Dec 5, 2015

The Big Boys Say Thumbs Down to donald trump


A little while ago I went rug shopping. Four rugs were laid out on the floor and among them was one with a pink motif that was dazzlingly beautiful. It was complex and sophisticated. If you had asked me at that moment which rug I wanted, I would have said the pink one.
This conviction lasted about five minutes. But then my mentality flipped and I started asking some questions. Would the furniture go with this rug? Would this rug clash with the wall hangings? Would I get tired of its electric vibrancy?
Suddenly a subtler and more prosaic blue rug grabbed center stage. The rugs had not changed, but suddenly I wanted the blue rug. The pink rug had done an excellent job of being eye-popping on its own. The blue rug was doing an excellent job of being a rug I could enjoy living with.


For many Republicans, Donald Trump is their pink rug. He does the job that they want done at this moment. He reflects their disgust with the political establishment. He gives them the pleasurable sensation that somebody can come to Washington, kick some tail and shake things up.
But decision-making is a journey, not an early December snapshot. It goes in stages.
The campaign may seem old, but we are still in the casual attention stage. Every four years pollsters ask Iowa and New Hampshire voters when they made up their minds. Roughly 70 or 80 percent make up their minds in the final month of the race. Up until then they are busy with life and work and just glancing at the campaign. If you ask them which candidate they support, that question may generate an answer, but that doesn’t mean they are actually committed to electing the name they happen to utter.
Over at the FiveThirtyEight blog, Nate Silver looked at campaign-related Google searches in past years in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Until a week or two before the caucuses very few people are doing any serious investigations of the candidates. Then just before and after the caucuses voters get engaged and Google searches surge.


Silver produced a chart showing what this year’s polling would look like if we actually took the current levels of casual attention and uncertainty seriously. In that chart “Undecided” had 80 percent support. Trump had 5 percent support; Carson, 4; Cruz, 3; and Rubio, 2.
That’s about the best description of where the Republican race is right now.
Just because voters aren’t making final decisions doesn’t mean they are passive. They’re in the dressing room. They’re trying on different outfits. Most of them are finding they like a lot of different conflicting choices.


Human beings have multiple selves. The mind dances from this module to that module. When Montaigne tried to describe his mind, he wrote, “I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness.” In one mood Trump seems pretty attractive to some people. In another it’s Carson, or Cruz or Rubio.


But in the final month the mentality shifts. The question is no longer, What shiny object makes me feel good? The question is, Who do I need at this moment to do the job? Different sorts of decision-making styles kick in.
For example, there are two contrasting types of decision-making mentalities, maximizing and satisficing. If you’re choosing a marriage partner, you probably want to maximize. You want to find the very best person you are totally in love with. You’ll need that passion to fuse you two together so you can survive the tough times. You want somebody who can inspire and be a messenger to your best future.
But politics is not like that. Politics is a prosaic activity most of the time. You probably want to satisfice, pick the person who’s good enough, who seems reasonably responsible.

When campaigns enter that final month, voters tend to gravitate toward the person who seems most orderly. As the primary season advances, voters’ tolerance for risk declines. They focus on the potential downsides of each contender and wonder, Could this person make things even worse?
When this mental shift happens, I suspect Trump will slide. All the traits that seem charming will suddenly seem risky. The voters’ hopes for transformation will give way to a fear of chaos. When the polls shift from registered voters to likely voters, cautious party loyalists will make up a greater share of those counted.
The voting booth focuses the mind. The experience is no longer about self-expression and feeling good in the moment. It’s about the finger on the nuclear trigger for the next four years. In an era of high anxiety, I doubt Republican voters will take a flyer on their party’s future — or their country’s future.


copied from the NYT


Michael Wolfe

 Henderson, Texas 1 day ago

Mr Brooks looks at fivethirtyeight, which says that those who are not political pros or serious hobbyists won't really think about the election until election year, which is still almost two months away, and one cannot go by the early polls.

But the Trump phenomenon is mostly arithmetic. From the start, about 20% of those likely to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses were fervently pro-Trump, and the remaining 80% split 16 ways, with the anti-Trump leader having about 10%. Many thought Mr Trump would drop out after the first debate, but he has been spending little money, getting lots of free publicity, and has no reason to drop out.

Since then, Mr Trump is up to 30%, and we've lost three of the 16 who had 0%, but the 70% who would never vote for Mr Trump are still splitting 13 ways, so Mr Trump still has a big plurality.

But unlike the UK, delegates don't all go to the candidate with the plurality in US nomination caucuses and primaries. To win the nomination, Mr Trump must have a majority of the delegates, and that's something he will never have.


Here is the horrible part of trump--he is bringing out the worst of our country.  Seriously, I have the same cousin--they pick and choose the facts and tidbits they want to read--all one-sided and base their judgement on that.  


Ann

 Chicago 1 day ago

My cousin is posting Confederate flags on his facebook page, as well as links to articles claiming all Muslims want to destroy America and lots of anti Black Lives Matter stuff.

I think that come Election Day, he'll still vote for Trump if he can. And it scares me.

Joan Hamburg: Smiling at Sardi's

Joan Hamburg is getting the last laugh.
After WOR Radio coldly dumped her in 2014 after 35 years on the air, Hamburg brought her loyal audience to WABC. On Thursday, her portrait was hung at Sardi’s.
The beloved expert on just about everything was hailed by her husband Mort, her kids Liz and John, Lorraine Bracco and Joy Behar, who sang (to the tune of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”):
“You say you need a lawyer/You tripped and fell in the foyer/You call on Joan/She sends you Schwartz & Klein/Now you can sue your employer.”


Joan Hamburg gets her portrait hung at Sardi’s

Planned Parenthood: It would be nice if Bill O'Reilly would check out these interesting facts about the organization



An expert report submitted to congressional leadership today, concludes
that the secretly recorded and heavily edited videos, released about
Planned Parenthood and life-saving fetal tissue donation ‘significantly
distort and misrepresent’ actual events.
“A thorough review of these videos in consultation with

qualified experts found that they do not present a complete

or accurate record of the events they purport to depict,”
- Glenn Simpson, a partner at the research firm Fusion GPS,

in a 10-page report submitted to leadership of the House and Senate.

Documents

Fusion GPS assembled three teams of experts in video forensics, production, and transcription to review five secretly recorded videotapes of Planned Parenthood staff that have been released as part of a three-year fraud by a group of anti-abortion activists with extremist ties. The experts, which include Grant Fredericks who is a contract instructor of video sciences at the FBI National Academy and one of the most experienced video experts in North America, reviewed the five short videos (of eight to 15 minutes in length) that have been widely reported on and viewed, as well as the longer versions of those videos (which total 12 hours for all five) that were released hours or days later.

Key quotes from the expert report:

“The short videos take a great deal of dialog out of context

so as to substantively and significantly alter the meaning of

the dialog contained in the long videos.”
“CMP edited content out of the alleged “full footage” videos,

and heavily edited the short videos so as to misrepresent

statements made by Planned Parenthood representatives.”
“The short videos significantly distort and misrepresent the

conversations in the full footage. Mr. Fredericks notes that

the short videos contain ‘edited conversations where

some spoken words are eliminated and some spoken words

are added out of content.”
 “At this point, it is impossible to characterize the extent to

which CMP’s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning

of the encounters the videos purport to document. However,

the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no

evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied

upon for any official inquiries unless supplemented by CMP’s

original material and forensic authentication that this material

is supplied in unaltered form.”
Along with the expert report, Planned Parenthood submitted a 
short breakdown of the heavy, deceptive editing in the five videos. 
Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards

said today:
“Our commitment is to get all the facts and share them fully,

and that’s what we’re doing today. We’ve said all along that

these videos were heavily edited to deceive the public, and

that’s what this expert analysis now shows. The more the

public learns about this fraudulent, baseless attack on women’s

health, the better, and that’s why today we’re laying everything

out for leaders in Congress and for the public.”

Key data from the summary:

  • Collectively, the five videotapes of Planned Parenthood staff have 
  • at least 42 splices where content is cut and edited together to 
  • make it appear to be a seamless conversation.
  • In some cases, these splices completely change the meaning 
  • of statements. On one video, a Planned Parenthood staff member’s 
  • remarks about lab protocols were edited to make it sound like she 
  • was talking about changing abortion procedures. Phrases on the tape 
  • were isolated and removed, stringing together unrelated sentences 
  • to change the meaning. 

    Anti-abortion activists used the doctored “quote” to support 
  • false claims that she was talking about changing how an abortion 
  • would be done, and the “quote” was published by mainstream 
  • media as if it were real.
  • On one tape, a Planned Parenthood staff member in Colorado 
  • says 13 separate times that any arrangements related to fetal 
  • tissue donation need to be reviewed by attorneys and follow 
  • all laws – and all 13 are edited out of the video.
  • On another tape, a Planned Parenthood staff member in Texas 
  • says nine separate times that there is no “profit” related to 
  • fetal tissue donation – and all nine are edited out of the video.
The summary of edits and expert report were submitted to Senate and
House leadership with a letter from Planned Parenthood Federation of 
America that provides extensive background and information on our
involvement with fetal tissue research. The letter explains that fetal
tissue research is critical for helping develop cures for serious diseases
and advancing public health.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in 

two states -- 1% of Planned 

Parenthood’s health centers -- 

currently offer tissue donation 

as an option for women who want it.

FetalTissueDonationMap-Aug2015_r2_TW.png
To date, four separate committees in the House and Senate have launched
investigations into Planned Parenthood.

In the last two weeks, 

five 

states have concluded 

investigations into 

Planned 

Parenthood – and 

every one 

of them has found 

no wrongdoing.

Two states – California and Texas – have also called for investigations
into the Center for Medical Progress. Last month, a bill to defund
Planned Parenthood and block millions of women from having
access to health care failed to pass in the U.S. Senate.


copied from the website of Planned Parenthood



from chloelouise:

here is what gets me real angry.........
Bill makes is seem as if Planned Parenthood is doing something
real bad, as if they are bad people doing a disservice to society.
He influences many people, but he might want to know the facts.

Organs are harvested every day and tissue donation takes place
every day in the United States--usually it is looked upon as a good
thing as in the word ...... donation.

My question--how would Bill handle things differently if the
tissue would not be donated--he never really answers that
question.  We know he is against abortion and that is his right
but what would his preferred outcome be for the intended tissue?

Just asking.......

he is not really looking out for the folks on this one--certainly
not the individuals that might want to take advantage of the
services of Planned Parenthood.

@lucymcbath: Standing Strong with Lucia Kay McBath





Standing strong with Lucia Kay McBath.


In loving memory of Jordan



check out her foundation:

The Walk with Jordan Scholarship Foundation

Honoring the life of Jordan Russell Davis



and here is a link to that page: