I get what you're saying, see the issues, and I've got several daughters and push them *hard* into math...
My point: attempts to mitigate the gender divide are different from systems that entrench it.
...but I think in practice this quickly becomes about political power and entitlement. The moment the gov has a "good reason" to put its thumb on the scales of justice that thumb is going to be used.
For example, you're quoting girls' issues with high school math to justify college efforts to "fix" the gender imbalance, but in college the gender imbalance goes the other way.
On a national scale, public universities had the most even division between male and female students, with a male-female ratio of 43.6–56.4. While that difference is substantial, it still is smaller than private not-for-profit institutions (42.5-57.5) or all private schools (40.7-59.3).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/#47931e921525
For another example, in practice affirmative action in college results in taking college spots away from Asians and giving them to Blacks.
Margo Dydek […] was a Polish international professional basketball player. Standing 7 ft 2 in (2.18 m) tall, she was famous for being the tallest professional female basketball player in the world. .
Thank you, and interesting... now if there were only a way to introduce her to my brother.
The next tallest WNBA players are 6’8?, so perhaps only her.
Ya, only her... although the idea of looking eye to eye at a woman seems really odd.
That situation leads to the election of the meanest SOB around who promises to outsource the pain and suffering of the situation. Thus 911 leads to the war in Afghanistan, and Israel leads to it's situation.
One of the points of electing Hillary is getting Bill back in the White House. The issue isn't whether we feel sorry for her (we will), the issue is whether we think she can do it by herself. I'm not sure how much of the electorate is that sexist... but then we need to worry about how much of a blow out this election will be and whether 1%(?) would matter.
That contract is 'anti-prorated', the longer you're with them the more painful it is to quit.
If you quit the first day then you pay back nothing. Quit at the end of the first year you owe about one third of a year's pay. Quit at the end of 3 years and you owe three times one-third of a year's pay (i.e. a full year's pay), and so on.
I suppose from some points of view this is aligned with the company's needs. If you're still working there after 2 years then they want to keep you... but I could argue the reverse as well. Having a pissed off worker who *can't* leave there for years seems unlikely to lead to good things.
Fundamentally I don't see why they need this. In terms of pay, they're top dog in their niche. You'd think they'd be attracting the best and brightest (by their niche's standards).
You left out how Trump will balance the budget by not paying federal contractors.
I view that as economic insanity which should be discouraged... but the point was to make a case for him. To be fair to Trump, Obama promised to lower the ocean, so making outlandish promises isn't new... but that's a dodge and I'm trying to be analytical here.
The big issue that kind of promise raises is: What happens to his followers when they find out he can't divide by zero or otherwise make economic insanity work, i.e. is there a 2nd Act?
There is still time, barely, for Trump2-the-master-of-economic-sanity to emerge, but I don't expect it. He becomes President on the thinnest of majorities, then he instantly disappoints his followers and tarnishes the GOP's brand, maybe as bad as Bush did.
This is a good effort; but are you actually convinced by these points or just flexing your brain?
Just flexing my brain, although imho a lot of these are reasonably close to correct (especially 'throw the rascals out'). But I have to judge him according to his claims, not what I want to read into him.
As for him being 'different'; we already know that. Everyone who meets him personally says something like that, he's been the showman from day one, and his kids aren't just able to give pretty speeches, they're functional people. Having said that, this just makes him 'unknown', not 'puppies and rainbows'. I could just have easily included this in a list of negatives.
To the extent he actually has a platform: he's anti-immigration, anti-free-trade, & pro-isolationism... and that's an economic train-wreck which deserves to be punished. He's also running on "big-man" government which I view as poisonous (although Hillary is similar here). Lastly the GOP's last President was pretty bad and that ended up giving the Dems a super-majority.
I don't think Hillary is going to lead this country where it needs to go, she's very much a 'state-control' gal, but I need to cut my losses.
Burt Likko:
Well, it’d be interesting to hear someone come up with an intellectually rigorous defense of a Trump policy or of Trump himself. Most of what I see out on teh Twitter — Trump’s favored medium of discourse — boils down to #HillaryIsWorse.
RE: Defending Trump
1) Throwing the rascals out periodically is good for democracy. For example if we're interested in holding the gov accountable for things like the IRS from suppressing free speech, this is the way to do it.
2) Trump-the-person is strikingly different (i.e. saner) than Trump-the-public-character. When you look at Trump's children, they're all seriously functional, sane, people.
3) Being President is mostly about management, delegation, and communicating with the public, those are Trump's strengths.
4) A reputation as a loose cannon isn't an entirely bad thing when it come to international relations.
5) Presidential Style and Presidential dignity aren't important when you get to the nitty gritty on any issue.
6) The GOP will keep both the House and Senate, and Trump probably doesn't care about what bills are passed as long as he gets credit, meaning breaking the log-jam would be a really good thing.
7) Trump as a businessman presumably has some idea on how to grow the economy.
8) Trump is very clearly not a social warrior, it'd be a good thing to end the GOP's attempts to police people's bedrooms and also end efforts to move God into the government.
9) Hillary is worse.
10) He's overweight, old, he'll be in a lot of stress... and his VP is solid. There's a joke making the rounds that his VP will be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
The problem is his 'act' makes him strikingly difficult to evaluate. Maybe he dumps the anti-free-trade (anti-immigration) parts of his leadership and the various other things which train-wreck the economy, maybe he doubles down on them.
Hillary is a corrupt state-power enhancer, and that, for it's flaws, is a known thing.
In a country that has democratic elections, that’s a recipe for someone running who says “we (and when I say ‘we’, I include myself) should not FREAKING HAVE TO LIVE WITH TERRORISM.”
Well put. And the next question to be asked in a Democracy is "who needs to die so I don't need to live with terrorism".
Which will always play a hell of a lot better than “if you look at the numbers dispassionately, you’d see that we still have a lot fewer bombings than we were willing to put up with in 1973.”
It's part of the human condition to pay a LOT of attention to people killing people-who-are-potentially-me. Husbands killing wives gets a pass, but murdering-potentially-me could be 'war'.
These are instincts, supposedly we've had periods of time (long before history) when the lifetime murder rate (from tribal war) was 20%-50%.
Yes, agreed with all that. The problem with "claw backs" is most people spend the money when they have it.
As far as Rieves goes... that contract is interesting. It's built to prevent the 2+ year vets from leaving, so they want to train people and then have them work at that store, but it's a highly paid/priced convenience store. I wouldn't think retention/recruitment would be a big deal if you're the highest paid employer on the block.
Which speaks to the idea that she is more valuable to them in the white house, rather than Trump.
That was exactly my feelings a week ago... but assume Trump is on course to weaken Europe via isolationism and Russia gets another country or two.
What could they possibly blackmail her into which would be better than that? Further she has had multiple scandals before, if she's in office then she probably won't care that much.
The article said a third of her pay was subject to claw back... and that other article suggests that company pays a lot more than average. So... what if those two balance?
Now maybe there are better ways to structure that, yearly bonus checks for example.
Jaybird:
But that does not mean that I will therefore vote for the person responsible for having the unsecured email server that was and is at the root of the embarrassment that we’re talking about here.
Russia is really good at this, and she was a high value target who was weakly defended.
My expectation is that they got everything.
My expectation is that people died because they trusted us and gave us sensitive info.
My expectation is that Hillary's emails also detail her getting money from people she shouldn't in exchange for doing things she shouldn't.
And as bad as all that is, rather than have her in office so they can blackmail her, they want Trump in office because it's in their interests.
In terms of voting, that last thing should give everyone pause, because I seriously doubt Russia's interests are aligned with our own.
Do we doubt that Russia has already tried to do exactly what Trump encouraged them to do this morning and break into the much-less-secure email that Secretary Clinton improperly used? No, of course they already have tried, and maybe succeeded, and that’s not the point.
The point is that a man who aspires to be President of the United States openly encouraged an adversarial foreign power to search for American diplomatic secrets using methods that violate American laws.
If you assume they *already* *have* all of those emails then no, he's not encouraging them to search for them illegally, they can just search their own computers. That goose is already cooked.
The more interesting question is *when* will Russia release Hillary's emails? My guess is October, when it will do the most damage.
The other questions would be "why" would they do this, and the answer would be something like "dominate Europe". I.e. Trump is an isolationist and wants our European allies to pay their own way, which effectively would leave individual countries on their own and they could be bullied/invaded by Russia.
Are you sure that’s true? Progress on drug legalization, sentencing reform, etc., is slow, but where’s the evidence that BLM is slowing it down?
Go to Google and type in "Hillary Clinton on the issues". The closest we get to "drug" is "crime" and we have the following:
Everyone in America should respect the law and be respected by the law. We need to end mass incarceration, use strategies like police body cameras to improve accountability, increase substance abuse treatment, and aim resources at criminals who pose the greatest threat. And we need to invest in education and job training—the foundations of success.
Do you see anything in there that can be interpreted as "ending the war on drugs"? BLM is, as far as I can tell, dealing with this as though it is entirely a "racist" thing. They're the voice of the black community saying "enough is enough"... but getting racism out of the war on drugs isn't, imho, going to actually do much. What is the non-racist thing we should do about drug dealers killing drug dealers?
I'd call it a cultural response to our dysfunctional gov policy, and yes, I fully agree it's rooted in WoD.
But "getting rid of racism" from policing simply isn't going to end mass incarceration as long as our policy is WoD.
The core policy is dysfunctional, trying to pretend we can make it "fair" is, imho, simply not going to work. Drug dealers are killing each other over street corners. What is the "non-racist" thing to do about that? Let them? Stop them? Something else?
On “Linky Friday #177: Creatures, Cities, Calories”
Hmm... one in a thousand? Intuitively that seems low.
Assuming it's 3.6, that means... 99.98%
http://www.intmath.com/counting-probability/z-table.php
"
I get what you're saying, see the issues, and I've got several daughters and push them *hard* into math...
...but I think in practice this quickly becomes about political power and entitlement. The moment the gov has a "good reason" to put its thumb on the scales of justice that thumb is going to be used.
For example, you're quoting girls' issues with high school math to justify college efforts to "fix" the gender imbalance, but in college the gender imbalance goes the other way.
On a national scale, public universities had the most even division between male and female students, with a male-female ratio of 43.6–56.4. While that difference is substantial, it still is smaller than private not-for-profit institutions (42.5-57.5) or all private schools (40.7-59.3).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/#47931e921525
For another example, in practice affirmative action in college results in taking college spots away from Asians and giving them to Blacks.
"
Thank you, and interesting... now if there were only a way to introduce her to my brother.
Ya, only her... although the idea of looking eye to eye at a woman seems really odd.
"
I've got you beat by 8 inches. :)
On “Morning Ed: Crime {2016.07.28.Th}”
That situation leads to the election of the meanest SOB around who promises to outsource the pain and suffering of the situation. Thus 911 leads to the war in Afghanistan, and Israel leads to it's situation.
On “Linky Friday #177: Creatures, Cities, Calories”
:Amusement: Probably not by my standards. I could met the girl mentioned and I'd still be multiple inches over her.
On “Morning Ed: Crime {2016.07.28.Th}”
You won't win the election with that answer. :)
On “Linky Friday #177: Creatures, Cities, Calories”
I still can't.
On “I am a Muslim doctor. I saved a Christian in Pakistan and it nearly cost my life”
This is a good example of why Trump makes traction with anti-immigration, and also why that policy is a problem. Their loss, our gain.
On “Morning Ed: Crime {2016.07.28.Th}”
One of the points of electing Hillary is getting Bill back in the White House. The issue isn't whether we feel sorry for her (we will), the issue is whether we think she can do it by herself. I'm not sure how much of the electorate is that sexist... but then we need to worry about how much of a blow out this election will be and whether 1%(?) would matter.
On “Morning Ed: Labor {2016.07.27.W}”
That contract is 'anti-prorated', the longer you're with them the more painful it is to quit.
If you quit the first day then you pay back nothing. Quit at the end of the first year you owe about one third of a year's pay. Quit at the end of 3 years and you owe three times one-third of a year's pay (i.e. a full year's pay), and so on.
I suppose from some points of view this is aligned with the company's needs. If you're still working there after 2 years then they want to keep you... but I could argue the reverse as well. Having a pissed off worker who *can't* leave there for years seems unlikely to lead to good things.
Fundamentally I don't see why they need this. In terms of pay, they're top dog in their niche. You'd think they'd be attracting the best and brightest (by their niche's standards).
On “NYT: Donald Trump Encourages Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails”
I view that as economic insanity which should be discouraged... but the point was to make a case for him. To be fair to Trump, Obama promised to lower the ocean, so making outlandish promises isn't new... but that's a dodge and I'm trying to be analytical here.
The big issue that kind of promise raises is: What happens to his followers when they find out he can't divide by zero or otherwise make economic insanity work, i.e. is there a 2nd Act?
There is still time, barely, for Trump2-the-master-of-economic-sanity to emerge, but I don't expect it. He becomes President on the thinnest of majorities, then he instantly disappoints his followers and tarnishes the GOP's brand, maybe as bad as Bush did.
"
Just flexing my brain, although imho a lot of these are reasonably close to correct (especially 'throw the rascals out'). But I have to judge him according to his claims, not what I want to read into him.
As for him being 'different'; we already know that. Everyone who meets him personally says something like that, he's been the showman from day one, and his kids aren't just able to give pretty speeches, they're functional people. Having said that, this just makes him 'unknown', not 'puppies and rainbows'. I could just have easily included this in a list of negatives.
To the extent he actually has a platform: he's anti-immigration, anti-free-trade, & pro-isolationism... and that's an economic train-wreck which deserves to be punished. He's also running on "big-man" government which I view as poisonous (although Hillary is similar here). Lastly the GOP's last President was pretty bad and that ended up giving the Dems a super-majority.
I don't think Hillary is going to lead this country where it needs to go, she's very much a 'state-control' gal, but I need to cut my losses.
"
RE: Defending Trump
1) Throwing the rascals out periodically is good for democracy. For example if we're interested in holding the gov accountable for things like the IRS from suppressing free speech, this is the way to do it.
2) Trump-the-person is strikingly different (i.e. saner) than Trump-the-public-character. When you look at Trump's children, they're all seriously functional, sane, people.
3) Being President is mostly about management, delegation, and communicating with the public, those are Trump's strengths.
4) A reputation as a loose cannon isn't an entirely bad thing when it come to international relations.
5) Presidential Style and Presidential dignity aren't important when you get to the nitty gritty on any issue.
6) The GOP will keep both the House and Senate, and Trump probably doesn't care about what bills are passed as long as he gets credit, meaning breaking the log-jam would be a really good thing.
7) Trump as a businessman presumably has some idea on how to grow the economy.
8) Trump is very clearly not a social warrior, it'd be a good thing to end the GOP's attempts to police people's bedrooms and also end efforts to move God into the government.
9) Hillary is worse.
10) He's overweight, old, he'll be in a lot of stress... and his VP is solid. There's a joke making the rounds that his VP will be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
The problem is his 'act' makes him strikingly difficult to evaluate. Maybe he dumps the anti-free-trade (anti-immigration) parts of his leadership and the various other things which train-wreck the economy, maybe he doubles down on them.
Hillary is a corrupt state-power enhancer, and that, for it's flaws, is a known thing.
On “Morning Ed: Crime {2016.07.28.Th}”
Well put. And the next question to be asked in a Democracy is "who needs to die so I don't need to live with terrorism".
It's part of the human condition to pay a LOT of attention to people killing people-who-are-potentially-me. Husbands killing wives gets a pass, but murdering-potentially-me could be 'war'.
These are instincts, supposedly we've had periods of time (long before history) when the lifetime murder rate (from tribal war) was 20%-50%.
And who was bombing whom in 1973?
On “Morning Ed: Labor {2016.07.27.W}”
Yes, agreed with all that. The problem with "claw backs" is most people spend the money when they have it.
As far as Rieves goes... that contract is interesting. It's built to prevent the 2+ year vets from leaving, so they want to train people and then have them work at that store, but it's a highly paid/priced convenience store. I wouldn't think retention/recruitment would be a big deal if you're the highest paid employer on the block.
On “NYT: Donald Trump Encourages Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails”
Assuming we don't have an October Surprise; Remind me of this in November and I'll be glad to say I was wrong. ;)
And to be clear, I'd be happy to be wrong. For that matter, if Trump wins and rules in a sane manner, I'd be happy to admit I was wrong about him too.
I base my opinion on the imperfect information I have in front of me, there are assumptions.
"
That was exactly my feelings a week ago... but assume Trump is on course to weaken Europe via isolationism and Russia gets another country or two.
What could they possibly blackmail her into which would be better than that? Further she has had multiple scandals before, if she's in office then she probably won't care that much.
On “Morning Ed: Labor {2016.07.27.W}”
The article said a third of her pay was subject to claw back... and that other article suggests that company pays a lot more than average. So... what if those two balance?
Now maybe there are better ways to structure that, yearly bonus checks for example.
On “NYT: Donald Trump Encourages Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails”
East Europe should be scared. It's probably their neck on the line here.
"
Russia is really good at this, and she was a high value target who was weakly defended.
My expectation is that they got everything.
My expectation is that people died because they trusted us and gave us sensitive info.
My expectation is that Hillary's emails also detail her getting money from people she shouldn't in exchange for doing things she shouldn't.
And as bad as all that is, rather than have her in office so they can blackmail her, they want Trump in office because it's in their interests.
In terms of voting, that last thing should give everyone pause, because I seriously doubt Russia's interests are aligned with our own.
"
If you assume they *already* *have* all of those emails then no, he's not encouraging them to search for them illegally, they can just search their own computers. That goose is already cooked.
The more interesting question is *when* will Russia release Hillary's emails? My guess is October, when it will do the most damage.
The other questions would be "why" would they do this, and the answer would be something like "dominate Europe". I.e. Trump is an isolationist and wants our European allies to pay their own way, which effectively would leave individual countries on their own and they could be bullied/invaded by Russia.
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
Go to Google and type in "Hillary Clinton on the issues". The closest we get to "drug" is "crime" and we have the following:
Everyone in America should respect the law and be respected by the law. We need to end mass incarceration, use strategies like police body cameras to improve accountability, increase substance abuse treatment, and aim resources at criminals who pose the greatest threat. And we need to invest in education and job training—the foundations of success.
Do you see anything in there that can be interpreted as "ending the war on drugs"? BLM is, as far as I can tell, dealing with this as though it is entirely a "racist" thing. They're the voice of the black community saying "enough is enough"... but getting racism out of the war on drugs isn't, imho, going to actually do much. What is the non-racist thing we should do about drug dealers killing drug dealers?
"
I'd call it a cultural response to our dysfunctional gov policy, and yes, I fully agree it's rooted in WoD.
But "getting rid of racism" from policing simply isn't going to end mass incarceration as long as our policy is WoD.
The core policy is dysfunctional, trying to pretend we can make it "fair" is, imho, simply not going to work. Drug dealers are killing each other over street corners. What is the "non-racist" thing to do about that? Let them? Stop them? Something else?
On “The Siberian Candidate: A Collection”
It took me a while to wrap my head around this.
Putin probably has Hillary's email server's full contents. I'd assumed he'd use it to blackmail her, but he timed this release to damage Hillary.
Ergo: We've got an October Surprise coming.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.