Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Blast from the past

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/675418949547384832[/ame]

[Ghengis Jon]

Poor Rex. Dissed by Chump and now reamed by subordinates for allowing Chump's destruction of the US diplomatic corps.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/11/politics/diplomat-resigns-letter-shackelford-tillerson/index.html

Chump is the best mole the Russians ever had.

[Kapture1]

Kaptiure & Geezer-

A good discussion of the huge swath of Alabama polls and what may account for the differences.

As he points out, pollsters that use automated robocalls have almost universally shown Moore with the lead. Pollsters using actual human callers have tended to show Jones winning.

The downside of robocalls?

1) Automated polls are banned by law from calling cell phones. Land lines tend to be owned by an older, whiter population.

2) Robocalls get lower response rates and therefore, if they don't get enough responses from particular demographics, sometimes make bigger assumptions

The primary downside of human callers is that there's some evidence to believe that respondents will be less honest.

Lots of other info in the article. But bottom line for Silver is that Jones would need all of Alabama's swing voters, so much as they exist, and get lopsided turnout in his favor.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...alabama-polls/

The issue with this is there is no standard polling format for a special election. Moore is a politically devisive figure it just depends on the turnout, which side shows up.


That asside, what your comment tells me is that there is a decent chance that people are going to vote for Moore but dont want to tell anyone.

[hack]

It's a dangerous precedent. A single allegation, which you deny, and your career is over. No due process. Jilted lovers have a potential nuclear weapon now.

Well that's why I was smart and didn't rise too far.

Seriously though, yeah. Every action begets an equal and opposite action, so in a way it's just the crows coming home to roost for some of these utterly evil fucks, but the ones that get away with it on the other hand destroy any notion of justice. Definitely will be a weapon against men in the future. It probably has been already, frankly.

The social fabric is stretched pretty thin these days.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well that's why I was smart and didn't rise too far.

I once had a very smart Nigerian MD who was quite satisfied with his rather lowly staff position in the facility that I worked with him tell me this:

The higher the monkey climbs in the tree the more he shows his ass.

Your reference about not rising too far reminded me of this gentle man who wanted no praise or promotion for his incredibly good hands on medical skills. He didn't need expensive diagnostics or needless labs. He knew about 99% of the time what was wrong with the patient by just listening and examining.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Beyond that, I sort-of agree with both you and AA. What's going on recently with these accusations of sexual misconduct in the work-place is dangerous precedent but at the same time it's unmasking men who fail to control their sexual urges instead directing them in one way or the other towards female co-workers ..... crows coming home to roost.

I think for now, on balance, it's probably a good thing.

[hack]

He didn't need expensive diagnostics or needless labs. He knew about 99% of the time what was wrong with the patient by just listening and examining.

I could have used that before I blew $300 on an MRI, the cost of which was incorrectly represented to me before I signed on for it. Of course after the MRI, and the orthopedic surgeon, the physiotherapist took the time to properly diagnose my hamstring problem and didn't need the MRI results.

But we have expensive toys and insurance companies and doctors who can just shrug and move on to the next patient a little faster.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The issue with this is there is no standard polling format for a special election. Moore is a politically devisive figure it just depends on the turnout, which side shows up.


That asside, what your comment tells me is that there is a decent chance that people are going to vote for Moore but dont want to tell anyone.

There is a chance that people lie to real pollsters more than robocalls, yes, but they also tend to hang up on robocalls more often as well. The degree to which people lie is debatable. And it's debatable which way people lie. There's probably some that are embarrassed to admit they're voting Jones. There's also probably at least a few who are telling their die-hard conservative friends that they're with Moore all the way but have private doubts.

I recall posting a study a while back that asked husbands and wives about their voting preferences and that of their spouse. Basically they would ask them "who did you vote for? who did your spouse vote for?". Overall wives were almost always correct. Somewhere around 10-20% (if I remember correctly) of husbands were flat-out wrong about the way their wives voted -- we can speculate as to why.

[Kapture1]

This is why polling is an inexact science that is often wrong

[Kapture1]

[ame]https://youtu.be/uKhJ6ise6oU[/ame]

[Dr. Strangelove]

LOL

[ame]https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/940389382334418944[/ame]

[Dr. Strangelove]

[ame]https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/940406428556283909[/ame]

[Kapture1]

[Da Geezer]

Jeff

Putin's motivation for probably specific direction to undertake the kind of cyber attacks that were unleashed in 2015-16 can be traced directly to the Panama Papers and the leaks that implicated him in money laundering. Putin was seriously embarrassed by the revelation of Russian corruption, the level of which should be no surprise to anyone that has taken the time to understand Russia and the Oligarchs under Putin.

The purpose of this undertaking was to repay the Obama administration and in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who Putin considered was behind the release of this damaging information. This was, to me, a really good read as I had never put Russia's cyber activity in this context. It makes a ton of sense and rather diffuses the notion that Trump was somehow involved.

That is a long article. CNN had an hour-long special that was making most of the same stuff.

The Panama Papers were released on May 9, 2016. That's four years after she left her post as Sos. More importantly, it was 6 months from election day. Jeff, that is just simple math. Really?

I just don't think Putin is in a precarious position at all. Yesterday he was hugging Bashir Assad and declaring victory, and bringing his troops home. To me, when a leader leaves his own country to visit a nation that is some distance away, that means they are in control. Finally, Putin has total control of the media (they call it the Fairness Doctrine) and I doubt if everyday Russians have ever heard of the Panama Papers.

[Da Geezer]

Kaptiure & Geezer-

A good discussion of the huge swath of Alabama polls and what may account for the differences.

As he points out, pollsters that use automated robocalls have almost universally shown Moore with the lead. Pollsters using actual human callers have tended to show Jones winning.

The downside of robocalls?

1) Automated polls are banned by law from calling cell phones. Landlines tend to be owned by an older, whiter population.

2) Robocalls get lower response rates and therefore, if they don't get enough responses from particular demographics, sometimes make bigger assumptions.

1) Automated polls are banned by law from calling cell phones. Landlines tend to be owned by an older, whiter population.

"Landline (864) and cellphone (544) telephone numbers were randomly selected from a statewide voter file of registered Alabama voters using a probability proportionate to size method".

The primary downside of human callers is that there's some evidence to believe that respondents will be less honest.

Sure is. "Some evidence..." Like maybe Donald Trump being elected President

There is a whole article on the methodology of the Fox poll. Jones is +30 on the cell phone portion of the poll, which you would expect. Frankly, IMO, these pollsters are going to have to figure a way to use texts to properly sample millennials.