Hillary Clinton: What happened

dignin said:

Do you think Russian/Trump ties are all smoke and no fire?

I guess I look at it this way.  Do I think the Russians and more specifically Putin are evil geniuses that worked covertly to undermine the US Presidential election, or bumbling nimrods who hired a bunch of flunkies to run Facebook accounts that were easily traced back to them?  I find it hard to square that circle. 

Simultaneously do I think that Paul Manafort is a corrupt lobbying sycophant who peddled influence to make money?  Yes, yes I do. 

These things are not mutually exclusive.  

I suspect that in the high stake game of world politics, what we are seeing is the blow back when people are viscerally angry about the outcome (and by people I am not talking about the electorate).   Manafort has always been a shady character and given the circumstances, taking him down and even loosely having that tied to the election is not a bad outcome for those who lost.  

PB11041 said:

dignin said:

Do you think Russian/Trump ties are all smoke and no fire?

I guess I look at it this way.  Do I think the Russians and more specifically Putin are evil geniuses that worked covertly to undermine the US Presidential election, or bumbling nimrods who hired a bunch of flunkies to run Facebook accounts that were easily traced back to them?  I find it hard to square that circle. 

Simultaneously do I think that Paul Manafort is a corrupt lobbying sycophant who peddled influence to make money?  Yes, yes I do. 

These things are not mutually exclusive.  

I suspect that in the high stake game of world politics, what we are seeing is the blow back when people are viscerally angry about the outcome (and by people I am not talking about the electorate).   Manafort has always been a shady character and given the circumstances, taking him down and even loosely having that tied to the election is not a bad outcome for those who lost.  

I don't think Putin gave a flying fuck about being found out. Actually, I think he wanted the world to know that he helped put Trump in office. And that American democracy would suffer as a result. He knows the US isn't going to do jack shit to them. And if they do, it's Putin's people that will suffer, not him directly. He's sitting there laughing his shirtless ass off. 

PB11041 said:

dignin said:

Do you think Russian/Trump ties are all smoke and no fire?

I guess I look at it this way.  Do I think the Russians and more specifically Putin are evil geniuses that worked covertly to undermine the US Presidential election, or bumbling nimrods who hired a bunch of flunkies to run Facebook accounts that were easily traced back to them?  I find it hard to square that circle. 

Simultaneously do I think that Paul Manafort is a corrupt lobbying sycophant who peddled influence to make money?  Yes, yes I do. 

These things are not mutually exclusive.  

I suspect that in the high stake game of world politics, what we are seeing is the blow back when people are viscerally angry about the outcome (and by people I am not talking about the electorate).   Manafort has always been a shady character and given the circumstances, taking him down and even loosely having that tied to the election is not a bad outcome for those who lost.  

who did Manafort work for for a good stint of campaign , you make it sound like the head bafoon didn't know who had their dirty little hands in the cookie jar ...

josevolution said:

PB11041 said:

dignin said:

Do you think Russian/Trump ties are all smoke and no fire?

I guess I look at it this way.  Do I think the Russians and more specifically Putin are evil geniuses that worked covertly to undermine the US Presidential election, or bumbling nimrods who hired a bunch of flunkies to run Facebook accounts that were easily traced back to them?  I find it hard to square that circle. 

Simultaneously do I think that Paul Manafort is a corrupt lobbying sycophant who peddled influence to make money?  Yes, yes I do. 

These things are not mutually exclusive.  

I suspect that in the high stake game of world politics, what we are seeing is the blow back when people are viscerally angry about the outcome (and by people I am not talking about the electorate).   Manafort has always been a shady character and given the circumstances, taking him down and even loosely having that tied to the election is not a bad outcome for those who lost.  

who did Manafort work for for a good stint of campaign , you make it sound like the head bafoon didn't know who had their dirty little hands in the cookie jar ...

Actually, I don't make it sound that way at all.  That is how you chose to read it.  Manafort having dirty money ties to Russian business and political influences for over a decade in the Ukraine really is about Manafort and certainly protecting those is obviously in his interest.  Whether any of that had any tangible impact on the US election versus being grotesque money laundering that was clearly done in a means of evading something he thought would be perceived as illegal activity is a whole other issue.  Either way, Manafort it appears is toast and everyone has known that for months.  Whether anything that he was indicted on has anything to do tangibly with the election seems to rely very much on whether they get a plea for something they do not already have.  Because if he could be tried on that already they would have indicted him on that.  Ergo it is very possible he is a just a scumbag that evaded taxes, potentially meddled in other countries affairs for his own personal gain and also happened to parlay his washington insider positioning to be a campaign director for someone who many seem to universally see as a walking idiot.   So is it so hard to believe that the "head bafoon (sic)" didn't know who had their dirty little hands anywhere?  No it really is not.   For a guy who is so hideously self conscious about things that are blatantly obvious, ie the size of a crowd or the actual vote tally in the election vs the electoral college vs history of elections, it really is not terribly impossible for me to imagine that he wouldn't even recognize his campaign manager.

In short, don't assume because A someone doesn't see something exactly the way you do that B they are supporting them or C defending them as much as D skeptical of jumps to conclusion that are not so elementary simply because it would nice and convenient if they were.

It would be great if all the most wild dreams of conspiracy were true and it took down the whole Trump administration.  What do I care, I am not a supporter, a Republican and would welcome if anyone actually was guilty of any assorted charges being charged and convicted.  That said, with past as prologue and an understanding of what the indictments are rather than a hysterical entertainment driven news aspect about the, I am not holding my breath.

https://www.popehat.com/2017/10/30/lawsplainer-the-manafortgates-indictment/

https://www.popehat.com/2017/10/30/lawsplainer-the-george-papadopoulos-guilty-plea/

Go Beavers said:

PB11041 said:

Go Beavers said: 

If you’re supportive of looking at voter data, then why were you so quick to poo poo the data that shows a significant number of voters were undecided at the last minute and then swung more towards trump on election day?

Data as in x number of people actually voted for A vs B is a lot different than polls that suggest that people implied they were undecided.

Polling data is fundamentally flawed.  It doesn't account for what people did, it asks a certain number of people why they think they did something and then applies it to everyone.  

I will give you a rudimentary example of how polling is often wrong.  I work at a business that routinely asks consumers of our clients products and services where they heard about the product or service.

We had one example in which for multiple years running one of the choices was the New York Times.  Inevitably it was the number 1 choice, each year, and we never did any marketing of any kind in the New York Times.  People are amenable to thinking one thing because it is how they want to be perceived or how they think people want to perceive them.

Similarly we have another client who markets products using almost exclusively television, and in the same manner respondents in self reported surveys choose magazines and newspapers as the source of where they heard of us.  Because they want to be perceived as reading, not watching TV.  

This is not uncommon, anchoring and availability as behavioral tactics are a proven phenomenon.

A poll that asks the question why would be flawed, so valid ones stay away from that question. In polls about the election, they just asked before and after. People often go to the claim that people lied in the polls when it doesn’t fit the narrative. Regardless, here’s a good article on it with data:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-really-did-switch-to-trump-at-the-last-minute/amp/

Familiar with the article which has a perplexing penultimate paragraph

"Still, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that voters might have gravitated to Trump anyhow. Research has long suggested that over the course of a campaign, partisans come home to their party’s candidate. Between mid-October and our post-election wave, Trump picked up almost 4 percentage points from people who had backed Romney four years before, suggesting that Republican identifiers were doing just that. Trump’s media coverage in the final two weeks was markedly more positive than it had been during the prior weeks, and it’s possible that shift in coverage was just the opening some Republicans and Republican-leaning voters needed to get behind Trump."

Which is summary states that the findings are basically inconclusive because it is also very likely that people who said they were not going to vote for Trump, ultimately came home to roost.  

LOL