4 ms·

"they" is the media sources Twitter used to "fact check". I was replying to the last part of your comment about what a president should and shouldn't do. US has

"they" is the media sources Twitter used to "fact check". I was replying to the last part of your comment about what a president should and shouldn't do. US has seen what a "presidential president" can do for decades - from the Carters to Bush's to Clintons to Obamas. All the nice guy "presidential presidents" and politicians came and left with more and more problems for everyone and people now blame the man who's barely been in office for 3.5 years (3 of which were spent on Russiagate) for all the problems just because he fights back on Twitter. "authoritative voices" doesn't mean anything now a days. Look at WHO debacle. Before, being correct made you an authority. Now a days, being an authority makes you correct. Somehow all the authoritative voices got everything wrong in every hoax I mentioned.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I caution against cherry-picking authorities making errors to conclude authority is a flawed concept. Societies have gone down the anti-intellectual road before, and it ends poorly. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Stalin's USSR. Correlation doesn't imply causation. Authorities on topics making errors get reported on more often because it's news. They also have more responsibility to be correct; the alternative to authority isn't truth, it's people taking wild guesses without the benefit of training. They are wrong more often, and they don't tend to make newspaper inches without that error causing some disaster because it's expected that people spouting off in a field outside their expertise would be wrong more often. Nobody is systematically fact-checking HN comments, for instance, because none of us are assumed to be authorities on anything. ;) A President, in contrast, is supposed to be an authority on, at least, the Constitution (or at the least, to know when their expertise is lacking), as he takes an oath to uphold it. The current President is demonstrably not (multiple EOs overturned by the courts are evidence of this). And his threats against Twitter show an extremely disturbing willingness to abdicate his responsibility to uphold the First Amendment. If the media is being hard on him, it's because they're doing their job; his behavior admits scrutiny beyond the extreme scrutiny his office alone already admits. When not even the Federal Election Commission agrees with the President's grandiose statements (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499890-fec-chairwoman-no-basis-for-trump-claims-voting-by-mail-leads-to-fraud https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499890-fec-chairwoman-...), the media is asleep at the wheel if they aren't fact-checking him. Correlation does not imply causation. I hypothesize problems increasing while we've had Presidential Presidents (and to my memory, we've only had the one type!) isn't being caused by Presidents; it's caused by the world becoming increasingly complicated as systems interconnect, economic engines get larger, and money, people, and information flow more swiftly. I know some people believed electing a "non-Presidential President" might generate a different result, but honestly... Are things, on net, better now than they were in 2016? Not even the economy is on an upswing anymore.
- busymom0 6y ago
  Regarding the AP article you mentioned: https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-Trump-commission-did-not-find-widespread-voter-fraud https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-... It does not mention mail-in voting anywhere. Also this line: > In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.” This tries to confuse the reader for political reasons as if it was a Republican who made the conclusion. But it wasn't, Matthew Dunlap is a life long Democrat. Since AP mentions "who are both Republicans", then they should have also mentioned that Matthew Dunlap is a democrat but they didn't - which shows there is a bias in this article and they are trying to sell a specific side of the story. Another easy way to point out the bias in the article is that later on, it quotes the vice chair of the commission: > “For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there’s a problem,” “It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose,” Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states. “Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,” Yet despite all these, the article's headline is "Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud". The correct headline would be "Trump commission found more than 1000 convictions for voter fraud Democrat Matthew Dunlap says that's not enough proof for voter fraud." Also "there hadn’t been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years" is simply 100% false. > California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, Democrat (described as activist, engineer, and civil servant) confirmed double-voting in one case and suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super Tuesday: https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-Voting-Response-to-EIPC https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-V... ^Seems like this has been deleted but this article talks about it: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-confirms-one-case-of-double-voting-and-possibly-more-during-super-tuesday-election https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-confirms-... You can filter this page by all double-voting fraud criminal convictions. There's 8 pages of names all the way till 2019 for double voting: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=24503 https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al... https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/database-swells-1285-proven-cases-voter-fraud-america https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/datab... I am aware of flaws in cherry-picking authorities. That's exactly what everyone else is doing (including the media since 2015) while accusing the other side what they are guilty of. From Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals - "accuse them of what you are doing"

shadowgovt 6y ago

I caution against cherry-picking authorities making errors to conclude authority is a flawed concept. Societies have gone down the anti-intellectual road before, and it ends poorly. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Stalin's USSR. Correlation doesn't imply causation. Authorities on topics making errors get reported on more often because it's news. They also have more responsibility to be correct; the alternative to authority isn't truth, it's people taking wild guesses without the benefit of training. They are wrong more often, and they don't tend to make newspaper inches without that error causing some disaster because it's expected that people spouting off in a field outside their expertise would be wrong more often. Nobody is systematically fact-checking HN comments, for instance, because none of us are assumed to be authorities on anything. ;) A President, in contrast, is supposed to be an authority on, at least, the Constitution (or at the least, to know when their expertise is lacking), as he takes an oath to uphold it. The current President is demonstrably not (multiple EOs overturned by the courts are evidence of this). And his threats against Twitter show an extremely disturbing willingness to abdicate his responsibility to uphold the First Amendment. If the media is being hard on him, it's because they're doing their job; his behavior admits scrutiny beyond the extreme scrutiny his office alone already admits. When not even the Federal Election Commission agrees with the President's grandiose statements (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499890-fec-chairwoman-no-basis-for-trump-claims-voting-by-mail-leads-to-fraud https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499890-fec-chairwoman-...), the media is asleep at the wheel if they aren't fact-checking him. Correlation does not imply causation. I hypothesize problems increasing while we've had Presidential Presidents (and to my memory, we've only had the one type!) isn't being caused by Presidents; it's caused by the world becoming increasingly complicated as systems interconnect, economic engines get larger, and money, people, and information flow more swiftly. I know some people believed electing a "non-Presidential President" might generate a different result, but honestly... Are things, on net, better now than they were in 2016? Not even the economy is on an upswing anymore.

busymom0 6y ago
Regarding the AP article you mentioned: https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-Trump-commission-did-not-find-widespread-voter-fraud https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-... It does not mention mail-in voting anywhere. Also this line: > In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.” This tries to confuse the reader for political reasons as if it was a Republican who made the conclusion. But it wasn't, Matthew Dunlap is a life long Democrat. Since AP mentions "who are both Republicans", then they should have also mentioned that Matthew Dunlap is a democrat but they didn't - which shows there is a bias in this article and they are trying to sell a specific side of the story. Another easy way to point out the bias in the article is that later on, it quotes the vice chair of the commission: > “For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there’s a problem,” “It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose,” Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states. “Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,” Yet despite all these, the article's headline is "Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud". The correct headline would be "Trump commission found more than 1000 convictions for voter fraud Democrat Matthew Dunlap says that's not enough proof for voter fraud." Also "there hadn’t been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years" is simply 100% false. > California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, Democrat (described as activist, engineer, and civil servant) confirmed double-voting in one case and suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super Tuesday: https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-Voting-Response-to-EIPC https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-V... ^Seems like this has been deleted but this article talks about it: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-confirms-one-case-of-double-voting-and-possibly-more-during-super-tuesday-election https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-confirms-... You can filter this page by all double-voting fraud criminal convictions. There's 8 pages of names all the way till 2019 for double voting: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=24503 https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al... https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/database-swells-1285-proven-cases-voter-fraud-america https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/datab... I am aware of flaws in cherry-picking authorities. That's exactly what everyone else is doing (including the media since 2015) while accusing the other side what they are guilty of. From Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals - "accuse them of what you are doing"