25 Jun Halo Effect – FT#177
Show Notes
The Halo Effect is a cognitive bias that leads people to base their whole opinion of someone on a single positive or negative trait.
Trump
We started out by discussing this clip of Trump admiring attractive men:
Then we looked at this clip of Trump talking about Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy:
And finally we talked about Trump’s reasons for not hiring John Bolton and Janet Yellen
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about this clip of Peter Bone defending Boris:
He followed that up by talking about these clips of Farage supporters in Clacton:
And he finished with this clip of David Cameron:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Britain’s Got Talent:
Then we discussed this clip from Hot in Cleveland:
And we finished up with this clip from a UX designer:
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong this week, and is on 51%!
No New Wars is not a logical fallacy
We talked about Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Trump finally got the big military parade he’s been craving since his first term. He couldn’t have it then because he’d accidentally hired some people who weren’t craven sycophants and James Mattis, his Secretary of Defense at the time, politely refused to arrange one. Actually, he said he’d “rather swallow acid”. This time around, though, Trump has exclusively hired the most obsequious brown-nosers he could find, so when he asked for tanks to trundle through DC they just asked him “how many Sir?” with tears in their eyes. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure Trump is so frequently approached by people with tears in their eyes because of the horrendous toxic stench he very obviously gives off. The safe distance from Trump without a gas mask must be at least a hundred feet. But I digress. Trump no doubt expected his military birthday parade would be an intimidating show of might, befitting the kind of TV dictator he so longs to be, but the outcome was a bit more pathetic. There were people there, and some footage from later in the day shows what could even be described as crowds, but it couldn’t be clearer from the almost empty bleachers on the actual parade route, that they expected a WAY bigger turnout than they got. Footage of tanks squeaking past bored, sparse, and silent spectators were only matched in patheticness by the footage of trained soldiers very deliberately not marching but ambling past the yawning Secretary of State and dozing President. By contrast, on the same day, over 5 million people, including some of our loveliest listeners, took part in over 2000 No Kings protests in large and small towns across America in one of the largest single day protests in American history. Obviously White House spokesman Steven Cheung called the No Kings Protests “a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance,” while claiming a quarter of a million people attended the parade, which depending on who you ask is about 3-6 times more than were actually there. We shouldn’t assume that will translate in any way to midterm votes, and all the fighting like hell still needs to happen, but we can be pretty sure that the day Trump was looking forward to for almost a decade made him sad, and sometimes that’s enough.
- In the same way that Trump alleges he fixed Free Speech by inventing Truth Social until Musk bought Twitter and did the same – and they both didn’t btw, Donald Trump Jr launched a new cell phone product called Trump Mobile in order to fix the mobile phone industry? Alleging that its upcoming T1 smartphone will be “proudly designed and built in the United States.” Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism, one of the only known companies to actually manufacture a cell phone in the United States kinda doubts it, “Unless the Trump family secretly built out a secure, onshore or nearshore (fabrication) operation over years of work without anyone noticing, it’s simply not possible to deliver what they’re promising.” Based on the specs of the T! Listed by Trump Mobile Weaver told CNN he believes the T1 phone looks like a version of the already available Revvl 7 Pro 5G, made by China-based Wingtech, which provides manufacturing services for smartphones and other products. The phone retails for around $169 on Amazon. Max Weinbach analyst at Creative Strategies added “There (are) only realistically four or five smartphone ODM (original device manufacturers) that would actually be able to manufacture something like this,” Weinbach said. “All of them are based out of China.” The Revvl device has the same screen size, battery capacity and storage as the T1 phone, and both phones have a headphone jack – a rare find on modern smartphones a nice old-fashioned feature Trump would no doubt love – though I expect he’d want a ¼ inch jack like a “proper” headphone socket – though I suspect he’s suspicious of stereo! Worldwide device tracker expert Ryan Reith added “Any phone (that) is going to be sold in September, or shipped in September into the US, the majority of it’s not going to be manufactured in the US, That’s a given.” and indeed in a press release, the Trump Organization said Trump Mobile’s products are not “designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.” Way to fix the tariffs problem too eh Donnie?
- A couple of weeks ago, amateur whale carver RFK Jr fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of experts which advises the CDC how and when people should get vaccines. His reasoning was that the members of the committee all had conflicts of interest, which is an anti-vax way of saying they knew true facts about vaccines because they’d done actual vaccine-related science. As is typically the case, scientists who do actual vaccine research end up interacting with companies that make vaccines, and they are required to literally disclose these relationships at the start of every public meeting of the committee. He promised not to pick “ideological anti vaxxers” as replacements, but then he also claimed he didn’t hit that bear with his car before he dumped it in central park, and that was a lie too. Among the new committee members he announced were Retsef Levi, an MIT management professor who called for the COVID vaccines to be withdrawn from the market, Vicky Pebworth, a nurse who is on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, a deliberately misnamed anti vaxx misinformation group, and Dr Robert Malone, who we talked about on a Patreon episode when he was interviewed by Dinesh D’Souza. Malone worked on very early mRNA vaccine technology and when real scientists refused to give him the credit for all the vaccine science that’s been done since then he became bitter and found a welcoming audience in the right-wingosphere by spreading dangerous misinformation about the COVID shots. That’s not even all of them, but I’m already too depressed.
- Republican lawmaker with ectopic pregnancy nearly died amid new Florida abortion laws – but blames the left so runs the headline in the Independent newspaper – all you need is right there isn’t it. Florida Republican Kat Cammack recounts emergency room ordeal but claims ‘fearmongering’ by Democrats and pro-choice activists sowing confusion among medical professionals. A doctor discovered the embryo implanted where the fallopian tube meets the uterus, a cornual ectopic pregnancy, and frankly told the representative: “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you.” But after deciding against surgery, the facility’s doctors and nurses had to be persuaded to give her the shot of methotrexate she required to expel the pregnancy. That was because the state’s six-week ban had come into effect at the start of that month, causing staff to fear they could lose their medical licenses and be sent to jail if they gave her the drug, which blocks the flow of folic acid to the embryo to prevent its growth. Cammack was only five weeks pregnant at the time, the embryo had no heartbeat and her own safety was in jeopardy, but nevertheless the congresswoman found herself forced to pull up the letter of the law on her phone to argue the case and even put in a call to Governor Ron DeSantis, without being able to reach him, before staff relented and came to her aid. But surprisingly, given her ordeal, the representative does not feel the law itself is at fault and instead blames Democrats for scaring medical professionals into confusion over their responsibilities. “It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she said. Molly Duane, a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, took issue with Cammack’s argument that pro-choice activists were to blame for sowing confusion, pointing out that Florida’s regulators had made it clear they intended to aggressively enforce their six-week ban while also failing to define ectopic pregnancy within the legislation. There’s a line in an Outbursts song that runs “and nothing gets done til somebody dies” – well if it takes one of their own to perish for right wingers to change their minds – let’s keep hoping! Frankly I’m surprised she didn’t blame Biden, …or Hilary.. Or Obama!
- The US military has a long standing policy of staying out of partisan politics. When Biden gave a speech in 2022 warning about the rise of fascism, he was criticised purely for having two Marines standing nearby, in camera shot. Trump’s Assistant VA Secretary James Hutton accused Biden of using the Marines as props, and Republican Congressman Darrell Issa said “The only thing worse than Biden’s speech trashing his fellow citizens is wrapping himself in our flag and Marines to do it.” Neither seemed too bothered when Trump signed his Muslim travel ban in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, or when he appeared with Marines in a video shot at the White House by the Republican National Committee. Anyway, earlier this month, in the run up to his parade, Trump gave a speech to the troops at Fort Bragg, filled with all his usual divisive rhetoric, and the assembled soldiers laughed at his jokes, cheered his attacks on Democrats and enthusiastically booed their fellow Americans and the media, at his encouragement. Meanwhile, a Trump themed pop-up shop on the base sold Make America Great Again Hats, shirts and necklaces, and other pro-Trumpabilia including a pretend credit card labeled “White Privilege Card – Trumps Everything”. Holy fuck, what’s going on with the military, you may well ask, and that’s fair, but it may not be quite as bad as it seems. The soldiers in the crowd and on camera behind Trump weren’t a representative cross section of the troops at the base, but rather ones who had been hand-picked based on both their political leanings and even appearance. The group visible on camera was almost exclusively white and male, which may be in part due to those with views opposing Trump being actively encouraged not to attend, but Military.com also obtained messages specifically restricting certain groups – one such message simply said “no fat soldiers”.
- Federal U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts ruled Monday it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants, adding that the cuts raise serious questions about racial discrimination. Judge Young said the administration’s process was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it did not follow long-held government rules and standards when it abruptly canceled grants deemed to focus on gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion. Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, went on to address what he called “a darker aspect” to the cases, calling it “palpably clear” that what was behind the government actions was “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.” After 40 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young added. He ended Monday’s hearing saying, “Have we no shame.” Despite the ruling that they had done just the opposite, Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services said the Trump administration is “exploring all legal options” including asking the judge to stay the ruling or appealing, “HHS stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people.” While the original lawsuits didn’t specifically claim racial discrimination, they said the new NIH policies prohibited “research into certain politically disfavored subjects.” including cardiovascular health, sexually transmitted infections, depression, Alzheimer’s and alcohol abuse in minors, among other things. Attorneys cited projects such as one tracking how medicines may work differently in people of ancestrally diverse backgrounds, and said the cuts affected more than scientists — such as potential harm to patients in a closed study of suicide treatment. So unless you have a politically favourable detrimental condition that is supported by the Trump administration – oh I don’t know like being rich and white and sick in the head, let’s hope the impetus of finding stuff they’re doing becomes a tsunami!
- Having gutted the board of the Kennedy Center and installed his own team of culture vacuums in their place, Trump finally went to see a show there this month, and picked the most ironic possible one – Les Miserables. A deliciously cruel reporter asked him a pointed question on the red carpet: “Have you seen the musical before and do you identify more with Jean Valjean or Javert?” Trump, of course, claimed to have seen it a number of times – well, zero is a number – but he was unable to decide who he felt more of a kinship with: the fundamentally heroic man whose momentary act of desperation in his youth caused him to spend the rest of his life seeking redemption, or the irrational bureaucrat with no empathy whose obsession with law, order, and punishment took over his life. Yeah, it’s a tricky one alright. Several cast members refused to perform for him and were replaced by understudies, and the audience responded to his presence with a mix of cheers and boos. When one group of ticket holders found out he would be attending, they donated their tickets to a group of drag performers, who showed up in full regalia and protested in the auditorium.
- Being disengaged from British politics for a few days relishing musicians playing music in the sunshine at the IOW festival does give one a sense of relief and perspective, which of course comes crashing down like Justin Timberlake’s artistic reputation perhaps, when it turns out that Starmer has been doing his utmost to perpetuate the diminished stature of Britain on the world stage by insisting on adhering to the so-called special relationship with the US that means a) he gets to say oh I’m sure Donald isn’t going to bother wading in on Iran he’s far too sensible to escalate things and b) agreeing with the nature of the need to bomb the fuck out of Iran when he does, and maintain the old “Israel has a right to defend itself” bullshit like a lapdog arse-licking poodle waiting for scraps that never come. Plus what are Israel defending themselves against – a possible future crime? Surely that’s just declaring war. Just like Blair forever besmirched himself with the dodgy dossier WMD lies perpetuated by Bush so Starmer is likely to see himself tarred with yet more Trump narcissism. What with that and the seeming refusal to see the impact of the number of resignations of labour councillors and MPs that the cutting of the personal independence payments welfare bill to pay for the increase in defence spending, Starmer could be in the middle of utterly blowing it for Labour. And this week various defence advisors have warned the UK to be prepared to start living on a war footing. With all the shit you’re doing to the country what exactly would we be going to war to defend? Unless of course it’s Supergrass continuing to be able to tour the 30th anniversary performances of their first album – reminding us that we are young, we run green Keep our teeth nice and clean See our friends, see the sights And feel alright!
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