06 Jul Labelling – FT#178
Show Notes
The Labelling Fallacy occurs when someone assigns a (usually negative) label to a person or idea as a shortcut to avoid providing evidence of how the person or idea is wrong.
Trump
We started out by discussing this clip of Trump calling everything woke:
Then we looked at this clip of Kelly Loeffler labelling her opponent, radical liberal Raphael Warnock:
And finally we talked about this clip of Vivek Ramaswamy labelling his opponents:
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about Liz Truss and the Anti-Growth Coalition:
He followed that up by talking about Suella Braverman and the Tofu-Eating Wokerati
Then he talked about Clive Lewis and Palestine Action:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from All in the Family
Then we discussed this clip from Not the Nine O’Clock News
And we finished up with this clip from Carnivale
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong this week, and is on 51%!
The One Big Beautiful Bill is still not a logical fallacy
We talked about the final version of the OBBB, which actually passed.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- If you exist in the world you probably know that Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic Primary for New York Mayor last week. Even my eldest was asking me at the weekend why the results of this obscure distant election were all over her timeline, and I’ll tell you what I told her – because he absolutely terrifies Republicans. As a Democratic Socialist with Muslim Indian heritage, born in Uganda, it’s not surprising he terrifies them, but until the primary results, they barely knew he existed, because most people expected Andrew Cuomo to win, despite all the sexual predation. But Mamdani went from about 10% in early polls to a convincing contender in a matter of months, and he and other non-predator candidate Brad Lander cross endorsed each other in order to scupper Cuomo’s chances, thanks to the fact that it was a ranked choice vote, and if voters put Lander and Mamdani first and second it would make it easier for one of them to win. As it turns out, he didn’t really need that boost, and his Democratic Socialist policies proved popular enough that Cuomo conceded on election night and after all the votes were reassigned Mamdani ended up with 56% to Cuomo’s 44. Those policies, incidentally, include support for affordable housing, rent freezes, free child care, free city bus transport, and higher taxes on New Yorkers with income of over $1 million. It’s that last one that Republicans really should focus on given how well it ties in with their general policies on giving rich people tax breaks and pretending to believe in trickle-down economics. Despite it almost being designed to give them something to argue against though, they were a bit distracted by just how unbelievably racist they are. Luminaries such as MTG, Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer, Don Jr, and Nancy Mace all spouted islamophobic bullshit, mostly invoking 9/11, Andy Ogles suggested removing his citizenship and deporting him, and Trump said he had a grating voice. Fucking Trump complained about the guy’s voice. His win isn’t a foregone conclusion of course, since current Mayor, definite criminal and Trump puppet Eric Adams is running as an independent and Cuomo might have another go as an independent too. They’ll probably all beat the Republican candidate, former Guardian Angel leader Curtis Sliwa, but the simple fact that everyone is so scared of Mamdani makes him the one to watch in my opinion.
- Whilst “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!,” thank you Elon, it’s probably just as obvs that Elon’s a bit peeved about the bit of the bill cancelling the EV mandate – which of course didn’t really ever exist. It was a 2021 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to ensure half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 were electric. Biden’s 50% target, which was not legally binding, had won the support of U.S. and foreign automakers. But what kind of experts are actual car manufacturers when you’ve got Trump and his… er… brain being an authority on everything. Elon took to his social media platform to complain in Porky Pig terms about the bill and Trump took to his social media platform to threaten Elon with more than just revoking the EV mandate – Elon’s got a lot more to lose apparently, more than the second straight quarter of tanking Tesla sales “Elon would have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.” When asked by reporters later in the morning if he would deport Musk, Trump in his best dimestore mafia boss persona said mysteriously, “We’ll have to take a look.” I say mysteriously but we know for sure it’s simply ignorance! Though deliciously, and if he did but know it, quite ironically, added “We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Musk shot back “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now“. Trump continued to hammer Musk later in the day as he visited Florida. “If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” he told reporters. Far from wanting to agree with Trump on that in a “yeah dur!” kind of way, surely it’d just be easier for Musk to go back to work at DOGE and investigate the waste of human life occupying the Oval office pushing the Big Breasted Bill. Instead Musk is threatening to fund primary challengers of any Republican who voted on the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” If that’s as legally binding as saying he’d buy Twitter we can then legitimately hold him to it and get Bezos to blast him into space to join his floatin’ frickin’ Model S!
- Depressingly, right-wing book bans are so ubiquitous these days that we rarely cover them among the stories we don’t have time to talk about because ironically, we literally wouldn’t have time to talk about all of them. Side note, this is also the reason we don’t cover every mass shooting or every Catholic priest who turned out to be a pedophile. However, the latest purge of completely fine books from school libraries in Tennessee is worth a quick mention. The sheer volume is kind of notable – thanks to the vague wording of the state legislation’s 2024 amendments to their own 2022 “Age Appropriate Materials Act”, different counties have banned different books, with 150 in Knox County, over 320 in Oak Ridge, over 400 in Wilson County, and in a gust of over-compliance, 574 books in Monroe County. The list includes all the usual suspects – Fahrenheit 451 of course being top of the list so that nobody will figure out that book burning is bad. Lord of the Flies, The Color Purple, and the Handmaid’s Tale are also on the list along with books about the Holocaust, racism, and the existence of gay people. Lots of Manga is gone, various graphic novels, works by Stephen King, Judy Blume, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Kurt Vonnegut. Basically hundreds of brilliant books you’d love to catch your teenager reading under the covers after they’re supposed to be asleep. But then it gets weird. A companion volume to the popular elementary school series the Magic Treehouse is banned, because it’s about the Olympics in ancient Greece. The problem, it seems, is that the discus-throwing Greek statue on the cover is naked. You can’t actually see anything – not like that pornographic State flag of Virginia that was banned in Texas schools, but if little kids see a statue of someone without clothes on they might realise that nudity is a thing in the world and then they’ll definitely figure out how to have sex by recess. Worse than all of these though, is the fact that in Monroe County, Tennessee they have banned Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and motherfucking Hobbes – the two greatest literary characters of the 20th century. The list they published is insufficiently detailed to know whether it is the whole series or merely the eponymous first collected volume, but either way, this is a travesty which must not stand. While some online commenters have theorised that the reasoning for this outrage is Calvin’s freethinking rebellious nature, that strip where he was an actual God, or the one where he fantasized about blowing up his school with an F15, far more likely given the amendment, is that Calvin generally dislikes bathtime and has on occasion been seen escaping while unclothed. And as we all know, a line drawing of a naked six year old running at full speed is guaranteed to corrupt even the most hardy child and turn them into the kind of reprobate who makes anti-Trump podcasts and swears all the fucking time. Incidentally, now seems like a great time to remind listeners with kids that the Brooklyn Public Library has an online programme called Books Unbanned, where kids from across America can borrow ebook versions of any restricted books, absolutely free.
- in 2024, a federal judge ruled in favour of educator Ms Wood that Florida’s enacting of the House Bill 1069, that prohibits teachers from using “a pronoun or personal title” that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.” was egregiously discriminatory. This law had been enforced against transgender educators, including Ms. Wood, who would be required to go by “Mr. Wood” in the classroom—an act that violates her personal dignity—or risk losing her job. The judge ruled that it violated Ms Wood’s First Amendment rights by imposing a viewpoint-based speech restriction ruling that personal titles—such as pronouns and honorifics—are a matter of individual identity, not subject to government control. As such, the law infringed upon Ms. Wood’s protected right to free expression. Of course the 11th Circuit disagreed. In a ruling handed down by Trump-appointed judges Andrew L. Brasher and Kevin Newsom, the court determined that using one’s pronouns and title in the classroom constitutes “classroom duties” and therefore falls under the control of the state. In essence, the judges ruled that Ms. Wood had no First Amendment rights while performing her job as a teacher, granting Florida the authority to compel her to use whatever pronouns or honorifics the state sees fit—even if they contradict her identity, and that requiring her to do so was not viewpoint discrimination. Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a scathing dissent. “The statute at issue here has nothing to do with curriculum and everything to do with Florida attempting to silence those with whom it disagrees on the matter of transgender identity and status. Florida cannot justify its viewpoint discrimination by relying on the very reason that such discrimination is constitutionally suspect—that it gets to decide what speech is permissible (the speech it likes) and what speech is prohibited (the speech it disagrees with).” Of course the bigotted toilet-fixated human-right denying fuckers on the right in Florida don’t give a fuck about the unforseen consequences of Florida therefore requiring that married female teachers use the last name of their husbands in the classroom even if they have chosen to keep their maiden names (because it declares as a matter of state policy that it does not like female teachers to appear to students to be in-dependent of their husbands); or that unmarried female teachers use “Mrs.” instead of “Ms.” in the classroom (because it declares as a matter of state policy that it wants students to think that their female teachers are all married or should aspire to be married). If these possibilities sound ‘First Amendment crazy,’ it is because they are, but just so long as Republican lawmakers get to discriminate against someone to exert their tiny-minded emasculated shrivelled powerless egos over someone now that slavery has been abolished! The one upside of this utterly frustratingly depressing news is that when they all get voted out these laws will get overthrown and seen to be the unhinged frothings of culture warrior schoolchildren from that other fiction novel Lord of the Flies!
- Trump’s potato-faced border czar really doesn’t understand the Streisand effect. CNN did a little story about a new app called ICEBlock, which probably would have passed without much notice, but Tom wants to make a federal case about it and now everyone is talking about this cool new app. The app, which again, is called ICEBlock, allows users to drop a pin on a map to let people know if ICE agents are spotted in the area, and other users in a five mile radius of the pin get a push notification to let them know they might want to avoid that area if they enjoy not being sent to a foreign gulag with no due process. Tom thinks it’s “disgusting” that CNN are reporting on the app which, in case you missed it, is called ICEBlock, and it’s only available on iPhones, because Androids don’t allow you to sign up for push notifications and stay anonymous. The maker of the app, you see, realises that if you have to give away any personal data to get this information it actually makes you less safe, due to the current administration’s tendency to trample on civil rights if it lets them harm minorities. Although he doesn’t look it, Tom is at least smart enough to suggest there’s another reason this is bad, over and above the fact that the ICEBlock app makes it easier for people who are just going about their fucking day to avoid being abducted by masked men in unmarked vans. He claims that it actually puts his band of thugs at risk. He says “It’s only a matter of time before someone sits in hiding and waits for an ICE agent and tries to take them out.” Admittedly, that must be really scary for people who are simply trying to do their job, and now have to worry that someone might grab them without warning, possibly abducting them and taking them somewhere where they’ll be mistreated. What a terrifying ordeal that only a complete monster would make someone have to go through. In defense of his fear for his jackbooted goons, he points out the now frequently repeated statistic that there has been a 700% increase in assaults on ICE agents since Trump took office. These are assaults as reported by the ICE agents, so it’s unclear how many are akin to “he looked at me funny” or “his face hurt my fist”, but either way 700% sounds like a huge increase. The fact that it sounds like a huge increase is why they say it like that, rather than saying there’ve been 79 such assaults this year compared to 10 in the previous six months. Hmm, I wonder if there’s any other possible reason for that change. No, I expect ICE agents were attacking members of the public without identifying themselves just ask much when Biden was President. It must be the public that’s in the wrong. And apps. Like ICEBlock. Which is free on the Apple store by the way. Tom also claims that ICE agents’ jobs are already dangerous, because they’re going after the worst of the worst. That’s not true either, because it’s much easier to round up day laborers at Home Depots and people attending legal immigration hearings than to go after actual bad guys. That’s why 71% of the 56,000+ people detained by ICE so far don’t have any criminal record.
- A study published on the 30th of June in The Lancet found USAID-supported programs saved 92 million lives in low- and middle-income countries over the past two decades, including 30.4 million children under the age of five. Something that the US was proud to be part of since 1961 when the agency was founded; the bringer of a power for good in a shattered world, a force to be admired and emulated globally in bringing health, wealth and well-being to many post-empire independent countries in the global south, a source of soft-power that gave the US great caché on the international development stage, a benevolent modelling of the best in western values. Without this support, researchers project 14 million additional, avoidable, premature deaths by 2030. Two days later US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the official end of USAID, eliminating the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency. In a State Department memo titled in fiction novel 1984’s ministry-of-truth-fashion “Make Foreign Aid Great Again” announcing the shutdown, Rubio laid into USAID, stating its “charity-based” model was against American interests and that it spawned “a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense.”(Labelling right there!) He also attacked recipient countries and regions – notably Sub-Saharan Africa – for not repaying the US with UN votes despite billions in aid. As Elon Musk, the world’s richest man don’t forget, famously tweeted he had skipped “some great parties” to put USAID “into the wood chipper,” telling the agency: “Time to die.” Still, all that money saved will be lining the pockets of the disgustingly wealthy through all the tax breaks the govt can now afford to give them. And as we know there is no-one more beneficent, altruistic, humane, humanitarian, neighbourly, public-spirited, philanthropic, generous, magnanimous, munificent, and unselfish than the hyper-rich. Eschewing their yachts, jets and space-craft to give their fortunes away in funding international aid in the poorest countries of the world with no expectation of return other than decreases in infant mortality, proliferation of health and economic thriving and a sense of contributing to the well-being of mankind’s future – oh no that’s what those damned pinko commie bastards Bill Gates and George Soros do! No you’re fine, keep it all you guys, but don’t forget who knowingly and with malice aforethought willingly killed 14 million people on your behalf when it comes to the next election!
- One of the aforementioned non-criminals currently in ICE custody is Danish national Kasper Eriksen. Kasper legally immigrated to the US in 2013, moved to Mississippi, where he met and married a US citizen, Savannah. They have four children together, and Savannah is currently pregnant with a fifth. He started the process of becoming a US citizen before his two year Green Card ran out in 2015, but forgot to file an I-751 form – petition to remove conditions on residence. Nothing seemed to be a problem until 2019 when the first Trump administration noticed the error and filed a removal order after he failed to attend an immigration hearing that Kasper claims he was never informed about. Anyway, Trump left office without doing anything about it, and under the Biden administration Kasper’s road to citizenship continued, ultimately leading to a letter in September 2024 to let him know everything was in order and arrange a final interview in April 2025. Kasper showed up to that final interview and was arrested by ICE agents too lazy to look for actual criminals. He was denied bail in May, and has spent 10 weeks so far in detention. This is just one story of thousands of similar ones. You may think the only quirk here is that Kasper is white and delightsome, and indeed he claims he’s pretty much the only English speaker in the cell he shares with around 100 other ICE detainees. But that’s not the reason I’m talking about him. The reason is that he’s a Trump supporter. So naturally, he doesn’t blame Trump, his overzealous ICE agents, or his fervor for booting people out of the country despite their attempts to do everything the right way and contributing to society. He doesn’t blame himself for forgetting to file that important form, or for somehow missing whatever notifications the first Trump administration sent him to indicate there was a problem. No, he blames Joe Biden. Despite the fact that the immigration official who was present at his arrest specifically told him he probably wouldn’t have been arrested under the previous administration, he says “The reason I’m sitting here is more or less a product of the Biden administration. They were the ones who let me go through this process without saying there was a problem. They didn’t keep an eye on it.” Jesus fucking Christ
- Meanwhile in Britain the Tiny Squalid Ugly Bill calling for welfare reform in the guise of cutting personal independence payments to the disabled and long-term unemployed, caused many Labour MPs to voice their concern disdain and horror that the very party with a long history of supporting the needy in accordance with truly community-centric socialist principles, could be considering cutting the welfare budget in order to fund an increase in defence spending and other fiscal blackholes rather than say tax the bleedin’ rich in accordance with truly long-standing socialist principles. Why is the ‘no new taxes’ manifesto promise sacrosanct and the ‘defending the parts of the community that experience severe barriers to the world of work’ not? The groundswell of dissent lead to the bill being watered down to the extent that many MPs including Labour voted for an amendment to scrap the damn thing altogether until a proper impact analysis had been carried out rather than rush it through half-arsed and unfair in order to be seen to be doing something with promises to carry out an impact assessment and amend it later – yeah we saw how well that happened with ooh I dunno – Brexit?! Despite the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall saying Labour MP’s are 100% behind the PM – it passed with only a 75 majority despite all the PIP cuts being removed – and 49 of those against were 100% Labour. At PMQs this week whilst Starmer was explaining how successfully the bedraggled tepid stupid ugly bill got passed and also defending the impact on the budget that taking the tough decision to not save £5bn by reversing the tough decision to cut welfare support would have, Rachel Reeves was seen behind him with actual tears rolling down her face. Today they both appeared chirpy and unified at a photo op presser in a hospital where they both said they were in lockstep and the tears were nothing to do with Starmer continuing to have full confidence in Reeves. You know, the exact same language Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng used about each other before one threw the other under the fiscal bus. If it wasn’t for the fact that this is the left we are talking about it would be deliciously funny to watch. They’re supposed to be the progressive ones and yet the tough decisions never seem to involve a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor! Where’s Robin Hood MP standing for Nottingham North when you need him?!Is it just me or is it actually getting quite difficult to not finish each of these headlines with the word “Cunts!” every single time? That’s increasingly the only way to accurately sum up the perpetrators of these barbaric and heinous acts; “Cunts!”
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