Nick's Blog

The Congolese Army is back to it's old tricks. Raping and pillaging the people it's supposed to protect. This has been a problem ever since Leopold of Belguim founded it's predecesor the Force Publique..

Sometimes they do it just for kicks. But in the past few wars these reports typically preceded major defeats.

The two men fighting for power were supposed to meet in Swaziland for negotiations.

Problem: Morgan Tsvangirai's passport is full. He can't leave the country.

Solution: Issue a new one

Problem: the passport office is "out of paper."

Solution: there wasn't one. The negotiations failed miserably.

Mugabe makes Kwame look like a Saint.

Is huge.

Technically it's 'in person absentee voting,' but whatever you call it it's big.

I'm trying to vote now. The line is several hours long.

We're going to turn out on election day.

Rochele Riley's latest column demands to know why Ken Cockrel is getting a free pass on not paying a huge fine. There are several obvious reasons. Riley mentions our exasperation with Kwame, our relief he's gone, and the fact that everybody likes Kenny. Another one is the Presidential race. It's almost always the top political story.

But there's another reason. It's quite simple, really. The County Clerk has a very difficult job. She has to get detailed financial data from everyone who runs for anything in Wayne County. It has to be quality information, the kind an accountant would love, and it has to be reported several times a year. There are a lot of people who run for office in Wayne County. Very few are accountants. This is not easy.

While this is going on she has to run a truly massive election operation, register thousands of voters, deal with tens of thousands of absentee ballot requests, thousands absentee ballots, thousands voters demanding to know why they haven't gotten the $^%# absentee ballot yet, etc. This is also not easy.

Her solution is simple: she ignores the reports until after the election. Then her staff carefully reads them all looking for errors, and assesses the maximum fine. Most politicians avoid paying the fine simply by correcting their paperwork.

This actually happened to me. My campaign for County Commission was funded almost entirely by myself and my immediate family. My Treasurer was an actual accountant, but in the middle of the race she got a six-figure offer from Goodyear and moved top Cleveland. As a result our record-keeping sucked. I recorded all our expenses, but didn't report donations from myself or my immediate family. As a direct result my original report included a huge deficit. Eventually I corrected that, but I screwed up the timing so at some points in our Committee's existence there was still a deficit. Long story short I still owe the County Hundred$. They aren't going to go after me because they know what I meant. I will probably, at some time in the future, get the whole situation resolved. But that is going to be a major pain so I keep putting it off.

What actually happened was simple. Cathy Garret changed the reports. Politicians who were not lawyers or accountants screwed up the new paperwork because they were used to the old paperwork. The Clerk enforces the requirements by fining people huge amounts, so many candidates got fined. Most fixed it without paying by amending their reports. Kenny did not, which ain't shocking. Campaign Finance reports are not light reading, and he has had a lot on his plate lately.

Is very strange. Challenges are always a pain in the ass for County Clerks. Right now election officials are very busy because we're having an election in two weeks. Now is not the ideal time to force a County Clerk to send out thousands of letters. Make sure the letters arrive, etc. They're working 24/7 as is, so it's just silly to think they'll be able to successfully check all these people out and still run a major election.

I don't think they're actually intentionally trying to sabotage Obama. I think they're panicking. They know McCain's in trouble and that there's not much they can do about it. Their dream of a new Conservative majority has been shattered by the very man they hoped would create it -- George W Bush. They're forced to vote for a hated maverick, and it's highly probable he'll lose. The economy sucks. The surge worked but a) it wasn't supposed to be necessary (remember "Stay the Course") and b) Afghanistan ain't looking great.

The Dems might pick up filibuster-proof Senate, and will hold the House. Even if the GOP keeps 41+ Senate Seats there will be no new anti-Roe vs. wade Supreme Court Justices for the next four years. If it doesn't, and the Democrats can agree amongst themselves, Conservatives will be politicly impotent for at least two years. With Obama's fund-raising prowess, and 19 GOP Senate seats to defend in 2010 it'll be almost impossible for them to gain Senate seats.

There's not much your typical GOP operative can do about this. They have to watch the American people reject everything they believe in. And they can't do a single thing about it. But they can damn well insure those voter lists are accurate. And those sketchy ACORN people aren't trying to turn Alabama into Chicago.

Never attribute to evil schemes that which can be explained by petty grandstanding.