Do we actually like other people?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2016

Or do we live to loathe:
For starters, let's talk about Alysin Camerota.

In 2014, CNN hired Camerota away from Fox News. It was a superlative hire.

For years, we'd seen her on Fox & Friends. In general, she was cast as the sane, intelligent caretaker woman seated between the two chimpish, inane younger men.

After sixteen years, she escaped to CNN, where she now co-anchors the morning show with Chris Cuomo. We're often struck by how good her work is there. (Cuomo plainly exceeds cable news averages too.)

Today, you can see Camerota interviewing a small group of Trump voters. Kevin Drum posted part of the tape, without comment, thereby throwing a bone to his liberal herd.

The herdsters have responded gratefully with hundreds of comments, aggressively kicking down instead of kicking up.

Here's the start of the most striking interaction between Camerota and the Trump voters. It involves a claim of widespread illegal voting:
JOHNSON (12/1/16): Voting is a privilege in this country. And you need to be legal, not like California, where 3 million illegals voted.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about that.

JOHNSON: I'm glad I brought that up, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Me, too, Paula. So where are you getting your information?

JOHNSON: From the media. Where else would we get it?

CAMEROTA: Which media?

JOHNSON: Some of it was CNN, I believe, and—

CAMEROTA: CNN said that 3 million illegal people voted in California?

JOHNSON: Well, it was coming all across the media. All across. If CNN didn't do it, then they were being smart this time.
Already, this doesn't seem to make sense. First, Trump voter Paula Johnson says that three million people voted illegally in California. Within moments, she says that CNN "was being smart this time" if they didn't make such a report.

Hint! We the people aren't a gang of geniuses. Regular people will often say things, and reach judgments, which don't make a lot of sense. This is especially true where partisan desires are involved.

BREAKING! This sort of thing doesn't just happen among Them! The liberal web is crawling with the stupid shit we liberals churn every day. Our dumbness tends to take different forms, but We are often transplendently dumb, just like The Others are.

Let's return to the transcript. Here's what happened when Camerota questioned Johnson further:
CAMEROTA (continuing directly): Do you think that 3 million illegal people voted?

JOHNSON: I believe in California that there were illegals that voted.

CAMEROTA: How many?

JOHNSON: I don't—to tell you the truth, nobody really knows that number.

CAMEROTA: But do you think three dozen, or do you think 3 million?

JOHNSON: I think there was a good amount because the president told people that they could vote and it happened in Nashua we caught some people—

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

JOHNSON: That they went into Nashua and they said, "The president said I could vote. I'm here illegally."

CAMEROTA: Did you hear President Obama say that illegal people could vote?

JOHNSON: Yes, I did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I did.

JOHNSON: I actually did hear it.

CAMEROTA: On what— Tell me where.

DIBARTOLO: On— You can find it. Google it. You can find it on Facebook.
Johnson ends up saying that she thinks "a good amount" of illegal voting happened in California. She and others say this happened because Obama said it was OK.

If you watch the rest of the tape, you will see Camerota track this claim to what she describes as a doctored report on Fox Business News. That report tracked to an interview Obama did with actress Gina Rodriquez. You can watch the interview here.

In fairness, Rodriguez asked Obama a jumbled, confusing question—a question Obama failed to clarify. Watching the tape, it almost sounds like Rodriquez is asking if undocumented people can vote.

Because Obama doesn't clean up the confusion lodged in her question, it almost sounds like he is saying that such people can vote.

So it goes when Democrats ask movie stars and comedians to help out at election time. You can watch the jumbled Q-and-A at the 3:20 mark of that tape.

Over the past thirty years, the rise of partisan propaganda orgs has taught us a powerful lesson. We've learned that people will believe all kinds of improbable claims, especially where the improbable claims helps advance partisan scripts.

Over here in our liberal tents, we pretend that this only happens with conservatives. In posting the tape without any comment, Drum gave his droogs a chance for hours of pleasure kicking down at Them.

In fact, our liberal comment threads teem with all manner of bullshit. Folk like Drum don't have the courage or the integrity to tell their readers this.

We liberals often enjoy kicking down at the regular people who get conned by disinformation. We're less inclined to kick up at the people who deliberately deceive them, or at other powerful entities which enable the endless deception.

For years, we've said the following: When major figures deceive the public, that in itself is news. Back in 2011, it was news when Donald J. Trump paraded around peddling all that birther bullshit. The New York Times and the Washington Post should have been aggressively reporting his conduct as news.

Right to this day, those big newspapers have run away from this problem, which started long before Trump. Sadly, people like Drum would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before they'd challenge such gutless conduct on the part of the Post and the Times—before they'd insist that the New York Times report the deliberate spread of disinformation as front-page news.

Today, Drum gave the herd a day of free play. Our unimpressive, loathing-fueled "liberal" team is part of this nightmare too.

What Yevtushenko said: As it turns out, we the people are extremely gullible. That's why we have an FDA, in case you didn't realize.

(When music men would come around, we people would buy their trombones.)

People believe the darnedest things! This seems to be the nature of people—"whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures," as Yevtushenko said.

Our liberal herd can be very dumb too. At some point, you have to make a decision:

Do I actually like other people? Or do I live to loathe?

26 comments:

  1. Does Somerby like people when he calls them droogs?

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    Replies
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  2. I never heard of Gina Rodriguez before. It seems she's a big star. She was born in Chicago to Puerto Rican parents. Her sisters are an investment banker and a doctor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rodriguez

    And it's Rodriguez, not Rodriquez.

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  3. The discussion of Hispanics voting begins around 3:20. Obama is fairly careful to specify that he's talking about Hispanic citizens voting. OTOH he says that voting cannot get one deported. That sounds a lot like encouragement for illegal immigrants to vote.

    He could have warned non-citizens not to vote. He could have said that non-citizen voting is a crime that would be investigated and prosecuted. After all, enforcing the law is his job, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to warn potential law-breakers. His failure to specifically speak out against non-citizens voting that gives extra power to his ambiguous statements.

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    1. Being a non-citizen is a civil matter, not a criminal one. Calling undocumented immigrants criminals is extremely misleading and leads to statements like Trump's, that immigrants are rapists and so on.

      If he warned non-citizens not to vote, he would have furthered the mistaken notion that non-citizens do vote.

      Note how Trump's declaration that voting was rigged caused his supporters to go vote twice, in case their first vote wasn't counted. Obama properly considered the impact of his words on people and didn't suggest something that doesn't happen.

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    2. Anon 4:49 -- Presumably you're relying on this statement, "Ask students whether someone who jaywalks or who doesn’t feed a parking meter is a criminal. Explain that only very serious misbehavior is generally considered “criminal” in our legal system. Violations of less serious laws are usually “civil” matters and are tried in civil courts. People accused of crimes are tried in criminal courts and can be imprisoned. Federal immigration law says that unlawful presence in the country is a civil offense and is, therefore, not a crime. The punishment is deportation. However, some states—like Arizona—have criminalized an immigrant’s mere presence." http://www.tolerance.org/immigration-myths

      This statement is tricky. Break this statement into two pieces: "1. Federal immigration law says that unlawful presence in the country is a civil offense 2. and is, therefore, not a crime." I accept that #1 correctly states Federal law. But, I presume that #2 is merely somebody's deduction, not a part of Federal law.

      But, #2 can be seen to be wrong, if we use the example of parking. Did you ever park in a "No Parking" zone? Then, one would say you parked illegally. This is correct usage, according to the Dictionary: "Illegal" means "not according to or authorized by law." So an unauthorized immigrant is here illegally.

      Unless, you like the awful pun:
      Unlawful means "Against the law." "Illegal" is a sick bird.

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    3. So...

      How many illegal immigrants voted? I think you're in the weeds, and wandering unnecessarily away from this question.

      People are lied to by their "gatekeepers" all the time. Shouldn't that be a crime in matters of importance? Yes, I would say it should be.

      Oh well. Some other life maybe.

      Delete
    4. Anon 6:21 -- Here's a article that sort-of attempts to answer your question. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Do+Illegal+Votes+Decide+Elections%3F (If you go into this article via google, you can read it without subscription.) The article makes several key points:

      1. There’s no way to know how many illegal votes there are.
      2. There's a lot of evidence suggesting that significant numbers of noncitizens cast ballots.
      3. The Obama administration has done everything it can to keep the status quo in place.
      4. The Trump administration could do a great deal, by cooperating with states that want to verify the citizenship of registered voters, by encouraging states to pass laws that require proof of citizenship, and by prosecuting cases of illegal voting.

      Delete
    5. If you are living and working illegally in a country are you going to risk discovery in order to register to vote? Keep in mind that most citizens don't vote. Multiply that by millions. Your suggestion is ludicrous.

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    6. Anon 8:26, trying to imagine what one would do in some hypothetical situation is a weak basis for reasoning. But, I'll play that game, too. AFAIK of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants who have been in this country, not a single one has been deported because s/he voted. So, it might not appear to be much of a risk for an illegal immigrant to register. Plus, the President's statement seemed to indicate that one's voting info wouldn't be used to cause deportation efforts.

      I'd love to see the Trump Administration announce that any illegal immigrant caught registering or voting would go to the front of the line for deportation. It would be interesting to see whether the reduction in Democratic votes was big or small.

      Delete
    7. Seems as if you say you can't say HOW MANY illegal votes were cast... since you seem to believe it was more than 2, can you name one case? And when you get to thousands, maybe someone, LIKE REPUBLICANS IN POWER will take you seriously and "go get them". Whitewater and Ben_Gha_zee prove the GOP will investigate ANYTHING.

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    8. David, you are wrong on all counts here.

      Obama clearly was not encouraging illegals to vote, he plainly was encouraging citizens with undocumented family members to vote without fear of retribution.

      The civil/criminal distinction is important and one will notice in mid-argument you suddenly dropped that concern, and oddly focused on the word "illegal".

      Your link is not an article but an opinion piece by disreputable Republican operative John Fund (plus his cold sores are gross, you have to wonder the source on that too!). The opinion piece does not provide "a lot of evidence suggesting that significant numbers of noncitizens cast ballots". In fact it provides no hard evidence, just supposition. Here are some actual articles:

      http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376

      http://archive.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131105arizona-immigrant-vote-fraud-rare.html

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/study-finds-strong-evidence-for-discriminatory-intent-behind-voter-id-laws/?utm_term=.9ae73b324458

      http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/

      http://www.factcheck.org/2013/01/voting-conspiracies/


      As a liberal, I am not opposed to regulations that target voter fraud, as long as they don't disenfranchise legal voters, or suppress voter turnout, which is the real purpose behind the Republicans' actions. Indeed, if we had greater voter turnout, Republicans would win few elections.

      Delete
    9. David says:

      AFAIK of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants who have been in this country, not a single one has been deported because s/he voted. So, it might not appear to be much of a risk for an illegal immigrant to register.


      But in the previous commenters link there is an article documenting such a case. David as far as you know is about as far as your own selfish desires.

      Delete
  4. "The left loves humanity and hates people." Which means they live to loathe and professed "love of humanity" is just another cudgel with which to hate. Enough people figured this out to elect Trump.

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    1. Those that elected Trump seem to be the more hateful of anyone. The left is admiral because inspite of how much they hate Republican voters, the left still works hard to better the Republican voters' lives.

      Delete
  5. False equivalence: liberals have been wrong, but are they really as inane as the woman ranting about illegals voting?

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  6. "When major figures deceive the public, that in itself is news."

    THIS!

    Yet I am reading this post exactly 5 minutes after I read an email from Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

    Art Junior is writing to let me know that he will have to raise the price of my NYTimes subscription starting in January.

    While his paper continues to fail in this important way.

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  7. "We liberals often enjoy kicking down at the regular people who get conned by disinformation. We're less inclined to kick up at the people who deliberately deceive them, or at other powerful entities which enable the endless deception."

    BRAVO BOB. Key point.

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    1. I am not convinced these people are actually deceived. I think they tend to know the truth but continue the deception for their own selfish purposes. Bob seems to think these "regular people" are dumb, which I wouldn't necessarily argue, but they are very savvy nonetheless.

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    2. This from the people who bought "hands up don't shoot" and Rolling Stone's Jackie rape and every other hoax.

      Delete
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