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Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #632 –
It seems like reality is starting to bite the Trump camp.  Not only is he slipping behind in the head to head polls but Clinton's lead in the Democrat held states is ballooning.  Unless Trump can make significant inroads in those states, Clinton is home and hosed.

Trump's pleas for Republican support are becoming more strident and the responses are becoming more negative. 
“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?”  Oddball

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #634 –
From what I heard, these were all retrieved before the FBI ruled out prosecution, so that decision is not affected by these e-mails.  Their release to the public is the only new feature and what impact they will have on public opinion depends on what is in them.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #635 –
Crooked Hillary & Slick Willy for Prison.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #636 –
The email scandal doesn't seem to be biting.  Multiple polls in the eleven "battleground" states have Clinton leading by 2-11% and the weighted average is Clinton 45.2% to Trump 39%.

Interestingly, nearly one in four voters polled say that they don't support Clinton or Trump. 
“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?”  Oddball

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #637 –
Not surprising, really, as it's a 'process issue'.  Those issues are less important to most voters than substantive policies.  At its worst, foreign spies might have hacked the emails but that can't be proved even if it can't be excluded.  But Russia and China are pretty good at hacking into government computers anyway, so there's nothing to say the emails would have been safe anyway.  It may be that she was partly motivated by the desire to use her mobile phone to process emails as she travelled and the government system was cumbersome.  Many suspect it was to avoid FOI access to the emails, though she denies that (and as it turns out, they have been released anyway).  The greatest problem has been that she's done a Fonzie by trying to justify herself.  Those attempts have failed badly and she has just dug a hole for herself.  It looks, though, that she has finally learnt her lesson and she is giving an unqualified apology.  When questioned about Colin Powell's denial that he told her to use her private email before she had already started doing so, she said she took full responsibility for her error and she wasn't going to try to shift blame.  If she keeps on doing that, she'll stop feeding the story.  It will still erupt as a story from time to time but she won't exacerbate the negative impact on her credibility by being evasive.

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #638 –
Trump is up against the clock now.  Deep into the last quarter, he's still several goals down.

There are only 70 days left until 8 November, but Minnesota opens early voting in just 26 days and 32 other States start voting shortly after that. 

He's still making unforced errors which will make it hard for him to rebound. 

Last week was all about a shift in immigration policy away from immédiate and permanent deportation of the roughly 11 million undocumented Mexicans before doing a U-turn and pledging to order mass deportation within an hour of becoming President.

Then he took to Twitter to celebrate the murder of a black NFL star's first cousin as he thought the fact she was shot to death in the street proves that he's right about blacks needing to vote for him.  After a couple of hours, he realised he had to tweet again to express his sorrow over her death!

Obviously, he wants to show moderate republicans and independents that he's a nice guy for whom they can safely vote but he keeps on stuffing up his lines.
 

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #639 –
Trump has accepted the Mexican President's invitation to meet with him in Mexico.  He's going there tomorrow, he says.  The circus continues...

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #640 –
Quote from: Mav on
Trump has accepted the Mexican President's invitation to meet with him in Mexico.  He's going there tomorrow, he says.  The circus continues...

Don't go Donald
There will be no quarter :(
Remember the Alamo!

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #642 –
The national polls have tightened somewhat - Clinton's 10% advantage in the wake of the DNC convention has halved.  That's not surprising as there was always going to be a short-term bounce and a 5% advantage is pretty handy.

Clinton, however, has expanded her lead in battleground states over that same period and that's far more important than the national vote.  Next Monday is Labor Day in the US and is widely regarded as the point at which the vote becomes hard to shift.

I still think the Zika Virus will become a major issue.  It seems to be an ideal topic to raise at the first debate at the end of September.  You'd hope that the moderators won't allow Trump to get away with saying he'll kill all the mosquitos on day 1 in his presidency.  No doubt Hillary won't let him off that easily.

The Zika story is like a sci-fi horror show.  The bad news keeps on coming.  Scientists now believe it stays in semen for 6 months.  Infected mosquitos pass the virus on in the eggs they lay, so wiping out adults doesn't stop an epidemic.  Testing on rats has shown that it can damage adult brains by attacking a type of brain cell which grows into neurons.  If this occurs also in humans, it may damage memory and learning in a similar way to Alzheimer's.  The link to Guillain-Barré Syndrome grows stronger.  Damage to foetuses and babies leads to a much wider array of conditions than microcephaly, from destruction of brain matter to scarred retinas and optic nerves and restrictions in mobility.  It also seems that it can cause disabilities in babies after apparently healthy births. 

Scientists have now found the Zika Virus in 3 populations of mosquitos in Florida.  As scientists believe that tests currently produce a significant percentage of false negatives, they believe the virus is widespread now.

Florida is a battleground State and the concern of Floridians can be deduced from the stridency of Marco Rubio on the issue.  Ordinarily, Republicans aren't supportive of Federal intervention in health matters but Rubio has called on Congress to reconvene as a matter of urgency to throw money at this problem.

Hillary is well-placed to lead on this issue.  Increasing the Federal health budget rather than throwing money at finding and deporting undocumented immigrants and pouring billions into a border wall is right up her alley.  It also brings to the fore the good work that Planned Parenthood does for women given that Congressional Republicans hope to tie increased funding for the fight against Zika to sidelining Planned Parenthood.  To date, Trump has been happy to say it's a State issue.  Will continuing down that line cost him Florida?

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #643 –
It's hard to trust the public Zika debate now, media are distorting figures because it rates. In reality there have been wildly varying reports from authorities.

While I generally trust scientists, I do not trust lawyers or administrators, and those less ethical types now know funding is associated with the Zika threat, it's in their interests to paint global doom as they get financially rewarded for it.  The more money that pours into Zika the more alleged "connections" will surface, soon it will be the cause of Hitler, ADHD and Terrorism. I had a big debate/argument at CSIRO recently about this, as I felt scientists were sitting on their hands allowing hysterical debate as it brought them funding. They were not pushing the policy line, but they were not vocal in debunking the fear mongers either!

In regards to the wildly varying reports, the CDC itself recently tested about 5000 suspected Zika related health cases, about 70% of those were dismissed immediately as mis-diagnosis leaving 1500 suspects for more detailed investigation. The second round of more in depth testing eliminated another 1200 as markers initially accepted as a health issue were shown to be statistically indeterminate, they couldn't tell if someone was health affected or not so subjective is the assessment. That left about 300 to be explained that had clear signs of a health issue, of the 300 only 6 had been exposed to a Zika infection! That turns out to be equal or less than the normal rate of birth defects for such diseases which in the USA runs between 8 to 15 in every 10000, if ZIka's effects were clear and real that numbers should have risen by some statistically significant amount. Looking at 5000 cases is a very significant study.

The situation is even worse now, in the USA IT companies are getting on board to use "Big Data" in a cure for Zika and are being funded heavily. It's all become a money issue, which is sad because the real labs researching Zika have been around for over a decade and now instead of being financially boosted they have to compete with people for the same money, many of those competitors are selling snake oil!

For example last month there was a global story circulating claiming epidemiological modeling showed up to 90 Million people would be infected by Zika within about 5 years. But those numbers are based on a study that had deliberately selected the worst case scenario for every variable, weather, mosquitos, travel, etc., etc., and then the report deliberately avoided discussing the potential health effects of that many Zika cases. Using the same protocols as this Zika estimate a worst case scenario for climate change apparently suggests that 1.2 Billion will die by 2030.

I understand why people are scared, but it's become almost as bad as the Anti-Vaccination debate.

An estimate mid-last month calculated that there was US$4.5M being spent for every confirmed Zika case, a significant order of magnitude more than diseases like Dengue or Chikungunya which have equal or even worse effects!

Humans are awful at estimating risks, it's an inherited trait that is hypothesized as the Keep Alive mistaken belief. In a nutshell, if you hear the grass rustling and think it's a Lion you'll run away and survive even if it's the wind, but if you hear the grass rustling and thinks it's the wind you're a dead person if it's a lion. The same mechanism is used to explain why so many people are so gullible, apparently we want to believe because on evolutionary time scales it has kept us alive.
The Force Awakens!

Re: US Presidential Election 2016

Reply #644 –
Hmmm ... strange how you claim scientific studies are showing that the threat of Zika has been greatly exaggerated at the same time as you say scientists are riding the wave of hysteria to obtain extra funding. In particular, you say the CDC has slashed away at the number of confirmed cases and that suggests they are a credible institution in your eyes.  But the CDC is a very strong proponent of urgent funding of the fight against The Zika Virus.  Maybe it's a Jeckyl and Hyde thing.

Seems to me you're fighting a rearguard action since your argument that there was no link between Zika and microcephaly bit the dust.  But if you want an argument over the science, best you start another thread.  This one is about the Presidential Election.  It doesn't matter what the true position regarding Zika is.  The question is how voters will react.  Railing against the "carbon tax" might have been a nonsense in economic and scientific terms but it helped win Tony Abbott an election.