November Surprise?

Rigged voting process?! You bet it’s rigged. And it’s done by those darn leftist Venezuelans. Just can’t trust those guys. They’ll have those Democrats in office and doing their bidding if we don’t keep a close eye on them. That’s right, if the Democrats win you’ll know it was all part of a leftist Venezuelan plot. I always knew they were up to no good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/washington/29ballot.html?ei=5065&en= e0c8ab46eb7f870b&ex=1162789200&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&adxnnlx=11621236 97-fGdgFeTtCKTTCxcnenqAsQ

Wow, Rove and Crew certainly have made us skittish and wary, like those skinny, abused dogs on Animal Precinct. I hope we’re not beyond rehabilitation.

Well, for one thing that whole so-called “World Series” was a trick to make all of us left-leaning Tiger fans stay in bed with the covers pulled over our heads until Thanskgiving. I mean, doesn’t St. Louis play in something called Bush Stadium? (I’m going with pronunciation, not spelling, here….)

I’m just sayin’

I fear a November 2006-November 2008 surprise. The Democrats take Congress…and absolutely nothing changes. They all go Leiberman, or William Jefferson, or rip off their masks and reveal themselves to be Democrat-simulation droids created by Rove & Co…

Dee, oh Dee. Why, from you all of all people?

Oh well, while I am all for diving into the delightful tin foil mad hatterness of talking about delaying the ‘08 election, but I think this one is not likely to be postponed. There’s really no question that the gop voter scare tactics are in full swing. We’ve already one gopper in California who was proud of his efforts to keep dusky liberals from exercising their franchise. There are, undoubtedly, many, many more.

By the way, Idiot Paparazzi-well done!

Did any one listen to Shrub in his press conference last week? He was asked a couple times if he was worried about the Repugs loosing the Congress. I find it un-nerving that he just gave that little snicker of his and said “I’m not worried. I see more than you do.”

Sounds like the fix is in already.

Ditto Dee. They aren’t worried because they know from experience they can steal the election and nobody will say anything, even if the exit polls are wildly off. As a drunk Republican Congressman Peter King said before the presidential election in Alex Pelosi’s documentary, “It’s all over but the counting. And we’ll take care of the counting.” They know the media and American public will actually buy “people lied” when it comes to exit polls. During the last election, a group of us was in contact with the president of the exit poll company in the days following the election. He refused to send us the exit polling data until, as he stated, the president was actually reinstalled by Congress and the election results were final. The only encouragement is that finally, after 6 years, the media are starting to report some mild, questioning reports regarding electronic voting. So maybe when the results don’t match the polls this time, they will do some more digging. Not that it will make a bit of difference this time around, because their candidates will be firmly installed in their positions as “investigations” get underway, which will either fizzle out, or prove, a year down the line, that perhaps their was some tampering, but it’s too late to do anything about it. Or, you, know, since they have Congress (with their stolen election), they just vote that it’s all legit, and turn away any enquiries (as documented in the short documentary at www.votergate.tv ). Surprise!

Hell, I was figuring that they’d decide to invade Iran by tomorrow.

I will be needing some liquidity in my portfolio shortly to take care of a business opportunity in Venezula, so I’ve decided to put the “bust” of Osama bin Laden on the block. You fine people may have the first crack at this - yeah, I know, I’m such a sentimental softy, but I kinda like you guys for some reason, plus I smell some real potential in this crowd - especially if George Soros pops in, as he does from time to time. So bids are opening @ $3,750,000. If I don’t get enough response (ie. money) here, I’ll be forced to put it on Ebay. The bidding goes public @ 12:00 midnight EST. May the greediest live long and prosper. OBL’s head, BTW, is in the cryo box next to Ted William’s and Walt Disney’s heads; talk about history on the half-shell!

As ice weasel said, go vote, dammit. (He was more polite than that.)

As for electronic voting, it won’t be safe until it’s done on open source software which produces an auditable paper trail, maintained and reviewed by the world volunteer computing community, and run only on Linux computers. We need to bring this to the attention of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It won’t be absolutely safe then, but it’d be tolerable.

I’ve never actually heard anyone give a reason, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear them spin it as ecologically friendly: wouldn’t want to waste precious trees by printing out something we can store electronically, would we, now? And you have to store all that paper in some way that makes it retrievable. I’ve been around too many computer equipment salesmen…

I’ll try this again

Hedera

Trust me. I’m a politician.

The one November suprise I don’t want is SeattleTammy telling me” Oh, honey, the water turned blue”. Just what I need, a kid who’ll go to High School when I’m in my seventies.

I’m enough paranoid to think something weird will happen at the polls this year. I kinda expected it ‘04. And I fear it now when I know that Rove has The Math. And George looks at The Google. What’s with the definitive article adjective anyway? (Or the DAA, which includes The Internets and The Tubes).

Is it time for the mandatory voting day? NPR reported Brazil does it this way, why not US?

Change Veterans day into voting to support Veterans day and make it a requirement to vote.

Maybe it would delute the affect of the special interest money some and we might see an actual realistic idea instead of the vacant headed dribble we get now.

A guy can dream at least….

Among the NPR top-of-the-hour headlines just now was “Cheney says that Iraqi insurgents are trying to influence the election”. I can’t believe he’s actually admitting that Rove is an insurgent.

re: paper trails for voting machines. One excuse that I heard offered repeatedly was that the printers were likely to jam and cause problems, so let’s not muck things up - simplify! In other words, we can’t make a reliable machine; rather than look for someone who can, just change the rules so that verification is no longer important. Say what you will about “The City That Knows How”, but the one thing they did right in SF was going for optically scanned ballots.

Dan, if you’re really worried—have the same surgery that my cat had!

And I love to vote in person, rather than by mail. It seems like such a great act of civic involvement! I get all mushy as I approach the doors of the local junior high school and see the flags and the “Vote Here” signs. It feels patriotic in the very best sense of the word. Participatory government!

Later, when the results come in, there’s the drinking…

Y’all are scaring me again. I don’t understand how sane people can be so paranoid….am I in an asylum?
Ice, good advice. I voted early and have encouraged all of my co-workers and friends to do the same.
Looks like Kerry might be our Oct./Nov. surprise. The gift that keeps on giving…

Fowler, glad to see you’re still hanging around.

Paranoid? How’d you be feeling if the situation was reversed? … if the head of the voting machine company had promised to deliver for Kerry in ‘04, if there was no paper trail, if there were regular reports of glitches that somehow always managed to favor the Dems. Maybe you’d rise above it, but I gotta suspect there’d be a fair amount of outcry from the right. There may be some paranoia, but I think there’s some legitimate cause for concern. As they say: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean nobody’s following you.

MMmmm … cookies

A wealthy emir from Doha, Qatar is the proud new owner of the last evidence of OBL’s time on earth and I’m up a whopping $44,375,250. Hell’s bells, I can buy half of Venezula for that, plus the controlling interest in a certain voting machine cartel featured recently in the news. This conglomerate is making huge inroads into the American market. Now let’s see; who do I want to win the next election…?

Coop, you’re just too damn good. (Keep it up)

Here’s a funny cartoon off youtube that pretty much sums up today’s Republican party. Maybe if they watch it’ll help them get a clue about how they’re selling this country out (but don’t hold your breath!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELfiVTTb5Jw

Siobhan, I’ve been checkin’ in, just not commenting. Working lots of hours, going to football & baseball games. Yes, we’re still playing baseball. Tonight I heard the first “specks” (white-fronted geese) so far this year. That means fall has finally reached East Tree Stump. Sorry about your Tigers. Most ‘Stros fans are for anybody but the Cards, but I have to admit I was pulling for ‘em. My youngest has never laughed so hard as the first time he heard an announcer on TV say Albert Pooh-holes. He actually looked @ me and asked “What did he say?”
Ann, I’m w/ you on voting in person. ‘Cept for the “mushy” part.

I was able to absentee vote a couple weeks ago, so Diebold won’t be able to flip the switch on my ballot. I had the pleasure to be able to vote against both Rick Santorum and Curt Weldon. Fowler, you’ll be happy to know I went with the Republican for the state Senate seat

Interestingly, Weldon’s campaign material referred to him as an “Independent” and the word “Republican” only appeared in the fine print - paid for by the Republican National Election Comittee. Weldon’s campaign material also attacked his opponent for not living in our Congressional district for the past 15 years, but neglected to mention that it was because he was serving in the US Navy - way to support our troops.

Regarding the “November Surpirse”, I believe the surprise this year will be that the Karl isn’t even trying to win this one. During the week I was at home, I received two (pre-recorded) calls from Bubba and three from Democratic PA Governor Ed Rendell, but not a single one from any Republican. I think Karl is throwing in the towel in sort of a lose the batlle (’06), win the war (’08) strategy. Or maybe I’m just hoping that at least somebody in this administration had some strategy to win some war.

Iraq is a quagmire that isn’t going to get fixed in two years no matter who is in charge in Congress. Housing prices are starting to fall, but mortgage payments aren’t. The DOW is setting records, but incomes are falling for the middle and lower classes. It’s just not a good time to be the party in power.

My guess is Karl writing off ‘06 and already working on the campaign literature for ‘08 about how we were just about to turn the corner in Iraq before the Democrats took over Congress and how the economy began to crumble in ‘06 (while glossing over the fact that the Dems really didn’t come to power until ‘07 after the economic pendulum had already begun to swing).

Dan, you didn’t kill it. It’s just that everyone is slow to recover from their post-Halloween hangover/sugar coma.

So it appears that the November surprise is John Kerry. (Leave it to him).

For those who are new (and not sick to death of this) my mantra is:

Republicans are ruthless
Democrats are gutless
Americans are idiots.

Kerry may or may not have botched a joke = Lying to get into a war, 2800+ soldiers dead, torture, total incompetence, 2 Billion a week down the drain, FOREVER! Protecting sexual pedophile predators, no health care for up to 30% of the public, no energy policy so high gas prices, (I’m too tired to fill in the numerous problems that this administration has screwed us with, but you get the idea).

So, overwhelming problems = botched joke.

Now the idiots will vote Republican.

The real problem with a paper trail is that the receipt is essentially meaningless. A machine can be programmed to print exactly what the voter entered, but record an entirely different vote. So, assuming there was some kind of machine ID on the receipt, to prove that votes were miscounted you would have to track down every single person who used that machine, hand tally their receipts, and then compare that total to the total the machine recorded. If the hacker is smart, only the minimum number of votes necessary to change the result will be changed. So it will be hard to detect fraud, and even harder to prove it, even with a paper trail. A bank receipt is an entirely different matter because there you only have one person and one account so the paper receipt is easy to compare. The only way to work around this problem is to use carbonless duplicating paper, where one receipt is given to the voter and another kept on a roll in the machine. I still think that smart fraud will be very hard to detect.

Just Jay, I don’t have first hand experience with electronic machines that do produce a papertrail, but I’ve heard two types described:

One produces a continuous roll printout which appears behind a sheet of plastic, and allows you to view the result before accepting it. You enter your choices on the machine, they appear on the screen, you verify that those are correct, and then it prints the result so you can see those. If the printed version that you see doesn’t agree with your choices, you call over a poll worker, I guess.

The other version prints out a “receipt” that you then deposit into a ballot box, where it is available for recounts if needed. If you walked off with your receipt, your original vote would still count, but if there was a recount your vote wouldn’t be there to verify.

Threadkil…er…Seattle Dan, They’ll both file for free agency, but who knows if they’ll play again. I could see Andy taking a year off, unless Rocket decides to pitch next year. I don’t think either will pitch anywhere other than Houston. Friends, family, and “who needs the money?”. Must be nice…
Thanks for the enlightenment Murray. Your brilliance has convinced me that I’m an idiot.
Oh, and Harold, same to ya’. Didn’t y’all spit on those vets when they came home?, but now we’re supposed to respect him for his service? I remember, you only spit on the ones that served thier full tour, didn’t injure themselves for Purple Hearts, and refused to lie to Congress about their buddies. Harold, SAME TO YA’.

Harold, I vote for Google-bombing W’s “hilarious” performance at the press correspondents’ dinner a few years ago - you know, the super funny “no weapons of mass destruction here” video. Everyone really yukked it up over that one, if I recall.

Fowler, a small number of stupid people 35 years ago treated vets badly, and those people were on the anti-war side. However, the vast majority of those who opposed the war did not behave that way toward vets. I don’t see how the actions of those few poeple should preclude all of us from criticizing the people who brought us this war, and from pointing out that most of them never served, and of those few who did serve, few saw combat.

My mommy always says that I’m handsome AND smart.

Sorry Harold, I blew it, I voted early. If only you and Murray had gotten to me earlier…
Siobhan, criticize Bush & co. all you want, I’ll give you that, but don’t expect the wingnuts to NOT criticize Kerry because he’s a vet, when it’s obvious that most ‘Nam vets can’t stand him. He proudly proclaims that he did his duty, but the ones that actually did refuse to talk about it. I was a child during Vietnam, but I do read, and I fully understand that Kerry is not the average ‘Nam Vet. He’s practically John Fonda.
Harold, you and Ann should “get a room” and quit slobbering on Adam’s page.

Fowler, conservatives can feel free to critcize Kerry. Hell, I do. I wish he’d had a spine when he voted to authorize this damn war.

I just can’t stomach the chickenhawks who are so eager for war - as long as someone else is fighting it, and as long as their taxes don’t have be raised to pay for it. It’s the same sort of hypocrisy that leads all of these closet cases to loudly denounce gays while practicing all of the very acts that they condemn.

Fowler,

I was clearly pissed - no other explanation for all the typos/grammatical errors in post #65. Not at you, just at the fact that such misconceptions have gained such a foothold. I was most enraged by a government that exploited patriotic impulses, lied their asses off, and treated the Viet Namese as expendables (there was a good reason that Jane Fonda hated the bombing raids over Hanoi, as did Joan Baez and legions of other people who had figured out the realities of the Viet Nam War - you can quarrel with how she chose to express that anger, but at least take a comprehensive look at that war, and at the dessicated quagmire we have now thrown our military into).

Cooper, we did take it outside. You should hear the volume up close.

And that was just the story I was referring to in my post. I was just too lazy to link. The best quote from Jones: “I felt I owed this to the {gay} community. What he is saying is we are not worthy, but he is.”

David, are you suggsting that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was actually a “boner in the cloak” every time he saw some hot young Corinthian boys?

The latest on Kerry’s “botched joke”:

The Associated Press has misrepresented the “stuck in Iraq” comment in an article on a mocking banner created by some troops as a response:

“MINNEAPOLIS (Nov. 2) - A group of Minnesota National Guard soldiers in Iraq has made a comically misspelled sign mocking Sen. John Kerry’s recent comments about the education level of troops, and their handiwork is getting plenty of attention.”

Kerry’s comments were never about our troops or their educational level. The fact that AP has made this statement suggests that they have been taking their cues from Karl Rove.

Intentional or not, their statement is false.

Time for the AP to issue a retraction and apology.

Fowler, always glad to point out the obvious.

Keith Olbermann seems to be absolutely fearless. For those who haven’t seen the special comment on White House Campaign Tactics - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq7JUi1lQc4

Oh! Right! Now the true believers of Rev Ted Haggard are buying the “I did not inhale” defense. What’s with that?! And has anyone else been enjoying the way the White House faith-based community liasons, flack catchers, spin doctors and other assorted cockroaches have been running from the light, heat, and wretch-inducing hypocricy generated by this scandal? Especially when it was revealed that Rev. Haggard spoke weekly with the White House? This is really fun!

I noticed those comments from Richard Perle too. Wasn’t he one of the original architects of this?? Actually, I guess not - I just checked the “Statement of Principles” on the Project for the New American Century site and he didn’t sign it. He was just one of Reagan’s brain trust; according the the Mercury News, though, he was buddies with Paul Wolfowitz, who did sign the PNAC statement.

It’s November 5, and I am wondering if one Saddam Hussein death by hanging November surprise cancels out one Ted Haggard homosexual prostitute sex November surprise…Hmmmm…

Oh Migawd!
there is a November surprise. Sadly, it came too late to affect the polls.

Brittny is dumping the KFed!!!!

I feel sorry for the children. Like I always did.

David, as a citizen of SEATTLE I keep Dan on a strict 4 foot rule. Makes ya creative- knawhattimean?
Kids always rebel, see Francis Cobain. she’s turning out ok.

Things are lookin nice tonight.

And we are so happy about Margeret’s victory! Keep in touch girlfriend! Mark your bookmark people!

Yes I could, Seattle Tammy.

It’s Thursday morning, and I still ain’t comin’ down. McCaskill in Missouri and onward for stem cell research! That is the sweetest of the three we needed, although they were all sweet. Embarrassed for the state of Tennessee, where racebaiting still works.

Oh, yeah, NC 11 is now represented by a Democrat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!