The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has signed up 1.3 million new voters this year in areas likely to vote Democratic.

Registered Democrat

ACORN’s registrants include Mickey Mouse, the entire starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys (who signed-up in Nevada no less), a 7-year old girl in Connecticut, Jimmy Johns (which is actually the name of a sandwich shop in Indiana), and one Ohio man who admitted signing 70 forms in exchange for cigarettes and cash.

Including these, ACORN has turned in at least ten thousand applications that are fakes. And since the Big O once ran training sessions for ACORN and his campaign has links to it, Republicans are crying foul. They have registered legal complaints in several states.

It’s a good issue for Republicans. ACORN should not permit local officials to reward workers for exceeding their quotas. And probably a handful of ACORN workers took liberties on their own, but that’s where the story ends. Seriously, does anyone think we’ve stumbled upon a conspiracy to steal the election?

There is no evidence for systematic voter registration fraud at ACORN and even if there was, that’s still not voter fraud, which would require that thousands of impersonators vote on November 4.

Still, the Big O should get in front of the mess. Denounce the mismanaging few and sound a trumpet for fair elections! Right now the Big O wins a fair election, and let’s not forget what happened last time a swing state got settled in court.

When spectators at Republican rallies spewed venomously at the Big O last week, the news overshadowed another story of possible fraudulent behavior by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a large voter registration group that targets likely Democratic voters.

Already this year, ACORN has signed up 1.3 million new voters.  But officials in a dozen states have raised concerns regarding at least 10,000 registration forms submitted by ACORN. In one Ohio county for example, ACORN registered one person 17 times. In Las Vegas last week, police raided ACORN’s offices and hauled off computers and documents.

Pursuing the story, CBS interviewed ACORN workers. Many said ACORN pressured them to increase their registration numbers, and this encouraged fraudulent activities such as transcribing names from phone books, creating fake names, using non-existent addresses, signing up dead people and registering inmates.

“Rumors of ACORN’s voter fraud have been greatly exaggerated and to a large extent manufactured,” ACORN’s chief organizer Bertha Lewis told the New York Times.  She added that ACORN informed officials about bogus registrations collected by its workers and dismissed the people in question.

Expect the story to evolve along two fronts this week: how much fraud took place, and what do we make of the Big O’s connections to ACORN, which include his campaign’s $800,000 payment to an ACORN-affiliated consulting firm last spring.

Those who toughed out Sarah Palin’s debate performance to the end last week saw her close by mangling a line from Ronald Reagan. If we don’t stay on guard she admonished, we’ll be “telling our children and our children’s children” about a time when America was free. 

Palin was trying to stoke fears of terrorism, the only remaining issue where her ticket still has an edge over the Dems. Never mind that the Gipper was talking not about national security but legislation to guarantee health care for older Americans, the program we now know as Medicare.

So there was plenty of irony in yesterday’s story that Palin’s boss would gut Medicare after all. Top Gun’s senior policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eaken let it be known over the weekend that Medicare and Medicaid program cuts would be used to fund the Republican tax-credit-dressed-up-as-a-health-plan stunt.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated these cuts would have to total $1.3 trillion over the next decade in order to keep the McCain plan budget neutral.

It is not clear that complex bureaucracies like Medicare could survive cuts like that, especially if they are implemented all at once, but that’s the point I guess. And never mind that Top Gun proposes a $5,000 health care tax credit for families, but the average family would have to fork over $12,000 for adequate coverage.

Conservative Republicans never warmed up to Top Gun. But now that they know what a President McCain would do to their despised entitlement program, they may just pull a lever for the guy after all.

Couric Grills Palin on Foreign Policy

Previous Worst Time Out in History

It’s yesterday morning. The Big O’s peeps call their Republican counterparts to suggest releasing a joint statement on the financial crisis. The Republicans agree. For six hours there’s no contact, and then look! It’s Top Gun on the tube! He’s suspending his campaign and stepping out to help solve the financial crisis.

Thank heavens! Washington needs his vast economic expertise right now.

McCain also says he wants to suspend Friday’s debate. A time out in the middle of a presidential campaign? Technical foul!

Here is how the Big O responded: “It is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.”

Already this year we’ve seen meltdowns in the housing and mortgage markets, skyrocketing foreclosure rates, the collapse of major investment banks and federal bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. And it’s only September!

Into these headwinds, John McCain spits “the fundamentals of our economy are strong!” It seems everybody but Top Gun knows what happens when you spit into the wind.

The crises have devastated millions of US households. 86% of those polled by ABC News last week said the economy was “not good.” GDP growth, anemic as it has been, is artificially propped by last spring’s one-time fiscal stimulus.

Now, unemployment is starting to accelerate. There are worrisome declines in retail and automotive sales, and there’s more debt out there than people can count.

Maybe Top Gun means we won’t crash and burn like the Great Depression? That’s true because modern economic shock absorbers do work. The recent surge in commodity prices helped US mining and agriculture interests, for example. The weakening dollar contributed to a hike in exports. Now these trends have faded and inflation worries have faded with them.

Maybe we’re not headed towards Great Depression II, but it’s time for some real Straight Talk from McCain: if current policies continue, we’re looking at years of little or no growth at best.

By now we know that Sarah Palin is playing fast and loose with the truth (some call it lying) when she claims to have rejected congressional funds for that infamous Bridge to Nowhere.

Yet she keeps bringing it up on the stump; at least a half dozen times this week alone. Does the truth matter anymore? Republican strategist John Feehery has his party’s answer (in today’s Washington Post):

“The more the New York Times and the Washington Post go after Sarah Palin the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent. As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter (italics added).”

It’s been 56 years since a party holding the White House nominated a person that is not currently the President or Vice President. Why is this happening now?

McCain told us in an ad he ran last month, “We’re worse off now than we were four years ago.” He then attempts to anoint himself as an agent of change, but that’s tough to do because he voted with Bush 90% of the time over the last four years.

We admire John McCain, but we care about the future not the past. And for that, there’s no there there with this man: Cut spending, he declares (crowd applauds)! Cut taxes (crowd cheers)! And his big idea? Cut earmarks (crowd becomes hysterical)!

Do the math Mr. McCain. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent would reduce federal tax revenues by a trillion dollars in the next 4 years. If we eliminate every single earmark (including the one Sarah Palin wants to build that gas pipeline in Alaska), we save $75 billion. Where’s the rest of the money coming from?

Yes Sara Palin was brilliant last night. But the content of her speech contained some nasty insinuations and code words that, although they may have sailed over Palin’s head, will not be missed by the very folks she was charged to seduce.

Specifically, Palin derided the Big O’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. In that role, Obama worked with people who had been left behind when steel plants closed or who had otherwise lost work.

As David Plouffe points out, community organizing is how regular folks respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Plouffe reminds us that for decades, ordinary people have forged their own versions of the American dream by driving change from the bottom up. Community organizing is what drove the women’s sufferage movement, labor rights and the civil rights movement for example. It’s going on today in churches, veteran’s clubs and many other venues. Do the Republicans understand this?

Sadly, Palin’s gaffe comes as no surprise. Her speech was after all, written by a speechwriter for George W Bush.

Controversial VP pick Sarah Palin didn’t just lance a festering boil of Republican angst last night. She dazzled. She was poised, self-assured, in command and not only that, she was accessible and likable.

She proved to be pretty adept with a shiv, too  (“I have actual responsibilities”).

To be sure, hers was an easy test-she read a speech (more about that shortly) before a crowd that desperately wanted her to succeed. Going forward, we’re likely to see her in similarly controlled situations as she takes time to brush up on her world maps and McCain’s changing policy positions.

Tougher tests will come when she faces the media or her opponents. There is also the risk that a story or two about her Alaska shenanigans will grow legs.

Still, Sarah Palin did save the game for McCain and his party, at least for one night. That was impressive! Congratulations to her.