About the new flu: “deep concern”
About Pakistan, overall: “gravely concerned”
About Pakistan’s government: “more concerned” (than nuclear threat)
About Iraq bombings: “legitimate cause of concern”
About Fiat-Chrysler merger: “ongoing concern” (in the sense of a business)

New flu:

Well, first of all, as I said, this is a cause for deep concern, but not panic. And I think that we have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond — intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say — will determine in large part what happens.

Pakistan:

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services, schools, health care, you know, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people.

Iraq:

Well, first of all, I think, it’s important to note that although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, et cetera, remain very low relative to what was going on last year, for example. And so you haven’t seen the kinds of huge spikes that you were seeing for a time. The political system is holding and functioning in Iraq.

Fiat-Chrysler:

All that promises the possibility that you can get a Fiat- Chrysler merger and that you have an ongoing concern. The details have not yet been finalized, so I don’t want to jump the gun, but I’m feeling more optimistic than I was about the possibilities of that getting done.

Well, as I said before, if you look at how the FDIC has handled a situation like Indy Bank, for example, it actually does these kinds of resolutions effectively when it’s got the tools to do it.

What I’ve said here in Washington is that we’ve got to make some tough choices.

Well, as I said, the American people are making a host of sacrifices in their individual lives.

I’ve said that we’ve got to have a serious energy policy that frees ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy.

And I’ve said that we’ve got to start driving our deficit numbers down.

What I said was I haven’t seen yet what provisions are in there.

But I’m — look, I’m not going to lie to you, it is tough, as I said.

As I said, President Calderón has been very courageous in taking on these drug cartels.

As I’ve said, we’ve already identified potentially $40 billion in savings just by some of the procurement reforms that are pretty apparent to a lot of critics out there.

And so what we’ve said is, look, let’s invest in health information technologies.

What we said was, that over the last decade, the average worker, the average family have seen their wages and incomes flat.

And so what we said, let’s give them a tax cut, let’s give them some relief, some help — 95 percent of American families.

And what we’ve said is for those folks, let’s not renew the Bush tax cuts.

And what we’ve said is let’s go back to the rate that existed under Ronald Reagan.

I think those [scientific and ethical] issues are all critical, and I’ve said so before.

What we have said is that for embryos that are typically about to be discarded, for us to be able to use those in order to find cures for Parkinson’s or for Alzheimer’s or, you know, all sorts of other debilitating diseases — juvenile diabetes — that it is the right thing to do.

And so as I said, I don’t take decisions like this lightly.

And as I said before, my hope is, is that we can find a mechanism ultimately to cure these diseases in a way that gains 100 percent consensus.

The runner-up drinking-game phrase might have been “it’s not just my opinion” or “don’t take my word for it.”

And there is uniform acknowledgment that the procurement system right now doesn’t work.  That’s not just my opinion, that’s John McCain’s opinion; that’s Carl Levin’s opinion.

And the best way for us to do that is to reduce health care costs.  That’s not just my opinion; that’s the opinion of almost every single person who has looked at our long-term fiscal situation.

It’s not just me, by the way. I was with Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia, today, who was very forceful in suggesting that countries around the world, those with the capacity to do so, take the steps that are needed to fill this enormous hole in global demand.  Gordon Brown, when he came to visit me, said the exact same thing.

And that’s not just my opinion; that is the opinion of a number of people who are also against abortion.

So you don’t have to take my word for it.  I think that there is a great deal of confidence that ultimately, although we are going through a rough patch, that the prospects for the world economy are very, very strong.

See for yourself:

“There are votes in Minnesota that aren’t even being accounted for, much less being counted,” spokesman Andy Barr told reporters at a press conference at Franken headquarters in St. Paul this afternoon.

Franken’s recount attorney, Marc Elias, said the campaign had become aware of the problem in the last few days from reports in the press as well as from campaign workers in the field. “Ballots have gone missing,” Elias said, calling it “a serious matter [that is] very concerning.”

He named more than a half dozen instances — from St. Paul to Duluth, and Crystal to Apple Valley — where the recount has turned up discrepancies between the number of recorded votes and the number of ballots county officials have been able to produce. And besides the cases reported in the news media, Elias said, the campaign’s own information indicates “this problem may be even more widespread.”

Elias acknowledged that “sometimes ballots go missing and then they get found” and that “missing ballots are not automatically an indicator that there is cause for concern.”

“In an election this close we cannot let any lawful vote go uncounted, and neither can we allow ballots to simply go lost,” Elias said.

Elias said the campaign’s letter to Ritchie would ask him to “launch an investigation to identify any and all missing ballots, and to immediately instruct local elected officials to redouble their efforts to find all missing ballots.”

As for the recount itself, Elias said the Franken campaign’s internal numbers, based on the judgment of the recount officials rather than challengers from either campaign, indicate that “the margin remains in double digits. In fact, it has narrowed since Friday.” He said that included ballots recounted on Saturday but not today. Official figures as of Saturday night had Coleman ahead by 167 votes with two-thirds of ballots recounted.

“When will Franken be ahead?” a reporter asked. “When it’s over,” Elias answered. He said the ballots already recounted remain “a slightly redder pile,” a subset that’s more Coleman-friendly than either the ballots remaining to be counted or the total ballots cast Nov. 4 taken as a whole.

Barr and Elias said nothing about events in Mower County today, where The UpTake has taken reports of recount officials and Franken challengers in conflict. The latest word is that tensions have calmed, apparently following a call from Ritchie.

Elias acknowledged the growing number of challenged ballots in the recount but said that in the end, the State Canvassing Board determines which candidates gets the votes from challenged ballots. “And there is nothing that either campaign can do about that by issuing challenges.”

Note: The Minnesota Independent hopes to cover Sen. Norm Coleman’s press conferences as we have Al Franken’s; however, Coleman’s campaign staff has refused entry to and in one instance ejected our reporters.

Video via The UpTake

Of the Coleman and Al Franken campaigns’ increasingly aggressive ballot challenges, Coleman said, “There are games being played on both sides and it would be great if people put the games aside.” He disavowed personal involvement in the recount’s nitty-gritty — “I’m not involved in day-to-day recount stuff” — but offered what seemed an informed opinion: “I would bet that most of the challenges are going to be dismissed.”

Asked about any awkwardness in his position as a sitting senator who may or may not have won re-election, Coleman responded: “I’m still senator. I believe I’m a winner. … I’m proceeding with the belief that we prevailed the first night, prevailed in the certification and we’ll prevail again.”

Coleman repeatedly denied being caught up in the recount hysteria. “‘I’m not walking around wringing my hands worrying about the recount,” he said. “I haven’t checked today to see where we’re at.” He did however cop to having checked the recount stats online Thursday night.

“We started out with the lead. I’m pretty confident we’ll end up with the lead,” Coleman said. “We have got a good canvassing board. I have faith we’ll get it done the Minnesota way. … I just want to get the recount done.”

In case anyone might have somehow gotten a different message, Coleman insisted: “I think this a fair process.”

Coleman, asked about his Nov. 5 statement that Democrat Al Franken should halt the then-impending recount, said he wouldn’t say the same thing today.  ”I ascribe that to not having slept for three days,” he said.

Coleman made his remarks at a press conference this afternoon at a nuclear plant training facility in Monticello, Minn. (Coleman’s staffers couldn’t eject the Minnesota Independent from this press event as they did on Wednesday, since this time we covered it via The Uptake’s video livestream.) The official topic of the presser was energy policy. “I don’t think anybody … rejected the drill-baby-drill mantra,” Coleman said in response to a question about his continued support for lifting restrictions on domestic oil exploration.

“I’m a great believer” that America will eventually be able to reprocess its nuclear waste, Coleman said.

Video via The Uptake

Related: MnIndy video: Coleman’s staff ejects reporter from press conference

“We have reason to be optimistic,” recount attorney Marc Elias told reporters at an afternoon press conference. “We are picking up votes across the state.”

The candidate himself — seldom seen locally since recount gears began turning — shared that view, according to communications director Andy Barr. “Al is cautiously optimistic,” Barr said.

Describing the stacks of ballots recounted by hand Wednesday as a “slightly redder” subset of the 2.9 million ballots cast on Election Day, Elias said the campaign believes Franken closed the gap with incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman by more than the secretary of state’s official count of 43 votes.

Elias also claimed to have seen local examples of the same phenomenon in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties, where Franken gained on Coleman in recounts of areas where the Nov. 4 election results show the Democrat didn’t run as well as in the remaining (yet unrecounted) precincts in those counties.

Elias said he was relying on internal campaign tallies of the recount’s Day One results, including reports from counties whose results came in too late at night to be part of the state’s official count at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Elias also said that anecdotal evidence received Wednesday about frivolous challenges has emerged as a pattern. “There are clearly a significant number of instances of challenging clear Franken votes,” he said. “We have seen examples of challengers that clearly are not meritorious and will not be upheld by the Canvassing Board.”

Elias granted that some of the frivolous challenges he alleges could be due to first-day jitterson the part of Coleman workers. He also conceded that Franken’s challengers — who on Wednesday demanded that nearly as many ballots be set aside for Canvassing Board review as did the Coleman challengers — may have also been overzealous. “It’s a very good question,” he said. “It’s part of our review.”

Competing with the recount for the campaign’s attention, Elias said, were the newly arriving lists of voters whose absentee ballots had been rejected by county election officials. That flow of info follows a Ramsey County District Court ruling Wednesday ordering Ramsey Countyto provide any such lists to the Franken camp.

Barr said about three dozen counties had so far followed suit. But the data isn’t uniformly presented, Barr said, so the campaign wasn’t sure what it had yet and wouldn’t state what it plans to do with the lists. On Tuesday, the state Canvassing Board promised to consider whether it would conduct its own review of rejected absentee ballots.

Barr expressed satisfaction that the Coleman camp’s claims of victory were being taken with a grain of salt even in GOP circles. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that national Republicans are beginning to realize that Sen. Coleman has not been determined the winner of the race and are becoming concerned,” he said, noting in particular that some Republicans are already suggestions of other lines of work for Coleman, such as the post of Republican National Committee chairman.

I am not at all insulted … I try to be understanding of why people feel suspicious. …  I encourage everyone to just chill … I want all votes to be counted properly …

Stephanie wrote:

I am a head election judge in an Anoka County precinct and I am not at all insulted by the requirement for a statewide recount. It might feel different if only certain counties or precincts were picked out for a recount, but in an election with < .01% variance a manual recount of every ballot seems like a reasonable precaution.

It is my experience that virtually all election judges are doing their best to ensure that all election laws are followed to the best of our ability, but we don’t dispute the obvious — that neither human officials nor our voting technology are perfect. I suspect that the vote totals for both candidates will go up as a result of a manual recount, simply because there are a certain number of ballots in which the voter’s intent will be obvious to human counters but not to the optical scanner.

I know that some voters are suspicious of elections officials and after the disaster of the 2000 Florida election I try to be understanding of why people feel suspicious. I don’t, however, think that Ms. Janacek is expressing honest concern. This is her usual MO of disingenuously spreading BS when she actually knows better.

I am pleased by the way the Secretary of State has handled himself so far. I encourage everyone to just chill and let the process provided for by our laws be carried out. It will be carefully supervised both by those entrusted by law and by representatives of both parties so there is little opportunity for anything to happen other than a higher degree of certainty.

Marie wrote:

Isn’t it interesting that the Republicans sound like they are against due process (the recount) and against state rights (it is a MN law to recount under .5 percent). The votes will fall where they may.

I am an election judge as well. I want all votes to be counted properly and at this minimal difference, it’s imperative that it be done by hand. The process will start about Nov 19th and take as long as necessary. I think the Republican anger is partially because they were out spent this whole election cycle. Normally it’s the Democrats who are short on cash. . . this time it was the Republicans.

(Note that these comments came in Nov. 9, before the latest round of charges and counter-charges.)

David Lillehaug

“The odds are that something went wrong with respect to counting.”

That’s what Democrat Al Franken’s campaign counsel, David Lillehaug, said this morning about the prospect of a pending statewide recount in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. ”We want to make sure that each ballot that was cast is counted appropriately,” he said.

Lillehaug called the 0.03 percentage point margin separating Franken from Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman “just a hair” and “unprecedented” in Minnesota history. A 1962 recount in the race for governor had a wider margin and far smaller number of votes, he said on Minnesota Public Radio.

Those comments came after Coleman spoke publicly for the first time since Election Night, when he told supporters at the state Republican Party gathering that the emerging results presaged a nail-biter (video). At a morning-after press conference, Coleman said he is “humbled and grateful for the victory that the voters gave us last night.” He acknowledged the possibility of a recount “because of my margin of victory,” but added, “It is up to [Franken] whether [a recount is worth] the tax dollars it will take to conduct.”

Coleman seemed to make reference to the bitterly fought campaign as he offered an Abraham Lincoln quote from the Civil War and urged that “we proceed in a Minnesota manner” in which any recount would be, in his words, “a respectful review.” Expressing doubt that a recount would change the result giving him a slim victory, Coleman added, “I commend my former opponents” — referring to Franken and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley.

MPR has audio for both Coleman’s and Lillehaug’s comments today at its Polinaut blog.

Watch Olsen’s video of the incident here. Larger video here.