I don't have much today except to share what I have learned this week from the interwebs. I follow PolitiFact on Twitter and I am amazed at the way they bend over backwards to come up with "facts" that aligned with their "non-political" agenda. It is awesome to behold.
PolitiFact upholds themselves as the great bastion of honest, unadulterated "fact-checking" along the lines of the well-worn catch phrase from the '60's TV show "Dragnet" - "Just the facts, Ma'am." Well, not really.
Now far be it for me to ever agree with anything that Donald Trump spouts, but the over-arching theme seems to be that it is okay to ignore the slaughter hundreds of endangered golden eagles every year for the sake of wind turbines rather than to kill one gorilla raise in a zoo to save one small child.
Example: Trump Exaggerates Wind Turbine Eagle Deaths
I would post links of the hundreds of articles relating to the death of a gorilla in the Ohio Zoo, but why bother....
How screwed up is it that we are to made to agonize over the death of one gorilla raised in a zoo, but are to ignore the wholesale slaughter of hundred of eagles into extinction for the sake of energy production?
Discuss...or discuss any other topic that may come up.
PolitiFact upholds themselves as the great bastion of honest, unadulterated "fact-checking" along the lines of the well-worn catch phrase from the '60's TV show "Dragnet" - "Just the facts, Ma'am." Well, not really.
Now far be it for me to ever agree with anything that Donald Trump spouts, but the over-arching theme seems to be that it is okay to ignore the slaughter hundreds of endangered golden eagles every year for the sake of wind turbines rather than to kill one gorilla raise in a zoo to save one small child.
Example: Trump Exaggerates Wind Turbine Eagle Deaths
I would post links of the hundreds of articles relating to the death of a gorilla in the Ohio Zoo, but why bother....
How screwed up is it that we are to made to agonize over the death of one gorilla raised in a zoo, but are to ignore the wholesale slaughter of hundred of eagles into extinction for the sake of energy production?
Discuss...or discuss any other topic that may come up.
31 comments:
Bev, I wish I could find the left's hypocrisy to be shocking, but I don't. They have no principles. They only have "principles" that apply to other people... they are not allowed to interfere with what they want.
That said, I do feel badly for the gorilla. He was minding his own business when some idiot invaded his home and the cops shot him for it. That's not right.
Gorilla Lives Matter, my friend, and to say otherwise is racist.
The eagles, well, they are arguably stupid... flying right into that spinning blade. Hold ma beer and watch this...
If those wind farms were the idea of say George W. bush then all hell would be breaking out..but since the Left has embraced them, well, the eagles can just suck it up. it's like that toxic spill in Colorado, caused by the EPA, not a word....
Bev, I think we're going to have to resign ourselves to the unenviable position of sticking up for Trump. If I'm forced to choose between liars and boors, I'll stand with boors every time.
Andrew - We don't use the phrase "bird-brain" for nothing. Stupid eagles, they should know better. Apparently, we need to scratch another phrase - "eagle-eyed"...;-)
Critch - That is the most frustrating part of this. If it HAD been Bush, it would headline news and lead stories on MSM. Clinton (and Obama) can lie to our faces and the story makes the news (for credibility's sake) and disappears.
Someone made an interesting comment yesterday opining that maybe Trump being President wouldn't be such a bad thing in that the MSM will hound his every move and parse out every syllable he utters to create scandal (and clickbait). If Hillary and/or Bernie gets in, they will lionize all they do in glowing stories about how did we possibly ever muddle through before she/he became Leader of the Free-ish World??
Tryanmax - I slowly..veeeeerrrrrry sllllooooowwwwwlllly coming around. I agree, I would rather have total boor than a unrepentant liar.
Critch, on the Colorado toxic spill, there were plenty of words, just none directed at the EPA. All the leftist media became sudden experts* on the history of mining so they could make the case that anybody and everybody but the EPA is at fault, and the EPA was just trying to help. (read that last clause in a whiny baby voice for full effect)
*I actually have no qualms with journalists becoming sudden experts on esoteric subjects that suddenly become topical. That is, after all, the role of a journalist in such cases. The issue I have is that biased journalists seem to reserve this skill set for the times when it can either make an opponent look bad or save the face of an ally, rather than employ it on a daily basis.
Bev and tryanmax, How about these ideas...
I prefer Mussolini to Hitler.
I prefer Krusty the Clown to Pennywise the Clown.
I prefer Al Capone's retarded Cousin to Jeffery Dahmer.
And so on...
Critch, I agree. I find it super annoying how the media bends over backwards to the point of suppressing facts and telling lies to protect their ideology. The Democrats should need to declare all the free propaganda they get on their financial disclosures.
Democrats should need to declare all the free propaganda they get on their financial disclosures.
Interestingly, the MSM has made an issue of how much free publicity that Trump has gotten out of them with his click-bait-y style. At one point they figured at least $40million and that was in March.
Bev, it is, ironically, Jonah Goldberg--staunch defender of #NeverTrump who recently wrote an article titled "Sorry, I Still Won’t Ever Vote for Trump"--who is doing the most to bring me around to the Trump camp.
It's a favorite argument among #NeverTrump-ers that The Donald presents too much of a political wild-card to ever comfortably vote for. At least with Hillary, so the argument goes, we would know what we're in for. (Put aside the lousiness of the argument that guaranteed decline is better than a chance at improvement.) But in a recent article devoted to explaining just why the Clintons are such habitual, unapologetic liars, Goldberg opened my eyes to the fact that a possible Hillary presidency is no less of a wild card.
Trump has taken just about every position possible on every subject, it's true. Without mentioning Trump, Goldberg says of the Clintons, "They would argue that with the right experts in charge, the government can do wonderful things to help people. But what the government should do is constantly changing, according to both of them." He rounds out that though by later asking, "Can you name a single substantial policy that she hasn’t flipped on — or wouldn’t change — if it were in her political self-interest?" I can't.
It's true that Bill Clinton's political expediency led him to step aside for the Gengrich House to handle the economy. But where Bill proved more concerned with his place in the history books, Hillary may be more concerned with more tangible, personal gains. (My guess is that, in the 90s, the former came at the cost of the latter.) I'm not saying it's for certain, just that we can't know. So that's where Goldberg has led me.
On my own, I've come to a couple of other conclusions.
1) Trump made his name under the Reagan economy. Whether he has the wherewithal to replicate such a thing, it makes sense that he would try to. Personally, I don't think he can do it, but at least he would be pointed that direction rather than the opposite, as Hillary or Bernie would be.
2) I am much more willing to roll the dice on some Trump SCOTUS picks than to accept the certainly leftist picks that Hillary is bound to nominate.
Andrew, I think in the case of Trump v. Hillary, the Krusty v. Pennywise comparison is the most apt.
What pisses me off about the NeverTrumps is that they are mindlessly repeating every single arguments the Democrats always make against every single conservative: (1) too dumb, (2) dangerous/risky, (3) not an expert, (4) lacks the respect of the liberal elite, (5) lacks the respect of foreign elites, (6) a group of leftist college professors/professionally aggrieved blacks, women, gays, whatevers opposes him, (7) could be the cause of leftist violence against him, etc.
The left uses this same crap against ALL conservatives and it's always crap. The right needs to debunk this and counter it. And here they are adopting it just because they don't like this candidate.
That's why our side is the stupid party.
tryanmax, Me too. That or perhaps a comparison of toilet bowls.
Hollywood actors used to say that any publicity is good, and Trump is sort of proving that. The more the leftists rail on him the more people hear about him. The thing is, the average American doesn't really trust the media anymore so they are in effect helping The Donald.
Critch, The other problem is what they are trying to sell. They say don't vote for Trump because he's X, Y and Z. But then they push Hillary as the alternative and everyone already knows her as X, Y and Z. So it comes across as asinine. "Don't choose their loser... choose our loser!"
A man who send out private goons to beat you up for criticizing him or a woman who sends out IRS goons to shut you down for criticizing her?
Decision, decisions...
I'm still leaning towards the Sweet Meteor of Death.
I'm with Kit. I for one welcome our new meteor overlord. :-)
This is one of those "above my paygrade" comments... but my only hope with Trump - and this is assuming he doesn't turn the country in Alternate 1985 - is that the right calms the fuck down for a little while. If Hillary is elected, I fear the fringe right will only grow more fringier.
Of course, I'm sure I'm wrong!
Wow. Obama was in town for the Air Force Academy graduation. The Thunderbirds did a flyby. One of them crashed in the strangest crash you will ever see. He had mechanical problems and flew it to a field by the highway and just kind of dropped it in an empty field and bailed out. The plane is just sitting there. It almost looks undamaged, like someone parked it there, except for the front end is bent.
I've never seen anything like this before.
Fortunately, no one was hurt.
And now one of the Blue Angels has crashed in Nashville. No word on the pilot. I hope they're ok.
What a bizarre coincidence!
Sadly, here come the conspiracy idiots.
Andrew, it's easy. The fringe left will blame racism and transphobia, the left will blame global warming, the right will blame gay people, and the alt right will blame Jews and say that this wouldn't happen under Trump's watch. :-)
Scott, That just about sums it up except for the really crazies!
Infowars: "This was clearly a false flag event meant to give Obama a chance to appear presidential so that no one resists when he sends out airplanes and navy ships to take our guns and give himself a third term so he can force us all to engage in swarthy gay African sex with him while his terminator robots molest our wives. Isn't it obvious?!!!"
An argument (by a conservative) that Hillary would be preferable to Trump:
LINK
Kit, I heard the same thing about Reagan. He was a crazy old cowboy who wanted to destroy the world or would at least destroy the world with his reckless adventurism and "cowboy diplomacy." He couldn't be trusted because he would shoot first and think later. Etc. etc.
If anybody strikes me as less to be trusted with nukes, it's Hillary. Trump is a fool, but his fundamental character is to be an ass during negotiations and then make nice when you reach a deal. Hillary's fundamental character is a seething cauldron of rage aimed at all those little people who don't see her greatness. She gets genuinely frustrated by opposition to the point of implosion, and then she reacts angrily. She's lacks any sense of how to negotiate.
Which would you rather trust with nukes? Not Hillary.
The "they attacked Reagan on this" argument re Trump doesn't fly with me. For example, the "Trump is not an expert" attack: Reagan was actually quite knowledgable about world affairs and economics, as pointed out by Matt Lewis in Too Dumb to Fail:
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Reagan’s political accomplishments were the result of a man who, for decades, took ideas seriously. Long before being elected president, he was boning up on policy and philosophy. During his General Electric days, “Reagan needed to keep his material fresh, so he would load steamer trunks full of books and news articles and read them in the long hours traveling across the country, rather than going to the Club Car to knock back drinks with the other businessmen,” says Reagan biographer Craig Shirley. “He traveled a long road from bleeding-heart liberal to populist conservative and an important part of that maturation process was his self-education— autodidact— on board those trains through all those years.”
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Has Trump given anyone any indication that he knows anything about, well, anything not named Trump. This is a man who went from advocating women go to jail for abortions to saying that Roe v. Wade should stay on the books.
This is a man who no longer relies on deal-making but on brand-name. Those hotels are not built by him, they are built by people to whom he has lent his richer-than-God brand. What happens when Russia and China see the emperor has no clothes?
It might not be pretty.
I see Trump as an Obama with more "red lines" to be crossed by our countries' enemies.
Speaking of Trump, I love a good Freudian slip. ;-)
Scott,
I love a good Freudian slip, too. ;-)
The only thing true in that Infowars bit is the swarthy gay African sex. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;)
Andrew, the saddest thing about the NeverTrumpers is that they mainly hail from the likes of National Review and should be aware that they're adopting those Democrat tactics. Just moments ago I heard Meghan McCain on the radio bemoaning Trump's shady business practices. Hello!? The woman he's likely to be up against is synonymous with Whitewater.
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