Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[CGVT]

Yawn

[hack]

And I think Trump will face the exact same sentence the Clintons faced with their foundation issues.

I don't know if you meant to compare them, so apologies if you did not, but, overall those types of comparisons are a big problem. Without a doubt the Clintons have been too corrupt over their years of public service for us to be able to consider them admirable public servants, but this is a proper charity with the appropriate levels of transparency and independent oversight and a track record of actually using its money for its intended purpose. The Trump Foundation is not.

There's no way to compare these two things, or approaches. Billary's slimy access merchant/speaker-fees approach to politics is unsavory and voters should be able to reject such candidates, but, ultimately, it's just not the same thing as the Ferdinand Marcos model Trump is using. Legal vs illegal. Is that simple. Using the same labels for both is grossly inaccurate.

[Kapture1]

Beta male cucks can yawn all they want but cant refute the truth.

[hack]

He's in his 70's and speaking off the cuff, you tend to get statements stuck in your head that you have said and repeat them. Again and again until called on it. Rote memory doesn't really allow for critical reflection of one's words.

Yeah. I think that's what he meant because it makes no sense to lie about it. Children asking (correct) is at least as much of a plea to emotion as a parent asking (incorrect).

Your milage may vary.

I agree that it makes no sense to lie about it, but that's what Trump does. We've had presidents in their 70s before, and it's been a hell of a lot harder to tell when they are lying than with this one. Seems like this one is being held to a different standard, and I'm not sure why.

[AlabamAlum]

There are mistakes and then there are lies. Trump has lied about his mandate, his electoral votes, his crowd size, and hundred other things. The self-aggrandizement and braggadocio was easy to see and there was a tangible gain for him if the lies were accepted. Flipping 'parents' from 'children' is just an addle-brained mistake. I have called my aunt my niece before. Even repeated that I was going to my niece's birthday party. I guess my friends could call me out as "LYING!" over it, but, meh.

It's pedantic and it makes others look like they are on a ....wait for it....witch hunt.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I commend Christopher Hitchens reflection that appears in Vanity Fair on the wasteland that is NK.

Despite the wildly liberal leanings of this mag, this is an eye opening portrayal of life in NK. I think it raises the point that the NK leadership isn't going to suddenly open its doors to SK or western thinking on a wide range of economic, social or political values.

The Kim dynasty is a rigid communist, self serving, oppressive regime. Any leakage of SK or western ways into NK would be destabilizing and won't happen to the extent the regime is capable of limiting it.

While I think it useful for the US to have open channels of communications with NK regarding nukes, thinking that life for NKs is going to improve because of this summit or anything to follow from it or that unification is possible is blitheringly stupid.

If you're interested Google Vanity Fair for the article. Worth a read.

[iam416]

It's pedantic and it makes others look like they are on a ....wait for it....witch hunt.

Indeed. Some may even say certain trivial attacks are revealing.

[hack]

There are mistakes and then there are lies. Trump has lied about his mandate, his electoral votes, his crowd size, and hundred other things. The self-aggrandizement and braggadocio was easy to see and there was a tangible gain for him if the lies were accepted. Flipping 'parents' from 'children' is just an addle-brained mistake. I have called my aunt my niece before. Even repeated that I was going to my niece's birthday party. I guess my friends could call me out as "LYING!" over it, but, meh.

It's pedantic and it makes others look like they are on a ....wait for it....witch hunt.

And there are one-off instances as well as regular patterns of behavior. I know you are no Trump slappy, which kind of drives home the point. This kind of politician is so foreign in the American political system that it's just seemingly hard for him to be labeled correctly. We don't have a frame of reference for this kind of behavior in this specific country. JMO people are generally just too decent-minded to understand how to be skeptical enough. And it would be exhausting. People like Trump depend on factors like that in order to do what they do. Once this kind of behavior is tolerated, changing that tolerance is a long process requiring a good bit of tenacity.

[iam416]

An important higher ed case is slowly working its way through the court system. A group representing Asian-Americans filed a case against Harvard for intentional discrimination. That case has gone through substantial discovery and the Plaintiffs have filed a motion for summary judgment. That's always a tough motion to win -- you file them, but they're tough to win. We'll see how this one goes. But, of note, by Harvard's own internal study, Asian-Americans would comprise 43% of the classes if assessed on academics alone. They comprise 19%. Also of interest is that Harvard's staggeringly consistent student body makeup by race. Of course, you can't "racial balance" under Supreme Court precedent. So, the fact that 5 straight classes have a virtually identical makeup is, heh, potentially troubling.

Plaintiffs' memorandum in support of their motion is here: http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpen...ort-of-MSJ.pdf

[AlabamAlum]

Asians are smarter than all of us. Whitey needs affirmative action to level the field.

Thanks, Harvard!

Kidding aside, there is more than just gpa. Community service, extracurriculars, and the blind grading of the entrance essays are all given significant weight. Now, if Harvard isn?t properly weighting those things and it?s not a blind essay review (Kwi Chang Caine?s name on top of the paper, for example), then Harvard has some ?splainin to do.

At least Harvard is a real Ivy, though.

[iam416]

AA:

The biggest predictors for acceptance (according to Harvard's own study):

Athletics (understandable -- like most schools, Harvard makes an exception for good athletes)
High Personal Score -- some vague, nonsensical category
Black -- Duh. AA's admittance rate on academics would be less than 1%.
Legacy -- Duh.

Those were, by far and away, the biggest predictors of admittance. Extracurriculars were comparable to Academics.

Of note, for non-legacy, non-athlete applicants, Asians either substantially outscored or were comparable to white applicants in every category but one, where whites were substantially better. Yes, that wonderful "personal rating."

And then, of course, using this "holostic" approach, the admissions office produces classes that are nearly identical in racial makeup.

Quite obviously, they start with a desired class makeup and use race and the ambiguous "personal score" to make it happen.

[AlabamAlum]

Tell me the result you want first so I can jiggle the nebulous, poorly-defined, rater's opinion-based criteria to achieve it?

Yeah, they might be in trouble.

[iam416]

Correct. Now, back to 24/7 PDJT.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Correct. Now, back to 24/7 PDJT.

Your hatred of PDJT updates sickens not just me and baby Jesus, but also the PAH

[Kapture1]

President 0bama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her Clintonmail.com account, and corresponded with her while she was overseas.



The press' sheer lack of journalistic curiosity for anything 0bama continues to astonish me (not really)



Also when Comey in July 2016 said that there was no evidence Clinton's emails were hacked by foreign powers, that was a lie.

?Foreign actors? accessed Hillary Clinton?s emails, including one that was classified ?secret,? according to a memo produced by two Republican-led House committees and obtained by Fox News.

The memo details the findings of congressional investigators who looked into whether the Department of Justice made politically motivated decisions over the past two years with respect to the Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations.

?Documents provided to the Committees show foreign actors obtained access to some of Mrs. Clinton?s emails ? including at least one email classified ?Secret,?? the memo says. The private accounts of Clinton staffers were also breached by unnamed foreign actors, according to the memo.

The memo also notes that the ?secret? classification, which was applied to at least one of the hacked emails, refers to information that, if disclosed, could ?reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.?

An internal FBI email sent in May 2016 by Peter Strzok, who was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller?s Russia probe for demonstrating political bias, corroborates the contents of the memo.

?We know foreign actors obtained access? to some Clinton emails, Strzok wrote in the email, obtained by Fox News.