Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Today's MAGA Dope

You can't have a real debate about anything if you don't start with a set of facts that we can all accept and agree on.

If one side literally makes shit up, and then insists that shit is ice cream, then there is no debate - because you cannot debate what isn't real.

You and your suite-mates can sit in your freshman dorm room, stoned outa your minds at 3am on a random Tuesday, and speculate about how much pixie dust a unicorn would need to have non-contact oral sex with Bigfoot, but that's not a fucking debate.


Thursday, November 09, 2023

The "Debate"


I don't really expect anyone to have watched the "debate" last night. And I put that word in quote marks because these "debates" aren't debates. They're advertising platforms.

So I have absolutely no expectation that anybody's going to be all that interested in fact-checking anything Republicans have to say at this point.

People with living thinking brains have to know that most politicians are going to spin most things in one way or another, but Republicans in particular have to be viewed as flat-out lying about most things in most cases. It's part of the GOP's brand now.

That said, I consider it part of my civic duty to have some information to back up my general claim that Republicans are posers and flim-flammers - so here's today's installment.


Fact-checking the third Republican primary debate

NBC News aired the third GOP debate of the 2024 election cycle from Miami on Wednesday night, featuring five candidates. Not every candidate uttered facts that are easily checked, but the following is a list of 12 claims that caught our attention. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates. These claims are examined in the order in which they were uttered.

➡︎“We’re almost $34 trillion in debt. Sixty percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Fifty percent of American families can’t afford diapers. One in six American families can’t pay their utility bills. …. He [Trump] put us $8 trillion in debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for that.”
— Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley

Haley accurately cited statistics on the national debt, people living paycheck to paycheck and being able to afford diapers and utility bills. She faulted former president Donald Trump for running up the national debt by $8 trillion. That’s also accurate: According to the Treasury Department, the nation’s total public debt, including intragovernmental holdings, climbed from about $20 trillion to $27.8 trillion under Trump, a gain of $7.9 trillion.

Of course, it is arbitrary and somewhat silly to tag presidents with the debt increase, as much of the gain is because of events, such as the pandemic, and policies made long before they took office. More than half of the debt under Trump came in the last 10 months of his term because of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the biggest drivers of the debt are spending on Social Security and Medicare, established decades ago. That spending happens automatically, not subject to annual appropriations made by Congress.

Hold up a minute there, Skippy. Social Security does not drive US national debt.
Medicare and Medicaid are a different proposition, but while all of the "entitlement" spending will eventually become a real problem, and a major drag on the economy, those problems go away if we get up off our butts and fix the tax code.
BTW - "entitlement" is the perfect word for that stuff - because it's mine. I worked for it. I fucking earned it. So take that snide shit you're always flinging and stuffed it back in your asshole.
You may continue now.

➡︎“Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden got a $5 million bribe from Ukraine. That’s why we’re sending $200 billion back to that same country.”
— entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy

This is baseless. Congressional Republicans released an FBI document from 2020 this year that makes a shocking allegation about President Biden — that he and his son Hunter were involved in a foreign bribery scheme with a Ukrainian business executive. The identity of this FBI source and any connection to Ukraine remain unknown, and the FBI has not publicly confirmed any tips the person supplied in the document. Moreover, the person was interviewed by telephone in 2020 about conversations that took place as many as four years earlier.

The Fact Checker examined a business transaction described in the document, comparing its account with publicly available information. Upon examination, the facts didn’t add up.

Ramaswamy then makes an unjustified leap to claim that the United States is backing Ukraine in its war with Russia because of this unproven allegation. There is no evidence that is the case.

➡︎“Obama sent millions to Iran. Frankly, President Biden has sent billions to Iran.”
— Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)

This is misleading. In both cases, the president returned money that was Iran’s in the first place — to facilitate the release of Americans detained in Iran.

Obama settled a decades-old claim between the two countries. An initial payment of $400 million was handed over on Jan. 17, 2016, the day after Iran released four American detainees, including Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian. The timing — which U.S. officials insisted was a coincidence — suggested the cash could be viewed as a ransom payment.

But the initial cash payment was always Iran’s money. In the 1970s, the then-pro-Western Iranian government under the shah paid $400 million for U.S. military equipment. The equipment was never delivered because the two countries broke off relations after the seizure of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. Two other payments totaling $1.3 billion — a negotiated agreement on the interest owed on the $400 million — came weeks later.

As for Biden, he released $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been held by South Korea — as part of a deal to win the freedom of five American detainees — but that money has not yet been received by Iran. After the Hamas attack in Israel, the administration said it had prevented Iran from tapping the money.

➡︎“China has the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 350 ships. They’ll have 400 ships in two years. We won’t even have 350 ships in two decades.”
— Haley

Not all ships are created equal. The United States has 11 aircraft carriers, compared with China’s two, and the U.S. Navy operates 92 destroyers compared with China’s 50, according to Global Firepower’s 2023 military rankings. China has an edge on submarines — 78 to 68. The United States is seeking to bolster the number of submarines.

➡︎“Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties. It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm.”
— Ramaswamy

Ramaswamy, who advocates cutting a deal with Russia that would allow Moscow to keep the Ukrainian territory it has seized, often paints an unflattering portrait of a country that is on a war footing.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed decrees that ban religious organizations with ties to Russia and suspended 11 Ukrainian parties with ties to Russia; most are small, but one, Opposition Platform for Life, has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament. Both actions were aimed at Russia and earned Russian protests. He also consolidated the country’s television outlets into a single TV platform, citing the need for a “unified information policy” under martial law. The stated aim was to combat Russian propaganda on independent TV channels, but the effect is to limit freedom of speech.

Ramaswamy also oddly labeled Zelensky — who is Jewish — a Nazi.

➡︎“She [Haley] welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were.”
— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

DeSantis is echoing an attack ad by a super PAC supporting him — which earned Three Pinocchios.

As South Carolina governor from January 2011 to January 2017, Haley recruited Chinese companies to her state. Chinese capital investment in South Carolina more than doubled, from $308 million in 2011 to nearly $670 million in 2015. Haley has sought to distance herself from the specifics of these deals, but she acknowledged at an Iowa town hall in October: “I recruited a fiberglass company,” known as China Jushi.

According to the contract between the county and China Jushi, the company would receive almost 200 acres of county-owned land free of charge if promised investments were made. The company’s factory is 5 miles from an Army training base, but it’s not a sensitive facility that would require a government review if such a foreign-owned company was located within 1 mile.

As for the “love letter,” DeSantis is referring to a letter sent to then-Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai on Dec. 30, 2014. Haley thanked the diplomat for congratulating her on her reelection and said she is “grateful” for China’s “contributions on the economic front.” In the letter, she said she considered China “a friend.”

➡︎“What he left out, though, Ron, and be honest about it, there was a lobbying-based exemption in that bill that allowed Chinese nationals to buy land within a 20-mile radius of a military base, lobbied for by one of your donors.”
— Ramaswamy

Ramaswamy suggested that DeSantis, who signed a bill restricting Chinese land purchases, allowed loopholes in the legislation. He got the radius wrong — it is 10 miles, not 20 — and the exemptions concern residential property. A foreign person can buy a residential property if it is less than 2 acres, if the property is more than 5 miles from a military installation and the buyer has an active visa to lawfully reside in the country. No donor who supposedly successfully lobbied for this exemption has been identified.

➡︎“He [DeSantis] has opposed fracking; he’s opposing drilling.”
— Haley

This is complicated, but Haley’s framing is misleading. Running for president, DeSantis has advocated for fracking. But he has opposed it in Florida. When he ran for governor, he pledged “to pass legislation that bans fracking in the state.”

In November 2018, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that banned drilling under Florida waters, a stance supported by many of the state’s Republicans. But it did not mention fracking.

Two days into his term, on Jan. 10, 2019, DeSantis signed an executive order that implemented the measure. The order directed the Department of Environmental Protection to “take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.” In effect, according to PolitiFact, that has meant no oil and gas permit authorizing hydraulic fracturing has been issued during his term as governor.

DeSantis has not yet fulfilled his pledge to pass legislation that would ban fracking. As a member of Congress in 2013, DeSantis voted for a bill that would prohibit the Department of Interior from imposing federal rules and regulations on states’ fracking operations, in effect deferring to state rules.

Asked about offshore drilling at a Sept. 7 town hall, Haley said: “I think that states need to be able to make that decision because it affects the quality of life for people of the states. For the states that want to do it, I’m all for it. For the states that don’t want to do it, the people have a right to make that decision.”

➡︎“I will make sure we claw back the $500 billion of unspent covid dollars that are out there instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after Middle America.”
— Haley

This figure is a common GOP talking point, but it is wildly exaggerated. When Congress passed a bill last year to provide the IRS with an additional $80 billion in funding over 10 years, that money would be used in part to hire 86,852 full-time employees in the next decade. But many would not be enforcement “agents” but employees hired to improve information technology and customer service. Treasury officials say that because of attrition, after 10 years of increasing spending, the size of the agency should grow only 25 to 30 percent when the hiring burst is completed.

The Biden administration’s strategic plan for the IRS, released in April, estimated that an additional 1,543 full-time employees would be hired in enforcement in 2023, or about 15 percent of newly hired staff. That would grown to 7,239 in 2024, or 37 percent of new staff.

Biden administration officials have pledged that enforcement efforts to collect unpaid taxes will concentrate on those earning more than $400,000.

➡︎“Social Security will go bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare will go bankrupt in eight.”
— Haley

Haley, like many politicians, uses “bankrupt” in a misleading way. The trustees for Social Security and Medicare predict there is 80 percent probability that reserves for Social Security will be exhausted between 2032 and 2037. If nothing is done, the program still could pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits. But Congress probably would be forced to act.

As for Medicare, there are four parts to the program, which covers 66 million people: Part A (hospital insurance), Part B (medical insurance), Part C (Medicare Advantage — private plans for parts A and B), and Part D (prescription drug plans). Just Part A, which covers hospital visits, hospice care, nursing facilities and the like, is in danger of going “bankrupt.”

Part B, which involves seeing a doctor, is paid out of general funds and premiums, as is Part D. Thus, if costs rise, premiums can be adjusted. But Part A is financed mainly through payroll taxes of 1.45 percent on earnings paid both by workers and employers; self-employed people pay 2.9 percent. The money raised is then credited to a pay-as-you-go trust fund, which uses the revenue raised to pay the benefits of Medicare beneficiaries.

There is no provision to use general revenue to make up the deficit, but there are various ways that Congress could deal with this problem, as it has in the past. In fact, from its inception, the Part A fund has been on the brink of going “bankrupt.” Page 4 of a useful report by the Congressional Research Service, titled “Medicare: History of Insolvency Projections,” shows that in 1970, it was due to go “bankrupt” in 1972.

➡︎“When life expectancy is declining, I don’t see how you could raise it the other direction. So it’s one thing to peg it on life expectancy. But we have had a significant decline in life expectancy in this country.”
— DeSantis

In avoiding a question on whether he would raise the retirement age for Social Security, DeSantis referred to a recent dip in U.S. life expectancy because of the pandemic and drug overdoses. But that’s a misleading frame because life expectancy has increased greatly since Social Security was established in 1935. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was 62 for women and 58 for men. In 2021, American women had a life expectancy at birth of 79 years, while men were at about 73. The retirement age was raised slightly in a bill signed by Ronald Reagan in 1983, and even with the recent setback, life expectancy has continued to increase.

➡︎“I certainly wouldn’t allow — not allow — for governors — former governors, Democratic governor of Virginia who talked about infanticide. … I think it’s unethical, unethical and immoral to allow for abortions up until the day of birth.”
— Scott

This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.

The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful, emotional and even moral decisions.

About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer.

Increasingly, there is a period when premature births and late abortions begin to overlap. In 2021, the CDC recorded almost 22,000 births between 20 and 27 weeks. Babies born before 25 weeks are considered extremely preterm, with vital organs such as heart, lungs and brain very immature. But the survival rate has climbed to 30 percent for 22-week babies and 55 percent for 23-week babies, according to a 2022 study.

Meanwhile, Scott mischaracterizes remarks by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), a physician.

Northam told a radio show in 2019 that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said Northam was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Today's Brian


Rubio is trying to argue that government can't do anything about the gun problem because government can't do anything.

It's another swipe at government itself - the concept of government. Republicans aren't just saying the Democrats' gun safety proposals are bad. They're saying "the government is bad".

Rubio is not as dumb as we like to think he is. Ain't none of 'em that dumb - not dumb at all.

What they're doing is working - it's having the desired effect.


Brian Tyler Cohen


Val Demings showed some real guts, and more than a little brain power. I like it when Dems get up on their hind legs and fight like there's something worth winning.


 

Sunday, May 29, 2022

Shooting Down A Gun Argument





Twitter Thread: (@JohnKaminar)

Folks, bear with me for a minute, please. I want to address a point that is often made by gun rights advocates, but which is a fallacy that civilians may not realize.

In the interest of full disclosure, I served 30 years in the Army and Army Reserve, I’ve taught marksmanship in the Army and supervised firing ranges and arms storage/security, and am a gun collector who supports the 2nd Amendment in that I believe that a law abiding citizen has the right to be armed if he or she so chooses, but I also believe that this right – like all of our rights – carries with it significant responsibilities.

So, my point: we often hear people say that since we trust an 18-year old soldier to carry an M-16 (the military version of the AR-15), then we should be comfortable allowing 18 year old private citizens to carry one.

But here’s what those folks are NOT telling you:
  1. No brand new enlistee in the Army (or any branch of the military) is given a firearm on Day 1 of his/her service. They receive quite a bit of training in firearm safety before they ever are allowed to handle the weapon – even if they grew up around guns and know all about them.
  2. When they do get to handle their M-16s for the first time, there are no bullets ANYWHERE around. After being trained in firearm safety, they are then trained on the weapon itself without ever firing a live round. They learn how to handle it, carry it safely, disassemble it, clean it, check it for functionality, and reassemble it.
  3. When they finally do get to fire the weapon, they are closely, CLOSELY supervised by their sergeants and officers. In fact, when the trainees go to the firing range for the first time, there are almost as many sergeants on the range as there are trainees. And some of the sergeants are assigned the specific responsibility for ensuring everything is done according to Army safety regulations.
  4. Once the recruits finish their training and join their units, they NEVER get to carry their firearms around. Those weapons are kept in the unit arms room under double lock and key – each weapon is locked into its storage rack and the arms room itself is locked. And the arms room is protected by an alarm system.
  5. No soldier of ANY rank can simply go to the unit armorer (the sergeant responsible for the arms room) and say, “Gee, Sergeant, may I please sign out my M-16? I feel like exercising my 2nd Amendment right today by carrying my rifle around just because I can.” No, the troops only sign out their weapons for authorized purposes, such as marksmanship training or field exercises, and when they do that, they are ALWAYS under the supervision of a sergeant – usually under the supervision of several sergeants and a few officers, to boot.
So, friends, that’s the rest of that story. Those 18 year old soldiers whom we trust to carry an assault rifle are doing so under conditions so tightly regulated as to make any gun rights activist blanche in anger.

The military recognizes that those weapons are so deadly that they never allow soldiers to just carry them around on the installation.

Those are the facts of the matter. So the next time one of your gun rights advocating friends tries to feed you that particular line, you can refute them with the facts.

Thursday, October 08, 2020

Fact Check

The debate last night was at least more like a real debate, and not that stoopid brick fight thing they had on last week.

CNN's Daniel Dale does his thing:


No knockouts, but Momala knocked Pence down pretty good with what's becoming her signature slap-back, "I will not be lectured to..."

And that's becoming one of the salient features of this campaign season - ie: Don't bring that mansplainin' bullshit in here again, boys.

So, I think there's a consensus forming that says Harris won it on points.

I'm sure the "conservatives" will piss and moan about "the angry screeching black woman", but y'know, fellas, that's kinda the fuckin' problem women in general have with the GOP now - your dismissive and condescending attitude has worn thin, and they're just not gonna put up with your shit anymore.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Call It Off


Eric Boehlert - Press Run:

Shedding all semblance of decency, let alone public civility, a desperate Trump turned Tuesday’s presidential debate not only into a brawl, but also a national embarrassment. Behaving like a petulant teenager, Trump rolled his eyes, constantly interrupted, hectored, tried to pick fights, and generally made a fool of himself as more than 80 million Americans tuned in, most of whom were likely thinking, ‘What have we become as a nation?’

It was clearly the worst presidential debate in American history, as Fox News moderator Chris Wallace got completely steamrolled by Trump’s bullying ways. And it was a debacle that Trump pre-planned. Allergic to debate prep and still seething about the blockbuster revelation about his massive tax evasion practices, Trump arrived with one goal — to make sure the debate was incomprehensible and that viewers learned as little as possible.

That’s why it’s time to call off the next two debates. Tuesday’s car wreck was a complete waste of time.

Months ago, I urged the Biden campaign to not show up for any of the debates this election season because I didn’t see the benefit of sharing the stage with a madman for 90 minutes. There's no upside to normalizing his behavior with a presidential debate and the legitimacy it provides. Now everyone sees the results. Biden held his own last night, there’s no question, telling Trump more than once to “shut up,” which in the past would have been unthinkable for a Democrat to utter on a debate stage. And it was exactly what was called for.

But there’s no need to repeat the fiasco. There’s no need for Biden to show up again so Trump can smear Biden family members, make a mockery out of public discourse, and lie relentlessly about every topic discussed during the forums. Running for president is serious business, and Trump is a child.

And yes, the 2020 debates are already so much worse than the 2016 debates, when, in retrospect, Trump at least pretended to occasionally follow some of the norms of public behavior. But all of that is gone now. Lost in the authoritarian power that he craves in the White House, Trump deems it beneath him to share the stage, and the spotlight, with another politician.

Another reason for Biden to politely bow out is because while the press is going to correctly portray the Tuesday debate as a stunning failure, they’re going to couch it in Both Sides language, suggesting Biden was somehow at all responsible for the national embarrassment, when it was entirely Trump’s doing.

That was apparent in real time last night. From Politico: “The first Trump-Biden debate: A trainwreck.” New York Times: “Sharp Personal Attacks and Name Calling in Chaotic First Debate.” CNN: “Pure Chaos at First Debate.” The Washington Post: “First Trump-Biden meeting marked by constant interruptions by Trump.” Technically those headlines were accurate, but all the news outlets presented the story as if both sides were to blame for the televised disintegration.

There’s also the simple fact that unless the the Commission on Presidential Debates allows moderators to cut off Trump’s mic for the next two forums, it’s not possible for any moderator to keep control of the event. Wallace was completely humiliated by Trump, who ran over the Fox News anchor at every turn, making it impossible for there to be anything remotely resembling a revealing or intelligent debate.

Comically, Wallace told the New York Times he wanted to be “invisible” during the debate, meaning it was up to the candidates to engage each other. Commission officials actually thought Wallace would act as a “facilitator,” gently walking Trump through the evening’s topics. That makes sense if you think Trump is a rational, sane person. But Trump’s a nihilistic actor. And the Beltway’s refusal to knowledge that — to think that protocols like presidential debates could still be adhered to — fueled last night’s disaster.

It also lends credence to canceling the next two debates, because it’s not possible to stage a two-person debate when one of them is a sociopath. The debate Commission can act quickly to try to save this format, by allowing Trump’s mic to be cut. But anything short of that would be a waste of time. It would be a waste of Biden’s time, and a waste of Americans’ time.

Trump has torn up so many norms and traditions with his radical behavior. So let’s add another one to the list — cancel the next two debates. Nobody will miss them.

Monday, September 02, 2019

Sit-n-Talk

There's this thing we call "compromise".

In the late 1780s, as the framers were in the process of pushing the US constitution towards ratification, one of the main criticisms was: "It's a bundle of comprise".

A lot of people were unhappy because they wouldn't be getting their way on their favorite issues. 

We don't need to wonder why there's a tendency for the kind of bullheaded tribal devotion to one side or the other in politics. It's embedded in the human firmware.

The point of the American Experiment was (is) to elevate compromise; to make compromise itself - and thus the ability to reach a positive outcome through compromise - a worthy and admirable alternative to bashing each other over the head with sticks and rocks.

There can be no more representative issue to illustrate that point than the Gun Debate.


Look at any given comments section online where the topic is Guns and Gun Control and 2nd amendment and dead kids etc etc. I've lost count of the times I could easily draw the inference that a commenter intended to back up his position with violence in order to prove his point - or his manhood, or some other fucked up thing rattling around in his vacuum-packed skull.


Weirdly, "conservatives" have it right - we've got a serious cultural problem. But the roots of that problem have very little to do with video games or hip-hop or lack of prayer or any of the other bugbears the right radicals love to pimp at us. Those are all reflections of our culture - they're symptoms, not causes.

I won't try to lay the blame at the feet of the US military (fake lord knows it's a whole fucktangle of weird shit), but think about the simple fact that we've got millions of kids who have grown up never knowing a single day in their entire lives when the US wasn't at war.

Now look at the cops they've grown accustomed to seeing.


And their dads, brothers, uncles, cousins and neighbors.


We've all but abandoned 'soft power', and made the decision to leave everything up to the military and the cops.

We send troops in to handle whatever we think is wrong in foreign countries, and we call the cops every time we think there might be a problem with somebody in the park or the grocery store or down the block from us.

We've come to fully expect that whatever the problem is, we can simply kill our way out of it.

WaPo - Howell Raines

September 1, 2019

As a hunter who has owned firearms since adolescence without breaking any laws or feeling under-gunned, I think I am equipped to offer a modest proposal that could produce a safer America and also break the maniacal hold of the National Rifle Association on the nation’s recreational shooters, not to mention Congress.

My proposal is simply that we revert to the gun laws that prevailed in the United States around 1960. From a public-safety standpoint, that was far from a perfect world. The cheap revolvers called “Saturday night specials” ruled the night in many cities. Loopholes as to the sale and registration of long arms allowed the importation of the mail-order rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill President John F. Kennedy in 1963.


Yet law-abiding hunters and target shooters had all the weapons and firepower they needed and were not in a state of constant turmoil over state and federal laws that restricted most shotguns to three rounds and most semiautomatic rifles and handguns to fewer than 20 rounds. American gun and ammunition manufacturers such as Remington, Winchester and Colt were thriving. Nobody argued that a six-shot revolver was inadequate for home-protection emergencies. Deer and elk hunters who used larger caliber rifles felt amply equipped with standard magazines of a half-dozen or so shells.

A return to these basic restrictions on loadings would appeal to most hunters, firing-range shooters and gun collectors who battle the nonstop whirlpool of NRA paranoia. It would give members of Congress, including those from rural, pro-gun states, a sellable policy with a history of limiting mass shootings in public places while protecting the sporting and self-protection practices of law-abiding citizens. And it would reduce the body count from shootings in public places.

I'm not saying we should yearn for some romantic fantasy of the pastoral days of yore. But I insist that we look at what was working for us before we removed all restraints and allowed private interests to install wholly owned coin-operated politicians in such openly crass ways.

This ends in plutocracy, which in turn eventually ends in bloody revolt - just exactly the way it did in 18th-century America.

Thursday, August 01, 2019

The American Freak Show

Anybody else flash on Gilda Radner when they see Marianne Williamson?



Zack Beauchamp, Vox:

Self-help guru Marianne Williamson was the breakout star of CNN’s first Democratic debate — at least if internet chatter and pundits are to be believed.

Williamson was the most-searched person on Google after the debate in 49 out of 50 states


CNN analyst and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm praised her “really compelling and authentic” answer on reparations, saying, “Honestly, I think she brought it.” GOP pollster Frank Luntz tweeted that “she’s cutting through the clutter tonight.” A Washington Post article claimed she had “a big night,” writing that she “used her limited time on the microphone to maximum effect, attracting attention for meaningful answers on race and Democratic ideology.” Even current Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) singled out her “surprisingly eloquent answers” to some of the debate questions during his post-debate MSNBC appearance.

This all needs to stop.


Something that I think would go a good long way in trying to stop it is exactly what Mr Beauchamp is doing - ie: take every opportunity to bitch at the Press Poodles whenever they hint at the standard bullshit of "horse race" or some other worn out metaphor, or when they start with the bromides like "Bringing some common sense..." or "a much-needed fresh perspective from outside the beltway..."

(BTW, ever notice how often the inside-the-beltway puffballs complain about how stuffy and stale it is inside the beltway, as they limo their way from one Georgetown cocktail party to the next?)

Marianne Williamson is not a serious candidate for the presidency: She’s a self-help celebrity who openly disdained policy debate onstage Tuesday night. Worse than that, she looms as a menace to public health — someone who has attacked antidepressants and vaccination in a manner that “can literally kill people,” as my colleague German Lopez (who covers public health) put it. She has no business being on the debate stage; the more famous she gets, the more harm she can do.

The fact that a lot of media figures aren’t recognizing this — that they’re either celebrating her flashes of insight on issues like reparations for slavery or enjoying her kookiness — shows that they haven’t fully internalized the lessons of Donald Trump’s rise to power. Williamson is vanishingly unlikely to win, or even come close, but the amount of press attention she’s getting is troubling. Even if public interest in her mandates some level of coverage, at least it could be more muted and skeptical than what we’re seeing.

“As far as I can tell, Williamson has zero experience or expertise that would prepare her to effectively do the job for which she’s auditioning, and that’s terrifying to me,” Seth Cotlar, a historian of the US at Willamette University, tells me. “It’s fun to cover politics as a circus, because it often is a circus, but the stakes of what happens in DC are incredibly serious and have real consequences for people’s lives.”

It's not a game show. It's not a beauty pageant. It's not Wrestle-fucking-Mania.
We're trying to figure what's best for the most, and while we don't get real close to it very often, we do manage to move things along when we're not encumbered by Rent-Seeking Media Leeches who think the point of the exercise is to sell cut-rate insurance bundles, mail-order housewares, and boner pills.

Hey, Press Poodles - wanna know why about 80% of us hate "the media"?  Take a look at about 80% of the shit you guys put on cable all day every fuckin' day.

Bring back Bobbie Battista and HLN. We got 30 minutes of actual news, followed by another 30 minutes of actual news, followed by another 30 minutes...

And when something else happened, they covered it like - you know - a fucking news story. They didn't treat every little thing like it was the Hindenburg in 1937, and they made sure they checked their shit before anything got on the air. 

And when they fucked up (because people fuck up once in a while), they went on the air and they said, "Dang - we fucked up. Sorry, guys. We'll try to do better."



It's like we've lost our ability to have an internal dialogue with ourselves before we blurt out whatever the fuck is rattling around in our heads. We're like 5-year-olds who just start yapping and end up asking grandma if she really is "ignorant hillbilly trailer trash, like Mom said you were a coupla days ago when she was talking to the neighbors...?"



Today's Quote


When the sun sets on your career and they are writing your story - of all the good and bad things you did in your life - the thing you will be remembered for is whether, in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him.
--Pete Buttigieg


Monday, April 08, 2019

Cult45


There are always reasons for any given behavior. Those reasons are often ridiculous - at least they seem pretty ridiculous to "normal" people - but it's possible to understand these things.

Bobby Azarian, PhD - Psychology Today:

6. The Power of Mortality Reminders and Perceived Existential Threat

A well-supported theory from social psychology, known as Terror Management Theory, explains why Trump’s fear mongering is doubly effective. The theory is based on the fact that humans have a unique awareness of their own mortality. The inevitably of one’s death creates existential terror and anxiety that is always residing below the surface. In order to manage this terror, humans adopt cultural worldviews — like religions, political ideologies, and national identities — that act as a buffer by instilling life with meaning and value.

Terror Management Theory predicts that when people are reminded of their own mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they will more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not. Hundreds of studies have supported this hypothesis, and some have specifically shown that triggering thoughts of death tends to shift people towards the right.

Not only do death reminders increase nationalism, they may influence voting habits in favor of more conservative presidential candidates. And more disturbingly, in a study with American students, scientists found that making mortality salient increased support for extreme military interventions by American forces that could kill thousands of civilians overseas. Interestingly, the effect was present only in conservatives.

By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump may be creating a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric.

In this video, I explain this in greater detail, and offer a potential solution to the problem.



So, yeah - dude's got a sing-song speaking style that gets pretty annoying pretty fast. For my own bad self, I'm trying to put aside my Sales Guy Training and ignore such things in favor of concentrating on the content.

One thing: it's interesting to me that the theme - perceived existential threat - is a recurring thing, and it meshes well with the old BBC documentary from 2006 (The Power Of Nightmares - Adam Curtis).

Here's your assignment on background:



The antidote, as per usual, is interaction with "the other side". Unfortunately, my experience of those interactions is that in order to have any chance at a meaningful exchange with a Red Hat or some other "conservative", I end up having to do most of the thinking for both us - just so we can have a civil discussion. 

But that almost inevitably means my debate partner is going to accuse me of being some snobby PC elitist even though it's very likely he's someone fully engaged in deliberate ignorance (regarding one topic or another) and refuses even to learn some of the basics of public discourse, eg: Logical Fallacies.

I have to insist that facts are facts. And I have to insist that my insistence on those facts is not justification for anyone to cop out and say "Both Sides Are Just Being Intractable".

Your feeling vulnerable (because of whatever threat you believe is "out there") doesn't negate the moral and ethical norms that have to be in place so we can live together in a civilized manner.



"And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." --JFK

Saturday, December 29, 2018

A Step Forward

Negotiating without framing the outcome as winners and losers.

If we have an argument instead of a fist fight, that's called progress. But we've allowed our attitude to backslide into looking at the debate as a battle.

If I learn something new and I change my mind about the issue we're debating, the current way we see these things requires me to be labeled the loser, which makes me more likely to rationalize a point of view that almost has to evolve into something totally radical and unworthy of support.


You Are Not So Smart Podcast:

Friday, September 07, 2018

The Alt-Right Playbook

Some interesting analysis from Innuendo Studios:



Bad arguments aren't a bug - they're a feature.



"Framing" and "Boxes": very similar to the Straw Man Fallacy.



Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Let's Review

Examine almost any "argument" from almost any Republican, and there's a better than even chance you're going to find a logical fallacy.

Listen to 45* - notice how often he prefaces the stoopid shit that falls out of his face with "Many people are saying".

Or when practically any given "conservative" tries to make his case by starting with "the American people want / believe / are with me...".

The Bandwagon Fallacy (aka: Appeal To Popularity) is what an awful lot of these clowns think of as a bedrock principle. Their position is the right one because everybody says so.


(Try to remember these 2 things. 1: The Ford Pinto was once the most popular car in America. And 2: Those nice fat sales numbers didn't keep the gas tanks from exploding)

Here's the one our "Christian" friends love to use:


...which ties in nicely with:


...and way too often leads right into:


...or:


A sub-heading under Tu Quoque is False Equivalence (aka: What-About-ism)

One of the big ones is:


The Anecdotal Fallacy is enshrined forever in The Myth Of The Welfare Queen. The new iteration shows up all the time now in the crap about "Illegal Immigrants Are Murdering White Girls".

It goes on and on and on.

Get 'em all: Your Logical Fallacy Is

Or: Information Is Beautiful


Friday, March 16, 2018

A Town Hall - VA05

Tom Garrett is a Daddy State clown of the highest order.


Follow him on Twitter. Listen to his speeches. Watch the YouTube videos. And then troll the fuck out of him.  Nobody deserves a good old-fashioned slagging more than this guy.

My comment at YouTube:

(and you might have to hurry - no telling how long his media people will allow criticism to stay in place)

Your "logic" is that banning bump stocks wouldn't save all that many lives, so why bother? Because - long guns? Well, what's the number, Mr Garrett? How many Americans do you need to see murdered before you get up off your ass and do something? 50? 500? How many? 

Then you turn around and say we have to spend enormous amounts of time and energy and money to solve the problem of immigrants involved in 3% of traffic deaths. 

You're an ideologue. You insist on taking every circumstance and smashing-fitting it into your narrow preconceptions. And the kicker is that you insist on using the most obviously ham-handed debate tactics, most often heard in a middle school cafeteria:
eg: "As someone who respects the Bill of Rights..." - what grade are you in now? 

Everybody respects the Bill of Rights, dopey - nobody is saying anything about tearing it up except you, when you're using it as a false premise. 

There is no honor in your outlook, or in your intellectually lazy presentation, or in your blatant attempts to impose your Daddy State agenda on us. 

You need to go.

Monday, February 26, 2018

The Big 2A



Like everybody else arguing in favor of a framework of sensible gun laws, I always get a lot of pushback from ammosexuals that eventually boils down to: "shall not be infringed - that's the phrase that matters, Libtard - SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED ".

(notice how I left out all the typos and spelling errors and grammatical hernias, in order not to make fun of the knuckle-headed rubes who're dumb enough to think that way - cuz I'm just a nice feller)

So anyway, their 4-word absolute-ittude has been a real stopper (in that they think that's all they need), but I think this might be a pretty good rebuttal:

You're ignoring 85% of what the 2nd amendment says - so we get to ignore 85% of the rights you claim the amendment confers on you.

In fact, I'll cut that back to just 50%. You can have either "keep" or "bear" - your choice.

This popped up on Twitter and it's what got me thinkin':

The Conversation, Saul Cornell:

The Second Amendment is one of the most frequently cited provisions in the American Constitution, but also one of the most poorly understood.

The 27 words that constitute the Second Amendment seem to baffle modern Americans on both the left and right.

Ironically, those on both ends of our contemporary political spectrum cast the Second Amendment as a barrier to robust gun regulation. Gun rights supporters – mostly, but not exclusively, on the right – seem to believe that the Second Amendment prohibits many forms of gun regulation. On the left, frustration with the lack of progress on modern gun control leads to periodic calls for the amendment’s repeal.

Both of these beliefs ignore an irrefutable historical truth. The framers and adopters of the Second Amendment were generally ardent supporters of the idea of well-regulated liberty. Without strong governments and effective laws, they believed, liberty inevitably degenerated into licentiousness and eventually anarchy. Diligent students of history, particularly Roman history, the Federalists who wrote the Constitution realized that tyranny more often resulted from anarchy, not strong government.

I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations.

Consider these five categories of gun laws that the Founders endorsed.

#1: Registration

#2: Public carry

#3: Stand-your-ground laws

#4: Safe storage laws

#5: Loyalty oaths