Nope. 5:1 take it or leave it. As I said, way better than betting sites. Even when I am fully confident, I don’t let people take advantage of me.
This is a compelling argument. I took a 5:1 bet because I think that there is approximately a 30% chance that Trump won’t be president on 1/1/19. Not, as Okrahoma seems to think, because I’m by any means certain. I mean, I’m 99% certain that Trump has committed offenses that should have him impeached and/or arrested, but I’m less confident that this will culminate in the appropriate action.
But, I’m 30% sure, and was offered 5:1 odds, and thus I take the bet.
Okrahoma, you do seem to be about 99% certain of Trump’s unwavering virtuousness and that everyone who believes that Trump is going to be found out by Mueller is delusional in your estimation. If you’re that certain, you should welcome corresponding odds.
Definitely not. I don’t bet ridiculous amounts of that would make me hurt financially in the utterly unlikely event they occurred to get piddly returns. That is irresponsible. Add to that the point that at 100:1 and having to wait 1.5 years I can safely stick into a CD or something and get way better returns. What’s the point?
I will be happy to take your and Sage Rat’s $, though, knowing that it is a small enough amount that it won’t hurt you financially.
That’s reasonable. But if it’s about returns, then why did you bet with a few posters at worse odds than the online prediction markets? If you wanted to make a statement of confidence, then that’s a pretty damn weak statement of confidence, if you’re not willing to go better than 5-1.
IOW, I don’t believe what I’m saying as much as I want you to believe i believe what I’m saying.
Yes, let’s explore the logic. Another false equivalence.
Gathering information is not the same thing as using illegally-obtained information.
Had Russians merely gathered information via passive means, then that’s done and it is understood that it’s done. But that’s not what they did. They actively hacked private computer servers to gather information, and such actions constitute a crime. They then used the illegally-gotten information in an effort to influence our elections. That, also, is illegal. If Trump aided them in their efforts, then that’s treason, in my opinion.
And let’s set the record straight: Republicans from the “Never Trump” movement initially funded Steele’s efforts in creating the dossier – a fact I notice you predictably ignored – before an unidentified Democrat took over the funding after Trump won the primary. Steele ultimately worked on the dossier for free.
Dems never officially bought, used or released the information contained in the Steele dossier. The information was revealed by Buzzfeed in January 2017. They published the dossier in its complete form and cautioned that information contained in it was unverified. I mean, people make false assertions all the time. You know. Like that Obama “wire-tapped” Trump Tower.
You want to blame Dems for information they never bought or used about activities Trump engaged in as a private citizen while visiting a country with interests adverse to ours, and try to pretend it’s the same thing as Russians actively hacking our elections with likely assistance from a man who stood to benefit because of it.
Most people can see it’s not the same thing at all.
This doesn’t make sense to me. If his goal was to “make so much money” then he would just put more money on a site which offered better odds.
Obviously his goal is to force other people in this bet to back up their own assessments. Having bets at odds which reflect his own assessment but which are wildly more favorable for his opponents than their own claims doesn’t accomplish that at all. Nothing in that for him at all.
I always enjoy reading mentions of the Democratic funding of the Steele dossier. Always omitting that it was Republicans who got the ball rolling on that. Always omitted. Curious.
“The dossier was produced as part of opposition research during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The research was initially funded by Republicans who did not want Trump to be the Republican Party nominee for president. After Trump won the primaries, a Democratic client took over the funding; and, following Trump’s election, Steele continued working on the report pro bono and passed on the information to British and American intelligence services.”
(Sorry about all the extraneous links, I copied it directly from Wiki…)
But he is refusing to back up his own assessments. He wants to hold others accountable for their rhetoric, but he will not stand behind his own. The odds he is giving are not in line with the certainty of his posts. Seems to me you can’t have it both ways. He should be willing to accept the financial consequences of the certainty of his predictions just as he expects from others.
Doesn’t really matter. If he’s a TRUE Trumpian, and if he loses, he’ll say he never made any bet, refuse to pay and call it fake news.
I don’t think so. ISTM that he’s willing to meet people in the middle here. He’s giving better odds than the bookies on this. ISTM that his odds are somewhere between his own assessment and that of his opponents. The other side doesn’t want to give anything at all.
I’ll give something. From his rhetoric, Okrahoma is nigh 99% confident (i.e. ~100 to 1) Trump will survive past 2019. I’ve offered far better odds than that – 20 to 1, and I’m willing to entertain counter-offers (as long as they’re better than 5 to 1).
Not really related to Russia but Trump’s bodyguard guy, Schiller, is leaving the White House.
I’m not sure what this will mean in practical terms, but based on everything I have read the best way to view Trump is like one of those rock stars who became famous as a teen, formed an entourage of people who are taking advantage of them, and never really learned how to be an adult. To the extent that Trump has been successful at all, it would largely be thanks to the hive mind of his entourage, and to the extent that he hasn’t been a success, it would be due to the chaos involved in managing things by entourage politics and having a stupid man-baby at the core of it all.
If the theory is that Trump has been at least in small part a success in his business and political ventures, one can presume that Schiller has been a large part of it.
If he leaves Trump then that has some pretty big implications. Unfortunately, since there’s no real information about what all recommendations Schiller was making over the years, it’s hard to say whether this will help to turn Trump into a wiser man (by virtue of leaving him in the care of wiser heads) or into an even dumber one by having him be stranded by someone who could actually make him listen to wisdom every once in a while.
But in Trump terms, he’s just lost his bestest bromance ever. He’s effectively been divorced, in the sense that most of us would consider it (i.e., where your female spouse is actually a human being to you). Based on the people I have met who were recently divorced, they went nutballs pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Not surprisingly at all, Trump was lying about his claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, based on what the DOJ said:
I read about that today, too. I had never heard of the guy until now, but it seems he has been a quietly significant factor in the WH. There was already major friction between Trump and his new chief of staff John Kelly, and we can probably assume that the departure of a true Trumpian loyalist as a result of Kelly’s new style of governance would almost certainly throw gasoline on that fire. It’s hard to see how Kelly lasts a year, and it’s frankly hard to see how he lasts until the end of this year.
And as I’ve said on other threads, if Kelly goes, I don’t think the few remaining adults in the room will be far behind. If Kelly goes, McMaster is also probably out. Cohn is probably out. Mattis might also be out as well. And if they’re out…the rest of us are in serious trouble.
We have a completely different thread that Okrahoma also took over on that subject. No need to drag it into this one.
I know you big boys are betting real money, but if some of you want to gamble with play money, PM me and I’ll start a Karachi auction in Thread Games. (What should we bet on? Presidential nominees/winner for 2020 and Last month of President Trump’s term ?)
I’m pretty sure you realize that Steele’s dossier isn’t being used as anything more than a road map for investigators, right? And the longer the investigation goes, the more its contents are being corroborated as truth. So fretting about who paid who for what is rather irrelevant. The important thing is it’s giving the investigators threads to pull on and leads to follow, which they’re doing and doing very well from all accounts.
Not from the accounts that I’ve read. AFAICT, the allegations in the dossier which have been confirmed are unremarkable, and the more incriminating allegations have not been corroborated. And don’t seem to be taken seriously altogether. As evidence, I would note that Comey told Trump he was not being personally investigated after he had the dossier. And Comey testified before Congress that Trump suggested that he (Comey) look into the allegations in the dossier so that he could publically refute them but that he responded that if he did that he could no longer say Trump was not under investigation. Which indicates that the FBI was not at that time looking into the allegations in the dossier. (Also that Trump was pretty confident the dossier would be refuted.)
You’re way behind then.