I certainly wasn't counting on the Russia investigation to bring Trump down. I was maxed in the betting markets on Trump to finish out his term.

I never really followed the markets but if you asked the odds Trump was removed back in 2018 I’d say something like more than 3:1 less than 300. Or basically the exact same thing I’d say about Biden now. The parallels between Qanon and you or me are just so shallow. I think deep down even deuces gets it; he’s just gone too far itt to be able to admit it.

Dammit, was I the only one who did not make any money betting on the various lines around the Trump presidency???


In all seriousness, as a guy who has never bet, and is shocked that so much money was made off of Trumpderps willing to emotional bet even that after the Election was certified he was going to be sworn in as POTUS again, can we not create that type of market again now?

I ask as someone who knows nothing about online betting, so forgive me if I am wrong, but are there not sites (and if not why not) that allow people to frame their own bets and they just take a vig, on the action?

For instance if i posted a bet saying "I am willing to take on betters up to $10K, against my position that 'Biden will serve out his entire term' and I am offering the odds of ... 'x'," is there no site that can act as arbiter for that type of bet and for doing so take 3%(?) off each bet??

Seems like that could be a good business for some offshore betting site. "Make your own Book" (dotcom) where the site makes money on every bet (vig) and has to approve bets as being 'verifiable' before they post. And also that acts as custodian for the betting cash which allows them an additional income of keeping the interest they make while custodian.

You have described betfair, you're 20 years too late

So right now, i could create my own bet, such as 'I am offering Biden to complete his term as Potus thru this term and offering 2:1 for anyone who wants to take the other side', and then I could go look for fish in the pro Trump Qanon crowd who still think Biden is going to be removed and Trump reinstated???


Heck I would give even better odds on that bet and I am sure I kind find Trumpderps to take the other side.

Bro, I know about as much about prop bets as you do, but I know what they are, and that I am really bad at them, and that you can lay odds on betfair for pretty much anything you want. I mean, I don't know if I can lay odds that my sister's second cousin will break 500lbs or smth, but pretty much any sports thing you want. You just need to find someone to take the other side.

d2,

Is your sister's second cousin making a legit run at 5 bills?

That must have been quite the sweat circa October 2nd, 2020.

I do not believe it is easy to deposit money on betfair as an American, which makes it difficult to attract the kind of money you are looking for.

Not really. I'm an only child.

I will admit that I wasn't thinking about COVID when I made most of those bets.

Actually, wait. If I had a sister, and she had a second cousin, that would be my second cousin too, right?

Another stellar self-own from the people who selflessly bring this to you guys day in and day out.

hmmm there must be people then taking massive advantage of emotional betters.

Just like those two guys in the Big Short movie who made tons of money by buying options based on things going very bad, when they realized rational money avoided betting on disasters and thus it was mispriced and could be exploited.

If you find a fiercely loyal group (ie Trump fans, etc) in any area it should be possible to fleece them in bets. I am now very curious to look up and see if I can find some of the more crazy bets.

That's not my argument. I don't need to invoke Trump's election fraud claims to debunk the Russia interference claims which were never supported. I make the claim that those claims aren't supported. The most I have got to refute me is an argument that the investigation definitely should have been initiated because the Brits heard something on some wire, some bit of conversation allegedly alluding to Russia having kompromat on Hillary, and then Crowdstrike revealing essentially that the Russians wrote "Russia was here" on some servers before not leaving evidence of taking anything.

My argument is that the claims are of the same general phenomenon which is a disinformation war between the two major culture poles in the country, and this warfare further erodes trust in public institutions and prevents us from cooperation in addressing major systemic problems like Covid.

I don't ignore sources because they don't agree with me. And I don't really do my own research either. I read people like Matt Taibbi and Aaron Mate who actually do research. Actually I do read some documents so I guess that counts as research. That's just faster than reading news articles a lot of times though.

It seems like you are conceding a lot here. What you are also saying is that if there were nothing backing up the claims made by the intelligence agencies or other authorities you wouldn't know it. The conclusions of authority are utterly devoid of logic and factual basis. When I challenge you guys to show otherwise you fail every time. You have this faith that there are some people somewhere drawing valid conclusions. But that's often not the case. You would know that if you looked but your trutherism is you don't want to look and see I am right. You're a coward in that way.

My prose is great. A lot of people on the internet have asked if I am a journalist. If you care to be more specific I could maybe write in a way which was easier for you to follow.

You might want to compare notes with Haseeb (user "DOG IS HEAD"). People tell him all the time that he writes like a young F. Scott Fitzgerald.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...erald-1082072/

I'm partial to a bit of Shakesperean prose myself, you think you can pull that off? Lacking that, maybe just adhere to some of his advice - "brevity is the soul of wit".

[ ] Happened.

Deuces declared prose
By any other name would
Still smell not that sweet

d2,

I told you so.

To be fair, he did answer my exact question as stated, while managing to totally miss (or ignore - I don't know) the not-so-subtle introspection subtext.

Post of the month.

Please quote who made this argument to you as I think you are lying but maybe I missed it?

It certainly did not come from me.

What I have told you is a factual account of George P's verbally given info getting to British Intelligence and then to US intel which proves the investigation was properly predicated and necessary.

No one denies or has ever refuted that such a chain of events, that if someone within one campaign says that the know that a foreign adversarial gov't has info and is trying impact the election that the US intelligence would not investigate that.

It is automatic that an investigation MUST be launched no matter who the politicians are.

You have never aid anything to refute that fact.

I continue to be amazed at the extent to which people like Deuces and Luckbox take take the reporting of Matt Taibbi as gospel. Taibbi first came to my attention for his reporting on the 2007-2008 financial crisis. His description of Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid in 2009 was the most memorable and most evocative turn of phrase in all of the reporting around the financial crisis. And Taibbi was directionally correct that Wall Street bankers deserved withering criticism.

But in every other respect, his reporting on the financial crisis was terrible. He didn't understand the subjects he was discussing, and as far as I can discern, he didn't care whether he understood the subjects he was discussing. I knew a lot of people in that era who were privy to the gory details. Many were defending Wall Street banks. Many were adverse to Wall Street banks. (I was in the latter group.) But on either side of the debate, I never meant anyone with actual knowledge and access to internal documents who thought that Taibbi's reporting was at all serious or accurate.

His reporting on this subject was so sloppy and analytically lazy that I pretty much wrote him off forever.

Did you miss the part where taibbi said he believes the interference to be true?