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The men of GLoP reunite to discuss the hit Amazon Prime Video The Boys. Is it a parody? Is it an homage? Or just a dark comedy? We investigate (warning: there may be a minor spoiler or two in this segment). Also, when he was “Anonymous,” the New York Times described Miles Taylor as a senior administration official. Spoiler alert: he was not senior and was likely not privy to any of the discussions he wrote about in the Times column or his book. We discuss. Also, is streaming really more popular than broadcast TV? Rob Long has some thoughts. Finally, who is the real Homer Simpson? GLoP debates. And yes, there is a bit of talk about the impending election (brace yourselves, commenters!), a mildly risqué joke that may or may not offend several billion people, and GLoP finally answers the question millions have pondered: what does former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and mass killer Charles Manson have in common? We’re certainly not going to spoil that one.
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How do we know the polls are right? Maybe they are. I don’t know. I guess we will see a few days from now but if Harris Biden speaks buy, shouldn’t we still be a little skeptical of the polls that predicted a blow out for Biden?
Wow, I thought the Reich/Manson common feature was going to be “diminutive,” with “delusional” as a hedge, followed closely by a side-bet on “evil.” Which could be easily combined into “evil dwarves with the mistaken notion they know something about economics.” (Pray for section 230.) However, the common feature seems to be that both Robert Reich and Vincent Bugliosi have pedestrian imaginations. Have to admit I was hoping for more.
Good points, interesting topics, to address them out of order. Is QAnon really that crazy? All the details are undoubtedly wrong – but really? In a world that includes Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, NXIVM is it really impossible? Is it crazy to think that there are powerful, connected people that are actually an organized crime syndicate?
I agree, How Homer Simpson was ruined over the run of the Simpsons:
While watching the Simpsons back in the 90s, I think the original premise of the Simpson’s was to be the Anti-Cosby show. I really identified my dad with the early Homer Simpson. He was never psychically violent with us, that much. Looking back as an adult, I see him in a different light. Because I know more about where he came from and how so many from the same backgrounds turned out so much worse. All things considered, he’s a Prince among men.
Next week is my parents 56th wedding anniversary, which is amazing, 56 years of marital misery.
You should look into the book, “Chaos: Charles Manson, CIA and the Secret History of the 60s” by Tim O’Niel. It basically finds Charles Manson may have been a ‘victim’ of the CIA’s MKULTRA program – its how he was (like Jeffrey Epstein) was able to get arrested on several occasions, and walk away from some pretty serious charges.
Amazon Link
The author on Joe Rogan:
Good talk, I really enjoyed this GLOP. You should look into having Tim O’Niel on the podcast, he’d be an interesting discussion.
I have a friend on Facebook that keeps pushing Robert Reich memes all the time. (I occasionally snooze him for 30 days, when his non-sense gets to rich..) I think the only thing preventing the formation of a Reich Cult, is his complete lack of personal charm. I sometimes think he’s the alter-ego of Paul Krugman. If you think about it, they’re never in the same room together, and their stupid utterances are almost completely inter-changeable.
I would have though it was both were jealous of Roman Polanski.
I give Reich credit for creating his own imbecilic AhrseHattery with no assistance from the even bigger Gobshite , both literally and figuratively, Paul Krugman.
For the record, here is the 538 (Nate Silver’s) projection for this election. This is the same group that missed spectacularly in 2016. This is the same election analysis group that so impresses the GLoP boys that it’s the only “polling” firm that JPod references in the podcast.
If you’d like to read a more adult take on what’s happening this year regarding polling, media coverage and the bias of commentariat, I would recommend that you follow Mollie Hemingway. Here’s her latest on The Federalist: Yes, Media Are Rigging the Election Against Half the Country, Here’s How. Pay particular note to the section: Slavish Devotion to Obviously Wrong Polling.
That is all. Continue with your smug chortling.
A Blue Texas? Georgia? North Carolina? Unpossible.
Wow sniffing data can be more dangerous to your worldview than glue.
Florida, Ohio, have already gone republican, Pennsylvania (still need spell check on that one) is on its way, Michigan too.
Yesterday, Joe Biden was in Wisconsin. A democratic campaign a week from the largest landslide in nearly a century, is not campaigning in Wisconsin.
I dont think I like Martina McBride digital inserting herself into this song. She was 2 years old when Elvis recorded his contribution to the song.
You know Brian, you keep repeating how “spectacularly” wrong Nate Silver was in 2016, but if you go back and you know, actually read what he was saying, he didn’t miss by much. Here’s what he said on the record on November 6th, two days before the 2016 election:
He got that right. Hmm, what else did he say?
The reason Clinton’s polling lead is less safe than Obama’s was four years ago is that the race is closer in some swing states, especially in the Midwest. That means that if she loses only one big state forecast for her, she loses the White House, Silver said.Why that sounds almost exactly correct. Maybe I’m mis-understanding the definition of the word “spectacular”? Now, I’m intrigued. What else did Silver say that day?
“If Clinton were to beat her polls by 3 points … you see something we call a borderline landslide. But if it goes the other way … all of a sudden Trump could very easily win the Electoral College,” he said.Huh. That’s weird, because he appears to describe a full two days before the election pretty much EXACTLY what happened. Please continue on, Nate…
The FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief defended his projection model from critics who say it should take into account early-voting data.
“I would be a little bit careful,” he warned of those numbers. “Democrats also in 2014 told themselves a lot of stories about how they would be saved by the early vote and got wiped out across the board in the midterm [congressional elections].”You want to say Silver got it wrong? Be my guest and knock yourself out. But he did not get it “spectacularly wrong” and in fact, he got it mostly right.
On your point about Mollie’s piece, she correctly points out that the RCP averages of the WI polls were way off. But there is a good reason they were so wrong that she does not mention in her piece. Here’s a screenshot of the final polls in WI:
Look carefully at the dates of those polls. The latest one closed on 11/2. James Comey held a press conference on the afternoon of 10/28 announcing he was reopening his investigation into Hillary’s email server (and the Weiner laptop). The election was on November 8th. So there was almost a week of no polling after a momentous announcement regarding Hillary’s email server. You think that might have swung some votes in WI after the polling stopped? Be honest!
Here is Nate Silver’s CYA comment this morning on Twitter (emphasis mine):
So…”way ahead” but “also not so far ahead”.
Uh huh.
As @annefy points out on Twitter, this is called equivocation.
Sad that seeing a GLoP episode in my playlist used to bring joy. Now I have to check the comments to see how much irrational Trump hatred there is in a pop culture podcast and determine if it is worth slogging through. This one might be worth it.
The word “spectacularly” as used in the comment, does not necessarily have to be a measure of statistical wrongness, but rather, a measure of wrongness in National expectation.
I did not see Trump winning in 2016, and when he did , it was very unexpected and therefore especially spectacular.
@blueyeti – Defend the 538 map, please.
Regarding the collapse of the Blue Wall in 2016, it certainly was not attributable only to James Comey’s announcement. Trump throughout the campaign had been appealing to blue collar voters in the Midwest and many of those who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump – the dismal or nebulous (smoke and mirrors) Obama economic “recovery” certainly played a factor. Then, of course, there’s Hillary’s dismissal of those Midwestern states by refusing to campaign there in the last few months of the campaign BEFORE Comey’s announcement, when her own campaign organizations on the ground in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio were begging the New York HQ for the Clinton campaign to get her butt out there because they had already detected a momentum shift for Trump.
So, no I’m not buying that Comey’s announcement was the pivotal game changer.
The problem Nate Silver has, is that he’s making specific predictions on ‘narrative acceptable’ data, and in the specificity we can see error. Texas going blue? Georgia? Those states where promised to the democrats in 2016. I think they both where declared before the first commercial break after the polls closed. Lets leave the trauma of 2016 behind, we’re only a few days away from entirely new psychological injuries.
Robert Cahaly of the Trafalger Group on outdate polling methodology.
And posted to YouTube yesterday.
Also note the Trafalger Group’s polling numbers on Real Clear Politics which seem a lot more credible.
Really? Then perhaps you can explain why Trafalgar took down the cross tabs on their polling from their website? Why even the “spectacularly wrong” Nate Silver lets us see his cross tabs. If they are so credible, why hide the underlying statistics? 🤔
Spoiler alert: their polling seems more credible to you because it conforms to your narrative. That’s fine — Nate Silver does the same for many others. But we should all be honest about that.
I’m sure it must be nefarious.
How’s your defense of the 538 Electoral Map coming along?
It is true that I prefer my narrative to the narrative of the GLoP boys who spend most of their time fantasizing that Trump will lose but don’t have the intellectual integrity to address what exactly that would mean for the country.
So, there is that. Shame on me.
He got it wrong. Trump flipped FL, MI, WI, and OH by a combined total of around 80,000 votes out of over 120 million votes cast at least in part because of events that occurred very late in the cycle that were not picked up by the polling for reasons we have already discussed. Hillary Clinton also made the brilliant decision to personally insult thousands of swing voters in key states. Brilliant. Good summation here if you’re interested.
I don’t pretend to know what is going to happen on Tuesday. I also fully admit that I am also probably influenced somewhat by my environment (deep blue town, in a deep blue county, in a deep blue state). That said, despite what may all believe, I am not rooting for Trump to lose. I am rooting for him to be better person and a better President.
Perhaps you misunderstand. The Electoral Map from 538 shown above is for 2020 not for 2016.
Nope. They have all done this countless times on their own shows (and in fact have discussed it in passing on this show on occasion).
My guess is that I can count them.
That map is delusional.
My guess is, that’s supposed to be “or two.”
Besides Reagan’s speechwriter, maybe Ricochet hired Biden’s speechwriter.
Nah., I’m just a lousy typist posting late at night. Fixed.
If you listen to Rob’s comments on the Ricochet Podcast, #518, The Home Stretch, it’s abundantly clear that he thinks that there is no existential threat to any freedoms from a potential Biden victory and that a Biden victory will continue to be simply a matter of policy changes that have merely a fiscal dimension and not really adversely affect foreign policy or the greater macro economy or unemployment – just a shifting back and forth of non-critical policy changes as he has perceived it for the last several decades. This is in line with Rob’s moral relativism as it pertains to Joe Biden specifically – that he’s dismissive of Biden’s criminal activity and graft because, you know, everybody in government engages in pay-to-play – so, what’s the big deal?
Also – Never mind how radical the Democratic Party has become. Never mind that they’ve encouraged riots around the country and promoted the defunding of police. Never mind that they have released violent criminals who have been arrested so that they can engage in more violence. Never mind that want to more actively censor and criminalize speech. Never mind that they encourage and turn a blind eye to anarchists who want to tear down many of the nation’s monuments and institutions and that Antifa and BLM rioters are being used as tools by Democrats to threaten Americans and push a Marxist ideology that Democrats won’t condemn. None of this is addressed by Rob or Jonah or JPod. Most of their analysis is superficial at best and seems to be mired in an inside-the-beltway mindset of the past.
Do the GLoP boys think that China will be restrained and more controllable from a Biden administration and from Joe specifically who has allegedly made millions of dollars from the Communist regime for himself and his family? Is Taiwan at risk in a Biden administration? Will Iran become resurgent in ratcheting up terror? Are they hoping for a Biden administration and hoping that Biden will end the regime of sanctions imposed upon them from the Trump administration? My guess is that’s what John Kerry, Secretary-of-State-for-Life and Biden confident will advise. Will Biden shuttle more palettes of cash in the dark of night to the mullahs? Will Joe apologize for the assassination of terror mastermind Soleimani? If Rob, Jonah, or JPod have addressed this specifically, please point me to it.
Finally, the GLoP boys put a lot of stock in how member states of the EU think of Donald Trump (Rob did in a recent NRO submission) – the same nations who have owed their freedom from Soviet and Russian domination since WWII to the United States and have been embracing socialism. Should we really care what Angela Merkel thinks of Donald Trump? Not something I lose sleep over.
On a side note…