"I Want Nothing!" Oh, But You Did!

By now, you've probably heard Trump's defense that the conservative media has grasped onto. Gordon Sondland dropped a bombshell on the White House last Wednesday, testifying that, in no uncertain terms, Trump did offer a quid pro quo to Ukraine. And furthermore, said Sondland, everybody knew it.

Now, Sondland has been a major Trump supporter, both in terms of money and vocal support. He is the ambassador to the European Union, which has an official partnership with Ukraine (even though Ukraine is not an E.U. member). He was right in the middle of the scandal, and therefore had first-hand knowledge of everything that was going on.

In other words, once and for all, this is not a "hoax," nor is this a "witch hunt." Let's put that one to bed once and for all.

The first thing conservatives did was ask for written proof. Sondland had lots of documents in the form of his own personal emails, but did not have the State Department documents to back him up. Those, interestingly, are sealed. So when Sondland was questioned by Steve Castor as to whether or not he had any proof, Sondland could only provide his own recollections, and admitted presumptions about what Trump and Rudy Giuliani wanted.

Republicans have seized upon this as proof that there's no "there" there. But let's look at that more closely: If what Sondland was saying was wrong, and his testimony was incorrect, then logically that would mean that he was doing his job incorrectly based on an incorrect presumption. For months, nobody said anything about it, and no Republicans voiced any objections until the day Sondland testified. That's incompetence on a grand scale, not only by Trump, but by ALL his State Department underlings! It would be cause to fire not only Trump, but everyone in the State Department!

OR, Trump is guilty. That's it. Those are your only two logical choices.

Now, the so-called "liberal media" has not reported this. But let's continue, because there's more.

Following Trump's eccentric lead, they are arguing that Trump outright told Gordon Sondland that he "wanted nothing from Ukraine," in a phone call on September 9th.

But wait, September 9th? Isn't that the SAME DAY that the whistleblower complaint was delivered to the House Intelligence Committee? Indeed it was! You can confirm that on the timeline provided by factcheck.org.

So that means Trump told Sondland he wanted nothing from Ukraine after the fact! Trump was walking it back at that point because he knew he'd been caught!

And his statement that he "wanted nothing" does not exonerate him. Rather, it proves he's guilty!

Has the "liberal media" reported this? Well, once in the New York Times, but that seems to be about it. For the sake of journalistic integrity, all news sources, left and right, should be reporting the living hell out of this. But they're not.

Fox News handled this the way Fox News typically handles things: by reporting what the president said, and then leaving it at that. Then they kicked it over to the sycophant commetators who parrot Trump's position without question. Only Justice Napolitano pointed out the truth, but by now Fox News viewers have written him off.

Under-reporting the news is the same as reporting biased news. Because Fox knows you, the viewer, will come to the conclusion they set up for you when they only tell half the story - the half they prefer to tell.

Eric

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Hannity Blows It Again

Sometimes, they make it too easy.

Last Wednesday, ahead of the impeachment inquiry hearings, Sean Hannity tried to take Democrats down a peg or two by saying that they have done nothing for America except go after Donald Trump.

This is so empirically false, it's amusing. They passed the renewal of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. The Senate passed it as well, and the president signed it, but only after Jon Stewart brow-beat Republicans into doing so. Then there's the 'For the People Act of 2019, H.R. 1, Equality Act, H.R. 5, H.R.7: Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 8: Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, H.R. 9: Climate Action Now Act, (Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019) (H.J.Res. 46, Vetoed March 15, 2019), Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, H.Res. 109, H.R. 150: Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act of 2019 (GREAT Act), H.Res.411: No More Presidential Wars Act, H.R. 662: REACH Act, H.R. 899: To terminate the Department of Education (interesting, perhaps better no Department than one run by Betsy DeVos?), H.R. 1585: Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019, SAFE Banking Act of 2019, H.R. 1595, H.R. 1644: Save the Internet Act of 2019, Taxpayer First Act of 2019, H.R. 1957, H.R. 2107: Affordable College Textbook Act, Well-Informed, Scientific, & Efficient Government Act (WISE Government Act)...

And all that simply cut and pasted from Wikipedia. It was that simple to find.

I mean, Jesus, Hannity! Can you even do an Internet search on Google?


Eric

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Dumb Strzok? Or Dumb Article?

It took me 0 seconds to find political bias on Fox News today. It is interesting how this has become so blatant, and so frequent, that anyone can find this sort of thing immediately, and without trying.

The article I found, headlined on foxnews.com, dealt with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired for having classified information on his personal phone, and for having an affair with a staff member. What makes the article so interestingly biased, is the fast that the article emphasizes one particular detail. Here's the opening paragraph:

"The Department of Justice released documents Monday outlining a slew of "security violations" and flagrantly "unprofessional conduct" by anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok -- including his alleged practice of keeping sensitive FBI documents on his unsecured personal electronic devices, even as his wife gained access to his cell phone and discovered evidence that he was having an affair with former FBI attorney Lisa Page."

Now, many people in government are "anti-Trump." Quite a few, in fact, have recently been in Trump's administration, and have left saying that Trump is an idiot. People like Reince Priebus, Anthony Scaramucci, John Kelly, John Bolton, Hope Hicks, and the list goes on. So it's not unusual for any given FBI person, or former FBI in this case, to have a negative opinion about Donald Trump. But this article LEADS with that fact. And in doing so, it strongly implies that those who oppose Trump are just as dirty as this particular ex-agent whose sloppy security breeches and extramarital affair got him into trouble.

Now, objectively, it should be obvious that Strzok's personal feelings about Trump are entirely separate from the misdeeds for which he was fired. It should also be obvious that there are plenty of Trump supporters who are just as dirty, and are currently sitting in jail or are awaiting jail. Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, and recently Roger Stone, among others.

Fox News is bluntly trying to say, "See? There are some crooked anti-Trumpers, too!"

Maybe so, but doesn't it look a little desperate to make your headline story of the day be one about a sloppy FBI agent who couldn't keep his fly zipped?

The bias of Fox News is not always blatant. Sometimes it is subtle. This time it wasn't so subtle, but it was subliminal. We are not meant to notice that Strzok's irrelevant anti-Trump stance is mentioned right away. We are not meant to be conscious of how this flavors perspective against those with an anti-Trump stance. And we are not meant to notice how, further down in the article, mention is made about leaks from the FBI in the Trump administration, and how this implicates that Strzok may be one of the leakers. For all we know, he might be, but it is not keeping with journalistic integrity to imply such a thing without evidence.


Eric

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The New Sacred Cow Wursthaus Mission

I've been doing this blog a long time. I've written a lot of screeds and vented a lot of my frustrations, both political and non-political. But now I need to decide what I'm going to do with this blog going forward. It seems married life has left me with less time to write, but I do wish to keep going.

Currently, I'm contemplating making a run for the 17th district of the Wisconsin State Assembly. I probably won't win, but I'm feeling the absolute need to seize the microphone in a way which goes beyond what this blog has been able to give me. I need to actually let my voice be heard for once.

As such, most of what I write in this blog going forward will be detailing the errors, lies and deceit of conservative media. The more I look at what's happening, the more I realize that support for Trump and the madness that so-called "conservatism" has descended into, can all be tied to the fact that a large percentage of our nation's citizens are being lied to. And not just lied to, but blatently and bluntly lied to. There is no distinction anymore between tabloid journalism and journalism. There is no journalistic integrity. It's all Oligarch Network News, and the Information Age has turned into the Misinformation Age.

So when I'm out there pointing this out, the victims of this network of lies will undoubtedly ask for proof. I will give them this blog, together with all of my past profanity, my past mistakes, and my bared soul. It will have one example after another, for days on end, and for the months going forward, of lies, lies and more lies, together with the proof of same. Will it be enough to convince a few sheep to leave the fold? Will it force the wolf to take off his woolen disguise? I don't know. But I'm willing to try.

Brace yourself, Fox News. Look out, Breitbart. I'm aiming at you.


Eric

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500 Scientists Deny Global Warming? Not!

With all the hoopla surrounding Greta Thunberg and her passionate address to the U.N., did you happen to see, in your social media feed perhaps, a link to an odd news story which said something like, "500 Scientists Write U.N.: 'There Is No Climate Emergency.'"? Op-Ed-Disguised-As-News organizations such as Breitbart made sure this headline got lots of undeserved exposure.

Except 500 scientists didn't write to the U.N.

Oh, there was a letter to the U.N., all right. You can read it here. https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ecd-letter-to-un.pdf But the headline was dead wrong. It wasn't 500 scientists. Get past the headline, and it becomes "500 scientists and professionals."

Well, shit, it's bait-and-switch right from the start.

But it doesn't stop there. The letter actually has only 14 actual signatories. These signers are the ringleaders of an organization called the European Climate Declaration, which in turn is headed by the Amsterdam-based Climate Intelligence Foundation, or CLINTEL. They claim to represent 500 people based on a networked list, but as we shall see, that list is dubious. Their leader is a man named Guus Berkhout, who is a scientist from the Netherlands. What is he a scientist of? Why, oil and gas exploration, of course. That takes the wind out of the sails right there.

But wait, there's more! I mean - less. The list of scientists is unimpressive. You can find it here:
https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ED-brochureversieNWA4.pdf


There are 506 people on the list, not counting the leaders. But of those, most are engineers, field chemists, computer techs and some self-appointed "experts" as well. What a letdown.

Oh, there are a few impressive names. A few are retired people from NASA, for instance. But for the most part, these are the blue-collar non-researchers who make up the grunts of a former science team, not the actual experts themselves.

The leader of the U.S. contingent is a guy named Richard Lindzen, who is usually at the top of every list of climate-change-denying scientists. For whatever reason, climate change denial has a real foothold among meteorologists, and Lindzen is one of them. He's rallied people to his cause in the U.S., but not many. The number of signatories on CLINTEL's list who are from the U.S. is a measly 45 people. Given such resources for advertisement as Fox News, it's amazing that he got only 44 other people. Maybe next time he shouled put out a call for signatories on the Mark Levin radio show.

The only name on the list which stands out is Freeman Dyson. This highly acclaimed scientist at Princeton is well known among science fiction fans for coming up with the "Dyson Sphere," which is a structure surrounding a star to harvest every single photon of energy. But why would he sign this document? The answer is, he didn't. In fact, most of the "signatories" were only represented by the 14 who actually signed the U.N. letter.

Dyson was involved with CLINTEL in the past, but hasn't had much involvement with them since 2009. He openly acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic climate change, he only questions the scale of certain projections. So his name being included on this list is dubious at best. It indicates that this list is a growing compilation of people who were ever associated with this organization, even remotely, at least once, and that, my friends, is called fudging the numbers.

Even with over-inflating and over-estimating the numbers like this, the list is only a little over 500. That may seem like a lot, and indeed, some media outlets have been reporting that such a high number indicates that denial of global warming is not limited to a few fringe scientists. But remember, this list was slapped together from 23 countries in total. If you can draw from that many countries, it isn't difficult to get 500 people on just about any topic, from denying the holocaust to insisting that Americans never landed on the moon in 1969. Get the minority tin-foil hats from that many countries, and you'll always get several hundred. I'm actually surprised that this group only got 500 people. They should realistically have gotten more with such a broad base to draw upon.

So there you have it. Once again some backwater mavericks who happen to have PhD's they can't do anything with due to their ruined reputations have made a career for themselves by deliberately muddying the water. These are the same sort of people (and sometimes even the VERY same people!) who repeatedly told us such whoppers as, "Cigarettes don't necessarily cause cancer!" And, "CFC's aren't really eroding the ozone layer!" Or, remember this one? "Lead in gasoline is not a significant neurotoxin." That one still amazes me! "DDT is harmless to children."

These sort of backwater shits have been wrong before. They'll be wrong again. And they're wrong now.

Pull me once, shame on you. Pull me several times....

...and I'm a Rush Limbaugh fan!


Eric

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Trump At 50%? Not Really.

Looks like there's a new poll out by Rasmussen, and it shows Donald Trump's approval numbers are at 50%. For those of us who actually follow the news, this seems impossible. Who the hell are these prairie dogs who pop up out of their holes and signal approval for Trump before disappearing?

Furthermore, the Fox spin on this is that this improvement in poll numbers stems from his opposition to the four female congresswomen (the ones nicknamed "The Squad") he recently insulted, telling them to go back home. In a horrendous rally in Greenville, North Carolina, an energized crowd chanted "Send her back! Send her back!" drawing comparisons to the 2016 chant of "Lock her up!" According to Fox, this opposition

The president agrees with this spin, arguing in yet another insane Tweet that "The Squad's" opposition to him has backfired, and that he's not backing down.

Really?

Well, Real Clear Politics can shed some light and provide some sanity. First of all, the Rasmussen poll does not show 50%. Rather, it shows a tie of 49% to 49%, meaning that 2% of poll responders were undecided, and Trump still hasn't reached that magic "50" yet. But that's a technicality. The real insight comes from other polls done concurrently.

The same day the Rasmussen poll came out, Gallup released its own poll. Trump's approval rating was 44% approve, 51% disapprove.
Reuters/Ipsos released another poll that same day. Trump's approval rating was 44%. His disapproval rating was 54%.
One day prior, that is on July 17th, Politico/Morning Consult released a poll. Trump's approval numbers were only 40%. Disapproval rating was 56%.
Also on the 17th, The Economist/You Gov released it's poll. Trump's approval came in at 46%, and his disapproval stood at 51%.

In other words, Trump's numbers haven't really changed all that much. He's still around 45% approval, and can't really climb much higher than that.

Among the polls released this week, only Gallup's was done over all of July. The others polled people between the 15th and the 16th, or from the 15th through the 17th.

Rasmussen polled from the 15th through the 17th.

In other words, what happened at the rally on the 17th couldn't have significantly improved Trump's poll numbers because it hadn't happened yet!

Yes, the fracas with "The Squad" happened days before, but that didn't seem to change Trump's overall poll numbers one way or the other. This time, Rasmussen is an outlier. An exception. A black swan.

Yes, it's true that Trump's overall polling average is slowly, slowly improving. But the latest polling data comes in under the wire. Saying Trump's poll numbers are up because of this is a bald-faced LIE.

What will really indicate the effect of this will be the poll numbers which follow. If next week's polls show improvement for Trump, Fox News might have an argument.

I'm willing to bet they'll go down.


Eric

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How To Guarantee Trump's Downfall

Every so often, I have a true stroke of brilliance. Yes, it's arrogant of me to say so, but I think it's warranted. I'll share my stroke of brilliance with you, and you can judge for yourself if you agree with me.

A man who has recently made the news again is a historian named Allan Lichtman. He pops up before every election, claiming to have successfully predicted the previous 8 or 9 elections or so. A closer look at his methods reveals that he's not quite so successful as he claims. He predicted Al Gore would win in 2000, and was wrong. He also called Donald Trump as the winner for 2016, but got cold feet and backpedaled right before the actual election. So he's not quite so confident in his methods as he advertises. Still, he's a media darling, and in these uncertain times, many love to hear bold predictions from a prophet. Even a bad one.

Lichtman's method is to measure 13 factors, and if the presidential candidate is favored in 8 of them, that candidate will win. Some of them are subjective, but some are clearly not. Two of the ones which are not subjective are short-term and long-term economic stability. It is those I wish to focus upon.

Those of us who know anything about economics recognize that Trump is ruining a perfectly good economic boom. He's taking the good momentum left to him from the Obama era and ruining it. Of course, it takes years for such ruining to be felt by the public, so we're not quite feeling all of it yet. In fact, any capitalist system is quite capable of continuously running well, and can take quite a beating before a real downturn happens. In 2008, it took an unexpected and massive housing-value collapse to bring the economy down, and even then, it bounced back after only three years. This has allowed Trump to falsely claim that he's been doing a good job with the economy. But, of course, his mismanagement will be felt sooner or later. Economists of all stripes are predicting a recession, but many of them are divided as to whether it will hit by 2020, or 2021.

If the downturn hits in 2020, Trump is out. If it hits in 2021, he might just win re-election.

And here is my stroke of brilliance. You see, the unspoken X-factor of an economy comes in the form of uncertainty. Economic uncertainty makes for a troubled market. Stocks are more jittery. Prices don't come down as readily. People cling to their wallets more tightly. Uncertainty is really the thing which drives an economy down. In the 1970's, economic uncertainty, caused mainly by OPEC driving gasoline prices up, made many people nervous, and inflation went way up. But today, Trump has let the unemployment rate slip below 4%, and inflation has not taken place. Why? Because markets feel certain. They are confident that the markets will remain predictable.

And here's where we all can topple Trump in a subtle, beautiful way.

We create more economic uncertainty!

How, you ask? By expressing worry about the economic future. By pointing out, quite correctly, that farmers are suffering; that Wisconsin is no longer the dairy state because dairy farms are selling out at the alarming rate of 2 farms per day; that one-fourth of last year's entire cranberry crop had to be simply dumped because farmers couldn't sell it; that Harley Davidson will soon be a European motorcycle company; that steel tariffs will drive the prices up for everything with steel as part of their manufacture.

It's really not lying. We have the above reasons and many more when it comes to worrying about the economy! But the more we talk about it, the more we express ourselves in worrying, the more we generate buzz about the coming downturn, the more it will happen. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

And the inevitable economic downturn will happen in 2020, not 2021, and Trump will be out in one of the biggest losses in American history!

After all, Trump has been pinning his entire re-election campaign on the economy. If it falters by November of 2020, he's got nothing.

So chat it up on social media, everybody! Express your worry about the economy on Facebook, for so you should! Tweet doom and gloom, an end to the economic boom! Generate word of mouth that the economy's going South! There's an economic storm coming, and it's name is Hurricane Donald! Be paranoid! Be LOUD about it! Worry, worry WORRY!

Hell, you're going to worry anyway. You might as well make it count.


Eric

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