Place yer bets, Ladies and Gents!

John Stossel, America's well-known Libertarian journalist, co-sponsors this site. In the last several elections, they've been remarkably accurate in predicting outcomes... thought they did miss the Bi*den win of 2020. Anyway, I'm keeping it open on a browser tab today just to watch as trends move this way and that.

electionbettingodds.com/

NE, I don't think it matters at this point. We aren't going to push a RESET button and get the last 4 years back. For better or worse, time has moved on. I prefer to focus on what I can affect: the present and the future. As a student of history, I find that groups stuck in the past get left behind and fall into obscurity.

"The South will rise again..." doesn't resonate with me.

I am going to have to side with NE on this one.

As a student of reality, I know

Note that election BETTING odds are very different than actual data.

Even in their own data, it shows that when the betting odds had someone in the "50-59.99% bucket" (which is where they have Trump right now at 57.4%), that person ACTUALLY won in their tracked data only about 41% of the time.

In other words, with Trump at 57.4% for "betting odds" right now, he is more likely to LOSE than win based on how their previous odds have gone.

I know that can be confusing -- but betting odds are very different from poll results.

Also, to note it, this site had Michelle Obama in the list with greater than 0 odds just a couple months ago.

But it is going to be an interesting day (or week or month) for sure...

Rick is right.

Rick is right.

Morning... Anyone win any money off the betting site? Just curious.

I know there are probably some folks who are pretty upset right now. I'm not here to mock or demean anyone. I'm not 100% happy with all of the outcomes from last night either. My state passed some ballot initiatives, one of which I was strongly opposed to. And that's how this system works: we don't always get everything we want, but we do get to strive for the outcome desired next time.

All the best. Rent on!

Well, it's a crazy world.

How the Democrats with their well-oiled well-funded machine can consistently pick such poor candidates is astounding.

And how the Republicans, who step on their own feet in the dark, were able to pick a candidate at least half the country wanted to vote for (he won the popular vote by a smidge too) is sheer luck.

But what this election has opened my eyes FULLY to - I already knew it but this time it was so jaw-droppingly clear - is that our legacy media is useless, bought & paid for, corrupt. They pulled the wool over people's eyes, repeated talking points that were not their own, and lead viewers to think a Dem win was inevitable when it was clear, if you paid attention, that it was not.

I'll tell you what gives me hope:

Trump is not going to enact nationwide rent-control. He is not going to fund tenants against landlords.

Me? There was one winner - the media.

They got what they wanted - voters depending on them and building their viewership by focusing on one candidate.

Algorithms gave me only what I wanted to hear, not both sides, and same to the other side.

Like the book 1984, the media changed the vocabulary.

I like Musk's comment that podcasts will be the future of how we truly learn about a candidate - long discussion, get to know the real person...NOT the twisted soundbites we got in this race.

The media, THEY are the ones who polarized the country and got people giving more credence to talking heads than to what the candidates ACTUALLY said vs what the media WANTED us to think.

They turned the race into a middle school popularity contest with lies.

The book 1984 - Politi-speak. Propaganda. Shift the wording.

The media accomplished their goal of making themselves the most important thing.

I talked with a dear friend at Convention and mentioned I was genuinely concerned about Biden, as a fellow human being, seemed to be sliding downhill. She thought I was being negative.

Then I realized HER favorite news sources never showed the videos of him tripping, halted speech, confusion, etc. I miss journalism and Walter Cronkite. Plus he looked like my Grandfather.

BRAD

I watch Podcasts. My favorite is Triggernometry. Those guys are great.

Just people talking is so much more informative if not more entertaining with sound bites.

I know the legacy media is lying to us because I saw the full clips that were then clipped like a bad haircut, so that the person looked like a monster or a rose according to which channel you were watching.

Have yet to talk to my daughter. Told the wife that we need to sell this new place fast like so we can buy the kid's place since she will be moving to Canada.

Don't recall her saying that, but she has drank the kool-aid for sure and expects the end of the world to happen because he got in.

Some of the better podcasts I saw were Joe Rogan's lengthy interviews with T*rump and V*ance. Unscripted, 3 hours long. The H*arris campaign had a chance to interview with Rogan as well, but wanted him to travel to her location, they wanted to do only 1 hour, and wanted people in the room with them, similar to the Baier interview where people were "waving him off" of certain questions they knew would be disasters if she actually had to give answers.

I don't give the public media an ounce of credibility. It was going downhill pre-2020, and then they utterly blew it on C-19. Independent journalists are all we have remaining, and even they have biases. We have to take anything we hear or see with the assumption that someone is trying to persuade us or dictate to us, even if it's only based on what they choose to cover vs. ignore.

The days of, "And that's the way it is." are gone, unfortunately.

NE: "The best way to get news is just turn everything off."

NE only two minutes later: "Have you all seen the video of Obama!!????"

Might want to start taking your own advice...

Consider each or our recent 2 main choices for president. If you looked at their track records, broken promises, extreme viewpoints, I don't think either would be considered tenant worthy.

Sad state of affairs when these are the 2 choices for who runs our country.

And yet he never has been found guilty.

Who are the accusers and what exactly is their background?

Some of the things you mentioned, JAC, would apply to the other as well.

Humans just love to put blame on someone else. It is a human condition.

He would be in jail and not President wouldn't he?

I admit I LOVED watching David Muir and other reporters/talking heads who hated on Trump for sooo long, now stumbling as they back-pedaled now saying she failed to do this or that, and how he was so smart.

Gotta talk nicey nice so they can get an interview with him and his peeps.

BRAD

JAC, this was an anti-Harris/Walz vote. Had the well-oiled, well-funded, frankly very well-run Democratic Machine been able to read the room, they would have known that letting the far-left extremists control the party was going to drive away the middle of the road, normal voters who just care about their kids, including housing, feeding and educating them. They care about their safety, their livelihoods and their future. They are not racist nor are they anti-immigrant: just anti-illegal immigration. Close the border for gawd's sake.

Harris is wildly too far left: her stated positions during her own aborted run did not attract anyone, and Walz is a SELF-DESCRIBED Knucklehead. She didn't want Shapiro because he was JEWISH (and they call Trump a N*azi.) She could have walked back her support for Biden's failed policies but chose not to. She could have explained her own positions and given us some hope of new plan but chose not to (or couldn't.)

It was a train wreck.

My newly-high hopes for the future are NOT based on Trump: at 78, this is his last hurrah but he has opened the door for new blood: Vivek, Vance, Tulsi, Musk...new ideas are needed. Let's hope the Dems can also come up with some.

NE, women are probably best with babies/toddlers, tis true. Not always but sometimes. But when they get even a tiny bit older, Dads can do the job as well or better.

And with women earning the majority of degrees these days, and earning at least the same as men, a SAHD might make more sense both financially and with the actual raising of the kids, especially boys but also girls: girls are very affected by their dads, so having a good one at home is...well...good!

Having been one, I don't like to admit it, but kids raised in Single-mom households are proven to be less well-adjusted than kids raised in two-parent OR single dad households. So it's okay for a dad to be the caregiver if it makes sense for the family financially.

"She didn't want Shapiro because he was JEWISH"

JAC, Perception is reality. Everyone is certain that they know something, yet everyone understands very little.

WMH was watching a different legacy media than I was if the media she was watching was stating that a Democratic win is inevitable.

Brad is right. Everyone has to be wary of the algorithms feeding you.

Dodge has a point in considering whether a candidate would be tenant worthy.

JAC, Trump largely won because 1) he ensured the immigration issue was forefront and 2) he was successful in keeping Democrats as being perceived to be primarily focused on culture issues rather than other issues.

Democratic President Obama left office after 2016 being called the "deporter in chief" for the numbers of people he had deported in comparison with earlier administrations. In the 2016 elections, Trump made decades old manageable weaknesses of our border a central portion of his campaign. He did this prior to the 2016 elections, and again in the run up to the 2024 elections.

This put a great big spotlight on where and how to get in. This got lots of media attention, and lots more people from other countries and continents got in on the big adventure. Think of it as a 21st century version of the Oregon Trail and the newspaper phrase "Go West, young man, Go West." Except this became "Go North". When you suddenly have miles of people walking from southern countries to your border, and when you have people flying into Mexico from China like they are on vacation and then joining the line to walk across the border, you know that someone has been very successful in getting out a message.

Trump is a great marketer. He's an expert at "Create the problem, sell the solution." Or in this case, highlight a manageable problem, attract enough border crossing miscreants so that it becomes unmanageable, and then say "Only I can solve it." And when Congress comes up with a bipartisan bill to stem the flow, make certain that the bill is killed so that you have that issue to continue to run on. That delay was enough to allow Venezuelan gangs to get a foothold in some places. We will be cleaning up that for years.

This marketing tactic is no different than the tactics of computer anti-malware providers highlighting weaknesses, attracting hackers, publicizing the hackers' successful exploits, and then selling you software to protect yourself. But the social impacts are much greater in the immigration case.

For all his talk, the number of deportations under Trump were less than the number of deportations under Obama. The number of deportations under Biden are on track to match those of Trump. But the problem is no longer with the number of deportations. It is now stemming the increased number of arrivals who were following Trump's Batman signal light.

This is not name calling any particular candidate or party. Both have their positives and negatives. This is simply stating what is obvious to those who are aware of very successful marketing campaigns. Politics is largely about marketing. Republicans are better marketers. WMH is wrong that the Democratic Machine is well-oiled and well run. Those flaws in the machine are outside of anything Biden or Harris control. But that is a whole other topic for a different forum.

JAC, Perception is reality. Everyone is certain that they know something, yet everyone understands very little.

WMH was watching a different legacy media than I was if the media she was watching was stating that a Democratic win is inevitable.

Brad is right. Everyone has to be wary of the algorithms feeding you.

Dodge has a point in considering whether a candidate would be tenant worthy.

JAC, Trump largely won because 1) he ensured the immigration issue was forefront and 2) he was successful in keeping Democrats as being perceived to be primarily focused on culture issues rather than other issues.

Democratic President Obama left office after 2016 being called the "deporter in chief" for the numbers of people he had deported in comparison with earlier administrations. In the 2016 elections, Trump made decades old manageable weaknesses of our border a central portion of his campaign. He did this prior to the 2016 elections, and again in the run up to the 2024 elections.

This put a great big spotlight on where and how to get in. This got lots of media attention, and lots more people from other countries and continents got in on the big adventure. Think of it as a 21st century version of the Oregon Trail and the newspaper phrase "Go West, young man, Go West." Except this became "Go North". When you suddenly have miles of people walking from southern countries to your border, and when you have people flying into Mexico from China like they are on vacation and then joining the line to walk across the border, you know that someone has been very successful in getting out a message.

Trump is a great marketer. He's an expert at "Create the problem, sell the solution." Or in this case, highlight a manageable problem, attract enough border crossing miscreants so that it becomes unmanageable, and then say "Only I can solve it." And when Congress comes up with a bipartisan bill to stem the flow, make certain that the bill is killed so that you have that issue to continue to run on. That delay was enough to allow Venezuelan gangs to get a foothold in some places. We will be cleaning up that for years.

This marketing tactic is no different than the tactics of computer anti-malware providers highlighting weaknesses, attracting hackers, publicizing the hackers' successful exploits, and then selling you software to protect yourself. But the social impacts are much greater in the immigration case.

For all his talk, the number of deportations under Trump were less than the number of deportations under Obama. The number of deportations under Biden are on track to match those of Trump. But the problem is no longer with the number of deportations. It is now stemming the increased number of arrivals who were following Trump's Batman signal light.

This is not name calling any particular candidate or party. Both have their positives and negatives. This is simply stating what is obvious to those who are aware of very successful marketing campaigns. Politics is largely about marketing. Republicans are better marketers. WMH is wrong that the Democratic Machine is well-oiled and well run. Those flaws in the machine are outside of anything Biden or Harris control. But that is a whole other topic for a different forum.

"...Trump largely won because 1) he ensured the immigration issue was forefront and 2) he was successful in keeping Democrats as being perceived to be primarily focused on culture issues rather than other issues."

I don't totally agree.

1) Because Biden removed the "Remain In Mexico" mandate and other immigration initiatives, the open border came back into focus, and not because of Trump. The Dem Machine did it to themselves, and then the GOP made headlines by transporting illegals out of Texas and other border states up to, famously, Martha's Vineyard, NYC and other sanctuary cities, who were promptly overrun and overwhelmed. Residents were horrified and their eyes were opened.

2) Culture became a HUGE issue during and after the pandemic and not because of Trump. Trans issues in sports, schools, and corporate HQs went front and center. DEI issues became overwhelming and ridiculous. "Gays for Paletine?"

On and on...

There were so many people who voted for Trump first term but swore after January 6th never again...and then Biden happened, and then Harris happened...

NE, Many things are just a person's opinion. You are applauded for admitting yours.

6x6 and WMH,

There is a problem solving method called the 5 Whys. It is designed to get past the outward symptoms and reveal the underlying causes. Instead of addressing a wet cabinet floor by wiping up the water, you keep asking why that happened until you identify the leaking pipe that is causing it. So you fix the pipe, which is probably the causal issue that happened, instead of addressing the wet floor, which is the most recent and most obvious thing that happened.

This approach can be used to pinpoint major turning points for many things, including the border problem. Here is one variation of the technique. It is up to the person doing the interpreting to determine how far back to go. That is, what is different in the world that caused some other event? Then what was different that caused the prior event, and so on until you find a significant turning point, rather than a reactionary turning point. A significant turning point would be when a situation majorly changed from the status quo that it had been at for the past 5, 10, 15, or more years, or whatever applicable time units. A reactionary turning point would be when a situation changes because someone or something is trying or has recently tried to address a problem and the whole situation is still in a state of flux. A set of reactionary turning points can eventually become classified as a significant turning point, but only after things settle down to steady state, which takes time. It can get a more complicated than this, but that is the gist of at least one variation of the technique.

So, 6x6, Biden opening the border would be a reactionary turning point. And WMH, the more recent initiatives on both sides are also reactionary turning points. So the question is, how far back do you go to find a steady state condition, even if that steady state was not a perfect condition?

6x6 likes theoretical and philosophical posts. So most of this post is largely for him.

The most qualified Man won

while Chuckles McKneepads lost.

Chuckles and nice hair obviously fit. RB and 6x6, can you explain the rest of the nickname? I am not up on the latest lingo.