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  • US Presidential Election

  • Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
 #169396  by kali o.
 Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:15 pm
I didnt watch the video yet, but you can absolutely not post anything from Vox and use the words 'good' or 'analysis'.
 #169397  by ManaMan
 Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:39 pm
kali o. wrote:I didnt watch the video yet, but you can absolutely not post anything from Vox and use the words 'good' or 'analysis'.
Vox is great. My good analysis is that you're wrong.
 #169403  by Don
 Sat Oct 22, 2016 5:41 pm
So I'm looking at 538.com's prediction and they still give 1/7 chance for Trump to win based on their model. But I think that's grossly misrepresenting what statistics is. I have seen their model and it's actually pretty good at calling the election down to state level, and their simulation isn't trying to figure out say the chance Clinton gets abducted by aliens in the next two weeks that'd let Trump win. They might as well say there is a 1 in 7 chance that either all the polls are completely wrong or that their underlying model is completely wrong. That's not a prediction. At this point we should consider all the likely swings in the poll to be over, and at any rate I know their model couldn't possibly try to figure out what are the odds some event favored Trump that'd move the poll by X% to begin with. Yes, they can still happen, but it doesn't matter because nobody can possibly model something like that in the first place. Also, we're not talking about using only one poll here that shows Clinton up 6% and then say there's a 1 in 7 chance maybe they're actually tied. The model obviously uses a ton of polls and it's saying 'well what if ALL of them were wrong by enough such that the real popular vote is even'. Sure the Brexit was missed by about 4% too but I think that has more uncertainty compared to the election and a lot more weird things going on.

The problem I have with these models is that suppose Clinton wins in a landslide, the guy who said he predicted 85% chance Clinton can win say 'see I got it right', and technically you can't prove that the model is worse than the guy who predicted Clinton has a 99% chance to win. For that matter you could have a guy predict Trump win 99% of the time and it just turned out he got really unlucky. In particular, I don't see how you can have a high actual success calling at the state level and then just play it ultra safe at the national level like 538.com is doing here. Unless the point is that their model has about a 15% built in error (and presumably that'd be even bigger at the state level) and due to sheer luck they happen to got most of the states very close to the exact result (which would require them being improbably lucky).
 #169404  by kali o.
 Sat Oct 22, 2016 6:14 pm
ManaMan wrote:
kali o. wrote:I didnt watch the video yet, but you can absolutely not post anything from Vox and use the words 'good' or 'analysis'.
Vox is great. My good analysis is that you're wrong.
I won't believe you mean that. I challenge you to go to google, type "Vox Trump", hit the news tab and review...say, just the first two pages. Come back here and say with a straight face Vox is a good unbias news source (please don't...you'll lose any credibility with me, for what little that is worth).

Like I said previously, I don't like either candidate, but my huge issue is with dishonest media and their impact on voters. Vox is one of the worst offenders. Even Breitbart is less bent. If you've already drank the koolaid, then places like Vox won't offend you...but in that case, the problem is you drank the koolaid and are no longer concerned with facts, but safe echo chambers.
 #169405  by Oracle
 Sun Oct 23, 2016 11:22 am
What's the koolaid in this case, Kali? That Trump is basically a clown show in his public displays?

And did someone actually claim that Vox was unbiased? It's totally biased, but that doesn't mean what they choose to report are lies - just means they only really represent one side of the argument, like most (unfortunately) news sources.

What would you say is a good source for unbiased reporting in this campaign?
 #169407  by kali o.
 Mon Oct 24, 2016 9:16 pm
Oracle wrote:What's the koolaid in this case, Kali? That Trump is basically a clown show in his public displays?

And did someone actually claim that Vox was unbiased? It's totally biased, but that doesn't mean what they choose to report are lies - just means they only really represent one side of the argument, like most (unfortunately) news sources.

What would you say is a good source for unbiased reporting in this campaign?
Well, by definition, anything bias is not going to contain good analysis. It's going to be slanted, cherry-picked and subjective. It's only going to be a good analysis if you already subscribe to the inherent bias.

As for a good news source...that's a good question. Not many - CNN and BBC have been Ok. Surprisingly, Fox News has been fairly balanced (I don't know if that's them trying to be an actual balanced source or just protecting themselves from any post-election Trump fallout). Vox is Ok if you are critical while reading....and then balance it out by going to Breitbart and being equally critical there.

If you solely visit sites like Vox, kotaku, Jezebel, etc. you will end up fucking retarded before you know it and completely drunk on regressive koolaid.

ps - I missed your first question - I don't know. I refuse to read Vox anymore. I am sure they didn't highlight anything even remotely pro-Trump...and no candidate/position is completely without merit or unworthy of discussion.
 #169409  by Oracle
 Tue Oct 25, 2016 12:00 am
kali o. wrote: If you solely visit sites like Vox, kotaku, Jezebel, etc. you will end up fucking retarded before you know it and completely drunk on regressive koolaid.
While I may question your use of the term 'regressive', I agree that sticking to news sources that simply echo your own internal biases is not going to make you better informed.

Bottom line - every news source is bought and paid for by someone with a bias. As news consumers today, the job is more so to sift through and compare the BS, rather than merely reading an article on a topic from a single source.

For what it's worth, I'm completely against Trump. Not for his policies, positions, or the party he (pretends to) belong to, however - he is simply a clown, and one of the most prolific lying politicians I've ever seen (and that's saying something, considering he hasn't been elected yet). He just doesn't have the temperament to lead - he always has to lash out or engage in one-upmanship. It's great for firing up the base (kinda), but he's proven time and time again that he has a huge problem with toning the rhetoric down. Perhaps if he gets elected (which isn't looking likely), something will 'happen' to him, and Pence will get a shot.

I think the US truly does need a disruptive force in federal politics - it's unfortunate that it came in the form of Trump.
 #169411  by kali o.
 Tue Oct 25, 2016 2:48 am
It's not like Hilary isn't lying every second word -- you don't need WikiLeaks to know that. So you don't like that Trump is a "clown". Is that a good reason? I dunno. It doesn't bother me much.

I think there is merit to the idea Trump is the candidate you need to break the system (or did he break it already?). He'd do far less damage internally than a socialist...if Sanders made it this far, I would have actually been scared.
 #169412  by ManaMan
 Thu Oct 27, 2016 1:11 pm
kali o. wrote:I won't believe you mean that. I challenge you to go to google, type "Vox Trump", hit the news tab and review...say, just the first two pages. Come back here and say with a straight face Vox is a good unbias news source (please don't...you'll lose any credibility with me, for what little that is worth).

Like I said previously, I don't like either candidate, but my huge issue is with dishonest media and their impact on voters. Vox is one of the worst offenders. Even Breitbart is less bent. If you've already drank the koolaid, then places like Vox won't offend you...but in that case, the problem is you drank the koolaid and are no longer concerned with facts, but safe echo chambers.
Meh, Vox definitely is biased in a center-left Obama/Clinton kind of way, at least their core contributors: Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, & Sarah Kliff. They do have some conservative authors from time-to-time (like Avik Roy's recent articles on Obamacare) as well as leftwing SJW type authors. They definitely are anti-Trump and unabashedly. The important thing is that you understand the author's biases. I like Vox because they dig deep into the details of things and get wonky about policy. They were one of the few places to actually analyzed Trump's policy proposals when everyone else was treating him as entertainment.

I definitely skew left although some of my political views can be eclectic and vary from time to time. I find right-wing media and new sites to be blow-hard and dumbed down. Libertarian ideas interest me and I do subscribe to The Rubin Report on YouTube and read Reason & BleedingHeartLibertarians from time to time. New and novel political ideas interest me. I will admit my own bias: I'm a Liberal with Libertarian tendencies.
 #169414  by kali o.
 Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:35 pm
I like Rubin too. If I look over traditional Liberal policy, I'd say I am 50/50 liberal/conservative-with-Libertarian-leanings, but would also say "Liberal" doesn't mean the same thing it did 10 years ago and is getting more wacky every year.
 #169415  by ManaMan
 Fri Oct 28, 2016 4:03 pm
nytimes

It looks like the FBI is reopening the Clinton E-mail investigation after finding new e-mails on phones belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.
Just 11 days before the election.
 #169416  by Eric
 Fri Oct 28, 2016 8:02 pm
And the Trump campaign which was dead in tbe water a week ago has new life lol.
 #169451  by Julius Seeker
 Tue Nov 01, 2016 6:44 am
I was looking at some election polls, and Trump is WAAAAY down right now. But the states he is still winning in:

Tenn
Indiana
Alabama
Kentucky
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Kansas
Mississippi
West Virginia
Idaho
Wyoming
N.Dakota
S.Dakota
Nebraska

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... attainment

Of that list, the most highly educated State on the list is Nebraska, which ranks 22nd. The next highest ranked state is Missouri at 33rd. The remaining states all rank at the bottom of the list with only the exception of Nevada. Now, I don't think the evidence shows that all regions/people in those states is stupid or conservative; just the majority. The evidence does highly suggest a strong correlation between Trump supporters/Teabaggers (or Alt Right, whatever they like being called now) and the uneducated.
 #169453  by ManaMan
 Thu Nov 03, 2016 2:44 pm
kali o. wrote:http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/10/2 ... ss-onstage

Thats good analysis? I only clicked that article because of this thread -- and immediately regretted it. I literally feel gross; like I am covered in a film of sjw and slightly more retarded as a result.
Yeah, that was a pretty dumb one. I can't say I read and/or support every article they write. I mean, what is "Rape Culture"? Rape is a thing and a serious crime. Calling being rude to women or cat-calling "rape" is bullshit. Trump was a bit of an ass in the video and sexist but he sure wasn't raping her.

Here's another from Vox (on their frontpage today) that I liked: "Amoral masculinity": a theory for understanding Trump from feminist contrarian Christina Hoff Sommers
Last edited by ManaMan on Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 #169456  by ManaMan
 Fri Nov 04, 2016 10:36 am
Julius Seeker wrote:I was looking at some election polls, and Trump is WAAAAY down right now. But the states he is still winning in:

<States...>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... attainment

Of that list, the most highly educated State on the list is Nebraska, which ranks 22nd. The next highest ranked state is Missouri at 33rd. The remaining states all rank at the bottom of the list with only the exception of Nevada. Now, I don't think the evidence shows that all regions/people in those states is stupid or conservative; just the majority. The evidence does highly suggest a strong correlation between Trump supporters/Teabaggers (or Alt Right, whatever they like being called now) and the uneducated.
Talking about education, it looks like Trump will be the first Republican in 60 years to not win a majority of the White-University-Graduate vote.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tru ... graduates/

As the GOP slides further into dumbed-down white christian nationalism, the educated are jumping ship.
 #169462  by ManaMan
 Sun Nov 06, 2016 11:07 am


Alec Baldwin & Kate McKinnon break character at the end of the skit & run through NYC dressed & Trump & Hillary. Good stuff.
 #169466  by Don
 Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:06 am
Anyone following the Scott Adams (of Dilbert) endorsing Trump deal? It seems to me he supports Trump because he thinks Trump is as awesome as he is, or something, except it doesn't really work. He claimed to support Hillary earlier to avoid being assassinated too. I guess he's trying to imitate Trump to sound cool and somehow doing an even worse job at it than the real Trump.

Overall I tend to agree with PEC's assessment that this election really isn't that close but all the news media had an incentive to make it sound like anything could happen. Well, the only way the prediction can be wrong is if the polls are totally wrong, which is not impossible but if you don't trust any of the polls out there, then why even talk about analysis when your underlying data is simply wrong? Guess we'll find out tomorrow.
 #169469  by ManaMan
 Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:49 pm
Don wrote:Anyone following the Scott Adams (of Dilbert) endorsing Trump deal? It seems to me he supports Trump because he thinks Trump is as awesome as he is, or something, except it doesn't really work. He claimed to support Hillary earlier to avoid being assassinated too. I guess he's trying to imitate Trump to sound cool and somehow doing an even worse job at it than the real Trump.

Overall I tend to agree with PEC's assessment that this election really isn't that close but all the news media had an incentive to make it sound like anything could happen. Well, the only way the prediction can be wrong is if the polls are totally wrong, which is not impossible but if you don't trust any of the polls out there, then why even talk about analysis when your underlying data is simply wrong? Guess we'll find out tomorrow.
He's been predicting a Trump win for a while. (How's that "landslide" coming along Scott?) Recently he said he endorses Trump because something or other. I think it was that SWM are discriminated against because he claims was denied promotions at two companies in the 80s that were trying to increase diversity. He did an interview on the Rubin Report where he went into more.
 #169470  by Don
 Tue Nov 08, 2016 6:56 pm
ManaMan wrote:
Don wrote:Anyone following the Scott Adams (of Dilbert) endorsing Trump deal? It seems to me he supports Trump because he thinks Trump is as awesome as he is, or something, except it doesn't really work. He claimed to support Hillary earlier to avoid being assassinated too. I guess he's trying to imitate Trump to sound cool and somehow doing an even worse job at it than the real Trump.

Overall I tend to agree with PEC's assessment that this election really isn't that close but all the news media had an incentive to make it sound like anything could happen. Well, the only way the prediction can be wrong is if the polls are totally wrong, which is not impossible but if you don't trust any of the polls out there, then why even talk about analysis when your underlying data is simply wrong? Guess we'll find out tomorrow.
He's been predicting a Trump win for a while. (How's that "landslide" coming along Scott?) Recently he said he endorses Trump because something or other. I think it was that SWM are discriminated against because he claims was denied promotions at two companies in the 80s that were trying to increase diversity. He did an interview on the Rubin Report where he went into more.
He's basically saying Trump is a genius that only a genius like him understands so if you don't see his viewpoint you're just dumb or part of the MIB guys working for Hillary that's trying to assassinate him, and I think he shares similar view as Trump. I think he had a promotion passed up and another woman took it or something in his past and his romantic life didn't exactly work out well. But while Trump is sometimes mildly amusing, Scott Adams is not. He also said he has so much faith in Trump that he'd be willing to assassinate him if Trump starts displaying Hitler like tendencies.

Honestly, I don't have too much of a problem if someone has an issue with woman or race or whatever and keep it to their own work. Gou Long, a famous Chinese novelist, is also quite a misogynist and all his novels the woman is either a slut or dies horribly or both, and it's okay because that's his book and he gets to do whatever he wants as long as the overall novel is entertaining. But at least he didn't try to lecture people outside of his novels of his views.
 #169472  by Eric
 Tue Nov 08, 2016 11:22 pm
Kali was right. Trump is going to win.
 #169473  by kali o.
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 12:25 am
Eric wrote:Kali was right. Trump is going to win.
I'd love to say I predicted a Trump win -- but I only insisted he could because the polls and media coverage were irrelevant. Whether he wins or not, I think it says something -- politicians and the media have never been more outta touch with the public. And the troll army of the internet can effect shit. It'll be interesting to see the fallout, what changes occur, how the extremes (regressives / nationalists) find common ground, etc.

Who did you vote for?
 #169474  by Don
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 1:16 am
It's pretty incredible how the polls were just so far off in this election. But if you don't use polls how do you even base any predicative decisions on?
 #169475  by Eric
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 3:15 am
kali o. wrote:
Eric wrote:Kali was right. Trump is going to win.
I'd love to say I predicted a Trump win -- but I only insisted he could because the polls and media coverage were irrelevant. Whether he wins or not, I think it says something -- politicians and the media have never been more outta touch with the public. And the troll army of the internet can effect shit. It'll be interesting to see the fallout, what changes occur, how the extremes (regressives / nationalists) find common ground, etc.

Who did you vote for?
Hildog, but I live in Louisiana, doesn't matter who I vote for, state has been red since the 60s heh.

Obama's legacy is fucked. The executive orders he signed are done day 1 Trump is in office, Obamacare can and will be repealed because the GOP controls Senate & House. He's gonna assign his own Supreme Court Judge which Obama was blocked from doing by Republicans.

What a crazy and historic run and result.
 #169477  by Eric
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 7:12 am
ManaMan wrote:Has Hillary conceded yet?
Hours ago
 #169478  by Shrinweck
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 7:41 am
She called him but still no speech afaik.

Sticking with my better Trump than Cruz position.
 #169480  by Julius Seeker
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 7:48 am
You have my sympathy.

He's going to do one of two things: first is nothing, because he doesn't know what he's doing. The second is that he's going to reem your country harder than a Corinthian slave boy, because he doesn't know what he's doing.
 #169481  by ManaMan
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 9:28 am
Julius Seeker wrote:You have my sympathy.

He's going to do one of two things: first is nothing, because he doesn't know what he's doing. The second is that he's going to reem your country harder than a Corinthian slave boy, because he doesn't know what he's doing.
...so basically another George W Bush?
 #169484  by Eric
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 4:47 pm
ManaMan wrote:
Julius Seeker wrote:You have my sympathy.

He's going to do one of two things: first is nothing, because he doesn't know what he's doing. The second is that he's going to reem your country harder than a Corinthian slave boy, because he doesn't know what he's doing.
...so basically another George W Bush?
It's signifigantly worse then Bush, because he's going to undo everything Obama did for the last 8 years and redhape our supreme court to a conservative lean for decades.
 #169485  by Don
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 8:18 pm
I'm wondering if it's possible for Trump to actually have a successful health care, like I can see him just going hardball because he thinks that works, and then it'll actually work because when you're the US Government you really can go hardball on certain issues. On average a citizen in USA pays for more for health care and there's really no reason why you can't just mandate the health care providers to make less money because other countries with socialized medicine don't have their health care providers fleeing the country either. The same can be said college tuition. If the US Government just declares you can't charge more than $X for college, it's not like Stanford will suddenly stop refusing to accept people because you can now afford to go there without being indebted for the next 15 years.
 #169486  by kali o.
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 8:37 pm
Eric wrote:
ManaMan wrote:
Julius Seeker wrote:You have my sympathy.

He's going to do one of two things: first is nothing, because he doesn't know what he's doing. The second is that he's going to reem your country harder than a Corinthian slave boy, because he doesn't know what he's doing.
...so basically another George W Bush?
It's signifigantly worse then Bush, because he's going to undo everything Obama did for the last 8 years and redhape our supreme court to a conservative lean for decades.
I think people are over-exaggerating what Trump will do. Get rid of Obamacare? Big deal - it was a clusterfuck anyway as-is. The supreme justices...whats battles are the left championing over the last few years? Trannies in bathrooms? The right to acceptable pronouns? The shark has officially been jumped.

Its not like abortions will be made illegal, despite the doomsayers.
 #169487  by Don
 Wed Nov 09, 2016 9:05 pm
One interesting side effect from this is what happens to the predictive poll websites that recently become a thing. I know Nate Silver is still saying 'well I gave Trump 20% chance to win so it's totally within my model' but you might as well say your model can never be proven wrong as long as you don't give 0% or 100% odds and just being 'sort of off' doesn't say much when a blind guess has 50% chance of picking the correct winner. Then again, I question modeling a change of opinion dealing with thousands if not millions of people as if it's just a random chance like whether you make a shot to be even accurate. 538.com is saying if 1 out of 100 people voted for Clinton instead of Trump then the end result would've looked like what they predicted. Well if 1 out of 100 people gave me a dollar I'll have an extra million, and that seems slightly more probable than people spontaneously changing their mind about who to vote. I think when they try to distill the numbers into just percentages and random chance, they miss the fact that 1% may represent a million people and it is NOT the case that one million people spontaneously changed their mind on who they'd vote for. Yes, it might not take much to change a million people's mind, but this is not the result of pure randomness. It's not like you're a Trump supporter and had tacos for breakfast and that made you decide to vote for Hillary instead. There still has to be a significant cause for any effect to occur when you're at the level of politics. I see an argument about how at least 538 and maybe other places are trying to go with a fantasy sports model and that just doesn't work. It's easy to believe that if LeBron James had tacos for breakfast instead of pancakes that might've randomly affected his 3 point shot later in the day since all kinds of crazy stuff can affect things like that to begin with, but that doesn't translate to voting patterns.
 #169488  by ManaMan
 Thu Nov 10, 2016 10:10 am
It should be pointed out that Hillary Clinton actually WON the popular vote because hey, a lot of fucking liberals cram into coastal cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... tion,_2016
Clinton: 59,923,027
Trump: 59,692,974

...but hey, that's not how our stupid "electoral college" system works, is it?

Just like Bush v Gore in 2000.

Maybe it's time to scrap the Electoral College? You know if the same thing happened to Republicans they'd be raising hell and shutting the government down until they got their way. Democrats? crickets...
kali o. wrote:The supreme justices...whats battles are the left championing over the last few years? Trannies in bathrooms? The right to acceptable pronouns? The shark has officially been jumped.
And you know, health insurance for everyone, access to birth control for everyone, maternity leave, etc... but I see your point. There is far too much emphasis on LGBTQ stuff on the left (I know, crucify me!). Why is that? It's because it's inoffensive to the wealthy Dem donors. They don't want economic leftism, it might hurt their bottom line & or raise their taxes... but sexuality & race-based leftism? Fine by them! So that's what we get. Most of the rest of the country hates it though. I think that's why Bernie Sanders was so popular in rural areas.
 #169489  by Eric
 Thu Nov 10, 2016 11:08 am
Maybe it's time to scrap the Electoral College?
It's not going anywhere.
 #169493  by Zeus
 Fri Nov 11, 2016 12:17 am
I think it just showed how sick people are of bullshit politicians. It almost happened 24 years ago with Ross Perot (until the Republicans threatened to kidnap his daughter) and politicians have gotten much worse since.

I mean, really, how else could you explain a reality in which we're gonna soon be watching a State of the Union address from President Tru......sorry, threw up in my mouth a little there. I'm working on that uncontrollable gag reflex, it's gonna take time
 #169495  by Don
 Sun Nov 13, 2016 3:13 pm
Trump got less votes than Romney or McCain especially after factoring that there are more eligible voters now compared to 4/8 years ago. So it's not the case that guys who normally don't vote for Republic voted for him. It seems almost surely less people voted Democratic than normal. Back in the Obama years when he won big people were all talking about how this new approach where they only campaign in where fancy new data tells them that matters is the new way to go because there's no point to waste energy on places that would've voted for you anyway. Well, it worked well when Obama won big but it sure didn't work this time around. It turns out that just because a state voted for one way for the last 28 years doesn't mean they're somehow supposed to always vote for your party. I don't think it's a shift of demographics because Trump did not get more votes compared to other Republican candidates before, but merely that even guys who would normally vote for you might not care to actually vote if you act like they're worth nothing because they always vote for you. That'd explain why the polls got it wrong, as in you poll someone who would've voted for Hillary they'd say they're voting for Hillary, even though they didn't actually vote since the polls don't try to measure that.

On the big data polling industry side, I noticed a lot of people, including the guys doing the sites themselves, seem to totally gloss over the point that even if you put out a probability model, you're still validated by whether it's right or not. That is, if I say there's a 51% chance Hillary wins, you cannot come to the conclusion that I called this election correctly. It might be less wrong than the guys who gave a higher % (even though that itself is uncertain), but certainly being wrong on the outcome cannot be taken as proof my model works. It's not necessary proof that it won't work, but if I claim my model works despite evidence say otherwise, then how can it ever be proved wrong? Also, the best model is the one that's called with the most certainty. Let's say Trump wins Florida by one vote, I guess people assume then a model that predicts Trump wins 50.00001% of the time in Florida is the best one. That is in fact incorrect. Suppose my model is based on talking to a time traveler who gave me the results ahead of time. I'll know with certainty that Trump indeed won by a margin of 1 vote, and then I can predict that he is going to win Florida 100% of the time (assuming this prediction itself doesn't somehow change the future). My 'consulting with time traveler' model has to hold more weight because I'm willing to put 100% certainty on it, which means I also have more to lose if this model does fail. Besides, how can my model which is based on the assumption that I already know the outcome somehow turn out to be less correct than any model that doesn't have this knowledge? After all, if we run the same scenario 100 times, I'll be able to predict the winner with 100% certainty each time too so it's clearly a more accurate model, provided that my source is actually correct.
 #169500  by ManaMan
 Tue Nov 15, 2016 10:34 am
kali o. wrote:Lol...oh Vox... Overt racism and intellectual vapidness - last gasps of SJWs I hope.

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11 ... on-protest
That certainly was something. Look, I know where she's coming from. She's from St. Louis like myself and yes, there *is* racism in St. Louis. HOWEVER, going around implying that all White People are racist and/or complicit in white supremacy isn't the way to reduce racism or increase the acceptance of diversity. She's just breaking everyone into tribes and saying her tribe are the victims and the white tribe is bad bad bad. Not helpful. It was BLM rhetoric like this that drove white people to white-identity-politics buffoon Trump in the first place. Why can't everyone be individuals? Why this need to resort to tribalism? Isn't that what classical liberalism is supposed to be all about? Racism is bad because it downgrades people based on their group instead of treating them as an individual IMO.

As you can see, this is the author's only article published on Vox. This isn't a regular writer. I think many Left news outlets publish articles like this as a type of "virtue signaling": "Look how 'woke' we are! We're not racist! We're good people.".
 #169501  by ManaMan
 Tue Nov 15, 2016 11:30 am
Don wrote:Trump got less votes than Romney or McCain especially after factoring that there are more eligible voters now compared to 4/8 years ago. So it's not the case that guys who normally don't vote for Republic voted for him. It seems almost surely less people voted Democratic than normal. Back in the Obama years when he won big people were all talking about how this new approach where they only campaign in where fancy new data tells them that matters is the new way to go because there's no point to waste energy on places that would've voted for you anyway. Well, it worked well when Obama won big but it sure didn't work this time around. It turns out that just because a state voted for one way for the last 28 years doesn't mean they're somehow supposed to always vote for your party. I don't think it's a shift of demographics because Trump did not get more votes compared to other Republican candidates before, but merely that even guys who would normally vote for you might not care to actually vote if you act like they're worth nothing because they always vote for you. That'd explain why the polls got it wrong, as in you poll someone who would've voted for Hillary they'd say they're voting for Hillary, even though they didn't actually vote since the polls don't try to measure that.
Also Obama was a charismatic candidate. He was like if scientists combined JFK and MLK in some lab to build the perfect liberal candidate. Clinton is.... NOT charismatic.
 #169502  by Don
 Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:54 pm
ManaMan wrote:
Also Obama was a charismatic candidate. He was like if scientists combined JFK and MLK in some lab to build the perfect liberal candidate. Clinton is.... NOT charismatic.
I think they were counting on Trump to be especially uncharismatic, but he actually got his so-called hidden Trump supporters, in the sense that his dropoff compared to Romney/McCain was less than expected even with all the negativity around him. Clinton obviously was no Obama in terms of charisma, though I don't think that alone can explain why she lost the blue wall states. These states, after all, are still solidly leaning toward Democrat so it should've been relatively easy to hold on to them. I saw an article saying that demographics is not destiny, namely just because you're a certain kind of guy doesn't mean the will of the universe compels you to vote Democratic or Republican. I think that's where the Democrats screwed up and they literally didn't think about the possibility that their normally reliably demographic could still use some attention. It's ironic that people say US presidential election comes down to only a few states having too much power, but surely nobody thought the states that decided this election was the ones everyone expected to vote blue. Sure, only a handful states decided the outcome of this too, but they're the ones that are neglected which is why they flipped red and decided the outcome.
 #169503  by Oracle
 Tue Nov 15, 2016 9:49 pm
Hey! Look at the bright side, at least there should be no gridlock now (unless the dems in the senate get as petty as the republicans have been the last several years).

On the other hand, Bannon, hey? Quite the stand-up guy...
 #169504  by Shrinweck
 Wed Nov 16, 2016 7:38 am
Yeah can't wait for them to fast track trickle down economics, deportation, and taking away insurance from people with preexisting conditions :D

But seriously, if they don't fast track shit that actually matters since it will make Republicans look good, such as infrastructure repair, then I would like to think that it spells doom for incumbents in terms of reelection.
 #169505  by kali o.
 Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:19 am
Oracle wrote:Hey! Look at the bright side, at least there should be no gridlock now (unless the dems in the senate get as petty as the republicans have been the last several years).

On the other hand, Bannon, hey? Quite the stand-up guy...
Whats wrong with Bannon?
 #169508  by Oracle
 Thu Nov 17, 2016 12:45 pm
kali o. wrote:
Oracle wrote:Hey! Look at the bright side, at least there should be no gridlock now (unless the dems in the senate get as petty as the republicans have been the last several years).

On the other hand, Bannon, hey? Quite the stand-up guy...
Whats wrong with Bannon?
Hey, I said he was a stand-up guy.

No surprise, Glen Beck doesn't agree with me (I never agree with that asshole!)

http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/articl ... .google.ca
 #169520  by Replay
 Fri Nov 18, 2016 11:29 pm
Zeus wrote:I mean, really, how else could you explain a reality in which we're gonna soon be watching a State of the Union address from President Tru......sorry, threw up in my mouth a little there. I'm working on that uncontrollable gag reflex, it's gonna take time
Remember this exchange?
Replay wrote:
Zeus wrote:You guys do realize that Hillary just won the presidency this past Tuesday, yes?
A lot can happen before November. And the anti-Trump coalition thinking it already has this one in the bag is one of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make.
http://tows.cc/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17800

While I got as fooled by the polls as anyone else for the last month or two, no doubt - I always knew a Trump win was within the possibility space, Zeus. I saw how he excited his base and I knew and tried to warn everybody what a weak, corrupt, defeatable candidate Hillary actually was.

I guess I will chalk it up on the long list of things I have tried to warn the board about which I was called crazy for. :)
 #169521  by Replay
 Fri Nov 18, 2016 11:45 pm
kali o. wrote:I think people are over-exaggerating what Trump will do. Get rid of Obamacare? Big deal - it was a clusterfuck anyway as-is. The supreme justices...whats battles are the left championing over the last few years? Trannies in bathrooms? The right to acceptable pronouns? The shark has officially been jumped.

Its not like abortions will be made illegal, despite the doomsayers.
Sadly, I have to disagree - not about the abortion issue, but on the notion that the Trump Presidency will not attempt to usher in other sweeping societal changes.

For example, on his first day as President-elect he promised to dismantle Dodd-Frank, the replacement legislation for Glass-Steagall. That's a curious position for a man who ran partially on anger against Wall Street corruption to take. It's basically giving a free pass to Wall Street to do whatever the eff they want, without oversight, once again. (Be prepared for another bubble/crash cycle as overheated investment bank money dominates the system again - those people didn't learn anything from 2008.)

And then there are his appointees. Our new attorney general has a long career of unrepentant racism - and may make re-criminalization and Federal prosecution of cannabis a top priority, in violation of Trump's statement while campaigning that he believed it was a states' rights issue.
The New York Times wrote:Accusations of racism have dogged Sessions's career: Actually, they almost derailed it. In 1986, a Senate committee denied Sessions, then a 39-year-old U.S. attorney in Alabama, a federal judgeship. His former colleagues testified Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were "okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
Then there's Mike Flynn - our new national security advisor, whom Obama removed from power because he could not be made to draw a distinction between enemy Muslim combatants and their families or other innocent civilians - he is known to be viciously anti-Muslim and has advocated killing the families of suspected terrorists without trial or mercy, which is really a very, very stupid policy if you actually understand and have studied the radical Islamic threatscape from a cultural standpoint. Half the Islamist terrorists out there right now joined the global jihad because their families were killed in earlier military actions.

---------------------

Remember how GWB ran on a very meek, mild, milquetoast platform - and by the end of it he was an unabashed "war President" who had tried to overturn half a dozen civil rights and freedoms?

It's gonna be the same way, people. Just be prepared. Trump is appointing a lot of very angry, very intolerant people to high office - and his supporters want him to hurt people who don't agree with them. I'm seeing it out on the feeds already.