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And, once again, I'm embarrassed for you, Lassus — since, once again, you managed to miss the point. Did you even bother to read the second paragraph before you fired off your breathless "gotcha" attempt?
The lives of Libyan civilians are absolutely equal to those of US personnel. Both are innocent parties. If you think that firing a minigun from a helicopter at a crowd is an appropriate or moral action, then I don't know what to say.
No one else had made that argument, though.
Sort of like after World War II ended, you could never find a German soldier who admitted to fighting on the western front.
--------------------------------------
Nowadays, Retardo (was his handle all caps?
YES IT WAS.
I wouldn't want to conflate him with fellow Cardinal fan TOLAXOR, who rocks. A lot.) only shows up to gloat when the Cardinals $hit magic pixie dust in a postseason series. Which is to say, more than I'd like, particularly given what's motivating him, but pretty rarely in the grand BBTF scheme of things.
I dunno, I always saw RETARDO's political comments as a variant of Gamingboy's posts on the Yankees: Outrageous but often side-splittingly funny. I can see why he got under David's skin, but it's not as if both of them didn't give as good as they got. It was BTF MMA at its finest.
Yep. Didn't see the relevance. Anyhow, it wasn't a gotcha, just a bit of amusement.
If you're voluntarily standing amidst people firing RPGs at a U.S. consulate some 6 hours into the attack, you're no longer a civilian.
So what happened? One often hears that campaigns mean nothing, that people vote for pre-established reasons or due to extra-campaign factors. But I can't help thinking that a substantial number of centrist voters were weakly supporting Obama, hoping that they could find some reason to vote for Romney, but suspecting that Romney was gauche at best and a fool at worst. And then Romney looked moderate and Presidential in the first debate, and Obama was like, whatever, and minds really did change. Can that be possible, or am I ascribing too much determining power to this vague contest of images?
EDIT: And I guess the significance of my question is: if Romney wins, that debate is going to look pretty important historically.
firing RPGs at a U.S. consulate some 6 hours into the attacktargeted by a US drone plane, you're no longer a civilian.FTFPOTUS
SO SAY WE ALL!
I disagree. I think that in retrospect, we'll be able to see pretty clearly that the polls started moving before the first debate. Obama had lost a point or so in the week prior to the debate. The debate clearly had a factor, but I wonder the extent to which the discussion around the debate is missing something else--be it advertising or something structural.
In any case, for it to be anything more than a historical curiosity, Romney would have to win.
Nieporent and DiPerna, and you, get what they/you give. If you knocked off the "typical lefty" stuff, the snark directed at you would decrease. There are other things that you could do to reduce the snark directed your way as well; you are either choosing not to do those things or are unaware of them. Your biggest problems in this area are your narrow, self-serving definition of "personal attack" and your need to put down liberals in post after post. You do that day after day, people are going to call you out and insult you. Simple stuff.
snapper is usually civil, but he holds a lot of positions very strongly that offend people and he rarely restricts his opinion to political horse races and basic gray-area policies--he is a philosopher king/moralist/worldview guy. That inevitably gets personal for people and will cause friction.
___
As to the election, my position hasn't changed. I think it will be very close and Obama will win.
Yes, I find that position completely plausible (and the debate thus more a matter of coincidental timing than actual factor). History can have the effect of reducing complex situations to single factors, and that effect should be resisted. One thing I'm trying to understand is how such a significant number of polled voters would switch their preferences during that stretch of the campaign. There seems so little positively to sway anyone at that juncture, yet the effect was so large.
It seems to me that Obama thought he could simply blast Romney hard enough that it would be impossible for Romney to recover. This might have worked in better economic times, but people tend to vote their wallets. Obama might have a 75 percent chance (or whatever Nate has him at today) of winning on Election Day, but it was always nuts to have Obama as a huge favorite in late 2011 and early '12, with the economy sputtering and with Obama having a thin list of accomplishments.
Well, we have neither peace nor prosperity, so I actually agree with YC and JK on a certain level--I never thought it was realistic to assume that Obama would coast home. The country has too many issues right now for that.
Additionally, Romney, while he is a worse candidate than McCain was in many respects (like I said before, there were reasons that McCain kicked Romney's ass in 2008),is more articulate, slicker and more glib than McCain is, and therefore better in a debate situation. And he has Ryan instead of Palin. I think that the idea of McCain's dying in office and Palin's becoming POTUS really did scare off some center-right voters in 2008. The Romney/Ryan ticket does not have that baggage.
The suggestion that Obama is losing due to voter prejudice is a strange one. I don't believe his race, national origin, religion or gender have changed since 2008, and he won by a considerable margin back then. If he loses this year, it will be because of his record in office.
As has been alluded to throughout, nationwide polls -- hell, even statewide polls -- are a very imperfect tool when the whole thing likely boils down to maybe a 5% share of the voting population of one state which has not been paying enough attention, here in late October, to make up their minds yet. (Okay, I don't think all undecideds are not paying attention, but it's a generalization that's probably more true than not. I'm talking true undecideds here, not the "libertarians" who always vote Repub or their equivalents on the left -- technically "independent" or not, those folks are going to vote Repub or Dem and you're not gonna change their minds. Hell, it might be less than 5% of the voting population of one state.)
You're actually doubling down on the persecution argument. Amazing.
Two pages back, without knowing anything specific about the situation, you called a woman's job as diversity officer "phoney-baloney". That was a throw-away comment, but it was typical of the way you argue from a position of ignorance on this site, and fling crap before you bother to educate yourself on a subject. The truth is, you have no idea what her job involves, or why such a position exists. But that doesn't stop you from just dropping a blanket insult directed at any who occupies a position similar to hers (which, btw, most universities today have; in a minute and half of Google searching, you could figure out why these positions were invented).
I also agree with the Clapper, that this isn't a "Bradley effect." For one thing, Bradley effects manifest themselves as discrepancies between polling and elections; you don't Bradley-effect yourself between one poll and another. For another, as noted, Obama had no Bradley issues in 2008. But it still may be the case that his support in the September '12 polls wasn't very firm, for lots and lots of imaginable reasons.
There's only been a reversal in the national trackers, though. Obama has gained back roughly 1.5 points in the RCP average from Romney's high in the national polls, but the states have been moving further in Romney's direction. (And, incidentally, two of the most pro-Obama national trackers apparently didn't even exist in 2010.)
It seems like a lot of the people surprised by Romney's gains bought into the false meme that undecideds don't break for the challenger. For some reason, people credit Nate Silver with "debunking" this, but his actual data supports the theory. According to Nate's own charts, in a true-incumbent election, the challenger gains by 3:1 in October and 2:1 in November. We might not be seeing anything unusual at all vis-a-vis Romney's gains.
You have no idea what I know or don't know about the situation. This Gallaudet story has been in the news for a week or two, and it wasn't the first time I had heard of a "chief diversity officer."
And, yes, I stand by my assessment that the position of "chief diversity officer" is a "phony-baloney job." The idea that colleges and corporations need someone to do racial and ethnic and LBGTQ bean-counting is absurd. If colleges and corporations are the colorblind meritocracies that they should be, there's no need for phony-baloney jobs like Angela McCaskill's.
(McCaskill, to the surprise of no one, is now demanding compensation from Gallaudet for the horrible trauma they've put her through. Only in America can a "chief diversity officer" cry foul for being outed as anti-diversity.)
You first, tough guy.
Obama's economics can be spinned as a disappointment, but we are not at the place we were in 2008. This is not the late summer, early autumn of 2008. We, at that time, in 2008 were seen as verging on a meltdown. The opposition to the party in power will have a great advantage under those circumstances. You say he won by a considerable margin. I agree. But it is remarkable that Obama didn't win by more, and it wasn't prognosticated he would win by that substantial margin he did until the last few weeks of the election. Had he been white, considering the way the administration and party in power was viewed at the time, does anyone not see this as a landslide? Race played a part. Those white blue collar males and others swallow that vestigial prejudice. To some degree, those racial prejudices were overcome at that time because of the economy. There's not that reason to allow that to happen now. They just needed something to hang that on. He doesn't care about the job. He, like George H. W., is too aloof, not engaged, doesn't care enough, is plenty long enough nail to hang that on.
Thanks for proving my point. That's not anywhere near the extent of the position's responsibilities. And of course, a straight (presumably?) white dude sees no reason why having someone to educate faculty on how to handle diverse student populations in the classroom would be necessary. Unsurprising.
Of course to white people, these institutions should be colorblind. Denying white privilege is the best way to perpetuate it.
Teaching in diverse classroom can be a really rewarding experience. But it can also be a challenging one-- creating a safe space for student expression and learning means being sensitive to a wide range of cultural differences. This is not a skill that everyone is born with-- some people who think they're good at it are really, really terrible, because they don't keep up with the literature on how people in certain groups prefer to be referred to, or changing perceptions of people in those groups, group dynamics, ect. This helps us accomplish our mission of creating a comfortable and productive learning environment for all of our students.
This is a strange position. You're claiming that her signing a petition constitutes a terminable offense. That's giving the employer a ton of power over what their employees do with their off-time.
LOL. And in the world where colleges and corporations are not all colorblind meritocracies, a.k.a. the real world, some institutions may need or choose to have a Chief Diversity Officer.
EDIT: For what it's worth, Goldman Sachs has one. And it sounds like her role does not involve much "bean counting".
It's not that strange to expect a "chief diversity officer" to refrain from signing a petition whose goal was plainly to deny equal rights to a segment of the population. (I suppose now you'll argue that she signed the petition — after hearing a sermon from her anti-gay marriage pastor — because she expects the pro-gay marriage position to win.)
1. I don't have a wikipedia alias, so I'm not sure how I could explain why I hide behind an alias on wikipedia.
2. I'm not the one suggesting that posting under an alias is cowardly.
Now, if you're wondering why I post with the alias JoMo the master pitch framer, well, it's because its purelity makes me giggle.
Your turn NY-13021.
Just so we're clear: you're fine with employers firing their employees for the political opinions?
You're hiding behind an alias here. Why? Are you Really Important? Are you scared of attaching your name to your comments?
But I suppose you're simply not going to answer this since it's pretty much impossible without admitting the inconsistency.
This liberal agrees (figured I'd note the occasion for posterity up front).
Nate Silver's model disagrees. Romney's likely electoral vote peaked at 254.9 on October 12, and was at 249.4 as of yesterday. Romney's likelihood of winning peaked at 38.9% as of October 12, and was at 32.1% as of yesterday. Romney's likely popular vote peaked at 49.1% on October 12, and was at 48.9% as of yesterday.
I don't believe a construction worker or teacher should be fired for being anti- or pro-Obama, but firing a "chief diversity officer" who apparently is anti-gay marriage is roughly akin to firing a math teacher who insists 2+2=5 or a science teacher who insists the Earth is flat.
Adorably, Joe thinks he meets wikipedia's notability standards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people))
That's a scary amount of power to give an employer. If the math teacher insists that 2+2=5 in their off-time, but when they punch the timecard, teaches that 2+2=4, that's all that should matter.
Your fascination with my Wikipedia page is really funny. I'm 39 and I've been on the internet since 1996. I've never had a Facebook account, never had a MySpace page, and I've had a one-page website for ~10 years. If you think I give a crap about having a Wikipedia page, you're nuts. My Wikipedia page was a response to vandalism. If Wikipedia deletes that page and locks the URL so some anonymous clown — like, for example, you — can't vandalize it, that would be fine by me.
In addition to being an anonymous clown, you're also not very good at reading. Can't say I'm surprised.
My Wikipedia page is a cure for insomnia, but the "notability" part is met by miles. Anyone who's had a couple articles written about them qualifies for a Wikipedia page.
This. Nate's model never projected Romney ahead in the only vote that matters, the EC, though he does show significant tightening. After the second debate, Obama has started edging out his EC lead again. Not that any of that matters to the fool that you people continue to engage for no apparent reason.
Still, you haven't answered the original question? Why is the pseudonym okay for you on wikipedia, but not okay for posters on BBTF?
That's a gross misunderstanding of the criteria. The whole reason for the notability criteria is so that Wikipedia doesn't become bogged down by people engaging in naked self-promotion and self-aggrandizing. Which is quite clearly what you're doing. IOW, if you were notable enough to have a Wikipedia page, you wouldn't have to create it yourself.
3542 — Still not very good at reading. So sad.
I agree with this.
I don't know that she should have been fired; but much like what we were talking about with social media here, she probably should have thought, given her career, to keep it more on the down-low. (Was it reported how it came out she HAD signed the petition? I don't recall.) Is that right? Probably not, but people are human beings, and they run on emotions more than logic.
This seems at odds with editing the Auburn, NY page to include yourself in the notable residents.
Full disclosure: About eight years ago or so, I created my own Wikipedia page, and it was deleted within minutes.
This page is starting to sound eerily reminiscent of both of those.
Nor did Nate's model ever project Romney ahead in the vote that doesn't matter at all, the popular vote, yet many people still focus on that instead of the state-by-state EC projections.
There's a big difference between advising someone to use discretion for the sake of optics, and outright firing them for signing a petition at their church. I don't think what she did was wise, but it should absolutely not be fire-able. It's also totally possible that she didn't understand how visible the petition's signatures would be when she signed it; this is probably the biggest mistake people make with social media.
I've never attempted to create a page. However, several years ago when I was a Wikipedia noob, I innocently attempted to correct a few detail errors and add a few new substantive points on the page of my semi-famous sister-in-law (Claudia Kolb). Within -- I don't know if it was minutes, but it was definitely within an hour or two -- my changes were deleted and I got an email telling me that I was doing it all wrong, and to stop being such a doofus (or words to that effect).
If I really tilt my head to the point of severe neck pain, I can perhaps get to "marginally justified," but even that's a huge stretch. You're not "completely in the clear," morally speaking, if you shoot someone in self-defense with no chance of harming a bystander. You may be legally and morally justified in choosing the lesser of two evils (self-preservation through violence over respect for the life of another), but justification excuses harmful behavior, as opposed to cleansing such behavior of all moral weight.
Even if you know innocents will be hit, you are still allowed to defend yourself, and are morally justified as long as you do not intend to shoot the innocents.
Perhaps criminally, but you'd lose badly (and rightly so) in the civil case.
Awesome. For reference:
Where do you draw the line? McCaskill apparently harbors some anti-gay feelings or else she would have been repulsed by her pastor's sermon, not moved to sign a petition that plainly aimed to prohibit gay marriage. If a "chief diversity officer" can't be fired for being anti-gay, then it would seem that no one could ever be fired.
If Grambling learns a staff member is a member of a white supremacist group, should it be prohibited from firing the person unless or until he engages in anti-black violence?
This isn't David Siegel threatening sales reps to vote for Romney or else. Angela McCaskill's political positions are directly relevant to her position as "chief diversity officer."
Nate Silver's projections were exactly right for that time period: had nothing changed, Romney would have been crushed in November. When Romney changed his colors, he changed the race. I never believed the race was a rout at that point (even said so here), but I have to admit I never saw the Romney pivots coming. That he's been able to change positions mid-race so easily — to the point where people on my FB feed are now claiming Romney's tax positions have ALWAYS been thus — has me gobsmacked. This afternoon, my brother dismissed the idea that Romney's changes in positions even mattered. "It doesn't matter. They all do it."
"So how do you know what you believe, then?"
He just kind of shrugged, then asked me if I'd seen Dinesh D'souza's documentary. My brother's become a big, big fan of foreign military intervention over the last few weeks. He claims it has nothing to do with the fact his job is developing missile technology.
Nate's pre-debate projections had Romney gaining by 3:1 in October and 2:1 in November.
You're reading an awful lot into her signing a petition.
If it's not coming out in her performance at work, it shouldn't be pertinent to the decision to hire and fire. If you work for a religious organization that professes to be against pre-marital sex, and you get pregnant out of wedlock, should that be grounds for firing?
He certainly did. But the point I was raising earlier is that the best evidence is that he didn't change the race irreversibly, as Obama has in fact not just stopped but slightly reversed the poll gains that Romney had so dramatically achieved.
I have to admit I never saw the Romney pivots coming. That he's been able to change positions mid-race so easily — to the point where people on my FB feed are now claiming Romney's tax positions have ALWAYS been thus — has me gobsmacked.
Me too, entirely. I thought I was a cynic, but Mitt Romney has succeeded in schooling me in what a cynic is. That is some kind of chutzpah.
Which projections are those?
Look at Nate's charts of true-incumbent elections from back in July (specifically, the second chart on that page). His view of the 2012 race has always been substantially at odds with some of the historical data he's presented.
Incumbents who saw late movement towards them, based on the preceding polls, include Truman, Nixon '60, Humphrey, Ford, Reagan (not that it mattered in '84), Clinton (more Perot leaking support than anything else), Gore, and Bush '04. With current methodology and attention, Truman would never qualify for that list today. Beyond those polling issues, and beyond the numerous counterexamples, you've got sample size problems (11 results from 1968-2008, including just 6 "true incumbent elections"). Thus, just about any "no president/challenger has ever [fill in the blank]" assertion that anyone cares to make probably says as much about what they'd like to see happen as it does about the little bit that has happened.
And for what it's worth, the acknowledgement that McCaskill might impact the diversity of a company culture and hiring practices flies in the face of this: There are tens of thousands of McCaskills in corporate front offices, all with their religious, racial, sexual, etc., biases, and they've been in charge of staffing and creating corporate cultures for generations.
It's interesting to compare these two scenes -
The air assault on Scorponok from Transformers 1. The term "danger close" is thrown in as a sop to realism, the target is probably 30-40 meters away from the ground team and all the civilians in the village, and the Warthogs lay down missiles and chain gun fire with no collateral damage, let alone casualties. And when that doesn't work they call in 105mm rounds, again with perfect accuracy.
Then you have this scene from Generation Kill, a faithful recreation of real events. Here "danger close" is defined as a strike within 600 meters of friendlies, and the Marines are freaking out because the captain wants to call in a strike 200 meters from their position. As far as they are concerned, this "right on top of their heads" and will likely get them some of them killed. And for the metrically challenged, 200 meters is roughly two football fields away.
From July?!? That's what you define as "pre-debate"?
Ooo-kay.
Small sample size or not, if you have six data points and they're all pointing in one direction, you need more than a hunch to go in the opposite direction. Whether it's "breaking for the challenger" (conventional wisdom) or "regressing to the mean" (Nate Silver), the result has been consistent.
I agree with the "should"-- I don't agree with the "must". I also don't think that companies should be in the business of monitoring their employees' off-hours behavior.
==
Very nice comparison. The "reality effect" in action. And it's always worth linking to the trailer for the next Call of Duty.
Um, no. This "small sample size" thing is kind of crucial.
Sure, but my point was simply that hiring should be colorblind (and gender-blind, etc.). If the director of hiring at a company is found to be discriminating, he or she should be fired. A monthly spreadsheet breaking down recent hires should be more than sufficient to determine patterns of racism or sexism.
***
Those charts are a study going back to 1968. How would the info. be different if Nate published it in Sept. rather than July?
So if you have six data points, and all six are pointing in one direction, you believe it's fine to ignore the trend based on nothing more than a subjective, non-data-related hunch? That's odd.
Swing and a miss.
Illustrating once again that you have no idea what her position actually involves.
OK, then please explain what is so different about the 2012 election that the prior six examples are likely not only to be wrong, but irrelevant.
Has she come out in favor of gay marriage in the last 10 minutes? Otherwise, her signing a petition moments after hearing an anti-gay marriage sermon seems instructive.
If you had the faintest hint of training in parametric statistics, you would probably understand that six examples are not likely to be wrong, right, or irrelevant. They are simply inadequate.
Then I guess statistical analysis of presidential elections will be pointless until sometime around the year 4000. Somebody should tell Nate he's wasting his time.
Well, Matt Drudge said it so you know it's true.
No. It means that statistical analysis of presidential elections is best applied to results that don't suffer from hopelessly tiny sample sizes. You know, like polls.
With this, I am through with you. On ignore, starting now.
"True incumbent" elections, differences between the late polling and the voting results:
Nixon '72: not much movement either way; not much of a contest, either
Ford '76: noticeable break to Ford, not the challenger (Carter)
Carter '80: break to the challenger (Reagan); announced polling has been criticized, and it's believed that most of Reagan's gains came earlier in the year
Reagan '84: slight, meaningless break to Reagan, not the challenger (Mondale), turning a big wipeout into a slightly bigger wipeout
Bush '92: moderate break to Bush in late September, not the challenger (Clinton... or Perot); no movement thereafter
Clinton '96: noticeable break to the challenger (Dole, but not Perot), but Clinton's reelection was never in danger
Bush '04: moderate break to Bush, not the challenger (Kerry)
They're not all pointing in one direction.
I kind of thought polls and election results were what Nate based those charts on. Perhaps he got lazy and just pulled the numbers out of a hat.
No, silly. Her "phony-baloney" position as diversity officer. You keep insisting it's about just simple number-checking. I explained some other aspects of the job above, but for some reason, you're clinging to your preconceived notion that such a person's job could be effectively executed by a piece of software.
The person who does those types of breakdowns and enforces company policies with respect to these practices might have the title Chief Diversity Officer.
Some folks here are embarrassing themselves, especially with the "he has it coming" defense.
Are you talking about #3528? You're seriously telling us that major universities and corporations need a high-level VP whose job essentially is to keep up with the latest entries at Urban Dictionary? I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but that's absurd. If this stuff is so vital, how do people make it to Harvard or Goldman Sachs in the first place?
Regardless, a person who appears to harbor anti-gay feelings has as much business acting as a "chief diversity officer" as a person with anti-female leanings has teaching Women's Studies. This isn't some political witch hunt unrelated to McCaskill's job; this is directly related to McCaskill's job. (And let's face it: The only reason Marylanders for Marriage Equality is supporting McCaskill is because they need black votes and don't want to be seen as bullying a deaf black woman. If this came out after the election, like the petitions in California after Prop 8 which led to businesses being boycotted, no doubt the reaction would be different.)
Yes. Next.
She works in higher ed. The fact that you don't understand how it could possibly entail more than managing a spreadsheet and keeping up to date on the latest slang suggests a really poor knowledge of how complex diversity-related issues are.
If it doesn't come out in her job-related performance, why is it pertinent?
Way back when, I dated a girl who worked for Chic-fil-A. we went out one night to a local watering hole, when all of a sudden, she grabbed my arm and said "We have to get out of here." I asked why, and she said "My boss just walked in. If he sees me here, I'll get fired." My only regret is that I was too young at the time to get and enjoy the irony.
Because every decision becomes questionable.
Not me. It's amazing how different the thread looks with his posts reduced to [Ignored Comment].
Apparently, I'm a huge, stupid troll whose opinions absolutely can't be left unchallenged. Or something.
I guess it makes sense to the lefties here.
More than anything, I suspect the recent surge in vitriol is related to the fact that the lefties here thought Obama would cruise to reelection, and now that they're facing the very real possibility of a president-elect Romney, they're lashing out.
See, he almost got me there, but then I remembered that there would be no way to convince him of my point of view. We simply operate with completely different views of reality and debating those is like trying to tell someone else what orange looks like to you.
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