Is it possible to fact-check?

There is no greater priority in the USA than finding a way to debunk lies and check on facts. All sides hurl assertions and leave it to citizens to decide which ones to believe. But in today's partisan echo-chambers, the choice nearly always depends on what sounds and feels "truthy." 

This is not the way adults operate! Politics used to at least bear slightly on confirmable-falsifiable factual evidence. That is, it did, before we entered a virulent 8th phase of the American Civil War.

Ponder what might happen if we all had a reliable place - or better yet, a suite of diverse and even competing places - where trustworthy folks could demolish some, maybe most, of today's howlers? Indignation-incantation junkies on the far-left and today's entire-right loathe that idea. Especially, Fox and ClearChannelRadio fought hard to end the Rebuttal Rule that would expose their audience to "here's disproof!" refutation.

Those attempting to verify evidence face a skilled immune system. Confederates denounce any attempt at fact-checking as "partisan."

"So what’s the basis for claims that, say, PolitiFact is biased?" explains Paul Krugman in Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias. 

"Hey, The arch-rightwing Weekly Standard explained the criteria: "Surveys done by the University of Minnesota and George Mason University have shown that the supposedly impartial “fact checking” news organization (PolitiFact) rates Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims...

"Notice the implicit assumption here," -- Krugman concludes -- "namely, that impartial fact-checking would find an equal number of false claims from each party. But what if – bear with me a minute – Republicans actually make more false claims than Democrats?"

Those who try my Questionnaire on Ideology, face a discomforting realization - that all of us have the same reflex: "My adversaries believe what they do because of propaganda or malignant purpose; but my beliefs come from logical appraisal of the evidence." 

Can "fact-checkers" be biased? Sure. That's not the smoking gun.

In fact, we're all koolaid-drinkers, to some degree. (We're human, after all -- at least until uplift or the arrival of AI.)  But the American/Western renaissance always depended on a majority of our citizens tempering this willful delusion with a grounding in pragmatic tools of evidence, even a willingness to murmur the sacred incantation of science: "I might be wrong."

And that is why the risen Confederacy must wage all-out war on every fact-centered profession. 

The smoking volcano is the confederates' refusal to ever offer up their own plan for a neutral fact-checking service!

== So what's to be done? ==

Over and over I have explained... confederates still have one zone where they accept the primacy of fact -- in wagers! Their macho will shrivel if they are faced with a bald challenge: 

"We dare you to offer up names of top conservative-adult sages who can help set up a neutral fact-checking service!"

Consider how this confrontation - (to date never used by even a single pundit, journalist, or Democratic politician) -- puts them in a bind.  

   --  If they refuse, they can be taunted with great effectiveness, that they are too cowardly to actually check on the 'fake news.'

   --  If they offer up loonies, that will help drive off their last fact-people. And mark this well: there are at least 10 million agonized "ostrich republicans" who may desert that fragile coalition, as many recently did in Alabama, if they get a 'last straw.'

   --  If they offer genuine adults to such a fact-checking endeavor, then those adults will betray the GOP and Fox, by saying: "that's not true." 

After the last 18 months, can we all agree that we need new tactics! 
Can we at least try this one? 

Make no mistake: the War on Science - and the war on all fact-using professions - constitutes the core of this treason. If we confront it boldly, then there may be a light.

By letting ourselves get distracted into symbolism and minutiae, we prove ourselves to be the fools.

== "Asserting something makes it so!" ==

Muslims celebrating on the roofs on September 11, 2001. Ted Cruz's father being involved in the JFK assassination. The largest inaugural crowds ever. Obama wire-tapping Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Three to 5 million people voting illegally in the election. And now DT is back to Birtherism! Claiming "evidence" he never shows, and plans to "sue" the almost twenty women who accused him of sexual assault... but never getting around to suing.

Or asking the IRS to stop the "audit" so he can share his tax returns. Or asking them to verify THAT there is an audit. "In Trump's first 298 days in office, Trump said 1,628 things that were either misleading or totally false, according to calculations made by the Washington Post's Fact Checker." 

My contribution to all this? Just perspective. (It's my job.) Squint and realize: this is how all our ancestors lived, all the time! No one could tell the king, or priest, or lords "that's not true and here's proof." 

We have lived in what was - historically - a bizarre experiment in reciprocal criticism and accountability. Adam Smith and the American Founders tried to embed this magical solution to human delusion, and it still lives! It has given us everything -- wealth, science, freedom -- but it is being torn down....

...by those who seek to restore feudalism. And it isn't just the oppression we should fear. It is the concomitant quality that always comes with that dismal formula.

Bad governance. Delusion,

Stupidity.

== Doing it right! ==

Peter Diamandis offers an excellent case for optimism! This ebook - Evidence of Abundance (free to download) should help stoke your determination not to let troglodytes yank us backward. Technology isn't the only factor than can help save us! Satiability, deferred gratification and avid use of the problem-perceiving prefrontal lobes are all urgent.  All of those can combine with guarded optimism and help us confidently act to save the world and our children.

Peter’s goal here is to help you “protect your abundance mindset despite this barrage of negative news. Consider this ebook as “conversational capital” for your dinner table conversations or some inspirational reading for your travels" this holiday.

== Using a private KGB/Smersh/SECTRE to bypass the “deep state” ==

If even a quarter of this is true, it demonstrates just how confident the new plantation lords are, that they’ll soon cancel or over-ride the foremost American tradition: rule-of-law. 

Former Blackwater head (and Trump cabinet-brother) Erik  Prince is apparently setting up - with Oliver North and financed by Trumpist oligarchs - a secret and private intelligence agency, intended to supply both information and ‘operations’ independent from our sworn officers in accountable agencies like the CIA and FBI. 

Those sworn federal officers are deemed too much part of the reviled “deep state”… the code phrase to dismiss fact-users who are answerable to laws and Congressional oversight and a free citizenry, and not to deep-pocket oligarchs. Horrors. Can’t have that.

How to stand up to the Kremlin: in the hifalutin-cogent journal Foreign Affairs, former VP Joe Biden and Michael Carpenter show in-detail that we are already mired in a kind of existential struggle… one that science fiction legend Frederik Pohl called “Cool War.” (Get the novel by that name. Its current plausibility will terrify you.)  Biden and his colleague lay out overwhelming evidence that a foreign regime - actually about two dozen, united in alliance — are using every means at their disposal to bring down America and the West and the entire Enlightenment Experiment.

In a few places, Ol’ Joe slightly oversimplifies: “In contrast to the Soviet Union, however, contemporary Russia offers no clear ideological alternative to Western democracy. Russia’s leaders invoke nationalist, populist, and statist slogans or themes, but the Kremlin’s propaganda machine shies away from directly challenging the core precepts of Western democracy: competitive elections, accountability for those in power, constitutionally guaranteed rights, and the rule of law. Instead, the Kremlin carefully cultivates a democratic façade, paying lip service to those principles even as it subverts them.”

In fact, the members of the anti-west consortium have made it plain that very very concepts of democracy and rule-of-law are to be disdained.  Moreover, we see the rump intelligencia on the U.S. right parroting identical themes, e.g. declaring that “democracy and freedom are incompatible.”

(Here is where I demolish that obnoxious mystical catechism.)

There are many aspects that Biden leaves hanging… like what will happen to Siberia, when Russia’s population plummets while millions of Chinese cross over as “businessmen.” (I'm taking bets over whether Siberia has already been pre-sold, while our eyes are diverted to the South China Sea.)

Then there is the U.S. right’s obsession with symbolism — that all is well, so long as former KGB agents wear crosses in the Kremlin, instead of hammers and sickles. (The symbolism obsession, made plain.)

But Biden’s detailed appraisal of corrupt and corrupting practices merits your attention, your sober reflection… and it means that moves by certain western officials to discredit and weaken NATO amount to… well… I am thinking of a T-Word.

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The downside of political amnesia

By the time you read this, we'll all know the outcome from the Alabama Senate race. And either way, it is a cautionary tale about the perils of plunging into phase 8 of the American Civil War.

You’ve also heard about an effort by well-known political fraudster James O’Keefe and his organization Project Veritas to entrap the Washington Post newspaper into publishing a false story about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, with the obvious intention of discrediting the well-documented allegations that Moore preyed on teenage girls when he was in his 30s. This Post writer - Paul Waldman - has a right to be angry… but also should take a stress pill.

“If you’re a Republican voter, I have some bad news for you. The people who lead the movement that supposedly represents your views — the politicians, the media figures, the activists — think you’re an idiot. In fact, they count on it…. This is much larger than O’Keefe or this one Senate race. It’s about a poison of exploitation and deceit that courses through the conservative movement. Some conservatives have tried to expunge this poison, without success. If anything, the scam has gotten even more pervasive and influential.”

Okay, take a breath, big fellah.  Pace yourself. In fact, I have nothing against baited tests of integrity being applied to all sorts of professions.  But they should be evenhanded and citizens should note when it snares members of their own party.  Not much chance of that, alas.

Anyway, you didn't expect the goal posts to shift, yet again?  Used to be that divorce was a sure killer for any Republican candidate. Then came Reagan and suddenly third or even fourth marriages are dismissed with a shrug. Vices like gambling become normalized, when casino lords make up a large part of your party's donor base. 

The goal post shifts regarding Climate Change have been epic! (First: "Glaciers are spreading!" Then: "There's been no warming for 20 years!" Then: "Okay it's getting plenty hotter but... but it's the sun! Yeah, that's the ticket!" Then: "Who cares about doomed Florida, if I can buy melting tundra in the Yukon!")

So calm down. Normalizing pedophiles and sexual predators is only part of the "normal" pattern.

== Don't be distracted from the core matter -- war ==

Everything I predicted about the looming Iran-U.S. “Potemkin war” is coming true, as anti-democratic forces converge on the same scenario. See: Iran’s hard-liners use Trump’s rhetoric to target rivals at home. "Escalating tensions with the United States have stirred nationalist sentiment in Iran, giving its hard-liners an opportunity to more fiercely target critics and settle old scores, rights advocates and analysts say."

Exactly as predicted. This run-up to war is a choreographed dance..

== The Soros Amnesia Effect ==

Google partnered with an organization largely funded by billionaire George Soros to “fact-check” news stories, a move that could affect search results for certain news agencies. The new group’s code of principles requires news agencies to obey five commitments to ensure news agencies remain honest, transparent and nonpartisan. 

And yes, there are denunciations that Soros - called by some “the Great Meddler - is using this excuse to gain propaganda advantage, as slyly implied in this article. (Only, note the source! RT, the official Kremlin mouthpiece.)

“Soros was recently criticised for transferring nearly $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations, making it the second largest charity in the US after the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation. The charity has been accused of inciting so-called “color revolutions” to install governments friendly to the US.”

Ah Soros.  All across the right-o-sphere, from Glen Beck and Fox to Alex Jones and Breitbart, George Soros is declaimed, often as Enemy #1. In their ravings about him, they illustrate the “true lie” technique. When a fellow is rich and strong enough to sue, you attack with half-truths. 

Glen Beck led the way, shouting "George Soros is so powerful he toppled EIGHT FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS!!!!"

Now, I’ll surprise you by agreeing with Beck. This lie is based on a true statement. George Soros did in fact help to topple eight foreign governments! But does it occur to any of the Beck-Breitbart-Fox watchers to ask their hypnotizers to name those foreign regimes that George Soros helped to topple? 

Is it a sign of the quality of this audience that no one asked or considered it pertinent? None of the alt-right blogs, not Fox, no one at all… and sadly, no one on the left or in mainstream media bothered, either. No one asked for the list of foreign governments that George Soros “toppled.” Why? Was it simple, dullard incuriosity? 

Can you name them? It seems a simple enough question. I ask it in perfect friendliness. There’s a hint, even in the recent RT article. And it shows that - yes - George Soros has been a master meddler!  But he has always been on our side. 

And those denouncing him are not. 

== Oh the “Uranium” thing… subsidized by guess who? ==

One outcome of the Paradise Papers imbroglio: Offshore cash helped fund Steve Bannon's attacks on Hillary Clinton, especially channeled in secret from Robert Mercer.

Oh, when your crazy Uncle screeches about “selling all our Uranium to Russia," ask him to state clearly what supposedly happened? And then put money on it in a wager! Over whether: 

(1) whether Hillary Clinton had anything to do with the decision (she didn’t),

(2) whether the Russians got any Uranium (they didn’t; a Russian company bought a Canadian mining company that owns land where maybe 20% of U.S. reserves might (estimates) lie deeply buried),

(3) whether she was bribed (show one scrap of evidence. Nine U.S. agencies and half a dozen Canadian ones signed off on the purchase; were all of them bribed?)

(4) This 'uranium sale' (that actually sold no uranium) helps to “arm” Russia? Hmm…. Maybe over a decade or more. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Yeltsin sold us almost all of their loose Plutonium…. hundreds of bombs’ worth, and already refined. So I guess the screams were louder, over there.

In a more general sense, you folks have been denouncing the Clintons for 25 years. In just taxpayer funded investigations (not counting right wing private eyes) the cost has neared half a billion dollars of our money. For much of that time, the GOP owned every single branch of government , ordering vast resources to seek even a single Clintonian "smoking gun." And to date, what's proved, or even indictable?

Nada, zip. This doesn't utterly prove the Clintons totally innocent!  (Though let's see you survive that kind of 25 year dissection, hm?) 

What it does prove is that the entire GOP political caste is so incompetent they shouldn't be trusted with a burnt match. Seriously. You can't nail the "worst humans alive" after 25 years spent prying into every single file or pimple or pore? A cynic might suggest you guys are siding with Idiocracy. 

== Bait n' switch ==

Paul Ryan announces a 4th tax bracket for "the rich," and thus hopes to distract from the core goals of theTax Bill. 

- to end the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) that assures the uber-wealthy pay at least something into the civilization that defends them.

- to end the Inheritance Tax. While you pay state and federal on the income you sweated for, some brat scion-heir will get billions tax free, because you weren't paying attention. The Inheritance Tax is by-far the fairest tax, helping to prevent a return to 6000 years of feudalism. And it need never be paid! Just leave your kids the exempt $10 million and assign the rest to a charitable foundation of your own choosing, to sing your generous name down the ages!

- the slashed corporate tax rate won't be spent much on productive capacity or jobs or R&D. These weren't incentivized and profitable companies were already spending their cash on stock buy-backs. (Which the Greatest Generation wisely made illegal.) This will let the 5000 member of the CEO caste fulfill their golden option plans while buying oligarch-owned stock at top prices, just before a recession. It is the part of the bill that has the aristocracy drooling.

This is the attempted oligarchic coup in its rawest form. Note that it is not the self-made, genius inventor tech-billionaires or makers or producers who are fighting for this. Most of them are democrats! (Or libertarians: another story.) 

No, it's the stupid ones - resource extractors who buy sweetheart deals through political influence, K Street "swamp" lobbyists, Wall Street parasite cheaters, lordly heirs, foreign sheiks and Cayman moguls - who actually manage to convince themselves that something like this will stand for long, before Americans eventually turn to one kind of revolution -- the moderate, rooseveltean variety preferred by the Greatest Generation -- or else another, less-moderate kind. 

Look up the word "tumbrels." See my earlier posting: Class War and the Lessons of History.

== Some conservatives can see what's in front of their faces ==

On his newsletter - Thoughts from the Frontine - John Mauldin struggles to maintain a nearly extinct species – the sane American conservative. And that means accepting facts, now and then, as illustrated by the following chart from John’s friend, billionaire Ray Dalio, one of the smart moguls who recognize that revolution is coming, and wants it to be one of those mild ones.

The red line is the share of US wealth owned by the bottom 90% of the population, and the green line is the share held by the top 0.1%. Right now they are about the same – the top 0.1% owns as much as the bottom 90% -- but notice the trend. The wealthiest 0.1% has been increasing its share of wealth since the 1980s, or the dawn of Supply Side “economics” -- while the bottom 90% has been losing ground. 

Says Mauldin: “Looking back, we see a similar pattern in the 1920s – which dramatically reversed in the following decade. Then there was an almost 50-year period during which the masses gained wealth and the wealthy lost ground. This doesn’t mean the 0.1% ceased being wealthy. It just means they owned a smaller portion of the total wealth. An economy in which 0.1% of the people own 10% of the wealth is still skewed, just less so.”

Yes, and I hope we can do as well as the Greatest Generation -- when America proved its 'greatness' -- and when the most adored American was the fellow who saved the republic from a communist revolution and put us on the road to prosperity, might and success. You know who.

== The real war, made utterly explicit! ==

Never has the war on all fact-users been more explicit than conveyed by the Core Loon himself, Rush Limbaugh. 

On Fox, they’ll whinge: “

we aren’t anti-science! We’re just urging you to assume scientists (and all other fact-professions) are all mealy-mouth, conformist-corrupt liars. We know and love science better than scientists!” 

Hypocrites. 

But Rush is blatant and in the open, See the image he originated, that’s circulating the web like mad. Hatred of all fact-using professions is now the main Confederate article of faith.

From Thomas Paine "To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."