Gambler’s Fallacy – FT#111

24 Oct Gambler’s Fallacy – FT#111

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Show Notes

The Gambler’s Fallacy is committed when someone confuses dependent and independent events or claims that a particular outcome is ‘due’ because it hasn’t happened for some time.

Trump

We started out by discussing Trump’s claim that you can’t lose when you’re billions of dollars out of pocket:

We followed that with this clip of Trump promising to keep saying Covid will just magically disappear until it does:

And we closed with this clip of him claiming that Climate Change will just go back the other way:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about the tendency of the Conservatives to keep switching tactics based on the fact that none of the ones they’ve tried so far seem to work, and noticed that both Boris and Liz have been described as ‘a busted flush’:

 

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from The World According to Garp

Then we discussed this clip from The Simpsons

And we finished with this clip from A Night in Casablanca

 

Fake News

Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game which, for a bit of a change, featured quotes from Herschel Walker:

  1. Well, you have to blame Senator Warnock because first of all, he and they have raised taxes and third, he hasn’t – the energy independence. We were and now we aren’t and that has meant we have to go to our enemies for gas. So the one thing, the one job I would do about inflations is that. We got to be energy independent again so we can have the energy we need and that is too important to Georgia people to not have that.
  2. Well, right now people have coverage for health care. It’s according to what type of coverage do you want? Because if you have an able-bodied job you’re going to have health care but everyone else have health care is the type of health care you’re going to get, and I think that is the problem and what Senator Warnock wants you to do is depend on the government. What I want you to do is get off the government health care and get on the health care he’s got.
  3. I believe in reducing insulin but at the same time you’ve got to eat right because he may not know and I know many people that’s on insulin and unless you have an eating right, insulin is doing you no good. So you have to get food prices down and you got to get gas down so they can go get insulin and you continue to pat yourself on the back but right now families are starving right now families are hurting and they’re hurting because of the bills and the laws you’re passing.

Mark got it wrong again this week, and has dropped below 48%

 

The ninth January 6th hearing was not a logical fallacy

We talked about the possibly final hearing from the Select Committee investigating the January 6th assault on Congress.

 

The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about

  • Right, it’s been a long week, and we had to watch some Matt Walsh videos for the Patreon bonus the other day, so this week I’m only doing good news stories. I’ll start with an update on the Venezuelan migrants who were used as political props by Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who looks like the guy who gets bit by a vampire and keeps it secret from the rest of the group. You’ll no doubt remember that Desantis and his minions flew the 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard and messed with their paperwork in a transparent attempt to get many of them deported. Well, it’s looking like his stunt might  backfired a bit. Texas Sheriff Javier Salazar has submitted some federal paperwork certifying that these migrants were victims of a crime. Since this means they are assisting law enforcement and need to be available as witnesses during the investigation, they are now eligible to apply for special visas reserved specifically for victims of or witnesses to crimes. If the applications are granted, they’ll be able to stay in the US for four years while they start the journey towards citizenship.  Thanks, Ron!
  • Having spent some time immersed in the pool that Matt Walsh sits in so long now his skin’s all puckered, and trying to figure out how he takes a normal thing and spins it to appeal to his right-wing spume-flecked angry-mob followers for money each day – well he’s somehow got to maintain the lifestyle his $4.9million YouTube earnings have afforded him I guess – it really comes as no surprise that fellow pool-scum Sean Hannity on Fox News managed to try to wring a tiny acidic drop of hate from an exclusive voicemail he’d obtained of Joe Biden talking to Hunter – daan daan daaaaan! Laptops Russia dodgy deals? You may ask…and then he played it and Biden simply says to Hunter:

  • “I’m here no matter what you need, I love you” Sheesh yeah what a monster, impeach him now, ringing up your son like that the very moment he’s going through hell with drug addiction! Call yourself a loving father? And yeah everybody else in the entire Twittersphere did exactly that and called him a great guy for demonstrating nothing but unconditional love even in the face of not knowing what to do to help. Of course that’s exactly what Hunter, as with anyone going through trauma, actually needed; that reassurance of unconditional love does help. Writer Paul Rudnick tweeted “It’s not only inspiring, it’s something no Republican has ever said to their child, which is how you end up with the bitter emptiness of Trump and Fox News”. As we’ve found out from Mary Trump’s book, unconditional love is just something Trump never had so he and his toadying acolytes can’t see the value of it.  And that’s just the thing – you can’t buy that – so Donnie’s not interested nor owns any.
  • Early in-person voting has started in Georgia and the good news is that turnout on the first day was massively up over the last midterms, with 131,000 voters showing up at the polls compared to only 71,000 on day one in 2018. Of course, somewhere close to 50% of those voters have probably cast a ballot for Herschel Walker, a man I’m pretty sure is two third graders dressed as a Senate candidate as an elaborate prank. Dammit, I said good news only, sorry! Given the vital importance of these midterms, such a huge initial turnout is great, especially since higher turnouts are likely to favor Democrats, and especially especially since this is happening despite Republicans’ attempts to make it harder to vote. It’s a good sign, but this is not the time to get complacent. The pressure needs to stay high and momentum needs to be maintained, so whether you’re in Georgia or a state with competent Senate candidates from both parties… I mean, there must be a couple, right? They can’t all be people like Herschel, Marco Rubio, Blake Masters, JD Vance, Dr Oz, Ron Johnson.. Holy shit there’s a lot of them though. Anyway, wherever you are, don’t forget to fucking vote!
  • Apparently in the Republican world hurricanes only go to wreak havoc where you tell them to – for example Trump and his Sharpie making the weather go where he said it would, like the Canute he is. And now Florida Man Ron DeSantis seems to be able to have allowed only the Republican-leaning counties of Florida to be battered sufficiently by Hurricane Ian to warrant a relaxation of the voting rules to accommodate the difficulties people are suffering in the aftermath. Voting rights groups had previously asked the governor to extend the statewide voting registration deadline, which ended on Tuesday, and to add more early voting days, as well as implement other accommodations including extended early voting days and the ability for voters to send mail-in ballots from addresses not listed in voting records. DeSantis you’ll be pleased to know did agree to those accommodations to make it easier for voters to vote in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, but not in Orange county, cos miraculously DeSantis guided the hurricane around it? No, don’t be silly, it’s cos Orange County votes Democrat d’uhhhh!. Of course, DeSantis said the decision to only accommodate three counties was “based on the collective feedback of the Supervisors of Elections across the state and at the written requests of the Supervisors of Elections in Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota counties” But Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of voter rights organisation Equal Ground said that the decision to exclude other counties “will remain yet another example of Governor DeSantis disenfranchising voters”. Way to make hurricanes veer to the right Ron!
  • Special Counsel John Durham, who failed spectacularly in his multi-year investigation trying to find anything to pin on Hillary Clinton, was in court last week prosecuting Igor Danchenko for lying to the FBI during the Russia Investigation. Danchenko is the second and final person indicted by John Durham, the first being lawyer Michael Sussman, who was acquitted back in May. Durham called Senior FBI Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten to testify against Danchenko, and was probably a bit upset when his own witness said that he considered Danchenko “truthful” and helpful to the FBI’s Russia probe, that securing him as a source was beneficial to the agency, and that Durham had misleadingly cherry-picked material that he wrote. This slightly undercut the allegations that Danchenko lied repeatedly to the FBI and impeded their investigation, and led to Durham trying to impeach his own witness on redirect by asking about the time he’d been recommended for suspension from the FBI. This shit show was probably a factor in the subsequent acquittal of Danchenko on all charges, leaving Durham with nothing whatsoever to show for a three and a half year investigation. It’s almost like the Russia investigation was legitimate, and not a witch hunt predicated on lies.
  • “This was the moment 3 days ago when Senator Dale Lee Agsby plunged his campaign into crisis” so runs the opening of a segment of Brass Eye a BBC comedy show from 1997 which used the news format to brutal satirical effect. It’s part of the episode called Sex which purports to cover a US election campaign on the part of Agsby which gets interrupted when ” . . . he releases several arcs of liquid silk from the fleshy nozzle of his fork” during a televised rally. Brilliantly done, looks exactly like news, and ridicules television coverage and US politics in one fistful as it were. 25 years later and Randy Kaufman (yes his real name) a GOP candidate running for an Arizona college district’s governing board was arrested on a charge of public sexual indecency after an officer allegedly caught him masturbating in his truck near a preschool. And there we have all the elements of a Chris Morris script except of course it’s real. Although Randy Kaufman was arrested Oct. 4 he only suspended his campaign on Tuesday 18th following media reports of his arrest. “I fucked up” he told the arresting officer – who’s report also includes the excellently dead pan “I immediately became alarmed as I saw [Kaufman] was manipulating his genitals in a masturbatory manner.” In a Facebook post from May Kaufman said he wanted “our children protected [from] the progressive left.” Obviously not from the masturbatory right, and it seems the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office tacitly agrees as, despite the charge, it said it’s too late for Kaufman’s name to be removed from the ballot, and some people have already voted early (insert your own jokes there). Well that’s alright then just so long as Randy continues, as he says, to “never stop fighting to protect the United States Constitution and the values that make America the greatest country in the world.” yep thems the values!
  • In my final piece of good news, a Trump supporter had a very bad day. Back in 2020, Denis Molla of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, claimed that he had been the victim of a politically motivated attack when his camper was set on fire and his garage door was spray painted with graffiti that said ‘Biden 2020’, ‘BLM’ and an Antifa symbol. But it turns out Molla had actually destroyed his own property in a medal-worthy example of performative victimhood which could not more accurately encompass today’s GOP unless his middle name was Vladmirovich. Which, actually, it is. Anyway, Denis submitted insurance claims in excess of $300,000 and started a GoFundMe so that he could add grifting to his Republican credentials, and I’m happy to say that last week he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, which could carry a sentence of up to four years. Naturally right wingers condemned this in the same strong terms they used when Jussie Smollett faked a hate crime and blamed it on Trump supporters. No, of course they didn’t, in fact when he gets out they’ll probably elect him Senator or something because we live in a hellscape and nothing fucking matters anymore. Dammit! Well, I tried.
  • Okay – only 44 days after she’d taken office and 7 days after she visited King Charles for her weekly meeting and who greeted her with “Back again? Oh dear, oh dear. Anyway”, and the same 7 days after she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng for agreeing with ther that the mini-budget was a good thing, although the pound disagreed and fell through the floor, and so she appointed Jeremy “often misnamed on the media” C…Hunt as chancellor who then reversed everything she’d agreed with Kwasi about, and a mere 5 days since “newspaper” the Daily Star set up a webcam looking at a 49p lettuce with the question “who will last longer?” our lettuce or Liz Truss. And a mere day since she said she was “a fighter not a quitter” in PMQ’s: Liz Truss has resigned as Prime Minister.
    This followed the resignation of her home secretary Cruella Braverman, who’s dreams of repatriating refugees to Rwanda will now not be realised, and it isn’t the fault of the tofu-eating Guardian-reading wokerati after all, and followed frenzied scenes of MPs being forced physically against their will through the door marked “No” in a vote to ban fracking (again – ban already enacted by the Tories several years ago) as it was seen as a potential vote of no confidence in Liz Truss’ government if they didn’t; In reacting to these scenes deputy chief whip – the man responsible for persuading mps to toe the party line, reportedly resigned – German TV News presenter Annette Dittert covered how he said he was feeling – brilliantly she says in German “I’d rather not translate that” afterwards.

    On a sweary side note Krishnan Guru-Murthy was heard on a hot mic after MP Steve Baker shouted at him the length of Downing Street following his interview with him,

    Baker didn’t hear and it wasn’t broadcast but Krishnan apologised on Twitter anyway and Steve Baker graciously accepted, though many people of course simply retweeted for instance (parody page) Factcheck-UK adding “FACT: By searching news stories of the past several years, and perusing Mr Baker’s voting record, we can confirm Steve Baker MP is, in actual fact, a cunt.” So what next for Blighty – a new leadership election? though this time they won’t even bother the 0.3% of the public they hounded about it last time, restricting the vote to MPs and not the party membership. In the absence of a general election – as of course that’s not in the best interests of the Tories – there will be a closing down sale of the UK followed by a series of appeal messages on the wireless asking for international support during this difficult time before the the whole miserable and run-down province is demolished to make way for Airstrip One…send help!

That’s all for this week, thanks for listening!

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Jim Cliff
jim@fallacioustrump.com


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