[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2017-May-03, 06:26, said:

If President Trump. or anyone, said that I robbed bank and shot the teller I hope that a newspaper would either not report that statement, since there is no truth to it, or if it reported it I hope they would also say that there is no known evidence to support such a statement. In the case of the wiretap, it certainly is a serious allegation by the current president against a former president so it should be reported that Trump made the allegation. It then seems obvious that at the very least the paper needs to say that this allegation has been made several times, absolutely no evidence has been offered by Trump to support this allegation, various people of high standing, by no means all of them Democrats, have said that they know of no evidence to support the allegation, and so on.

Of course the problem is that this plays the DT game of hyping up something that has no basis in fact, getting everyone worked up, then pulling the rug with a big ha ha, effectively saying "Ha, got you going on that, ha ha ha". Tiresome is woefully inadequate to describe this.

Should the newspaper say he lied? This gets tricky. A person is an alleged bank robber until he is convicted, even if the is caught on camera. At the personal level I cannot recall the last time I called someone a liar. But from time to time I say "I don't believe that". The difference is clear. I am an authority on whether I do or do not believe something. Proving someone to be a liar, adequately so that it will withstand a lawsuit, might be harder. In the Watergate days someone asked Sam Ervin if the report of the Senate Watergate Committee would declare that Nixon was a crook. Nixon had famously declared that he was not a crook. Ervin's response was something like this: If a painter paints a picture of a horse, correct in every detail, he can then label the picture "horse" or he can leave it unlabeled and trust that anyone can recognizes a horse when he sees one.

The Trump style has been on display for a long time. His supporters say that what he says doesn't matter, only what he does matters. So pretty much everyone, supporters and opponents alike, agree that he just shoots off his mouth without regard for facts. Should we then call him a horse? Or just trust people to recognize a horse when they see one.

You certainly make a good point, Ken, and I am not entirely opposed to your views; however, I think in Trump's case the argument can be made that his lifetime achievement award of being a serial liar and his repeated use of the same fabrication tactics since taking over the WH has created an anti-deference league of his own making.

I really don't care how he is called a liar as long as it is explicitly shown that he is. In the case of the wiretap claim, it would be sufficient to say about DT that he is repeating a totally fabricated story he heard or read from on a fake news site.

The reason this is critical is that his hardcore supporters don't care that he is a serial liar, but civilization as a whole needs him labeled a liar, needs to cling to decorum and civility in order to prosper and thrive, as without the decorum and civility that gives the sense of oneness to a society we devolve into beastly circles of savage tribes howling at the moon.

[barmar]

Most news organizations have on many occasions referred to Trump's wiretapping allegations as being unfounded, and some have occasionally used their word "lie".

One problem with the word "lie" is that it refers to a deliberate and knowing telling of a falsehood. If someone is deluded and/or misinformed, and as a result has an incorrect belief, it's not really a lie. So calling Trump a liar is a much stronger statement than saying that there's no evidence for what he's saying. While we in the general public are certainly entitled to our opinion about his beliefs and motives, responsible news organizations can reasonably feel that they need more proof to use this word.

For instance, when Trump claimed that his Electoral College win was the biggest since Reagan, I suspect he actually believed it. Lots of superlatives were used when he won the election (mostly because everyone was surprised at the size of his win), he misunderstood, and never bothered to look it up.

Of course, when making allegations of serious, criminal misconduct, one should be more dilligent. If he's not deliberately lying, then he's being grossly irresponsible.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2017-May-03, 08:40, said:

Most news organizations have on many occasions referred to Trump's wiretapping allegations as being unfounded, and some have occasionally used their word "lie".

One problem with the word "lie" is that it refers to a deliberate and knowing telling of a falsehood. If someone is deluded and/or misinformed, and as a result has an incorrect belief, it's not really a lie. So calling Trump a liar is a much stronger statement than saying that there's no evidence for what he's saying. While we in the general public are certainly entitled to our opinion about his beliefs and motives, responsible news organizations can reasonably feel that they need more proof to use this word.

For instance, when Trump claimed that his Electoral College win was the biggest since Reagan, I suspect he actually believed it. Lots of superlatives were used when he won the election (mostly because everyone was surprised at the size of his win), he misunderstood, and never bothered to look it up.

Of course, when making allegations of serious, criminal misconduct, one should be more dilligent. If he's not deliberately lying, then he's being grossly irresponsible.

Characterizing Trump's Obama wiretapping claim as an "allegation" lends an undeserved credence to the claim as an allegation may be true. It is not necessary to call someone a liar to show that they are indeed a liar.

The New Yorker shows how to do this:

Quote

Trump has never gone out of his way to conceal the essence of his relationship to the truth. In 1980, when he was about to announce plans to build Trump Tower, a 58-story edifice on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, he coached his architect before meeting with a group of reporters. ‘Give them the old Trump bullshit. Tell them it’s going to be a million square feet, 68 stories.’ This is the brand Trump has created for himself – that of an unprincipled, cocky, value-free con who’ll insult, stiff, or betray anyone to achieve his purposes. But what was once a parochial amusement is now a national and global peril. Trump flouts truth and liberal values so brazenly that he undermines the country he’s been elected to serve and the stability he’s pledged to ensure. His bluster creates a generalized anxiety such that the president of the United States appears scarcely more reliable than any of the world’s autocrats. Trump thinks out loud, and is incapable of reflection. He’s unserious, unfocussed, and, at times, it seems, unhinged.

Or, as New Republic shows, Trump can be absolved of lying and still be shown as what he really is:

Quote

Yet the increasingly frequent tendency of Trump’s critics to label him a liar is wrongheaded. Trump is something worse than a liar. He is a bullshit artist. In his 2005 book On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, emeritus philosophy professor at Princeton University, makes an important distinction between lying and bullshitting—one that is extremely useful for understanding the pernicious impact that Trump has on public life. Frankfurt’s key observation is that the liar, even as he or she might spread untruth, inhabits a universe where the distinction between truth and falsehood still matters. The bullshitter, by contrast, does not care what is true or not. By his or her bluffing, dissimulation, and general dishonesty, the bullshit artist works to erase the very possibility of knowing the truth. For this reason, bullshit is more dangerous than lies, since it erodes even the possibility of truth existing and being found.

[jogs]

Zelandakh, on 2017-May-02, 08:23, said:

You really think that alienating people from the USA's closest ally (UK) is good for your country? You have a very strange view of the world when you describe this as "doing something right".

You don't represent the views of the majority of the British people. The common people voted for Brexit.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-03, 09:01, said:

Characterizing Trump's Obama wiretapping claim as an "allegation" lends an undeserved credence to the claim as an allegation may be true. It is not necessary to call someone a liar to show that they are indeed a liar.

allegation:

Quote

A claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof.

That seems to be an accurate characterization of Trump's claims about the wiretapping.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2017-May-03, 11:56, said:

allegation:

That seems to be an accurate characterization of Trump's claims about the wiretapping.

Quote

What is ALLEGATION?
The assertion, declaration, or statement of a party to an action, made in a pleading, setting out what he expects to prove.
(Black's Law Dictionary)

I think it is bending over backwards - or showing deference - when someone simply repeats some absurd nonsense he heard on The Alex Jones Show, and you legitimize his claim by calling it an allegation. Others may disagree with me, and that is fine.

[Winstonm]

jogs, on 2017-May-03, 10:18, said:

You don't represent the views of the majority of the British people. The common people voted for Brexit.

I upvoted you for making two complete sentences that related to each other; however, it is an error to think the results of one election represents the will of all the people, or even a majority.

[Zelandakh]

jogs, on 2017-May-03, 10:18, said:

You don't represent the views of the majority of the British people. The common people voted for Brexit.

What does a vote for (or against for that matter) Brexit have to do with the concepts that you answered - that describing the alienation of your cloest ally as "doing something right" is strange? As Winston wrote, it is nice that you have managed to write two sentences that are legible and fit together but perhaps we could also try to create sentences that refer to the subject at hand next time too?

[Trinidad]

jogs, on 2017-May-03, 10:18, said:

You don't represent the views of the majority of the British people. The common people voted for Brexit.

You don't represent the views of the majority of any people. The common people don't jog.

I really don't know what the two have to do with each other. The fact that the majority of a people did one thing does not mean that Zel doesn't represent their opinion on an entirely different thing.

You are saying that since Zel (supposedly, I didn't check) was a Bremainer, he is not allowed to state anything anymore, e.g. that the British like fish and chips.

If you sincerely think that makes sense, I would suggest that you don't represent the views of the majority of the US people.

Rik

[gwnn]

The relative margin for Hillary over Trump (~51.1% from the people who voted for one of the two candidates) was similar to Leave over Remain (~51.9%). I would say neither difference is huge and saying that one or another outcome was "the views/will of the (common) people" or similar framings is naive.

[y66]

From The New Study That Shows Trumpcare’s Damage by David Leonhardt May 4, 2017:

Quote

When Massachusetts expanded health insurance a decade ago, state officials unknowingly created an experiment. It’s turned out to be an experiment that offers real-world evidence of what would happen if the House Republicans’ health bill were to become law.

The findings from Massachusetts come from an academic paper being released Thursday, and the timing is good. Until now, the main analysis of the Republican health bill has come from the Congressional Budget Office, and some Republicans have criticized that analysis as speculative. The Massachusetts data is more concrete.

Unfortunately for those Republicans, the new data makes their health care bill look even worse than the C.B.O. report did. The bill could cause more people to lose insurance than previously predicted and do more damage to insurance markets. The $8 billion sweetener that Republicans added to the bill on Wednesday would do nothing to change this reality. President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan are continuing to push a policy that would harm millions of Americans.

Here are the basics of the new study, and why it matters:

The Massachusetts law subsidizes health insurance for lower-income households, and does so via four different income categories. Everyone in a category — for example, a family of four earning between $44,700 and $55,875 a year — would pay the same price for insurance. A family earning less would pay less, and a family earning more would pay more.

This system creates what economists call a “discontinuity.” People who have only slightly different incomes pay very different prices for an insurance plan. A family earning $44,701 could pay a couple of hundred dollars more per year than a family making $44,699.

Discontinuities are a social scientist’s friend, because they set up natural experiments. The price difference faced by the similar families I just described allows researchers to analyze how much the cost of insurance affects people’s willingness to sign up.

And price ends up mattering a lot. When plans become even slightly more expensive, far fewer lower-income families sign up. “Most low-income people aren’t willing or able to pay much for health insurance,” says Mark Shepard, a Harvard economist and an author of the new study.

Why? Partly because people know that they have an alternative. They can instead rely on last-minute emergency-room care, in which hospitals typically treat them even if they lack insurance. Such care is problematic: It tends to be expensive, raising costs for other patients, and it’s often not as good as preventive care. But many poorer families choose E.R. care over taking money from their stretched budgets for health insurance.

The Republican health bill wouldn’t raise people’s costs by only a small amount, either. It would force many low-income families to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more for insurance — and most of them would likely respond by not buying insurance. The people who still buy plans would disproportionately be sick people, which would then cause costs to rise even higher. “When premiums go up, it’s the healthier enrollees who drop out,” said Amy Finkelstein of M.I.T., another author of the study.

The authors didn’t specifically compare their data to the estimates by the C.B.O. But the magnitude of the new results suggests the C.B.O. estimates of insurance losses were conservative. Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard, the paper’s third author, said that the Republican proposal would effectively end enrollment in the insurance markets for families that make less than $75,000 a year.

It’s important to note that the study’s three authors aren’t political animals. Finkelstein has won the John Bates Clark Medal, an award for the top academic economist under the age of 40, and her research on Medicare is frequently cited by conservatives.

The Republican health bill is simply a bad bill. It’s been blasted by conservative and liberal health experts, as well as groups representing patients, doctors, nurses and hospitals. Above all, the bill cuts health benefits for the poor, the middle class, the elderly and the sick, and it funnels the savings to tax cuts for the rich.

In the name of a political victory for themselves and Trump, House Republicans may now be on the verge of passing the bill anyway. The only things that can keep it from becoming law — and harming millions of Americans — is the United States Senate.

[jogs]

There is no homogeneous thinking in any of the Western countries. The elite think one way and the common folks think another. It's all about globalism versus populism. We populists think the purpose of government is to protect the interest of its own citizens.

[Winstonm]

Though Trump knows little, he does understand how shallow is the mind of a broad swath of Americans concerning social conservatism and how emotive is their reactivity so all he has to do to garner their support is produce the illusion, a la reality t.v., of taking actions on their behalf; the raft of executive orders in lieu of legislation shows how clearly he understands this power of perception compared to fact; it is in perception where both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness lies, as exposing his empty deceptions leaves him standing naked in front of a mirror, a king with no clothes.

The difficulty for the reality-based community is figuring out a way to expose the deceptions so that those deceived feel betrayed rather than protected.

[PassedOut]

jogs, on 2017-May-04, 08:10, said:

There is no homogeneous thinking in any of the Western countries. The elite think one way and the common folks think another. It's all about globalism versus populism. We populists think the purpose of government is to protect the interest of its own citizens.

Those labels are false flags. The real disagreement is about what will actually protect the interests of the citizens and what will not:

Walls won't help. Tariffs won't help. Tax breaks for the rich won't help. Small insurance risk pools for the sick won't help.

Rebuilding the infrastructure will help. Expanding public education and vocational training will help. Universal healthcare will help.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-04, 08:45, said:

Though Trump knows little, he does understand how shallow is the mind of a broad swath of Americans concerning social conservatism and how emotive is their reactivity so all he has to do to garner their support is produce the illusion, a la reality t.v., of taking actions on their behalf; the raft of executive orders in lieu of legislation shows how clearly he understands this power of perception compared to fact; it is in perception where both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness lies, as exposing his empty deceptions leaves him standing naked in front of a mirror, a king with no clothes.

Indeed. When he touts all his accomplishments in his first 100 days, most of them have little substantive impact. His only real accomplishment was getting Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. The rest give the illusion of acting on his promises, but don't really change much. I guess in the case of the travel ban he can claim that he tried -- but should we really credit him for making promises that any knowledgeable person would know he couldn't really keep?

For instance, relaxing regulations on coal companies is not going to bring back coal jobs. Coal has been in decline because other energy sources (e.g. natural gas) are cheaper and preferable, not because of burdensome regulations. And the majority of coal jobs were lost to automation, not because of the reduced number of coal mines. Trump can put on a show of signing EOs intended to restore coal jobs, but few coal miners will get help from them.

[ldrews]

PassedOut, on 2017-May-04, 09:18, said:

Expanding public education and vocational training will help.

The education system in the US has been deteriorating for decades under the current policies. As Einstein is quoted to have said: "Doing more of the same thing and expecting a different result is a definition of insanity." The US education systems needs significant reform, not expansion.

[PassedOut]

ldrews, on 2017-May-04, 12:18, said:

The US education systems needs significant reform, not expansion.

The US education system varies wildly in quality, with many citizens getting little of value from it. Looking out for those citizens means expanding it to those citizens to ensure that they too get an education that prepares them for modern life.

The US education system has been discussed a fair amount in the Water Cooler. One obvious reform would be to eliminate the censoring by Texas politicians of widely-used textbooks.

[kenberg]

The House passage on Health care is, I think, a very big deal. Democrats will oppose it. that's a given. Probably they will defeat it, we shall see. I have no real feel for how this will play out with the voters. Just about everyone has some interest in health care.This is no longer an abstract repeal and replace, and I imagine there will be a large number of people asking how this will affect them . Possibly they will even demand clear and honest answers. Something along the lines of "I have, or my aging parent has or my young child has, medical problem X. Under this plan, the treatment for X will be covered how and at what cost?" Something like that.

We shall see how this goes. I don't thin that the argument "We have to replace the ACA because the Ds did it and Ds are bad' is going to fly. I also don't think that the argument "We have to oppose this replacement (ok, modification) because the Rs are doing it and the Rs are bad" is going to fly. In each case the argument will fly with some, but there are a lot of voters out there and some, maybe quite a few, will want to hear a little more substance to the argument.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2017-May-04, 14:35, said:

The House passage on Health care is, I think, a very big deal. Democrats will oppose it. that's a given. Probably they will defeat it, we shall see. I have no real feel for how this will play out with the voters. Just about everyone has some interest in health care.This is no longer an abstract repeal and replace, and I imagine there will be a large number of people asking how this will affect them . Possibly they will even demand clear and honest answers. Something along the lines of "I have, or my aging parent has or my young child has, medical problem X. Under this plan, the treatment for X will be covered how and at what cost?" Something like that.

We shall see how this goes. I don't thin that the argument "We have to replace the ACA because the Ds did it and Ds are bad' is going to fly. I also don't think that the argument "We have to oppose this replacement (ok, modification) because the Rs are doing it and the Rs are bad" is going to fly. In each case the argument will fly with some, but there are a lot of voters out there and some, maybe quite a few, will want to hear a little more substance to the argument.

Politically, I think the biggest mistake made was in rushing through this bill without an CBO report on its impact; you can fool some of the people some of the time, but keep it up, sucker, and we'll kick you stinkin' ass.

[Winstonm]

jogs, on 2017-May-04, 08:10, said:

There is no homogeneous thinking in any of the Western countries. The elite think one way and the common folks think another. It's all about globalism versus populism. We populists think the purpose of government is to protect the interest of its own citizens.

Here is your "populist" president in action and what his repeal of the ACA will do: (emphasis added)

Quote

The Affordable Care Act ushered in a historic reduction in the national uninsured rate. By targeting assistance to low- and middle-income families that need health coverage and forbidding health insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions, it expanded coverage to about 20 million people.

The American Health Care Act, which is the House Republican bill, would undo both of those things.

The legislation would end the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to poor adults and drastically cut federal funding for Medicaid overall, jeopardizing coverage for children, people with disabilities and elderly people in nursing homes. The bill also would allow states to permit health insurers to go back to turning away customers because of their health status and medical histories, or charging them higher rates.

The American Health Care Act is also a vehicle for almost $600 billion in tax cuts for wealthy people and health care corporations.

Those making $250K a year or more get tax cuts on the backs of poor and middle class who lose their health coverage - great populism there.