zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — more on the digging dirt / foreign sources story ]
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It’s all too easy to lose sight of the intriguing parallelism here — but symmetries are worth watching, often revelatory. Good catch by Daniel Nexon:

1. Accusations in this @politico story about the Clinton campaign are potentially analogous with the Trump mess. https://t.co/FgQp1OM8hD

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

2. But that analogy is not a shield for Don Jr., Jared, and the rest.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

3. Members of the Trump omitted multiple contacts—including one now explicitly revealed to involve attempted collusion—from their SF-86s.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

4. At least some of the same people lied repeatedly about their activities and engaged in a concerted campaign of deception to hide them

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

5. But, most importantly, we can't deal in the hypothetical. It's possible that Clinton and her people would've been in the same boat.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

6. We'll never know, though, because she's not POTUS.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

7. The relevant parties in the Clinton campaign aren't running the White House. the biz interests of the President, and/or getting the PDB.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

8. So, maybe Clinton would be looking at possible impeachment for collusion with Kiev. With this Congress, I'm sure it would be a live issue

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

9. Ultimately, such whataboutism is a distraction. Don Jr's revelations have massive national-security implications. Full stop. The end.

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) July 11, 2017

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From January: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire:

Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

[ .. more .. ]

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Your thoughts? — valuable since they’ll no doubt differ from mine..

[ by Charles Cameron — media keeps wildly guessing re matters of protocol ]
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For example..

Trump flashed me a thumbs up as he rode the gold escalator up to his first overseas adventure. pic.twitter.com/PZCmb3JCC4

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 20, 2017

According to guidance for Saudi provided to WH press corps: "The thumbs up gesture is considered rude." https://t.co/ybWcrBTCup

— Carol Lee (@carolelee) May 20, 2017

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Ah, well, no one can say Trump is not sensitive:

Many people are saying it was wonderful that Mrs. Obama refused to wear a scarf in Saudi Arabia, but they were insulted.We have enuf enemies

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2015

Oops:

Melania is not wearing any veil. pic.twitter.com/25QwgPgAHC

— Eddie Du (@Edourdoo) May 20, 2017

And then again:

@akhbar Pffff. Hardly any Western female personality wears a scarf during visit to Saudi Arabia. May, Merkel, Michelle. Such a non-story. @akhbar pic.twitter.com/IghtzMCGO7

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) May 20, 2017

@AP Michelle Obama, Laura Bush,Hilary Clinton,Angela Merkel,Condi Rice are just a short list of powerful women who DID NOT wear a head scarf!

— Jane (@txgforever) May 20, 2017

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Oops again:

If this were Obama, conservative headlines would read: @POTUS BOWS TO SAUDI KING!!! #maga #trumptrain #Deplorable pic.twitter.com/VpBU7Cpzr1

— Bryan W. Van Norden (@BryanVanNorden) May 20, 2017

Nope, he was bending to receive a medal around his neck.

So far so good — nobody seems to know what’s what, but ni disasters have been spotted. . The first major test is yet to come. As the Washington Post puts it, Trump campaigned against Muslims, but will preach tolerance in Saudi speech.

That will be quite a trick — but not impossible if his speech writer has been reading Will McCants.

And I suspect Melania is the President’s trump card in all this..

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Oh, and now this, for good measure:

Not true at all that the thumbs-up is rude in the Middle East. Banning Muslims and saying "Islam hates us" is a different story. https://t.co/USB7PPN6Mh

— DavidKenner (@DavidKenner) May 20, 2017

I’m reminded of roulette..

[ by Charles Cameron — not a weatherman myself, though I do appreciate Bob Dylan ]
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Is what I suggest here ridiculous, or important but largely overlooked, or well known and in general background awareness? What say you? I just want to air the topic..

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There’s a lot of talk about swing voters, right? A Brookings Institution chapter, What Exactly Is a Swing Voter? Definition and Measurement runs to 31 pages and 27 footnotes explaining the concept, but I think there’s one swing vote they may be missing.

I came to this conclusion after pondering the whole question of margins of error in polls. It’s generally accepted that polls have margins of error, often in the mid-single digits. Margins of error call forth interesting analytics, too — see this graphic and accompanying comment from Pew, 5 key things to know about the margin of error in election polls:

For example, in the accompanying graphic, a hypothetical Poll A shows the Republican candidate with 48% support. A plus or minus 3 percentage point margin of error would mean that 48% Republican support is within the range of what we would expect if the true level of support in the full population lies somewhere 3 points in either direction – i.e., between 45% and 51%.

Even a relatively small margins of error can be enough to encourage misreading an upcoming election result, but the margin of error I’m thinking of is in the range of 35% of undecideds. Let’s call it the weathervane vote.

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Consider this quote from Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President, 1960:

The weather was clear all across Massachusetts and New England, perfect for voting as far as the crest of the Alleghenies. But from Michigan through Illinois and the Northern Plains states it was cloudy: rain in Detroit and Chicago, light snow falling in some states on the approaches of the Rockies. The South was enjoying magnificently balmy weather which ran north as far as the Ohio River; so, too, was the entire Pacific Coast. The weather and the year’s efforts were to call out the greatest free vote in the history of this or any other country.

That’s also the epigraph to another piece of learned disquisition — and yes, I love (envy, mock) academics — The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections. That’s from The Journal of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 3, August 2007, pp. 649–663.

Parasols or umbrellas?

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But my figure of 35%?

First, let me admit i’m not exactly clear on the distinctions or overlaps between swing voters and undecideds, so I may be adding my own margin of error by conflating the two — but my 35% comes from a 2012 piece titled Bad Weather on Election Day? Many Won’t Vote. I think my favorite bullet point therein was this:

In bad weather, Mitt Romney supporters are more likely to vote.

Their lead paragraph gives me my 35% figure:

Among those who plan to vote this year, 35 percent of undecided voters say that inclement weather conditions would have a “moderate to significant” impact on whether they make it to the polls on Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

Don’t ask the the margin of error on that particular poll, though, the good folks at Weather.com failed to say.

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My favorite weathervane to date:

Bottom line: If 35% of the swing vote hinges on which way the wind blows, I’m prone to thinking the weather may well have the deciding vote in this here election.

Hat-tip for pointing me to the 35% piece: rockin’ andee baker.

[ by Charles Cameron — the only virtue I can see in this darkness is that the light contrasts with it ]
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I find this frankly horrifying:

Sold at Trump rally at Regent U pic.twitter.com/NB57JJlQHV

— Peter Montgomery (@petemont) October 22, 2016

This, at a supposedly Christian university?

Feh.

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Mark you, I think targeting an individual — any individual –in this way is very different from targeting contested seats in an election. I can understand both Democrats and Republicans using the imagery of targets or cross-hairs to suggest where they’d like their supporters to get active, get out the vote and win seats..

I said as much in On sneers, smears, and mutual sniping:

Neither “targetting” political adversaries nor “having them in your crosshairs” equates to killing or there would have been a whole lot more attempted assassinations — just the one was bad enough.

Have some proportion, people.

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However, as an inveterate DoubleTweeter I have to say that pinning targets or cross-hairs on individual leaders in highly charged political disputes speaks a wholly different language, and presents a far higher threat level, than targeting districts on an electoral map:

Similar images from Israel before Rabin's assassination in 1995: Netanyahu also fostered environment of hatred @cjwerleman @petemont pic.twitter.com/yZN85dT3If

— The Post Doc wanter (@derridalicious) October 22, 2016

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For the record, I find this no less offensive:

[ by Charles Cameron — artificial intelligence at the intersection of religion and politics ]
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Our own J Scott Shipman posted what I term a DoubleQuote on Facebook this morning, offering a juxtaposition of politician Hillary Clinton and preacher Benny Hinn:

I’ve enlarged it and cropped it lengthwise to give you a proper appreciation of the comparison.

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Okay, I thought, Scott’s doing an informal DoubleQuote, let me see if I can find the two images and rework them into one of my regular DoubleQuote formats. Only it wasn’t that easy. The only versions of the Hinn photo I could find were too small for my format, and the Hillary image wasn’t a photo but a screencap from a video — I could find a similar screencap from another TV channel, but not the exact one Scott had found.

As you’ve seen above, I finally settled for cropping and enlarging the image Scott had provided — but along the way I ran across another instance of the intelligence of artifice — in this case, Google Image Search’s recognition technology:

Ah — but spokesperson for what or whom?

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I’m relieved to say that while Google is in general a brilliant, cutting-edge, genius of a search engine, it’s clearly not following the current Presidential race with any enthusiasm.

You see that lady? She’s one of the candidates, and she was on several TV channels and online streaming sites just last night.

There’s another candidate, who probably looks pretty much the same to you:

I don’t think my telling you all this will make you more artificially intelligent — but it might make you a little better informed about current affairs.