Late last week USA Today posted a factcheck article on Donald Trump's claims regarding immigration. Of course, it comes as no surprise to Democratic observers that the man is totally untruthful on that (or any other!) score. Nor is it any surprise that no other Republican candidate for president does much better. Theirs isn't merely the Party of No, it is also the Party of No obligation to the truth, when truth disagrees with their prevailing narrative.
More below, but first, a word from our sponsor ...
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top to pop up in diaries around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the fleur de kos...
|
If they were honest, when asked why they lie so readily and consistently, they'd have to answer, because facts aren't what they NEED them to be. (I’ll return to this a bit later.)
Worse, Trump voters aren’t at all concerned with fact checking, because they LIKE the narrative Trump spins.
Here are the four elements of the Trump plan that USA Today examined:
• He said “birthright citizenship” is the “biggest magnet for illegal immigration.”
• He claimed taxpayers have paid “hundreds of billions” in health care, education, welfare and more for illegal immigration from Mexico.
• Trump says the “incarcerated alien population” was responsible for “3 million arrests.”
• He said border crossing cards and NAFTA visas are “major” sources of visa overstays.
USA Today takes apart each of these bullshit claims. By all means read the article for the details. Except for two comments I want to make.
First, the jerk can kiss goodbye the idea that they can block citizenship for children BORN here. Even if they win the presidency, they won’t have majorities enough to write that out of the Constitution. (Since, of course, what they REALLY want is to suppress the size of the minority vote, a group they never ever intend to help in any way, not even accidentally.)
Second, on the ‘cost’ of immigration, USA Today says this:
There have been few studies on this topic, and few attempts to put a number on the cost of illegal immigration. A 2007 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the net impact on state and local budgets was “most likely modest.” A 1997 report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences found most immigrants — both legal and illegal — would have a net positive effect on government budgets over the immigrants’ lifetimes, but some states, such as California, would face a net cost over the long term.
I’m sure it is a net positive, nationwide.
But the reason I am writing this diary is to talk about factchecking and Trump’s supporters. You can factcheck all you like, the facts aren’t going to mean any more to them than they do to him. They’ll say that facts mean something if they support a Trump contention, but otherwise, they aren’t troubled at all by his lies.
I have conducted some informal (ie. NOT scientific!!!) polling, and come to the conclusion that the percentage of supporters who note and care about fact checking is -37%.
So, Ben, how can that number be less than zero? Well, because it includes voters for the other Republican candidates as well. They cannot afford to value factchecking more than Trump supporters because it might give him a competitive advantage their candidates may not enjoy to the same degree. They HAVE to repudiate facts, or become Democrats. Just not going to happen.
Okay, I promised a return to an earlier subject, because I had a thought while composing it. To refresh, I said:
If they were honest, when asked why they lie so readily and consistently, they'd have to answer, because facts aren't what they NEED them to be.
This scenario reminds me of an episode in a movie Werner Herzog made of the life of a real man named
Kaspar Hauser. Entitled Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, or The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in English, the movie dealt with a real individual who was found in late adolescence with no usable experience of social or human interaction, including the ability to use language. As treated in the Herzog version, psychologists of the day (1820's and 1830's!) regarded him as the incarnation of the proverbial ‘
tabula rasa,' (blank slate) so they could investigate elements of the
nature v. nurture debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/... (The information in the Wikipedia article differs from my memory of the Herzog film, I don’t know why.)
In Herzog's treatment, they asked him logic questions, among others. One logic puzzle they posed in the movie was a case in which there were two villages. In one village, everyone always told the truth. In the other, they always lied. So they asked Kaspar Hauser if he could conceive of a single question he could ask that would illuminate which village a fellow came from.
The question they wanted him to ask was a logical trick.
'If I asked you which village you were from, what would you say?’
Since the liar would be compelled to lie about the lie he WOULD have told, he would wind up being tricked into telling the truth, despite himself.
I liked Kaspar Hauser film answer much better. He said:
I'd ask him if he was a frog. If he said yes, he'd be from the liar village.
Dealing with Republicans is a lot like that. And Donald Trump among the very ugliest of this year's crop of frogs.
On to tonight's comments!
Brillig's ObDisclaimer: The decision to publish each nomination lies with the evening's Diarist and/or Comment Formatter. My evenings at the helm, I try reeeeallllyy hard to publish everything without regard to content. I really do, even when I disagree personally with any given nomination. "TopCommentness" lies in the eyes of the nominator and of you, the reader - I leave the decision to you. I do not publish self-nominations (ie your own comments) and if I ruled the world, we'd all build community, supporting and uplifting instead of tearing our fellow Kossacks down.
From Smoh:
This thread in gjohnsit's diary, "This is Not Normal" I found to be hilarious and adorable!
Participating are:
jwinIL14 (Thread linked begins with jw's comment)
Friend of the court
Wolf10
jwinIL14 again
And, finally, please thank Smoh for the fine submission!
Top Mojo for Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you
mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary
FAQing Top Mojo.
1) I'm a Bernie supporter and I couldn't agree less! by Quabbin +116/-1
2) Hard to believe he's gone by tgypsy +110
3) The two cases are not the same. Note even close by The Revenge of Shakshuka +108
4) What did he do is the proper question. by Mrcynical +99
5) I love reading this story again and your gramma... by navajo +98
5) What a lovely tribute by Puddytat +98
7) to back up Katrina's claims ... by jamess +92
8) AND more recently that that. Not just... by Meteor Blades +89
8) Sometimes by gchaucer2 +89
10) If only that were true by Chinton +88
11) What a wonderful man by Kestrel +84
11) I agree. by slksfca +84
11) From this grandma .... by Joy of Fishes +84
14) The political part of me loves it by BoiseBlue +82
14) I admit that I was on the side of laughing by BoiseBlue +82
16) Your puse by high uintas +81
16) Oh Hai Whoknu! Even #Sekritarmy Not Immune... by leonard145b +81
18) Wellsaid. He's a wanna-be fascist whose by TomP +77
19) But what several of the Duggars did goes by d3clark +76
20) Good Morning! by LieparDestin +74
21) the anchor baby Bush bigotry by Denise Oliver Velez +71
22) #birthrightcitizenship by Denise Oliver Velez +69
23) Trump's the story by jamess +68
23) I think people forget that by Denise Oliver Velez +68
25) some recent editorials by Denise Oliver Velez +67
26) And from this Muskogee grandma by Joieau +65
27) A wonderful story MB. A great tribute. n/t by RonK +64
28) We fight st00pidâ„¢ with the #sekritarmy facepalm. by jwinIL14 +63
28) Why? by mbayrob +63
30) #sekritarmy has so many battles to fight by kerflooey +62
2015-08-24 Top Comments with Pictures, courtesy of
jotter!
(Making note to speak with
jotter about the David Hasselhoff selection. ::wink:: )