Barack Obama was told on Monday that he will be kept off the ballot in Connecticut. Despite turning in the required number of signatures before the deadline, the ticket will not be listed. The secretary of state admitted that they made a mistake in counting the signatures and also incorrectly struck legitimate signatures from the ballot, but explained in a court hearing on the issue that they couldn’t possibly remedy the situation by printing new ballots in the allotted time. A judge agreed with them, and in essence said that despite admitting the mistake, the electronic voting machines and paper ballots could not be corrected in time for the election next Tuesday. “There’s nothing we can do, and we’re sorry,” were the only words that the judge could offer to a devastated Obama campaign.

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? The Obama campaign did everything right and couldn’t make the ballot because of screw-ups, laziness, and a judge too stupid to realize that a candidate should be on the ballot if the state screws up and the candidate plays by the rules. The outrage would be palpable if this story was true for Barack Obama or John McCain, but it’s non existent right now because this actual situation, word for word, happened to Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate in the 2008 election and my choice for President of the United States.

What’s completely enraging about this case is that the Barr campaign did everything right. In fact, Judge Janet Hall, the presiding judge in the case, didn’t dispute the argument that everything was done by the books by the Barr campaign.

“We are outraged by the decision of Judge Hall. To allow a candidate for the highest national office to be unlawfully excluded from an election because it would inconvenience state workers or interfere with bureaucratic procedures goes beyond the pale,” stated Russ Verney, campaign manager for Bob Barr.

Verney continued, “It takes a few days to print good, old paper ballots which served us well for over 100 years. Throw the machines in the river and allow democracy and justice to take precedent over technology. If the state of Connecticut maintains a level of incompetence so great that they cannot print ballots before the election, I encourage them to look to private industry and call Kinkos.”

You can’t even imagine this happening to McCain / Obama, can you? In fact, in Texas, despite a state law that clearly stated deadlines for candidates to submit their ballots, and despite the fact that Obama hadn’t been nominated yet, and McCain wasn’t nominated and hadn’t picked his VP candidate, they were still allowed on the ballot even though they had to certify the choice was already made. I spoke about this on an episode of IT.tv last month:

Hell, in that video, I even mention Bob Torricelli and his replacement on the New Jersey ballot, despite it being inside the deadline, because the New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled that no matter how many candidates were on the ballot, the ballot wasn’t fair if there wasn’t a Democrat up against the Republican, in effect taking all of Doug Forrester’s campaign ads, materials, and in fact his strategy, and tossing it down the toilet inside a deadline within which change was actually against the law.

That’s what happens when Democrats break the law. That’s what happens when Republicans break the law. That’s not what happens when a Libertarian doesn’t break the law. Whether or not you’re a libertarian is not at issue here. Either way, you should be outraged that the two major parties are allowed to ignore the law without consequence while those same laws are enforced to the letter against independents and third party candidates.

The system is designed to protect the Democrats and Republicans. It’s run by Democrat and Republican judges who have party allegiances and who let those allegiances cloud their decisions. In case after case, election law isn’t equally enforced even when the violation is flagrant and obvious. If that isn’t political croneyism, nothing is.

I got myself all worked up and set off tonight over, essentially, nothing. Some jerk in Kansas City wrote the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in my entire life, I think. Here’s the relevant article in case they decide it’s too ridiculous to keep on the site.

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

In a nutshell, if you call Obama’s policies and attitudes “socialist,” you’re a racist. You’re not saying it’s really socialist and that the policies have a socialist tone; instead you’ve essentially called him “nigger.” Yep, criticizing Barack Obama’s policies is not possible; if you’re doing it, you’re doing it out of racism.

This isn’t the first time a criticism of Barack Obama has been deemed “racist.” As one commenter on the drivel I snipped wrote, “Wait, so now “socialist” is the secret word for referring to blacks? A few months ago, the code word for negro was “inexperienced.” Then somebody suggested that “elitist” was a euphemism for nîgger. You can’t say that Obama is “liberal” anymore, because liberals have disowned the word “liberal” and now prefer “progressive” — but if you call Obama “progressive,” that’s the same as calling him an “uppity nîgger,” according to some progressive voices in the black community.”

In essence, the Obama campaign, and to a lesser degree his supporters and various other surrogates, have started policing the language. If you’re a critic of Barack Obama, you’re starting to learn that any criticism of the man might get the scarlet letter of racism slang upon him and be shunned by civil society.

When does it stop?

For years we’ve heard from the left that you cannot question their patriotism, and they’re right. For the most part, the left loves this country as much as the farthest right-wing soldier loving American, but think about the reaction the left gave. It was a visceral outrage that sent most left-wingers seething and frothing with anger. They couldn’t get to a mic fast enough (and frankly, the media couldn’t provide one fast enough) to prove how much they love their country because the right-wing attack machine was smearing their ideologies.

Yet here we are, on the cusp of a new administration. The reality is that Barack Obama will most likely walk away with the presidency on November 4th. As we adjust to the reality that whoever runs this country won’t be a Bush or a Clinton for the first time in a very long time, we’re being told this is a campaign based on change. In reality, it’s a change, but one that basically turns questioning of patriotism into claims of racism and changes the aisle from which the epithets are slung.

We’ve spent 8 long years of George W. Bush making bad decisions running this country wondering where it would end. The PATRIOT Act, for example, is the single worst piece of legislation ever passed in the history of this country. McCain-Feingold gutted the first amendment. Under the urging of the President, we’ve now bailed out people too stupid to realize they couldn’t afford a $450,000 a year house on a $37,500 salary. Under this president, we’ve watched an expansion of power of eavesdropping the likes of which we’ve never seen in the history of this country. During that time, we had most of the right telling us that things are being done because they’re good for us, and most of the left telling us it’s a power grab.

Now, in the pre-Obama era, there’s no such thing as legitimate criticism. You cannot criticize Barack Obama based on his policies. If you do, you’re a racist. You can’t have a negative opinion of the man or his policies that is based on anything but the color of his skin. Just ask the left right now; they’ll tell you. In their mind, they see you as a person who doesn’t agree with Obama as sitting in a smoky room with a bunch of old white men wondering “what we have to do to stop the nigger from winning.”

Don’t believe me? Watch the web. Read the news. Count off how many dumb schmucks write things like I cited above. That wasn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last, because that’s what Obama’s supporters think of you. Only an uneducated racist could possibly disagree with him. Get used to it, because this is what we have to look forward to for the next four to eight years.

If you thought the last 8 were like 1984, wait until we have a real live Thought Police keeping us in line. It’s coming, and in some ways it’s already here.

I completely agree. Get these bastards out of my damn city already.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer wants police to crack down on the dozens of vendors at Ground Zero. NY1 reports that in spite of a “2004 state law prohibit[ing] vendors from working the area bordered by Broadway on the east, West Street on the west, Liberty Street on the south side, and Vesey Street on the north,” vendors still set up and sell various wares, including many 9/11-related items (like “Tragedy,” the photo pamphlet memento!). Stringer said, “We don’t think this should be a three-ring circus where profiteers are cashing in on one of the worst tragedy to befall the United States of America,”

And just to prove I put my money where my mouth is, here’s some video I took a few years ago at Ground Zero.

Imagine my surprise as I turned on Episode 4 of Fringe and saw that they filmed it across the street from my office!

Also imagine my surprise as they reoriented the neighborhood (the skyline isn’t there, and there never was a construction site across the street from the diner). Imagine my surprise as they told me I worked in Brooklyn (the diner is actually in Long Island City).

Oh yeah… And if that waitress worked in the diner I’d be there everyday.

Just sayin’.