The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out

Good thing, too, since it would be illegal to either change the registration form or throw it away.

It's hard not to get the impression that McCain just doesn't think these attacks through.

McCain still believes that the corporate-controlled media will give him a pass and ignore the story about Sproul. I have more than a little suspicion that he's right.

It's almost a shame that there isn't one more debate where Obama can smack McCain over the head with this one. Almost a shame.

Needless to say, the Democratic commentariat should feel free to savage their opponents without prejudice should they utter the word "ACORN."

Rep. Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican said in May, "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That is hilarious! I need context - did Sproul screw with Cannon's district or something?

And yeah, I've been waiting for the shoe to drop on GOP efforts to tamper with voter registration. Because if they're accusing their opposition of something bad, history has shown that usually their opposition is clean but THEY have a problem they're trying to pin on their opponents.

The fact that McCain has pointed a loaded gun at his own foot - again - is completely unsurprising. Just imagine a man with this level of competence as President - I'm beginning to think he's less competent than Bush the Lesser. Yeesh.

shouldn't "voting against troop voting" be "voted against troop funding"?

Compounded with the charges against Sproul, there was this report the other day about an actual arrest of a GOP Political Consultant for Voter Registration Fraud.

wow, i honestly did not expect this.

It's really true: every single one of McCain's attacks on Obama is PROJECTION. Every. Single. One.

Have we ever had such a ridiculously clear choice in a presidential election? Any historians want to weigh in? 1932? 1964?

It's really true: every single one of McCain's attacks on Obama is PROJECTION. Every. Single. One.

Well, I'm not going to go that far. His attack that Obama wants to "spread the wealth" clearly isn't projection, since McCain's plans aggregate the wealth up to a tiny group of people. I have to say - it's also not much of an attack for anyone who wasn't already going to vote for McCain anyway, but there you go.

But yeah - just about anything else McCain says Obama wants to do - up to and including raising taxes on the middle class - is projection of McCain's own deficiencies. Kind of shocking, isn't it?

I'm beginning to think he's less competent than Bush the Lesser.

That's how it's shaping up for me too. If he wins, this country is done.

In fact he does think them through. With intention McCain uses the Rove tactic to accuse others for exactly that which you have been accused. The idea is that the latest accusation is the one that sticks, especially when the main stream media isn't going to bother setting the record straight, and even then it's buried in back pages and/or the target audience doesn't pay attention to the rebuttal.

Believing that McCain somehow just didn't think things through is giving him way to much credit.

I can't remember exactly when the Republican primary was held here in UT (June?), but Cannon lost to an even further right candidate in that primary. Makes me think that Sproul may have been involved in that, but no actual data.

Its official: if you want to find an attack against the McCain campaign just look at the attacks it makes against its opponent. Odds are he's twice as guilty.

Sproul is a piece of work. He sums up the politics-as-total-war Republicanism that Gingrich ushered in. He moves fast enough to blur the lines of legality but it's clear he's unethical. In a just world, he'd be in prison.

It's all over for McCain except his lukewarm mea culpa and the inevitable forgiveness from our punditocracy. McCain has run the nastiest campaign in modern American history. He's been Nixon without the strategic vision. In the end, McCain failed because he had nothing more to offer than a fluffed-up biography. Now even that fraud lies exposed for what it is.

The difference between Acorn and this is that ACORN is all over the news.

My contribution is that McCain has never cared enough about details (except a few military details) to learn what's really going on in the world.

McCain assumes that being raised by an admiral, spending six years as a POW and playing golf with U.S. Senators as a military aide makes him well-informed. "What else is there to know about the world?"

So, McCain has a simple formula. He surrounds himself with the right people and doesn't get involved in the details.

This formula seemed to work for Reagan and W. McCain is a surprised it isn't working for him.

McCain is too intellectually lazy and generally ignorant to see the differences between himself and Reagan and W.

McCain doesn't realize that 1980 was a good year for someone like Reagan to run. Another time in U.S. history and Reagan doesn't look like such a great candidate.

And, both Reagan and W. knew how to be product and let their handlers manage the details. McCain has to feel in command, in control. He doesn't do the necessary research to be in command and in control, but he sees himself that way.

Steve Benen quotes Rep. Chris Cannon: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that CNN and the rest of the corporate-owned media are not working in close collaboration with the Republican Party and the overtly partisan right-wing extremist media to barrage the voters with fake, phony, trumped-up, racist, demagogic propaganda about Sproul.

McCain's a bulb-brained, vain, ex-fighter pilot who has a history that, if you squint, looks heroic. He left his wife after his service, re-married well, and got into politics where an if-you-squint personal narrative + lots of dough = success. He's a crank with a sour sense of humor and not very smart. Essentially, he's a dumbed-down version of Bob Dole. Except without any political sense at all. Or shame.

Just thought I'd share a story about the record number of early voting in Harris County (Houston area)...Many voters complained that when they voted straight Democratic ticket, their vote was reversed for President - from Obama to McCain. How does this happen? No reports from anyone voting straight Republican ticket and vote reversal for President - seems rather strange to me - so PLEASE, PLEASE double and triple check your ballot before casting your vote!! Here's the story...

"A problem with scanning devices that automatically read voters' identification at the Acres Homes Multi-Service Center led U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee to complain, "This is inexcusable. I came out here just expecting to shake people's hands, and it's pandemonium."

In response to reports from other locations that voting machines were reversing votes cast in the presidential election, Kaufman said: "We tested those aspects of the system in a formal way with party officials, and that did not occur. I still cannot urge people enough to check your work and keep your focus on what you're doing."

Double-check your picks
Kaufman's office was informed early Monday that some of the first voters had cast straight-ticket Democratic ballots only to discover that the machines had recorded their presidential vote as Republican.

DeLeon said the equipment was tested and found to be working properly, but he suggested that voters should double-check their selections before submitting the vote.

Straight-ticket voters should not select any individual candidates as that might cancel out their vote in that particular race."

"It's hard not to get the impression that McCain just doesn't think these attacks through." Or care. First, the McCain campaign thinks that whatever is out there first sticks. Second, they think they have convinced the voters to believe the McCain campaign over news reports which contradicts their claims by consistently attacking the news media as unreliable. Third, they remind voters he's a scary black ("not like you and me") out to cheat his way to victory. Fourth, they throw in a good dose of voter intimidation of minorities. According to the Rovean victory doctrine, battle tested in 2000 and 2004, these tactics should carry McCain to victory in a last minute surge of reconsideration by swing voters. I fear the worst is yet to come. Smear and Fear.

In regards to my last post (and being optimistic!), maybe nobody was voting straight Republican ticket so there's nothing to compare to - perhaps?

"The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out

Good thing, too, since it would be illegal to either change the registration form or throw it away."

Absolutely correct and only ONCE in all this media frenzy over ACORN have I seen this pointed out. ACORN followed the law in submitting these obviously phony forms AND in alerting the registrars to them.

There is no there there, but that doesn't keep the bubble heads in front of the cameras from repeating this idiocy over and over and over.

It's hard not to get the impression that McCain just doesn't think these attacks through

You keep saying this, Steve. But of all the examples of McCain's rank hypocrisy listed in your second paragraph, not a single one got any traction with the MSM. Had the Obama campaign made an issue of these things, more people would know about them. But Obama doesn't play that way.

McCain says this stuff because he banks on getting away with it. Most of the time, he's right.

It's hard not to get the impression that McCain just doesn't think these attacks through.

And that is the same lack of thinking that got us into Iraq.

McCain says this stuff because he banks on getting away with it. Most of the time, he's right.

He's playing to his base anyway. They don't care if an attack is accurate or hypocritical; they just want to hear mean things said about the Other.

... but McCain aides would be well served if they did a quick hypocrisy check before going on the offensive.

You seriously believe such beings are capable of understanding the concept hypocrisy well enough to "check" for it?

ROTFLMAO

It isn't that McCain doesn't think these attacks through before he makes them. What he is doing is looking at his own actions and when he sees something that he knows is way over the line, he attacks Obama for having done it. Then when his own transgressions come to light, if they actually do appear, they don't seem to be so bad. This is a standard Rove tactic to attack the opponent for doing what you yourself are doing in spades.

What? Am I the only one who has noticed that McCain's standard method of concocting an attack is to dredge up a repugnant action of his own or of one of his associates, change the name to "Obama", and then trumpet the result in outraged tones?