U.S. Politics: The Flood Shall Wash Away The Cobbs

[Rorshach]

8 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

The epitome of white privellege, threaten nuclear war, get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been a joke for a while, now it just went full on irrelevant as fuck.

The rules as to who can nominate people for the prize includes every legislator everywhere. Also, every past winner still alive.

However, to be nominated means nothing, as the committee handing out the prize will have quite a number of nominees. As it stands now, I would expect Trump’s nomination to be cut at the first meeting. 

Note that this is speculation - the committee does not publish anything from its meetings.

(Side note: did you know Fidel Castro was nominated for at least 16 years running? Didn’t mean he got the prize.)

[DMC]

@Kalbear

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Probably not drunk enough, then. I'll wait until tonight. It's especially statistically stupid because it has nothing to do with statistics per se. It's just math. When you're taking the popularity value (51%) and adding it to the GNP (.2%), it's not really hard to figure out the overall share that can be directly attributed to the economy success or failure. You might be implying that the popularity of the POTUS is based on the economy primarily, but that's hardly directly attributable based on that value, and there's no way to determine how much is economics and how much is other. 

Oh well.  This is my own fault, I expected too much of you.  Well, more the collective you, but yeah, you specifically as well.  No, dude, it's not just math.  It's a regression equation - one you are blatantly ill-equipped to understand.  I figured after years of OGE posts you guys would maybe have some idea to comprehend basic OLS, but I guess not.  You're obviously referring to Lewis-Beck & Tien's model, which I've linked before.  They share their regression equation here:

Quote

V = 37.5 + 0.26 popularity + 1.17 economic growth

So, to break this down like I'm teaching methods 101 to undergrads:  the 37.5 is the "alpha" - that's the constant.  That means if both popularity was zero (obviously never going to happen), and economic growth was zero (obviously can and will happen at times), the incumbent party would still get 37.5% of the two-party vote share based on the equation.  Then, Beta-1 is popularity * 0.26, while Beta-2 is economic growth * 1.17.  What does that indicate?  Every gain in economic growth is about 4.5 times more powerful in the incumbent party's vote than every gain in popularity.  Is it on a different scale?  Yes!  That's the fucking point!  They're different variables with different variations that have different effects.  Saying it's "just math" is, honestly, something I'd fail you for in any course on basic econometrics.

As somewhat of an aside - but more to just put this dog to rest - we have Nate Silver's pearls of wisdom that @Mudguard linked awhile back.  That article is so astonishingly intellectually disingenuous I don't even know where to start.  First, he brings up the fact unemployment isn't a good measure.  Great, thanks Nate!  We've known that since Kramer made that clear nearly 50 years ago.  Then he compares an annualized change in GDP growth to incumbent vote share and finds a tiny r-squared.  Sure, that's because nobody in the history of trying to compare elections and the economy would use an annualized share.  Then he goes on about inflation - again, Kramer.  Finally, he analyzes the Bread and Peace model for the rest of the article.  Which, um, pretty much no political scientist uses.

I mention this to say Nate Silver is trying to sell you something and the success of economic models works against his (economic, heh) interests.  Academics aren't trying to sell you anything.  Hell, we know you won't even read us.  Which is pretty much my point, Kal.  We've had these discussions before.  I've linked you repeatedly to economic models - pretty much the entire history of them - in the past.  The bottomline is you don't really care about the empirical research, you plainly don't understand even the most basic of its methodological underpinnings, and you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.  Make fun of me being drunk all you want, it's deserved, but the pathetic thing is blackout me still knows a tonnage more than you do, or even seems to want to if it doesn't fit your narrative.

[OldGimletEye]

UnKook My Campus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/05/01/george-masons-president-calls-for-donor-agreement-review-after-problematic-discovery/

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The president of George Mason University has called for a review of active financial gift agreements that support faculty positions, days after acknowledging that some of arrangements did not meet academic independence standards.

 

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Monday’s email from Cabrera followed a note sent days earlier, in which the university president said some financial gift agreements that had been accepted by George Mason “fall short of the standards of academic independence” and raised questions about donor influence.

The acknowledgment came as some at George Mason have pushed for greater transparency surrounding private donors, an effort that has been focused on the school’s ties to billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, a backer of conservative political causes and a major donor to universities.

 

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The matter in Fairfax County Circuit Court was still pending Tuesday, said Samantha Parsons, who is an alum of George Mason and a staff member of UnKoch My Campus, an organization that focuses on the Koch family and its influence on higher education.

UnKook My Campus. How do I sign up?

................................................................................

Now, we all know Mike Pence is a moron

But, just in case there was any doubt in the back of anyone's mind, here is the proof that Pence is in fact an idiot.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/2/17309964/mike-pence-joe-arpaio-rule-of-law
 

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Tuesday night, I saw a story scroll by in my Twitter feed that actually shocked me.

Vice President Mike Pence, on the stump in Arizona to promote the Trump administration’s regressive tax cuts, delivered a shoutout to former sheriff and ex-convict Joe Arpaio, hailing him as a “tireless champion” of both “strong borders” and “the rule of law.” This is a description our vice president offered a man found guilty of criminal contempt of court, among other sins.

 

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Even worse, though, was the specific invocation of Arpaio as a tireless champion of the rule of law. Whether you loved or hated Arpaio’s famously cruel — or, as he would say, “tough” — policies, that was his authentic persona. There simply isn’t a shred of the rule of law in him. I’ll quote the editors of National Review from their masthead editorial on the subject of Arpaio’s Senate run back in January so you don’t need to take my word for it:

 

[Rippounet]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

Now, we all know Mike Pence is a moron

But, just in case there was any doubt in back of anyone's mind, here is the proof that Pence is in fact an idiot.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/2/17309964/mike-pence-joe-arpaio-rule-of-law

Makes me think of "Mitch McConnell on Jeff Sessions" in Time's "most influential people" of 2018.

http://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5217633/jeff-sessions

If you want, you can also check out "Ted Cruz on Donald Trump" :

http://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5217621/donald-trump-2

[Holy Sith!]

Trump tweets after Giuliani says president reimbursed Cohen for $130K Stormy Daniels payment

These tweets were obviously not written by Donald. (Only one word misuse and nothing in ALL CAPS!)
It would come as no surprise to me that Donald considers all campaign money to be "my money," making little distinction between the two as he freely commingles funds.

There are so many legal torpedoes heading in Donald's direction that it boggles the mind. It will only take one hit to send him to the bottom.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

10 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

and said they were net fishing while the Mueller team was spear fishing.

I'm not sure what you (or maybe he) mean by this comment. Is this meant to suggest that the Mueller team engages in precision? Or to suggest that Congress catches more fish with nets?

9 hours ago, Trebla said:

He seems to think since Trump used private money it wasn't a campaign violation. Is that true?

Somewhat. A candidate can spend however of their own money that they want for their campaign. The issue is that this money was not disclosed as part of his campaign expenditures, assuming that it constitutes an expenditure meant to benefit his presidential campaign.

[OldGimletEye]

On Rubio’s attempt to make conservatism an actually useful and serious enterprise.

Well, it looks like Rubio folded faster than superman on laundry day.

The “libertarian” overlords were not pleased.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/02/rubio-again-criticizes-corporate-tax-cuts-but-with-a-gop-friendly-twist/

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“Overall, the Republican tax-cut bill has been good for Americans. That is why I voted for it. But it could have been even better for American workers and their families,” Rubio wrote in the opening lines of the piece, which ran under the headline, “Two cheers for corporate tax cuts.”

If the Republicans had chosen to make the bill somewhat sane, making the bill revenue neutral which would require putting the top rate at somewhere between 25%-30%, and the bill didn't have other flaws, Rubio might have had somewhat of a point.

But the Republican Party decided to not go that route.

[mormont]

28 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Somewhat. A candidate can spend however of their own money that they want for their campaign. The issue is that this money was not disclosed as part of his campaign expenditures, assuming that it constitutes an expenditure meant to benefit his presidential campaign.

It's not only that, though. There is a distinct difference between spending your own money on your campaign, and someone else lending you money to spend on your campaign, that you then later repay.

[DMC]

Rudy Giuliani was still on television this morning.  Unbelievable.

[LongRider]

7 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Rudy Giuliani was still on television this morning.  Unbelievable.

What now?  More of, a noun a verb and no campaign finance violations?  A noun a verb and no pee pee tape? A noun a verb and Nobel Prize?   What a douche.

 

[DMC]

He was thisclose to saying the Cohen payment was made to save Trump's marriage.

[LongRider]

30 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

He was thisclose to saying the Cohen payment was made to save Trump's marriage.

  Rudi 'how Trump saved his marriage' Giuliani.  That's rich.  

[A Horse Named Stranger]

12 hours ago, Yukle said:

Think really carefully - if you are Putin, when is the time of maximum benefit to show your hand?

It's not when Trump is being impeached. It's after it. Why? He won't be convicted, there's a less than 0% chance the Republicans will want their Fuehrer behind bars.

Surviving impeachment, though, is tantamount to being proclaimed innocent. Has anyone ever tested if you can survive impeachment and still be criminally charged after leaving office? Would that contravene double jeopardy laws?

For Putin, who cares?

Wait until after Trump survives, and then release a tape. Show the world how broken America is, that they cannot stand against a tyrant in office. He doesn't want to own Trump as such, he wants to destroy US influence around the world. Then, at the next G20 meeting (after Trump has an hour long one-on-one meeting, of course) who will leaders listen to? Russia and China, the emerging political players? Or the USA, a country so devoid of functioning systems that they elected a crime lord and kept him in office despite all of the fallout?

On the other hand,  Russia is still (unfoccially) at war with the Ukraine. So the US delivering arms to the Ukraine is not exactly in the Russian interest, to say the least. It looks like Ukraine has basically extorted that arms deal from Trump, so how good an asset is he, if the Ukraine can get arms deals out of him?

So I wouldn't be surprised if Putin pulled the plug over this, either now or during/after the midterms when Republicans (hopefully) will have lost their majority (and appetite) to shield Trump anymore.

 

[mormont]

27 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

He was thisclose to saying the Cohen payment was made to save Trump's marriage.

Playing devil's advocate here, but... I can see why he wants to say that.

Remember, the Trump party line is (has to be) that this payment was made for personal reasons, not political ones. That way it isn't a campaign expense, and no campaign finance laws were broken. 

[Mudguard]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

As somewhat of an aside - but more to just put this dog to rest - we have Nate Silver's pearls of wisdom that @Mudguard linked awhile back.  That article is so astonishingly intellectually disingenuous I don't even know where to start.  First, he brings up the fact unemployment isn't a good measure.  Great, thanks Nate!  We've known that since Kramer made that clear nearly 50 years ago.  Then he compares an annualized change in GDP growth to incumbent vote share and finds a tiny r-squared.  Sure, that's because nobody in the history of trying to compare elections and the economy would use an annualized share.  Then he goes on about inflation - again, Kramer.  Finally, he analyzes the Bread and Peace model for the rest of the article.  Which, um, pretty much no political scientist uses.

Thanks for linking your previous post on economic models in your earlier post.  I note that the PollyVote site lists the Bread and Peace model (among many others) on its website and incorporates its prediction into its aggregate. They also list the 538 model and also incorporate it into their aggregate.

Now that I've seen the Political Economy model, I'm still not impressed with it's utility.  It's interesting, especially in its simplicity, but it seems pretty useless besides being a relatively simple way of roughly predicting the popular vote shares of each party.  The Lewis-Beck Tien Political Economy Model isn't really based on any theory of voting, so it doesn't provide any insight about why people vote the way that they do.  Their model was simply developed by testing a bunch of different variables and seeing which one(s) fit the data set that they used the best.  What was the original point of citing this model?

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I'm not sure what you (or maybe he) mean by this comment. Is this meant to suggest that the Mueller team engages in precision? Or to suggest that Congress catches more fish with nets?

Lol, I thought it was pretty clear I was quoting Caputo!

Caputo explained he viewed the Capital committee as desperately flinging their net wherever, hoping they’d catch something, anything, whereas Mueller’s team knew the answers to all the questions they asked and honed in on points they wanted to confirm. He was sure they were focused on finding Russian collusion.

[DanteGabriel]

1 hour ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I'm not sure what you (or maybe he) mean by this comment. Is this meant to suggest that the Mueller team engages in precision? Or to suggest that Congress catches more fish with nets?

The follow-up line makes it a little more clear:

"The Senate and the House are net fishing. The special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate."

I guess Caputo feels impaled because he whined to a Senate committee about how difficult it was to pay the legal bills after doing grubwork for a legendarily crooked shitheel. Apparently the investigators are ruining the cushy life he built for himself flacking for the shittiest people in the world.

I wouldn't look too closely at what he thinks "net fishing" is supposed to mean. To elaborate on his analogy, the Senate committee is tentatively dipping a little net in the shallows and the House committee has been putting up "no fish heer libruls keep owt" signs hand-painted by Devin Nunes.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Rudy Giuliani was still on television this morning.  Unbelievable.

I can’t even….. I once made an imperfect comment to a small town paper (less than a population of 5,000 residents) and got chewed out for it and was placed off press detail for a week as a punishment. How in the hell is he still on TV?

Oh wait, it’s being reported that this was the intended goal of his press circuit.   And Trump signed off on it.

And SHS just threw him under the bus hardcore.

Why would any sane person associate themselves with this mess? This Administration is staffed by a hundred Kato Kaelins……….

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

The follow-up line makes it a little more clear:

"The Senate and the House are net fishing. The special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate."

I guess Caputo feels impaled because he whined to a Senate committee about how difficult it was to pay the legal bills after doing grubwork for a legendarily crooked shitheel. Apparently the investigators are ruining the cushy life he built for himself flacking for the shittiest people in the world.

I wouldn't look too closely at what he thinks "net fishing" is supposed to mean. To elaborate on his analogy, the Senate committee is tentatively dipping a little net in the shallows and the House committee has been putting up "no fish heer libruls keep owt" signs hand-painted by Devin Nunes.

Funny. I imagined a very wide net, with every fish slipping just slipping through the net. While Mueller's team on the other hand follows a pretty accurate targeted approach.

[Ormond]

12 hours ago, Ser Knight Somerville said:

Interesting question.  Without researching, this is how I would answer:  Double jeopardy attaches when a defendant is tried for a crime by the judiciary, and in the case of more serious crimes with the right to demand a jury trial. Therefore, I opine that it is not double jeopardy, and an official removed from office by the impeachment process would be susceptible to indictment by a grand jury and trial before judge and jury.  That said, with precedent of any sort lacking in the USA, I would expect the question to be decided by the US Supreme Court after indictment but before trial. 

There is a precedent in the other direction. Federal judge Walter Nixon was convicted of perjury and sent to prison, but that did NOT automatically remove him from office and he refused to resign, so he had to be impeached by the House and tried and convicted by the Senate in order to be removed from office. I think that strongly implies that impeachment and criminal charges are two different issues, and going through one does not preclude going through the other. After all, I think the harshest penalty the Senate can invoke as a result of impeachment is removal from office and being denied the right to hold federal office in the future. The Senate can't send someone to prison or fine them as a result of an impeachment conviction; that would have to be through a separate trial in the court system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Nixon