I mean first of all, it's fairly self-selecting. People go to Intrade rather than Intrade going to them, so I don't think it's nearly as representative. Second, where do intraders get their information from?
I think it's also interesting to note how Intrade bobs and weaves depending on what is happening at large. You say they are the best predictor of what will happen, but at what point? The day of the election? Six months before? How valuable is that?
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Lyrhawn: Exactly. InTrade bettors might also take into account commentary by folks like Nate Silver, Ben Smith, Andrew Sullivan, et al, but from what I've seen InTrade prices are driven by polls, election results, stories that break through the chatter, and inside-the-beltway groupthink.
Another problem with InTrade is that it is, theoretically, open in manipulation--someone with enough money could drive a certain candidate's shares higher in hopes of driving positive stories in the media.
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That was what I first thought too, Lyr, but then you have examples like Cain never rising above, what, 10%? Compared to Romney's consistently staying well above 50%? According to pollsters and some pundits, Cain really had a shot for a minute there, but it doesn't really seem intrade bought it.
Again, I'm absolutely not an expert on the subject, was just curious what your take on it might be. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I think, for your benefit, we need to find some sort of summary "The people who want you to misunderstand and distrust the methodology of polls, and why" article somewhere.
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Okay. Fair warning: I'm usually pretty mistrustful of articles that say "X people want you to think Y thing because it helps them to achieve Z hidden agenda!!!!"
Also I don't actually mistrust polls very much. Oh, I might react with skepticism to a single poll that seems totally counter to what I'd previously seen/heard/read, but I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand. The only thing re: polls that really bothers me has nothing to do with the methodology of the polls themselves. I just wish articles were more open about the margins of error in a given poll and the exact questions being asked on said poll, because a lot of times writers will interpret polls a way that is wildly different than another person looking at the exact same poll would interpret it. Then they publish their interpretation as proven by the poll.
But, polls themselves are neutral. The margins of error are determined using basic statistics, and I have nothing against that at all!
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You can usually find the raw polling data online somewhere if you really want to look, though it depends on the polling agency. Most of the time you can find the margin of error information too.
Some of it you have to look for, which can be a chore.
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Oh for sure! Again, I'm not criticizing polls or pollsters here! Just that oftentimes someone citing a poll in an article fails to mention little details like that there's a +/-10% margin of error or that the poll is counting anything from "Lean X" to "Strongly X" as "X" and there is no "Undecided" option. The polls themselves include this data, but if you are, say, reading an article in the Wall Street Journal, they may not mention it, and it can pretty drastically change what the poll actually tells you.
So, TL;DR Polls are like guns. Neutral tools in themselves but can be misused by people with their own goals, so it's good to have one yourself. Okay that analogy sucked at the end, whatever, close enough.
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The important thing is that they're (1) definitely not Christian and (2) do we really need a (2)?
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Interesting. I remember once in the 6th grade or so, somebody said to me: "you're a Christan right?" And when I said no, she said: "well then what are you?" as if a white person can only be a Christian. But then, this was San Francisco, where being a Christian is like being in the church of England. Not omething to get excited about.
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I don't know that it is even a matter of actual religious beliefs. I think it is a case of "not one of us".
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't know that it is even a matter of actual religious beliefs. I think it is a case of "not one of us".
I'm reminded of the Heffalump song from one of the Winnie the Pooh movies Tiptoe is currently in love with...
quote:Everyone knows what a heffalump's like It's got fiery eyes and a tail with a spike With claws on its paws that are sharp as a tack And wing-a-ma-things coming out of its back
'Cause its bottom is up and its top's really down So its nose is its tail or the other way 'round Yeah, and it's wide as a river and tall as a tree Imagine gigantic And times it by three
It clomps here and there It stomps to and fro It's got three horns above And eleven below And those are its good points There's much more to know About the dreadfully dreaded Thoroughly three-headed Horribly hazardous Heffalumps
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Muslormon. Who can really tell the difference anyway?
Yeah, all I've got ... is maybe there's some usage of "Muslim" floating around that is along the lines of "religion that shares a base of Judaism and Christianity, but includes new revelations and/or prophets." But even that might be having too much confidence in people and they are just as likely to call Taoists and Buddhists, Muslims.
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quote:Poor Herman Cain. If he had been a Democrat, nobody would have cared about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is only a big deal when a Republican does it.
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I wondered when someone was going to mention that 'someone' said that. (Seriously - it made me smile in a kind of 'oh, dear, no' kind of way).
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I'm always shocked by his political writing. Not that he holds opinions that differ from mine, but that his current events writing is so unpersuasive and lacking in intellectual honesty. It's hard to believe it's the same guy.
It's possible (unlikely but possible) that it's all a setup for Cain, but even if that were true, it wouldn't have anything to do with how "the left" feels about conservative blacks. "The left" would love for Herman Cain to be the nominee. "The left" would have held on to this story for at least another six months if the attack was politically motivated. A contested GOP primary is good for democrats, and this will be old news in the general election if Cain is nominated.
On the other hand, if it is some sort of elaborate setup, the possibility of a primary rival (Romney or whoever hopes to be the not-Romney) or some republican power brokers concerned about Cain seem much more likely.
You can argue that democratic voters didn't care about Bill Clinton's womanizing/harassment, but I heard all about those behaviors, even from "the media". I think democratic voters care less about sexual behavior than republican voters. As a result you rarely hear "family values" type of rhetoric from democrats, so the political crime of hypocrisy is avoided.
For the record, I don't think it's a setup. I think news outlets are running with a potential sex scandal because that's what they always do whenever there's any evidence of it at all.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Is this 'someone' who I think it is?
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Everyone watch the debate tonight. It's at my alma mater!
My little undergrad institution will now be forever known as "that school where the 50th GOP debate was held." Always nice to get national recognition.
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I do have to give Herman Cain credit, he said he would do a polygraph test. I think he shouldn't say it, he should just do it and get it over with.
I actually doubt Beliak's story. The acts she described pass the line of sexual harrassment and cross into sexual assault. Forcing your hand up someone's skirt and grabbing a woman's head and trying to force it down into where it shouldn't be is not just harrassment. What woman would calmly tell the guy afterwards, "I have a boyfriend." and then ask the guy for a ride home? Most women would probably fight, get out of the car, and call the police.
She has stated she will not take a lie detector test, something Cain has said he will do. I'm starting to believe she just came up with this story to make the rounds on National news channels and get a quick buck.
I don't know enough about the other accusers. It is often cheaper for large corporations to pay someone off than it is to pay a lawyer $500 an hours to defend the company in court. I believe someone said that one of the accusers was angry because Cain left a dinner and left the accuser with a massive bar tab.
If Cain is truly innocent, he should just go take a polygraph test and be done with it. It wouldn't get him completely off the hook, but it would help him in the eyes of voters. Many people still believe polygraphs are infallible. If he truly believes he did nothing wrong, the polygraph wouldn't really be able to say whether or not he is lying about the harrassment.
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quote:Poor Herman Cain. If he had been a Democrat, nobody would have cared about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is only a big deal when a Republican does it.
HA! Oh, weepin' creepin' Jesus.
My initial response was to think about Democrats who were chased out of office for sexual harassment. I haven't come up with one yet, and it's kind of bothering me.
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Anthony Weiner is gone from memory already?
Geraine, Not to comment on her credibility (which I agree is shaky) but you would be surprised at how many women (and men, too) respond to sexual assault especially from a person in authority. There is an instinct to downplay, to avoid rather than confront, to "keep things friendly". Even to be polite rather than risk the assault becoming angry and violent.
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quote:I don't know enough about the other accusers. It is often cheaper for large corporations to pay someone off than it is to pay a lawyer $500 an hours to defend the company in court. I believe someone said that one of the accusers was angry because Cain left a dinner and left the accuser with a massive bar tab.
This is in my experience a myth. If a company starts paying out large sums to anyone who makes an accusation, they encourage lots of accusations. Normally, a company will generally not offer to settle out of court if the claims are consider frivolous.
There is also a myth that sexual harassment charges will automatically ruin a man's future. Which given that Clarence Thomas sits on the supreme court and Bill Clinton was not force from office is pretty ridiculous.
Around the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, women I know started talking about their experiences with sexual harassment and I was really surprised that almost every woman had a story to tell. Almost every woman I know has been in a work situation where there was some sort of sexual harassment. And none of the women who shared these stories with me filed or threatened law suits or even made official complaints.
Given what I've seen, I think the probability that an innocent man would be accused of harassment by 3 separate women is extremely unlikely. The idea that a company would pay large sums to several women based on frivolous claims of sexual harassment from one man is just not credible.
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As was discussed in detail in a rape thread, sometimes men believe they did nothing wrong yet they still committed rape. It is entirely possible Cain believes what he did was fine when he was in fact way over the line.
Women are trained in our society to be polite and kind. Unfortunately, this means they sit by and take a lot of crap. My most recent example is fairly minor in offence but still freaked me out. My daughter was eating lunch at preschool. The kids at the table started spitting goldfish at her. She went and told the teacher but being a 4 year old, she mumbled and all the teacher got was the other kids are being bad. So the teacher said go sit down. My daughter went and sat down and just sat there as the little brats filled her hair with goldfish and spit. Didn't say anything, didn't protect herself and was horrified when we suggested other responses because then she would have broken the rules. People don't always defend themselves the way we think they should.
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yeah, I made the mistake of getting curious and reading the latest OSC political snippet.
quote:And if a Republican who is also black ever actually did anything, the racists of the Left will get rid of him as fast as they can, because he doesn't fit their racial stereotype of what all black people have to be.
Any black person who doesn't fit their racial profile is a constant contradiction of the Leftist fantasy of blacks who all need to be "saved" by white liberals.
Poor Herman Cain. There's no room for any kind of mistake or ambiguity in the private life of a Republican, especially an African-American, who wants to run for President.
This is the dumbest thing I've read in months. I am not being hyperbolic. This is indefensibly dumb. Look at it. I don't even have to add much to it.
quote:My initial response was to think about Democrats who were chased out of office for sexual harassment. I haven't come up with one yet, and it's kind of bothering me.
You forgot Weiner's Weiner? What about Eliot Spitzer? David Wu was forced from office, too. Kwame Kilpatrick probably also counts, but like with Herman Cain, the sexual scandal is ultimately irrelevant in the face of pretty much everything else about him as a candidate. Gary Condit?
That said, let's think about the implication. If the Republicans are getting the lion's share of the truly odious or hilariously bad sexual scandals — wide stances, trying to get it on with underage staffers, or what have you — gee, I wonder why it's so easy to think of so many more pushed from office from that side of the aisle.
The case that qualitatively similar cases of sexual harassment or abuse or affair are just 'forgiven' by the immoral miscreant Liberals is not an easy one to substantiate. Not that OSC is really interested in trying.
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Kwame doesn't count. He was run out of office for being a ridiculous over the top crook. The sexual misconduct was just window dressing.
Rabbit -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember the Clinton/Lewinsky issue being one of sexual harassment. Wasn't she a willing participant?
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If we're talking purely sexual harassment, of the sort where it is the politician harassing individuals, as opposed to just any sex scandal, that might ... leave the Republicans holding even more of the share of available contemporary political examples. I think you can still count in Clinton on that part, though.
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She was still a subordinate, and many workplaces will consider that sexual harassment even if she does not consider herself to have been coerced.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: You forgot Weiner's Weiner? What about Eliot Spitzer? David Wu was forced from office, too. Kwame Kilpatrick probably also counts, but like with Herman Cain, the sexual scandal is ultimately irrelevant in the face of pretty much everything else about him as a candidate. Gary Condit?
Hey- don't forgot that Vitter liberal democrat of Louisiana is still serving despite his dalliance with prostitutes. Posts: 644 | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Kwame doesn't count. He was run out of office for being a ridiculous over the top crook. The sexual misconduct was just window dressing.
Rabbit -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember the Clinton/Lewinsky issue being one of sexual harassment. Wasn't she a willing participant?
Ummm... are you forgetting Paula Jones? I mean, if we're talking about settlements being proof of something there, Clinton paid Jones almost a million dollars to make her allegations of sexual harassment go away (pretty gnarly harassment to, if one believes her side of things.) The focus moved to Lewinsky because Clinton lied about sleeping with her while he was testifying re: Jones, but that's not where the accusations of sexual harassment originated. Edit: I don't really want to make this about Clinton. Hell, I'm the one who mentions presumption of innocence in this very post. I just wanted to clarify that Rabbit is absolutely right to lump Clinton into the group of guys that prove sexual harassment allegations are not automatically a career ender.
The only other thing I would add is that you can't make up for in volume what you lack in truth. The simple fact that there are now three allegations against Cain doesn't mean he loses his presumption of innocence, in my opinion. The thing that weirded me out the most was Gloria Allred cracking a joke about the alleged harassment ("his version of a stimulus package") and the victim smirking at said joke.
All that being said, I also think Scholarette makes a great point that some form of harassment could have occurred, and Cain could simply not see it as harassment.
quote:Originally posted by natural_mystic: Hey- don't forgot that Vitter liberal democrat of Louisiana is still serving despite his dalliance with prostitutes.
Another brave man who is trying to save marriage from the gay agenda.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Anthony Weiner is gone from memory already?
I specifically discarded Weiner an example because his problem wasn't sexual harassment, it was infidelity.
Spitzer was booking prostitutes. Wu would normally count, but lets be honest, the man is also insane.
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By the way, did everyone catch some of the delightful nuggets from the debate tonight? First off, this was by far the best moderated debate I've maybe ever seen. I've never seen moderators stick so closely to forcing candidates to answer questions and in provoking genuine debate between candidates. Every time a candidate pivoted to his stump speech, Maria stopped him or her and asked the question until the candidate provided some sort of answer. It was awesome.
I felt Herman Cain had a strong debate. His answers were crisp, clean, snarky in all the right places, and fairly clever at times too. I mean, most of what he was saying was just as much bull as everyone else, but he was never flustered, his delivery was clean and smooth, and perhaps most importantly, the crowd appeared to be behind him 100% regardless of the question, to the point of booing the moderators when they asked about the allegations. Maybe that's why his poll numbers haven't dipped much.
Huntsman gave a couple fantastic answers, and I really enjoyed the confused look on Perry's face during one of them when Huntsman said "efficacious." I wish they'd allowed him to speak more, continues to be my favorite Republican. In particular I loved his answer on China. He explained perfectly why China is doing a hundred unfair things to us, but why starting a trade war with them would be both useless and damaging.
It's sad that, statistically, he and I are polling even in the presidential race right now when you consider the margin of error.
Dan -
I DID forget about Paula Jones, my bad.
And yeah, Cain's joke was...an interesting choice given the position he's in, but then, I found Allred's joke just as distasteful.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I specifically discarded Weiner an example because his problem wasn't sexual harassment, it was infidelity.
You wouldn't characterize e-mailing pictures of oneself (or parts of oneself) in a state of undress to someone who did not ask for said pictures as a form of harassment?
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It's possible BlackBlade wasn't aware of the whole situation. Most people remember there were pictures, some people forget that he was sending them to young women over the internet.
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So, people are going to get on Perry's butt about how he forgot which third government system he wants to throw on the corpse pile, right alongside our schools!
As usual, it's hilarious how the issue isn't how he wants to pull a ghoulish Thatcher/Major-style privatization hack job on government, it's that he's brainfarting one of three targets on his list during a high-stress debate.
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The gaffe was just particularly amusing, though I will say, you know it's one thing to misspeak or randomly forget a data point or statistic...but when you want to close down whole government departments, you should really remember which ones they are. That's kind of a big deal.
I enjoyed how much the other candidates were trying to help him out though.
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Ron Paul was helpful for that specific kind of thing! Like a Clippy of horrible, horrible, horrible conservative ideas.
"I see you're trying to dismantle governmental social programs and regulation. Would you like some targets?"
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: So, people are going to get on Perry's butt about how he forgot which third government system he wants to throw on the corpse pile, right alongside our schools!
Yep, because before the Department of Education was created in 1980 there were no public schools!
But yeah Perry's blanking on an entire department he wants to get rid of was pretty hilaribad. I'm going to assume he was failing to remember the Department of Energy, because it's sort of the target du jour for most Republicans. If there's one thing us conservatives hate more than schools and the economy, it's electricity. Dark Ages all the way!
Sam, you just killed me with your Ron Paul-as-Clippy comment. Perfect.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Yep, because before the Department of Education was created in 1980 there were no public schools!
The Department of Education, for all its flaws, is a great thing for people like Perry to get out of the way to continue their wholeheartedly destructive tendencies for "reforming" the educational system. Peeking behind the graft curtains to look at the effects that Perry's administration has had on Texas schools so far should provide ample evidence that his incompetence goes well beyond just trying to convince people that Texas schools teach creationism.
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I didn't say anything about Perry being a competent person to dismantle the Dept of Education and mitigate any negative consequences (or that he wouldn't use doing so as an excuse to intentionally create what I see as terrible consequences, like teaching creationism in schools). I just felt it was a little disingenuous to imply that believing the Dept of Education shouldn't exist is the same thing as wanting to destroy schools in general.
And by a little disingenuous, I might mean a lot disingenuous. Except it was also rhetorical hyperbole (your specialty! Okay that should probably read our specialty) so I think I'll stick with a little disingenuous.
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I'm sure Perry doesn't think he's trying to butcher education, much the same way I'm sure John Major didn't think he was trying to butcher rail.
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quote:The only other thing I would add is that you can't make up for in volume what you lack in truth. The simple fact that there are now three allegations against Cain doesn't mean he loses his presumption of innocence, in my opinion.
This would be a valid point IF we were talking about criminal charges. When a person is facing prison time and other serious penalties, it is proper to err on the side of mercy and treat them as innocent until their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt.
But we aren't talking about whether Cane should go to prison, we are talking about whether he should be President of the US. The standards should be different. If you think a history sexual harassment is relevant to being President, then you shouldn't simply be asking whether the man has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt to sexually harass people -- you should be asking whether there is a reasonable doubt of his integrity on this issue.
In my mind at least, the multiple independent accusations which were accompanied by sizable settlements, are enough to cause serious concern about Cain's innocence. With that kind of history, I would be concerned about hiring him to work in my department. It wouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker but it would certainly warrant further investigation.
When seeking the most powerful position in the world, a person does not deserve to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. If you want to be President, it is your job to prove you are qualified for the job not your opponents job to prove you aren't.
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quote:I just felt it was a little disingenuous to imply that believing the Dept of Education shouldn't exist is the same thing as wanting to destroy schools in general.
In theory you are correct, but in practice everyone I know who supports eliminating the Department of Education also favors gutting the public school system in general.
*edited to add that I recognize that many of the people who are in favor of gutting the public education believe that the private sector will actually do a better job. Those people are simply wrong. I don't see the difference between people who want to destroy education and people who want to do things that will destroy education as being all that important.
[ November 10, 2011, 08:31 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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I'd like to understand why you think the private sector can't do education better. Maybe in another thread?
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