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Purgatory: Oops - your Trump presidency discussion thread.

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  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    May they secede and take their Sarah with them.
  • She is an odious piece of trash. Being a mouthpiece requires a great deal, but she has gone above and beyond the call of duty. God save Arkansas.
  • So now the campaign to inflict the current occupant of the White House upon us for four more years has fired some pollsters because they reported that he was trailing Democrats in the polls. "Fake polls," he called them.

    Setting aside Mark Twain's (or was it Disraeli's) observation about statistics, tweaking it a bit: "There are lies, damn lies, and polls" -- I have never understood how polls, taking so small a sample as they do, could be anywhere near accurate. In fact, they have been shown time and time again to be wildly inaccurate.

    Still, talk about shooting the messenger . . . .
  • In fact, they have been shown time and time again to be wildly inaccurate.

    Most notably in November of 2016.
    :rage:
  • Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    In fact, they have been shown time and time again to be wildly inaccurate.

    Most notably in November of 2016.
    :rage:

    This is one of those things that everybody knows but isn't actually true.

    Polling is a classic example of sampling. It is somewhat impractical to question a whole population of several million. On the whole though, sampling ~1000 people gives you a calculation of the result with a known margin of error of 3%* or so. Hence in a clear race, the polling will really give you an accurate answer. In a tight race, that margin presents a problem if you treat polling as a form of prophecy. I laid out a bit more detail here.

    The issue of the 2016 Presidential election was not the polling, it was the interpretation. Firstly, on the share of the vote, the polls were pretty much spot on: a Hilary win. The electoral college is where is goes a bit squiffy. The path to victory for Trump depended on him beating the polls in 4-5 states. You can work out the probability of that for each state. What pundits did was say ahhh yes, but the probability of that happening in every state where he needs to is really small. This is the fallacy of assuming independence where variables are not truly independent. The truth is that if Trump beat his polls in one state, he was very likely to do so in others. Why? Because factors that affect polling error - such as maybe people didn't want to admit to supporting Trump - apply to all of the states. If one moves in a certain direction, so potentially do they all. Once you get past this basic statistical error, you see that Trump's chance of winning was never the 1% chance many called it but around 25-30% as 538's model had it. 25-30% is pretty likely in this context. Details here.

    There are lots of ways to skew polls; either deliberately to get a desired result for PR purposes** or because of poor quality. Thus all polls should be critically assessed. When it's a poll I'm interested in, I go and look at the whole report: the good polling companies publish a lot of detail of how they derived their 'headline' result. However it is a fallacy, and actually quite a lazy one to simply say that they're all wrong.

    AFZ

    *That is the statistical error. I discussed this an other types here

    **There is evidence that polling changes voter behaviour; for example, undecideds are more likely to vote for someone who is leading in the polls. So there can be value in distorting a result in a particular direction.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    I have never understood how polls, taking so small a sample as they do, could be anywhere near accurate. In fact, they have been shown time and time again to be wildly inaccurate.

    Interestingly this kind of thinking never gets extrapolated to things like medical labwork. I've never come across anyone who insists the phlebotomist take a full quart of blood because a small sample would be inaccurate.
  • Blood, being a liquid, and continually flowing, can be expected to have all of its components more or less equally diffused within it.

    Beliefs, being held by birds of a feather who tend to flock together, cannot be expected to be equally diffused among a population.

    I will allow as how a professionally constructed sampling runs the chance of being more accurate than an amateurishly constructed one, but I personally trust my phlebotomist to do a better job than any pollster.
  • Another caveat about polls (in Canada, at least) is that they are "within x% [or whatever the margin of error, depending on sample size] 19 times out of 20", meaning that 5% of the time the poll will be wildly out of whack.
  • As a vampire, I just drink my fill when I'm hungry.
  • alienfromzogalienfromzog Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Simon Toad wrote: »
    As a vampire, I just drink my fill when I'm hungry.

    Ahhh, Simon. For the past two decades, I've lived my life by a very simple maxim: WWBD?...

    (What Would Buffy Do?)

    AFZ
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    edited June 2019
    Save the world, as usual, then look exhausted and want to quit the whole thing.

    ETA: Then make some wryly sarcastic remark.

    "She saved the world...a lot."
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    This just in: Acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan has withdrawn from consideration to become the full Secretary. Shanahan withdrew because of domestic problems in the past.
  • And they seemed like such a lovely family.
  • HedgehogHedgehog Shipmate
    And they seemed like such a lovely family.
    Always ready to make a bad thing worse, Trump's explanation for Shanahan's departure is so that he (Shanahan) "can devote more time to his family." Shudder.
  • In these parts, "devote more time to his family" when said about a departing employee means that he would have been fired if he did not acquiesce to a request to tender his resignation.
  • Does it mean that for Huckerbee?
  • I'd hate to be the family she devoted more time to.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    It's like when a job applicant is asked why they left a certain job, and they say "oh, I wasn't being challenged enough" or "I'm looking for new opportunities". It may not mean they were fired (or nearly so); but it does mean there's something they don't want to say. It's standard interview advice in job-hunting books.

    On rare occasions, such excuses may be solely true.
  • Did somebody say that Huckerbee was going to run for Governor of Alabama?
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Arkansas, I think.
  • Simon ToadSimon Toad Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    oh yeah, the pirate Kansas :tongue:
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Simon Toad wrote: »
    Did somebody say that Huckerbee was going to run for Governor of Alabama?

    That "somebody" was Trump. As with all such suggestions or advice it seems staged.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Simon Toad wrote: »
    Did somebody say that Huckerbee was going to run for Governor of Alabama?

    That "somebody" was Trump. As with all such suggestions or advice it seems staged.

    Politico reports she is very serious about running for governor of Arkansas.
  • Her Daddy was Governor there, was he?
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    (On the movie thread in Heaven, Twilight posted some comments about Trump and West Virginia, in relation to the upcoming film Hillbilly Elegy. I've replied to them on this thread, to keep Heaven heavenly.)
    Twilight wrote: »

    West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump and it was because he promised them hope, it really had nothing to do with conservative values. Hillary was honest with them and they simply couldn't stand to hear it. It was her worst state.

    This sort of backs up my theory that there is really no such thing as Trumpism, in any substantial way. It's basically just the usual Republican voters, plus a bunch of people in the Rust Belt(many of them previous Obama voters) who got talked into believing that he could save their jobs. If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition(or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.
  • stetson wrote: »
    If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition (or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.
    Is there now?
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition (or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.
    Is there now?

    Yes, like I said, the rust-belt contingent who voted for him expecting intervensionist economic policies to save their jobs. They're not a large percentage of the people who voted GOP in 2016, but due to the mathematical distortions of the electoral college, they did make a big difference.

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    (On the movie thread in Heaven, Twilight posted some comments about Trump and West Virginia, in relation to the upcoming film Hillbilly Elegy. I've replied to them on this thread, to keep Heaven heavenly.)
    Twilight wrote: »
    West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump and it was because he promised them hope, it really had nothing to do with conservative values. Hillary was honest with them and they simply couldn't stand to hear it. It was her worst state.

    This sort of backs up my theory that there is really no such thing as Trumpism, in any substantial way. It's basically just the usual Republican voters, plus a bunch of people in the Rust Belt (many of them previous Obama voters) who got talked into believing that he could save their jobs. If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition (or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.

    There's a nostalgia factor at work here as well. About ten times the number of West Virginians work in health care as work in all types of mining, let alone coal mining specifically. Yet Trump's promise to restore coal mining jobs while repealing the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") counts as a promise to "save [ West Virginian's ] jobs" because for largely nostalgic reasons West Virginians see coal mining as a job but working in health care isn't.

    For the record West Virginia was actually Hillary Clinton's second worst state. She lost there by a margin of 42 percentage points (26/68). Her worst state was Wyoming, which she lost by a margin of 46 percentage points (22/68).
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Crœsos wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    (On the movie thread in Heaven, Twilight posted some comments about Trump and West Virginia, in relation to the upcoming film Hillbilly Elegy. I've replied to them on this thread, to keep Heaven heavenly.)
    Twilight wrote: »
    West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump and it was because he promised them hope, it really had nothing to do with conservative values. Hillary was honest with them and they simply couldn't stand to hear it. It was her worst state.

    This sort of backs up my theory that there is really no such thing as Trumpism, in any substantial way. It's basically just the usual Republican voters, plus a bunch of people in the Rust Belt (many of them previous Obama voters) who got talked into believing that he could save their jobs. If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition (or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.

    There's a nostalgia factor at work here as well. About ten times the number of West Virginians work in health care as work in all types of mining, let alone coal mining specifically. Yet Trump's promise to restore coal mining jobs while repealing the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") counts as a promise to "save [ West Virginian's ] jobs" because for largely nostalgic reasons West Virginians see coal mining as a job but working in health care isn't.

    In fariness to the Old King Coal nostalgists, I think there is probably also the idea that coal-mining is the kind of industry around which a geographically-based community can be built. IOW, if a mine closes in a given town, not only will individual jobs be lost, but the town will cease to function as a socioeconomic entity. And it's not likely that the people who were working the pits could just check the classifieds to find similar work nearby, if the industry itself is in general collapse.

    Whereas there are not many communities built around the provision of ACA services, and the average health-care worker who loses her job after ACA being terminated probably has a better chance of finding work in the private sector, than a miner does at another mine.

    Granted, this sort of thinking CAN come perilously close to "My job-loss is an affront to the sacred order of the universe, yours is just the way things go." Even so, I think we all sort of accept that there was more concern over the possible loss of jobs in the Michigan auto-industry in the mid-2000s, then there was, say, over the loss of jobs in the videocassette industry just prior to that.

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Whereas there are not many communities built around the provision of ACA services, and the average health-care worker who loses her job after ACA being terminated probably has a better chance of finding work in the private sector, than a miner does at another mine.

    A couple observations. In what way is the ACA not "the private sector"? The whole purpose of the ACA was to provide health care within the existing framework of private insurance and existing healthcare infrastructure, supplemented by Medicaid expansion for those at the very bottom of the income ladder. I'd also point out that the closure of rural hospitals and health clinics is a big problem, particularly in West Virginia and if your local hospital shuts down a health care worker is in much the same position as a miner whose mine has closed. Repealing the ACA so that those with the least income can't afford a hospital visit is one way to exacerbate the stresses on rural health care.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    There's a nostalgia factor at work here as well. About ten times the number of West Virginians work in health care as work in all types of mining, let alone coal mining specifically. Yet Trump's promise to restore coal mining jobs while repealing the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") counts as a promise to "save [ West Virginian's ] jobs" because for largely nostalgic reasons West Virginians see coal mining as a job but working in health care isn't.

    I don't think it's coincidence that mining and manufacturing jobs, which historically employed a lot of white males in rural areas, count as the Real American Working Class while modern working class jobs aren't. Most working class jobs today are in customer service and healthcare, which are heavily urban, female and minority.
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    (On the movie thread in Heaven, Twilight posted some comments about Trump and West Virginia, in relation to the upcoming film Hillbilly Elegy. I've replied to them on this thread, to keep Heaven heavenly.)
    Twilight wrote: »

    West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump and it was because he promised them hope, it really had nothing to do with conservative values. Hillary was honest with them and they simply couldn't stand to hear it. It was her worst state.

    This sort of backs up my theory that there is really no such thing as Trumpism, in any substantial way. It's basically just the usual Republican voters, plus a bunch of people in the Rust Belt(many of them previous Obama voters) who got talked into believing that he could save their jobs. If the Rust Belt abandons him in 2020, there won't be much to distinguish his coalition(or, for that matter, policies) from that of any other Republican candidate.
    I'd argue that Hillbilly Elegy* feeds directly into what fed voted for Trump.
    To quote one line of one review, the book is:
    a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class
    And, rather ironically, the author blames fatalism and learned helpless rather than indolence for the region's plight. A premise rejected by Trumpistas when applied to black people.

    *With the caveat that I am surmising based upon synopsis, not having read the book.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    There's a nostalgia factor at work here as well. About ten times the number of West Virginians work in health care as work in all types of mining, let alone coal mining specifically. Yet Trump's promise to restore coal mining jobs while repealing the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") counts as a promise to "save [ West Virginian's ] jobs" because for largely nostalgic reasons West Virginians see coal mining as a job but working in health care isn't.

    I don't think it's coincidence that mining and manufacturing jobs, which historically employed a lot of white males in rural areas, count as the Real American Working Class while modern working class jobs aren't. Most working class jobs today are in customer service and healthcare, which are heavily urban, female and minority.

    urban, female and minority - sounds like America's real working class.
  • So he didn't bomb Iran. Yet. But he will. Kill some Muslims. Get some votes. Great for oil businesses to have a spike in oil prices. Keep America Great. Get reelected. Because it looks like your sorry politicians aren't willing to do what it takes.

    The Rant thread in Hell has lots about systematic and deliberate gov't child abuse. That's good for votes too apparently.

    Is it just me or is the worst yet to come?
  • Is it just me or is the worst yet to come?

    It's hard to imagine that it could get much worse than this. But it will. These people will begin to die en-masse and then we will see these concentration camps for what they are: no different from Hitler's gas chambers, except that disease germs rather than poisonous gas will be the instrument of death.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    Is it just me or is the worst yet to come?

    It's hard to imagine that it could get much worse than this. But it will. These people will begin to die en-masse and then we will see these concentration camps for what they are: no different from Hitler's gas chambers, except that disease germs rather than poisonous gas will be the instrument of death.

    I keep wondering what the long-term plan is here. Thousands of unaccompanied minors incarcerated in for-profit detention centers. I want reporters to start asking more questions about this. I personally am fearful that we're watching the development of a new form of slavery. When you're detained for no valid reason, how can there be a valid reason for your official release? What does release even mean? Deportation? Release into an increasingly hostile US population? With zero preparation, perhaps not even knowing any English, having zero education (They're not even deemed worthy of having toothbrushes -- that;s what the admin is arguing in the courts RIGHT NOW.)

    Will they be trained militarily, then turned against the forces that drove them to seek asylum? Are they just going to rot in jail until they expire? Are they going to be assigned to our new Gilead's Commander Class to care for Commander Children? Or maybe (shudder) produce some? WHAT IS THE PLAN?

    There is no plan, of course. If someone actually coerces an answer of some kind from The Menace, it'll be along the lines of "We'll see."
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    So apparently the U.S. almost went to war with Iran last night.
    President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions.

    As late as 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations.

    Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.

    The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.

    That's behind the New York Times paywall, but seems like a worthy use of one of your five monthly NYT passes.

    For clarification, the drone shot down was (allegedly) an RQ-4, kind of a robotic version of the old U-2 spy plane reconnaissance aircraft. It's a large and expensive robot, but it's still just a robot. One of the points of having unmanned drones for this kind of thing is that it doesn't risk lives and, as a consequence, lessens the pressure to escalate into armed conflict if one of them is shot down.

    Returning to the Times piece:
    Mr. Trump’s national security advisers split about whether to respond militarily. Senior administration officials said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, had favored a military response. But top Pentagon officials cautioned that such an action could result in a spiraling escalation with risks for American forces in the region.

    So the professional military are (allegedly) unwilling to start feeding the lives of soldiers into a meat grinder so Cadet Bonespurs (h/t Sen. Duckworth) can boost his approval ratings and distract from his corruption and concentration camps. It's just fine with chickenhawks like Bolton and Pompeo, though. The fact that Trump can apparently be swayed back and forth by different advisors on a question this serious within the span of an hour or so(?) does not seem like a good thing.
  • That spy drone reportedly costs somewhere around $150,000,000 (more if it's been souped up). I suspect the missile system that took it down cost a great deal less.

    In related news the Yemenis fired a missile at one of those Saudi desalination plants. There are lots of soft targets like this all along the gulf and I wonder if Trump and co had that in mind when they called off the attack.
  • Cadet Bonespurs, is good.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    There was a meme on Facebook today of Putin on the phone saying "Donald, call off that air strike".

    Life imitating art?
  • Ohher wrote: »
    Is it just me or is the worst yet to come?

    It's hard to imagine that it could get much worse than this. But it will. These people will begin to die en-masse and then we will see these concentration camps for what they are: no different from Hitler's gas chambers, except that disease germs rather than poisonous gas will be the instrument of death.

    I keep wondering what the long-term plan is here. Thousands of unaccompanied minors incarcerated in for-profit detention centers. I want reporters to start asking more questions about this. I personally am fearful that we're watching the development of a new form of slavery. When you're detained for no valid reason, how can there be a valid reason for your official release? What does release even mean? Deportation? Release into an increasingly hostile US population? With zero preparation, perhaps not even knowing any English, having zero education (They're not even deemed worthy of having toothbrushes -- that;s what the admin is arguing in the courts RIGHT NOW.)

    Will they be trained militarily, then turned against the forces that drove them to seek asylum? Are they just going to rot in jail until they expire? Are they going to be assigned to our new Gilead's Commander Class to care for Commander Children? Or maybe (shudder) produce some? WHAT IS THE PLAN?

    There is no plan, of course. If someone actually coerces an answer of some kind from The Menace, it'll be along the lines of "We'll see."

    You're right. There was no plan when we detained asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru. Seven years on, with no trials and no crime, about 1000 people are still there. Every now and then one of them kills themselves. Perhaps that's the plan.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    There was a meme on Facebook today of Putin on the phone saying "Donald, call off that air strike".

    Life imitating art?

    Liberals criticizing Trump for not attacking Iran is a strong indicator of the complete moral and ideological bankruptcy of mainstream American politics “left” or right. In any case they will likely get their wish in due time. And in the event of a disastrous US war with Iran Russia will likely benefit in the long run.

  • What's the odds of Bolton going if he doesn't get his way.

    And I agree. The left should be saying that Trump created this problem by his swaggering and arrogant discarding of a treaty that was a platform for peace. If he wanted talks, that treaty was the way to go. Cancelling it in an effort to gain his magical leverage was stupidity in a can.

    They should leave it to people on the right to whisper about how the President doesn't have the bottle for the task. I haven't really followed the commentary. Who on the left in the USA is criticising Trump for not bombing Iran?
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Piglet wrote: »
    There was a meme on Facebook today of Putin on the phone saying "Donald, call off that air strike".

    Life imitating art?

    Liberals criticizing Trump for not attacking Iran is a strong indicator of the complete moral and ideological bankruptcy of mainstream American politics “left” or right. In any case they will likely get their wish in due time. And in the event of a disastrous US war with Iran Russia will likely benefit in the long run.
    Which liberals have criticized Trump for not attacking Iran?
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    None that I know of, that's for certain.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    I took the meme to mean that the criticism was of Trump all ready to bomb Iran until Putin told him not to, but I may have got the wrong end of the stick.
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    I'm very liberal for the U.S. and I have never seen/heard anyone criticizing Trump for not going to war so I think you may be misinterpreting that, SirPalomides. That said, I have certainly seen/heard him made fun of for being indecisive.
  • I remember Romanlion used to drop fact-bombs and depart. Mind you, she never wrote essays.
  • One of the biggest websites for knitting and other textile arts (Ravelry), has banned explicit support for Trump, on the grounds that "support for the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy". I believe other websites have done similar. No link. The Twitter reaction has been, well, interesting.
  • I wish CNN and MSNBC would ban mention of his name, or at the very least ban the use of the title "President" when referring to him. Surely there are other things happening in the world besides things that are associated with him.

    I also wish they'd stop talking about Democratic contenders for the nomination at least until November.

    I am still of the opinion that you-know-who would have faded into oblivion in 2015-2016 if the media had not bombarded us with his name every waking hour of every day.
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