The start of an impeachment inquiry is a bit like a roll of the dice.
The outcome is uncertain.
What will happen is that testimony and documents will come out and the American public will have better insight into the events.
Of course most people will rely on the media coverage to get their facts so we know that there will be two versions circulating.
Even the media with the bias, and maybe they all have some, may be forced at some point to accept some alternative facts.
It would have to be impossible to dispute and even then it will be spun.
So the next few months may be more of a media trial than anything else.
Facts are becoming more and more malleable in today's world.
Showing posts with label facts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facts. Show all posts
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Fiction and Reality
At this point in the election cycle we see fictional promises of tax cuts, accusations without merit and other outright lies in an attempt to sway voters or energize the Republican base.
Whether any of it will work remains to be seen, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but some of the ranting fail any rational test.
The administration trumpeted about how it had reduced illegal immigration until it hadn't and then blamed the Democrats.
The great tax cut that did for little for the American public was a great success, until it wasn't and now they will pass a new one.
The deficit was going to be eliminated during his first term except it won't be and is in fact growing.
We are going to get respect from other nations, as soon as they stop laughing at us during a UN session
North Korea was going to eliminate its nuclear weapons, except it isn't.
He was going to fix health care, except it turned out to be complicated, at least for him.
In addition to being a sexual abuser himself, as caught on tape, he supports sexual abusers for significant appointments and makes fun of their victims.
He apparently thinks illegal aliens who get over the border are immediately allowed to vote.
He has disrupted the lives of the "Dreamers" who are in most cases as American as anyone and should be treated fairly.
He was going to expose the fraudulent voting, except he couldn't find any.
Its clear why his businesses have gone bankrupt multiple times, he doesn't understand the relationship between income and expenditures.
The fact that the economy is doing well, as it was when he entered office, is something, but it seems like he is trying to disrupt it and he hasn't fundamentally changed anything.
Well, he has added a lot of acrimony to the nation, its at an all time high.
Whether any of it will work remains to be seen, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but some of the ranting fail any rational test.
The administration trumpeted about how it had reduced illegal immigration until it hadn't and then blamed the Democrats.
The great tax cut that did for little for the American public was a great success, until it wasn't and now they will pass a new one.
The deficit was going to be eliminated during his first term except it won't be and is in fact growing.
We are going to get respect from other nations, as soon as they stop laughing at us during a UN session
North Korea was going to eliminate its nuclear weapons, except it isn't.
He was going to fix health care, except it turned out to be complicated, at least for him.
In addition to being a sexual abuser himself, as caught on tape, he supports sexual abusers for significant appointments and makes fun of their victims.
He apparently thinks illegal aliens who get over the border are immediately allowed to vote.
He has disrupted the lives of the "Dreamers" who are in most cases as American as anyone and should be treated fairly.
He was going to expose the fraudulent voting, except he couldn't find any.
Its clear why his businesses have gone bankrupt multiple times, he doesn't understand the relationship between income and expenditures.
The fact that the economy is doing well, as it was when he entered office, is something, but it seems like he is trying to disrupt it and he hasn't fundamentally changed anything.
Well, he has added a lot of acrimony to the nation, its at an all time high.
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Fairness
One of the things that I find troubling often is when people try to be fair.
I don't have a problem with that except it often results in them being unfair.
For example, in many sporting events, the officials don't want to seem like they are favoring one side over the other and so, even when one of the teams is being clearly more aggressive or outside the rules the official try to find offenses to sort of even things up on the non-offending team.
The assumption that both sides are more or less playing the game the same way leads to this and a lopsided number of calls will be challenged by the team that has them.
The result of this is that the team being more "guilty" will get away with things while the more "innocent" team will get penalized.
This is because it just seems fair that by the end the number of infractions is roughly the same.
We see the same thing in Politics where there is the same assumption that both sides use the same tactics. They do to some extent, but recently at least we see one party clearly leading in falsehoods and dirty tricks and then accusing the press of bias when it points it out.
The press bends over backwards to try to appear balanced.
The dontard clearly leads all contenders in outright lies and history revisions and the press has pointed it out. However it then finds things which are much less significant to accuse the other side of for balance.
This attempt to be balanced results in bad behavior being equated with behavior that is not close to equal in seriousness. For example I read a recent fact checking article concerning a private citizens op-ed which stated that the dontard has shown no inclination to stop election hacking.
The article spelled out examples, many of which were done b congress trying to show this was incorrect and concluded the words "no inclination" went too far. Really? This was an op-ed by a private citizen that drew a conclusion that is essentially accurate, even if a few things could be found that might indicate the opposite.
It was clearly a lot of effort to be "balanced".
It wasn't.
I don't have a problem with that except it often results in them being unfair.
For example, in many sporting events, the officials don't want to seem like they are favoring one side over the other and so, even when one of the teams is being clearly more aggressive or outside the rules the official try to find offenses to sort of even things up on the non-offending team.
The assumption that both sides are more or less playing the game the same way leads to this and a lopsided number of calls will be challenged by the team that has them.
The result of this is that the team being more "guilty" will get away with things while the more "innocent" team will get penalized.
This is because it just seems fair that by the end the number of infractions is roughly the same.
We see the same thing in Politics where there is the same assumption that both sides use the same tactics. They do to some extent, but recently at least we see one party clearly leading in falsehoods and dirty tricks and then accusing the press of bias when it points it out.
The press bends over backwards to try to appear balanced.
The dontard clearly leads all contenders in outright lies and history revisions and the press has pointed it out. However it then finds things which are much less significant to accuse the other side of for balance.
This attempt to be balanced results in bad behavior being equated with behavior that is not close to equal in seriousness. For example I read a recent fact checking article concerning a private citizens op-ed which stated that the dontard has shown no inclination to stop election hacking.
The article spelled out examples, many of which were done b congress trying to show this was incorrect and concluded the words "no inclination" went too far. Really? This was an op-ed by a private citizen that drew a conclusion that is essentially accurate, even if a few things could be found that might indicate the opposite.
It was clearly a lot of effort to be "balanced".
It wasn't.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Talking Heads
The world is a complex place, which was apparently a surprise to the dontard.
He seemed to believe that he could just tell people what to do and they would do it.
This may have been one of the reasons he had so many bankruptcies, of course it may have been because they did do what he asked.
His judgment is based on what people call talking heads, especially the ones on one particular news network.
Talking heads are not news people, they are opinion people who find facts that sort of support what they want to say.
A lot of these so called facts are really opinions of other people or half-truths that can be twisted like a balloon animal to resemble a real animal.
They aren't real animals and a lot of these facts aren't real facts.
The fact that they get repeated a number of times doesn't make them true, simply persistent.
Even reputable journalists don't get a lot of things right, although what they publish or say has some credibility.
Real events are complex and we always prefer simple answers.
The entire war in Iraq was based on misinterpretation of evidence. It was misinterpreted because the people saw what they wanted to see. When they didn't see real "proof" it was easy to assume it was there anyways, just well hidden.
This is pretty much the way some of our media operates, making leaps of faith and drawing conclusions, at least the talking heads do.
They simplify the complex and our dontard buys it.
Watch out folks!
He seemed to believe that he could just tell people what to do and they would do it.
This may have been one of the reasons he had so many bankruptcies, of course it may have been because they did do what he asked.
His judgment is based on what people call talking heads, especially the ones on one particular news network.
Talking heads are not news people, they are opinion people who find facts that sort of support what they want to say.
A lot of these so called facts are really opinions of other people or half-truths that can be twisted like a balloon animal to resemble a real animal.
They aren't real animals and a lot of these facts aren't real facts.
The fact that they get repeated a number of times doesn't make them true, simply persistent.
Even reputable journalists don't get a lot of things right, although what they publish or say has some credibility.
Real events are complex and we always prefer simple answers.
The entire war in Iraq was based on misinterpretation of evidence. It was misinterpreted because the people saw what they wanted to see. When they didn't see real "proof" it was easy to assume it was there anyways, just well hidden.
This is pretty much the way some of our media operates, making leaps of faith and drawing conclusions, at least the talking heads do.
They simplify the complex and our dontard buys it.
Watch out folks!
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Facts Used to be Facts
Ever since I can remember there have been people who I'll refer to as "roll your eyes" people.
By this I mean people who would express opinions about things that were just so wrong that all you could really do was roll your eyes.
It could be in almost any topic, but the views were so clearly contradicted by reality that it was hard to argue with them.
For example, if someone maintained that aliens were routinely grabbing people and examining them undetected. You can't actually prove it isn't happening, but there is so much evidence that it isn't happening or couldn't happen undetected that no reasonable person would believe it.
Now, sometimes the person holding these views was otherwise an intelligent person, but for whatever reason he allowed this unreasonable idea to take hold.
It used to be the sort of stuff people would hear on late night talk radio or read in some tabloids and if you ignored all the rest of the world it could almost sound credible.
Over the years as we got an almost unlimited number of cable channels, we have seen these roll your eyes views move into primetime. In fact we have a whole cable news channel that seems to specialize in this stuff.
It gets ratings and I'm pretty sure most of the people saying these outrageous things actually know better but their audience doesn't.
We have another phenomena that seems sort of new, where people think they can hold any opinion they want despite scientific evidence contradicting them. I mean people who maintain the earth is flat when there is clear proof it is round.
Its sort of a relativism that I don't remember and maybe it is something with the schools.
There are wrong ideas, at least in the world of empirical science.
The problem is that these views have become more mainstream and now we have a "roll your eyes" administration. It actually believes some of these outrageous things and doesn't seem to be learning.
All we can do is figure out why we seem to be getting dumber as a nation and see what we can do about it. Or we can just "roll our eyes".
By this I mean people who would express opinions about things that were just so wrong that all you could really do was roll your eyes.
It could be in almost any topic, but the views were so clearly contradicted by reality that it was hard to argue with them.
For example, if someone maintained that aliens were routinely grabbing people and examining them undetected. You can't actually prove it isn't happening, but there is so much evidence that it isn't happening or couldn't happen undetected that no reasonable person would believe it.
Now, sometimes the person holding these views was otherwise an intelligent person, but for whatever reason he allowed this unreasonable idea to take hold.
It used to be the sort of stuff people would hear on late night talk radio or read in some tabloids and if you ignored all the rest of the world it could almost sound credible.
Over the years as we got an almost unlimited number of cable channels, we have seen these roll your eyes views move into primetime. In fact we have a whole cable news channel that seems to specialize in this stuff.
It gets ratings and I'm pretty sure most of the people saying these outrageous things actually know better but their audience doesn't.
We have another phenomena that seems sort of new, where people think they can hold any opinion they want despite scientific evidence contradicting them. I mean people who maintain the earth is flat when there is clear proof it is round.
Its sort of a relativism that I don't remember and maybe it is something with the schools.
There are wrong ideas, at least in the world of empirical science.
The problem is that these views have become more mainstream and now we have a "roll your eyes" administration. It actually believes some of these outrageous things and doesn't seem to be learning.
All we can do is figure out why we seem to be getting dumber as a nation and see what we can do about it. Or we can just "roll our eyes".
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