Tag Archives: Trump

Donald Trump is Being Hoisted with his Own Petard

Posted on by
Reply

It seems to us that the POTUS (the President of the United States) should be dealing with the affairs of the state rather than lobbing bombs of various sizes at social media, especially these days. Twitter was historically benefitted because Trump used it so frequently and thus publicized it. But social media is now lobbing their own bombs. Starting on Memorial Day (May 25), instead of inspiring unity, Twitter applied a fact-checking notice to Trump’s tweets on the subject of voter fraud, non-usage of masks, and other issues. Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to take Trump to task, causing a bunch of Facebook employees to use Twitter to voice their objection. Some of Facebook’s larger advertisers, North Face and Patagonia in particular hit him where it hurts.

Net Neutrality: A Victim of Politics?

Posted on by
1

The current fracas about net neutrality is an example of the worst features of politics and the US’s two-party system. “European diplomats … believe Trump’s foreign policy is chiefly driven by an obsession with unravelling Barack Obama’s policies. “It’s his only real position,” one European diplomat said. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate.”

In the case of Net Neutrality it MIGHT be predictable that even Republicans other than Trump would side with the big companies like Amazon, Comcast, Facebook, and Google. But new FCC head appointed by Trump seems to be going to extremes to kill and bury net neutrality. This is ironical because killing net neutrality is likely to most hurt the voters of the species who put Trump into the White House. We even suspect that many of the “little guys” who are members of this species don’t even understand what net neutrality is and that those little guys are the ones who will suffer most because it is THEY will suffer as they become second-class citizens with regard to information and entertainment they receive via the Internet. Readers of this post who are uncertain as to what net neutrality is would do well to have a look at its definition on Wikipedia or another reliable source of information.

President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai appear to be ignoring the U.S. Declaration of Independence that states “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Given the importance of the Internet today, their attitudes and actions are clearly violating Americans’ pursuit of Happiness.

Why Did Polls Predict 2016 U.S. Presidental Election Result So Badly?

Posted on by
2

presidentialpolls4-550x366

There aren’t many, or any, surveys with more respondents than the polling accompanying U.S. presidential elections. And all such polls have error, both from simple randomness and from non-response bias. This year’s inaccuracy was not the first flagrant example. In 1948 newspapers trumpeted incorrectly that Dewey had beat Truman.

The 2016 election had an important source of randomness and confusion, namely the unpredictable behavior of Donald Trump. And one of the other sources of confusion was the difference between the Electoral College (whose results are the ones used to determine the winner) and the popular vote (which is interesting but not governing). It is still not clear as of November 14 (nearly a week after Election Day), but it appears that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and any polling that dealt mainly with the popular vote could easily draw the wrong conclusion.

Additional errors can arise from the inconsistency among the states regarding mail-in ballots or voting places open as early as September 19. The 46 million early voters (prior to election day) included a large number of unaffiliated (neither Democratic nor Republican) voters, making it hard to predict voter behavior on election day. (The total voter count was 130 million.) Beyond this, voter turnout apparently wasn’t predicted accurately

Traditional telephone polling also was a source of errors. Some people intending to vote for Trump were ashamed to admit it when they were surveyed with live interviews. Automated-dialer calls with recorded voice and Internet polling gave better results. But these calls cannot be used with cellphones.

Of all the analyses of the causes of the inaccuracy of the polls, we found the ones by Sean Trende on Rear Clear Politics the most helpful. Most perceptive was his finding that the polls were OK, but the conclusions by the pundits weren’t.