination. In a swarm there is very little.

If you don’t tell them, you’re just gonna leave it to chance that they’ll figure it out?

Sure, why not? Remember, you’ve got tens of million of people observing the system. A small number figure out the hole and then they tell two friend who tell two friends…

If Obama wins, this election was stolen…

Depends on the level of corruption. Some level of corruption occurs in any election but we don’t seem to have a firm idea about what level of corruption would invalidate an election.

The word is, “conspiracy.”

No reason to turn off the verification system and incur higher charges from the credit card issuer, unless you have told people they can give multiple times under multiple aliases, to evade the statutory reporting requirements and prohibitions on foreign contributions. But the occasional honest mistake will cost you more, but be swamped by the millions of planned evasions of reporting rules.

If you don’t tell them, you’re just gonna leave it to chance that they’ll figure it out? That they (people who want to do this) even exist? Sure… that makes sense.

And this was in place in the primaries and proven to work, and not uncovered when Obama decided not to accept public funding.

The only way to track this would be back to the credit card numbers and the names and addresses they were issued to, but campaigns don’t report credit card numbers, and the names given were all bogus. I’m not even sure the Obama campaign broke the law, in a narrow sense, they DID ask people to give their names… the fact that the names are meaningless, notwithstanding. No, if there is a crime, it’s conspiracy to evade the intent of teh law, and that may be a hard one to make stick.

If Obama wins, this election was stolen… the only grace note being McCain hoist on his own Campaign-finance-reform petard.

If you doubt me, maybe you would be interested in buying this bridge that I own in NYC…

Also, I think Tcobb may have the only way to “save” campaign finance limits—it’s hard to see any other way to have enforceable requirements.

How far was Czarist Russia from Kerensky’s government in 1916? And how far was Kerensky’s government from the Bolshevik Revolution?

I don’t say what Obama will do. But here is what he could do.

I think Obama is simply an opportunist, possibly a good leader, possibly terrible. OTOH Nancy and Harry strike me as natural born killers.

The fabled balance of powers is nonsense. We are about to have a President who will be backed by a large Democrat majority in Congress. Pelosi and Reid seem willing, even eager, to do whatever Obama may ask.

The Senate’s filibuster rule is only a procedural rule. It can be changed in an hour. Who could stop Senate Democrats from doing that?

The Courts are, in the final analysis, powerless. Congress can impeach and remove any federal judge. Who says they have to be guilty of anything? Obama could obtain total control of the Supreme Court. Why not Michelle as Chief Justice, she went to Harvard Law?

The President can remove any US Attorney. And if Congress agrees appoint new Directors of every security agency such as the FBI and CIA. Every person in the Justice Department can be fired. The federal reserve was created by legislation and can be neutered by legislation.

The military is sworn to uphold the constitution. What they will actually uphold is the government established by the constitution. There would be only silence from the generals; usually not a bad idea anyway. Even pols run nations better than generals.

In the final analysis an alliance of Congress and the President can do as it wishes. It looks like such an alliance will be stronger in 2009 than at anytime since the Civil War.

So we will see what the Democrats wish.

Soon we will see what they wish.

This tactic of structuring the situation such that Obama can say he didn’t know was called “plausible deniability” in the Nixon days.

Actually, I think the term originated with Col. Oliver North to describe covert activities but Nixon would have loved the term. Many have noted similarities between Nixon and the Clintons and certainly the Democrats evinces the same political paranoia that haunted Nixon.

Even Nixon’s political corruption may not have been unique. A lot of historians have shown that Kennedy and Johnson used a lot of the tactics, such as having the IRS audit enemies, as did Nixon.

Impeachment is the least of what he deserves. I still have hope, though. Conservative hope and not that ridiculous marshmallow fluff dopey hope of Obama’s.

This tactic of structuring the situation such that Obama can say he didn’t know was called “plausible deniability” in the Nixon days. Also popular with the Nixon White House was “that is no longer an operative statement,” which is perfect for those times when Obama “refines” his position (and insists that he hasn’t).

We might also mention the new version of the enemies list, with the odd things that happen to people who oppose Obama, such as his electoral opponents whose “sealed” divorce records were somehow revealed in time to get them out of his way when he was running for US Senate (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjlhNTNmZjk2YmI4N2Y0Y2M2YmI2ZTE4MWVlNDYxNWE=)or those who toss a pointed question his way (Joe the Plumber). Anyone remember Daniel Ellsberg and his psychiatric records? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Fielding_break-in).

But there won’t be any Watergate stories here, since pointedly questioning The One is divisive and distracting (according to Himself), something that should be “a federal crime” (according to the New Yorker) “spreading the poison” (according to Lanny Davis) and worst, racist, according to every Obama surrogate.

As one sage put it, America has two major political parties: The Republican Party and the MSM. The Democrat Party is merely the political wing of the MSM and as such is utterly beholden to it. Now and again Democrat lawmakers may spar with MSM journalists, but this is purely an internal power squabble.

Every election cycle the MSM pours hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity into Democrat Party war chests in the form of slanted news stories, fraudulent investigative reports, biased “analysis” pieces, cover-ups of Democrat Party scandals, hagiographical coverage of Democrat candidates for office, and coordinated attacks on GOP candidates. When you chip in the effects of sitcoms and comedy shows that target GOP politicians far more than Democrats, it adds up to a propaganda behemoth that Joseph Goebbles could only dream of. And all of this is perfectly legal and utterly beyond the reach of campaign finance laws.

After January 20, 2009 I predict that you will see the MSM/Democrat Party consolidate its gains by instituting ACORN-type voter registration as government policy. Once Democrats are safely beyond the reach of the ignorant, unwashed heathen rabble called voters, independent media will be next on the chopping block. If the courts get in the way, well – it is not hard at all to see a President Obama say about an unfavorable ruling, “The Court has made its decision – let the Court enforce it.” Plus I find it not a little bit frightening that the fate of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights may be in the hands of the likes of folks like Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens.

Since everything else; from the biography to the fundraising is fake; why not go all the way and have an imaginary candidate as well!

I see that whenever a fundraising problem on the Democratic side the Dems shoot back with the “hey, everybody does it” defense, then produces anecdotal evidence, easily found, of a handful of irregularities on the Republican side. That’s enough to convince the press; it has been working pretty good that way for a while now.

If Obama wins I expect February pardons of oodles of people, if he doesn’t win it gets interesting….

1. Unlimited donations allowed by any CITIZEN. Only the first $1000 is tax deductible.

2. Businesses/corporations are expressly forbidden from making any donations to an individual running for office. They are also forbidden from donating to PACs, etc. Businesses/corporations may be allowed to donate for specific ballot measures, etc. But this is left up to the individual states to decide.

3. Foreign donations continue to be illegal. No exceptions.

4. All donations, regardless of the amount, are public record.

5. Journalists must state their donation information in each political article they write.

It’s about the tyranny of the majority. When most people see things a certain way and you don’t, you’re at risk of arousing their anger at any time, in any number. You can lose job opportunities, be hounded by officials, beaten by thugs, anything at all can happen to you if the majority of people vehemently disagree with you on important matters. Nobody has to tell them what to do.

It takes courage to face down a tyrant, but it takes much MORE courage (and we may need this kind very soon) to face down the majority of the people in your own culture and tell them they’re wrong.

Actually, I’ll go ahead and link Miller’s Some Kinds Of Vote Fraud Are More Equal Than Other Kinds (11/17/04) and Facilitating Vote Fraud (10/31/04).

An observation on anti-fraud protections for credit card charges. Clearinghouses (banks) offer measures like AVS for online merchants to use to cut down on the use of stolen cards, and the like. But at some level, a bank doesn’t really care one way or the other: if a charge proves to be bogus, the agreement between the bank and the merchant permits the bank to do a “chargeback.” In other words, it is the merchant who ends up paying for the mistaken payment that he or she originally accepted.

Now consider somebody who wishes to donate an illegal $100,000 to the Obama campaign. With some combination of credit cards and cash cards in hand, he visits the website’s donation page and makes 503 donations of $199 (I’m unsure of the maxiumum per-donation amount that would work here, it appears to be under $200 but at least $49). With AVS disabled, any name and any address will do. Even with AVS enabled, it’s not that hard to foil the system.

Once the campaign has accepted the funds and passed the charge onto the clearinghouse: end of story. There is no complaining party that will cry “thief!” After all, the point of the discussion is that the donor wanted to chip the $100K.

AVS is designed to protect the merchant from chargebacks, not to spotlight transactions that an outsider might find suspicicous for some reason.

It gets better. Some merchants (e.g. amazon.com) retain credit card numbers to facilitate future purchases. In the wake of well-publicized hacks into merchants’ database, an alternative strategy is for the merchant to not hold onto the number once the transaction is complete.

Guess which approach the Obama campaign has adopted. When the Obama Justice Department gets around to investigating this matter, in July 2009 or so, what they’ll have to work with is a database containing Names, Addresses, and Amounts. Tell me again: which of those millions of transactions are you claiming are fraudulent, and how do you propose going about proving it?

Pretty neat!

Early voting combined with registration and same-day ballot casting is an invitation to corruption and voter fraud. States rarely compare notes. A person claiming to be a new resident from California moving to Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon will likely go uncaught. If any of those states checks with California, they won’t find out about the others. And the state where the potential voter is originating from (California in this case) probably doesn’t keep track of queries so they won’t notice that three other states also asked about the same individual.