30 Jul Non Sequitur – FT#5
Show Notes
Non Sequitur is Latin for ‘does not follow’. Colloquially, non-sequitur tends to be used to mean a sentence which has no relation to the previous one, but in logical fallacy terms, that would more likely be a Red Herring fallacy.
For our purposes, Non-Sequitur describes a situation where the conclusion of an argument appears initially to be related to the premise, but on closer inspection, such a conclusion cannot be drawn from the evidence provided.
The examples used in this episode will be coming soon.
Here are the links to the stories we talked about
Treason is not a logical fallacy: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/24/cancel-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-helsinki-sequel-column/816245002/
And finally, some things we really didn’t have time to talk about:
- Trump found a way to distract everyone from Russia this week, sending an all-caps tweet to the President of Iran promising “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before” if Iran threatens the US. So in a few months, Trump will be having a summit with Rouhani and telling everyone he’s a great guy with a good sense of humour.
- Trump decided that the disastrous economic fallout from his trade tariffs is no big deal because, thanks to the rise in the stock market during his presidency, ‘we’re playing with the bank’s money’. I’m sure the thousands of ranchers and factory workers whose jobs are at risk will be happy to hear that.
- Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen secretly taped conversations from 2016 where the pair discussed paying off Playboy model Karen McDougal who claimed she had a ten month affair with Trump. Here’s a tip: when your lawyer is taping your conversations for their own protection, you might be doing something illegal.
- Trump met Queen Elizabeth on his visit to London. He kept the 92 year old Queen waiting in the hot sun for 14 minutes, then stood in front of her as they inspected the troops. Jesus Christ Donald, even if you don’t respect women in general, she’s the fucking Queen! – This was the one moment and she was the only person in the world who could have shot Trump in the back of the head and got away with it! Whip a pistol out of the back of a corgi, bang, stuff it back in and look the other way saying ‘air say there’s a mairn on that graassy knoll”
- The Trump administration are trying reduce the protection currently given to endangered species by reforming the Endangered Species Act before the midterms. Because killing bald eagles is a sure vote-winner!
- Sarah Sanders reports that Trump is planning on revoking security clearance from former national security officials who’ve “politicized and in some cases actually monetized their public service security clearances, and have been making baseless charges to which such clearances provide inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.” Pretty much like the way Trump is using the entire office of being the faaakin’ President then!
- On July 27th 2016, Trump said in a news conference “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Well, it turns out they were listening, because within hours, according to the latest round of indictments from Mueller, Russian hackers made their first attempt at accessing Hillary Clinton’s personal servers.
- And Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been destroyed with a pickaxe for the second time. The star was awarded in 2007 for Donald’s work on the Apprentice. Maybe if he’d won an Emmy like he always wanted, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now. You know, like if Hitler had been a more successful artist…
