How the Democrats will steal the Minnesota Senate seat.

It seems that the recount in the Minnesota Senate race will conclude with Norm Coleman still up by a couple hundred votes.

Further, while the Al Franken team will make a big deal about absentee ballots, it is unlikely the courts will agree to count ballots which clearly do not meet the legal requirements for acceptance.

But I don't think Franken really cares. I mean, it would be easier for the Democrats if he could manufacture enough votes in the recount to win, but they have a plan which will work in any case.

The first part of the plan has already succeeded. Al Franken got a judge to violate the sacrosanct rule of the "secret ballot", providing the Franken campaign with the names, and addresses of every absentee ballot that was rejected.

Franken's team has now contacted all those people, asking them if they were Franken supporters. No doubt they are finding Coleman people, but they will be ignored.

The next step will be for Franken's team to get every Franken voter to sign an affidavit asserting that they voted for Al Franken in the election.

Simple probability suggests that about half the rejected ballots will be Franken supporters, so they should easily be able to find over 3000 people to sign.

Normally, this wouldn't be any help. I mean, you could also call registered voters, and ask if they voted, and if not, get them to sign affidavits that they WANTED to vote and WOULD have voted for Al Franken. The courts still wouldn't accept them as actual votes.

But that's not the point. See, the Democrats have control over the Senate. And the constitution puts the Senate as the final arbiter of elections for the Senate.

So next January, when it's time to seat the new Senators, the Senate Democrats will note "irregularities" in Minnesota, and will bring the question up for a vote. And then the affidavits will be presented. And the DEmocrats will note that, while the law in Minnesota didn't allow those votes to be counted, it is CLEAR that those votes WERE cast and were for Franken.

And since the Senate doesn't have to abide by the Minnesota law, the Democrats will vote to count the extra ballots, and award the election to Franken. It won't matter that nobody checked the OTHER absentee ballots. The Media will go along with what the Democrats do, so there won't even be an outrage.

It's happened before -- the Democrats once refused to seat a republican House candidate winner, putting in the losing Democrat instead. And nobody batted an eye.

I suppose the Coleman camp could try to counter this by calling all the absentee names and getting THEIR supporters to sign affidavits. But there's no reason to suspect the Democrats in the Senate would accept them.

Twilight

I'm just back from seeing the movie "Twilight". I'm not going to give away the movie or the book plot, but if you don't like people commenting on the nuts and bolts, you can skip this anyway.





I didn't think I'd like the Bella character after watching the trailers, but I liked her in the movie.

I also liked Alice, and we didn't see enough of her. If there are "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" (and apparently a warped "Team James"), I'm definitely "Team Alice".

Characters weren't very developed in the movie. One of the things I liked about the book was the character development -- it wasn't deep, but I felt like I got the essense of the characters. That was not well-translated to the movie. I don't feel like I really know any of the people based on the movie.

They ignored Jasper, which given how little development any other characters got isn't so surprising, but I would have hated to have been given that role hoping to make it into something.

I don't like spinning camera shots. I got dizzy a couple of times in the movie -- in both cases NOT during "action" sequences, but when the characters were basically standing or lying still.

In general, I felt the book survived the movie. My son, who has not read the book, said he got lost in the movie, and I guess there are times where having read the book is probably necessary to really understand what is happening.

Sparkling Edward could have used some better CGI or something. I know I'm a guy, but my daughter agrees that he looked worse sparkling, when it was supposed to be "magnificent".

In general, I think they could have spent more money on makeup. The vampires too often looked like people with way too much makeup. I actually think Powder made the guy white better than they did in this movie.

There were a few things that simply didn't match what my mind had imagined when reading the book. The two biggest are that I pictured Bella's house to be in the woods a bit, not on a street with curbs; and I pictured the school as being out on a plain and being a bunch of small buildings you had to walk outside to get from one class to another -- not an urban-looking building in the heart of the "city".

They did catch the essence of the "dreary small-town" otherwise. I loved the logging truck.

I thought Edward's car was sufficiently cool, but my daughter did not.

Vote McCain -- Obama 1.5 hours late for his rally.

McCain is no conservative, and I disagree with him on a lot of issues. He loves to work with Democrats, and to compromise, and to do all those things that the media always tells us are important in a good leader.

I disagree with Obama on everything, and he's a liberal who never works with Republicans on anything, and would if he was republican be dismissed as a far-right extremist.

But because the media wants a Democrat, they pretend McCain is out of the mainstream and they hide everything about Obama so people might think Obama is just an ordinary moderate.

Vote McCain.

I'm stuck here within a mile of Obama's "final rally", I've had to listen to their music, and all their speeches. Obama was supposed to be here at 9pm, but it's 10:30 and he's not there yet.



Obama can't even show up on time for his own rallies. He is no way ready to be President.