Bill Maher For President - 2028

[Swammerdami]

My bookmarks are scattered hither and yon! But Google quickly found links to some related studies. Or, do I need to say, to conform with your Trumpist world-view, "supposed studies"?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272714000929

First one is behind the paywall, the second one is mostly behind the paywall. I still think the methodology of using google searches is questionable at best. It also flies in the face of the fact that Obama won decisively in 2008. But in any case, the meat of the study, the results section, is locked behind the paywall.

Sheeez. You need your hand held for everything? This should get you the 2nd paper:

The Cost of Racial Animus on a Black Presidential Candidate: Using Google Search Data to Find What Surveys Miss

How can we know how much racial animus costs a black candidate if few will admit such socially unacceptable attitudes to surveys? I suggest a new proxy for an a

papers.ssrn.com

You make a couple of cookie-related clicks and locate and click the "Open PDF in Browser" box.

How can we know how much racial animus costs a black candidate if few will ad-
mit such socially unacceptable attitudes to surveys? I suggest a new proxy for an
area’s racial animus from a non-survey source: the percent of Google search queries
that include racially charged language. I compare the proxy to Barack Obama’s 2008
and 2012 vote shares, controlling for the vote share of the 2004 Democratic presiden-
tial candidate, John Kerry. Previous research using a similar specification but survey
proxies for racial attitudes yielded little evidence that racial attitudes affected Obama.
An area’s racially charged search rate, in contrast, is a robust negative predictor of
Obama’s vote share. Continuing racial animus in the United States appears to have
cost Obama roughly four percentage points of the national popular vote in both 2008
and 2012, giving his opponent the equivalent of a home-state advantage nationally.

Rather than simple counts, the Google data measures the intensity of racial animus. As for Obama winning decisively, get someone with a clue to explain (a) the "8-year switch" (which failed in my lifetime only in 1988 and 2020), (b) Katrina, (c) Iraq, (d) the utter stupidity of choosing Palin as running-mate. ANY Democrat would have won that election in a landslide.

But consider 2012. Obama had the incumbent's advantage and a very successful 1st term. yet won by a narrow 51-47 margin. That you think Obama's race didn't matter shows how hopelessly wrong almost all your political understanding is.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Her penchant for woo should be a disqualifier.

we now know from Trump that the notion of “disqualifiers” is dead.

Other than minimum age, natural born citizenship, and term limit. And I’m not even confident in those anymore, given the current SCOTUS.

 

[Toni]

Well, in Winfrey’s favor, she does not appear to be a sociopath and she seems to have gained her wealth and fame by the dint of her own hard work and of course, considerable luck. On the downside, she tends to fall for some woo ( Dr. Oz).

Her penchant for woo should be a disqualifier.
And funny how the Left thinks only rich entertainers work hard, but rich businesspeople like Musk or Bezos did not.

But she’s been immensely popular with the masses ( sorry, guys but women actually do count) and would certainly attract a lot of votes.

Women do count, but so do men. And I can't see WInfrey appeal to many of us.

None of this is any indication that she’d be a good head of state but she’d beat the hell out of Trump, any of his family or cult members

Wishful thinking. She would turn a lot of people off.

I agree that her falling for woo is a disqualifier. Which is why I mentioned it.

The fact that you see me as a leftist and that I acknowledge Winfrey's hard work (and good luck) does not mean that I only see rich entertainers as hard workers. She's rich, she's an entertainer/philanthropist and she worked really hard to get there. AFAIK, she does not underpay or mistreat others or steal the ideas of others and claim them as her own in order to enrich herself. And, as I mentioned, she does not appear to be a sociopath, which I think that Musk seems to be and perhaps Bezos as well but he at least has the good sense to not put his character on such display as Musk.

That said, I think that society is wrong to allow people to amass such wealth that laws no longer appear to apply to them. Specifically, American society. Our country is founded on the principle that all are created equal under the law and all should be treated the same under the law. Reality is quite different and when one looks at the uber wealthy, it is extremely obvious.

 

[Toni]

I think you really do give short shrift to Hillary’s qualifications.

Am I? I do not think her unqualified, but far from being "most qualified candidate ever" as repeated on here as well as elsewhere. I think that, just like calling her "smartest woman in America" are gross exaggerations.

By all accounts, she seems to have been very actively involved in helping formulate her husband’s positions when he was governor and when he was POTUS. Indeed, she was more like Mrs. Wilson than either Mrs. Bush or Mrs. Kennedy or Mrs. Eisenhower or Mrs.Nixon and a hell of a lot more extracted and informed than Mrs. Reagan ( or Mr.).

Wilson was pretty much incapacitated by the closing stages of his presidency. I do not think that situation is at all comparable to the Clintons.

What Bill had that Hillary dud not, aside from male genitalia, was a greater degree of personal charisma.

Indeed. She has no charisma.

Hillary was stuck being a woman in a man’s world and felt it necessary to act more ‘manly’ than ‘womanly’ but in fact, she would have been and was pilloried for either.

I do not think it's her sex that held her back. Quite the opposite. Had Hillary been born a boy, say Hildebrand Rodham, he would have been a successful corporate lawyer or something, but would not have entered politics. Unless, perhaps, he met Wilhelmina Clinton (she goes by Billie) and became the first First Gentleman in 1992 ...

I did not vote for Bill

You did not vote for Bill? Who did you vote then? Perot?

I guess that's where Katie Porter got that thing with the whiteboards ...

and Hillary was not my first choice candidate but I did vote for her.

I could not stomach voting for either of the 2016 major candidates. Certainly not for Hillary after she wrote an op-ed saying that women should get lesser criminal sentences than men for the same crime.
Hillary Clinton: Women and prison – the cost in money and lives

I know someone who knows someone who went to school with Hillary. (yeah, I know, I know). The story is and was long before her run for POTUS that she would someday be POTUS, back in her college days. This, btw, was related to me before any of her runs at POTUS. She is personally ambitious and I believe that she has the intelligence and demeanor and skill set to be effective as POTUS. She seems to have earned a great deal of respect from world leaders. It's really in the US that she has problems.

I think that Hillary was born in the wrong time, when women, in order to be taken seriously and to succeed at high levels, needed to act like men: Flatten out anything that could be pinned on them as too emotional or weak. But I've never met the woman, so I honestly am just writing my own impressions and my own observations from life. I also think that marrying Bill was a big part of her downfall. For a lot of reasons.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Of course Hillary gained invaluable insight when she was First Lady. She was an active participant in Bill's administration and was politically active and well educated prior to that. For a terrible and brief time when I was young I spent almost a year working as a document printer at a title insurance company. Just being there helped me learn important things about that business--who was who, how the process worked, what the culture was like, etc.

Hillary spent 8 years in that environment and people expect that she came away having learned nothing? ... why the hell am I having to explain this???

 

[Swammerdami]

"Charisma" is hard to define and hard to measure. And different people will have different opinions. I watch Elizabeth Warren on YouTube and think she has magnificent charisma; yet voters don't seem to think so.

During the 2nd Millennium charisma was an important quality for statesmen because it could help unify a nation. This is no longer the case in post-rational Amerika, as tens of millions of sick Americans will just hate whomever Tucker Carlson, Facebook and Vladimir Putin tell them to hate. Yet charisma is still important just to get elected.

Most of the hatred directed against Hillary comes from lying or confused propagandists on the Right or on the Left. (I include "Left" because many progressives stupidly regard her as a war-monger.) Still, most of us would admit that -- despite the famous seven-minute standing ovation -- her oratory style lacks a "charismatic" rapport.

But even giving her big demerits for lack of charisma, she is still one of the most qualified Presidential candidates ever. Eleanor Roosevelt (although never a political candidate AFAIK) is the only American political woman I can think of who might have been as "qualified" as Hillary.

I compare with other women not out of misogyny, or to make a two-tier ranking but just because there have been several male Presidents with very high qualifications (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and even John Q. Adams come to mind) or ambiguous qualifications: I think Dwight D. Eisenhower was quite qualified despite a relatively barren one-track biography. Lyndon B. Johnson was very qualified. And so on.

But Sarah Palin? Famous for being unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads? It's impossible to think about her "qualifications" without bursting into laughter. Not only is she the least qualified person ever to run on a national ticket, but whoever is in 2nd-place for "least qualified" must be a VERY distant 2nd place. No need to expound the point; anyone with even a tiny clue knows what I'm talking about. An ignoramus might blame Tina Fey and her caricature -- But Tina Fey is hugely MORE qualified than Palin.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This is why I was stunned and disappointed to find one Infidel spend long minutes denouncing Clinton's qualifications while praising Palin. Unbelievable. I've been gullible my entire life, giving people the benefit of the doubt; but now we know that everything from the pen of that Infidel is just pro-QOPAnon vomit. That Infidel -- sometimes I call him Creed's Anagram -- has told us he doesn't vote for Trump and gullible me believed him! I'm humble enough to admit my errors. Gullible Swammi is a slow learner but no longer believes that baffling pretense from a "card-carrying" member of the QOPAnon Bullshit Machine.

 

[TSwizzle]

Not only is she (Palin) the least qualified person ever to run on a national ticket, but whoever is in 2nd-place for "least qualified" must be a VERY distant 2nd place.

Nah, Kamala Harris is waaaaay in front.

 

[Derec]

Dang! Never thought I would say this, but I think Southpark may have crossed a line there.

"The Snuke" episode came out in 2007, a time when people were a bit less uptight than now. It's a fun episode - organized like the then running show 24. Remember that one, with Kiefer Sutherland?

 

[Colonel Sanders]

"Charisma" is hard to define and hard to measure. And different people will have different opinions. I watch Elizabeth Warren on YouTube and think she has magnificent charisma; yet voters don't seem to think so.

During the 2nd Millennium charisma was an important quality for statesmen because it could help unify a nation. This is no longer the case in post-rational Amerika, as tens of millions of sick Americans will just hate whomever Tucker Carlson, Facebook and Vladimir Putin tell them to hate. Yet charisma is still important just to get elected.

I try to make this point to people about Reagan to people who weren't old enough to have seen him in action. Hate him and his destructive policies all you want. Be rightfully outraged at Iran-Contra. Feel disgusted at his attitudes towards minorities and gay people. That's fine.

But there was no denying his charisma. Carter and Mondale never stood a chance.

 

[Patooka]

"Charisma" is hard to define and hard to measure

Nope. It determines the amounts of spells you can cast per level. Very clear and easy to measure.

 

[TSwizzle]

Oh Hillary;

A social media post made by Hillary Clinton to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day has been branded as 'sick and disgusting'.
The Democrat, compared the fight against Nazi Germany to voting against Trump in November. The former Secretary of State said in her post: ‘Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote’, she said in the post to her X account, which has been widely criticized.

Daily Mail

 

[thebeave]

Oh Hillary;

A social media post made by Hillary Clinton to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day has been branded as 'sick and disgusting'.
The Democrat, compared the fight against Nazi Germany to voting against Trump in November. The former Secretary of State said in her post: ‘Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote’, she said in the post to her X account, which has been widely criticized.

Daily Mail

Well, you should give her a little credit. At least she didn't say the women back home on D-Day had it worse.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trump has also questioned, generally, the point of going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, given his belief those wars were ill-advised. The President has wondered aloud “what did they get out of it?,” the same source told CNN.

The source spoke with CNN following Trump’s forceful denial of a story in The Atlantic magazine Thursday that he had disparaged US service members killed in battle and chose to skip a ceremony honoring veterans.

The Atlantic specifically reported that Trump didn’t want to attend a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 because he was concerned that the rain would ruin his hair. Trump said the US Secret Service prevented him from flying to attend the ceremony due to the weather conditions.

Later Saturday, a former senior administration official confirmed to CNN that Trump referred to fallen US service members at the Aisne-Marne cemetery in crude and derogatory terms during the November 2018 trip to France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

The former official, who declined to be named, largely confirmed reporting from Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine.

Fox News, the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post have also corroborated various parts of The Atlantic’s reporting.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/05/politics/trump-vietnam-war/index.html

Stern responded, "I even went as far to say that you're braver than any Vietnam vet because you're out there screwing a lot of women."

"Getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, in actuality," said Trump.

Later in the interview Trump and Stern again compared avoiding STDs to Vietnam.

"I'm having a good time, but Howard, you know the one negative: It's very, very dangerous out there," said Trump.

"Yes it is, it's your Vietnam," added Stern.

"It's Vietnam," added Trump. "It is very dangerous. So I'm very, very careful."

Trump, comparing sex to Vietnam, said in 1998 he should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor

In a previously unreported 1998 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump compared sex to going to battle in Vietnam and joked he should be getting the Congressional Medal of Honor.

money.cnn.com

Oh Donald...

 

[bilby]

Oh Hillary;

A social media post made by Hillary Clinton to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day has been branded as 'sick and disgusting'.
The Democrat, compared the fight against Nazi Germany to voting against Trump in November. The former Secretary of State said in her post: ‘Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote’, she said in the post to her X account, which has been widely criticized.

...particularly by neo-nazi enablers, such as the
Daily Mail

FTFY.

Of course it's been criticized. The Daily Mail and her supporters are not at all in favour of people pointing out the fact that a Trump victory would be a disaster for freedom and democracy.

Note that their complaint isn't that she's wrong.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"Charisma" is hard to define and hard to measure

Nope. It determines the amounts of spells you can cast per level. Very clear and easy to measure.

The problem is we should be electing clerics, not sorcerers!

(Cleric as in maximizing wisdom, not cleric as in theocracy.)

(Besides, you have cause and effect backwards. A sorcerer can determine their charisma by how much they can cast but has no inherent ability to measure it. You're mixing them up with what their player knows. Besides, since we seem to be living on a magically suppressed world where nobody can cast anything how would they know?)

 

[barbos]

He'll also be in his 70s in 2028.

True, But he does not have dementia, unlike current thing in the White House.

 

[Swammerdami]

I just heard about  Purity Spiral. I'd never heard of it before, but it has had its own Wiki page for 12 months. I attach an article showing how even an on-line knitting discussion was brought down by participants who competed to see who was most "woke."

I didn't know where to post it, but a Bill Maher thread seemed like a good fit. He agrees with us rational thinkers that woke-ism in post-rational America goes WAY too far. The condemnation he gets on this Board is part of our own "purity spiral."

How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral

A process of moral outbidding is corroding small communities from within

unherd.com

 

[Derec]

Right on! You can see the effect in the vitriolic response I got in the October Surprise thread for daring to criticize one of Kamala Harris' policy positions.

I also found this interesting from the article:

Lindsay pointed to the atheist movement of the mid-2000s, from which he’d come: a community that once had the wind in its sails, but had imploded into infighting by 2011, as half of its members jagged off in an social justice direction. Soon enough, the likes of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins were being problematised as stale, male and pale. The rules on who could speak became more byzantine, and, eventually, half the audience stopped bothering. These days, there are effectively two communities bearing the New Atheism tag, each much weaker and less coherent.

I remember this when it was happening. Things like Elevatorgate, Atheism+ and deplatforming Richard Dawkins for not toeing the party line is what soured me on the organized atheism movement, as it did many others.

 

[Derec]

The problem is we should be electing clerics, not sorcerers!

How about paladins?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is we should be electing clerics, not sorcerers!

How about paladins?

Paladins can't exist in a world without a benign GM ensuring they're never faced with an impossible choice.