Red Warrior's Journal: Notes from the heartland

Wisconson is dryer than Washington, at the moment.

The class is good. It's interesting. The doctrine is evolving. (which is what makes it interesting)
It is very illuminating to put faces to what before had been only names, email text, and the occassional voice.

This class really highlights the fact that this isn't your grandfather's (or your father's, or your older brother's) Army anymore. The experiences (both military and civilian) that the people in this unit bring to the table are really impressive. As is the collegial (as opposed to hierarchical) way things get done. As is the way the Army now goes about its training.

Yeah, that's about as specific as I'm going to get in this forum about the training. But the comments really apply to the way(s) the Army does business as a whole. The changes over the last several years are really amazing.

I "blame" Rumsfeld, btw.

I see that the D's are already ramping up the "if we don't win, it means it was fraud".
'Cuz they don't know anyone who voted for Nixon....
Previous prediction stands.

forget where I read it

[eglamkowski]

But someone was suggesting that the fraud excuse, especially when made BEFORE the election, may just be disenfranchising black voters mostly likely to vote democrat. Accusations that blacks are most likely to be intimidated or prevented from voting leads them to wonder why they should bother at all. I'll have to see if I can find that piece again.

electoral-vote.com

[peacefinder]

Mr. Tannenbaum is back for this year's elections, analyzing available polling data. He has access to lots of polls and he has links to (or summaries of) other poll aggregators' predictions. To summarize the summary, even the more Republican-biased poll watchers are predicting that the Democrats will take control of the House. (Albeit just barely.)

In combination with the nifty and frightening almost-how-to that Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] put out the other week, I admit that I will be highly suspicious of fraud if the Dems

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[ncc74656]

I admit that I will be highly suspicious of fraud if the Dems do not take the House.

...because it's just inconceivable that the public would see through the Democrats' lies and distortions, isn't it?

I suppose the only question remaining is whether they can fool enough of the people long enough.

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[Red Warrior]

That's why I had the "'cuz they don't know anyone who voted for Nixon" in the JE. Same thing after the 2004 election, when we had certain New Yorkers, not to mention any names, absolutely dumbfounded because they knew a 'wide cross-section' (or words to that effect) of society, and NOBODY THEY KNEW voted for Bush...

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[peacefinder]

...because it's just inconceivable that the public would see through the Democrats' lies and distortions, isn't it?

Umm. No. It's because it seems highly unlikely that so many polls and poll aggregators would miss their margins of error in the same direction without something strange going on.

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[Red Warrior]

without something strange going on.

I agree. I just probably disagree with you what that "something strange" is. And I don't find it strange. Just not acknowledged. The elephant in the room, if you'll pardon the pun. ;-)

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[nizo]

Hehe

Here I get all excited, thinking I am finally reading a non-political journal entry, but nooooooooo. I can't wait for the election furor to die down (probably take a few months, assuming nothing really blatently horrible happens), so we can all get back, umm, whatever it was we all talked about before politics :-)

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[peacefinder]

I should also add that I'll be highly suspicious of fraud if the Dems end up with more than 260* seats in the House or more than 52 in the Senate. I'm sorta nonpartisan in my suspicions of fraud. :-/

[*: My actual guess is 240, but there's not a lot of data to base that on. There are many House districts in which there have been no public polls, and some with only a couple polls. In several of the latter, supposedly safe Republican members of the House are shown to be in serious trouble. I think there will b

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[ncc74656]

I should also add that I'll be highly suspicious of fraud if the Dems end up with more than 260* seats in the House or more than 52 in the Senate. I'm sorta nonpartisan in my suspicions of fraud. :-/

Fair enough, though from where I'm sitting, it wouldn't be too surprising if the fraud went their way. There's already been some some voter-registration shenanigans in multiple states [prnewswire.com] (and this press release was put out by the union-affiliated Employment Policies Institute, hardly a bunch of "reichwing Bush

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[peacefinder]

Blech. I hate dirty pool. The idea that elections might be decided by dueling shysters is even more distasteful than dueling lawyers.

That Ars Technica article I linked is really worth a read. It makes important distinctions between retail and wholesale fraud, and between detectable and undetectable fraud.

As evil as that registration fraud is, it's retail fraud. Even though this is (allegedly) a big retail fraud effort, it's sorta small and traditional potatoes and both sides are known to have played that ga

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[Red Warrior]

I think it'd be a great thing to make sure there's a one-to-one relation between votes cast and live eligible citizens

I don't.

OTOH, I think it would be a great thing to have a one-to-one relation between votes recorded and votes ACTUALLY cast by live eligible citizens. :-P~~

I'd also like the ratio of votes recorded for each candidate and issue to be in a one-to-one ratio to the votes actually cast by said live eligible citizens.

While I'm just making stuff up, I would also prefer that uninformed people do no

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[peacefinder]

"While I'm just making stuff up, I would also prefer that uninformed people do not vote, even if they are both alive and eligible citizens...."

Well, yeah. I certainly have qualms about increasing the pool of uninformed voters, I like to think that the stupidest votes on each side of any issue would cancel out. But I'm an inveterate optimist that way. :-)

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[Red Warrior]

Of course you will, because the polls that NEVER get the elections right[1] (else, why bother with the poll that counts - the election?) will have ... not gotten the election right!!!!

That's OK. You'll be in "good" company. Pelousy and the rest are already prepping the message.

I'm sticking to mine. Rs GAIN in the Senate. Rs hold the house. RW laughs. ;->

Either way, barring D crys of "it must been rigged, how else can you explain that those people my friends didn't vote for winning?!?!!", we'll know the r

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[peacefinder]

Well, Tannenbaum's EVP didn't get it right last year, but he was pretty close. [electoral-vote.com]

One way or another, it should be fascinatin'.