The Trump Card...

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
No. That particular incident has a fake narrative to it.
There are like 30 different camera phone videos of that incident, and all of them show the same thing... Biden bus and the Biden vehicles busted their lane and they're the ones who side wiped the Trump vehicles.
 
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muttly

Veteran Expediter
Fascinating election night so far. I'm watching Bannon's warroom special election coverage. He has this analyst Richard Baris who is a computer with the vote numbers. Good stuff.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Expecting to wake to a Biden win this morning, I woke to a yet uncertain result. What came to mind was a quote made a week or so ago by Republican pollster Frank Luntz:

"Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday night, that his "profession is done" if President Trump wins re-election come Nov. 3, and proves the national polls wrong yet again.

“'I hate to acknowledge it, because that's my industry — at least partially — but the public will have no faith. No confidence. Right now, the biggest issue is the trust deficit,' Luntz said in response to Baier asking how pollsters will fare if they are wrong in predicting the 2020 presidential election. 'Pollsters did not do a good job in 2016. So, if Donald Trump surprises people, if Joe Biden had a 5- or 6-point lead, my profession is done.'"

While the election result is still unknown, I think it is fair to say the 2020 election is utterly devastating to the polling profession. The misses were so numerous and so large that even the polls that got it right will be discredited. As confident as they seemed and as scientific they claimed to be, they blew it. What a bunch of arrogant putzes! They misled a lot of people with their supposedly credible methods and fooled themselves into thinking they were producing something of value. The people who believed them (including me) are suckers who will be unlikely to trust them again.

That was my first thought upon seeing this morning's news. I've been in meetings all day and have more coming soon. I literally have not had time to think today about the election. Will take that time tonight or tomorrow after I catch up on the news.
 
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Turtle

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Retired Expediter
Hey, Phil. If you need someone to wipe down and sanitize equipment, you can probably get a pollster on the cheap.
 
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pjjjjj

Veteran Expediter
I found it pretty hilarious to hear Biden say that, "we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies". Unbelievable considering all the shenanigans everyone has had to endure and listen to from his court over the past 4 years.
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Hey, Phil. If you need someone to wipe down and sanitize equipment, you can probably get a pollster on the cheap.
I would not trust them to do the job.

We're hiring two new employees this week. Onboarding them takes a great deal of additional time so I'm not free to process the election news like I would otherwise be. I can say that with the little news and commentary I've watched so far, is infuriating to see the journalists use pollsters as sources and expert guests as if they had the same credibility they did before the election.

On another matter, I have never liked how the news people shifted from reporting news to interviewing each other as experts and turning themselves into hollywood-like stars. These people have egg all over their face now but either don't realize it or don't care. They're continuing along as if nothing is wrong. That too is infuriating. It makes it easy to minimize my news-and-views-consumption time, which I may continue to do once the new-employee time is behind me.

Right now, I'm like, Biden wins? OK. Trump wins? OK. the LOSERS are the pollsters and journalists who relied on them. The infuriating thing is they don't seem to know it, or if they do, they don't seem to care. Nothing has surfaced yet to suggest they feel the need to change.
 

Turtle

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Retired Expediter
That's the thing, really. Trump wins and the Far Left is gonna riot. They still haven't accepted the 2016 election. Biden wins and the Right is gonna get up and go to work.

I've maintained ever since I can remember that it really doesn't matter that much who is president, since there's only just so much damage they can do, what with the checks and balances being what they are. Obama pushed the edge of the envelope on that one, but even his damage was minimal.

One of Trump's biggest and most enduring legacies may very well be that he opened the eyes of a lot of people at just how fake the Fake News Media really is. And the Media has tried of late to see just how far they can push things. They pushed a completely fabricated Russia Collusion narrative for four years, and half the country believed it. They have pushed the Fine People Hoax and to this day half the country believes it. And in a remarkable display of hubris, they literally disappeared one of the biggest news stories of our lifetime in the breathtaking corruption of Joe Biden and his family.

And yeah, whenever you see one journalist interviewing another journalist about their opinions, know that neither one of those journalists have any credibility left at that point.
 

pjjjjj

Veteran Expediter
I am a little confused because last night as I was watching news of election status (fox), they were talking about the process of counting the mailed-in ballots, and showing on camera (possibly through a window or something?) someone manually taking ballots out of envelopes, placing the ballots in a pile and.. what I believed to be/what appeared to be simply discarding the envelopes. They seemed to not be keeping them together. Meanwhile all this stuff going on about the mailed-in ballots and how they'll need to be verified in case they may not end up being allowed/counted. I found it strange the volunteer/staff(?) didn't seem to be stapling each envelope to its corresponding ballot. Surely anyone would do that if they even suspected for a moment that the postmark/info on the envelope might possibly have to be verified/proven at some point?
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Regarding the polls ...

I'm realizing I placed too much trust in "scientific" polling. Now reading post-mortem analyses of 2020 election polls, and more about polling history and methods in general, I find myself moving toward a new belief that public opinion cannot be accurately or scientifically polled.

Public opinion is too complex and too amorphous to be objectively measured and categorized.

In ancient times, there were experts who divined the future by reading animal entrails. In the 1800's, there were experts who determined a person's mental traits by examining bumps on the skull. In both cases, these "experts," were said to have scientific insights others did not have. They were part of a recognized profession and were respected by the social and civic leaders of their day. These "experts" used their status and special skills to produce and market their findings.

Yesterday's readers of animal entrails and head bumps are today's pollsters; people who enjoy special status, not because they know what they are doing, but because their folly remains unquestioned and unjustifiably respected.

Public opinion polling is a fool's errand. I was a fool to buy into the scientific double talk pollsters use to delude others, and delude even themselves.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
I am a little confused because last night as I was watching news of election status (fox), they were talking about the process of counting the mailed-in ballots, and showing on camera (possibly through a window or something?) someone manually taking ballots out of envelopes, placing the ballots in a pile and.. what I believed to be/what appeared to be simply discarding the envelopes. They seemed to not be keeping them together. Meanwhile all this stuff going on about the mailed-in ballots and how they'll need to be verified in case they may not end up being allowed/counted. I found it strange the volunteer/staff(?) didn't seem to be stapling each envelope to its corresponding ballot. Surely anyone would do that if they even suspected for a moment that the postmark/info on the envelope might possibly have to be verified/proven at some point?
The vantage point you have watching TV is inferior to those of the Democratic and Republican party poll watchers who are physically in the room, watching every move made by the poll workers. If there were irregularities worthy of note, you can be certain at least some of the poll watchers in that room would have screamed bloody murder.
 
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pjjjjj

Veteran Expediter
The vantage point you have watching TV is inferior to those of the Democratic and Republican party poll watchers who are physically in the room, watching every move made by the poll workers. If there were irregularities worthy of note, you can be certain at least some of the poll watchers in that room would have screamed bloody murder.
I would think so..but like I said, I'm confused..at some point today on the news they were saying that these ballots didn't even need to have a date stamp on them at all.. so I'm more confused than ever. How do mailed in ballots reach the polling office for inclusion in the count if there is no postmark? How do they prove/show that any given ballit was in fact mailed by the deadline date? Are people allowed to just drop off their ballots in person after the fact even after asking to have a mail-in ballot? Tonight on the news they're talking about, 'where are all the military votes'.. huh??????
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
I would think so..but like I said, I'm confused..at some point today on the news they were saying that these ballots didn't even need to have a date stamp on them at all.. so I'm more confused than ever. How do mailed in ballots reach the polling office for inclusion in the count if there is no postmark? How do they prove/show that any given ballit was in fact mailed by the deadline date? Are people allowed to just drop off their ballots in person after the fact even after asking to have a mail-in ballot? Tonight on the news they're talking about, 'where are all the military votes'.. huh??????
I'm unsure of the details but it has something to do with military ballots sent from overseas via a military postal service that does not use postmarks.
 

pjjjjj

Veteran Expediter
Yes, I wasn't referring to the two things being related. It's understandable that the military ballots wouldn't be postmarked. I was shocked at the volume coming from the military which hadn't yet been counted.
 

Turtle

Administrator
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Retired Expediter
I find myself moving toward a new belief that public opinion cannot be accurately or scientifically polled.
One step closer to realizing the mainstream media is fake. All news is fake, even Fox News.
... watching TV is inferior to those of the Democratic and Republican party poll watchers who are physically in the room, watching every move made by the poll workers.
Except in a lot of those rooms Republican poll watchers weren't allowed in, and then when the vote counters were forced to let them in, they were kept at such a distance that they still couldn't watch every move made by the poll workers.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
One step closer to realizing the mainstream media is fake. All news is fake, even Fox News.
Well, Turtle, if you really think about it, it's not just the news that's fake. Everything is fake. It matters not what is seen or unseen, it's fake.

Consider two people standing on an ocean beach viewing a sunrise. Each is told to write a short story describing the experience. The stories will be different. They are different because they are fake. If they were not fake, they would be the same. Right?

Or put ten artists on the same beach, painting the same sunrise. No two paintings would be the same, so they are all fake. Right?

Or consider five journalists covering a city council meeting where the treatment of an out-of-control feral cat population is at issue, and outraged and energized citizens representing a wide variety of views fill the room to overflowing and frequently break into disorder (kill the cats, live trap and move them, adopt them, let them be, pledge to vote against any council member who is seen as even a little cruel to animals, save the birds the cats kill, save the children from rabid cats, punish citizens who feed the cats, revoke private property rights so city workers can manage or kill cat colonies, etc.). And note that these journalists write for either the Associated Press, Cat Lover's Monthly, Association of City Councils Journal, the local advertiser newspaper, or the Journal of Epidemic Disease (some of these titles made up to make the point).

These stories are all fake, right? They don't agree with each other. They are subject not to the facts, but to the interpretations of those viewing and writing about them. You can't even get a simple majority of people in the room to agree on what the issue is. It has something to do with cats and the elected officials who do not see things your way are wrong and should be voted out if they vote adverse to your view.

The Bible is fake, right? You can set a copy in front of two people, maybe even two God-fearing, Bible-believing experts who have studied and taught and preached about the Bible their whole lives, and both can agree 100% that the words of a certain verse say what they say. Yet one can easily say it means this, and the other can just as easily, and just as authoritatively say it means something else. Is one of these experts fake and the other not? If so, how do you know? How do you decide?

To me, the concern is not that the news is fake. Everything is fake because everything requires each of us to interpret it before responding to or acting on it. The concern is the rapidity and finality with which Americans are willing to dismiss a conflicting point of view, or conflicting news source as fake; and thereby delegitimize those holding it or broadcasting it.

When I was young, I was taught in school how to debate. The debate began by agreeing on the question at hand and the rules of the discussion. Then people would offer their views and evidence in support of one thing or another relative to that question.

In a murder trial, agreement is established ahead of time about the authority of the Court, the laws that apply, the roles of the actors, the rules of procedure, etc. Once those are all established, the trial begins and the truth is determined. Under a different process (where different rules of evidence keep jurors from learning different facts), a different truth may be agreed upon. (Note that the person charged may not accept the authority of the Court, but that does not matter since the power of the state was applied to force the suspect to play the game.)

That does not mean the other truth is fake. It means there are different truths, depending on the context that then applies. And each of us, interprets what we learn, know and feel through the filters we habitually use (often unconsciously).

As with the news, so too with everything else. It's all fake until we assign our meaning to it. In that regard, you and I agree. All news is fake.

So if we accept that, what question can be asked to enable an ultra-liberal and ultra-conservative to agree on what's best for the country? What processes can we use to manage our disputes in a way that does not delegitimize our fellow Americans?
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Except in a lot of those rooms Republican poll watchers weren't allowed in, and then when the vote counters were forced to let them in, they were kept at such a distance that they still couldn't watch every move made by the poll workers.
How many rooms? Was this widespread in multiple states or an isolated instance? How do we know this actually happened? I have not been following this item closely. I did hear the Republicans admitted under oath in a court case that access was granted all along. The claim of no access was false. Details please?
 
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