A 2fer

Republicans have nothing but money, and since that's their only tool, everything and everybody has to have a price.

And of course, if the parties were reversed, the Wingnut Outrage-O-Matic would be cranked up to 12.

Ain't it funny how there's no mention of this anywhere on "the right". Their silence is a deafening confirmation of their intention to continue with the hypocrisy as they preach about "transparency", but remain as opaque as possible.

They pull their shit and then pretend they didn't do anything untoward, or they have the mandate of law.

(like they give one empty fuck about the law)

Ground News

Federal Courthouse, Victoria St, Laredo TX

Texas city removes anti-border wall mural after loss of funding threat from governor

HOUSTON (AP) — A South Texas city has removed a mural protesting the border wall along the southern border with Mexico following a threat by Gov. Greg Abbott to withhold up to $1.6 billion in road funding.

The mural, which was painted on a street in front of the federal courthouse in Laredo and said, “Defund the Wall,” was removed Tuesday evening, said Noraida Negron, a spokesperson for the city of Laredo.

Its removal came after Laredo’s City Council on Monday voted to do so.

Laredo is the latest U.S. city to remove political messages or artwork from roadways following a directive from the administration of President Donald Trump and action by Republicans.

In August, Florida officials removed a rainbow-colored crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub where 49 people were gunned down. In March, crews in Washington, D.C., removed a large yellow “Black Lives Matter” mural that had been painted on a street one block from the White House. The removal came after pressure from Republicans in Congress.

During an at times contentious meeting on Monday, Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said he had requested a vote on the mural’s removal after receiving a letter earlier this month from the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, directing the city to eliminate the mural or risk losing up to $1.6 billion in funding for roads.

“We’re not going to devastate our community for what is considered one particular vantage point on our public roads, even if this speech may be popular or well received,” Treviño said.

On Oct. 8, Abbott directed TxDOT to ensure that all Texas cities and counties are in compliance with federal and state guidelines on roadway safety and that symbols, flags and other markings conveying social or political messages were prohibited.

“Texans expect their taxpayer dollars to be used wisely, not advance political agendas on Texas roadways,” Abbott said in a statement.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday.

Abbott’s directive came after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy in July sent letters to all U.S. governors saying that intersections and crosswalks needed to be kept free from distractions as part of a nationwide roadway initiative.

“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy said in a statement in July.

The mural in Laredo was painted in 2020 using private funds and came amid lawsuits and protests against the building of the border wall in the area. In 2021, federal officials terminated all remaining border contracts for the Laredo sector.

In Laredo, Elsa Hull a landowner who opposed the building of the border wall, told city council members on Monday that the state’s order to remove the mural was “bullies threatening our city.”

“This mural enabled the people to unite and stand against injustice and allowed us to keep our land, our homes, and our river from being taken away from us. This is part of our history. Don’t erase our voices completely,” Hull said.

The removal of the mural in Laredo comes as earlier this month officials in Houston removed a rainbow-colored crosswalk that had been in place for the last eight years to honor in part the LGBTQ+ community.

During a City Council meeting earlier this month, Houston Mayor John Whitmire was critical of Abbott’s directive but said the city would likely lose any legal challenge to the order.

“If we do not find ways as a city to take a stand, what’s next?” Houston City Council member Abbie Kamin said. “When something is erased like this that means so much to so many, there is a real toll on the community.”

Know Your Bias

Wikipedia:

Bias is disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

Your Bias Is

Today's Chart

As expected - and for the 20th year in a row - a coupla things come into pretty sharp focus.

The first is re-affirmation that the reason DumFux News and "conservatives" bitch about liberal bias is almost solely because they're way off to the right.

click to embiggen

The second item is that DumFux news has extended its losing streak to 22 years.

No Pulitzer
No Peabody
No Polk
No Hillman

Zero Zip Zilch Nada

Today's Chart

Again:

The presence of confirming evidence

and

the absence of conflicting evidence

yields a higher probability for truth

-------------

The absence of confirming evidence 

or

the presence of conflicting evidence requires continued skepticism and further review

Pick A Bias, Any Bias

The more we learn, the more we understand how little we actually know.

A cognitive bias refers to a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.[1] Individuals create their own "subjective social reality" from their perception of the input.[2] An individual's construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behaviour in the social world.[3] Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.[4][5][6]

Some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context.[7] Furthermore, cognitive biases enable faster decisions when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics.[8] Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations,[9] resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (bounded rationality), or simply from a limited capacity for information processing.[10]

A continually evolving list of cognitive biases has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics. Kahneman and Tversky (1996) argue that cognitive biases have efficient practical implications for areas including clinical judgment.[11]

Some examples: