@davereaboi @GlennKesslerWP @Max_Fisher pic.twitter.com/VbDXhkzqXs

— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) November 15, 2016

Jim Webb says U.S. didn’t have income taxes until 1913

Our ruling

Webb said “we did not even have a federal income tax in this country until 1913.”The modern income tax structure, complete with Form 1040, was born in 1913. But in the interest of history, it should be noted that Lincoln ushered in an income tax in 1862 and it lasted 10 years.So we rate the statement of Webb — a historian himself — Mostly True.

Ron Paul says federal income tax rate was 0 percent until 1913

Our ruling

Paul’s statement that the federal income tax rate was zero until 1913 reflects the timing of the constitutional change enabling the current tax. But his claim disregards two pre-1913 efforts to impose an income tax — one of which was in place for a decade. This debate claim rates Half True.

2000th tweet dedicated to one of the greatest moments in Russia history. pic.twitter.com/Hxa4a4mdNO

— Only In Russia (@CrazyinRussia) November 9, 2016

One of the things that seemed crazy at the time was Donald Trump’s bringing out the women who made accusations of sexual assault against Bill Clinton. The polls bore it out, in that nobody especially held that against Hillary. On another level, though, maybe it did work with swing voters. Not (just) that Bill Clinton did Bad Things, but he did Bad Things and people voted for him anyway. Ergo, you can vote for Donald Trump even if he did Bad Things. Or is, in general, not a good person. Democrats spent eight years talking about compartmentalization and how you don’t have to like the person to support them for president. I voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 and came to regret that for multiple reasons, one of which is that character does count. So ironically, the reason I regret voting for Bill contributed to my voting for Hillary. But personal scoundrelry really did become normalized during his era, even if there are clear distinctions to be drawn between their behaviors. Less than 40% of Americans approved of Donald Trump, but 47% of him voted anyway. His voters tended older (old enough to remember Bill), and it’s not unreasonable to believe that it’s not that they didn’t care about Trump’s misbehavior, but that they had compartmentalized it in a way they were trained to a couple decades ago.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”

Source: Quote by Michael Crichton: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is…”

This is rough.  Very rough, kinda stream of consciousness, so keep that in mind.

I was looking at this map, and I had something of an epiphany regarding how so many voters could be OK with Trumps pretty naked racism & sexism.  I’m sure some percentage of his voters just blew it off as un-serious, but the evidence of his attitudes was stark enough I figure a person would have to be working that lie pretty hard.  So why did so many find it OK enough to vote for him?  I think the answer lies in the demographics.

I grew up in the late 70’s/80’s, in very rural WI.  While I did witness some hardcore racism & sexism, for the most part, everyone was pretty tolerant.  But there was a lot of low level racism & sexism; call it ‘-ism-light’.  Enough that I was steeped in that undercurrent as I grew up.  It’s surprising how deeply it embeds, and sticks with you.

I left rural WI, joined the Navy, got educated in Madison, and live near Seattle, so I’ve had time & experience to work past the -isms, but even now, seeing ‘-ism-light’ doesn’t cause a reaction.  I have to parse it, process it, and then I recognize it and decide it’s not OK.  That filter I grew up with isn’t gone, I’ve just got a second filter on top of it, courtesy of diverse exposure & experience.

But if you never left those places, even if the environment is not so steeped in -isms anymore, people my age, who don’t have that second filter, they will have a strong tolerance for such things.  They probably wouldn’t accept it in themselves, or their immediate family and friends, but the more removed an offensive person is, the better the ability to tolerate it to a degree.

So Uncle Ned who can’t stop making racist & sexist jokes, he doesn’t get invited to family gatherings very often.  But Trump?  He’s so far removed…

Or any people, for that matter. The good stuff doesn’t start until an hour in. It actually sort of gives you an idea of how long it actually took. Well, if you’re watching it on video. I suspect things like that go more quickly when you’re in the middle of the terror.

Source: Watch the Titanic Sink in Real Time in a New 2-Hour, 40 Minute Animation | Open Culture

Sometime during the GOP primary races–probably after I wrote this— I started to sign on to the view that we need to stop “understanding” Trump supporters and focus on defeating them. I had forgotten two things.

First, while “defeating” (and winning over) the opposition are the principal goals in a political contest, it’s not always about “defeating.” It’s also about trying to live in the same world with others, being open to what they have to say, and when possible, convincing them to listen to what I have to say.

Second, understanding the opposition is always important. There’s the utilitarian reason. You’re more likely to win if you understand your opponent. But there’s also the intrinsic rightness of aspiring to empathy. People are people in their own right. I never said and never really believed that Trump supporters were the caricatures of racist reactionaries that others portrayed them as any more. But I probably acted that way.

Trump supporters have their own feelings and their own complex views of the things in their lives that affect them. They are humans just like me, though on average they probably got a lot fewer breaks in their lives than I have. I don’t mean that last point condescendingly, either, as in “they are so underprivileged that they must turn to somebody like Trump.” But it’s probably the case that I stood and stand to gain a lot than they from the type of policies that Clinton would have enacted or maintained. (It’s probably also the case that from a purely personal perspective, I stand to gain a lot from some policies Trump supports.) I also have resources to fall back on should I experience some reversals in fortune. So maybe I should withhold judgment when someone sees things differently. That’s what I ask of others before they judge me.

I do maintain some fundamental disagreements. Whatever their personal views, people who voted for Trump at the very least determined that his racist and sexist-bordering-on-pro-rape-apologetics statements weren’t deal breakers. For me, they would have been deal breakers even if Trump’s views aligned with my own on other matters. Some of my nieces, nephews, and in-laws are Latino or black. Those statements of Trump suggest either that they don’t have a place in our society or that their “proper” place is below white males. (That said and while I don’t know for sure, one of my Latina in-laws probably voted for Trump.)

I need to get out of my bubble more often. As the cliche goes, to understand someone is to forgive–or at least legitimate–them. “Understanding” can sometimes lead to apologetics or agreeing with that with which I should not agree. But it can also put things in perspective and force me to recognize others’ humanity.

I mentioned Over There how bad of a candidate Hillary Clinton is and got a fair amount of pushback. If she’s so bad how come she keeps winning? The answer involves quite a bit of good fortune that doesn’t actually reflect on her capabilities as a candidate. She has, with only one exception (2006 re-election), underperformed in every race that she’s run. She’s just been in a position that she’s been able to afford to. In 2000, she was elected to the senate as a carpetbagger… and underperformed Al Gore by five points. But you can do that when you’re running as a Democrat in New York. In 2008, she lost to underdog Barack Obama. In 2016, she had the hardest time fending off Bernie Sanders, who should have been a token challenger. Any one of these performances can be explained away (Obama is really good! She was a carpetbagger against a native! Someone else getting 45% was inevitable!), but taken all together the common thread is her. We can add this election to her list, where if you tilt your head and squint your eyes you can say something about the popular vote or Comey or whatever. But she lost to a man with a 37% approval rating. It’s pretty remarkable. In the end, she was a Martha Coakley who chose less bad races.

I had been spending quite a bit of time arguing that Trumpism could win, but completely regarded that Trump himself would.

I’ve been wrong about him time and time again as a candidate. I hope that I am shown to be wrong about him as president.

This is a reasonable facsimile of a campaign sign in a few places just outside of town near Lain’s preschool.

I kept wondering where Garrison County was, and why there were signs for a campaign in some county somewhere else that I’d never heard of. I mean, there are a number of counties around here since we’re by two state lines, but even so I thought I knew what they were.

Finally, I remembered to google it and discovered that there is no Garrison County. So… what the hell?

It took me way too long to figure out what was going on.