02 Dec Moving the Goalposts (Redux) – FT#186
Show Notes
Moving the Goalposts occurs when someone changes the rules after their initial criteria have been met.
Trump
We started out by discussing the strike on the Iranian nuclear facility which started with a claim of total obliteration, and ended with this clip of Tom Cotton and Lindsay Graham:
Then we talked about the shifting excuses related to the Epstein files.
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about this clip of Scarborough voters reacting to the budget:
Then he looked at this clip of an LBC listener definitely not being racist:
And finally this clip of Owen Paterson blaming the badgers:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Futurama:
Then we discussed this clip from Battlestar Galactica:
And we finished up with this clip from Selma:
The details of the Louisiana literacy test given to Black voters in the 60s can be found here: https://slate.com/life/2013/06/voting-rights-and-the-supreme-court-the-impossible-literacy-test-louisiana-used-to-give-black-voters.html
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong again this week, and is on 87 out of 174 – exactly 50%!
The Body of Evidence is not a logical fallacy
Jim guested on the Body of Evidence podcast and talked to Christopher and Sophie about logical fallacies, so we played the episode in this segment.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- On November 20th, a group of six Democratic lawmakers, all former military or intelligence personnel, released a video and accompanying statement reminding active members of the military and intelligence community that they can, and must, refuse illegal orders. This is, of course, completely accurate. U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders.The only reason anybody would have any issue with this at all is if they were already issuing illegal orders, or planned to do so. So naturally, Trump freaked the fuck out, accusing them via Truth Social of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also reposted several responses including one that said “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” Some people saw this as a bit of an overreaction to lawmakers restating laws, and even suggested it might be inciting violence, but not spokesBarbie Karoline Leavitt, who just flat out lied that the Democrats were telling people to disobey lawful orders. Meanwhile, Secretary of War and former Fox and Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth told the Pentagon to investigate one of the lawmakers, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and consider recalling him to active service so that he could be court-martialled. Pete might have overestimated how easy it is to intimidate a former astronaut who flew over 30 combat missions as a Navy fighter pilot, but then Pete also overestimates his own ability to do a single pull-up. It makes sense that Pete would be feeling a bit sensitive about the issue, especially after the Washington Post reported last week on one of the war crimes he ordered people to commit in September. It seems that under Pete’s instruction, Seal Team 6 were having a normal one firing missiles at small boats in the Caribbean because they totally definitely were trafficking drugs, honest, no, you can’t see the evidence, it goes to a different school. Anyway, the boat was blown to pieces, but two of its occupants survived, clinging to the wreckage. Pete’s orders, according to the post, were to “kill everybody”, so a second strike was ordered on the survivors. Since that’s against the Geneva Convention even if the ad hoc war Trump has declared on supposed Venezuelan drug cartels was real, that would be exactly the kind of illegal order military personnel are required to disobey, and if they are later held accountable, “I was just following orders” isn’t going to cut it.
- Yeah, remember when Mamdani was running for Mayor of New York and in his election victory speech called Trump a “despot”. And Trump called Mamdani ‘My Little Communist and Liddle Communist and Mamdani the Commie’ in that irritatingly shit way he has of coming up with atrocious nicknames to belittle anyone he perceives as being a threat to him, and Leavitt billed Mamdani’s visit as a “communist coming to the White House“. Well Mamdani did visit and Trump was all cringey and pally and not shouty like he was with Zelenskyy – also not a communist. And also weird that when he did meet an actual communist – hmm is Putin a communist? Not really, well possibly as much as Stalin ever was – when he did meet Putin he was equally as fawning and cringey. Perhaps cos, like your least favourite Uncle who’s bound to say something outrageous about someone over Thanksgiving and Christmas, Trump just goes on the same shallow one-sided views fed to him by the Fox network as the basis for his thinking. We then get into the rabbit spiral of Fox fawning over Trump and spouting Trumpisms and Trump taking that as the truth and spouting that which gets reported by Fox and round and round the echo goes. Anyway having actually met Mamdani he’s all smiley and “this is my favourite nephew”y and starts waxing lyrical about how he loves New York and Mamdani will be great and if things had been different Trump would’ve been Mayor of New York, and said surprising things like ‘he’ll be a great mayor’ and he was “confident that he can do a very good job“. At one point the press asked Mamdani if he still believes Trump is a fascist, he began answering and Trump interrupted to say ‘it’s okay to say yes, it saves having to try to explain’. What is going on? Has Trump – and we live in hope for our Thanksgiving Uncles – actually got to hear about what Mamdani’s policies actually were, and what an earnest guy he is, and changed his mind? Or is it that he can’t help himself but pal up to winners? Or does he see a way to appease voters by having Mamdani tackle the tough cost of living environment that Trump himself has created, and then take all the credit? It has a similar feel to me to that of the Mayor of London nearly always being from the opposite party to the one in power, though at the moment Sadiq Khan is Labour and so is the government in power, and there’s a strange grudging detente between Starmer and Khan, notwithstanding the disastrous Labour campaign in Boris Johnson’s old seat pre-general election when Starmer endorsed a labour candidate that was opposed to Khan’s extension of the low emission-zone across London to include that constituency. I can’t work out what Trump’s doing, I suspect he doesn’t know, he’s just defaulting to appeasing New York Mayors like he used to when he donated to the Democrats in order to get preferential real estate deals in the 80s and 90s. I hope Mamdani keeps the affability card up his sleeve to throw back at Trump next week when Trump starts watching Fox again and sees good things being done for New Yorkers and starts worrying about his own popular appeal.
- Ignoring decades of science showing vaccines to be safe, the CDC’s website was changed last month to say: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Unsurprisingly, this follows a direct order from Felchy McBrainworm himself, RFK Jr, who insists this is based on the Gold Standard of science, which these days is presumably based on the idea that the person with the most gold gets to set the standard for science. The FDA’s getting in on the act too, with their top vaccine regulator, Dr Vinay Prassad, telling staff via email that for the first time, the agency “will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” According to the email, he told the agency’s biostatistics and pharmacovigilance team to analyze 96 reported deaths from 2021 to 2024, and they determined no fewer than 10 children’s deaths were related to the COVID vaccine, and “the real number is higher”. The evidence cited was the highly reliable “trust me bro”. Real experts, like Dr. Paul Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, are skeptical, saying “Because he doesn’t provide any evidence, he is asking us to trust him on an important issue. All this will do is scare people unnecessarily. At the very least, he should provide all the evidence he has so that experts in the field can review it and decide whether he has enough data to prove his point.” Prassad and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary say that they will change how the FDA approaches vaccine regulation, such as requiring manufacturers to prove they reduce disease rather than show they generate antibodies but Dr. Jesse Goodman, who had Prassad’s job at the FDA until 2009 says that measures such as “immunologic endpoints like antibody levels… have helped provide children and adults with timely access to safe and effective vaccines, saving many lives.”
- Okay so this is a bit scary, and also a bit progressive? The US Coast Guard on Thursday issued a memo that reclassifies swastikas and nooses as “hate symbols” in a rapid about-face after facing intense scrutiny for a previous policy change which downplayed their display as merely “potentially divisive.” Scary cos that was the previous policy – can you be a bit Nazi, like being a bit pregnant?! A bit progressive?, well perhaps its so in the current Trump environment cos the newest memo expressly prohibits the display of nooses, swastikas or “any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, anti-semitism, or any other improper bias.” Before you go ‘yeah Coast Guard stick it to the good-people-on-both-sides fascist orange stroke-dodger’, the newest memo was released only hours after a Washington Post article pointed out that whilst since 2023, Coast Guard policy had said displaying the symbols “constitutes a potential hate incident.” In the updated policy first reported by The Post on Thursday, and issued by the Coast Guard last week, that language had been changed to referring to those symbols simply as “potentially divisive.” That policy had been set to take effect in December. Defense Secretary and GI Joe-wannabe Pete Hegseth has dismissed the idea of there being an issue with extremism in the military. During his confirmation hearing in January, Hegseth said a focus on extremism has “created a climate inside our ranks that feels political when it hasn’t ever been political.” Was this what gave permission for the Coast Guard – which is under the purview of Homeland Security – to feel able to relax its view a little? Hard to say, certainly agency spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, denied in a post to social media on Friday that the Coast Guard was “backtracking” by issuing the latest memo. “The 2025 policy is not changing—USCG issued a lawful order that doubles down on our *current* policies prohibiting the display, distribution or use of hate symbols by Coast Guard personnel”. Okay perhaps the Washington Post does still have some power over the Trump administration, and perhaps there are some inalienable truths when it comes to the wrongness of swastikas and nooses and other hate symbols. Eventually maybe the word Trump will join that list.
- A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that Lindsey Halligan, the former Miss Colorado runner-up turned US Attorney who brought the charges at Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department. I want to be very clear. I’m not questioning Lindsey’s legal expertise or experience because she’s a former beauty pageant contestant. It would be offensive and sexist to assume she’s not up to the job because she’s an attractive woman, or to conclude that her looks are the only reason she is in the job. Questioning a woman’s abilities based on how pretty she is, is wrong. However, when a president with a history of hiring attractive female lawyers who routinely demonstrate their ignorance of or disdain for the law, makes a Florida insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience at all, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, there are three possible reasons. Either she’s secretly amazing at law-talking stuff, he likes the way she looks, or she’s prepared to indict anyone he tells her to, regardless of whether they’ve done a crime. Turns out it’s probably those last two, since even before the cases were dismissed because her appointment was unlawful, she was badly tanking the case against Comey. She fucked up the Grand Jury proceedings so badly that Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the DOJ to hand over all Grand Jury materials to the defense, writing his 24-page opinion that he had identified at least two statements Ms Halligan made to grand jurors that could be seen as “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process”. One statement Halligan made, the judge noted, “suggests” that the grand jury “did not have to rely on only the record before them”, and that there was “more evidence – perhaps better evidence” that the government had that would be used at trial. Two days later, in a hearing about whether the prosecution against Comey was due to Trump’s animus towards him, it was revealed that the full Grand Jury never even reviewed the final set of charges. After they declined to approve one of the three counts she presented to them, instead of presenting them with a new indictment, Halligan simply took an altered version to the jury foreperson to sign it. According to CNN’s reporting, Judge Michael Nachmanoff, despite appearing exasperated and taking several seconds of silence to take in what the prosecutors admitted, did not give away whether he viewed the issue as a procedural or fatal error. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, as the cases have been dismissed, although that was done without prejudice, which leaves the door open for the DOJ to take another swing, should they ever get their ducks in a row. Fortunately, the DOJ’s ducks are the kind who prefer to kick each other in the face for a piece of bread than line up all tidily.
- Nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz – no not like the childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, scouring the ‘burbs to entice elders into care home by means of a giant red metal horseshoe shape with N and S on the ends, he owes a lot of nursing homes – He was sentenced in April to three years for defrauding the government of $38 million. Schwartz was alleged to have overseen a “collapsed nursing home empire” and “willfully” failed to pay employment taxes – I know what you’re thinking ooh sounds like the kind of a guy Trump would love to hang around with – his kind of a fella – well you’re way ahead of me – cos around that time, Schwartz paid $960,000 to two lobbyists “seeking a federal pardon,” according to their lobbying filing. And who were the lobbyists making the filing? – yeah our old friends right-wing provocateurs and political-slapstick idiots Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl. It is not clear what Burkman and Wohl did for Schwartz. But on Nov. 14, seven months after Schwartz’s conviction, Trump granted Schwartz a “full and unconditional” pardon. There you see Schwarz is his kinda guy alright. Liz Oyer, a former U.S. pardon attorney who was fired by Trump in March, said the involvement of the lobbyists — and the huge payment — heightens concern that there is “a special tier of justice for people who can afford to pay.” The pardon went against a March recommendation by Trump’s Justice Department, which cited the seriousness of Schwartz’s crime in seeking a sentence of a year and a day. The judge rejected that recommendation and in April imposed a three-year sentence. Schwartz had served three months when he was pardoned, according to his attorney. Burkman whose company JM Burkman & Associates is listed as receiving the payment, declined to discuss his role in the case. Though in an email, he called Schwartz “a wonderful human being and man of God who had been unfairly accused by the Biden DOJ.” I guess Trump’s God is on the side of Mammon and not on the side of caring for one’s elders, one’s employees or about paying taxes – yep yep yep “a special tier of justice for people who can afford to pay.” indeed.
- I was distressed to discover today that there’s a British branch of Turning Point USA, the Hitler-youth-esque political group previously fronted by tiny-faced dead person Charlie Kirk. It’s imaginatively named Turning Point UK, and they’ve made the news with a typically right-wing mix of bigotry and ignorance, by having a shit-fit about a drag queen in a panto. I realise pantomimes are a curiously British thing that many of our non-British listeners might be confused by, but basically every Christmas pretty much every regional theatre up and down the country puts on very broad comedic versions of familiar stories like Cinderella, Aladdin, Goldilocks, and so on. The main male character, known as the Principal Boy, is played by a woman, and a significant older female character, the Pantomime Dame, is played by a man in exaggerated drag, with huge wigs, over the top make up, and plenty of camp innuendo. It’s a beloved tradition, and enjoyed by all ages, usually starting very young. And that, of course, is the issue for the 17 year old Turning Point UK representative, who literally calls himself Young Bob, and was presumably never taken to a panto as a kid, when he appeared on Talk TV to decry a Christmas drag show in Richmond, which is aimed at kids. Young, dumb, and full of right-wing buzzwords, Young Bob described the show he hasn’t seen as “woke nonsense”, pushing a “marxist delusion” which is “hypersexualising children through transing them”, adding: “Five-year-olds are too young to explore this material, and even teenagers.” Can we please let these idiots know about Mrs Brown’s Boys on the BBC. Maybe they can make enough fuss to get it cancelled.
- In a similar vein about being a bit pregnant, is it possible to be a bit racist but not the bit where it actually is racist, kind of racism light? Racist adjacent? Super fucking racist Nigel Farage responded to allegations in the Guardian made by several of hs contemporaries at Dulwich college where he went to school in the 70s. The allegations are that Farage joked about gas chambers in earshot of Jewish pupils, asked non-white pupils where they were from and told them to go back there, and put another pupil in detention, when he was a prefect, for the colour of their skin. When asked about the claims, Farage responded: “Have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground, that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some sort of way? Yes.” He added: “I’ve never directly racially abused anybody. No.” The word ‘directly’ is blushing to the roots of its hair with embarrassment at the amount of work it’s having to do there. Pressed on whether he would say categorically that he did not racially abuse fellow pupils, Farage said: “I would never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way.” So I did do it, yes, but I did it gently? Yeah I’m sure it didn’t hurt him one bit to say to a Jewish classmate ‘the nazis had the right idea’ – but you see Nige the hurt and the insult are not on your side of the words, it’s the effect of those words deliberately said to someone, the hurt and the insult is theirs to measure and attest to – not yours. Where’s the Reform spokesman echoing Tricia McLaughlin’s Coast Guard doubling down on the fact that this stuff is not tolerated and it’s a hate crime? Ah yeah probably facing 10 years in jail for having taken pro-Russian bribes like former Welsh Reform UK leader Nathan Gill. And where’s Farage just ‘fessing up and saying sorry and he was young and ignorant and he’s of course changed in the intervening years and will ensure he and his party do everything they can to ensure that no hints of racist behaviour could ever be construed from any of their actions, policies, speeches or broadcasts? Yeah nowhere cos there is of course a reason why he hasn’t done that – fundamentally anger and hatred pays his bills, that and he’s a fucking racist. Meanwhile, Police have arrested two men in connection with a mobile phone hidden in the House of Commons that was reportedly planted there to play sex noises during Prime Minister’s questions…. and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
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