James Robert Kelley

(Update May 9, 2008: Looks like CNN felt the heavy weight of my post, and updated their site.  Ok, maybe they don’t even know I exist, whatever).

I probably sound like a broken record, harping about the evil deeds the media does to Ron Paul this election cycle. Today I discovered another evil deed, and it definitely show a strong desire to keep the viewing sheeple calm and under control.

Indiana and North Carolina recently held their primaries, which led me to CNN’s website to see the delegate counts. I was interested in knowing if Ron Paul was able to pick up any delegates, now that he is the only guy running against McCain. Here is a screen shot from the CNN “Election Center 2008″ page:

This screen shot was taken early on Thursday May 8, 2008. CNN posted the Democrat delegate counts as they came in, but after more than a day passed I started to wonder if they were even awarding delegates on the Republican side. Then the aweful truth set in, Ron Paul must have won some delegates and the establishment does not want anyone to know!

Why would they care? The establishment, whoever they are, want us all to be calm little sheeple. If the presumptive nominiee is not mopping up all of the delegate, it means there is dissention in the party ranks. We cannot have any dissent! This set me on a fact finding mission, to see if Ron Paul had in fact picked up any delegates. I didn’t know if he would have, since he only scored 8% of the vote, but I had to know if my suspicion was correct.

My next stop was the Republican Party of Indiana’s website. There was ZERO information on their site that I could find. It seems like this primary was a total snoozer in Indiana. So I stopped by the North Carolina Republican Party website and could not find any useful information. I did find something that further increased my suspicions on on North Carolina Republican Party Candidates webpage:

Notice anything missing? They have on the page, in more detail than I’ve shown in this snip, a full list of candidates for the various offices in North Carolina. We can see that Senator Elizabeth Dole was facing competition from Pete DiLauro, etc. This missing part should be in the list of candidates running for President. It ONLY lists John McCain! Unbelievable! Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul were both on the ballot in North Carolina. Ron Paul is still officially in the race, yet his name is not on the list.

Basically, the NC GOP is telling us to not look behind the curtain and be loyal party sheeple, don’t question, just vote for the guy we ordained.

So, after that little journey, I still did not have my question answered. Did Ron Paul win any delegates? Is CNN and the Republican Party trying to hide the truth from us? A couple searches on Google turned up a result from an AOL webpage detailing North Carolina primary results, surely maintained by someone who has a lust for numbers and technology with little regard for politics:

There, My Friends, is the proof. AOL somehow let this one slip. Ron Paul won 5 delegates. So much for party sheeple, we still have a few people out there willing to think for themselves. Maybe, if the media will just report and not decide, the rest of America can wake up and break free from their TVs.

In a previous post I wrote about how John McCain worked to alter election law to his benefit, but it looks like the laws are coming back to bite him toward the end of his Presidential primary run.

John McCain has spent nearly $50mil so far seeking the Republican Presidential nomination. Late 2007 his campaign was not doing as well as it is now, so he applied for a $6mil loan from Fidelity Bank and Trust of Bethesda Maryland. He needed the additional money to gain automatic ballot access in all states, as opposed to paying several million dollars to gain access to the ballots. In order to secure the loan, John McCain used the prospect of obtaining Federal Matching funds.

According to election law, any candidate using Federal Matching Funds is bound to limitations.  The limitation that John McCain is running up against is the $54mil limit on spending.  Considering he has reported spending nearly $50mil and more money since then, it is possible that he will not be legally allowed to spend any more money.

John McCain thought he was free and clear of this limitation, since a couple weeks ago he wrote to the FEC to withdraw his application for matching funds.  The commission responded (PDF) stating that he provided the prospect of Federal Matching Funds as collateral for the loan, which prevents termination of the contract.  According to election law, a candidate may withdraw an application as long as they have not received any of the funds or used the prospect of funds as collateral on a loan.  John McCain has until March 7, 2008 to file a response before the commission votes on rescinding the contract.

As it stands, the FEC is not likely to rescind  the contract.  The impact to the McCain campaign will be staggering.  Although McCain already appears to have the nomination locked up, he still needs another 200 delegates to win the nomination.  If he is not able to spend any more money, he may not be able to compete with Mick Huckabee and Ron Paul in some of the upcoming states.  Combine that with the potential scandal if he has indeed broken election law and the accusations of an affair with a lobbyist, McCain could lose out on additional delegates and potentially many of the unbound delegates.  If he is able to secure the nomination, he will not be able to campaign until he gets the nomination in September.

A McCain campaign blackout until September will virtually end his chances to win the Presidency.  Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama will be campaigning heavily in the months leading up to John McCain’s nomination, and they will surely use McCain’s inability to respond against him.  Events are shaping up in a way to ensure McCain will not be our next President; but then again, this election cycle is the most unpredictable election cycle in memory.

Mitt Romney “suspended” his run for President after the Super Tuesday primaries.  “Suspended” means something quite different than “dropped out.”  Mitt Romney is basically still in the running, he is technically taking a breather.   This could be a rest that lasts the entire Primary process, he could rejoin the race, or he could use his delegates in a bid to gain the Vice President slot in the GOP nomination process.

The possibility of rejoining the race seems remote, but I see a possible strategy he could be employing.  John McCain gained a “front-runner” status after Super Tuesday with nearly 700 delegates in the bag.  The momentum he gained seemed unstoppable, so Romney would consider it prudent to drop out of the race; even without a strategy to win the nomination.  The strategy would be to “suspend” his race, which would unite the anti-McCain voters toward Huckabee or Ron Paul.  As we have seen in the February 9th primary and caucuses, Huckabee took all of the delegates awarded.

Huckabee has gained momentum during the February 9th Primaries due to the absense of Mitt Romney.  This could put an end to John McCain’s momentum and unlock his grasp on an outright nomination.  If that happens, John McCain will need to survive a brokered convention, which is not as certain.  Mitt Romney would then be able to reenter the race at a time when John McCain is down and try to gain enough delegates to become a force in the brokered convention.

Will this happen?  I have no idea, but it seems very possible that Mitt Romney could be counting on it.

The Republican Party has let the sheep skin slip in recent months.  In Louisville, KY Republican Senator Mitch McConnell “pressured” Republican Chris Thienman into stopping a run for Congress.  The reason was simple, McConnell supports Ann Northup, who lost the seat to John Yarmuth during the 2006 Congressional Election, and he is unapologetic about applying pressure and taking the option away from voters.

Louisiana GOP officials held off for days when counting the Louisiana Caucus results, which brought charges of vote tampering.  The votes they were not counting were enough to replace  John McCain with Ron Paul as the top candidate delegate earner.

Then today the truth comes out from Maine.  Maine held the Republican Caucus Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  The results at the end of Saturday were posted quickly on the Maine GOP website, which accounted for 70.5% of the vote.  As it stood, John McCain held the second place slot, with Ron Paul coming in third.  I was eager to see the completed totals, which should not have taken long due to the small size of the electorate; because that 29.5% of the remaining vote could make a difference for second place.

As of 4pm EST on Monday the results have not been posted, but news articles have been circulating widely that John McCain scored the second place finish with 21% and Ron Paul at 19%.  This was in spite of the fact that during most of the counting Ron Paul was in second place.  A conspiracy theorist would suggest that they picked the best time to stop counting.

Now it turns out that Ron Paul may have scored 35% of the delegates, based on internal numbers, according to the official Ron Paul Blog:

Delegates to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis are elected by the state delegates.  Internal results from 10 of 16 counties, including the largest cities of Portland, South Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Augusta, Waterville, Bangor, and Brewer, show Ron Paul picking up 215 of 608 State Convention delegates so far reported, or 35%.

Don’t expect any corrections in the media, they only want the truth to come out after it is too late.  That way they can have yet another sad story to report on the news.

The Fox News Unfair in the Balance article gave an example of how Fox News shows bias toward Ron Paul in the 2008 Presidential election process, but CNN is not innocent in this matter.

When looking at the CNN website today I noticed a prominently displayed chart that details the fund raising numbers for each of the Presidential Candidates. A copy of the chart, taken from http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/candidates/ is below:

The chart is on a page with current information, and shows a ranking of candidate fund raising. If you notice the small print, the chart states “TOTAL as of 9/30/2007.” The reason this is misleading is that news agencies have already posted results of 4th quarter fund raising and readers are assuming they are seeing current information (this is a NEWs agency). Ron Paul, who is dead last in this chart, actually raised more money that the two Republican front-runners combined in the 4th quarter; cash on hand is also greater than the combined amount of Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Why would CNN do this? Ask ABC and the Associated Press why they recently released financial numbers and completely left the top earner off of their report. This happens so frequently that no argument can be made that this isn’t an intentional pattern.

This whole debacle causes me to remember one of the plot threads from the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart. The establishment on both sides of the conflict was more interested in their own promotion and importance that they were willing to sacrifice freedom. Today we have oppressive organizations that seek to maintain their power, even if it means sacrificing what is most important.

The 2008 Presidential Election cycle is not the first time John McCain has run for President. He was defeated by George W. Bush in 2000 for the Republican nomination, even though he did well in some of the early primary states.

John McCain first introduced the The McCain–Feingold Act in 1995, in preparation for the 2000 Election. McCain–Feingold was filibustered and did not gain any traction until 2002, after the 2000 Election cycle in which John McCain was defeated by his opponents superior fund raising. I believe this was the main reason he pushed the bill through in 2002.

Rudy Giuliani recently dropped out of the race, mainly due to his inability to raise money under the McCain–Feingold Act’s restrictions on fund raising. Mitt Romney is somewhat immune to this Act, since he is personally wealthy. Ron Paul is also able to raise large amounts of funds from small donors, but there is no doubt that his existing opponents would be able to far out raise McCain if they were able to draw on restricted funds.

Mike Huckabee is a strong example. He does not have much support from small donors, but he would be able to draw in large amounts of money from religious organizations. Mitt Romney would be able to draw funds from corporate interests and Ron Paul would be able to draw funds from Libertarian groups.

With this in mind, I am convinced that John McCain feels assured he will win the nomination, because he has been crafting his plan and laying down the groundwork for over a decade. I am sure some of the readers will be able to point out additional laws and regulations John McCain has influenced to ensure his path to the Presidency, such as influence over election rules and even voting machines.