I don't know why - it all seemed rather inefficiently run to me.  They had 7 machines across 3 congressional districts, but usually only 2 or 3 were in use at one time.

at Courthouse area in Arlington throughout the work week from what I understand.  I didn't vote absentee, but I had a chance to talk to someone working in the county building on Friday -- he said that the lines had been crazy, that it had been busy all week.

The 80 percent turnout target seems like a very real possibility for the county.

in Arlington, most likely 120,000 voters according to Frank O'Leary.  That's out of 144,385 registered voters, which would get us to 83.1% turnout...

83.1 percent factoring in the increases in voter registration.  That would be pretty awesome.  Hopefully things pan out along those lines.

I'm a DC voter now (ha, need to change the name), but have many friends voting in Arlington. I had a few arrive at Courthouse Plaza to vote this morning by 800am, and they were told the line was already estimated to be 4+ hours. People were in line as early as 6am this morning. Incredible.

I was planning to spend all day canvassing in Arlington through the Arlington Dems/AYD. Evidently, they had so many people volunteering that, as TheGreenMiles said, they were shipping people out to other neighborhoods - because much of Arlington has already received several touches, as well as literature. We did lit dropping to 1000+ apartments in Ballston and Rosslyn, though, and let me tell you, my feet are barkin' now!

Wow.  You came down here from Arlington--and to think, that's not even the 'real Virginia'.

Our lists were closer to 45 today, (but that was two lists).  The number of volunteers we get from other parts of NoVA (and MD and DC) is amazing.   I'm happy to say that several people today told us they had already voted.

When you control the Presidency and both houses of Congress for 6 years, it is preposterous to try to put the main blame on someone else. The main blame lies with the Unregulated Free Trade Part of the Republican Pary.  McCain-Graham are card carrying members.  If the bush administration had been doing its job of regulating these folks instead of just letting them do whatever they wanted to, the whole crisis could have been avoided.  

This is absolutely bizarre -- most independent economists would ask what you're smoking.

Fannie and Freddie issued conforming loans -- e.g. loans that had to conform to federal lending standards.  Where Fannie and Freddie got into trouble was based on their investment in the commercial paper and unregulated mortgage security market.  

The majority of subprime loans were issued by private investment banks like UBS, DeutscheBank, Lehman Bros., Goldman Sachs, etc, and secondary mortgage lenders like Countrywide.  

e.g. Players who were heavily invested in what had once been the secondary mortgage market, which is not subject to federal lending standards.  Greed pure and simple compelled the banks to issue these ill-advised loans.  Contrary to what some in the far-right seem to believe investment banks aren't involved in charity.  

Over the short-term these private equity firms and investment banks saw huge returns on risky mortgages.

What's compounded the problem is a secondary issue involving another unregulated part of the financial market -- credit default swaps.  Basically, these private players tried to hedge their bets and reassure investors by purchasing unregulated "insurance" policies on these risky mortgage securities.  These secondary debt obligations are what brought down players like AIG.

If you're looking for real analysis on this one -- and not simply some GOP white-wash, check out a report issued by the Dallas Federal Reserve in the Fall of 2007.  

http://dallasfed.org/research/...

ACORN has nothing to do with subprime mortgages.  What they do is offer credit counseling services -- they do not issue loans, and cannot compel anyone to issue loans to borrowers.  Since 1989 they've worked with borrowers and banks to create something like $10 billion worth of home mortgages.  I don't know how many of those loans have had problems, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that -- even if EVERY SINGLE one of those loans went belly up -- we wouldn't be looking at the need for a trillion dollar bailout.

The Dems bear some responsibility on this one, but none of this would have been possible if people like Phil Gramm hadn't pushed to throw out the remaining parts of the Glass-Steagal Act in 1999.  The revisions to the Commodity Futures Act in 2000 pushed by Phil Gramm made it possible for the credit-default swap industry to explode into a trillion dollar albatross.  On top of this the regulators at Treasury and the Fed were asleep at the switch for the better part of 7 years.

The whole reason that the Bush White House was pushing for removing federal backing of Fannie and Freddie was that they wanted to privatize and remove ALL regulation of the financial industry.  Who do you think was behind the effort to remove the backing of Fannie and Freddie?  (Here's a not so subtle hint -- it was private investment banks who had started entering the mortgage market in a big way starting around 2000).

If the Bush administration had achieved that objective, you could effectively take the current problems that we're facing and double them.