The Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi video had over 5,000,000 views in 3 days when it was taken down by the owners of YouTube-- (not "Despacito" territory, but impressive). The comments section was filled with interesting discussion (I'd say as many against as for, but I didn't count). It gave people a public sphere. The point by point dissection of the doctors' presentation by many commenters expanded understanding. Many of the commenters provided refutation and data analysis. Taking the presentation down ended the discussion.
The rush to censor is fearful. At least the Erickson and Massahi video provided (for a brief few days) a forum where people of different viewpoints engaged each other.
If the Bakerfield's Dr are so convinced they are correct, just setup a website and post their video there? Why complain (either for or against) on why YouTube took it down? Seems they just want the attention they are getting.
And that's precisely the point. Instead of allowing people to critically think, debate the issue like adults, and allow bad methodology to be exposed for what it was (and allow everyone learn a lot on the process,) YouTube just elected to believe one expert over another expert. Typically, the experts that Facebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives.
That sort of censorship turns both platforms into partisan propaganda machines, not public forums, over time. More concerning, by the by, is Facebook's decision to block communication between people daring to protest the government's response to Covid-19. Whatever their justification, when you are a giant platform that starts aligning yourself politically and then censoring things, you are by definition a massive platform that censors based on political leanings. That's no longer a public square. That's propaganda.
"experts that FAcebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives." That's not my experience. Typically what happens is that the inspection of bias, under threat of low funding, is implemented with really crappy AI and everything gets censored.
"Typically, the experts that Facebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives."
They actually tend to just go with whoever's most powerful. They listen to entities like the Atlantic Council. It's not "left". The ruling oligarchy is neither left nor right. They're not centrist or moderate, either.
They're their own peculiar brand of modern western elitist quasi-fascism.
It was an ABC news station that put up the presentation, not the Bakerfield, Drs. Think it is part of MT's point that YouTube censors the public sphere.
OK, Matt, loved you for years, but this one got me to cough up the $40 subscription...your ability to see clearly amidst this insanity we are in is both rare and invaluable. Thank you thank you thank you.
I am shocked at how badly the pandemic has been covered in terms of a 360 view. "If it bleeds it leads", so there's lots of gory stories of packed hospitals people drowning in their own lung fluid, etc. Second is the financial impact, either on the billionaires, or on the working poor, lots of outrage on both sides.
But those aren't the only stories. Somehow we've lost the narrative that 95% of people affected by the pandemic are elderly and have at least one major illness. A child is many more time likely to be killed by the regular flu - or a car accident - than CV-19, but everyone is shrilling talking about home-schooling six months from now.
I haven't added up the numbers, but abuse, addiction, depression and suicide are all way up - for all ages and all conditions of health. We also have millions of people waiting on cancer treatments and angiograms and other life-saving treatments because they are all closed. Do we count a death due to cancer in six months as Covid because they missed the window for effective treatment? Are we so myopically focused on the primary effect of the pandemic, and yet blind to the all the secondary effects that DO add up?
And then of course there's the financial effects. We could have millions and millions on the street in a few months - singles, families, elderly, all because they lost their income and had no way to keep the bills paid up. Because of the multi-billion dollar bailout, many large companies are sitting on stacks of cash that they don't have to spend on employees. The longer those employees are gone, the longer those companies have to automate, or just not replace those jobs, the worse the unemployment and poverty situation will go on.
I don't agree on forcing people to go to work in dangerous conditions, but for most people they aren't that dangerous. Yes, there are those random stories of people that you wouldn't expect dying from the pandemic that do - but the risks of Covid-19 for the healthy and the non-ill are reasonable given all the other risks of everyday living that exist no matter what.
We should be concetrating our efforts on how to protect the vulnerable - because they are by far the most likely to suffer ill, and figure out rational, reasonable ways to protect them from the general population, while allowing the general population more freedoms.
In my opinion, the US is so mired in self-pity, victimhood and drama - that we are unable to function in a rational way. I think we have less than ten years, tops, before it's pure authoritarianism.
plus imagine a hospital ...they fill every ICU with a treating a million causes of death or injury. Then SARS2 hits, causing COVID-19 in the lungs which we have no treatments for, ventilators do nothing for dying patients with covid 19, just certain types of pneumonia. numbers go up a third every three days or more, and fills every bed in the hospital with sick people. Just from one thing. Then comes the mass burials which are happening all over the place, where entire new plots are being laid down in the street. Or maxium occupancy incinerators. Vaccines generally take 10-15 years to develope, viruses don't respond to medication much. So we are left now, to wonder and hope that our antibodies from survival recognize SARS2 early after initial infections. Or run the risk of fighting off yearly SARS2 which kills most people when it gets into their lungs, or permanently damages their lungs/immune system. Weakening healthy adults , enough to lose a battle with anything else thats around. Like say the flu....which attacks RS CNS .
actually its about 70 times more deadly than the flew according to the current numbers. Or 7%...which the flu is about .01% deadly. And in two months we have 1,000,000 cases wwhile doing a variety of measures. 1/3 of the worlds sick people are in the US. 3-9% of the US populations currently has it. Spread rate of 1.3 when unchecked.... I mean the numbers make the flu numbers look lreally good. The flu gets to 54 million sick a year, 30k deaths a year. Which we passed in two months...just in deaths... Unchecked spread looks like millions dead for this type of corona virus which we have.. It still is very likely to mutate now that so many people have it. Young people of all ages are dying in NY , spanish, and italian hospitals. No idea why people think 7% death rate is good odds. Only 16% for elderly people. .01% is 10 times less than 1%...which is like yellow fever or dengue death rates.... New viruses which we have no immunities for, can decimate all ages by a large enough number that corona virus is the number one cause of death across the board. And just so you thirty year olds in america get your shit straight, influenze is the fifth killer in normal times due to pulmonary illness. No idea why you would consider infectious diseases that mutate every year and we only build immunity too via frequent contraction as safe. IE yearly vaccines targgetted to one of the many flu strains. Add a virus that attacks the heart, lungs and immune system to the point that it leaves scarring in survivors lungs like tuberclulosis. And suddenly you might start truly regarding the fact that it is now a pandemic in the system of pandemics. Forever. And possibvly with a higher rate of reinfection. .that wasnt elminated like SARS or contained to the middle east like MERS-COV. The idea that this is something the young can avoid....is hilarious, You might want to look at the staggering death toll of young people. occuring right now in new york.
While I probably disagree with Taibbi on a fair number of policy issues, he is one of the few left of center journalists who possesses intellectual honesty. I agree with him that we need to stop looking at every fact from the standpoint of how it might play for my side politically. As I say often, if it rains today, nothing that Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, or Ocasia-Cortez says about the rain will change the fact that it rained. I will not say that it did not rain because I prefer the source, or that it did not rain because I do not prefer the source. As to the advocacy of prior restraint on the press, this Atlantic article argues a position at odds with the intent of our Founding Fathers, and at odds with our jurisprudence. What makes it so disturbing is that it is the position of two law professors. I am an attorney, and I have believed that if we put 100 attorneys in a room, they might not agree on much. But they would oppose restrictions on free speech, and prior restraints on the press, with a few exceptions such as troop movement. This Atlantic article was not published in the Daily Stormtrooper, or The Spartacus League. It was in a mainstream publication, and it was written by experts in the law. Regardless of whether you are right, left, or center, if you want to live in a democratic republic, you must oppose prior restraints on the media.
So here is the argument about the rain. It didn't rain yesterday. See I have this picture of yesterday. It is sunny outside. No rain. These people, the ones who say it rained. Fake news. They hate you, and they all work for the deep state to make you think it's raining when its not. If you dont fight back and go outside since it's sunny out those other people will go outside and steal your jobs. We have to do something about those people who say it rains.
...and thus has been the last 3 1/2 years that we have lived through. It seems silly, but on some level it has worked with 30% of the American public
My point is that propaganda when deployed by someone in power is always going to sway some people who want to believe it...it goes both ways. Trump just uses it because he cannot accept blame for anything...and uses it to a degree most people thought wouldn't be possible. The way I said it...it is exactly the way he does it
Glad to be told that the heads of CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC,NPR, NYTimes, WaPo, LA Times, ASAToday, Gannett, (running out of pixels go we'll go with 95%+ of the local press) the entire Democrat Party are powerless.
At some point reality intrudes and people will talk among themselves and realize that what they get in the press has morphed into gas-lighting. That's when a corrupt and biased media loses the battle. Like a druggie groggily looking at an overdoes they still don't realize they are committing suicide.
Taibbi is not being “intellectually honest” when he says Russiagate was an instance of government and the msm being “spectacularly wrong.” That’s just not an honest assessment of what happened, it’s Trumper spin. Below Taibbi refers to an elaborate effort to spread a false tale about Trump colluding with the Russians. There was no such effort. Meanwhile, if Taibbi is so honest then why do so many of his readers believe so many falsehoods about Russiagate, as demonstrated by this comment thread?
We should put our integrity before our politics. Regardless of how we think or feel, Russiagate turned out to be an absurd fraud. While I did not vote for Obama, I never believed that he was born in Kenya. We should not allow our feelings to get in the way of seeing the facts.
We should also be careful about what words we chose... was it overblown BS? I think we can mostly agree about that. Was it an intentional fleecing to the extent that you could call it fraud? I doubt that.
But as others pointed out re: WMDs, etc. our news organizations have let themselves be manipulated by the state into providing cover and/or rationale for their actions. *This* should be a lesson to the press, and it clearly hasn't been learned.
But why do people believe Russiagate “turned out to be an absurd fraud”? A fraud is when someone lies to get another person to do something that benefits the liar at the other’s expense. The allegation is that the media and the govt were lying to the American people about Trump’s wrongdoing. Is this a factual argument, or just political bullshit? What are the facts that I need to see that would convince me there was “fraud”?
See my comment below about the fraudulent actions by the FBI in securing the FISA warrant. I do not want any American defamed by this type of partisanship abuse of the law. If this had happened to Obama, Democrats would be right to be angry about it.
You said Russiagate turned out to be an absurd fraud. When I asked why, you said because the FBI acted fraudulently in seeking the FISA warrant. You are referring to the footnote in the FISA warrant application that references the Steele dossier. So I have two questions: first, why do you think that footnote made the entire investigation an “absurd fraud”? Second, is that single footnote the totality of what you are complaining about?
My GOD....there wasn't any evidence of a crime. In Fact the entire "investigation" wasn't even criminal it was an intelligence investigation" which meant it was authorized by Obama, and he is guilty of worse than Nixon for doing so. Have you no ability to think for yourself? Weird how Comey "exonerated" Hillary on his own accord, as teh Obama head of FBI, without any legal authority to do so and Lynch just accepted a completely unprecedented act of illegality? Yet its ok He lied to Trump about the Steele Dossier and submitted falsified documents to the court that withheld exculpatory information on Papodapolous and Page? Can you even comprehend how daft you are?
Weird how all of the Mueller report was missing in the impeachment hoax, why? If all that investigation had found crimes so compelling, why not use that for the impeachment charges? Please, deflect and change the subject.
It's been demonstrably proven that it WAS a false tale about Trump colluding with Russia. This is pretty well established by now. The sky was, in fact, NOT falling... Chicken Little has gone on to bigger and better lies to help his coop managers, but here you are -defending them all.
I don’t understand the question but it is a fact that Trump’s people met with Russians and discussed the campaign, and Cohen was also communicating with the Russians about a Trump tower deal, and for months and months Trump lied about it and demonized anyone who kept speaking truth about it. That was real. It would have been extreme negligence under the circumstances if there had not been an investigation, and if there had not been an investigation then we would not know about this. Meanwhile Trump stood on stage next to Putin and said he didn’t know why anyone would believe US intelligence over Putin. Reasonable people can disagree about whether he committed a crime or whether he should be impeached, but the idea that Trump’s wrongdoing wasn’t “real” is Orwellian nonsense, right? Of course it was real. There are many books about it
Matt, is it correct that since the election the msm has been telling people that Trump won because of a conspiracy between Russia and Trump? Is that accurate? It seems like a lot of your readers are very confused
Full disclosure: I'm a libertarian. I do not agree with much of what Matt Taibbi says. That out of the way, over the past year, Matt has been doing yeoman's work in taking on the terrifying anti-intellectualism sweeping the left in their effort to attack Trump. As Taibbi says in this article: the cure is worse than the disease.
We cannot allow the central tenets of public discourse and critical examination of facts to be a casualty in the left-right total war we've experienced since Reagan.
What Matt has been doing since Russiagate is try to persuade people that his view of it wasn’t just wrong. This is a massive project that will probably take up the rest of Taibbi’s life
And all you've done is post all over this comments threads that you disagree with Taibbi where the Russian collusion hoax was concerned. We get it. You disagree.
It’s not a matter of disagreement. In my view, people who refer to Russiagate or the Mueller investigation as the “Russian collusion hoax” are just lying. There was no hoax.
There is no factual information that Russiagate was a hoax! And every time I point that out I get insulted. Instead of insulting me why don’t you educate me?
Why? So he can tell everyone that Russiagate was an instance of govt and msm getting it “spectacularly wrong”? That’s not true and I think he knows it’s not. I respect Taibbi’s right to free speech but it’s not good to say these things because it just feeds Trumper conspiracy theories
Doesn't removing all the conspiracy theories also feed them? Like the removal of the 2 doctors video, or general ban from Google of things they consider to be "wrong." The issue here is about a dangerous precedent - letting a single body or bodies decide what is correct and what is not.
I’m angry. Not as angry as you are apparently but I’m angry enough to keep expressing myself in this forum. You are calling me an asshole because you want me to stop talking, which is ironic given that Taibbi’s piece is about censorship. Meanwhile, my view of Russiagate has not been debunked. The Mueller Report did not debunk my view, it reinforced it. I understand why you are calling me a pest but isn’t it possible that I am sincerely outraged that even now, months after the Mueller Report, Taibbi is still telling this story about how the msm and the govt got it “spectacularly wrong”?
Well I am glad we agree, the mueller report found no criminal wrong doings regarding "treason", or trump colluding with the Russians to beat HRC. He certainly broke laws, just not the pee tape kind Rachel Maddow was suggesting. What exactly do you see as russiagate? 1,000,000 views on twitter, by Russian bot farms?? Honeypot spy games where the president, who was influence peddaling in every neighboring state while being funded by multiple foreign state lobbies was selling us out to the russians??? Outside of the normal efforts of say Bill Clinton to keep yeltzin in the white house sog kennel till he sobered up? Russian collusion like US companies building pipelines with russian oil companies? US private market building pipelines with russia thru syria? I wonder who had more influence on getting trump elected , the 2 billion dollars from donors, or russia, the nearly failed state... Which struggles harshly for economic dependence and has an Iron Ring/"anti" ballistic weapons aimed at it from every one of the 200 military bases with american flags near by. You know that stuff run by the pentagon and the National Security Council? Republicans haven't ever let NATO interests and decades of war interfere with their close friendship with russians.... thats a real position in other countries. Seeing america as this democracy where elections matter. :) That's def what the FSB sees in US eleections w/ foreign and public policy. Putin, the guy we picked for the job in the first place to be our new Yeltsin. Hes the puppetmaster of a TV celebrity in a country that is so complex and full of unelected officials running policy....that trump was good for putin?? None of trumps campaign looks like every other campaign, and heads of agency's have always been "against" the private sector rather than coming from it. The dept of enerrgy head on the national security council wants to sell us out to russia. Thats why trump has been squeezing russias allies since day one. I mean HASNT BEEN. hes a putin puppet, a trained monkey whos job it was to end the nuclear treaty with iran. Then every nuclear treaty reagan signed with the soviet union. To invade and sanction 4 close russian allies, including russia nonstop! That was putins mastermind blackmail working there. The prez who asks you to inject bleach, fearlessly committed treason by forcing russia to deploy military jets in multiple countries they are allied with to prevent US regeime change. Glad mueller proved all that.
Like always, I agree and am moved deeply by most of your positions. I do however find the argument not entirely convincing. I've seen you down on Russiagate from the beginning and I've never felt like I understood why. I get the barrage without the evidence and what that means for the broader context but seriously, Washington's entire currency is lying. So too is Wall Street. But Putin's isn't? Trump's? Is it really that complicated? Trump was laundering real estate for bad guys for decades. It's his business model. Deutsche Bank was involved with fraud in every dimension and direction and Trump was a relatively small play all things considered, but the SOB knew what he was involved with and doing. He went so far as to claim the "Act of God" defense based on deuschbag Greenspan's insane lie that no one saw 2008 coming. Trump went so far as to sue DM for being a victim of predatory lending. Trump? Victim of Predatory Lending??!?!?! WTF?!?!? Given all of that and then some (Mercers, Bannon, etc.) are we to pretend it wasn't exactly what it looks like? Why wouldn't we? Because Clinton was on the other side? I really don't get that part at all.
I'm sorry, but Russiagate wasn't about whether or not Trump or Putin were liars or bad people. It was a very specific set of allegations that have been proven now to be false: that Trump was being blackmailed by the Russian state, that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign in an election interference plot, that the Trump campaign traded sanctions for election aid, that Trump himself committed treason and was a compromised foreign agent, etc. This has all been investigated and discounted. In fact it appears now, from the investigation of IG Michael Horowitz, that the FBI knew relatively early on -- by late 2016 -- that there was no coordination or collusion going on between Russia and the Trump campaign. Yet smears and innuendo flowed for years from intelligence sources anyway. You don't have to be a Trump fan to be pissed that there was such an elaborate effort at spreading this false tale.
Wow, not sure if I'm impressed (okay, I am) or baffled (a little bit) by your willingness to engage those leaving comments. I'm a pretty staunch Conservative and I agree with most of what you write. It always amazes me how fast comments fall into name calling, and in this case, an absolute unwillingness to look at what actually happened in the Russia investigation. Keep up the good work.
To add insult to injury the “Russians” they did indict got the charges dropped, so we had a three year a Russia probe that caught no Russians, go figure!
Matt, what do you say to people who experienced “Russiagate” as exposing the lies of Trump and his people? Lies about campaign meetings and contacts with Russians, for example? For us there was no spectacular wrongness by anyone, right? Can you identify the specific intelligence sources or officials who were “spectacularly wrong,” and identify the statements they made that turned out to be wrong? It feels Orwellian to me to characterize Russiagate as an example of Trump’s critics getting it wrong. Trump really was lying when he said his campaign had nothing to do with the Russians.
That case also resulted in nearly a year of stories claiming Devin Nunes had lied in his memo on FISA abuse -- he did not
Intelligence sources who said Trump was guilty of "treason," or had been in "constant contact" with Russian intelligence, were spectacularly wrong. So was Adam Schiff when he said there was "more than circumstantial" evidence of collusion. We were lied to repeatedly about the Steele dossier. I could go on.
I say all of this as someone who dislikes Donald Trump intensely.
Are you saying there was no there there in the Mueller report because it wasn’t All there? Obstruction of justice and bungled attempts at holding hands with Russian influentials doesn’t count? Yes, the liberal press & Democrats were looking for collaboration between Russia & the campaign that never eventuated, but Mueller said a couple things, something like ‘if I could of exonerated him I would have and conviction is above my pay grade, it is up to the house & senate’.
Wow. So appreciative of the thread. Will dive in to the above soon but to me, just because the investigation was wrong in every direction doesn't make the obvious, that Chump-stain was and will always be in cahoots with whomever serves his greater interests. Saudi Arabia should be every bit as investigated as Russia, or outed, or however we want to frame it, but WTF, it's hard to keep up. It's like a fast-break of bullshit.
There was more than circumstantial evidence of collusion. Even if you disagree with Schiff about what the word “circumstantial” means, he wasn’t “spectacularly wrong.” Meanwhile, you’re talking about errors, but in the comments below you refer to an elaborate effort to deceive the American people. I will tell you honestly I think you know there was no such effort. I think you’re lying about it
No, he has articles right here on this site that give you the information you're after. If you're too lazy to go and read them, that's on you, not on him, me, or anyone else here who aren't your paid personal assistants. Can you demonstrate any kind of willingness on your part to put in some effort, or will you just continue saying, "spoonfeed me the information or you're wrong"?
Ive put in a ton of effort. I followed all of it pretty closely. You say I’m being lazy but trying to find support for falsehoods is a wild goose chase. I’ll reread Taibbi’s WMD article but I don’t understand why people think it’s my burden to prove the msm and govt were “spectacularly wrong” about something. If they were wrong and it was so spectacular then presumably you remember it right? I guess it was so spectacular that nobody remembers what it was
So you’re saying there is an article somewhere where Taibbi identifies specific individuals or agencies who were “spectacularly wrong” and identifies the statements that were “spectacularly wrong”? I’m not asking you to do research for me but I read the article I think you’re referencing and it’s all innuendo and conclusory assertions by Taibbi
Ian, to such people, I say first: Why would it be appropriate to investigate to this extent these particular "lies of Trump and his people"? Most politicians lie every day. About big stuff and small stiff. It's what they do. It is not the government's job to investigate every white lie, deception, untruthful denial, etc. It is its job to investigate crimes, not politics.
And if you say these lies were crimes, I would say no more so than most other politician lying about everything under the sun. So why would this particular subject be more deserving to investigate, to this extent, than all the other lies almost every politician lies about every day?
The answer: Orange Man Bad?
Or, do you prefer that the government (FBI, CIA, House, Senate) and Media treat every single lie in this same fashion? The real crime here is that government used its limited resources for political sabotage, instead of investigating real crimes.
BTW, it was established very early on that people within Trump's organization met with Russians. No need for special counsels, deep investigations, etc. It was pretty easily documented. No surprise there, as pretty much all national politicians have done the same.
I agree that law enforcement shouldn’t prosecute politicians for lies generally. But the FBI wasn’t investigating Trump for lying. They were investigating him for criminal conspiracy. So reporters start asking Trump questions about his campaign’s contacts with the Russians and he lies about it over and over again. When the subject of a criminal investigation lies about something relevant to a crime, law enforcement will be less likely to draw any inferences in the subject’s favor and more likely to spend resources investigating. My point is not that Trump committed a crime or that he should have been impeached, although I believe those things. When people say “no thoughtful unbiased person would ever think Trump was colluding with the Russians” I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone. Anyway, I very much appreciate the tone of your comment
Between 2008 and the start of 2014, 6.5 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country and 3 million got jobs. Over the same time, the number of working-age natives holding a job declined 3.4 million.
This is far worse than anything Trump ever did and why Dems lost the election. They are on the same track again, NO deportations, NO detention, NO border, inviting more job loss at a critical time.
Thanks, Ian. I was specifically responding to your question...
"what do you say to people who experienced “Russiagate” as exposing the lies of Trump and his people?"
My point being, those who view it that way are much more concerned about the politics of winning than they are about if something bad happened. They want to find out if Trump is did anything bad, not because they care if bad things happen, but because they want to be able to hang something on Trump so they can oust/defeat him.
Viewing "russiagate" as just trying to catch Trump in his lies is completely political and an abuse of power. Unless we want the same standard applied to all politicians who lie (which is all of them, and it's often pretty dang obvious.). You know, equal application of the law.
But even then, that isn't the role of the FBI to "expose [fill in politician name]'s lies."
The FBI kept digging around, trying to save face and do some CYA, long after they knew there was no "there" there. They tried their darndest to fabricate and insinuate the "there", but they knew it wasn't there.
Almost 3 years later, I run unto this post and our comments. Funny now to see how much more we have learned/confirmed. The FBI and other powers-that-be knew pretty much all along that nothing illegal (or unethical or immoral, as a side note), was going on with Trump and Russians. They knew first-hand (from Steele and his "source") that the dossier was a political hack job and complete hogwash. Then weaponized it anyway, falsified dates on emails ("accidentally"), deceived FISA judges, and went on a smear campaign rampage. Nothing they did was appropriate.
In other words, they are shadow government, who acted illegally and unconstitutionally themselves because they believed they were saving us from Orange Man Bad. Ends justify the means. It just so happens the means keeps them in power, violates the constitution, and targets their political and administrative enemies. But, it worked, I guess.
I get it and I agree completely, but that still doesn't answer why it never became a specific focus about his financial involvement through DB and how that played out with Putin. We know the DB was fined $10B for laundering Russian money and Trump had no business getting the credit line he did at the time that he did. I accept everything you say, but of all people, you're the guy I would think would have blown that part sky high.
It is a common device to muddy the waters and win a dumb argument by expanding the topic beyond a specific issue. You know, when you forgot to turn off the oven and the dinner was burned and soon your wife is bringing up every g.d. thing she thinks you did wrong since your wedding night. "That still doesn't answer" is a fancy way of saying, and repeating, "Yah but, yah but yah but. " The questions you ask were not part of the charges. End of story. Now shut up for god's sake. Or, just file for divorce and get it over with.
Let's start with the basics. What do you know about Deutsche Bank's practices going back to the 90's. I appreciate you're a self-proclaimed clever 3-steps ahead kinda-guy because you "get it." What exactly do you get?
If the Panama papers were the tip of the iceberg, going after his financial corruption may reveal the allegers are also corrupt. Could be a back and forth not worth pursuing. Especially when it's easier to pump Russiagate through the msm.
Well of course they are. But so what? Does that cover Trump for his play? Because everyone is corrupt, that gives Trump a pass? I mean c'mon. This isn't some jack-ass blog. This is Taibbi and we've come to expect the goods when something doesn't add up, or it does add up and we just need to kick it in the nuts with a 10 yard run. I buy the larger point Matt makes but I don't pretend that it's a closed case on Trump and Russia or Saudi, or whoever else from a large criminal syndicate "corroborated" with Chump-stain at least on the money part. Did they need to spell out that they expected him to do x if they made purchases for y? Of course not. If Taibbi readers don't get this has always been about pay to play, I'm seriously confounded. And the real irony is, so too are the readers that aren't getting it.
DNC refused to give access to FBI to investigate DNC assertion of Russian hacking. The hacking DNC claimed was on behalf of Trump. This was essentially the charge of treason. FBI mandated by law to investigate. Refusal should have resulted in obstruction of justice charges and seizure of servers. By backing off — our justice system collapsed and became a Middle Eastern system of private justice, subject to negotiations and political wrangling. Russuagate should have ended then and there. But it conveniently meanders finding new herrings aling the way.
DO not get me wrong — Trump like the rest if the elite is immoral chaser of old calfs, his grasp of American ills notwithstanding.
It doesn't cover for anything. It wasn't an answer with regards to morals or honor. Just a shot in the dark regarding strategy. I don't disagree there was financial corruption with Russia, but I think the neoliberals pushed a different strategy. Maybe if they weren't corrupt, they would have taken a more sincere stab at it. Maybe not. I think we agree on the pay to play. The panama paper confirmed that is what it is all about.
This isn't some jack-ass blog but every post isn't always going to be precise, especially after twelve hours of work and getting the kiddos fed and to bed. Just my tired two cents.
Right on and I hear you. Same goes for me. The whole system is corrupt so why doesn't Matt frag that point instead of being in the space that has to justify it all by saying how wrong the Dem's got whatever collusion wasn't proved. Fine, okay. I get it. That doesn't convince me Trump didn't collude even if he was a "useful idiot" in the process. The dems completely fucked up on the impeachment in almost the same way Mueller fucked up the 2-year investigation. None of them followed the money and that's why I subscribe to Matt and have read him for years. The whole thing is a head-scratcher.
Yea. Right. I'm pretty surprised how some who have commented here are literally clueless about who and what Deutsche Bank is. It bolsters my point to begin with. By waving off the Dems (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, MSM/MSNBC) complete wipe-out, somehow that is the end of the story? Not remotely. They just failed to pull the most obvious thread. Usually Matt is way on top of this stuff, but my theory is his change in focus from the financial crises to presidential campaigns had an effect. Matt's definitely back on point so I'm hopeful he takes a swing at what I've been parlaying throughout this thread.
Matt is not “on top of this stuff.” Matt is telling his readers there was an elaborate effort to spread falsehoods about Trump colluding with the Russians even though he knows that’s not true. He refers to people being “spectacularly wrong” but when pressed the best he can come up with is some statement by Schiff about “circumstantial” evidence. Matt’s job now is to restore his reputation by making everyone think we live in a reality where he was right at the outset. But we don’t live in that reality. We live in the one where Trump and his people lied on television and under oath for many months about their contacts with the Russians. To say Matt is “on top of this stuff” is to say we should substitute his bullshit for the truth. But we really should not
Ian is on top of NOTHING. Dude, read the Horowitz report and get ready for the Durham report. Matt comes with facts, publicly available. Ian comes with nitwit disproven talking points from Rachel Maddow - who is a hack that is wrong about everything.
I'm kind of laughing because to a degree I agree but I just think Matt got a little lost in the weeds because his employers didn't want him up the financial worlds ass. I feel like he's back.
Agreed! General Flynn being cleared and exonerated is yet another example of of the mendacity of the Obama administration, the FBI and "intelligence" agencies. It's a strange testament to the derangement of Russiagaters that it caused them and my fellow liberals to embrace the FBI, CIA and a whole host of horrible organizations.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it Is, unfortunately. Trump’s buffoonery has nothing to do with this. Prying people’s’ minds away from the irrelevant is particularly challenging when it comes to the Trump-hatred. Just astonishing.
Matt, when you refer to an “elaborate effort to spread this false tale,” what are you referring to specifically? Are you saying Rachel Maddow or the NYT or the Washington Post deliberately lied about facts? I apologize for accusing you of lying and I will reread your WMD post. I’m not a troll. But can you please just tell me: Is it true that there was an elaborate effort to spread a false tale, or is that just you echoing Trump that the media is the enemy of the people?
and now they want to be able to tell you what you can and can't say. I think something none of us know about the current situation is going to come out later in the year and it will make many people livid
So they found issues and there was obstruction but not the exact problems they were designated to find so the entire thing should be thrown out? Would that be applied evenly to rich and poor? You have to know everything before you have the ability to investigate? Is this a Joseph Heller skit?
No CRIME was found. When there is no crime, there can be no obstruction. Yes, a crime was what they were looking for. That's why the "whole thing" had to be thrown out. It Should apply the same to rich and poor, but the usual tactic with the poor is to threaten and intimidate to get the person to plead guilty -- to something. Special prosecutors are not appointed to get to the ultimate truth of a matter. They are appointed to determine if a crime has been committed, and, if yes, who commited it and/or abetted it. So, no, you don't have to know everything in advance, and in fact, the Mueller investigators did a lot of "fishing" for evidence of a crime. It's not a "Catch-22." The staff were highly motivated, almost all Democrats, and they were plenty intimidating and threatening. The fact that they found nothing adding up to a crime is not a result of them being lazy or sloppy. It was because the rumor machine was dead wrong to begin with. If you will look up who worked on this, there was no hint of a cover-up.
The only Russian collusion was Hillary and the DNC (including their MSM partners) paying money for, and actively promoting as truth, nonsensical Russian propaganda. Time to take the trash out.
Totally agree. They kicked the working man to the side of the road for their precious Foreign Born, when the workers complained, they called them a basket of deplorables. Had to blame their loss on Russia, because they plan to keep giving our jobs away courting their new constituency, thinking we won’t notice.
I got a one week suspension there for posting a chart showing the housing bubble began before Bush took office because of things Clinton did. The trolls do not appreciate us shining light in their lairs....
“Exactly?” Really? What was this “elaborate effort at spreading this false tale”? Do you know anything about it? Who was involved? Taibbi is lying about this “elaborate effort” to deceive the American people. It did not happen
Steele dossier? Robert Mueller knowing there was no case against Trump the second he landed in Washington, but keeping the "investigation" alive for two years? Recent exposure of FBI set up of Gen Flynn?
Matt, is it accurate that the FBI knew there was no case against Trump but kept the investigation alive for two years anyway? Is that factual? Why do so many people who read your articles still have these false ideas about what happened?
Oh for Christ's sake you sniveling twerp....go research National Review for the facts. Or Fox, or Townhall or Breitbart, or Real Clear Politics...My god you brainless twits can't even do your own research. What a joke. The evidence is everywhere if you dare to look for it. Type 'Russiagate hoax' in Google and then dare to read any piece that comes up and refute the story with your facts. You Leftists are idiots.
So you are saying Rachel Maddow was involved in an elaborate effort to spread a false tale? There’s no evidence for that. It’s just a cheap story that Trumpers tell themselves because the reality is too painful. Isn’t it?
He was down on Russiagate because it was obvious that there was no substance there to anyone with a pulse. Look no further than, do you really think DJT could engage in a covert conspiracy? We practically know every thought in the man’s head two seconds after he thought it.
There is no evidence Trump colluded with Russia. More proof emerges every day. I don't support Trump but attempting to frame him for something he did not do only weakens the focus of attacks on the many bad things he is doing. Like destroying the environment and his constant provocation of Iran and Venezuela. Study the veracity of issues and don't get sucked into main stream corporate propaganda that is controlled by the 1%.
(a snippet, but I recommend reading the whole thing.)
"I’m especially interested in sources of expert bias that usually fly under the radar. Friendship and peer pressure, for example, rarely get as much attention as money, or even as ideology. As I’ve already discussed, experts’ opinions are mostly secondhand, just like everybody else’s opinions. And just like everybody else’s opinions, experts’ opinions are greatly influenced by affiliation – that is, by the opinions of their friends and colleagues. (See for example this discussion of conflict-of-interest issues affecting experts who advised the World Health Organization on how to handle the 2009–10 swine flu pandemic.)"
Thanks for the link. Interesting insight into why companies and governments say the things they do when controversy arises. And the discussion about expert disagreement vs expert uncertainty goes to the heart of why our political parties are staking out the extremes instead of looking for common ground.
Matt, I disagree, perhaps, with your reference to Kemp and the other governors who opened their states. Don't you agree that their effort seems to be an attempt to prevent workers from claiming unemployment benefit and that, as such, their efforts should not be seen as motivated by a simple, freely determined skepticism about the merits of the science or even the biased journalism? I do applaud your general thesis, and would add for my part that one of the most interesting phenomena regarding the media response to coronavirus and scientific material in general is a seeming mass desire to settle matters once and for all rather than fostering an attitude that scientific activity is more than anything else a manifestly long-drawn out, labor intensive pursuit, that requires much time, almost always, before actionable insights can be formulated, much less acted upon. It is odd that, as you have noted so many times, a media so addicted to manufacturing themes that must be continually resuscitated, like Russia, do the exact opposite with science: as you note, pundits and reporters, when confronted with science, tend to cram and swot maniacally (under deadline, assuredly) in order to get as close to a definitive statement as possible as fast as possible, when the entire process is designed (though increasingly commercialized and siloed privatized science mitigates against this in important ways, whilst reinforcing it in others) only to provide "answers" of any sort extremely tentatively. This is perhaps one of the most annoying things about many Americans' expectations of scientific activity, which you see in medicine (and weather forecasting!) perhaps most of all: people frustrated with the underlying uncertainty of medical prognoses seem to expect cookie-cutter specific formulations virtually on the spot, and are angered when these are not forthcoming. I even know people who have taught philosophy of science who have never stepped foot in a lab or have the vaguest notion of how "knowledge" is produced there. This sort of thing adds fertile ground for themes development of potential misunderstandings amongst lay-people that raises the deleterious effects to another level. But I am digressing. My main question is about Kemp and the others, but if you could speak a little to flesh out your interesting comments on reporters and scientific subject matter, I would be most grateful. I love your work, Matt, keep up the good job!
I definitely believe that the motives of a lot of the politicians who want to end the lockdowns are less than pure -- there are enormous sums of money at stake and many of these politicians are probably listening to lobbyists who are pushing dubious scientific takes in order to justify whatever policy measures will get the money faucet turned back on. I get that, I absolutely do. I'm not endorsing people like Kemp. I'm just very exhausted by the know-it-all Karenism of press figures who read a quote form a scientist in the Times ten minutes ago and now are on the air dramatically accusing some politician halfway across the country of murder. There are really two issues here. One is that the more we drift into point-and-shriek mode in news coverage, the more bereft of options news consumers become when it comes time to just look for the raw answers to questions we all have: how safe is it to go outside? How close is too close? How much will a mask protect me? What kinds of activities are dangerous and which ones aren't? What are the pros and cons of various responses? The heavier the editorial judgment in reporting these things, the harder it becomes for readers to trust the answers to those simple questions.
I guess the other thing that bothers me is that in the current setup, the cries of "murderer" always involve a Democrat calling out a Republican or vice versa. So yes, the Kemps of the world have impure motives, but I don't love the media motives either. Yes, you can get on Kemp if you like, but the easiest way to do it is to talk about who's advising him, who his donors are, who stands to benefit most from the reopening, etc. But I personally would be scared of sounding so certain on the science, for the exact reasons you point out -- it's a process, often a moving target, and designed to be discussed in exactly the opposite way that reporters understand things, i.e. questions shouldn't be reduced to a single inflexible hot take.
The media is by and large very bad at covering scientific issues (not that this is solely a scientific issue but still) largely for the reason you say in your piece - media figures have to pretend like they know what they're talking about when they don't and they REALLY don't know anything about most things science-related. Any acknowledgement of nuance/uncertainty is lost
I would amend that comment to say the media is by and large very bad at covering issues. One of Mr. Taibbi's points was that under the pressure of deadlines and the need to be first on the story, they don't go in for deep background or information. For a more in-depth tratment of this idea, read "Airframe" by Michael Crichton, he nailed it.
"Airframe" is a great recommendation! Happens that I transcribed a couple of key passages a long time ago. Here they are ...
1. from p. 107; "She" is Casey, a high exec at at airliner manufacturer:
Walking away from [reporter Jack Rogers], she realized she was exhausted by the effort of the interview. Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess match; you had to think several steps ahead; you had to imagine all the possible ways a reporter might distort your statement. The atmosphere was relentlessly adversarial.
It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time when reporters wanted information, their questions directed to an underlying event. They wanted an accurate picture of a situation, and to do that they had to make the effort to see things your way, to understand how you were thinking about it. They might not agree with you in the end, but it was a matter of pride that they could accurately state your view, before rejecting it. The interviewing process was not very personal, because the focus was on the event they were trying to understand.
But now reporters came to the story with the [lede] fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn’t want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted [[? mutual? – PN]] hostility and suspicion. This new mode was intensely personal: they wanted to trip you up, to catch you in a small error, or in a foolish statement—or just a phrase that could be taken out of context and made to look silly or insensitive.
Because the focus was so personal, the reporters asked continuously for personal speculations. Do you think an event will be damaging? Do you think the company will suffer? Such speculation had been irrelevant to the earlier generation of reporters, who focused on the underlying events. Modern journalism was intensely subjective—“interpretive”—and speculation was its lifeblood. But she found it exhausting.
And Jack Rogers, she thought, was one of the better ones. The print reporters were all better. It was the television reporters you really had to watch out for. They were the really dangerous ones.
2. from p. 146; Richman is a lawyer.
“One crash finished the [DC-10].”
“What crash?”
“It was an American Airlines flight from Chicago to LA,” Casey said. “May, 1979. Nice day. Good weather. Right after takeoff the left engine fell off the wing. The plane stalled and crashed next to the sirport, killing everybody on board. Very dramatic, it was all over in thirty seconds. A couple of people taped the flight, so the networks had film at eleven. The media went crazy, calling the plane a winged coffin. Travel agents were flooded with calls canceling DC-10 bookings. Douglas never sold another one of them.”
“Why did the engine fall off?
“Bad maintenance,” Casey said. “American hadn’t followed Douglas’s instructions on how to remove the engines from the plane. Douglas told them to first remove the engine, and then the pylon that holds the engine to the wing. But to save time, American took the whole engine-pylon assembly off at once. That’s seven tons of metal on a forklift. One forklift ran out of gas during the removal, and cracked the pylon. But the crack wasn’t noticed, and eventually the engine fell off the wing. So it was all because of maintenance.”
“Maybe so,” Richman said, “but isn’t an airplane still supposed to fly even missing an engine.”
“Yes, it is,” Casey said. “The DC-10 was built to survive that kind of failure. The plane was perfectly airworthy. If the pilot had maintained airspeed, he’d have been fine. He could have landed the plane.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Because, as usual, there was an event cascade leading to the final accident,” Casey said. “In this case, electrical power to the captain’s cockpit controls came from the left engine. When the left engine fell off, the captain’s instruments were shut off, including the cockpit stall warning and the backup warning, called a stick shaker. That’s a device that shakes the stick to tell the pilot the plane is about to stall. The first officer still had power and instruments, so [[? but? -- PN]] the first officer’s chair didn’t have a stick shaker. It’s a customer option for the first officer, and American hadn’t ordered it. And Douglas hadn’t built any redundancy into their cockpit-stall warning system. So when the DC-10 began to stall, the first officer didn’t realize he had to increase throttle.
“Okay,” Richman said, “but the captain shouldn’t have lost power in the first place.”
“No, that was a designed-in safety feature,” Casey said. “Douglas had designed and built the aircraft to survive those failures. When the left engine tore off, the aircraft deliberately shut down the captain’s power line, to prevent further shorts in the system. Remember, all aircraft systems are redundant. If one fails, the backup kicks in. And it was easy to get the captain’s instrumentation back again; all the flight engineer had to do was trip a relay, or turn on emergency power. But he didn’t do either one.”
“Why not?”
“No one knows,” Casey said. “And the first officer, lacking the necessary information on his display, intentionally reduced his airspeed, which caused the plane to stall and crash.
They were silent for a moment, walking.
“Consider all the ways this might have been avoided,” Casey said. The maintenance crews could have checked the pylons for structural damage after servicing them improperly. But they didn’t. Continental had already cracked two pylons using forklifts, and they could have told American the procedure was dangerous. But they didn’t. Douglas had told American about Continental’s problems, but American didn’t pay any attention.”
Richman was shaking his head.
“And after the accident, Douglas couldn’t say it was a maintenance problem, because American was a valued customer. So Douglas wasn’t going to put the story out. In all these incidents, it’s always the same story—the story never gets out unless the media digs it out. But the story’s complicated, and that’s difficult for television … so they just run the tape. The tape of the accident which shows the left engine falling off, the plane veering left, and crashing. The visual implies the aircraft was poorly designed, that Douglas hadn’t anticipated a pylon failure and hadn’t built the plane to survive it. Which was completely inaccurate. But Douglas never sold another DC-10.”
“Well, Richman said, “I don’t think you can blame the media for that. They don’t make the news. They just report it.”
“That’s my point,” Casey said. “They didn’t report it, they just ran the film. The Chicago crash was kind of a turning point in our industry. The first time a good aircraft was destroyed by bad press. The coup de grace was the NTSB report. It came out on December 21. Nobody paid any attention.”
For what it’s worth, Matt, Chris Hayes is the MSNBC host who did a segment on the physics of wearing a mask and how it would help, but not prevent virus spread. So I think he’s at least trying to do some responsible work, within the confines of a cable news prime time opinion model.
My only point about Chris was that he didn’t address the reason those doctors were on the news in the first place - they’d been censored. That’s a lot more dangerous than anything the doctors said.
Murder? Death is a valid side effect of lockdowns. There is no death-free answer to whether COVID-19 will be responsible for more deaths than, say, starvation, unavailability of non-COVID medical care, un-monitored drug ingestion, broken homes and broken families, absence of necessary resources such as heating fuel or apartment heat, injuries from accidents that could have been attended to in time but weren't. If it's a war, people will die no matte what policy choices are made.
It is hard to admit that we all as individuals struggle from a universe's load of ignorance. The sheer amount of inaccurate things we each believe or trust in each day is far more comfortable too ignore. It is hard to understand, but if you dont fight for your fellow persons rights. You are kissing your own away,those of your children, neighbors, friends,people you will never even meet.
To not be wary of handing extreme powers over speech and our daily lives to the government? Whats next? Truth is meaningless next to extreme concentrations of power in unaccountable , distant authorities who control the levers to your very existence. And journalism has become a very big lever. One that convinces masses of people, that their interests are best served by celebrity personalities. Rather than real social bonds beyond the daily fiction's of the consumer product we enjoy as news. No need to consider similarities between us human beings if we are too busy running from the ever constant threats...of the other. People are suddenly simple, and we can "know" millions who we will never meet, with the certainty provided by our betters. I'm guessing when journalism was used to destroy labor movements, no many stooped to consider how much power words hold over our imaginary. No one realized, with words and pictures, we can turn masses of people against themselves. Certainly video wiould never be Great for choosing the preferences of your self hating society. In commerical media we trust. To advertisement institutions we pray. At least we are not as stupid as that OTHER guy over there. Judging by his teeth and appearance.....and clothing. He might not even be a person. I do pretend to know that, "psycho paths with guns protesting." is no excuse to give up my own rights to protest. And I deeply question finalizing the end of public assembly....what kind of moron thinks those sorts of powers aren't now a permanent fixture world wide? I bet he or she has wonderful taste in suits. Eh If everyone is against the only mechanisms of control we have to affect change in our federal and state system why not skip ahead to the pretending like politics doesn't exist. Everyone's supposedly a conservative in this country. Maybe they can explain Milton Friedman to me . Not sure what kind of conservative it is that believes both in fascism and getting happily screwed by it. The whole country seems skewed towards authoritarianism. Maybe that's the next big system change? Nice how many more prisons that have been built for "immigrants". 1.9 million in jail? With 4.9 million in the system??? think of all the money we can make by imprisoning the rest, and charging the tax payer for the service! If anyone doubts the validity of our actions, lets just say they hate america and want everyone else to die to criminal masterminds.
Authoritarianism is instituted in many ways. Some are out in the open and others done surreptitiously like
1. Replacing 70% of U.S workers with foreign born
2. Ignoring the law which requires immigrants to have a Sponsor if they can not support themselves. LAW: Under ;212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), an individual seeking admission to the United States or seeking to adjust status to that of an individual lawfully admitted for permanent residence (green card) is INADMISSIBLE if the individual, "at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge.”
Marginalization:
In all of 2012 there was just one investigation of an immigrant under this provision, and it was dropped. In figuring who is a “public charge,” only cash benefits are counted; so that an immigrant family living in public housing, receiving food stamps, free school lunch, and Medicaid is considered self-sufficient!
3. DACA was against the law. They have spawned 200,000 babies. SEE what happens when you don’t follow the law? This is what the law protects the taxpayers from.
4. Pumping the schools with millions of children who can’t speak English and have no scholastic skill sets has dropped the system down to # 30 something in the world.
5. Some "immigrants" take their culture with the when they sneak in.
Hispanics are, in fact, substantially more likely than whites to commit serious crimes, and U.S.-born Hispanics in particular are about two and a half times more likely.”
That's a lot more than one mouthful. Please reorganize your thoughts and try again, or find a translator. There appear to be some good ideas -- some insights -- sort of half-buried in here.
Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank. Here’s why (2017)
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant.
The unions in LA were in bed with politicians to pass laws that made dysfunctional union labor mandatory along with other sweetheart deals which led to 40% of home building costs being due to a union premium. Had the unions been focused on giving their customers a fair price instead of fleecing them, people would not seek non-union labor. People don’t like being cheated. If unions make it legal to cheat their customers, it is inevitable that a black market in labor will arise. The unions deserve to be busted.
We've been warned about this before. How quickly we forget that the thousand page Patriot Act appeared almost out of no where during the 9/11 hysteria and was passed almost unanimously. At this stroke of a pen our representatives launched the national security state on steroids and drastically undermined our Fourth Amendment rights. Even worse, when it came up for renewal under the "liberal" leadership of Barak Obama, Congress passed it again even though the original bill being based on lies. Someone once said that American fascism will not come by military coup. It won't have to. We willingly sign away our rights one by one. And those that don't disappear with our acquiescence are secretly undermined by the NSA. Taibbi's article is notable because members of our legal community, who swear to uphold the constitution are suggesting that we carve out a slice or two from the First Amendment. They can't have the rabble making a mess of "their" democracy. But democracy is supposed to be messy. Our history is replete with examples of elites trying to direct and control and peoples movements saying 'not so fast.' Hopefully we still have enough peoples movements to appose these recommendations. When honest journalism fails, so does our democracy.
1. People under 35 make up <1% of COVID-19 deaths (but 45% of the total population).
2. People under 25 make up 0.13% of COVID-19 deaths (but 32% of the total population).
3. People over 65 make up 79.4% of COVID-19 deaths (but only 16% of the population).
4. The average age of someone who dies from the COVID-19 in the US is almost 75. Average age of the total population is around 38.
We hammered an amazing economy needlessly. This will cost lives. We were afraid, so we let experts make best-guess (and that's being generous) decisions based on extremely limited data and information, and completely inaccurate assumptions.
Kids should be in school. Businesses should be open. Workers should be working. Life should, for the most part, move on to normal activity. It should have always been this way, with PERHAPS the allowance of a two-week shut in. There are of course some exceptions. The elderly and high-risk groups should be isolated. Personal safety measures should be taken (wash hands, stay home if sick, cough into elbow, etc.). People and businesses should be free to take extra measures if they wish (limited business hours, wear masks, limit store traffic, etc). But only if they want.
Let's assume life expectancy is 79. The average person who dies prematurely from COVID-19 loses 4 years of life. The average person who dies prematurely from other causes loses 41 years of life.
When comparing lives lost due to the COVID-19 versus lives lost due to shutting down the economy in order to minimize the COVID-19, the COVID-19 would have to be 10 times as deadly to be "worth it" from a years-of-life-lost perspective. And this doesn't even account for a quality-of-years-of-life-lost perspective (example: the last 5 years of one's life are likely to be a lower quality than the 5 years from 30-35). It also doesn't account for the fact that smarter, focused approaches could have kept the economy strong -- nearly eliminating the shutdown-caused deaths (starvation, worse health care, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol deaths, suicide, etc.) while keeping the COVID-19 deaths at nearly the same levels (maybe an increase in the near-term, but a decrease in the long-term as herd immunity is reached).
We will never truly know the complete picture or a perfect quantitative analysis, one way or the other, as to whether the disease or the cure was more deadly here. Which is why, unless there was some empirical evidence, or even truly convincing data, or some very convincing high probability (and no: "fear" does not count as convincing) that the COVID-19 would be SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 10 times as deadly as the cure, the cure should have been out of consideration. There were other, more reasonable, less-harmful, cures.
99% had other ailments and more than 10,000 residents and staff in long-term care facilities across the U.S. have died from COVID-19 infections, according to a KFF analysis of state data.
Food for thought:
What if everyone in history who died from a communicable disease lived instead and went on to propagate? How many people would be alive today? We would need another planet.
When so much is unknown, the experts can't do much more than theorize.
That's why in mid-April, experts (astronomers) announced an exoplanet they "found" -- one of the only exoplanets to be directly imaged, and among the first to be given its own name -- wasn't even a planet after all. It was just a dust cloud formed by two icy bodies colliding or something.
That's why for about 20 years experts (medical doctors) told parents to lay their kids on their stomachs to help prevent SIDS -- advice that led to an estimated 60,000 extra SIDS deaths, as experts changed their minds and told parents to lay them on their backs instead because it is actually dangerous to lay them on their stomachs.
These guys are experts, geniousess, cream of the crop, doing the best they can. But with very limited knowledge. Once enough information is gathered, experts can give useful and workable and helpful advice. Until then, all they can do is theorize in ways that aren't very practical, and sometimes dangerous (increasing the number of infant deaths, for example). That's what has happened here with the COVID-19.
You've really hit the nail on the head. But it turns out that your reference to "the Idiocracy set injecting fish cleaner" perfectly exemplifies your statement, "We actually know jack". First of all, the mainstream media's version of the story was that some guy had decided that he and his wife should drink fish tank cleaner because the label said it contained hydroxychloroquine, not that anyone had injected it.
But more importantly, this was totally out of character for the man who died. All it took to discover that was a few calls to some of his friends. The deceased was an engineer with an extensive science background. According to his friends, this was wildly out of character for him, but they also reported that he'd long been victimized by his abusive wife. It was his wife who mixed the fish tank cleaner that they both drank. Interestingly, the dose she fed him killed him, while the dose she took sickened her but left her alive.
So, at best this is a case of sloppy reporting that produced a false story that fit perfectly with the media's disdainful attitude toward anyone who's not part of the coastal elite. At worst it's a case of intentionally fraudulent reporting.
It'll be on Forensics Files one day... The story of how a wife killed her husband off during a global pandemic and tried to make it look like it was HIS idea.
The breakdown is occurring solely because those in power are corrupt. That causes all kinds of rebellious chaos. People don't trust their leaders. They don't trust the longtime establishment media. And since any intelligent organized opposition is quickly thwarted, we are left with people scattered to find answers.
The Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi video had over 5,000,000 views in 3 days when it was taken down by the owners of YouTube-- (not "Despacito" territory, but impressive). The comments section was filled with interesting discussion (I'd say as many against as for, but I didn't count). It gave people a public sphere. The point by point dissection of the doctors' presentation by many commenters expanded understanding. Many of the commenters provided refutation and data analysis. Taking the presentation down ended the discussion.
The rush to censor is fearful. At least the Erickson and Massahi video provided (for a brief few days) a forum where people of different viewpoints engaged each other.
Which is exactly what free speech is supposed to do. If an idea has merit, it can withstand scrutiny; if it doesn't, it won't.
People whose Ideas cannot withstand scrutiny? They try to "shut up" the people who will call them on it.
If the Bakerfield's Dr are so convinced they are correct, just setup a website and post their video there? Why complain (either for or against) on why YouTube took it down? Seems they just want the attention they are getting.
And that's precisely the point. Instead of allowing people to critically think, debate the issue like adults, and allow bad methodology to be exposed for what it was (and allow everyone learn a lot on the process,) YouTube just elected to believe one expert over another expert. Typically, the experts that Facebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives.
That sort of censorship turns both platforms into partisan propaganda machines, not public forums, over time. More concerning, by the by, is Facebook's decision to block communication between people daring to protest the government's response to Covid-19. Whatever their justification, when you are a giant platform that starts aligning yourself politically and then censoring things, you are by definition a massive platform that censors based on political leanings. That's no longer a public square. That's propaganda.
"experts that FAcebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives." That's not my experience. Typically what happens is that the inspection of bias, under threat of low funding, is implemented with really crappy AI and everything gets censored.
"Typically, the experts that Facebook and YouTube choose to believe align with left-leaning narratives."
They actually tend to just go with whoever's most powerful. They listen to entities like the Atlantic Council. It's not "left". The ruling oligarchy is neither left nor right. They're not centrist or moderate, either.
They're their own peculiar brand of modern western elitist quasi-fascism.
It was an ABC news station that put up the presentation, not the Bakerfield, Drs. Think it is part of MT's point that YouTube censors the public sphere.
This is excellent.
OK, Matt, loved you for years, but this one got me to cough up the $40 subscription...your ability to see clearly amidst this insanity we are in is both rare and invaluable. Thank you thank you thank you.
Tremendous article. Well done mate. Several ringers in here. All aces.
I am shocked at how badly the pandemic has been covered in terms of a 360 view. "If it bleeds it leads", so there's lots of gory stories of packed hospitals people drowning in their own lung fluid, etc. Second is the financial impact, either on the billionaires, or on the working poor, lots of outrage on both sides.
But those aren't the only stories. Somehow we've lost the narrative that 95% of people affected by the pandemic are elderly and have at least one major illness. A child is many more time likely to be killed by the regular flu - or a car accident - than CV-19, but everyone is shrilling talking about home-schooling six months from now.
I haven't added up the numbers, but abuse, addiction, depression and suicide are all way up - for all ages and all conditions of health. We also have millions of people waiting on cancer treatments and angiograms and other life-saving treatments because they are all closed. Do we count a death due to cancer in six months as Covid because they missed the window for effective treatment? Are we so myopically focused on the primary effect of the pandemic, and yet blind to the all the secondary effects that DO add up?
And then of course there's the financial effects. We could have millions and millions on the street in a few months - singles, families, elderly, all because they lost their income and had no way to keep the bills paid up. Because of the multi-billion dollar bailout, many large companies are sitting on stacks of cash that they don't have to spend on employees. The longer those employees are gone, the longer those companies have to automate, or just not replace those jobs, the worse the unemployment and poverty situation will go on.
I don't agree on forcing people to go to work in dangerous conditions, but for most people they aren't that dangerous. Yes, there are those random stories of people that you wouldn't expect dying from the pandemic that do - but the risks of Covid-19 for the healthy and the non-ill are reasonable given all the other risks of everyday living that exist no matter what.
We should be concetrating our efforts on how to protect the vulnerable - because they are by far the most likely to suffer ill, and figure out rational, reasonable ways to protect them from the general population, while allowing the general population more freedoms.
In my opinion, the US is so mired in self-pity, victimhood and drama - that we are unable to function in a rational way. I think we have less than ten years, tops, before it's pure authoritarianism.
plus imagine a hospital ...they fill every ICU with a treating a million causes of death or injury. Then SARS2 hits, causing COVID-19 in the lungs which we have no treatments for, ventilators do nothing for dying patients with covid 19, just certain types of pneumonia. numbers go up a third every three days or more, and fills every bed in the hospital with sick people. Just from one thing. Then comes the mass burials which are happening all over the place, where entire new plots are being laid down in the street. Or maxium occupancy incinerators. Vaccines generally take 10-15 years to develope, viruses don't respond to medication much. So we are left now, to wonder and hope that our antibodies from survival recognize SARS2 early after initial infections. Or run the risk of fighting off yearly SARS2 which kills most people when it gets into their lungs, or permanently damages their lungs/immune system. Weakening healthy adults , enough to lose a battle with anything else thats around. Like say the flu....which attacks RS CNS .
actually its about 70 times more deadly than the flew according to the current numbers. Or 7%...which the flu is about .01% deadly. And in two months we have 1,000,000 cases wwhile doing a variety of measures. 1/3 of the worlds sick people are in the US. 3-9% of the US populations currently has it. Spread rate of 1.3 when unchecked.... I mean the numbers make the flu numbers look lreally good. The flu gets to 54 million sick a year, 30k deaths a year. Which we passed in two months...just in deaths... Unchecked spread looks like millions dead for this type of corona virus which we have.. It still is very likely to mutate now that so many people have it. Young people of all ages are dying in NY , spanish, and italian hospitals. No idea why people think 7% death rate is good odds. Only 16% for elderly people. .01% is 10 times less than 1%...which is like yellow fever or dengue death rates.... New viruses which we have no immunities for, can decimate all ages by a large enough number that corona virus is the number one cause of death across the board. And just so you thirty year olds in america get your shit straight, influenze is the fifth killer in normal times due to pulmonary illness. No idea why you would consider infectious diseases that mutate every year and we only build immunity too via frequent contraction as safe. IE yearly vaccines targgetted to one of the many flu strains. Add a virus that attacks the heart, lungs and immune system to the point that it leaves scarring in survivors lungs like tuberclulosis. And suddenly you might start truly regarding the fact that it is now a pandemic in the system of pandemics. Forever. And possibvly with a higher rate of reinfection. .that wasnt elminated like SARS or contained to the middle east like MERS-COV. The idea that this is something the young can avoid....is hilarious, You might want to look at the staggering death toll of young people. occuring right now in new york.
It's OK... it's time it all burned down anyway.
While I probably disagree with Taibbi on a fair number of policy issues, he is one of the few left of center journalists who possesses intellectual honesty. I agree with him that we need to stop looking at every fact from the standpoint of how it might play for my side politically. As I say often, if it rains today, nothing that Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, or Ocasia-Cortez says about the rain will change the fact that it rained. I will not say that it did not rain because I prefer the source, or that it did not rain because I do not prefer the source. As to the advocacy of prior restraint on the press, this Atlantic article argues a position at odds with the intent of our Founding Fathers, and at odds with our jurisprudence. What makes it so disturbing is that it is the position of two law professors. I am an attorney, and I have believed that if we put 100 attorneys in a room, they might not agree on much. But they would oppose restrictions on free speech, and prior restraints on the press, with a few exceptions such as troop movement. This Atlantic article was not published in the Daily Stormtrooper, or The Spartacus League. It was in a mainstream publication, and it was written by experts in the law. Regardless of whether you are right, left, or center, if you want to live in a democratic republic, you must oppose prior restraints on the media.
So here is the argument about the rain. It didn't rain yesterday. See I have this picture of yesterday. It is sunny outside. No rain. These people, the ones who say it rained. Fake news. They hate you, and they all work for the deep state to make you think it's raining when its not. If you dont fight back and go outside since it's sunny out those other people will go outside and steal your jobs. We have to do something about those people who say it rains.
...and thus has been the last 3 1/2 years that we have lived through. It seems silly, but on some level it has worked with 30% of the American public
It certainly worked on liberals who believed the liberal media who claimed there were not WMD in Iraq, despite all the proof to the contrary.
My point is that propaganda when deployed by someone in power is always going to sway some people who want to believe it...it goes both ways. Trump just uses it because he cannot accept blame for anything...and uses it to a degree most people thought wouldn't be possible. The way I said it...it is exactly the way he does it
Glad to be told that the heads of CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC,NPR, NYTimes, WaPo, LA Times, ASAToday, Gannett, (running out of pixels go we'll go with 95%+ of the local press) the entire Democrat Party are powerless.
At some point reality intrudes and people will talk among themselves and realize that what they get in the press has morphed into gas-lighting. That's when a corrupt and biased media loses the battle. Like a druggie groggily looking at an overdoes they still don't realize they are committing suicide.
Taibbi is not being “intellectually honest” when he says Russiagate was an instance of government and the msm being “spectacularly wrong.” That’s just not an honest assessment of what happened, it’s Trumper spin. Below Taibbi refers to an elaborate effort to spread a false tale about Trump colluding with the Russians. There was no such effort. Meanwhile, if Taibbi is so honest then why do so many of his readers believe so many falsehoods about Russiagate, as demonstrated by this comment thread?
We should put our integrity before our politics. Regardless of how we think or feel, Russiagate turned out to be an absurd fraud. While I did not vote for Obama, I never believed that he was born in Kenya. We should not allow our feelings to get in the way of seeing the facts.
We should also be careful about what words we chose... was it overblown BS? I think we can mostly agree about that. Was it an intentional fleecing to the extent that you could call it fraud? I doubt that.
But as others pointed out re: WMDs, etc. our news organizations have let themselves be manipulated by the state into providing cover and/or rationale for their actions. *This* should be a lesson to the press, and it clearly hasn't been learned.
Well that might be an issue for Matt to investigate. Although if he investigates and finds no fraud he’ll be out of a job.
But why do people believe Russiagate “turned out to be an absurd fraud”? A fraud is when someone lies to get another person to do something that benefits the liar at the other’s expense. The allegation is that the media and the govt were lying to the American people about Trump’s wrongdoing. Is this a factual argument, or just political bullshit? What are the facts that I need to see that would convince me there was “fraud”?
See my comment below about the fraudulent actions by the FBI in securing the FISA warrant. I do not want any American defamed by this type of partisanship abuse of the law. If this had happened to Obama, Democrats would be right to be angry about it.
You said Russiagate turned out to be an absurd fraud. When I asked why, you said because the FBI acted fraudulently in seeking the FISA warrant. You are referring to the footnote in the FISA warrant application that references the Steele dossier. So I have two questions: first, why do you think that footnote made the entire investigation an “absurd fraud”? Second, is that single footnote the totality of what you are complaining about?
My GOD....there wasn't any evidence of a crime. In Fact the entire "investigation" wasn't even criminal it was an intelligence investigation" which meant it was authorized by Obama, and he is guilty of worse than Nixon for doing so. Have you no ability to think for yourself? Weird how Comey "exonerated" Hillary on his own accord, as teh Obama head of FBI, without any legal authority to do so and Lynch just accepted a completely unprecedented act of illegality? Yet its ok He lied to Trump about the Steele Dossier and submitted falsified documents to the court that withheld exculpatory information on Papodapolous and Page? Can you even comprehend how daft you are?
The Mueller report, perhaps?
That’s not what the Mueller Report said, so no
Weird how all of the Mueller report was missing in the impeachment hoax, why? If all that investigation had found crimes so compelling, why not use that for the impeachment charges? Please, deflect and change the subject.
So you still believe that it's real?
It's been demonstrably proven that it WAS a false tale about Trump colluding with Russia. This is pretty well established by now. The sky was, in fact, NOT falling... Chicken Little has gone on to bigger and better lies to help his coop managers, but here you are -defending them all.
Enjoy waiting in line for toilet paper, comrade.
I don’t understand the question but it is a fact that Trump’s people met with Russians and discussed the campaign, and Cohen was also communicating with the Russians about a Trump tower deal, and for months and months Trump lied about it and demonized anyone who kept speaking truth about it. That was real. It would have been extreme negligence under the circumstances if there had not been an investigation, and if there had not been an investigation then we would not know about this. Meanwhile Trump stood on stage next to Putin and said he didn’t know why anyone would believe US intelligence over Putin. Reasonable people can disagree about whether he committed a crime or whether he should be impeached, but the idea that Trump’s wrongdoing wasn’t “real” is Orwellian nonsense, right? Of course it was real. There are many books about it
The reason Hillary Clinton lost was not because there was a grand conspiracy between Russia and Trump. That was a false narrative.
But they spent most of their time since his election telling us it was true. It was not. The end.
Matt, is it correct that since the election the msm has been telling people that Trump won because of a conspiracy between Russia and Trump? Is that accurate? It seems like a lot of your readers are very confused
Funny how its everybody but you that is confused,....LOL
Why don't you pass the time by playing a game of Solitaire?
Holy mother of God. Please seek a therapist. Through telemedicine at least.
Why should I seek a therapist? I appreciate snark but do you have a response that’s about what I said and not about your opinion of me personally?
Full disclosure: I'm a libertarian. I do not agree with much of what Matt Taibbi says. That out of the way, over the past year, Matt has been doing yeoman's work in taking on the terrifying anti-intellectualism sweeping the left in their effort to attack Trump. As Taibbi says in this article: the cure is worse than the disease.
We cannot allow the central tenets of public discourse and critical examination of facts to be a casualty in the left-right total war we've experienced since Reagan.
What Matt has been doing since Russiagate is try to persuade people that his view of it wasn’t just wrong. This is a massive project that will probably take up the rest of Taibbi’s life
And all you've done is post all over this comments threads that you disagree with Taibbi where the Russian collusion hoax was concerned. We get it. You disagree.
It’s not a matter of disagreement. In my view, people who refer to Russiagate or the Mueller investigation as the “Russian collusion hoax” are just lying. There was no hoax.
Actually, it's a matter of you acting like a partisan unwilling to actually accept any factual information that shatters your worldview.
There is no factual information that Russiagate was a hoax! And every time I point that out I get insulted. Instead of insulting me why don’t you educate me?
John Brennan, is that you?
Like the other you have failed to produce any facts that Trump “colluded” with Russia to win the election.
What did Mueller conclude re: Russian collusion and Trump?
Facts say otherwise. But like all morons you clearly are not smart enough to let go of your indoctrination and wise up.
Jesus how many posts are you gonna make on this.
Why don't you pass the time by playing a little Solitaire?
Kinda like how you will spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself that being a diseased f@ggot retard is ok?
You're a fucking retard weasel puke fuck.
Thank God for Matt Taibbi having a platform.
Why? So he can tell everyone that Russiagate was an instance of govt and msm getting it “spectacularly wrong”? That’s not true and I think he knows it’s not. I respect Taibbi’s right to free speech but it’s not good to say these things because it just feeds Trumper conspiracy theories
Doesn't removing all the conspiracy theories also feed them? Like the removal of the 2 doctors video, or general ban from Google of things they consider to be "wrong." The issue here is about a dangerous precedent - letting a single body or bodies decide what is correct and what is not.
I’m angry. Not as angry as you are apparently but I’m angry enough to keep expressing myself in this forum. You are calling me an asshole because you want me to stop talking, which is ironic given that Taibbi’s piece is about censorship. Meanwhile, my view of Russiagate has not been debunked. The Mueller Report did not debunk my view, it reinforced it. I understand why you are calling me a pest but isn’t it possible that I am sincerely outraged that even now, months after the Mueller Report, Taibbi is still telling this story about how the msm and the govt got it “spectacularly wrong”?
Well I am glad we agree, the mueller report found no criminal wrong doings regarding "treason", or trump colluding with the Russians to beat HRC. He certainly broke laws, just not the pee tape kind Rachel Maddow was suggesting. What exactly do you see as russiagate? 1,000,000 views on twitter, by Russian bot farms?? Honeypot spy games where the president, who was influence peddaling in every neighboring state while being funded by multiple foreign state lobbies was selling us out to the russians??? Outside of the normal efforts of say Bill Clinton to keep yeltzin in the white house sog kennel till he sobered up? Russian collusion like US companies building pipelines with russian oil companies? US private market building pipelines with russia thru syria? I wonder who had more influence on getting trump elected , the 2 billion dollars from donors, or russia, the nearly failed state... Which struggles harshly for economic dependence and has an Iron Ring/"anti" ballistic weapons aimed at it from every one of the 200 military bases with american flags near by. You know that stuff run by the pentagon and the National Security Council? Republicans haven't ever let NATO interests and decades of war interfere with their close friendship with russians.... thats a real position in other countries. Seeing america as this democracy where elections matter. :) That's def what the FSB sees in US eleections w/ foreign and public policy. Putin, the guy we picked for the job in the first place to be our new Yeltsin. Hes the puppetmaster of a TV celebrity in a country that is so complex and full of unelected officials running policy....that trump was good for putin?? None of trumps campaign looks like every other campaign, and heads of agency's have always been "against" the private sector rather than coming from it. The dept of enerrgy head on the national security council wants to sell us out to russia. Thats why trump has been squeezing russias allies since day one. I mean HASNT BEEN. hes a putin puppet, a trained monkey whos job it was to end the nuclear treaty with iran. Then every nuclear treaty reagan signed with the soviet union. To invade and sanction 4 close russian allies, including russia nonstop! That was putins mastermind blackmail working there. The prez who asks you to inject bleach, fearlessly committed treason by forcing russia to deploy military jets in multiple countries they are allied with to prevent US regeime change. Glad mueller proved all that.
Oh it was debunked before the impeachment hoax...you not willing to accept it is why you are a loser. And why your anger is growing....LOL moron.
How many Trumper comments end with an insult like “moron” or “idiot”. Nearly all of them. It’s not a coincidence
Like always, I agree and am moved deeply by most of your positions. I do however find the argument not entirely convincing. I've seen you down on Russiagate from the beginning and I've never felt like I understood why. I get the barrage without the evidence and what that means for the broader context but seriously, Washington's entire currency is lying. So too is Wall Street. But Putin's isn't? Trump's? Is it really that complicated? Trump was laundering real estate for bad guys for decades. It's his business model. Deutsche Bank was involved with fraud in every dimension and direction and Trump was a relatively small play all things considered, but the SOB knew what he was involved with and doing. He went so far as to claim the "Act of God" defense based on deuschbag Greenspan's insane lie that no one saw 2008 coming. Trump went so far as to sue DM for being a victim of predatory lending. Trump? Victim of Predatory Lending??!?!?! WTF?!?!? Given all of that and then some (Mercers, Bannon, etc.) are we to pretend it wasn't exactly what it looks like? Why wouldn't we? Because Clinton was on the other side? I really don't get that part at all.
I'm sorry, but Russiagate wasn't about whether or not Trump or Putin were liars or bad people. It was a very specific set of allegations that have been proven now to be false: that Trump was being blackmailed by the Russian state, that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign in an election interference plot, that the Trump campaign traded sanctions for election aid, that Trump himself committed treason and was a compromised foreign agent, etc. This has all been investigated and discounted. In fact it appears now, from the investigation of IG Michael Horowitz, that the FBI knew relatively early on -- by late 2016 -- that there was no coordination or collusion going on between Russia and the Trump campaign. Yet smears and innuendo flowed for years from intelligence sources anyway. You don't have to be a Trump fan to be pissed that there was such an elaborate effort at spreading this false tale.
Wow, not sure if I'm impressed (okay, I am) or baffled (a little bit) by your willingness to engage those leaving comments. I'm a pretty staunch Conservative and I agree with most of what you write. It always amazes me how fast comments fall into name calling, and in this case, an absolute unwillingness to look at what actually happened in the Russia investigation. Keep up the good work.
To add insult to injury the “Russians” they did indict got the charges dropped, so we had a three year a Russia probe that caught no Russians, go figure!
Matt, what do you say to people who experienced “Russiagate” as exposing the lies of Trump and his people? Lies about campaign meetings and contacts with Russians, for example? For us there was no spectacular wrongness by anyone, right? Can you identify the specific intelligence sources or officials who were “spectacularly wrong,” and identify the statements they made that turned out to be wrong? It feels Orwellian to me to characterize Russiagate as an example of Trump’s critics getting it wrong. Trump really was lying when he said his campaign had nothing to do with the Russians.
He wrote whole articles on this subject. Trying to make him waste his energies because you can't do a research is what's Orwellian here.
Fact check: you're an idiot
In other words, no, he can’t identify the statements that were spectacularly wrong or who made those statements. It’s not factual reporting.
Here's a brief 6,000-word summary of just the early media errors on Russiagate: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million
Here's a summary of the errors and deceptions involving the FISA warrants, which resulted in public reporting that Carter Page was an "agent" of a foreign power (he was not) https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944/
That case also resulted in nearly a year of stories claiming Devin Nunes had lied in his memo on FISA abuse -- he did not
Intelligence sources who said Trump was guilty of "treason," or had been in "constant contact" with Russian intelligence, were spectacularly wrong. So was Adam Schiff when he said there was "more than circumstantial" evidence of collusion. We were lied to repeatedly about the Steele dossier. I could go on.
I say all of this as someone who dislikes Donald Trump intensely.
Are you saying there was no there there in the Mueller report because it wasn’t All there? Obstruction of justice and bungled attempts at holding hands with Russian influentials doesn’t count? Yes, the liberal press & Democrats were looking for collaboration between Russia & the campaign that never eventuated, but Mueller said a couple things, something like ‘if I could of exonerated him I would have and conviction is above my pay grade, it is up to the house & senate’.
Wow. So appreciative of the thread. Will dive in to the above soon but to me, just because the investigation was wrong in every direction doesn't make the obvious, that Chump-stain was and will always be in cahoots with whomever serves his greater interests. Saudi Arabia should be every bit as investigated as Russia, or outed, or however we want to frame it, but WTF, it's hard to keep up. It's like a fast-break of bullshit.
There was more than circumstantial evidence of collusion. Even if you disagree with Schiff about what the word “circumstantial” means, he wasn’t “spectacularly wrong.” Meanwhile, you’re talking about errors, but in the comments below you refer to an elaborate effort to deceive the American people. I will tell you honestly I think you know there was no such effort. I think you’re lying about it
No, he has articles right here on this site that give you the information you're after. If you're too lazy to go and read them, that's on you, not on him, me, or anyone else here who aren't your paid personal assistants. Can you demonstrate any kind of willingness on your part to put in some effort, or will you just continue saying, "spoonfeed me the information or you're wrong"?
Ive put in a ton of effort. I followed all of it pretty closely. You say I’m being lazy but trying to find support for falsehoods is a wild goose chase. I’ll reread Taibbi’s WMD article but I don’t understand why people think it’s my burden to prove the msm and govt were “spectacularly wrong” about something. If they were wrong and it was so spectacular then presumably you remember it right? I guess it was so spectacular that nobody remembers what it was
This whole thing is a troll fest in a tug of war over incompetence. Deutsche Bank you fools!
So you’re saying there is an article somewhere where Taibbi identifies specific individuals or agencies who were “spectacularly wrong” and identifies the statements that were “spectacularly wrong”? I’m not asking you to do research for me but I read the article I think you’re referencing and it’s all innuendo and conclusory assertions by Taibbi
Gilbert, you're a dick.
You sound like a classic authority-worshipping fascist, you would be a good fit in China but swine like you are determined to bring China her.
Which makes you either the pu55y or the a--hole.... which is it.
Ian, to such people, I say first: Why would it be appropriate to investigate to this extent these particular "lies of Trump and his people"? Most politicians lie every day. About big stuff and small stiff. It's what they do. It is not the government's job to investigate every white lie, deception, untruthful denial, etc. It is its job to investigate crimes, not politics.
And if you say these lies were crimes, I would say no more so than most other politician lying about everything under the sun. So why would this particular subject be more deserving to investigate, to this extent, than all the other lies almost every politician lies about every day?
The answer: Orange Man Bad?
Or, do you prefer that the government (FBI, CIA, House, Senate) and Media treat every single lie in this same fashion? The real crime here is that government used its limited resources for political sabotage, instead of investigating real crimes.
BTW, it was established very early on that people within Trump's organization met with Russians. No need for special counsels, deep investigations, etc. It was pretty easily documented. No surprise there, as pretty much all national politicians have done the same.
I agree that law enforcement shouldn’t prosecute politicians for lies generally. But the FBI wasn’t investigating Trump for lying. They were investigating him for criminal conspiracy. So reporters start asking Trump questions about his campaign’s contacts with the Russians and he lies about it over and over again. When the subject of a criminal investigation lies about something relevant to a crime, law enforcement will be less likely to draw any inferences in the subject’s favor and more likely to spend resources investigating. My point is not that Trump committed a crime or that he should have been impeached, although I believe those things. When people say “no thoughtful unbiased person would ever think Trump was colluding with the Russians” I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone. Anyway, I very much appreciate the tone of your comment
Trump was not at the Tower meeting. This is the Twilight Zone, people professing to be for working an and doing this very quietly and behind our backs
70% of all new jobs went to foreign born
For workers 2000 to 2014, the total change in employment was about 8.8 million.
Of that number
FOREIGN-born workers grew about 6.2 million for only 13% of population
NATIVE-born, the number was only 2.6 million for 87% of the population
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/02/peter-morici/economist-immigrants-have-taken-all-new-jobs-creat/
Between 2008 and the start of 2014, 6.5 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country and 3 million got jobs. Over the same time, the number of working-age natives holding a job declined 3.4 million.
http://cis.org/all-employment-growth-since-2000-went-to-immigrants
This is far worse than anything Trump ever did and why Dems lost the election. They are on the same track again, NO deportations, NO detention, NO border, inviting more job loss at a critical time.
Thanks, Ian. I was specifically responding to your question...
"what do you say to people who experienced “Russiagate” as exposing the lies of Trump and his people?"
My point being, those who view it that way are much more concerned about the politics of winning than they are about if something bad happened. They want to find out if Trump is did anything bad, not because they care if bad things happen, but because they want to be able to hang something on Trump so they can oust/defeat him.
Viewing "russiagate" as just trying to catch Trump in his lies is completely political and an abuse of power. Unless we want the same standard applied to all politicians who lie (which is all of them, and it's often pretty dang obvious.). You know, equal application of the law.
But even then, that isn't the role of the FBI to "expose [fill in politician name]'s lies."
The FBI kept digging around, trying to save face and do some CYA, long after they knew there was no "there" there. They tried their darndest to fabricate and insinuate the "there", but they knew it wasn't there.
Almost 3 years later, I run unto this post and our comments. Funny now to see how much more we have learned/confirmed. The FBI and other powers-that-be knew pretty much all along that nothing illegal (or unethical or immoral, as a side note), was going on with Trump and Russians. They knew first-hand (from Steele and his "source") that the dossier was a political hack job and complete hogwash. Then weaponized it anyway, falsified dates on emails ("accidentally"), deceived FISA judges, and went on a smear campaign rampage. Nothing they did was appropriate.
In other words, they are shadow government, who acted illegally and unconstitutionally themselves because they believed they were saving us from Orange Man Bad. Ends justify the means. It just so happens the means keeps them in power, violates the constitution, and targets their political and administrative enemies. But, it worked, I guess.
Hillary had more meetings with the Russians than Trump.
I think that point is self-evident. That's where I get befuddled.
I get it and I agree completely, but that still doesn't answer why it never became a specific focus about his financial involvement through DB and how that played out with Putin. We know the DB was fined $10B for laundering Russian money and Trump had no business getting the credit line he did at the time that he did. I accept everything you say, but of all people, you're the guy I would think would have blown that part sky high.
It is a common device to muddy the waters and win a dumb argument by expanding the topic beyond a specific issue. You know, when you forgot to turn off the oven and the dinner was burned and soon your wife is bringing up every g.d. thing she thinks you did wrong since your wedding night. "That still doesn't answer" is a fancy way of saying, and repeating, "Yah but, yah but yah but. " The questions you ask were not part of the charges. End of story. Now shut up for god's sake. Or, just file for divorce and get it over with.
Obviously you don't get it.
But just to nibble a little on your red herring, are all people who had a line of credit with DB suspect, or just Trump?
Let's start with the basics. What do you know about Deutsche Bank's practices going back to the 90's. I appreciate you're a self-proclaimed clever 3-steps ahead kinda-guy because you "get it." What exactly do you get?
Why am I not surprised you would give a non-answer answer.
Again, are all people who've done business with DB also doing business with Putin, or is that just a charge specific to Trump?
No seriously. You're an idiot.
Book called "Dark Towers" could get everyone up to speed. Internal politics at DB and industry trends were big factors.
Yup. Kevin is apparently unaware and if he were, I don't think he could get through it.
If the Panama papers were the tip of the iceberg, going after his financial corruption may reveal the allegers are also corrupt. Could be a back and forth not worth pursuing. Especially when it's easier to pump Russiagate through the msm.
Well of course they are. But so what? Does that cover Trump for his play? Because everyone is corrupt, that gives Trump a pass? I mean c'mon. This isn't some jack-ass blog. This is Taibbi and we've come to expect the goods when something doesn't add up, or it does add up and we just need to kick it in the nuts with a 10 yard run. I buy the larger point Matt makes but I don't pretend that it's a closed case on Trump and Russia or Saudi, or whoever else from a large criminal syndicate "corroborated" with Chump-stain at least on the money part. Did they need to spell out that they expected him to do x if they made purchases for y? Of course not. If Taibbi readers don't get this has always been about pay to play, I'm seriously confounded. And the real irony is, so too are the readers that aren't getting it.
Let us stick with Russiagate.
DNC refused to give access to FBI to investigate DNC assertion of Russian hacking. The hacking DNC claimed was on behalf of Trump. This was essentially the charge of treason. FBI mandated by law to investigate. Refusal should have resulted in obstruction of justice charges and seizure of servers. By backing off — our justice system collapsed and became a Middle Eastern system of private justice, subject to negotiations and political wrangling. Russuagate should have ended then and there. But it conveniently meanders finding new herrings aling the way.
DO not get me wrong — Trump like the rest if the elite is immoral chaser of old calfs, his grasp of American ills notwithstanding.
It doesn't cover for anything. It wasn't an answer with regards to morals or honor. Just a shot in the dark regarding strategy. I don't disagree there was financial corruption with Russia, but I think the neoliberals pushed a different strategy. Maybe if they weren't corrupt, they would have taken a more sincere stab at it. Maybe not. I think we agree on the pay to play. The panama paper confirmed that is what it is all about.
This isn't some jack-ass blog but every post isn't always going to be precise, especially after twelve hours of work and getting the kiddos fed and to bed. Just my tired two cents.
Right on and I hear you. Same goes for me. The whole system is corrupt so why doesn't Matt frag that point instead of being in the space that has to justify it all by saying how wrong the Dem's got whatever collusion wasn't proved. Fine, okay. I get it. That doesn't convince me Trump didn't collude even if he was a "useful idiot" in the process. The dems completely fucked up on the impeachment in almost the same way Mueller fucked up the 2-year investigation. None of them followed the money and that's why I subscribe to Matt and have read him for years. The whole thing is a head-scratcher.
As the Obama admin worked so hard to invent dirt, do you not think they would have been all over "legitimate" dirt.
Yet when questioned under oath, Clapper,Brennan, Rice admitted they had zero evidence for collusion.
What you're recounting is just more lies and disinformation - you've been reading Mensch/Abramson nonsense.
Why not focus on DB when the highly partisan witch hunt was determined to find wrong doing where none existed? Maybe because there was nothing there.
Yea. Right. I'm pretty surprised how some who have commented here are literally clueless about who and what Deutsche Bank is. It bolsters my point to begin with. By waving off the Dems (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, MSM/MSNBC) complete wipe-out, somehow that is the end of the story? Not remotely. They just failed to pull the most obvious thread. Usually Matt is way on top of this stuff, but my theory is his change in focus from the financial crises to presidential campaigns had an effect. Matt's definitely back on point so I'm hopeful he takes a swing at what I've been parlaying throughout this thread.
Matt is not “on top of this stuff.” Matt is telling his readers there was an elaborate effort to spread falsehoods about Trump colluding with the Russians even though he knows that’s not true. He refers to people being “spectacularly wrong” but when pressed the best he can come up with is some statement by Schiff about “circumstantial” evidence. Matt’s job now is to restore his reputation by making everyone think we live in a reality where he was right at the outset. But we don’t live in that reality. We live in the one where Trump and his people lied on television and under oath for many months about their contacts with the Russians. To say Matt is “on top of this stuff” is to say we should substitute his bullshit for the truth. But we really should not
Ian is on top of NOTHING. Dude, read the Horowitz report and get ready for the Durham report. Matt comes with facts, publicly available. Ian comes with nitwit disproven talking points from Rachel Maddow - who is a hack that is wrong about everything.
I'm kind of laughing because to a degree I agree but I just think Matt got a little lost in the weeds because his employers didn't want him up the financial worlds ass. I feel like he's back.
Ricky, you're POS.
I'm a POS because you wear a tinfoil hat and have rocks for brains? lmao. Ok Patrick. If you say so
Agreed! General Flynn being cleared and exonerated is yet another example of of the mendacity of the Obama administration, the FBI and "intelligence" agencies. It's a strange testament to the derangement of Russiagaters that it caused them and my fellow liberals to embrace the FBI, CIA and a whole host of horrible organizations.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it Is, unfortunately. Trump’s buffoonery has nothing to do with this. Prying people’s’ minds away from the irrelevant is particularly challenging when it comes to the Trump-hatred. Just astonishing.
Matt, when you refer to an “elaborate effort to spread this false tale,” what are you referring to specifically? Are you saying Rachel Maddow or the NYT or the Washington Post deliberately lied about facts? I apologize for accusing you of lying and I will reread your WMD post. I’m not a troll. But can you please just tell me: Is it true that there was an elaborate effort to spread a false tale, or is that just you echoing Trump that the media is the enemy of the people?
Thats what he is saying. Pulitzers lost all its credibility also.
They didn't care about the facts
and now they want to be able to tell you what you can and can't say. I think something none of us know about the current situation is going to come out later in the year and it will make many people livid
Fact Check: There was no elaborate effort to spread a false tale. That is a fantasy of Taibbi’s and is not based on facts
Fact Check: you're a troll
A “fact check” is when you call our a falsehood. I’m pretty sure calling me a troll is not a fact check. It is very clever though so keep it up!
I apologize. You being a troll is simply a fact
So they found issues and there was obstruction but not the exact problems they were designated to find so the entire thing should be thrown out? Would that be applied evenly to rich and poor? You have to know everything before you have the ability to investigate? Is this a Joseph Heller skit?
No CRIME was found. When there is no crime, there can be no obstruction. Yes, a crime was what they were looking for. That's why the "whole thing" had to be thrown out. It Should apply the same to rich and poor, but the usual tactic with the poor is to threaten and intimidate to get the person to plead guilty -- to something. Special prosecutors are not appointed to get to the ultimate truth of a matter. They are appointed to determine if a crime has been committed, and, if yes, who commited it and/or abetted it. So, no, you don't have to know everything in advance, and in fact, the Mueller investigators did a lot of "fishing" for evidence of a crime. It's not a "Catch-22." The staff were highly motivated, almost all Democrats, and they were plenty intimidating and threatening. The fact that they found nothing adding up to a crime is not a result of them being lazy or sloppy. It was because the rumor machine was dead wrong to begin with. If you will look up who worked on this, there was no hint of a cover-up.
There was no “elaborate effort at spreading this false tale.” Matt, would you please retract that falsehood?
Opinion | The Trump Campaign Conspired With the Russians ...NYT
Republicans’ Big Lie About Trump and Russia
Opinion | How Barr and Trump Use a Russian Disinformation ...
Collusion wasn’t a hoax and Trump wasn’t exonerated.
.www.nytimes.com › opinion › trump-fusion-gps-boo
this is the kicker
REMINDER: WaPo, NYT Won Pulitzers For Russia Collusion ...So Pulitzers lost all its credibility also.
DAILY! WaPo and NYT hammered the front page. Go back and look. He was guilty without a trial. Trumpis sing the NYT. I hope he wins.
The only Russian collusion was Hillary and the DNC (including their MSM partners) paying money for, and actively promoting as truth, nonsensical Russian propaganda. Time to take the trash out.
Totally agree. They kicked the working man to the side of the road for their precious Foreign Born, when the workers complained, they called them a basket of deplorables. Had to blame their loss on Russia, because they plan to keep giving our jobs away courting their new constituency, thinking we won’t notice.
Methinks you might be one of those "scolds" Matt talks about!
Russian bot alert.
All of my posts in the HILL were removed when I posted the daily Russian Interference Trial court briefs.
I got a one week suspension there for posting a chart showing the housing bubble began before Bush took office because of things Clinton did. The trolls do not appreciate us shining light in their lairs....
Well most of the MSM is owned by what, 3 corporations? And those in turn are owned by.... but that would spoil the surprise.
Exactly.
“Exactly?” Really? What was this “elaborate effort at spreading this false tale”? Do you know anything about it? Who was involved? Taibbi is lying about this “elaborate effort” to deceive the American people. It did not happen
Steele dossier? Robert Mueller knowing there was no case against Trump the second he landed in Washington, but keeping the "investigation" alive for two years? Recent exposure of FBI set up of Gen Flynn?
Matt, is it accurate that the FBI knew there was no case against Trump but kept the investigation alive for two years anyway? Is that factual? Why do so many people who read your articles still have these false ideas about what happened?
Oh for Christ's sake you sniveling twerp....go research National Review for the facts. Or Fox, or Townhall or Breitbart, or Real Clear Politics...My god you brainless twits can't even do your own research. What a joke. The evidence is everywhere if you dare to look for it. Type 'Russiagate hoax' in Google and then dare to read any piece that comes up and refute the story with your facts. You Leftists are idiots.
rachael maddow? Any major news network pushing this? We must censor ourselves and obey!
So you are saying Rachel Maddow was involved in an elaborate effort to spread a false tale? There’s no evidence for that. It’s just a cheap story that Trumpers tell themselves because the reality is too painful. Isn’t it?
Laser-like! Keep on, brother...
He was down on Russiagate because it was obvious that there was no substance there to anyone with a pulse. Look no further than, do you really think DJT could engage in a covert conspiracy? We practically know every thought in the man’s head two seconds after he thought it.
There is no evidence Trump colluded with Russia. More proof emerges every day. I don't support Trump but attempting to frame him for something he did not do only weakens the focus of attacks on the many bad things he is doing. Like destroying the environment and his constant provocation of Iran and Venezuela. Study the veracity of issues and don't get sucked into main stream corporate propaganda that is controlled by the 1%.
Great article!
You might enjoy reading this, written by a "risk communicator" for the WHO.
https://www.psandman.com/col/disagreement.htm#head5
(a snippet, but I recommend reading the whole thing.)
"I’m especially interested in sources of expert bias that usually fly under the radar. Friendship and peer pressure, for example, rarely get as much attention as money, or even as ideology. As I’ve already discussed, experts’ opinions are mostly secondhand, just like everybody else’s opinions. And just like everybody else’s opinions, experts’ opinions are greatly influenced by affiliation – that is, by the opinions of their friends and colleagues. (See for example this discussion of conflict-of-interest issues affecting experts who advised the World Health Organization on how to handle the 2009–10 swine flu pandemic.)"
Thanks for the link. Interesting insight into why companies and governments say the things they do when controversy arises. And the discussion about expert disagreement vs expert uncertainty goes to the heart of why our political parties are staking out the extremes instead of looking for common ground.
Matt, I disagree, perhaps, with your reference to Kemp and the other governors who opened their states. Don't you agree that their effort seems to be an attempt to prevent workers from claiming unemployment benefit and that, as such, their efforts should not be seen as motivated by a simple, freely determined skepticism about the merits of the science or even the biased journalism? I do applaud your general thesis, and would add for my part that one of the most interesting phenomena regarding the media response to coronavirus and scientific material in general is a seeming mass desire to settle matters once and for all rather than fostering an attitude that scientific activity is more than anything else a manifestly long-drawn out, labor intensive pursuit, that requires much time, almost always, before actionable insights can be formulated, much less acted upon. It is odd that, as you have noted so many times, a media so addicted to manufacturing themes that must be continually resuscitated, like Russia, do the exact opposite with science: as you note, pundits and reporters, when confronted with science, tend to cram and swot maniacally (under deadline, assuredly) in order to get as close to a definitive statement as possible as fast as possible, when the entire process is designed (though increasingly commercialized and siloed privatized science mitigates against this in important ways, whilst reinforcing it in others) only to provide "answers" of any sort extremely tentatively. This is perhaps one of the most annoying things about many Americans' expectations of scientific activity, which you see in medicine (and weather forecasting!) perhaps most of all: people frustrated with the underlying uncertainty of medical prognoses seem to expect cookie-cutter specific formulations virtually on the spot, and are angered when these are not forthcoming. I even know people who have taught philosophy of science who have never stepped foot in a lab or have the vaguest notion of how "knowledge" is produced there. This sort of thing adds fertile ground for themes development of potential misunderstandings amongst lay-people that raises the deleterious effects to another level. But I am digressing. My main question is about Kemp and the others, but if you could speak a little to flesh out your interesting comments on reporters and scientific subject matter, I would be most grateful. I love your work, Matt, keep up the good job!
I definitely believe that the motives of a lot of the politicians who want to end the lockdowns are less than pure -- there are enormous sums of money at stake and many of these politicians are probably listening to lobbyists who are pushing dubious scientific takes in order to justify whatever policy measures will get the money faucet turned back on. I get that, I absolutely do. I'm not endorsing people like Kemp. I'm just very exhausted by the know-it-all Karenism of press figures who read a quote form a scientist in the Times ten minutes ago and now are on the air dramatically accusing some politician halfway across the country of murder. There are really two issues here. One is that the more we drift into point-and-shriek mode in news coverage, the more bereft of options news consumers become when it comes time to just look for the raw answers to questions we all have: how safe is it to go outside? How close is too close? How much will a mask protect me? What kinds of activities are dangerous and which ones aren't? What are the pros and cons of various responses? The heavier the editorial judgment in reporting these things, the harder it becomes for readers to trust the answers to those simple questions.
I guess the other thing that bothers me is that in the current setup, the cries of "murderer" always involve a Democrat calling out a Republican or vice versa. So yes, the Kemps of the world have impure motives, but I don't love the media motives either. Yes, you can get on Kemp if you like, but the easiest way to do it is to talk about who's advising him, who his donors are, who stands to benefit most from the reopening, etc. But I personally would be scared of sounding so certain on the science, for the exact reasons you point out -- it's a process, often a moving target, and designed to be discussed in exactly the opposite way that reporters understand things, i.e. questions shouldn't be reduced to a single inflexible hot take.
The media is by and large very bad at covering scientific issues (not that this is solely a scientific issue but still) largely for the reason you say in your piece - media figures have to pretend like they know what they're talking about when they don't and they REALLY don't know anything about most things science-related. Any acknowledgement of nuance/uncertainty is lost
I would amend that comment to say the media is by and large very bad at covering issues. One of Mr. Taibbi's points was that under the pressure of deadlines and the need to be first on the story, they don't go in for deep background or information. For a more in-depth tratment of this idea, read "Airframe" by Michael Crichton, he nailed it.
"Airframe" is a great recommendation! Happens that I transcribed a couple of key passages a long time ago. Here they are ...
1. from p. 107; "She" is Casey, a high exec at at airliner manufacturer:
Walking away from [reporter Jack Rogers], she realized she was exhausted by the effort of the interview. Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess match; you had to think several steps ahead; you had to imagine all the possible ways a reporter might distort your statement. The atmosphere was relentlessly adversarial.
It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time when reporters wanted information, their questions directed to an underlying event. They wanted an accurate picture of a situation, and to do that they had to make the effort to see things your way, to understand how you were thinking about it. They might not agree with you in the end, but it was a matter of pride that they could accurately state your view, before rejecting it. The interviewing process was not very personal, because the focus was on the event they were trying to understand.
But now reporters came to the story with the [lede] fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn’t want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted [[? mutual? – PN]] hostility and suspicion. This new mode was intensely personal: they wanted to trip you up, to catch you in a small error, or in a foolish statement—or just a phrase that could be taken out of context and made to look silly or insensitive.
Because the focus was so personal, the reporters asked continuously for personal speculations. Do you think an event will be damaging? Do you think the company will suffer? Such speculation had been irrelevant to the earlier generation of reporters, who focused on the underlying events. Modern journalism was intensely subjective—“interpretive”—and speculation was its lifeblood. But she found it exhausting.
And Jack Rogers, she thought, was one of the better ones. The print reporters were all better. It was the television reporters you really had to watch out for. They were the really dangerous ones.
2. from p. 146; Richman is a lawyer.
“One crash finished the [DC-10].”
“What crash?”
“It was an American Airlines flight from Chicago to LA,” Casey said. “May, 1979. Nice day. Good weather. Right after takeoff the left engine fell off the wing. The plane stalled and crashed next to the sirport, killing everybody on board. Very dramatic, it was all over in thirty seconds. A couple of people taped the flight, so the networks had film at eleven. The media went crazy, calling the plane a winged coffin. Travel agents were flooded with calls canceling DC-10 bookings. Douglas never sold another one of them.”
“Why did the engine fall off?
“Bad maintenance,” Casey said. “American hadn’t followed Douglas’s instructions on how to remove the engines from the plane. Douglas told them to first remove the engine, and then the pylon that holds the engine to the wing. But to save time, American took the whole engine-pylon assembly off at once. That’s seven tons of metal on a forklift. One forklift ran out of gas during the removal, and cracked the pylon. But the crack wasn’t noticed, and eventually the engine fell off the wing. So it was all because of maintenance.”
“Maybe so,” Richman said, “but isn’t an airplane still supposed to fly even missing an engine.”
“Yes, it is,” Casey said. “The DC-10 was built to survive that kind of failure. The plane was perfectly airworthy. If the pilot had maintained airspeed, he’d have been fine. He could have landed the plane.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Because, as usual, there was an event cascade leading to the final accident,” Casey said. “In this case, electrical power to the captain’s cockpit controls came from the left engine. When the left engine fell off, the captain’s instruments were shut off, including the cockpit stall warning and the backup warning, called a stick shaker. That’s a device that shakes the stick to tell the pilot the plane is about to stall. The first officer still had power and instruments, so [[? but? -- PN]] the first officer’s chair didn’t have a stick shaker. It’s a customer option for the first officer, and American hadn’t ordered it. And Douglas hadn’t built any redundancy into their cockpit-stall warning system. So when the DC-10 began to stall, the first officer didn’t realize he had to increase throttle.
“Okay,” Richman said, “but the captain shouldn’t have lost power in the first place.”
“No, that was a designed-in safety feature,” Casey said. “Douglas had designed and built the aircraft to survive those failures. When the left engine tore off, the aircraft deliberately shut down the captain’s power line, to prevent further shorts in the system. Remember, all aircraft systems are redundant. If one fails, the backup kicks in. And it was easy to get the captain’s instrumentation back again; all the flight engineer had to do was trip a relay, or turn on emergency power. But he didn’t do either one.”
“Why not?”
“No one knows,” Casey said. “And the first officer, lacking the necessary information on his display, intentionally reduced his airspeed, which caused the plane to stall and crash.
They were silent for a moment, walking.
“Consider all the ways this might have been avoided,” Casey said. The maintenance crews could have checked the pylons for structural damage after servicing them improperly. But they didn’t. Continental had already cracked two pylons using forklifts, and they could have told American the procedure was dangerous. But they didn’t. Douglas had told American about Continental’s problems, but American didn’t pay any attention.”
Richman was shaking his head.
“And after the accident, Douglas couldn’t say it was a maintenance problem, because American was a valued customer. So Douglas wasn’t going to put the story out. In all these incidents, it’s always the same story—the story never gets out unless the media digs it out. But the story’s complicated, and that’s difficult for television … so they just run the tape. The tape of the accident which shows the left engine falling off, the plane veering left, and crashing. The visual implies the aircraft was poorly designed, that Douglas hadn’t anticipated a pylon failure and hadn’t built the plane to survive it. Which was completely inaccurate. But Douglas never sold another DC-10.”
“Well, Richman said, “I don’t think you can blame the media for that. They don’t make the news. They just report it.”
“That’s my point,” Casey said. “They didn’t report it, they just ran the film. The Chicago crash was kind of a turning point in our industry. The first time a good aircraft was destroyed by bad press. The coup de grace was the NTSB report. It came out on December 21. Nobody paid any attention.”
For what it’s worth, Matt, Chris Hayes is the MSNBC host who did a segment on the physics of wearing a mask and how it would help, but not prevent virus spread. So I think he’s at least trying to do some responsible work, within the confines of a cable news prime time opinion model.
My only point about Chris was that he didn’t address the reason those doctors were on the news in the first place - they’d been censored. That’s a lot more dangerous than anything the doctors said.
Murder? Death is a valid side effect of lockdowns. There is no death-free answer to whether COVID-19 will be responsible for more deaths than, say, starvation, unavailability of non-COVID medical care, un-monitored drug ingestion, broken homes and broken families, absence of necessary resources such as heating fuel or apartment heat, injuries from accidents that could have been attended to in time but weren't. If it's a war, people will die no matte what policy choices are made.
It is hard to admit that we all as individuals struggle from a universe's load of ignorance. The sheer amount of inaccurate things we each believe or trust in each day is far more comfortable too ignore. It is hard to understand, but if you dont fight for your fellow persons rights. You are kissing your own away,those of your children, neighbors, friends,people you will never even meet.
To not be wary of handing extreme powers over speech and our daily lives to the government? Whats next? Truth is meaningless next to extreme concentrations of power in unaccountable , distant authorities who control the levers to your very existence. And journalism has become a very big lever. One that convinces masses of people, that their interests are best served by celebrity personalities. Rather than real social bonds beyond the daily fiction's of the consumer product we enjoy as news. No need to consider similarities between us human beings if we are too busy running from the ever constant threats...of the other. People are suddenly simple, and we can "know" millions who we will never meet, with the certainty provided by our betters. I'm guessing when journalism was used to destroy labor movements, no many stooped to consider how much power words hold over our imaginary. No one realized, with words and pictures, we can turn masses of people against themselves. Certainly video wiould never be Great for choosing the preferences of your self hating society. In commerical media we trust. To advertisement institutions we pray. At least we are not as stupid as that OTHER guy over there. Judging by his teeth and appearance.....and clothing. He might not even be a person. I do pretend to know that, "psycho paths with guns protesting." is no excuse to give up my own rights to protest. And I deeply question finalizing the end of public assembly....what kind of moron thinks those sorts of powers aren't now a permanent fixture world wide? I bet he or she has wonderful taste in suits. Eh If everyone is against the only mechanisms of control we have to affect change in our federal and state system why not skip ahead to the pretending like politics doesn't exist. Everyone's supposedly a conservative in this country. Maybe they can explain Milton Friedman to me . Not sure what kind of conservative it is that believes both in fascism and getting happily screwed by it. The whole country seems skewed towards authoritarianism. Maybe that's the next big system change? Nice how many more prisons that have been built for "immigrants". 1.9 million in jail? With 4.9 million in the system??? think of all the money we can make by imprisoning the rest, and charging the tax payer for the service! If anyone doubts the validity of our actions, lets just say they hate america and want everyone else to die to criminal masterminds.
Authoritarianism is instituted in many ways. Some are out in the open and others done surreptitiously like
1. Replacing 70% of U.S workers with foreign born
2. Ignoring the law which requires immigrants to have a Sponsor if they can not support themselves. LAW: Under ;212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), an individual seeking admission to the United States or seeking to adjust status to that of an individual lawfully admitted for permanent residence (green card) is INADMISSIBLE if the individual, "at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge.”
Marginalization:
In all of 2012 there was just one investigation of an immigrant under this provision, and it was dropped. In figuring who is a “public charge,” only cash benefits are counted; so that an immigrant family living in public housing, receiving food stamps, free school lunch, and Medicaid is considered self-sufficient!
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/423422/majority-immigrant-households-are-on-welfare
3. DACA was against the law. They have spawned 200,000 babies. SEE what happens when you don’t follow the law? This is what the law protects the taxpayers from.
4. Pumping the schools with millions of children who can’t speak English and have no scholastic skill sets has dropped the system down to # 30 something in the world.
5. Some "immigrants" take their culture with the when they sneak in.
Hispanics are, in fact, substantially more likely than whites to commit serious crimes, and U.S.-born Hispanics in particular are about two and a half times more likely.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/05/jason_richwine_hispanics_and_iqs_the_heritage_foundation_scholar_began_researching.html
Murder Rate for Hispanics Is Twice the Murder Rate for Whites http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/murder-rate-for-hispanics_b_5309973.html
47% of ALL gang members are HISPANIC the rest are ALL the other nationalities in the WORLD. 70%
Latinos accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/02/18/a-rising-share-hispanics-and-federal-crime/
Hispanics, including both men and women, are twice as likely to see domestic violence.
http://www.latintimes.com/hispanic-domestic-violence-statistics-nearly-two-thirds-women-know-abuse-victim-allstate-262497
Did you ever consider that it was their behavior that landed them in ail?
That's a lot more than one mouthful. Please reorganize your thoughts and try again, or find a translator. There appear to be some good ideas -- some insights -- sort of half-buried in here.
COST IN JOBS AND WAGES: 70%
Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank. Here’s why (2017)
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/
Those "immigrants" were SCABS used to bust unions, in the false name of humanitarianism. And that’s what they’re running on...... again.
The unions in LA were in bed with politicians to pass laws that made dysfunctional union labor mandatory along with other sweetheart deals which led to 40% of home building costs being due to a union premium. Had the unions been focused on giving their customers a fair price instead of fleecing them, people would not seek non-union labor. People don’t like being cheated. If unions make it legal to cheat their customers, it is inevitable that a black market in labor will arise. The unions deserve to be busted.
We've been warned about this before. How quickly we forget that the thousand page Patriot Act appeared almost out of no where during the 9/11 hysteria and was passed almost unanimously. At this stroke of a pen our representatives launched the national security state on steroids and drastically undermined our Fourth Amendment rights. Even worse, when it came up for renewal under the "liberal" leadership of Barak Obama, Congress passed it again even though the original bill being based on lies. Someone once said that American fascism will not come by military coup. It won't have to. We willingly sign away our rights one by one. And those that don't disappear with our acquiescence are secretly undermined by the NSA. Taibbi's article is notable because members of our legal community, who swear to uphold the constitution are suggesting that we carve out a slice or two from the First Amendment. They can't have the rabble making a mess of "their" democracy. But democracy is supposed to be messy. Our history is replete with examples of elites trying to direct and control and peoples movements saying 'not so fast.' Hopefully we still have enough peoples movements to appose these recommendations. When honest journalism fails, so does our democracy.
Well I agree with every single word in this article.
In the USA:
1. People under 35 make up <1% of COVID-19 deaths (but 45% of the total population).
2. People under 25 make up 0.13% of COVID-19 deaths (but 32% of the total population).
3. People over 65 make up 79.4% of COVID-19 deaths (but only 16% of the population).
4. The average age of someone who dies from the COVID-19 in the US is almost 75. Average age of the total population is around 38.
We hammered an amazing economy needlessly. This will cost lives. We were afraid, so we let experts make best-guess (and that's being generous) decisions based on extremely limited data and information, and completely inaccurate assumptions.
Kids should be in school. Businesses should be open. Workers should be working. Life should, for the most part, move on to normal activity. It should have always been this way, with PERHAPS the allowance of a two-week shut in. There are of course some exceptions. The elderly and high-risk groups should be isolated. Personal safety measures should be taken (wash hands, stay home if sick, cough into elbow, etc.). People and businesses should be free to take extra measures if they wish (limited business hours, wear masks, limit store traffic, etc). But only if they want.
Here is where I got my numbers:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/
Let's assume life expectancy is 79. The average person who dies prematurely from COVID-19 loses 4 years of life. The average person who dies prematurely from other causes loses 41 years of life.
When comparing lives lost due to the COVID-19 versus lives lost due to shutting down the economy in order to minimize the COVID-19, the COVID-19 would have to be 10 times as deadly to be "worth it" from a years-of-life-lost perspective. And this doesn't even account for a quality-of-years-of-life-lost perspective (example: the last 5 years of one's life are likely to be a lower quality than the 5 years from 30-35). It also doesn't account for the fact that smarter, focused approaches could have kept the economy strong -- nearly eliminating the shutdown-caused deaths (starvation, worse health care, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol deaths, suicide, etc.) while keeping the COVID-19 deaths at nearly the same levels (maybe an increase in the near-term, but a decrease in the long-term as herd immunity is reached).
We will never truly know the complete picture or a perfect quantitative analysis, one way or the other, as to whether the disease or the cure was more deadly here. Which is why, unless there was some empirical evidence, or even truly convincing data, or some very convincing high probability (and no: "fear" does not count as convincing) that the COVID-19 would be SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 10 times as deadly as the cure, the cure should have been out of consideration. There were other, more reasonable, less-harmful, cures.
99% had other ailments and more than 10,000 residents and staff in long-term care facilities across the U.S. have died from COVID-19 infections, according to a KFF analysis of state data.
Food for thought:
What if everyone in history who died from a communicable disease lived instead and went on to propagate? How many people would be alive today? We would need another planet.
When so much is unknown, the experts can't do much more than theorize.
That's why in mid-April, experts (astronomers) announced an exoplanet they "found" -- one of the only exoplanets to be directly imaged, and among the first to be given its own name -- wasn't even a planet after all. It was just a dust cloud formed by two icy bodies colliding or something.
That's why for about 20 years experts (medical doctors) told parents to lay their kids on their stomachs to help prevent SIDS -- advice that led to an estimated 60,000 extra SIDS deaths, as experts changed their minds and told parents to lay them on their backs instead because it is actually dangerous to lay them on their stomachs.
These guys are experts, geniousess, cream of the crop, doing the best they can. But with very limited knowledge. Once enough information is gathered, experts can give useful and workable and helpful advice. Until then, all they can do is theorize in ways that aren't very practical, and sometimes dangerous (increasing the number of infant deaths, for example). That's what has happened here with the COVID-19.
You've really hit the nail on the head. But it turns out that your reference to "the Idiocracy set injecting fish cleaner" perfectly exemplifies your statement, "We actually know jack". First of all, the mainstream media's version of the story was that some guy had decided that he and his wife should drink fish tank cleaner because the label said it contained hydroxychloroquine, not that anyone had injected it.
But more importantly, this was totally out of character for the man who died. All it took to discover that was a few calls to some of his friends. The deceased was an engineer with an extensive science background. According to his friends, this was wildly out of character for him, but they also reported that he'd long been victimized by his abusive wife. It was his wife who mixed the fish tank cleaner that they both drank. Interestingly, the dose she fed him killed him, while the dose she took sickened her but left her alive.
So, at best this is a case of sloppy reporting that produced a false story that fit perfectly with the media's disdainful attitude toward anyone who's not part of the coastal elite. At worst it's a case of intentionally fraudulent reporting.
For more detail, see: https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/man-who-died-ingesting-fish-tank-cleaner-remembered-as-intelligent-levelheaded/
It'll be on Forensics Files one day... The story of how a wife killed her husband off during a global pandemic and tried to make it look like it was HIS idea.
Mmm hmm
The breakdown is occurring solely because those in power are corrupt. That causes all kinds of rebellious chaos. People don't trust their leaders. They don't trust the longtime establishment media. And since any intelligent organized opposition is quickly thwarted, we are left with people scattered to find answers.
The Reaping is upon us.