Month: March 2017

Comey Confirms Trump’s Allegations Obama Had His Phones Wiretapped Are False…

So, Trump was wrong. And, for folks like me we suspect he knew he was wrong all the while. He willfully spouted lies to mislead the American people and he should be held to account for it.

Most likely Trump will pass it off that he was given misinformation, pick a scapegoat, and fire him or her. Then, all will be forgone and forgiven.

I suppose there is an outside chance he’ll double down, turn on Comey, and,… you get the picture. He’s that much of a “narcissist”, and, he is crazy. Right?

The Washington Post – On the 60th day of his presidency came the hardest truth for Donald Trump.

He was wrong.

James B. Comey — the FBI director whom Trump celebrated on the campaign trail as a gutsy and honorable “Crooked Hillary” truth-teller — testified under oath Monday what many Americans had already assumed: Trump had falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping his headquarters during last year’s campaign.

Trump did not merely allege that former president Barack Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower, of course. He asserted it as fact, and then reasserted it, and then insisted that forthcoming evidence would prove him right.

But in Monday’s remarkable, marathon hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey said there was no such evidence. Trump’s claim, first made in a series of tweets on March 4 at a moment when associates said he was feeling under siege and stewing over the struggles of his young presidency, remains unfounded

Comey did not stop there. He confirmed publicly that the FBI was investigating possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and associates with Russia, part of an extraordinary effort by an adversary to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election in Trump’s favor.

Questions about Russia have hung over Trump for months, but the president always has dismissed them as “fake news.” That became much harder Monday after the FBI director proclaimed the Russia probe to be anything but fake.

“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-boggling event.”

More BENEATH THE FOLD.

THE ART OF WILLFUL SELF-DELUSION

Motivated reasoning and cognitive bias are terms used by psychosocial researchers to describe a tendency among people to filter information, turn off eyes and ears, and consider only the evidence they want to hear.

Everyday in our local newspaper, I read letters to the editor. Letters from hotheads. Letters from bigots who rationalize hatred even as they deny their bigotry.  Most remarkable is the inventiveness of people who go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize the irrational and engage in willful self-deception.

Fake news, bogus conspiracies, straw man arguments, exaggerated and embellished claims, errors of attribution, errors of reasoning, denial, projection … all are examples of cognitive bias.

Each week, I see examples of willful self-delusion in opinion letters and online discussions. One reader says: “You make me sick to think that you walk the streets and could be near me. You are probably one of the animals …”; a cognitively biased abreaction.

“The left absolutely hates Donald Trump. They hate him with every fiber of their being, every cell in their bodies, but they don’t precisely know why.”  But we do know why!  Do you see what we see?  Do you see Trump’s defects of character?  Do you see the bullying of a disabled man, a travel ban that handcuffs children, a deportation order that sends a hospitalized girl with a brain tumor to a detention center?  Partisan bias is cognitive bias when you fail to see the insanity and inhumanity.

Conservative commentator Kathleen Parker condemns his reckless rhetoric. Hothead Trump loyalists denounce Parker as a traitor.

President #45 bashes the press as “an enemy of the people.” Senator John McCain defends a free press as a constitutionally protected right.  Hothead Trump loyalists denounce McCain.

There will always be an angry rabble who cast a blind eye on gross misuses of power. Never dismiss a mob whose hunger for red meat is insatiable. If you fail to feed them, they will assail you as assuredly as flies drawn to carrion.

Galloping hissy fits, boorish misuses of words, ad hominem character assassinations, misquotes, harping, carping, nitpicking, accusations, fabrications, deceptions, insults, and angry outbursts — hardly a week goes by without uncouth examples of cognitive bias leaping off page.

Are We Really Who We Profess To Be?…

Here we are, precisely at the same place we were yesterday, last week, last month, and last year. Trying to determine just exactly how in the hell this nation of immigrants with the best governmental system known to humankind got so goddamned screwed up.

A bunch of educated and liberal individuals, revolutionary actually, decided to revolt against a rather liberal monarchy and in the process built a system that recognized the supremacy of the individual rather than the state. A system built on the rule of law rather than the whim of a particular individual or group of individuals.

Our founders warned against foreign entanglements. Yet over our 240 year history we have managed to regularly become entangled in many foreign adventures, including even saving the world from Fascism and Communist totalitarianism. A admirable thing. Note, Karl Marx was not a fan of totalitarianism, in  fact Marx despised the totalitarian state. Don’t confuse 20’th century communism  with 19’th century Marxism. They are not one in the same.

Back to America. What in the hell is wrong with us? A nation of immigrants with a statue that proclaims liberty and welcomes all with the following.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Yet we  elected a man who campaigned on emotions intended to result n closing the door to the above values. Why? Fear? Bigotry? Racism? Ignorance? What? Do we even question our inner feelings or motives as a nation anymore?

It s hard to know just what freedom and liberty means these days. Is it freedom and liberty as long as it is of the type we approve of while that we disapprove of is considered tyranny? It often seems that way listening to and reading a lot of the political stuff offered as gospel these days.

Freedom. Liberty. Indeed. We all have the right to experience and enjoy the blessing of both. It is our right as individuals and no one has the right to deny or take away our freedom and liberty. But, and this is all important but, freedom and liberty is not free. Freedom and liberty requires and demands that the rights to freedom and liberty of others be respected. With freedom and liberty comes a great responsibility, to respect the freedom ad liberty of others to be free. Een when you disagree with their views.

We must add to the above, just so NO ONE misunderstands, absolutely no one has the right to forcibly infringe on one the rights and freedoms of another, unless it is in an act of self-defense against someone attempting to infringe upon your rights and freedoms.

A final note to the above. The only justification for violence against another human being is in an act of self-defense against a perpetrator of violence against you.

 Simple. Philosophically pure and consistent.  Yet we’ve managed to make our founding ideals complicated so as to fit some ideological perspective.

That’s  our perspective, feel free to leave yours.

 

The Mystery

I was not; now I am—a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says “no” to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,
Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.
Whene’er, o’ercoming fear, I dare to move,
I grope without direction and by chance.
Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand
That draws them ever upward thro’ the gloom.
But I—I hear no voice and touch no hand,
Tho’ oft thro’ silence infinite I list,
And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;
Tho’ oft thro’ fateful darkness do I reach,
And stretch my hand to find that other hand.
I question of th’ eternal bending skies
That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;
But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes
On me, as I one day shall do on them,
And tell me not the secret that I ask.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 – 1906

Federal Judge In Hawaii Blocks Travel Ban…

Just breaking. Another federal judge has put a temporary halt on Trump’s new travel ban. US District Court Judge Derrick Watson has determined Trump’s new  executive order still does not pass the legal test.

“The illogic of the Government’s contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed,” Watson wrote.”
Equally flawed is the notion that the Executive Order cannot be found to have targeted Islam because it applies to all individuals in the six referenced countries,” Watson added. “It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7% to 99.8%.”
“It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam,” Watson added. “Certainly, it would be inappropriate to conclude, as the Government does, that it does not.”
Several states and immigration advocates say the new order still suffers from legal flaws and asked federal judges to weigh in by issuing temporary restraining orders blocking the ban before Thursday. Federal judges in Maryland and Washington state may also issue rulings Wednesday.
The new ban was announced earlier this month and set to take effect Thursday. It would ban people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days.
The White House did not immediately comment on Watson’s ruling, but the Trump administration argues the ban is necessary to protect the nation’s security.