The Final US Election Thread

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Thats two dirty jokes today!

I really enjoy innuendo.




Hetero only of course.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Listen, if you're going to use jokes innuendo, then you really should use some kind of lubricant.

And I seriously don't see how that's not gay.

[Lemur]

Insane, just insane.

The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance. [...]

At issue for the church locally and nationwide are exit polls showing 54 percent of self-described Catholics voted for Obama, as well as a growing rift in the lifestyle and voting patterns between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

In a letter posted on St. Mary's Web site, Newman wrote that "voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

Catholics who did so should be reconciled to God through penance before receiving communion, "lest they eat and drink their own condemnation," Newman wrote, echoing a I Corinthians admonition for anyone who partakes "without recognizing the body of the Lord."

[Crazed Rabbit]

Nate is optimistic about Franken's chances. Basically the theory is (Using data from other recounts, especially in independent recounts of Florida) that the people who are most likely to make ballot errors (And hence not have their votes counted initially) are most often:
1) Working class
2) Minority
3) Elderly

Franken won the first 2 categories and tied in the third. The votes are more likely to be counted this time because often it is clearly marked who the person wanted to vote for, but they did not fill the ballot in correctly.

That and the places manufacturing votes out of whole cloth for him helps a lot.

CR

[Hooahguy]

Insane, just insane.

The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance. [...]

At issue for the church locally and nationwide are exit polls showing 54 percent of self-described Catholics voted for Obama, as well as a growing rift in the lifestyle and voting patterns between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

In a letter posted on St. Mary's Web site, Newman wrote that "voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

Catholics who did so should be reconciled to God through penance before receiving communion, "lest they eat and drink their own condemnation," Newman wrote, echoing a I Corinthians admonition for anyone who partakes "without recognizing the body of the Lord."

why should you be suprised? catholics are usually very pro-life.

[Strike For The South]

why should you be suprised? catholics are usually very pro-life.

Politics and religion should be separate. That is disgusting mixing the 2

[Martok]

That and the places manufacturing votes out of whole cloth for him helps a lot.

CR

Care to elaborate?

[Askthepizzaguy]

That and the places manufacturing votes out of whole cloth for him helps a lot.

CR

I didn't know we could do that. Dang!

Well, I know what my strategy is for 2012. I'm already setting up the manufacturing plant. I need some people to volunteer, preferably ones who can work 12 or more hours a day, and don't mind sleeping on shelves.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Care to elaborate?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html

When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 221 -- a total change over 4 days of 504 votes.

Amazingly, this all has occurred even though there hasn’t even yet been a recount. Just local election officials correcting claimed typos in how the numbers were reported. Counties will certify their results today, and their final results will be sent to the secretary of state by Friday. The actual recount won’t even start until November 19.

Correcting these typos was claimed to add 435 votes to Franken and take 69 votes from Coleman. Corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate. The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state House races.

Virtually all of Franken’s new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior -- a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.

To put this change in perspective, that single precinct’s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.

The two other precincts (Mountain Iron in St. Louis county and Partridge Township in Pine county) accounted for another 100 votes each. The change in each precinct was half as large as the pickup for Obama from the corrections for the entire state.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of mistakes to “exhausted county officials,” and that indeed might be true, but the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.

Indeed, the 504 total new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482). It was also true that precincts that gave Obama a larger percentage of the vote were statistically more likely to make a correction that helped Franken.

There gets to be a point where coincidence just don't cut it.

CR

[Hooahguy]

Politics and religion should be separate. That is disgusting mixing the 2

well, cant do much about it but shake your head...
besides- free speech (not that im in favor of mixing politics and religion)....

[Askthepizzaguy]

Franken has never appealed to me all that much. His left-wing screed books are horrendously argued, overtly biased, blindly partisan, and on the same level as Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity.

Why anyone would make this man a Senator is beyond me.

That being said, if he votes with the Democratic majority, that's useful for the nation in getting legislation passed. We can toss him out if he becomes a problem, and if the legislation that gets passed is too extreme, it will be reversed by a less partisan congress. The beauty of elections is that they aren't permanent.

Finally, I have no problem with a full investigation into a race as close as this. I don't want Franken getting in due to any kind of funny business. I'd also be interested in a runoff election. Didn't both top candidates only get some 43% of the vote? I think the supporters of the third candidate should be given the option to weigh in on which one of the remaining candidates they would prefer.

However that's wishing, not a solution. Recount it by hand, and allow a Republican, a Democrat, and a non-partisan to review each individual ballot which is even remotely questionable. There should be clear guidelines as to what ballots should be counted and which ones should not.

The Dems already have a clear majority, so it doesn't bother me if Franken gets in or not. Just how he gets in.



EDIT: I do technically have to consider anything Faux News presents as a legitimate news story, but frankly they have serious bias and conflict of interest problems.

[CountArach]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html

I'm sorry, but that's your source?



I thought you were above that man...

[Lemur]

I'm sorry, but that's your source?

Note that the item CR linked to is not even categorized as "news" by Fox, but rather as "opinion." And as anyone who's sampled Fox News knows, once you get into the opinion category, anything—anything goes.

[Askthepizzaguy]

LOL

In my opinion, the Democrats won all the seats in the House and Senate. Even the ones which weren't being contested this year.

[CountArach]

LOL

In my opinion, the Democrats won Republicans lost all the seats in the House and Senate. Even the ones which weren't being contested this year.

Now you are a true Faux News reporter...

Remember the Democrats never win anything, the Republicans only lose it.

[Askthepizzaguy]

That's true. If I were to see things from the Republican side, every bit of power in government is theirs. They just have to hold onto it and gain it from the Democrats. If they lose seats, it's because they had a bad strategy this year, not because they have bad ideas which didn't work in practice, and it's time to give someone else a chance.

[Crazed Rabbit]

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...d-hominem.html

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...-the-well.html

Read up on that and try again.

CR

[Askthepizzaguy]

While it's true that something Fox news says is not necessarily untrue, they have almost universally lockstep Republicans as paid commentators, hosts, and pundits. When something they say ends up in their opinion section, it should be treated as such.

That's not ad hominem or any other kind of fallacy.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Hey, here's an idea; why don't you try addressing the issues raised in the article?

CR

[Askthepizzaguy]

I don't see the need.

I could spend all day, every day, addressing every opinion or news story presented by Fox. I won't change their minds, I'd have to correct a lot of misinformation, and it wouldn't get me anywhere even if I won the debate.

I'd be happy to respond to anything you write in your own words, because at least then you're as committed to the discussion as I am. You couldn't just send me articles to respond to, allow me to wear myself out replying, and send me some more, all written by paid professionals who have the time and resources to endlessly and fallaciously argue a point.

You, on the other hand, are a fellow orgah I respect and appreciate. I even have a soft spot for ya. What you argue I would take seriously, and I would do you the courtesy of responding to.

I could, if I had the time, which I don't, dissect and respond to exactly one article by Fox. Beyond that, I'd be directing energy somewhere it doesn't need to be, which is the brick wall of paid Republican commentary.

[Martok]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html



There gets to be a point where coincidence just don't cut it.

CR

Sorry CR, but Fox News is no more credible a source than MSNBC....and in many ways, it's even less so.

In any case, I think the answer is simpler than what the article implies: While overall we're fairly centrist, Minnesota does tend to lean to the left more often than to the right -- it's hardly a coincidence that both Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale hail from here. In any statewide race that's close enough to warrant a recount, simple Law of Averages is more likely to favor the Democratic candidate. Now whether Franken will benefit from that remains to be seen, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Franken has never appealed to me all that much. His left-wing screed books are horrendously argued, overtly biased, blindly partisan, and on the same level as Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity.

Why anyone would make this man a Senator is beyond me.

I'm not exactly enamored of him either, but I'll be damned if I was going to vote for the man who moved in lockstep with Bush 99% of the time (and only bailed when the situations with Iraq and the economy started visibly souring). This year's Senate race presented us Minnesotans with the classic "lesser of two evils" scenario -- pick your poison.

That being said, if he votes with the Democratic majority, that's useful for the nation in getting legislation passed. We can toss him out if he becomes a problem, and if the legislation that gets passed is too extreme, it will be reversed by a less partisan congress. The beauty of elections is that they aren't permanent.

Finally, I have no problem with a full investigation into a race as close as this. I don't want Franken getting in due to any kind of funny business. I'd also be interested in a runoff election. Didn't both top candidates only get some 43% of the vote? I think the supporters of the third candidate should be given the option to weigh in on which one of the remaining candidates they would prefer.

However that's wishing, not a solution. Recount it by hand, and allow a Republican, a Democrat, and a non-partisan to review each individual ballot which is even remotely questionable. There should be clear guidelines as to what ballots should be counted and which ones should not.

The Dems already have a clear majority, so it doesn't bother me if Franken gets in or not. Just how he gets in.

Ditto that. At this point, my main concern is that whoever wins the seat will have done so legitimately -- no shenanigans for me, please.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Faux News is a rightwing rag and I refuse to comment on it and

This article actually adresses the points raised by CR's article. Rather, convincingly debunks several.

[Lemur]

I think we're all thrilled to hear that Joe the Plumber now has his own blog. Milk that 15 minutes of fame, baby!

[Hooahguy]

"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

[drone]

"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

The tubes are currently clogged. Some plumber this guy is...

[LittleGrizzly]

http://secureourdream.com/index.html

That should work instead...

Joe's homepage incase your wondering..

Theres absolutley nothing there at the moment, a brief opening message about the election, and a bunch of attempts to get people to register or buy the book...

[Lemur]

The Slashdot effect has a known liberal bias. As does the Digg effect. Frankly, all network protocols are in the tank for Obama. IPv6 is practically owned by the DNC.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The tubes are currently clogged. Some plumber this guy is...

CR, there are many articles out there about how kerry won ohio and gore won florida. You dismissed those easily didn't you?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Franken has never appealed to me all that much. His left-wing screed books are horrendously argued, overtly biased, blindly partisan, and on the same level as Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity.

Why anyone would make this man a Senator is beyond me.

Minnesotans have a fairly long tradition of electing "unusual" politicos. In my opinion, they have a rather rich collective sense of humor and they do it for the entertainment value.

[CountArach]

I think we're all thrilled to hear that Joe the Plumber now has his own blog. Milk that 15 minutes of fame, baby!

I'm willing to bet he is running for a Congressional race. Think about it - he probably has better name recognition than any potential opponent, the RNCCC will pump as much money into the race as he needs to get their symbol promoted and he is going to have a lot of people coming to help campaign for him.

He is in the perfect position to do this - all he needs is a basic knowledge of policy, which he appeared to completely lack throughout the campaign.