quote:Originally posted by Parkour: " A discussion where people constantly agree and avoid argument. Generally don't have any conflict (or at least don't address any conflicts they might have). And generally pat each other on the back."
So we currently agreed with, avoided argument with, and pat Ron on the back, ...
Hah, oh, wow! Yeah, good point!
My only rebuttal to that is: I don't count Ron.
Sorry, I just... I thought that was a given.
There's technically no "Ignore" function on this forum, but yeah. Assume everything I've been saying has been from the standpoint of Ron's posts being hidden.
I still read people's responses to him, though. And hold them to what I think is a reasonable standard. Hence my taking exception with Xavier's response to Ron, but not Ron himself. Because Xavier seems like someone who can be reasoned with.
To get back to our old analogy: I'm some Young-Earth Creationist in a suit and tie who's gone to the conference to argue with one or two people about fossil records or something. Ron is some guy with a sandwich board wandering the halls of the conference hiding from security and harassing anyone who passes by.
He just doesn't count. Conference is still a circlejerk, elephant in the room, the devil made fossils, etc. etc.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Vadon: Dan, I'd just like to say that I while I largely disagree with you that this thread was a circle jerk, you've been patient, provided examples of what you consider example of the smugness, and still crack jokes at genuinely funny things throughout this. If more people (both conservative and liberal) took a similar approach as you, I think there'd be a lot less demonizing the other side. I just wanted to say thanks.
Thanks yourself.
I disagree with Sam a lot, but I also think he's one of the funniest guys on this forum. He's like Jon Stewart, in that way.
Not that Jon Stewart is on this forum. You get what I mean.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I honestly don't understand what was smug about me posting my honest opinion of Romney's concession speech. Am I not allowed to post an opinion if I'm not in the minority without it being construed as smug?
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Let's say we're all here discussing a plate tectonic event that just happened...
Not that this meta-discussion over circlejerks isn't fascinating and all, but speaking of tectonic events, apparently this political historian, Allan Lichtman has devised a means of predicting elections looking as tectonic events. Move over Nate Silver. From NPR:
quote: Lichtman analyzed presidential elections between 1860 and 1980. Over that 120-year period, he looked for markers of stability and markers of upheaval.
Much of what he found is intuitively obvious: When the country was in recession or there was a foreign policy disaster during the tenure of the last administration, the incumbent party was likely to lose. When there was a major domestic or foreign policy success, the economy was doing well, or an incumbent president was running for re-election, the party in power tended to hold on to power.
What Lichtman did was take his data seriously: He found that in every election between 1860 and 1980, when the answers to six or more of the 13 questions he devised went against the party in power, there was an upheaval — the challenger won.
He applied the model to subsequent elections. Starting in 1984, the model has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every election — sometimes months or even years before the election takes place.
posted
By the way, you[Dan] wanted a link to the Pew study which showed that in the MSM the candidates received roughly equal shares of positive, negative, and mixed coverage. Here's the article, though it has underscores and I'm on my phone so you may need to copy and paste it: http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/winning_media_campaign_2012
Summary: President Obama and Governor Romney received roughly equal shares of the types of coverage in the late campaign cycle. (Romney's negative coverage came from his quick criticism of Obama on Benghazi, Obama's came from his poor performance in the first debate.) Fox News is demonstrably biased against Obama just as MSNBC is significantly biased against Romney. Indeed, MSNBC was more biased against Romney than Fox was against Obama.
Finally, while their shares of positive, negative, and mixed coverage from the MSM were roughly equal at the end of this year, in 2008 Pew found that there was significantly more favorable coverage for Obama than McCain.
So the short of it, there wasn't a MSM bias for either candidate in the late stages of the campaign. (I'd point out that their sample doesn't include the period of time when Romney's 47% video was covered, nor the issues with his Taxes or his botched foreign trip.) So it's plausible that over the course of the past year, there was bias, but not in the last couple months.
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: I honestly don't understand what was smug about me posting my honest opinion of Romney's concession speech. Am I not allowed to post an opinion if I'm not in the minority without it being construed as smug?
I don't think that was smug.
Actually, in my original comment, the only person I called smug was Destineer, or really Destineer's friend. I'm not sure your comment really even qualifies as part of a circlejerk, though. I guess just the naked contempt. That sort of contempt doesn't seem, to me, to be the comment of someone who expects to engage in a rational discussion with people who disagree.
Do you see what I mean, at all? I may have just been stretching a bit when I included it, though.
Vadon: Thanks for the link!
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posted
There wasn't meant to be any contempt, naked or otherwise. I just honestly haven't seen anything from Romney that I'd consider to be a genuine moment, and I'd sincerely like to. If someone has a good shot at being the leader of my country I'd like to know something about what they really believe.
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posted
Well, context matters. It's easy to see how it might read like a dogpile with all of us posting stuff at once.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Indeed, MSNBC was more biased against Romney than Fox was against Obama.
Maybe its me nitpicking, but not reporting equivalent quantities of "negative stories" is not necessarily evidence of bias.
If back in the 1950 my news organization reported more favorable stories about Harry Truman than Joseph Stalin, that doesn't mean that its biased. Maybe there just were more negative news about one over the other.
quote:My only rebuttal to that is: I don't count Ron...
Which could be partly why I was left scratching my head. I don't know how arguing with another poster (snarkily or otherwise) could possibly be contributing to a 'circle-jerk'.
posted
All that aside, the two most important things to come out of that election both involved 'writing on the wall' things. The first was about changing demographics and why the gop had screwed itself with future voters. The second thing is how people got to witness the conservative news'cocoon' at work. People have actually gotten to test it. Is starting to be a thing that people took note of, and recognize how it hurts conservatives.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
There's a gaping hole in these arguments that demographics are going to kill the Republicans: people writing on this topic always seem to forget that in the US, the only voters who are empowered in the first place are swing state voters.
Show me some studies that don't just count the growing minority population of the nation as a whole, but either (a) show that these demographic changes are occurring in important swing states or (b) that they threaten to turn previously secure red states into swing states. Then I'll be impressed.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I don't think anyone forgot. This place even takes on the fact that the ec makes only a small amount of states matter. These states matter because they're so close. Some of these states would not have mattered a decade ago but are already midway between red and blue. We used to be a red state. Over bush's term, the demographics went over the edge. We are now looking like a permanent loss for the republicans. Colorado is now a blue state.
If the same trends continue, Florida will be solidly blue. Most todays swing states will be. And formerly solid red states will be toss ups. Texas will be competitive.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
Destineer: That's a good point. One should also consider though that with that overall trend, in 10-20 years we will see strongholds become "left/right leaning" and also "new battleground states". I mean sure, maybe Latino voters aren't going to be evenly dispersed, but you can't escape the math. Either the Republicans will court women voters and Latinos, or they won't and will have to adapt to losing chunks of those huge constituencies.
posted
It's remotely possible. It's really, really very hard. Political identities, for most people, calcify in young age. If someone is 23 years old and they vote democrat, they will most likely vote democrat through their entire lives. People don't really change as they get older (and as noted in a study approaching the issue of "people turn conservative as they get older" — the opposite effect happens; people lean slightly more liberal as they get older)
There are some things the GOP can do to reverse the trend. They are, by and large, doing the opposite.
Since I am unabashedly anti-GOP, these are things I (mostly) like, and why I consider the tea party an unwitting ally; they are doing everything that works out the best for liberals in the long-term.
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quote:Indeed, MSNBC was more biased against Romney than Fox was against Obama.
Maybe its me nitpicking, but not reporting equivalent quantities of "negative stories" is not necessarily evidence of bias.
If back in the 1950 my news organization reported more favorable stories about Harry Truman than Joseph Stalin, that doesn't mean that its biased. Maybe there just were more negative news about one over the other.
You're right, Xavier. This is a great reason why a study like that is deeply flawed. It ignores too much context.
I haven't had a chance to read up on the study itself yet, but this is exactly the sort of thing that I was wondering about.
quote:Originally posted by Xavier:
quote:My only rebuttal to that is: I don't count Ron...
Which could be partly why I was left scratching my head. I don't know how arguing with another poster (snarkily or otherwise) could possibly be contributing to a 'circle-jerk'.
Yep, I hear you. It honestly didn't even occur to me to count Ron until Parkour blatantly spelled it out for me.
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posted
Destineer, I don't have a link but I have heard projections that Texas will be battleground in ten years.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: There wasn't meant to be any contempt, naked or otherwise. I just honestly haven't seen anything from Romney that I'd consider to be a genuine moment, and I'd sincerely like to. If someone has a good shot at being the leader of my country I'd like to know something about what they really believe.
JT, there was a time he was defending his faith, thinking he was then off air at a radio broadcast. Something like objecting to the common portrayal of the LDS Church as monolithic in belief and enforcement thereof. It was a genuine, passionate moment. I think Slate or Salon referenced it -- I'll try to find that.
posted
My personal perception of Romney is of a generally good guy, but for whom some ambitions come completely first. This is true for many politicians, and gets more likely the higher you go, but his campaign's willingness to try and maneuver in such radically different directions struck me as above average, though I can't be objective about that. I was struck repeatedly with an impression that there was little he wouldn't say or do that wouldn't be itself somehow disgraceful-such as for example at times downplaying his agenda on abortion, but at other times campaigning on how against it he was. By that I mean I don't consider either position disgraceful, even though I disagreed with the second, but when taken together...anyway.
Probably for that reason, his concession speech, signaling as it did the end of his presidential ambitions, rang as solid and decent and even graceful or excellent. This may say much more about me and the impressions I read into him given the context, than anything else.
----------
Now as for the whole notion of smug circle jerks...well, sure. Samprimary is engaging in a lot of that. It's sort of his thing. I'll happily give you that, Dan. But the rest? It was a very long, hard fought, and (supposedly) close race with one side making a host of claims about what the will of the American people really was that turned out to be badly wrong in many many cases.
Is there a way to say to someone, "You were wrong about this thing," when the thing in question was a prediction of say two feet of snow and the actual weather was a light balmy rain?
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: If back in the 1950 my news organization reported more favorable stories about Harry Truman than Joseph Stalin, that doesn't mean that its biased. Maybe there just were more negative news about one over the other.
I agree with your larger point that negative coverage in isolation is not evidence of bias when the only thing that can be reasonably covered is negative. It's why I tried to emphasize that the study didn't include Romney's troubles overseas, his unreleased taxes, and the 47% video. He received a lot of coverage for those things without much in the way of redeeming coverage. In my opinion, during that time, there's a reason he didn't receive positive press attention--he didn't do anything worthy of positive coverage. Regardless of my opinion on Governor Romney, his campaign was a disaster for much of the year.
To extend your point with my own example, if I'm reporting on the devastation of a tornado, it's not me being biased against tornadoes. Tornadoes do a lot of damage without any redeeming qualities. During much of the year, Governor Romney spent much of the time with his foot in his mouth. I don't think it's necessarily an indication of the Governor's character, but at the very least, he was making mistakes. A lot of them. It's not media bias when all you've got is a long list of faux-pas to report on.
That being said, I stand by my claim that MSNBC was more biased against Romney than Fox was against Obama. When you compare their positive-negative-mixed coverage to the main-stream media, there's a gap. When there's a gap in positive coverage between news sources, it indicates selection on what stories are being covered. It's not like Stalin or a tornado where you genuinely don't have something positive to report. It's that you are choosing to emphasize the negatives over the positives of a candidate.
I'm pretty sleep deprived and feel like I'm not being particularly clear in this post, so I'll just end by saying I agree with your larger point that negative coverage isn't evidence of bias. But I believe that in this case, it's fair to say that both MSNBC and Fox were biased in certain directions.
If your contention is with me saying that MSNBC was more biased against Romney than Fox is against Obama, then I think there's a fair point to be made there.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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national vote for house representatives in total flipped six percent, and now democratic house representatives are receiving a majority of all popular votes.
so, officially, THIS YEAR, if republicans did not have artificial overrepresentation from gerrymandering, the republicans would most likely be a minority party in the house of reps.
That is actually way faster than I anticipated.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
On one hand Fox sorta just blatantly out and out lies about Obama and his policies, what has MSNBC done to Romney?
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posted
devoted significant quantities of airtime and effort towards negative portrayal of Romney and expressing a tone of doubt towards his campaign more in line with his actual electoral chances
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
[url=http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/28/282471/the-platinum-coin-option/?mobile=nc]Possible way to a avoid the 'fiscal cliff', print two platinum coins worth a trillion$ each.[/url
For laughed shape them into the shape of balls.
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There are some things the GOP can do to reverse the trend. They are, by and large, doing the opposite.
That its the stark part of this election. The republicans have a lesson they have to learn, which they can't if they keep convincing themselves that the media was colluding against them with unfair bias. In fact, their own system and their own tendencies worked against them and created a reality bubble that GIGO'd them.
So do they learn? Out do they convince themselves that its all about the mainstream media colluding against them, and continue to fail at pundarts.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: There wasn't meant to be any contempt, naked or otherwise. I just honestly haven't seen anything from Romney that I'd consider to be a genuine moment, and I'd sincerely like to. If someone has a good shot at being the leader of my country I'd like to know something about what they really believe.
JT, there was a time he was defending his faith, thinking he was then off air at a radio broadcast. Something like objecting to the common portrayal of the LDS Church as monolithic in belief and enforcement thereof. It was a genuine, passionate moment. I think Slate or Salon referenced it -- I'll try to find that.
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: In fact, their own system and their own tendencies worked against them and created a reality bubble that GIGO'd them.
posted
A man boasts to me of Momentum, his greatest invention. "To victory," he cries, taking flight. I light a candle from the wax of his wings.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've been reading the final runup on commentary on nate silver and the backlash he got from pundits by sort of relegating their constant horse-race bloviations to a much more useless sphere.
quote:Nate's really putting his cock on the chopping block with predicting Florida going blue and predicting Obama wins the national popular vote by 2.7%. It means that even if Obama narrowly wins, Nate's detractors are going to go "this hack thought that Obama was going to win Florida. Now, a special comment from our senior analyst Dick Morris..."
quote:He was already there. Florida has been a toss up all week he might as well go big, and the momentum, god help me, really is pro-Obama.
quote:For the record, Nate has a model. He's not doing anything except data entry.
quote:It's the same kind of reaction that serious statisticians get in the baseball world, too. People hate it when their way of knowing things is challenged.
quote:Haha, I love the implication that we would actually be talking about important issues of substance if only Nate Silver and his ilk weren't around, as if pundits, or anyone really considering the audience pundits get, actually gives shit about anything important anymore.
quote:Worse, I think Nate actually does the horse race thing for them entirely. They're terrified that they'll have to start talking about whether certain policies are good instead of what America will think of a policy. One has a right answer, the other one is what they want.
quote:Is it fair to say (just going off of what I see on Twitter/Facebook/pundit shows/radio/etc.) that at this point Nate Silver is one of the ten most hated figures nationwide among right-wingers? Not bad for a guy who was just known to few hardcore politicos four years ago, and who did it all from behind a keyboard.
quote:It's seems pretty clear really. A statistical model with a proven track record will eventually be seen as much more reliable than any pundit. The pundits are terrified they might have to actually talk about something of substance or back up their gut opinions with more than hot air to compete with a statistical model, so they're trying their damnedest to kill it in the crib.
quote:I know I shouldn't cross post but Obama is 70% on intrade. Hes half that on Betfair. If you're risk averse, not in the US and dont hate money you should be arbing the shit out of that. Of course if you're not risk averse you should be having your max. bet on Obama.
quote:Nate Silver's book "The Signal and the Noise: Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is shooting to the top of Amazon.
But I hear that once you unskew the polls the actual bestseller is Atlas Shrugged. :smug:
quote: I'm still shocked that Intrade took forever to catch up to Nate Silver's model. 70% even at 9 PM, IIRC, while the European betting markets were at 85%+. Are there a lot of Republicans on that site?
^ note to above: YES. Which is why the conservative data/'gut feeling'/toss-up mentality bubble earned me cold hard cash.
posted
There is one assumption that everyone is making about Fox news that needs to be questioned.
The assumption is that Fox News wanted and worked hard for Mitt Romney and the Republican's to win.
The fear is that they tried to manipulate the system so that their chosen candidate would win.
But suppose that Fox News only wanted to make as big a profit as legally possible. You can try doing that by reporting the news, but that is boring. Bored views don't watch. Ad revenues decline.
Or you could try to manipulate the news so it represents not a Republican dream world, but a world where disasters of historic proportions are occurring every minute of the day. Stay tuned as this crisis feeds into the next, or you are doomed.
The Republican primaries was a series of weekly underdog stories. Will this underdog beat that underdog or will they be crushed by the evil powers that be.
Then Romney and Obama ran at a neck to neck basis. Every time it looked like one or the other was ahead, some major crisis occurred and the world had to watch.
Perhaps the Obama major victory was foreseeable and predictable, but that would have cut into ad revenue. As such for every prediction based in fact, some theory or other had to pull everything into doubt.
The racetrack is the winner of every horse race. If you want to imagine a media conspiracy, remember who was treating the election of our President as a 18 month long horse race.
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posted
Nothing you are saying is really incompatible. Fox news can be essentially working for the republican party as an institution, and it can be doing so perfectly in line with doing so for profit.
Even if the election was looking massively in favor of Romney, they would have still prepped and discussed the issue horse-race style. They would have still done so within the same bounds of their measurable bias and collusion with republican interests, as well as their proven tendency to mislead.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I've been reading the final runup on commentary on nate silver and the backlash he got from pundits by sort of relegating their constant horse-race bloviations to a much more useless sphere.
quote:Nate's really putting his cock on the chopping block with predicting Florida going blue and predicting Obama wins the national popular vote by 2.7%. It means that even if Obama narrowly wins, Nate's detractors are going to go "this hack thought that Obama was going to win Florida. Now, a special comment from our senior analyst Dick Morris..."
quote:He was already there. Florida has been a toss up all week he might as well go big, and the momentum, god help me, really is pro-Obama.
quote:For the record, Nate has a model. He's not doing anything except data entry.
quote:It's the same kind of reaction that serious statisticians get in the baseball world, too. People hate it when their way of knowing things is challenged.
quote:Haha, I love the implication that we would actually be talking about important issues of substance if only Nate Silver and his ilk weren't around, as if pundits, or anyone really considering the audience pundits get, actually gives shit about anything important anymore.
quote:Worse, I think Nate actually does the horse race thing for them entirely. They're terrified that they'll have to start talking about whether certain policies are good instead of what America will think of a policy. One has a right answer, the other one is what they want.
quote:Is it fair to say (just going off of what I see on Twitter/Facebook/pundit shows/radio/etc.) that at this point Nate Silver is one of the ten most hated figures nationwide among right-wingers? Not bad for a guy who was just known to few hardcore politicos four years ago, and who did it all from behind a keyboard.
quote:It's seems pretty clear really. A statistical model with a proven track record will eventually be seen as much more reliable than any pundit. The pundits are terrified they might have to actually talk about something of substance or back up their gut opinions with more than hot air to compete with a statistical model, so they're trying their damnedest to kill it in the crib.
quote:I know I shouldn't cross post but Obama is 70% on intrade. Hes half that on Betfair. If you're risk averse, not in the US and dont hate money you should be arbing the shit out of that. Of course if you're not risk averse you should be having your max. bet on Obama.
quote:Nate Silver's book "The Signal and the Noise: Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is shooting to the top of Amazon.
But I hear that once you unskew the polls the actual bestseller is Atlas Shrugged. :smug:
quote: I'm still shocked that Intrade took forever to catch up to Nate Silver's model. 70% even at 9 PM, IIRC, while the European betting markets were at 85%+. Are there a lot of Republicans on that site?
^ note to above: YES. Which is why the conservative data/'gut feeling'/toss-up mentality bubble earned me cold hard cash.
posted
And yet, we're the ones who lose. For it to be a true fiscal cliff, they should have all tied their salaries to a deal being passed.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
who in congress actually cares about their salaries? Their real salary comes from being paid for their votes.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Don't know, but Newt Gingrich comes across as kinda interesting to listen to on the Colbert.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: who in congress actually cares about their salaries? Their real salary comes from being paid for their votes.
Oh they care about every dollar. Why would they be any different than any other person? We hate to lose money. We can spend it all day long, hate to lose it.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
That article did not surprise me one bit. Of course he wouldn't take responsibility for the outcome of the election even though it was his own flawed policies that turned the voters towards Obama.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
Seriously. Did he not learn anything from the fallout of his "47 percent" video? He may have said afterwards that he was completely wrong about the whole thing, but obviously he didn't really believe it, because he's right back to seeing large segments of the population—especially the darker-skinned ones—as greedy parasites.
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