Dennis bin Laden? Is there a cave under Hastert’s house?

dunno, but the taxpayers did dig a cave under Cheney’s residence…

measure up @ 74

Just had a call from some republican committee urging me to vote absentee immediately. Are they desperate to get what votes they can before the bigger story comes out, or are they planning to rf the elction via Diebold?

Depends if they count votes before the election :)

Actually I am a little serious here, it is legal to count absentee votes received before the election, and to let the results slip out? Then they can brag that they are ahead.

depends on the ballot type

when my county used mark-a-vote cards for every voter in the county, the absentee ballots recieved before election day were counted about 1:00 pm on election day. The outcome was pretty much decided right there, because the AVs are from a representative cross section of the voter population.

You gotta understand that there is a lot of testing and adjusting of the counting machines going on before hand. The candidates have a right to witness the testing and the counting, so your concern about “Bragging” is valid, but unavoidable. Mostly the result isn’t bragging, it’s mostly about panic and last minute GOTV efforts

anybody who thinks tampering is possible in this stage is wrong. The ballots are a paper record, and are subject to audit. There just ain’t any hidden tricks to be used at this stage

with electronic voting, the process is different. people like me who vote absentee thru the mail still use the same cards, and those cards are counted in the middle of the day as before.

Some people who vote absentee at the ROV office (Registrar Of Voters) cast their vote on an electronic machine that can’t be counted until the close of the polls. The number of absentee ballots cast on the machines at the office is negligible. The bulk of the absentee ballots are cards that can and will be counted before the polls close

all of the electronic machines used in the election have a paper “reciept” (is it really a reciept if you don’t give it to the voter ???), and those “reciepts” are also audited

but the whole point is that the “regular” vote doesn’t matter. every race will have an established “margin” when the cardstock absentee ballots are counted, and that margin doesn’t change very much when the whole canvas is added, no matter what type of voting method is used

I can call the office about 2:00 pm on election day and learn the results of any race on the ballot (cuz I know somebody there … actually I know a whole lot of somebodys)

just so you know: the ROV office looks like a (insert ethnic slur here) fire drill on election day. Ever seen a room full of monkeys trying to fuck a bunch of footballs ??? That’s what happens at the local ROV office on election day. Think of the worst day you could imagine at work, and then multiply by 10. Phones are ringing off the hook, people are running around EVERYWHERE, and there is a group of tourists walking around watching everything you do. It’s not a fun place to work. Nobody said democracy was pretty

Christy Hardin Smith @ 37

Has anyone seen anywhere any apology from any of the Republican leadership to any of the pages who were caught up in this? Any sense of remorse at all? Anything of that nature? I’ve been trying to find that in any of their statements, and I’m coming up with a blank on this. If anyone remembers something like this, I’d appreciate a link…because I think that is a HUGE gaping hole, and absolutely appalling, but I don’t want to level that charge without being able to back it up — and I don’t want to miss something on this. There has been so much written and said inthe last week, but I haven’t been able to find anything that says “I’m sorry” to these kids or their families from any of these people. Thoughts?

I agree 100% Christy, HUGE gaping hole. I have seen zero wrt anything remotely approaching an apology. Apologizing implies they did something wrong and that contradicts their dummy defense. They didn’t know anything, therefore, they don’t have to apologize.

I’ve been doing some Googling – obviously not much since I’m still on this thread, but here’s what I’ve found so far:

From Mark Foley
In a statement, Foley said, “I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”

http://abcnews.go.com/images/U…..tement.pdf

Nothing about the victims.

That’s it. There were four to six pages of links, depending how I did it. I used the search string:

mark foley apolog sorry remorse parents victims hastert reynolds boehner

and some minor variations.

There sure isn’t a lot of text out there that has those terms all together in one place. If anyone among the names I used apologized, I think there’d be several references to it in the news.

I think that at this point, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. There was a very small window of opportunity to be in front of the story, and it may not only be closed, but nailed shut.

They are damned regardless. The door closed days ago, basically when it first came out, when they might have had a chance to mitigate the damage – though whether they could have actually mitigated the damage is purely speculative. Hastert, et al., needed to step up and take responsibility immediately rather than blame the media or anyone else and announce they would investigate every and all allegations and pursue them to the end, where ever they led.

That is basic organization crises management learned from the J&J Tylenol poisonings, and they failed.

immanentize — this Foley scandal is a good vehicle for renationalizing, and Lieberman all but gave it to Ned.

Any Dem candidate who has a reaction like Lieberman’s should be spanked. Lieberman’s trying to use experience as a competitive edge, but frankly, good ethics and compassion for victims don’t resound through Lieberman’s experience.

Look at Ned with the kids he’s taught, with his own kids; he leads by example. We need that 51st vote to be a guy like that.

agreed!

John Casper —

Over at MyDD, there is a theory put forward that lamont was so strong in the primary because he was a movement candidate that interested all th epower and money and strength of the progressives in the party. After that win, he just became a regular candidate and began focussing on local issues and meeting the needs of the local Dem infrastructure. That was necessary because the general voting electorate (as we know) is much more conservative than party primary voters. Further, the intense progressive national focus has necessarily dispersed as individuals supporting lamont in the primary look increasingly to the political races in their own districts.

The Connecticut local scene is however, still Joe’s turf in a conservative way — Joe is the local, known candidate and Ned is an unkown (at least insofar as how he will act as a Senator). One campaign theory would be for Ned to completely renationalize the election. Talk about torture and Bush and etc. That frankly may be the only way, given trend lines, to move voters off of their comfortable Joe vote.

Thanks very much imm.
Your explanation makes sense.
It contradicts the “total meltdown” that was put out above. Furthermore it is consistent with Ned’s 6% name recognition last January.

The numbers so far have showed a tightening of the race. The latest numbers, both Zogby and Rasmussen, now show Joe pulling away. There might be several causes, but this recent move, since after September 25, is certainly cause for concern. It’s very possible that Ned’s campaign may be making mistakes.

I think that at this point, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. There was a very small window of opportunity to be in front of the story, and it may not only be closed, but nailed shut.

Interesting – but not surprising – that the media can ferret out the tiniest of details on the Amish school shooting and do all kinds of homework on their faith and practices, but they cannot seem to bring themselves to educate the public that Foley’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with him being a predator, other than that if he were straight, his victims would have been female pages.

With the Amish school-shooting story, the media have talked to religious scholars and experts, educating the public on who the Amish are, but with the Foley scandal, the “experts” and the people the media is seeking out for comment all seem to have resumes that have Focus on the Family or the Family Research Council on them. Do the media believe that the public is being served by making no effort to debunk the impression that this is a gay thing?

This is one strange world we are living in.