Last Minute Debunkery

We may be only a day away from Election Day, (as of this writing) but the BS never stops. Its very existence highlights why we need to stuff the Republicans back into their caves.

I neglected to mention it at the time but this sound bite from the Fetterman/Oz debate was spine-chillingly evil.

I like my local political leaders but I wouldn’t want them anywhere NEAR the decision-making process for my health care. The party of “less government” couldn’t be more clear that they really only want “less” of the stuff that interferes with their designs on power. They’re taking their little orange flags and waving the government right into our doctor’s offices, bedrooms, and personal lives, like a jumbo jet into its parking spot on the tarmac. Just as long as they stay out of rich people’s gilded lives, I guess. Can’t have them making sure the air is breathable and the water doesn’t kill you. That would hurt the quarterly statement!

Also, with the possibility of Republicans running one of the houses of Congress, we have their petty revenge to look forward to. I saw this headline last week from our idiot cousin to the south, MTG:

She wants to investigate companies that stop donating to Republican campaigns. How sinister is that? They’re not “donations” anymore, they’re protection payments. What’s she gonna do, send a couple of goons over to Apple?

“Youse better get your checkbook out, if youse knows wut’s good for ya. Don’t make me have to come back here again or else my associate, Vlad, here, might help someone accidentally fall out of a 7th-floor window.”

This is in addition to impeaching President Biden at least a couple of times, just on principle. And that principle has nothing to do with justice, only revenge. Playground-level tit-for-tat.

Maybe if we’re lucky, The Lord will break his more than two thousand years of silence and speak to her:

(I’ve been waiting since April to use this!)

It’s obvious that the Republicans only want to run on a couple of choice things. And even the stuff that’s in their wheelhouse, they have to lie about. You’ve probably already seen the stories about how crime is the highest in the country in red states, yet they want to scare you with the prospect of Democrats letting criminals out of jail to run wild on your block. And there’s always their immigration scare tactics to fall back on, even though it’s really a nothing-burger. See, if there’s immigration from the south, it’s a problem for Republicans. They keep yelling about illegal immigration because they presume that it’s ALL illegal. They don’t even know what the legal process IS. They just see Fox “News” panic stories from the border and that’s all they need. Then they produce bullshit memes like this:

First of all, it’s “why AREN’T the 2 million people…” If you can’t speak the language, you should go back where you came from, right?

Here’s why it’s not an invasion, Gomer. The people coming up from the south aren’t arriving in tanks or firing rockets, blowing up buildings and power plants. They aren’t conscripting their own citizens and forcing them to join the fight. They’re not annexing territory. They’re just showing up to try to escape violence and find a better life.

We can pick nits on the best way to do that (MAGA view: go somewhere else,) but there is nothing in common with the Russian invasion of Ukraine other than there is a border involved. All this meme does is amplify the degree to which MAGAs consider brown foreigners to be subhuman.

Their logical fallacies don’t get any better when they turn their eyes to domestic issues:

The giant, raging fallacy at play here is that Twitter employees didn’t tell Keystone Pipeliners to do anything… If anyone said such a thing, and that’s a big IF, that would be Twitter users. Twitter’s coders and technicians had nothing to do with it. Users create the content so this is completely off base. Pipe workers can find other pipes to build and Twitter workers will find other companies. Life will go on. 

But Republicans love to pretend that the Keystone pipeline getting canceled has something to do with the price of gas. Which is hogwash, of course. The Keystone pipeline was for exporting oil abroad, not for us to use. There’s zero bearing on our current gas situation. But those are just more pesky facts from those good-for-nothing fact-checkers.

It always makes me laugh when I see my conservative friends passing around memes criticizing fact-checkers. I mean, it’s a complete self-own. Yes, I agree… it’s much easier to pedal bullshit when no one calls you on it. Don’t like it? Don’t spread verifiable lies.

The BS isn’t limited to politics anymore either. A couple weeks back, I debunked a football meme about Tom Brady. Wouldn’t you know, here comes another one. Maybe it’s just his people trying to make him feel better after his divorce, but you’d think they’d be able to do better when their source material will go down as the greatest ever. This is the latest:

There are two areas where this is lacking. First of all, the attention to roughing penalties has greatly increased in recent years. Mahomes and Allen play in a completely different environment than when Brady and Rodgers started.

But more importantly, this graphic doesn’t differentiate from the ticky-tack penalties that Brady seems to draw, versus when quarterbacks get seriously clobbered. It’s not just the penalties Brady draws that invite derision, it’s that the contact is minor. This graphic treats all roughing penalties equally.

Refs have always treated quarterbacks differently. Some get the living crap kicked out of them with no calls; others like Tom Terrific draw penalties from a hard glance.

So yes, the numbers for total calls look damning, but they only tell a slice of the story. A slanted slice.

***

So, OK, off we go to the next election. I’m hopeful that by my next writing, we’ll know whether sanity reigns across the land or a significant portion of the population has sold off their personal freedoms and a democratic system of government for the illusion of paying less for a gallon of milk or gas.

We have to realize that the Republicans have no viable plan to combat inflation. And if they DO have a plan, I bet it looks a lot like a quid pro quo.

We know that while prices are high, corporate profits are also at long-time high marks. So it’s not the cost of supplies, materials, or labor, they’re just jacking up the prices because they can. And in fact, I’m sure they’ve noticed that they can price-gouge their brains out and the President is getting the blame for it. And the big companies like that, because if they can prod voters into blaming Democratic politicians and get Republicans back into power, they will gladly lower prices in return for getting their taxes cut and environmental and safety regulations rescinded. That’s the plan.

Although it wouldn’t surprise me if they accepted the political largesse and kept the prices high anyway. It’s not like the Republicans would care; they’d just find a new way to blame the Democrats.