Pizzagate & the American Right Wing

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Dec 5, 2016.

  1. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    You keep assuming a motive you have not shown evidence for. I made no equivalencies, nor falsehoods. I gave you my sources, so if you can refute them, why haven't you? And no, MediaMatters does not count as an unbiased source. Politifact rated a claim made by a Republican as "Half True" while rating the exact same claim from a Democrat as "Mostly True". Would you call that unbiased too? This is one of the fact-checkers Facebook wants to check news stories.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The birther movement never fell flat. It worked. It remains at the center of Trump's voting base.
    Every Republican from Reagan on has run on trickle down economics - Bush, W, and Trump, won on it. And the Southern Strategy is just a name - it was focused on the hotbeds of racial bigotry in the old Confederacy, to pry them away from the Dems, but it works wherever the - what's the euphemism? oh yeah: "uneducated working class (that happens to be white)" - is found.
    Uh, Salon is not full of alt-right trolls. Have you lost track of your own argument? (And I don't actually read it anyway - I just followed a link to find the original of an argument).
    Uh, ok - are we agreed that your entire argument here depends on that being the case?
    Yes. Within a statistically insignificant margin.
    I said nothing about Clinton's vote, or anyone else's. I described Trump's vote. Accurately.
    So all that crap about me rallying them by screaming at them and calling them names is what - no longer operable?
    Almost everyone who thinks Trump will get them prosperity again is either racist or rich. Why is that?
    Citation needed. There is no sign of very many such "independents".

    It would be an interesting thing to check out - the actual count of those who voted for Obama in 2012 (when the Crash and Palin was not warping the vote) and voted for Trump in 2016. By the numbers, they are very, very few.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    You posted a false equivalence between Breitbart/Fox presenting a second James O'Keefe video (after the Acorn one) as legitimate news, and NBC deceptively editing one of the audio recordings in the Zimmerman affair.

    You used that to argue for a false equivalence between the fake and bad news operations of the "alt-right" (Republican) media and those of other media in the US.

    In the course of that you presented Fox covering the story of Sherrod's slandering as if it were the story of an NAACP official's reaction to the video, which is not what happened and you know that. You also described Fox reporting the NAACP reaction statements as equivalent to statements from witnesses of an event, which is not what they were and you know that. You also described Fox - and even Breitbart - as "reporting on" the video footage, which is not what happened and you know that. And so forth.

    Again: everyone who behaves the way you just did, pushing false and fake and bad news, is rightwing. It's a onesided phenomenon.

    Edit in - from I think 2008, when the "both sides" argument was being used to deflect blame for the crackup of the country under W, and the predominance of rightwing interests in the fake and bad news deluge was already long established common knowledge:
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2016
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    MediaMatters does count as an accurate source, for timelines and such especially.

    All accurate sources of onesided bad stuff are going to be "biased" in some political sense. Best to measure "bias" with respect to reality, facts on the ground, and prevalence of error, rather than partisan favor.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    1) I did not cite Politifact here.
    2) It wasn't the "exact same claim" - Paul said no American paid any money in income tax before 1913, "0 dollars" paid; Webb said we did not have "a Federal income tax" before 1913. Paul's claim is flatly false, but it's a technicality - he deserves to be credited with expressing a generally useful and meaningful truth that supports his argument, rather than a false statement entirely. Webb's claim is less flatly false - a special wartime levy on some incomes but not others is not what people think of as a Federal income tax, Lincoln's setup was structurally different from today's, and one can even argue that the Federal government we have now did not exist at the time (a war was being fought, and then recovered from, on that question).

    So Politifact's assessments can be defended. Myself, I think the arguments Politifact used need a bit of attention (they promulgate the error of impression that wage income could not be taxed by the Federal government under the Constitution, when the actual problem was taxing farm or business profits and other return to capital), and I would rate the claims of both Paul and Webb the same - as half true unless they mention the Constitution, at which point they would become mostly false.
     
  9. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, but you have made false equivalencies and asserted falsehoods. Let's be honest here. What you did was cite a another right wing nutcase conspiracy theorist who has absolutely no evidence to back up his assertions either and he does make false equivalencies and you cited him as evidence. Did you not listen, did you not understand what he said? It was pretty clear, and it was pretty clever. But it certainly isn't honest. Yes, you gave a source and that source was almost exclusively opinion based on unfounded facts.

    Shapiro admitted to some fake news on the part of others while simultaneously spewing his own fake news. The other guy's fake news is bad, but his fake news is good. Shapiro attempt to gain credibility by admitting to the other guys fake news while at the same time spewing his own. Shapiro offered no evidence to back up any of his conspiracies or his fake news and at the same time drew false equivalencies between the left and right.

    Just because you don't like Mediamatters, it doesn't mean it's not credible. The Mediamatters reference gave you several examples of Fox News spreading fake news. It gave you names and dates. Now if you can debunk any of those examples, please do so.

    Oh, please do provide some evidence to back up your assertion mate.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  10. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Iceaura, once again this argument is going nowhere and is not even on topic, your inability to imagine that people are simply stupid and desperate and they all must be racist instead is precisely what helped trump get elected.

    As for citations, try google:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...re-are-plenty-of-them/?utm_term=.4a6bbdf05e67
    The Post-Schar School poll also shows that, among Trump voters who said they shared Trump's views on only some, hardly any or no issues, 30 percent approved of Obama. And among Trump voters who weren't "very" optimistic about Trump's policies — they were only "somewhat" optimistic or were pessimistic — 25 percent approved of Obama. This suggests a very real and sizable group of voters who didn't really like Trump that much and liked Obama — but still voted for the GOP nominee.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/upshot/how-did-trump-win-over-so-many-obama-voters.html?_r=0
    Nate: Yeah, I think the comparison just doesn’t compute for ideologically consistent voters on a left-right scale. But that’s not how many voters think about elections. And Trump had the same pitch to white working-class voters in Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Ohio, wherever, as Obama: He would fight for the working class over special interests, and his opponent is bought by Wall Street and would advance the forces of globalization. Democrats have to grapple with the fact that they lost this election because millions of white working-class voters across the United States voted for Obama and then switched to Trump.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/11/obama-voters-for-trump/508292/
    However, I am thrilled to see the cynical, greedy Clinton machine finally smashed to bits. I am thrilled to see the arrogant cocoon of the news media, popular culture, Hollywood, liberal activists, DNC, identity politickers, and academia punctured by reality. I am thrilled to see the progressive juggernaut derailed. Trump could have replaced “Make America Great Again” with, “It’s the Authoritarianism, Stupid!” The progressive left seems to have grown more hysterical, more bullying than ever before. It has enacted an illiberal, punitive, terrifying form of politics where everyone is one wrong position or one misunderstanding from being ex-communicated from the world of the decent. You’re either an Angel completely signed onto their endless quest for progressive utopia, or a Devil.
     
    Syne likes this.
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Their racism is an observed fact, independent of their votes for anybody. It's not what they "must be", it's what they observably are and have been for a long time now.
    You have yet to address its role in bringing the stupid and desperate people to turn to Trump (and the Republican Party in general) rather than someone who would help them.
    None of those are citations of the fact in question. All you have there is citations proving that some other people share your blind spots, bad reasoning, and unsupported opinions. (They all, for example, (except 538 who didn't mention it) talked about the mistakes of Hillary and the Dems and the "Left" and the "Progressives" interchangeably - as if they were the same people).

    You need this number: how many of Trump's voters cast ballots for Obama in 2012.

    Then you need to subtract this: How many of them think Obama is a secret Muslim, or was born in Kenya (but voted for him anyway).

    What you are trying to do is sift out the white working class Hillary-hate Obama vote that was drawn to Republican Trump via racism (all the birther stuff, the T-Party stuff, etc) from the white working class Hillary-hate Obama vote that was not drawn Republican by thirty years of Republican appeal to their racism.

    I don't know why you care so much about that small fraction of the American voting public, but you do, so have at 'er.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2016
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    It is observable that the sun revolves around the earth.

    Again lets go with your premise, what do we do about them being all racist, hum? kill them? What? I point out the factors we can win at and your excuse is fatalism of "they are all racist".

    because trump promised them change, he himself is something horrible different from any politician before, many of these people would rather a wracking ball like Trump then "more of the same" with Clinton, they WANT to burn it all down as they believe they are fucked either way so might as well get it over with now.

    Pretty sure there are some surveys/polls there too, and if your not going to take the word of a obama voters turn trump voters telling you why s/he did it, there is no hope for you.

     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Start by never denying the fact again. See what happens.
    Nothing fatalist about it - of course "we" can win. They are, for starters, a minority - the hardcore Republican voter is less than a third of the electorate as a whole. And in the second place, "we" already did win - not only a majority of the vote, but probably the unrigged electoral vote as well (75,000 lost votes in Detroit and Flint, about 400,000 improperly denied "crosscheck" voters in Michigan overall - disproportionately black voters, in both categories, in an election won by less than 11,000 votes). (Voting machine problems much larger than the election margins).

    Why would I not take their word? Unless their behavior conflicts, of course, but in this case it seems like you have managed to find a couple of Obama voters turned Trump voters - but they don't seem to be ignorant, or stupid, either.

    So there's a couple - not exactly representative of those "stupid, desperate" working class white folks you were talking about earlier, but hey, where's there's one or two there's probably, like, thousands. At least.

    So what you need is a count of them. Ok? That's the missing fact, here.
    So never mind the "independents" you imagine, we're back to the "stupid, desperate" working class I spent the past year screaming names like "racist" and "fascist" at?

    Nope:
    So the 58 million are unreachable, and not my fault for screaming names at them in my spare time, that's a relief. We're back to the "independents". Do you have a count yet?
    To remind you:
     
  14. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    No those 1-2 million that swayed it, some of them are your fault.

    Here a video you will refuse to watch:



    Well it is not a fact and it is useless, See what happens: lets see calling everyone racist, gets us Trump, hmmmm.

    Well we did not win enough.

    Oh boy conspiracy theory alarms going off. Ok where was all that rigging in 2008 and 2012?

    Yeah that one that thinks Hillary is simply too religious, totally not ignorant.

    I need to count them? I'm not a political scientist. Look if you don't want to accept the evidence that can be got on hand, fine, I long gave up on you, but denying that you have not been calling these people racists is beyond me.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2016
  15. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Check the in-line links.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Why do you continue to obsess over this fantasy of calling people names? And why do you insist on denying that the core Republican voter - whose surprising turnout numbers "won" this election - is racist, significantly and influentially and obviously racist?
    Not one of them. Certainly not the folks in your video there - they were all about hating Hillary, as they talked to the black male interviewer. Hardly mentioned being screamed at for being racist or fascist at all. Or did I miss something?

    Meanwhile, they (whoever you eventually figure out "they" are) didn't "sway" anything - the bulk of the Trump vote, and the rigging, won the election. The core Republican voter turned out, and voted. You're trying to blame the wave on the spume.
    It was around, and documented then as now - Obama won by overwhelming it. Clinton was a poor overwhelmer.

    He got some help, recall - the lawsuits in Ohio that turned a spotlight on the voting machine problems just days before the vote, for example, is credited by those following the matter with saving the electoral vote of that State (and a couple with similar machines) for Obama, and thereby quite possibly turning the election itself. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/mia-in-voting-machine-war_b_2054411.html https://washingtonspectator.org/did...-stop-karl-roves-vote-rigging-scheme-in-ohio/

    Do you remember the evident surprise, to the point of denial, that Karl Rove and a couple of other Republican TV faces showed when the 2012 Ohio vote was called for Obama? Seriously - they were in public denial, obviously taken completely by surprise, right on camera. A lot of people remarked on that, at the time, without any reference to the Ohio lawsuits and controversy.
    You need to identify them and count them before you argue from who they are and how many there are, yes. At four per video, you have 500,000 videos to go. So far, not a single "stupid, desperate" working class white voter an any of them.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Dealt with in #125.

    You continue to post individual, isolated and brief, comparatively trivial, and much differently handled, incidents as equivalent to a dominant, continual, and overwhelming pattern; you continue to present individual mistakes and punished violations of policy as equivalent to concerted and coordinated efforts undertaken as policy.

    It's the last lie of the junkie: "it doesn't matter if I'm hooked on bad stuff, because all the stuff is bad and everybody's hooked on something".
     
  18. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    0. Because in your mind everyone is racist and is thus inconsequential

    1. Because calling them racist rallies them
    2. Because despite their numbers we have won before
    3. Because the ones that turned the tide can be reasoned with, their interest in anti-establismentism and economic reforms in their favor can be met with a better candidate

    Oh so you noticed a factor MORE IMPORTANT than racism in this election.

    Oh so they are racist, but not racist enough to tell a black man what they really think?

    yes yes the rigging you conspiracy nuts talk about, I have yet to see proof so I don't believe. Nothing can be done about the core republican voter, but those 1-2 million independent voters that tipped the scale is what matters.

    Once again you noticed we ran the wrong candidate.



    You and Alex Jones sound so similar right now it is uncanny! Where is the proof? Oh but look at all this evidence of aliens crash landing in Roswell... yeah well I need proof to believe.

    Yes, yes, it was hilarious, but that is not proof of anything.

    I think this is very relevant the threat right here:

    First you have an event, then you want to believe something of that event, be it emails show Clinton fucks children or Karl Rove rigging failed, the news knows this so they try to cobble together a good story, what ever evidence they can put together to support what the audience wants, the final results is people like you who see all the political opponents as racist that most certainly have rigged the election, or on the other side your typical paint huffing Alex Jones watcher. You live in chamber of your own observational bias fed back on you.

    Seem pretty stupid and desperate to me, I guess this is a matter of interpretation. You need to prove all those voting machines were rigged, you need to prove they are all racist, what is your point. I at least go with the actionable theory, the one we can do something about like run a better candidate next time, your theory is to wallow in fatalism.
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Obviously false. I don't even claim all Trump voters are racist, and I certainly don't regard racists as inconsequential - (the entire Republican core voting base is inconsequential?) - I'm the guy insisting that these are competent adults with real lives and many concerns, you're the one calling them stupid and desperate.
    Uh, no, I said they did not appear to be racist. In my post. The stuff I type, that expresses my thoughts, y'know?

    Of course that would be very common - you do know that, right? - just not in this case. Necessarily. By initial appearance. At least, not as a dominant and immediate motive, without further info.

    And as I said - you have found four people who do not appear to be stupid and desperate, but otherwise illustrate the kind of Trump voter you for some reason think was more important than all the others - so you only have 500,000 more such vides to go, and you have your count! Minus the stupidity and desperation.
    Nope. I noticed another factor in this election - which of course I have been posting about for years here, including in front of you recently.
    You have seen quite a bit of evidence.

    What exactly don't you believe? The cross-check rigging? The voting machine distribution and reliability patterns? The various voting machine tally problems? The consistency and bias of the errors in the voter roll purges? The ID requirements intention? The grounds for, timeline of, circumstances surrounding, and legal aftermath of, the attempted software modification in Ohio in 2012? Or is all of that accepted fact but seemingly coincidence, in your view?
    Nonsense. Nothing so total is required, or indicated.

    The evidence is that vote rigging of various kinds affected a few million people to an unknown but significant degree - and these were targeted voters, not the random millions of "independents" of your imagination, so of amplified effect.

    Easily enough to swing the election.
    Once again with the ignorant guesswork producing flatly false claims in pursuit of stupidly personal attack. In this case, coming up with the standard "bothsides" wingnuttery - to go with the "screaming names" and the "calling everyone racist" and the rest.

    Is there a single box on a single page of the wingnut playbook you are too intelligent, or too ethical, or simply too embarrassed, to check off in these postings? Do you have a floor here?
     
  21. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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  22. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Well, you aren't exactly being honest, are you? But be that as it may, let me remind you of your assertion:

    "Politifact rated a claim made by a Republican as "Half True" while rating the exact same claim from a Democrat as "Mostly True". Would you call that unbiased too? This is one of the fact-checkers Facebook wants to check news stories." - Syne

    These are the Politifact references you offered:

    Jim Webb says U.S. didn't have income taxes until 1913

    This is what Webb actually said:

    "We did not even have a federal income tax in this country until 1913," he wrote on his campaign website. - Webb

    That statement is mostly true that prior to 1913 the US didn't have an income tax. There were a few exceptions as the article noted. But for the most part, the US didn't have an income tax prior to 1913. That's why his statement was rated as mostly true.

    Ron Paul says federal income tax rate was 0 percent until 1913

    This is what Paul actually said:

    "We should have the lowest tax that we’ve ever had, and up until 1913, it was 0 percent. What’s so bad about that?" - Ron Paul

    The two are not the "exact same" as you asserted. Paul was referring to tax rates, not a specific kind of tax. Webb was referring to a specific kind of tax, i.e. the income tax. Webb's assertion was much broader. The US has never been a zero income tax rate country as Paul inferred.

    Per your reference:

    "Paul’s statement that the federal income tax rate was zero until 1913 reflects the timing of the constitutional change enabling the current tax. But his claim disregards two pre-1913 efforts to impose an income tax — one of which was in place for a decade. This debate claim rates Half True." - Politifact
     
  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    If you can't parse the similarity, I certainly can't help you.
     

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