This is what a fear happening

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...s_are.html

Quote:There are very few endorsements that are going to matter in this presidential election, but Michael Bloomberg’s might be one of them. On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, the three-term mayor of New York City called on his fellow independents to vote for Hillary Clinton. “I am asking you to join with me not out of party loyalty, but out of love of country,” Bloomberg said. Why? Is it because he’s so enthusiastic about her many virtues? Nope, it’s because a Trump presidency would be an unmitigated disaster: “He would make it harder for small businesses to compete, do great damage to our economy, threaten the retirement savings of millions of Americans, lead to greater debt and more unemployment, erode our influence in the world, and make our communities less safe.” Ouch...



http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...s_are.html

I was driving back home from an errand.

I saw what I thought was a plane on approach to SFO but it never turned on final, and instead continued heading East. I then realized it was not a plane, it had a tail of ionized matter and debris.

I then thought it might be a fireball ... but it was moving way too slow for that.

My next thought ...

A man made object experiencing a flawed re-entry. In a way it reminded me of how the ill fated space shuttle looked as it started to break up. Was it a MIRVed war head cluster? Would there be others to come, and air bursts soon to follow?

This last train of thought was not too far off. It is being described in the news today as a "Chinese rocket."

I wonder exactly what sort of vehicle it really was.

Was it a hypersonic war head delivery vehicle undergoing some sort of dry run?

Was it indeed a standard rocket, but purposely reentered over the US, to test our defenses against ICBMs and hypersonic vehicles?

Food for thought.

Without thoroughly endorsing it, Alan Watts explains why astrology is relevant to reality. A human is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The stars are in your mind. Each being is in relation to the all and to all others. The body is inside the soul. The horoscope is a map of the universe at the time of a person's birth, therefore it was a drawing of the soul, which is the whole universe as it is focused on your organism. 

https://youtu.be/v7vFOU8e0wU?t=55m52s

I noticed that the Board Statistics at the bottom of the main page says that Maintenance is the newest member (as of today), yet the Member List says that user is banned. Why do some users get banned from this forum, and why are they still included in the Board Statistics?

You hear people talking about how Hillary is one of the most qualified candidates ever to run for office, the same could be said for Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan.

Could it be that instead of slaying the dragon of Social Darwinism, the Trump phenomenon has refocused its fire on a different target?

Where previously the wrath of the Social Darwinists was directed at the poor in this country, it is now being directed at poor countries and foreign entities - Mexicans. Muslims, etc.  There is still the same call for "rolling up the drawbridge against the peasants," as per a comment that appeared in The Weekly Standard some two decades ago.

It is no longer about the wealth and poverty of persons.  It is now about the wealth and poverty of nations.

Just now I'm seeing some strange behavior.

A post I made a couple of hours ago has vanished (it was made on the Election 2016 thread).

Meanwhile, a post made a few minutes ago by Playright on the Trump and Putin thread semi shows up. Clicking directly on the "latest post" feed you can see it but it is invisible in the actual thread hierarchy.

Hopefully this will pass with no issues.

Hopefully there is no data loss.

A question for those who are old enough; was it common for celebrities to speak at political conventions before boomers took over?

The growing divide by socio-economic status among whites isn’t good news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot...p=cur&_r=0

Quote:The list of voting groups generally alienated by Donald J. Trump is long: Hispanics, women, the young, the college educated and more. How is it that he’s in such a close race with Hillary Clinton?

The answer lies with a group that still represented nearly half of all voters in 2012: white voters without a college degree, and particularly white men without a degree.

Mrs. Clinton is showing enormous weakness with this group. And these voters are supporting Mr. Trump in larger numbers than they supported Mitt Romney four years ago. It’s enough to keep the election close. It could even be enough for him to win...


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot...p=cur&_r=0

This article should be interesting. Here is the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/upshot....html?_r=0

Here is the article:

Quote:Donald Trump officially became the Republican party’s nominee Thursday night, and on Monday, the Democratic convention begins in Philadelphia. In the coming weeks, you can expect lots of polls — and headlines — suggesting new insight into the state of the presidential race.
With some caveats, our advice is: Don’t pay too much attention to them.
You can see what we mean in the chart above. It shows how much the polling average at each point of a presidential election cycle has differed from the final result. Each gray line represents a presidential election since 1980; the bright green line represents the average difference. In general, as the election nears, the polling average comes closer and closer to the election’s final result — but not for the next few weeks.
History suggests that in the short periods after the conventions, the polling average can often move away from the final result, not toward it. That’s because polls taken in the middle of the convention are often unreliable: Gains made by the party’s nominee can often be short-lived.
One approach is to ignore the polls during this tricky period. Our presidential forecast, which currently gives Hillary Clinton a 74 percent chance to win, does something different: It imposes a small penalty on polls taken when a candidate might be receiving a convention bounce. This penalty, based on conventions since 1980, fades out over the next few weeks.
At the same time, and perhaps more important, the model increases its variance estimate — how uncertain it is about its assessment of the race — during the convention period. Because of this volatility, it makes sense to judge polling over the next few weeks with more skepticism than usual. As a general rule, when variance goes up, it helps the underdog, so it’s possible that the model’s estimate of Mrs. Clinton’s overall chance of winning may decline slightly in the weeks ahead.
Of course, it’s also possible that Mr. Trump will not get a convention bounce at all, reflecting perhaps the most disorganized, unpredictable and bizarre convention in decades.
It’s unclear whether conventions still hold the power they once did. The bounces candidates received in 2008 and 2012 were more modest than some in years past, but television ratings for the conventions remain high. Ratings for the 2012 Democratic convention were the highest since 1992, and ratings for the Republicans in 2008 were the highest since 1976.
Bounce or no bounce, the history lesson remains: Polling averages tend to be volatile in the weeks after national conventions. As the election nears and the short-term effects of the conventions fade, the polling averages will rapidly become more precise.
In other words, if you’d like to take a break from political polls for a few weeks, you won’t be any worse for it. We’ll be here when you get back.
Until then, take a look at this series of charts showing how conventions have affected polling averages in every election since 1980.
What polls say about the 2016 election
Mrs. Clinton held a steady lead going into the conventions.
Trump becomes presumptive nominee
What polls said about the 2012 election
President Obama seemed to receive a bump in polls from the Democratic convention and the “47 percent” video of Mitt Romney released by Mother Jones. But polls tightened again in the month before the election. In 2012, Mr. Obama outperformed his polling averages on Election Day by about three percentage points.
“47 percent” video published
What polls said about the 2008 election
In some ways, the 2008 election mirrors this race, with two Democratic candidates fighting over the party nomination after the emergence of a presumptive Republican nominee. At this point in that election, Mr. Obama and John McCain were nearly tied, but that was before Mr. Obama was the clear Democratic nominee. Once he was, he became the favorite. The most significant movement came in the closing months of the contest, amid the 2008 financial crisis.
McCain: "The fundamentals of the economy are strong."
Obama clinches nomination
What polls said about the 2004 election
John Kerry held a slight lead for a couple of months in 2004, but George W. Bush hung on to his five-point Republican convention bounce for a narrow victory.
What polls said about the 2000 election
With all of the controversy surrounding the 2000 election, and the Florida recount in particular, it is easy to forget that the national polling average in November showed George W. Bush with a comfortable three-to-four-point lead over Al Gore.
But on Election Day, it was Mr. Gore who won the popular vote while losing the Electoral College.
What polls said about the 1996 election
Third-party candidates add an extra complication to presidential polling. Frequently, they perform well in polls early on, but their support tends to fall off.
In 1996, early polls showed the Reform Party candidate Ross Perot at 15 to 20 percent, a number that dwindled to 8 percent by Election Day.
You can see the well-defined convention bounces in 1996, as first the Republican and then the Democratic convention seemed to swing the polling average toward each party temporarily.
In terms of raw numbers, the 1996 election was the worst polling miss since 1980, with the Election Day average missing the final vote by over four points. But the ultimate result was never in doubt; Bill Clinton won by almost twice that margin.
What polls said about the 1992 election
The combination of the Democratic convention in July and Ross Perot’s abrupt departure from the race seemed to be responsible for a swing in polling average toward Mr. Clinton of over 20 points. Mr. Perot re-entered the race in October, but it did not substantially alter Mr. Clinton’s standing in the polls.
Perot drops out
At this stage of the 1988 election, polls were very far from the final result, swinging a full 20 percentage points over the next five months, generally favoring George H.W. Bush after the Republican convention. Mr. Bush did win handily, as expected, though by a slightly smaller margin than polls predicted.
President Reagan led by double digits in most polls at every stage of his re-election campaign, but even these numbers swung wildly after Walter Mondale emerged as the Democratic nominee, and after both conventions.
Mondale clinches nomination
The 1980 contest is a good example of how a candidate’s standing in the polls can collapse.
Jimmy Carter led by around 10 points in early April.
A spate of polls in the week leading up to Election Day suggested that Mr. Carter might have narrowed Mr. Reagan’s lead – three of the nine polls released in the final 10 days of the campaign even showed Mr. Carter ahead – but ultimately, Mr. Reagan won handily.