Chilly

Thanks Rush. Do you ever not parrot what the Republican heads tell you? If you weren't defending anyone, then what the hell was the point of posting that? Does it make yourself feel better that the Democrats had a page sex scandal back in 1970s? You sound just like Sean Hannity. He has the same exact schtick in this whole thing: I'm not defending what Foley did, what he did was bad, but the Republicans aren't so bad, the Democrats did it before too! Just like Sean Hannity is defending the Republicans, it does sound like you are defending them by posting about something that happened to the other side in 19-friggin-70s. So you're pushing this whole "I'm not defending them", and now you're back to this? And accusing him of defending Studds? Okay Sean, stop it with the whole "No, I'm not defending it thing". What *should* be asked is why the hell didn't Hastert look into this? Hastert's whole defense in the matter is "I interviewed him and he tricked me." Well no sh-- shirlock, what'd you think he was going to do. Why didn't you actually talk to some of the pages that were bringing forward these supposed accusations? Having your party's leader in the House just ignore serious charges isn't exactly just a "let it go and move on" scenario.

Nope, sorry. According to the American Physiactric Assocation, pedophilia does not have to involve an act of sex. There merely has to be the presence of urges or fantasies. I'm using pedophilia as a broad term here, as its the general wide-used term for persons under 18. It might actually be better described as ephebophilia.

Doesn't matter if they are or not, its how an individual voter views this that matters.

No I don't assume. I know that he asked a 16-year-old boy, that he *knew* was 16, to measure his dick, how he masturbated and blew his load, how often he masturbated, if he had a hardon, and other such things. What the hell would you call that if its not pedo?

They do that every year, and every year the GOP comes up with a better strategy of driving out voters. The GOP is well ahead of the Democrats in campaigning at this point. Did you actually read my response to your original post about this or do you just ignore other people when they refute what you say? For typical Republican voters, not much effect will be had. There might be a little vote suppression, but it'll be seen by most GOP supporters as one man gone wrong rather then the whole party to blame. For typical Democratic voters, you will feel the effect of it firing up the base and lowering the Dems average of 15% defection rates. Democratic voters will see this as a corrupt Republican congress who initiated a coverup, and that we need to oust at any costs. True Independent voters are the ones that we really don't know what effect this will have. Are they going to view it as a party-wide scandal? Are they going to think that this is a single isolated case? Is this a straw that broke the camels back so to speak? I don't think anyone really knows yet what effect it will have on independents. They should have covered their own ass better either way and done some more investigating into it, thats Hastert's biggest mistake here. He relies on an interview with the guy to settle it. Yeah, like he's going to tell you the truth Dennis, he's a congressman in the Public spotlight. While I don't agree with the argument, one could say that it goes to a pattern of him hitting on pages.

Thats old data actually, or of its not, its probably not from an independent pollster. Latest Rasmussen poll has it at Whitehouse 51-42. There was a USA Today/Gallup poll released on Friday that had a similar result (I think it was Whitehouse 50-42).

Kind of - the Democratic base has two issues: while its larger then the Republican base, it has a poor showing on election day; the Democratic base also has a higher rate of defection then the Republican base. For the Dems, mobilizing the base is the biggest challenge in their elections. Republicans rarely defect, and this has been hurting the Dems over the past few elections. This story will help lower the Democratic defection rates this November. Which has nothing to do with actual poll results or elections. The polls show the opposite - the House is more likely to remain under Republican control then the senate at this point. The Democrats have to make up 16 seats to take the majority in the house, which is a ton. You're looking at 40 contested seats in the House. The Dems would have to win 23/40 seats. Thats a tough margin to ask a party to win in an election like this one. Currently there are 4 seats outside of the margin of error being held by Republicans, and 6 by Democrats. That means that 30 of these seats are currently statistical ties (within the margin of error). You're looking at Democrats having to win 10 out of 30 tossups to hold a majority in the House. Remember, that all of these 30 seats currently have Republican incumbents, which is a HUGE Republican advantage. The House is in play, but it still likely will be (barely) Republican when all is said and done if today was the election. Whether this changes significantly as this story unfolds and as the election gets closer, or not, obviously remains to be seen. There are 33 Senate seats up for the taking this election cycle. Democrats need to pick up 6 seats besides winning all of theirs to take it. If we count Lieberman as a Democrat, 16 of the Democrats 17 incumbent senate seats are well outside the margin of error, with only New Jersey as the exception. Also, Democrats are outside of the MoE to pick up Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. So, that leaves 4 more seats that the Dems need. McCaskill, Menendez, Whitehouse, Ford Jr, Allen are all up in the air. Its looking increasingly like Chafee is in trouble, so Whitehouse is pretty set. Allen will most likely eek out a win vs Webb, while Tester will most likely take Montana. 2 more should do it, and Bernie Sanders is for all intents and purposes a Democrat. Its a 50/50 shot . Right now Hillary is, and unless something changes she'll be the nominee. Then again, it seems like every primary, something changes, so its still too early to tell.

Yeah it does, because sooner or later you'll lose those games.

Indy looked good today, didn't they?

Yeah, he overstated it, I wont' deny that. But you also understated it - its not as if the age of consent being 16 makes it okay. Do you really think it won't be? The Republicans as much as any one have been focusing elections on values in order to drive out their religious base. This issue really, really fires up the Democrats base and to a much lesser extend suppresses some of the Republican base a bit. If you look at why people have voted Republican in the last elections, a large chunk of the vote totals was because people believed they'd "do the right thing" and that they were the party of morality compared to the Dems. Given that an investigation will "take weeks, not months" according to Congress, its going to be in the news right about the time of the election. They may try to delay the report until just after if it talks bad of the Republican leadership, but it'll still be there. Also, the media will try to make this last as long as they can - its the type of stuff that sells newspapers. Your question also delves into why a person votes the way they do. The model of human voting behavior with the most proof behind it is John Zaller's Memory-based theory. One of the parts of this is that people access the most recent events a lot more readily then events that happened a long time ago, and thus give much more weight to current events. Foley will be a LOT more accessible come November then many other memories. Some other reasons why it will stay in the news: - All of the house representatives are up for election, just like every other 2-year election cycle. Given that Hastert, Foley, and Reynolds have all come under fire, it'll stay in the news. Today during the Bills game, for example, Reynolds was running an ad about the situation. - Foley might have resigned, but his name is still on the ballot in Tampa. Is it going to make a difference? We certaintly see in some districts where it has already. Reynolds is now down by 8% after being up in his district before the scandal. Hastert's district hasn't had any poll data that I can access yet this election cycle unfortunately, so I dunno about that. Foley went from a sure win to now being a sure Democrat seat. We're also seeing for the first time projections for the election start to take a Democratic turn. The Dems, who I previously thought wouldn't have either house in play, suddenly do. They've got at least a 50-50 shot at winning control of the Senate, looks like they're going to win a majority of governorships for the first time in a while. The House is also in play, which it didn't look like it was going to be before.

No, the story just failed to pull me in. As far as comedy trilogies - how bout the naked gun trilogy?

Austin Powers is most likely the best comedy trilogy because I can't think of any other comedy trilogies. I dunno about the Borne series. I hated the first movie, and fell asleep 3/4 of the way through.

UK is dumB

I don't think Matrix was near S-wars or other trilogies, but I do think that it was pretty damn good. I was one of the few that enjoyed the last 2 movies. Best trilogy ever? Hmm, I'd say Star Wars 4-6 (original 3) and the Godfather trilogy a close 2nd. x3 did suck, I'd agree.

No, because he's a friggin pedo.

Nebraska kicked Iowa State's ass.

Well I was only joking, but since you mention it, most likely Mizzou or Nebraska, both of who are ranked you know.

Yeah, I'd agree, NYJ and Jax both have a chance to lose vs us.

You Big 12 hater you.

No its not. You've got freaking pundits reading news stories on Fox. Network news is a helluva lot more professional then that. Speaking of which, the Daily Show had a great bit on the question mark and the cavuto. You can watch it here.

I hope it does, part of the reason why I'll be seeing it is for one of the clsases I'm taking on the media and hollywood.

California realized that only another actor can take out the governator

I haven't seen Iron Maiden in concert unfortunately. I'd like to though. I will say, In Flames puts on a helluva concert. Right now they're touring with Bodom in the UK. That'd be friggin awesome. Another band I want to see in person is Rammstein. Their live DVD from Berlin is insane.

Since we have a limited amount of time to get our news, and since most American's get their news from one source (say Network News, Cable News, Newspaper, etc), its a bad thing that they aren't attempting to play the middle. Now, in an ideal world, where there was unlimited time and resources, it wouldn't necessarily be bad, because you would have different viewpoints to turn to.