Trump Thread (cont.)

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Erich said:
Hmm… where have I heard something like that before? Oh, yes… Gallup’s polling from early 1980 showing that Ronald Reagan was some 30 points behind Jimmy Carter, who of course he went on to demolish in the fall.
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One difference though, Gallup at least had a poll to base their claim on, whereas “Hillary will win in a landslide against Cruz” is based AFAIK on nothing except for hearsay.
 
meltzerboy said:
Does anyone understand this “pact” or “collusion,” as Trump calls it, between Cruz and Kasich for the purpose of stopping Trump’s candidacy at all costs? According to what I gather, one is encouraged to vote for Cruz, even if one supports Kasich, or the reverse, in states where one or the other is doing well, so as to block Trump from winning in those states. Is that the gist? Doesn’t this assume, however, that Cruz supporters and Kasich supporters are interchangeable even though they are most likely not? This sounds to me like a dubious idea at best.
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Seems to me it would diminish both of them. Would make them look like a couple of Pomeranians nipping at the heels of a bull mastiff.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Now and then I’m put to wonder whether the standard college model is simply outmoded, like buggies or large dinosaurs that have outlasted the food supply. One of my daughters took a couple of courses from Seton School a few years back, and it was way ahead of the comparable offering in the Catholic high school she was attending.

College is a nice experience, a lot of fun, a world that’s kind of neat to be in at one time in one’s life, but the cost is so extravagant and the waste of money involved in building all those luxury residence halls and fountains and whatnot so extreme that one really does wonder whether online classes aren’t simply going to take over most of it one of these times. One of my daughters recently got her NP and, except for practicum (which she set up herself) it was all online. The only times she showed up at the university were to interview for her admission to the program and to graduate.

I just read where a local student got a scholarship to a prestigious school. Full ride, room and board, tuition and everything. $71,000/year. That’s insane for anybody who is borrowing money to pay for it. And one wonders how much longer that kind of thing can possibly last, even for parents with just one child.

Of course, a lot of students meet their future spouses in college or grad school. But then, there’s online for that, too.
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No doubt online, both for- and not-for-profit, is the wave of the future for education (as for everything else), and it is happening now. The “live” teacher is gradually becoming obsolete.
 
Ridgerunner said:
This will seem even more weird. Back when I started in politics, all delegates to national conventions were chosen by state conventions, whose delegates were chosen by district conventions, whose delegates were chosen by county conventions.

There was basically no dissent involved, because the delegates were nearly all bound to the big officeholders, and willingly. Division, if it happened, was at the national level, and it was 'deal" based, not so ideological as now.

But a few decades ago, it was decided that people ought to vote in primaries. So, party discipline fell apart in the Repub party, though superdelegates in the Dem party (a remnant of the old system) can still make kings and queens.

Frankly, it has never seemed to me that the general public should be selecting a party’s delegates.
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I am older by three weeks than Pearl Harbor, and this was never disclosed “pointedly” as has been done through Trump, that the general public/voter did NOT select the party’s nominee through the juggling of delegates. As we now have learned, “chosen delegates”, are not sent to report the total votes cast for the candidate, they are free to pick their fave! They are also allowed to accept costs of lodging, meals, other enjoyment paid for by the candidates. Also, the National Republican Party Committee can change the rules of balloting to suit their preference of acceptability. Its bad enough in some states that the citizen has NO vote. Only the politicians. That is up to the state. Its been another area that the American people have been kept Gruber stupid and the news media need to stop repeating “its been the rule for a long time”. :doh2:
 
meltzerboy said:
Does anyone understand this “pact” or “collusion,” as Trump calls it, between Cruz and Kasich for the purpose of stopping Trump’s candidacy at all costs? According to what I gather, one is encouraged to vote for Cruz, even if one supports Kasich, or the reverse, in states where one or the other is doing well, so as to block Trump from winning in those states. Is that the gist? Doesn’t this assume, however, that Cruz supporters and Kasich supporters are interchangeable even though they are most likely not? This sounds to me like a dubious idea at best.
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I think what you described is more the “Mitt Romney approach”.

What the 2 campaigns are saying is more like: Cruz is in last place in CT so he’ll won’t focus his campaigning efforts there. And so on.

But whatever you call the plan, I think it will have a downside. Say I’m a CT voter who likes Cruz, but would prefer Trump over Kasich. Then I would say: Aha, Cruz isn’t campaigning here because he’s definitely not winning the state. I want to make my vote matter, but I like Trump better than Kasich so I’m voting Trump.
 
meltzerboy said:
Does anyone understand this “pact” or “collusion,” as Trump calls it, between Cruz and Kasich for the purpose of stopping Trump’s candidacy at all costs? According to what I gather, one is encouraged to vote for Cruz, even if one supports Kasich, or the reverse, in states where one or the other is doing well, so as to block Trump from winning in those states. Is that the gist? Doesn’t this assume, however, that Cruz supporters and Kasich supporters are interchangeable even though they are most likely not? This sounds to me like a dubious idea at best.
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it seems amateurish at best and kind of ridiculous and I agree with Trump, it makes them look weak and desperate!
 
meltzerboy said:
No doubt online, both for- and not-for-profit, is the wave of the future for education (as for everything else), and it is happening now. The “live” teacher is gradually becoming obsolete.
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True but scary. I don’t know if you teach online, MB, but I do in addition to my face-to-face courses – and online is a completely different animal. At least in my discipline, few of the spontaneous ah-ha moments that happen in the classroom happen online. The same interactions in which students feed one another and grow because of one another (which are so desperately needed for many) are often missing from online classes, replaced by functionalism. Blah.

Ah, well. Back to Trump.
 
meltzerboy said:
No doubt online, both for- and not-for-profit, is the wave of the future for education (as for everything else), and it is happening now. The “live” teacher is gradually becoming obsolete.
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Trouble is, some professors are paid staggeringly large salaries, while adjunct and assistant professors can barely keep body and soul together. Just by my observation, the big money is going into huge salaries for a favored few plus posh quarters for the universities themselves.

The graduate school to which I went consisted in perhaps four actual school buildings located within a city, with some refurbished old hotels and some historic residences. Now it extends for blocks and blocks with lavish dormitories and all kinds of statuary and fountains. And the student body is hardly larger than it was when I went there.

The building where I attended grad school was just a bunch of classrooms with chalk boards and those chair-desk things. Since I graduated from there, that graduate school has built not one but two very lavish buildings. The first “new” building was turned over to some other part of the school after a few years of use, and they built an entirely new one in a stupefyingly expensive part of town.

Gold plating is completely out of control. It honestly does make me think of some enormous dinosaur that ate up all the vegetation available and turned its grazing range into a dust bowl. It has managed, for some time, to fatten on loans a lot of students can’t pay back. We now have two politicians that propose to create another financial desert in order to haul greenery to the first desert. Personally, I think this country ought to let the monsters die of financial starvation in the deserts they, and the government, have created.
 
gracepoole said:
True but scary. I don’t know if you teach online, MB, but I do in addition to my face-to-face courses – and online is a completely different animal. At least in my discipline, few of the spontaneous ah-ha moments that happen in the classroom happen online. The same interactions in which students feed one another and grow because of one another (which are so desperately needed for many) are often missing from online classes, replaced by functionalism. Blah.

Ah, well. Back to Trump.
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it probably varies. My daughter who got her NP essentially on line, had quite a lot of interaction with her fellow students. They can talk to each other online, and they do. Possibly the professor doesn’t know about that because they don’t see it happen or perhaps don’t bother to find out. But there is at least some interaction with the professor because students can ask questions on line.

I would say the “socratic method” would not work too well online, because students aren’t necessarily in attendance at the same time. But a lot of courses don’t adapt well to that method anyway. I don’t think it would add a lot to a course in pharmacology, for example. There’s simply a definite body of knowledge to learn and a short time in which to learn it. There’s not a whole lot of “aha” to it. You either know how this medication interacts with that one, and why, or you don’t.

English literature or drama? Yes, I can see the merits of face to face, because the understanding has to be “teased out” of things when the author did not actually intend them to be obvious, and meant to challenge the intuitive.

Public speaking? Oh yes. If you can’t see an audience reaction, you don’t know how to adjust your style and manner of presentation. But then, most don’t really master it anyway.

Endocrinology, though? Your pituitary gland is either functioning properly or it isn’t. And there are objective signs and symptoms of dysfunction. The real "aha’ moments are in practicum or internship or in practice when you’re working with real patients.

Oh yes, Trump. 🙂 Ummm. Maybe he will discover (realize) that the higher education system’s (name removed by moderator)ut is greater than its output, in short, that it’s bankrupt. He would know bankruptcy when he sees it, whether in the private or public sectors. 🙂
 
Ridgerunner said:
it probably varies. My daughter who got her NP essentially on line, had quite a lot of interaction with her fellow students. They can talk to each other online, and they do. Possibly the professor doesn’t know about that because they don’t see it happen or perhaps don’t bother to find out. But there is at least some interaction with the professor because students can ask questions on line.

I would say the “socratic method” would not work too well online, because students aren’t necessarily in attendance at the same time. But a lot of courses don’t adapt well to that method anyway. I don’t think it would add a lot to a course in pharmacology, for example. There’s simply a definite body of knowledge to learn and a short time in which to learn it. There’s not a whole lot of “aha” to it. You either know how this medication interacts with that one, and why, or you don’t.

English literature or drama? Yes, I can see the merits of face to face, because the understanding has to be “teased out” of things when the author did not actually intend them to be obvious, and meant to challenge the intuitive.

Public speaking? Oh yes. If you can’t see an audience reaction, you don’t know how to adjust your style and manner of presentation. But then, most don’t really master it anyway.

Endocrinology, though? Your pituitary gland is either functioning properly or it isn’t. And there are objective signs and symptoms of dysfunction. The real "aha’ moments are in practicum or internship or in practice when you’re working with real patients.

Oh yes, Trump. 🙂 Ummm. Maybe he will discover (realize) that the higher education system’s (name removed by moderator)ut is greater than its output, in short, that it’s bankrupt. He would know bankruptcy when he sees it, whether in the private or public sectors. 🙂
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I completely agree with everything you’ve said here. And that, my friend, is a truly happy thing. 😃
 
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