History has a tendency to repeat itself at times when you least expect it. Or, if you pay attention to Leftist rhetoric (which may be against the Geneva Convention, or at the very least the 2024 Shriners Convention), it happens every time a Republican gets into office. And if you’re not paying attention, you will Nazi this coming.
See what I did there?
In the waning hours of the Brick Tamland Administration, history repeated itself when he announced the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. This sentiment was echoed by Queen Kamala the Unappointed (see what I did there?), Senator Kirsten “I’m Angela from ‘The Office’ Without the Charm” Gillibrand, and Leftist groups like the Center for American Progress. And just like the previous times the Equal Rights Amendment was at the center of conversation, advocates are proclaiming its necessity to ensure equality between/among the sexes.
Yeah, about that…
Equal Rights Amendment
What the Left thinks it means – a ratified Constitutional Amendment necessary to ensure equality of the sexes
What it really means – an irrelevant Constitutional Amendment that Leftists want to enshrine anyway
Although it’s become a hot topic, the Equal Rights Amendment has a bit of a history. It was first proposed in 1923 as part of the women’s suffrage movement. Eventually, the ERA finally came into being as a proposed Amendment in 1972. The wording is as follows:
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
This is where things get a little tricky for the ERA. Although it was passed by both houses of Congress, 38 states still had to ratify it, and there was a time limit placed on it. This time frame expired on June 30, 1982. So, that should be the end of it, right?
Ooooh, sor-ray. The Left continued to push for the ERA to be ratified like they would get an ice cream cone after it happened. Well, that explains why Brick Tamland was hot and heavy to get it ratified. Anyway, Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in January 2020, barely missing the deadline by…let me check my notes here…almost 40 years. So, so close…
In spite of this, the Left continued to push for the ERA to be ratified because a) the conditions were met aside from the time frame, and b) they really wanted women to have equal protection as men. You know, back when they thought there were only two genders? (And at the break, it’s still Genders 2, Leftists 0.)
On the surface, what the ERA stands for is pretty reasonable and a good step. We love people to be treated equally in theory. These days, though, the practice is situational and only when we’re directly impacted. You know, just like when Leftists support police officers until they don’t? And, surprise surprise, the Left is the same way when it comes to women.
The Equal Rights Amendment has become obsolete because society has changed without it. Today, women occupy many high profile positions in business, politics, OnlyFans, and so on. In some areas, they’ve even surpassed men. Maybe it’s just me, but the fact women have these positions shows the ERA is a non-starter. What more equality do women need that isn’t already covered by laws and society?
The quickest answer for the Left is abortion, or as they call it “bodily autonomy” or “health care.” Or maybe they can just call it infrastructure like they did everything else for a time. But even this fails with a cursory knowledge of recent Supreme Court rulings that made abortion a state issue rather than a federal issue. Then, there’s the logic problem. Abortion laws by definition affect women more than men because…and I can’t believe I have to say this in 2025…MEN CAN’T GET PREGNANT. Equality of rights based on sex can’t apply here because there is no equivalent male counterpart to abortion. Oops.
The wage gap? To my knowledge, there are no laws on the books right now mandating women be paid less than men for doing the same job. What’s more, there are already laws and practices on the books that prohibit it, thus the ERA would be a redundancy like having two Leftists scream about the pay gap when none would suffice.
So, this begs the question of why the Left hasn’t done anything substantive about the ERA since the Reagan era. The simple answer? Leftists don’t really give a fuck about women, just their votes and money. The more complex answer? Leftists need women to be victims, even if it’s self-inflicted victimhood. Challenging the ratification status of the ERA or even coming up with another attempt to ratify it when they had control of both houses of Congress was never a top priority to the Leftists in power. After all, we had to save the rare triple breasted albino puddle jumping raven! And how do I know that bird is rare?
Because I just made it up.
Imagine being a Leftist woman and having your equal rights take a back seat to an animal that may or (probably) not affect the world in any way, shape, or form. That should make any sensible Leftist female (a stretch, I know, but I like to dream) pack up shop, take their pink pussy hats, and look for a non-Leftist man to settle down with. But since they think they’re victims of “The Man” or “The Men” or “The Patriarchy,” they stay firmly planted in the back seat and let other causes take all the attention.
And the ERA is part is the mythical carrot that keeps them there.
But there is another angle that few, if any, have explored: the impact the ERA will have on the trans community. While it’s easy and fun to mock the Left’s inability to follow actual science and conclude most people fall into one gender or the other, there is a perverse genius involved. If we accept the Left’s idea that even genders are more complex than they actually are and that there are more that can be claimed merely with an assertion, it throws a lot of things into question.
Like…oh I don’t know…the Equal Rights Amendment.
Once the Left gets a foothold on a legal matter, they will use it as a catapult for other matters only tangentially related to the original matter. That’s how the gay rights movement went from merely asking to be treated like regular people to “bake the cake, bigot.”
I have no hard data to back this up (aside from the fact the Left abandons women like Leonardo DiCaprio does when they turn 25), but having seen how the Left has used other social issues to push an alternate agenda, I can’t rule out the possibility of the ERA being “ratified” by Presidential fiat being used to further their transgender agenda. Or as I am calling it the transgenda.
See what I did there?
Although the Left is going to call the next steps in the ratification process uncertain, that’s only because they know as much about the Constitution as they do about economics: very little, but they’ll still try to convince you otherwise. The fact remains the Equal Rights Amendment had its shot to be ratified within the time limit Congress set and it wasn’t. No matter how many social media posts or proclamations from current and former political figures get made, the ERA is DOA, and it doesn’t l0ok like the Left wants to do the heavy lifting to make it a priority.
Which is fine by me. I’m not a fan of redundancy except when it comes to my jokes and pop culture references, but it’s clear America has moved past the notion that women have only certain societal roles. Now, we can confidently say women can fuck shit up just as well as men can!
Month: January 2025
Extremist Makeover: Congressional Hearings Edition
If you’re like me (and if you are, I’m sorry), you’re tired of watching Congressional hearings. Whether it’s a Presidential appointee or a witness addressing the ever-important question of who let the dogs out, the script never changes.
1. The Congresscritters who support what the person says/believes throws more softballs than at any given summer weekend.
2. The Congresscritters who reject what the person says/believes will come up with the most bizarre “gotcha” questions designed to make them look like they know what they’re talking about. (Spoiler Alert: if they’re in Congress, it’s usually a good bet they don’t.)
3. Both sides get to crow about how well their Congresscritters did.
4. Nobody changes their minds and votes usually fall along party lines.
5. Congresscritters get paid for doing next to nothing.
Clearly, this is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, especially from an entertainment perspective. If there’s no mystery about the outcome, you run the risk of being predictable and the audience looking for something else to watch. The attention span of many adults is shorter than that of a ferret high on truck stop speed and with a pure espresso and cane sugar IV drip. So, we have to find a way to hook people early and keep them hooked. And since cocaine is neither free nor legal, that idea is out the window.
One tack to take is to turn every hearing into a reality show. Granted, there’s a good chance the boneheads in DC will find a way to screw this up, but there’s a reason shows like “Big Brother” and “Survivor” keep getting renewed: we get to see people at their best and worst. The human drama is the best drama we have and often we don’t need to do much to bring it out. In most cases, all it takes is for the barista to get your order wrong for it to come flowing out.
A Congressional hearing made like a reality show would be a way to get more eyes on the product and make it more exciting. But we can’t stop there! We will need a panel of judges to point out the high and low points of each person, both Congresscritter and witness/nominee. Plus, it will give Simon Cowell work for the rest of his life, so that’s a draw right there! Just get two or three more people and you have your panel.
And of course, there’s sex. Sex sells, so we have to find a way to add a bit of spice (Channel, that is) to the proceedings. Since people can and usually are dragged through the mud during their hearings, why not bring actual mud into the equation? That’s right, boys and girls, I’m talking about mud wrestling! Granted some of the matches we’d get would be like watching the ladies from “The View” in a burlesque revue, but there are some that would make it well worth the wait. It could also be used to settle squabbles between Congresscritters. Imagine if Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had taken their disputes into a kiddie pool full of mud instead of dueling. History would be forever changed, and a lot more exciting!
Of course, this approach may remove the gravitas of the hearings, but I would argue it was already removed before I got involved. However, I do understand that concern and I have another solution, and we can all be a part of it. Every chair in the hearing room gets wired to a light, but noticeable electric shock. If the audience feels a Congresscritter or a witness/nominee isn’t telling the truth, is avoiding the question, or is acting the fool, we get to push a button and shock them! Not only will it increase audience participation, but there’s a chance it could work as negative reinforcement so they behave. Get shocked enough, and even the most offensive Congresscritter would get straight and fly right.
Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff, consider this your warning.
There’s one more alternative I can give that would remove the clowns from this Congressional three-ring circus The Constitution states the Senate has the right of “advice and consent” when it comes to federal nominees, but it doesn’t say how this advice and consent has to be given. With the advent of social media (and, yes, I guess that counts Bluesky), do we need to spend the time, money, and room space to hold a hearing? This can be done over Zoom, Teams, or any other teleconferencing service and the nominees won’t even need to get out of their pajamas if they choose. Imagine a candidate for the Secretary of Education being grilled while in a Spongebob onesy! Not only would it be cute and enjoyable, but it would elevate the perception of Congressional hearings.
Of course, the politicians would hate this idea because FaceTime wouldn’t give them the media facetime they need to feed their egos. All the more reason to do it!
Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to improve Congressional hearings!
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
With the incoming Trump Administration, there are going to be a lot of confirmation hearings for his Cabinet. And without exception, Leftists are obsessed with qualifications. To hear them speak (and I’m not sure why you would want to), none of Trump’s appointees have the basic qualifications to tie their own shoes, let alone run a section of the American government.
Let’s just say the irony is not lost on your humble correspondent.
But what exactly do Leftists mean when they talk about qualifications? Good question, and I hope I have a good answer, or at least an answer entertaining enough that you won’t throw your computer in the dumpster.
qualifications
What the Left thinks it means – important characteristics that show someone is capable of doing the job
What it really means – qualities politicians have little room to talk about
First, a bit of a rabbit hole to set up the shitshow proper. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the responsibility of advice and consent. Under normal conditions, this can be a useful tool to determine whether a potential government official has the knowledge, background, and judgment necessary to fulfill the duties of the role. Under current conditions, it’s a way for know-nothing assholes to preen for the cameras and look for their “gotcha” moments. And that’s when the Senate is being less horrible than usual.
Through this advice and consent process, nominees get dragged in front of Senate committees and either given more ball gagging than on a gay porn set (not that I know anything about that, mind you) or a gauntlet of nonsensical, partisan bullshit questions that makes you wonder if the Senators asking them actually want to hear from the nominee.
In other words, any given Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
The reason qualifications is such a buzz word recently is because Democrats and Leftists want to make the public at large believe everyone Trump nominates is dumber than a bag of hammers, even if they have more experience than the assholes asking the questions. And when these assholes aren’t asking gotcha questions, they’re heading to their favorite media outlets to brag about what they did, and so they can get their balls sucked.
Yes, even the women, or for any Leftist reading this, birthing people.
Although we would like to get the best people for the job, there’s one significant hurdle: the best people for the job wouldn’t take it because it would be a downgrade. For most people, getting a cushy government job where you couldn’t get fired even if you tried would be a dream. But within that dream, there is the nightmare of being stagnant. Great ideas rarely get implemented, excellence is seen as a detriment, and good employees are pushed to be as mediocre as they can be. And qualifications? It’s more about connections or other factors unrelated to the job than it is about whether you can do it.
That’s one of the reasons I chuckle when the Left starts talking about how unqualified Trump’s appointees are. Leftist hate achievement and want everybody to be equally…meh. Just check the right boxes and you, too, can be the Undersecretary of Beverage Acquisition for the Undersecretary of Waste Disposal under the Secretary of Environmental Justice, Transgender Division. In other words, you’re getting coffee for trash collectors under someone who got a shitty degree that couldn’t get you hired by a temp agency.
And it might give you a fast track to being in Congress or some President’s Cabinet if you play your cards right. Just ask Pete Buttigieg.
Which brings me to another reason I’m chuckling a lot at Leftists demanding Trump’s appointees be qualified: they’re responsible for confirming some of the Brick Tamland Administration’s worst picks, like Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation. Not to pick on Mayor Pete here, but what in the wide world of fuck were his qualifications? Fixing roads in South Bend, Indiana.
Let’s ask the people of East Palestine, Ohio, how they feel about his qualifications for Secretary of Transportation. That is if you can get them to drop their pitchforks and torches at the mention of his name.
The fact many of the same Senators who question the qualifications of Trump’s appointees thought nothing of the lack of qualifications of many appointees of the Brick Tamland Administration makes me want to tell them to take a seat, but that wouldn’t be any fun.
That comes when you ask these sanctimonious assholes obsessed with qualifications to pontificate on the California wildfires, where the people in charge aren’t qualified to run a free water outlet in the desert, let alone fighting a major fire. I would particularly like to hear from new Senator Adam Schiff, one of the ones who keeps warning us about the dangers of having incompetent people in positions of power. Or he could just look in the mirror to see an incompetent person in power.
Yeah, I went there. And I’ll continue to go there so much, I’ll get my mail forwarded there.
The whole kerfluffle over qualifications right now is based on partisanship, just like it has been with previous appointees from both sides. As much as I like Ted Cruz (which is slightly more than I like most politicians), his questioning of Ketanji Jackson Brown over issues like Critical Race Theory only feed into the problem. Which gives me an idea for an Extremist Makeover, but that’s a blog post for a different time.
In the meantime, it should be pointed out these hearings are like the plot of a horrible mystery novel: you know what’s going to happen before we get to the end because it’s so fucking obvious. Democrats are going to vote against the nominees, Republicans will vote for the nominees, both sides are going to claim victory, and the qualification kerfluffle gets tossed aside.
And we’ll get stuck with the results.
So, yay, I guess?
Unlocking the Keys
With all of the post-2024 Election analyses, there’s been a lot of talk about Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys, the factors he’s used to predict 9 of the past 11 Presidential elections. A lot of talk, but not a lot of analysis, per se. Oh, you had your share of squawking heads on both pointing out how the 13 Keys failed this election, but not a lot of thought as to why.
Well, since I lack hobbies, I decided to do a bit of research and analysis of my own and what I found out might change a few minds.
Before we get into the boring stuff, we have to set our parameters, i.e. know what we’re talking about. After all, this isn’t MSNBC, so we can’t get away with spouting off without having facts.
Lichtman’s Keys are as follows:
Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Under Lichtman’s model, a successful candidate has to win at least 8 of these Keys. And considering its track record, it would be hard to imagine a scenario where the Keys failed.
This is where things get a little tricky, and where most of the post-election analysis surrounding the Keys stopped. The consensus was the Keys were wrong, which negatively impacts Lichtman and the model itself. However, that’s far too simplistic and inaccurate an assessment. Based on my own analysis, the Keys still work and worked in the 2024 election.
Where the failure occurred is in the interpretation of the data. Whenever you do any kind of social research, there is always a chance one’s personal beliefs can find their way into the analysis of the findings. If you’re not careful, you go from letting the data drive your conclusions to rooting for a particular conclusion and retroactively figuring out how it came to pass.
To be fair, observation bias isn’t limited to the “soft sciences.” There are some prime examples of hard sciences being sucked into the wonderful world of bias. The difference is in the ability to reconstruct the experiment to test the hypothesis further. With hard science, the way to do that is clear, but with soft science, it’s unclear, if not impossible, to reproduce the outcomes. We can set up similar conditions, but the passage of time, the introduction of new information, or even just the possibility of a changed opinion limit the effectiveness and accuracy of the reproduction.
Setting all that aside (because it gets pretty close to migraine-inducing territory for me), the important takeaway is the data is the data. It’s how we interpret it that creates the opening for bias to affect the outcome.
I can’t say for certain Lichtman’s prediction that Vice President Kamala Harris would win 9 of the 13 keys was based on bias rather than a difference in interpreting the data. Prior to 2024, the only other time in recent history that the Keys didn’t accurately predict the outcome was in 2000 when he predicted Al Gore would defeat George W. Bush. His explanation for why the Keys didn’t predict the winner then? Bush stole the election.
That suggests to me he may have a bias issue when it comes to elections he feels strongly about, and he has made it clear he’s not a Trump supporter by any means. Having said that, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt here and chalk the 2024 election prediction failure to just having an off night. More grace than he deserves? Maybe, but feel free to excoriate me in the comments.
Lichtman’s prediction for 2024 were as follows:
The following nine keys line up in favor of the incumbent Democrats.
Contest Key 2: The Democrats have united in near unanimity behind Harris.
Third-Party Key 4: In recognition of his fading support, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign. His endorsement of Donald Trump does not impact this key.
Short-Term Economy Key 5: It is too late for a recession to take hold of the economy before the election. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which provides the most reliable assessment of recessions, typically takes a few months to establish that the economy has fallen into a recession (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020).
Long-Term Economy Key 6: Real per-capita growth during the Biden term far exceeds the average of the previous two presidential terms.
Policy Change Key 7: Biden has fundamentally changed the policies of the Trump administration in areas such as the environment and climate change, infrastructure, immigration, taxes, and women’s and civil rights.
Social Unrest Key 8: Despite sporadic demonstrations, social unrest has not risen to the level needed to forfeit this key: massive, unresolved unrest that threatens the stability of society as in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Scandal Key 9: Republicans in Congress have tried and failed to pin a scandal on President Biden. His son Hunter’s crimes do not count as scandal, which to do so must implicate the president himself and generate bipartisan recognition of wrongdoing.
Foreign/Military Success Key 11: President Biden and Biden alone forged the coalition of the West that kept Putin from conquering Ukraine and then undermining America’s national security by threatening its NATO allies. Biden’s initiatives will go down in history as an extraordinary presidential achievement.
Challenger Charisma Key 13: As explained, Trump does not fit the criteria of a once-in-a-generation, broadly appealing, transformational candidate like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan.
Seems like a lock, right? Not quite.
I have no dog in this hunt since I didn’t vote for either Trump or Harris, so my analysis shook out a bit differently. Instead of focusing on just the 9 keys Lichtman thought Harris would win, I think a look at all 13 would be helpful.
Here’s what I came up with.
Party Mandate: Although the 2022 midterm elections didn’t quite swing as far right as the GOP would have wanted, the fact remains they regained control of the House of Representatives. On that, Lichtman and I concur. Advantage: Trump.
Contest: Lichtman gave this one to Harris, but the conditions under which she received the nomination makes this a bit harder for me to concede this Key to her. At the beginning of the election cycle, Ms. Harris was still considered to be Vice President, in spite of the thoughts at the time she might be a drag on the ticket. The unity behind her didn’t come together until after the nomination process was truncated and she was allowed to take over for Joe Biden. Trump, on the other hand, went through a primary process where he had challengers of varying degrees of ineptitude. Even with that being the case, the GOP by and large got behind Trump from the outset. Thus, I have to give this one to the GOP. Advantage: Trump.
Incumbancy: Once Joe Biden dropped out, this Key became a moot point. Neither Trump nor Harris could claim this, so neither one would get the advantage from it. No Advantage.
Third Party: There was no significant third party presence in the 2024 election. The closest we had was Robert Kennedy, Jr. No Advantage.
Short Term Economy: Now, we’re getting into the fun stuff! Lichtman was correct when he said there was not a recession in play here. However, that doesn’t automatically mean the economy is strong. We may not have had a recession, but we still had to deal with an economy voters felt was in decline because, well, it was. Even if you consider the drop in the inflation rate to be a step in the right direction, it didn’t resonate with voters. For that reason, I cannot give Harris the nod as Lichtman did. Advantage: Trump.
Long Term Economy: Second verse, same as the first. Advantage: Trump.
Policy Change: Again, Lichtman correctly stated the Biden Administration changed policies put in place by the Trump Administration, which were certainly big, but for the wrong reasons because they were historically bad changes. (Inflation Reduction Act, anyone?) When asked what she would do differently, Harris couldn’t come up with anything, which meant she knowingly or inadvertently signed off on the policy changes Biden made, which were ultimately unpopular. Staying the course when you’re about to hit the rocks isn’t smart in real life or in politics. Advantage: Trump.
Social Unrest: One of the candidates got shot at twice after years of being called a fascist, and the other was Kamala Harris. That tells me there’s social unrest. Advantage: Trump.
Scandal: Sorry, sir, but you think President Biden was devoid of scandal, I have swamp land in Death Valley I’d love to sell you. This was one of the biggest blunders Lichtman had with his 2024 Keys because it ignored one of the biggest stories of last year: Biden’s declining mental faculties. That in and of itself (as well as the media’s cover-up) was a big enough scandal to swing this Key to Trump. Advantage: Trump.
Foreign or Military Failure: That was Joe Biden’s M.O. even back in his Congressional days. As we saw with the mess that was the Afghanistan withdrawal, there was no way for Biden to escape blame for it. And Harris was pretty much either a ghost on the scene or nodded in approval at whatever harebrained idea Biden came up with at the time. Trump didn’t have that problem because, well, he wasn’t Commander In Chief. Advantage: Trump.
Foreign/Military Success: Unless you count making President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine super rich, I got nothing. Advantage: Trump.
Incumbent Charisma/Hero: Even if you count Harris as the incumbent, she was a popularity void, as evidenced by the number of people who walked out of her rallies after the musical performances by big-name stars concluded. And Trump wasn’t the incumbent. It’s a wash. No Advantage.
Challenger Charisma/Hero: Say what you will about the man, Donald Trump has charisma and he imposed his will on the Harris campaign. Lichtman got this one completely wrong. Advantage: Trump.
So the final score from my analysis is 10 Keys for Trump, 0 for Harris, and 3 for No Advantage. And considering Trump won the White House, I’d say the Keys worked pretty good once possible bias (and definite missed calls) were accounted for. It may not have been the result Lichtman wanted, but from where I sit, the Keys worked to perfection, even if he didn’t.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
This was another week where you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a potential Lexicon entry. Although I’m not sure why you would want to swing a dead cat around, but I’m not here to kink shame. Let your freak flag fly, baby!
Out of all the potential subjects, one really stood out for me. In a move that shocked, well, not that many people, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta and all the social media sites under it would be moving away from its “fact checking” model (which literally fact-checked obvious jokes, thus making the model itself a joke) and moving more towards a Community Notes standard like what is being used on the Social Media Site Formerly Known As Twitter. This got Leftists all atwitter (or would that be aX) at the notion. Journalists (0r whatever the fuck Brian Stelter is) and Leftist hacks were up in arms at Zuck’s decision.
Which obviously means it was the right decision.
And it makes it perfect for a Leftist Lexicon entry.
fact checking
What the Left thinks it means – a vital service that should only be done by professionals
What it really means – finding out the truth and calling out the lies
One of the hardest things about being informed today is knowing who you can trust. Modern journalism is a hodgepodge of shitty sources sucking up to even shittier people so they can get invited to dinner parties with yet even shittier people. The Fourth Estate has become Leftist stenographers more than the bulldogs that will relentlessly seek the truth. Anymore, any journalists are lucky to stumble into the truth, and even then there’s a better than average chance they’ll completely miss it.
On its face, the idea of fact checking is a good thing, especially given the modern journalism as described above. We want to be informed, or at the very least seem informed to impress others. To that end, we look for sources that break things down for us and teach us things we didn’t know. With the sheer deluge of information sources, it’s hard to find a way to control the output of the fire hose.
Enter the fact checkers, doing the research for you so you don’t have to! It’s so easy and cheap to do, it’s a wonder why people don’t do this more often!
And that’s the problem.
When you pawn off anything you should do yourself, you are subject to the outcomes the other party produce. It’s like when you hire a contractor who farms out the work to a subcontractor. The job may get done, but it may not up to the standards the contractor has. Then it becomes a matter of people pointing fingers at one another trying to figure out who’s responsible for the kitchen sink being put in the attic.
When it comes to information, it’s a lot harder to fix the fuckups, mainly because no one wants to take responsibility for your being misinformed. You don’t want to admit you were a dumbass for believing a fact checker. The fact checker doesn’t want to admit fault because a) it looks reaaaallllly bad when a fact checker can’t figure out the truth, and b) it hurts their widdle fee-fees. The entity that hired the fact checkers doesn’t want to take the hit for the reasons mentioned above and because it erodes the trust the entity has, which ultimately costs them money.
In other words, when you rely on fact checkers to do your research for you, more often than not, you’re their bitch.
Then, there’s the lovely little problem of bias. In the early days of Facebook fact checking, the people doing it leaned so far left they were parallel to the ground while standing up. Once that got called out, Zuck tried to balance out the fact checkers and the checking itself, but only made it worse because some of the fact checkers had bias issues. Not a good look, kids!
Regardless of which side of the political/ideological aisle you’re on, bias fucks up your ability to be truly informed because it limits your scope of information sources. Social media has turned us back into a tribalistic society where anyone who deviates from what you consider to be normal, just, and right is an infidel and, thus, not even worthy of even basic human decency. When you face information from one of those “unclean” sources that contradicts your mindset, you have two choices: adapt, or reject.
I bring this up to underscore the problem with biased fact checking. If you have the opinion information from one side or the other is untrue (regardless of whether it’s factual), you are going to more inclined to reject it. And if you have the power to shape what other people see on a social media website like…oh I don’t know…Facebook, you are going to be tempted to hide the “bad” information and go after those who want it to be known.
There’s an old saying that applies here…something about absolute power and corruption…I’m sure it will come to me.
Anyway, the Facebook fact checkers fell into this trap, which caused a lot of accounts to get warnings, suspensions, and even terminations. And in some cases, actual news stories shared online got slapped with misinformation tags (I’m looking at you, Hunter Biden) and were subsequently suppressed. Oh, and I forgot to mention Zuck said he got pressure from the Brick Tamland Administration to suppress the laptop story.
And who got punished for suppressing this legitimate news story? The entities who shared it. I mean, why would people who actively worked towards misinformation by absence see any punishment for making people misinformed? That’s just crazy talk, man!
But it also exposes the danger of trusting fact checkers without verifying whether what they’re saying is factual. Just because you tell me you’re honest doesn’t mean I’m not gonna test you. And you shouldn’t just trust and believe either. News stories that sound too good to be true should be the first ones that should make your Bullshit Meter light up like the…biological discharges…in an hourly rate hotel room when you scan it with a blacklight flashlight.
Not that I know anything about that, mind you…
This is going to be a bit of an ask, but it’s going to make more sense if you do it. Question all of your sources while reaching out for alternative sources from a wider array of ideologies. Then, let common sense be your guide. If something sounds factual and makes sense, be open to accepting it. If something sounds like more full of bullshit than the world’s largest cattle ranch, then don’t trust it. Consider it mental calisthenics that will make you stronger, faster, better. And without the need for bionics!
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out how the typical Leftist sources are so upset Mark Zuckerberg is going in a new direction with fact checking. The way it was set up initially, the Left had the power over what got considered factual. Now, thanks to the advent and popularity of Community Notes, they no longer control the flow of information and can be called out for pushing misinformation while pretending to guard against it. And if you’re a Leftist media shill, the worst thing you can do is strip them of the power and the prestige of being information brokers and letting the hoi polloi point and laugh when you fuck up.
If I may offer a suggestion, media folks, maybe stop parroting Leftist squawking points and start doing your fucking jobs. There’s a reason used car salesmen are considered more trustworthy than the media and their fact checkers these days, and I can draw a pretty clear conclusion as to why. But I’m sure if you really put your hivemind to it, you’ll figure it out by the end of January.
Of the year 3843.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
With Donald Trump’s second Inauguration right around the corner, the Left has been acting mature and being deeply introspective about how Queen Kamala the Appointed lost, looking for a better way forward for 2028.
Just kidding! They’re still screaming like little bitches.
But this time around, their shrieking sounds…vaguely familiar. In fact, it was 4 years ago, if memory serves. It’s almost as if the Left…is denying the results of the 2024 election. After all, it’s impossible Trump won the popular vote against someone as beloved as Queen Kamala the Appointed, right?
Well, let’s just say everything old is hypocritical again. Back to the election denial well for another taste.
election denial
What the Left thinks it means – a valid expression of doubt over the results of the 2024 election
What it really means – hypocritical bullshit the Left uses to excuse losing so badly
There’s a popular idea in Leftist circles that Republicans can only win by cheating. That’s going to come as news to those of us who remember the 1984 election, where Ronald Reagan made Walter Mondale his bitch, but that’s not important right now. The point is Leftists have built up a belief they will always win elections unless there’s chicanery.
You know, like the Electoral College?
This time around, the excuses for Queen Kamala the Appointed’s loss are more frequent than my trips to the bathroom after eating Chipotle’s e-coli special. Elon Musk hacked the voting machines. There is evidence of election tampering, which is why the Harris campaign started collecting funds for what they call the “President’s Recount Account.” Trump had Russians call in fake bomb threats to polling places. There are 20 million missing votes. And, because these are Leftists we’re dealing with here, a ton of hashtags.
To be fair, there has been election denial from both the Left and the Right in recent years, but of the two sides, the Left has had the election denial thing on lockdown. But after the 202o election where the President Brick Tamland got more votes than Barack fucking Obama (something I’m still questioning because it makes zero sense), the Left turned their popular electoral pastime into…fostering an insurrection! Yep, if you even sounded like you were questioning the outcome of the most secure election in history (according to the same Leftists saying the 2024 election was stolen), you were on par with those evil, dastardly, no-good, utterly despicable insurrectionists who…let me read my notes here…were mostly peaceful (as opposed to the “mostly peaceful” protests in 2020 where shit got broken and set on fire), with only a handful of asshats who did more than just peaceably assemble.
Well, if that’s the case, better get me a buffalo hat.
Of course, it’s not, but the Left made the rules, so that means I get to call each and every one of them who denies the 2024 election insurrectionists and, thus, subject to jail time and other legal overreactions. I hear Gitmo is nice this time of year…
Seriously, though, we should not be afraid to call bullshit if there’s actual bullshit being presented as truth. To date, I have yet to see any convincing evidence of any of the Left’s election denial, but I have seen some questions about the 2020 election that make it hard to believe it was as legit as the Left wants us to believe. Regardless, the act of denying an election isn’t the second coming of the burning of the Reichstag building. In today’s society where lying is like breathing (especially to the political and media classes), I’m surprised there aren’t more protests over stolen elections. I think the reasons there aren’t are a) the Right all have jobs, and b) the Left are pussies.
More to the point, there are some serious election irregularities that both sides can’t seem to agree are problems. Like the possibility there are some places where there are more votes cast than citizens in those places. Combine these with people who may be voting twice because they have homes in two different states (i.e. snowbirds and college students), ineligible voters, the dead voting in elections, long lines at polling places, electioneering under the guise of handing out free water at polling places, the lack of updated technology, the over-reliance on said technology, the lack of voting machines in some districts, and a general apathy towards voting because of shady shit going on, and we have a powder keg just waiting to be set alight by someone with a Zippo and a bad attitude.
Yet, even with all of this (and the hypocrisy of the Left), it’s hard to point out many examples of actual election denial. We may not like the results, but that in and of itself is not election denial. As long as we aren’t breaking the law, negatively impacting someone else’s rights, or generally being an asshole about it, it’s kosher. And, Leftists, hurt fee-fees don’t count as generally being an asshole, unless we’re talking about you being said asshole.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the sheer hypocrisy of election denial. It’s okay for Leftists to question election results, but not for anybody else? Bullshit! Either you let everybody in on your reindeer games or you can take all the seats. From where I stand, you can definitely take the seats and go over there. No, not there. Still too close. Keep going. I’ll let you know when you can stop.
Okay, now we have our chance. Let’s get out of here!