The Right's Assault on Facts, Data, and Reality

[jackd]

I just saw a report that a Defense Department spokesperson said the incursions during the Trump administration were not detected until "after the fact" and that's why no action was taken against them and the failure of detection had to be addressed. I wonder what Trump thinks about that or, regardless of what he thinks, what he'll say.

[LFC]

Watch Sen. Mike Lee's (R-UTterly Craven) reaction at the SOTU compared to what he said before. Such fake outrage.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 8, 2023 23:19:02 GMT LFC said:

Watch Sen. Mike Lee's (R-UTterly Craven) reaction at the SOTU compared to what he said before. Such fake outrage.

After looking a video clips I realize that Lee, MTG and the like believe that they won't look bad to their constituents. Like Trump they can hide behind "I didn't say that" meaning I didn't use those exact words or "I didn't say that in conjunction with this debt ceiling discussion." And they are probably right in that belief.  Like Huckabee Sanders rebuttal speech, they only speak to a small group of people and they only care about them.  Actually they may not believe it's a small group of people.

[goldenvalley]

Seems like the House investigation into why Twitter didn't allow the New York Post story link about the Hunter B. laptop for 48 hours or so has not yielded much but theater:

[LFC]

Hunter Biden's attorney may be taking the path of a best defense being a good offense. I suspect there lawsuits are coming as he looks to be reimbursed for his legal bills and for general slander.

Hunter Biden Goes On The Offensive

The new more aggressive posture from Hunter Biden that I mentioned last week is taking on more concrete shape:Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who took over as Biden’s counsel in December, sent the “litigation hold” letters on Wednesday to 14 people allegedly linked to efforts to generate coverage critical of the 53-year-old son of President Joe Biden, according to a person familiar with the development.

[LFC]

Go, Joe! GO! Biden kicked Republicans square in the nuts over Social Security and Medicare. To make matters worse, he stuck to the facts of what they actually have proposed! (GASP!) He's not letting up nor should he. People need to know that the GOP wants to destroy Social Security, and they've told us that for years.

GOP Whines Over Biden Social Security Attacks

It’s a sure sign Biden has hit a soft spot and his attacks are working.

Let’s say it again though for those in the back: Republicans have been targeting Social Security since its inception! As Paul Krugman puts it:

But, of course, many Republicans do want to eviscerate these programs. To believe otherwise requires both willful naïveté and amnesia about 40 years of political history.

Here's a Wayback Machine link to the Krugman article. Reagan, Gingrich, W Bush, and Ryan all took swings at the social safety net. To paraphrase a line from the The American President, "The Republicans' problem isn't that they don't get it. The Republicans' problem is that they can't sell it!"

[LFC]

TPM is collecting a list of Republicans and their public statements about harming the social safety net.

[LFC]

Here in PA it's easy to understand the Republican panic over having their assaults on the social safety net being brought out in elections. This is from their most recent losses.

Bob Asher, a top GOP donor in Pennsylvania who is also helping finance the postmortem, said that he came up with the idea during discussions with other local Republicans after the election. He was struck, he said, by what he heard. Some officials told him that efforts that flew under the radar — such as Democratic mail advertisements aimed at older voters arguing that Republicans would eliminate Social Security and Medicare — were actually major factors in the election.

Go Dems! Meanwhile, Republicans continue the same hiding they've been deploying on abortion after the abortion of a SCOTUS decision. They want a set of policies that they're too cowardly to support openly because the majority of the country hates them.

[AnBr]

About time that the Dems get down and dirty with the Rethugs. The big difference is that they, unlike the Goopers don't have to lie to do it.

[LFC]

Moscow Mitch, Qevin, and many other Republicans have desperately tried to shut off the spigot of the GOP's stance on Social Security. It isn't working. Remember the Blueprint to Save America? TPM does.

Three-Quarters of House GOPs Endorsed Social Security Cuts Last Year

With Republicans telling us, collectively, “Who are you going to believe? Us or your lyin’ eyes?” the work of de-bamboozling is never done. Don’t thank me now. Just remember to sign up to become a member.

As we noted earlier, Republicans are now aghast that anyone would be claiming they want to cut Social Security. But last year the Republican Study Committee — a House caucus which includes about 75% of all House Republicans — released a proposed 2023 budget which included basically every kind of Social Security cut on offer.

The Blueprint to Save America proposed raising the eligibility age at first to 70 and then higher if and when life expectancy goes up; it proposed cutting (or in their words “modernizing”) the benefit formula for everyone currently 54 and under; means-testing Social Security benefits; including work requirements for some Social Security beneficiaries; and allowing people to divert payroll taxes into private investment accounts — aka “retirement freedom.”

(See details on pages 81-82 of the Blueprint to Save America.)

Democrats should have held their feet to the fire on this issue long ago. They should have also gotten behind Grayson on healthcare, shoving the term "death panels" up the GOP's nose.

[LFC]

REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY!

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) have been sparring publicly over whether Republicans support cuts to Social Security and Medicare – and now Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and other hardline conservatives are getting involved in the fight.

Last week — just days after President Biden called out some Republicans for plans to sunset Social Security and Medicare in his State of the Union speech — McConnell renewed his staunch criticism for Scott’s “Rescue America” plan, which states that “all federal legislation sunsets in 5 years,” with no exceptions for Social Security and Medicare. McConnell has criticized Scott for the plan before, maintaining many Republicans’ claims that the party doesn’t support gutting the programs, despite the fact that pushing cuts has been a key policy ambition for the Republican Party for decades.

While Republicans like McConnell want to signal to Americans loudly and clearly that the party doesn’t back such efforts ever since Biden called them out during the SOTU, Scott and his sunsetting agenda are making their position harder to spin. And the messaging is made muddier by Scott’s befuddling claims that his 12-point-plan won’t actually harm Social Security or Medicare.

But RonJohn thinks we should trust him.

​​“The leader ought to be supportive of our incumbents,” Johnson said, according to Punchbowl News. “Sen. Scott’s done a good job in Florida. I think Floridians appreciate the fact that he’s forthright and honest with them. And I know from my personal involvement with Sen. Scott, his only interest is in saving those programs.”

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) agrees with Johnson. Braun said Scott “is concerned about saving” entitlement programs, “not sunsetting it in the sense of getting rid of it. If we want it there for future generations, we’ll have to do something to keep it alive.”

Rick Scott, who was the CEO at a company found guilty of massive Medicare fraud, says he knows what he's doing. Uh, huh.

But Scott is adamant that he knows what he is doing.

“I’ve won three hard statewide elections. I’m putting time into my state. And actually, I’m doing exactly what I told my state when I ran,” Scott told Punchbowl, in response to McConnell’s criticism. “I’ll win my election this time by doing the exact same thing. I put out a plan…”

[AnBr]

Feb 15, 2023 13:19:09 GMT LFC said:

Democrats should have held their feet to the fire on this issue long ago. They should have also gotten behind Grayson on healthcare, shoving the term "death panels" up the GOP's nose.

[LFC]

Republicans, being Republicans, are trying to somehow pin blame for the Norfolk-Southern derailment and chemical spill in Ohio on Biden because of course they are. It doesn't matter how stupid their comments are. Making sense stopped being important to the GOP a long time ago. Here's Gym Jordan, sex crime enabler, saying something immensely stupid.

If they don't like the burning of the chemicals then they can take it up with Gov. DeWine.

Republican politicians and media seeking to exploit the OH train derailment for political gain can direct their inquiries to Gov. DeWine, who said today he followed Norfolk Southern’s recommendation to burn the chem cars, and whose CEO gave his him his word everything will be ok.

They can also give Trump a shout-out.

he derailment of a 150-car train carrying hazardous material in East Palestine, Ohio, was likely more severe because the Trump administration repealed a key safety rule, according to an industry insider.

[snip]

Speaking to investigative news outlet The Lever, Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said the "severity" of the accident was likely increased by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.

A rule was passed under President Barack Obama that made it a requirement for trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes, but this was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.

The industry said it would cost more than $3 billion to implement. The FRA under Obama said it would be around half a billion.

The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency responsible for investigating rail accidents, told The Lever that the Ohio train that derailed was not fitted with ECP brakes.

"Would ECP brakes have reduced the severity of this accident? Yes," Ditmeyer said.

Referring to opposition from within the rail industry to fitting ECP brakes, he added: "The railroads will test new features. But once they are told they have to do it ... they don't want to spend the money."

[goldenvalley]

I know I'm a broken record on this...Jordan isn't talking to anyone but people who already agree with him.  Fine details belong to the elitists who just want to use them to make everyone else feel stupid and bad.  

[LFC]

The derailment story keeps getting worse. I'm sure the anti-regulation party will whine more.

Nearly two weeks after a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in rural Ohio, questions still linger about the lasting effects of the incident and the speed at which residents were returned to their homes.

Around 9 p.m. on February 3, a train operated by Norfolk Southern Railway derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, located on the border of Pennsylvania and roughly an hour from Pittsburgh.

Among the chemicals the freight was carrying, five cars contained vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that is linked to various cancers and is used in a variety of plastic products and manufacturing. In the initial days after the derailment, temperatures rose in the cars holding the vinyl chloride and officials at both the railroad company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, ordered that residents evacuate East Palestine.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Republican Governor Mike DeWine said he learned that the train cars were marked as non-hazardous, and thus officials weren’t notified that the train would be crossing through the state.

The governor called on Congress to look into the regulations that would allow a train carrying multiple cars with hazardous substances to be labeled non-hazardous.

“Frankly, if this is true, this is absurd and we need to look at this,” DeWine said. “We should know when we have trains carrying hazardous materials that are going through the state of Ohio.”

[LFC]

More on Norfolk Southern. Accidents are just a business cost that, maybe until now, were less than the cost of prevention.

Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems.

ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East Palestine, Ohio.

The policy applies specifically to the company’s Wayside Detector Help Desk, which monitors data from the track-side sensors. Workers on the desk can tell crews to disregard an alert when “information is available confirming it is safe to proceed” and to continue no faster than 30 miles per hour to the next track-side sensor, which is often miles away. The company’s rulebook did not specify what such information might be, and company officials did not respond to questions about the policy.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 23, 2023 16:07:11 GMT LFC said:

More on Norfolk Southern. Accidents are just a business cost that, maybe until now, were less than the cost of prevention.

Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems.

ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East Palestine, Ohio.

The policy applies specifically to the company’s Wayside Detector Help Desk, which monitors data from the track-side sensors. Workers on the desk can tell crews to disregard an alert when “information is available confirming it is safe to proceed” and to continue no faster than 30 miles per hour to the next track-side sensor, which is often miles away. The company’s rulebook did not specify what such information might be, and company officials did not respond to questions about the policy.

This reminds me of the Ford Pinto where Ford decided it would cost less to deal with wrongful death and injury cases than it would to redesign the rear of the car and retool manufacturing plants.

[LFC]

This is DeSatanist's hand-picked utter nutter.

Florida's health department opened and then closed an investigation into the state's polarizing surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, after a tipster claiming to have insider knowledge alleged that Ladapo "manipulated data" and committed "scientific fraud" in his final edits to what became a contentious, widely panned analysis on COVID-19 vaccine safety in young men.

That's all according to a report by Politico, which reviewed state documents on the investigation, including the original complaint from the tipster. Those documents appear to raise more questions than answers regarding the accusations and the health department's investigation. According to the documents, the Florida Department of Health’s inspector general opened an investigation in November of last year but closed it at an undisclosed time because the anonymous complainant didn't respond to follow-up questions.

“Batshit study”

The dubious analysis at the center of the controversy was posted online last October by the health department. Oddly, though, it did not list any authors or bear the health department's letterhead or other identifiers. Ladapo used the analysis as the basis for the state's concerning recommendation that males aged 18 to 39 should not receive an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. That recommendation goes against the recommendations of all other major health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As Ars previously reported, the analysis was roundly criticized by outside epidemiologists and other health experts, who described it as "utter rubbish," "extremely misleading," "comically bad," "seriously flawed," and "the absolute most batshit study design and analysis plan I have ever seen." Others noted that the conclusion "smells of p-hacking" and data cherry-picking.

In a particularly stinging assessment, Ladapo's former mentor at Harvard University, health economist David Cutler, bluntly told The Washington Post last year, "If I was a reviewer at a journal, I would recommend rejecting it." Cutler echoed other experts in calling the analysis deeply flawed, and he worried it would wrongly discourage people from getting vaccinated against COVID-19. "Anytime you tell people to do something incorrect, you risk causing harm," Cutler said.

The anonymous complaint to the Florida health department's inspector general suggests that some staff at the department may have been equally alarmed by the analysis—which could explain why it doesn't bear any of their names.

Of course it is Florida's health department so I fully expect this to go nowhere. DeSatanist will protect his lies.

[LFC]

House Republicans now want to "investigate" (paywalled) the Norfolk-Southern derailment and chemical spill. Josh Marshall has something to say about that. The sentence I bolded should be run on repeat until the Republicans shut up and actually do something to regulate the lax safety records of America's railroads.

Bring it The F**K on ….

In recent days I’ve seen every major paper write a version of the How Did This Tragic Train Derailment Become a New Culture War story. I didn’t need to ask myself whether any of them gave the actual answer, which I think most of us know. How is it that a train derailment caused by a major GOP-donating corporation, in a state run by a Republican governor, caused at least in part by regulations rolled back by Republican President Donald Trump … well, how exactly is that a story about Democrats not caring about people in “flyover country”? The Republican crackpot investigations complex is even now prepping to hold hearings about it.

The reality of the situation is that big corporations like Norfolk Southern spend millions in Washington for lax regulation and our railroad infrastructure is woefully aged and deficient — and not just for freight rail. Virtually every upgrade to the country’s railroad infrastructure and the quality of its rail stock pays dividends either in safety or efficiency. Republicans are simultaneously calling out corporations for not caring about ordinary Americans while carrying their anti-regulatory water on Capitol Hill. Democrats should run a freight train right through that contradiction. Only good things can come of it.

Democrats should pound on the fact at every opportunity that the Trump White House not only rolled back those regulations but Trump literally bragged about doing so on Twitter.

But that’s hardly enough. Democrats, led by the White House, should immediately bring forward expansive legislation to bring America’s railroads up to code, to not only add additional health and safety regulations but change the formulas and frameworks through which new regulations are promulgated. (They’re currently held captive by a framework of narrow cost-benefit analysis which does not take into account the true externalities and consequences of man-made disasters like these.) That legislation is the answer to every Republican’s crocodile tears about how did this happen? Why was Norfolk Southern allowed to do this? How do we prevent this from ever happening again?

You call it the Rail Safety and Corporate Accountability Act of 2023. You keep flogging it nonstop and certainly every time the East Palestine catastrophe comes up. It should be Democrats’ focus in any hearings about it. Was it terrible? Yes. Pass the Act. Should the big corporations be held accountable? Definitely. Pass the Act.

But it has to come now, not in response to more caterwauling months from now.

Does this mean the law will pass? It might. Even under a Republican House. There are actually signs of some emerging bipartisan agreement on passing new legislation. But if Republicans refuse to bring such a bill or any reasonable approximation of it to a vote let them explain why they oppose it.

Few things are more important in politics than making clear why things happen or fail to happen. That includes the policies that allow them to happen and the people who keep those policies in place. There is a rearguard chorus from the left saying that Obama should have done more than the limited regulations he advanced within current law and that Biden should have done more in his first two years to restore the regs that Trump turned back. Fair enough. All the more reason to pass the Act.

For Democrats, the policy and the politics line up exactly. They should be leaning into it. Yes, Republicans react to their own policy failures with performative pearl-clutching. Elite media buys it every time. But that’s only a conversation for people already part of the reality-based community. More importantly, being right about that doesn’t make future toxic chemical derailments any less likely. President Biden’s State of the Union address shows the rhetorical mold in which to sell it.

Introduce the legislation and push it hard. Make clear to everyone what the problem is and where everybody stands and increase the chances of actually improving things. Policy and politics line up precisely.

[LFC]

I can't even. They're actually pushing that the Russian war on Ukraine might be / is a hoax.

Since I spend time, for better or worse, swimming in the swill of right wing influencers and Trumpists, I’m often able to see things before they go fully mainstream — or rather before their existence gets picked up in mainstream media. Just over the last few days there’s been a burst of claims that something is not quite right about the Ukaine War, that the whole thing might be made up. Perhaps it’s a potemkin war. Maybe the Ukrainians are just crisis actors, as we sometimes hear claimed about the victims of mass shootings in the United States. The “questions” are characteristically vague and open-ended, designed to sow doubt without stipulating to any clearly disprovable claim.

The particular claim or question is, where are the pictures? Why isn’t there more war reporting as we’ve seen with every other war. How is it world leader after world leader is able to visit Kyiv in relative safety?

Just asking questions, as they say.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 27, 2023 18:35:38 GMT LFC said:

I can't even. They're actually pushing that the Russian war on Ukraine might be / is a hoax.

Since I spend time, for better or worse, swimming in the swill of right wing influencers and Trumpists, I’m often able to see things before they go fully mainstream — or rather before their existence gets picked up in mainstream media. Just over the last few days there’s been a burst of claims that something is not quite right about the Ukaine War, that the whole thing might be made up. Perhaps it’s a potemkin war. Maybe the Ukrainians are just crisis actors, as we sometimes hear claimed about the victims of mass shootings in the United States. The “questions” are characteristically vague and open-ended, designed to sow doubt without stipulating to any clearly disprovable claim.

The particular claim or question is, where are the pictures? Why isn’t there more war reporting as we’ve seen with every other war. How is it world leader after world leader is able to visit Kyiv in relative safety?

Just asking questions, as they say.

I wonder where all these supposed crisis actors come from.  Is there a secret website where you sign up to be one?  Get a crisis actor card so you can get jobs?  

[LFC]

Moscow Mitch tries to go kinda’ MAGA and it’s pretty awful to watch. The phlegm ball in his throat is getting bigger, his monotone is worse, he is even more free of emotion or expression than before, and he seems to be struggling a little to read. He’s 81 and I think his age is catching up to him. He just comes across as a zombie.

[LFC]

More reality on Norfolk Southern. This is a company and an industry that needs more regulation, not less. Guess which party is on each side of that solution.

Norfolk Southern’s accident rate jumped 80.8 percent between 2013 and 2022, to 3.658 accidents per million miles traveled, from 2.023. Norfolk is one of seven “Class 1" railroads. Overall, the group had 27 percent more accidents, a rate of 3.067 accidents per million miles traveled, up from a rate of 2.415 in 2013.

The increased accident rate comes as the chemical industry predicts a rise in the amount of chemicals that will be shipped by rail, trucks and other forms of transportation.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 14, 2023 17:41:46 GMT LFC said:

More reality on Norfolk Southern. This is a company and an industry that needs more regulation, not less. Guess which party is on each side of that solution.

Norfolk Southern’s accident rate jumped 80.8 percent between 2013 and 2022, to 3.658 accidents per million miles traveled, from 2.023. Norfolk is one of seven “Class 1" railroads. Overall, the group had 27 percent more accidents, a rate of 3.067 accidents per million miles traveled, up from a rate of 2.415 in 2013.

The increased accident rate comes as the chemical industry predicts a rise in the amount of chemicals that will be shipped by rail, trucks and other forms of transportation.

Not just Norfolk Southern.  It's just the company in the spotlight.   Train lengths of 100+ cars are just not safe in any emergency.  You don't have to be a railroader or physicist to figure out that slowing down a train of that length will take a long time; stopping it, even longer.  That's aside from whatever hazardous cargo it carries which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

[LFC]

Feb 9, 2023 16:23:02 GMT LFC said:

Hunter Biden's attorney may be taking the path of a best defense being a good offense. I suspect there lawsuits are coming as he looks to be reimbursed for his legal bills and for general slander.

Hunter Biden Goes On The Offensive

The new more aggressive posture from Hunter Biden that I mentioned last week is taking on more concrete shape:Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who took over as Biden’s counsel in December, sent the “litigation hold” letters on Wednesday to 14 people allegedly linked to efforts to generate coverage critical of the 53-year-old son of President Joe Biden, according to a person familiar with the development.

Hunter continues to go on the offensive. Good for him. After the mishandling of his data, the handing it out for political purposes, and the firehose of lies and accusations I see no reason why he shouldn't try to burn every one of them to the ground.

Hunter Biden is accusing the Delaware computer repair shop owner who worked on a laptop of trying to invade his privacy and wrongfully sharing his personal data for political purposes, according to new federal court filings.

Biden’s lawyers also say that John Paul Mac Isaac opposed the presidential candidacy of Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, and that he gave Hunter Biden’s data to “political enemies” to help then-President Donald Trump in 2020.

“Mac Isaac intended and knew, or clearly should have known, that people to whom he provided the data that he believed to belong to Mr. Biden would use it against then-candidate Joseph Biden and to assist then-President Trump,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in a court filing on Friday.

Ronald Poliquin, a lawyer for Mac Isaac in the civil case, declined to comment to CNN on Friday, saying Mac Isaac’s team was still reviewing Hunter Biden’s claims and would respond in court.

The filing from Hunter Biden’s lawyers outlines several ways Mac Isaac provided data to others – including when they say Mac Isaac sent a hard drive inside a stuffed animal to his father in New Mexico, and to a lawyer who worked with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani, Steve Bannon and Republican political aides ultimately got access to some of Biden’s data, which contained “sensitive, private material,” according to the lawsuit.