Being straight means to be attracted to only members of the opposite sex. With the rise of transexual mainstreaming and acceptance as well as numbers of people going through with the various stages of transitioning their gender, this created a rift because people who identify as straight have different feelings about trans people. This mostly applies to straight men and trans women. A trans woman is a biological male who lives life as a woman. So, depending on how good the surgeries were to transition the male parts into female parts and how feminine the final outcome is, a lot of straight men don’t care that a trans woman they date is really a biological male because “straight” means being attracted to women – not doing a DNA test and then determining from there if you’re attracted to someone or not. Other straight men find that concept ridiculous because they only want to date, have romances with, or have sex with biological females. Both are valid, but with that pre-mentioned rise in trans-acceptance comes the inevitable trans-acceptance bullying. This comes in the form of badgering straight people who don’t want to date biological men and smearing them as bigoted for… er… being straight.
In response… someone sought to clear up the confusion by creating a new label for this group of straight people: Super Straight. A description for straight people who are only interested in members of the opposite sex who are biologically the opposite sex and not just identifying and living life as such. Problem solved, right?
The origin of the term was just a dude named Kyle on TikTok proposing the concept but it resonated with so many straight men who were tired of not being heard or seen in their identification that, to them, straight means “not interested in males [even if you’ve had surgery to hide the most outwardly male parts of you]” that it spread, grew, and was of course condemned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8vQhkPnEE4
In an interview with Insider, he said, “I created it because I was sick of being labeled with very negative terms for having a preference, something I can’t control, and getting labeled by the community that preaches acceptance with that sort of stuff.”
Predictably, activists hated it, he was smeared as a bigot, and had to delete the original TikTok after many thousands of views because the death threats were getting to be too much and too scary. Reddit briefly had a new sub created called “r/SuperStraight” and it was since banned. At the time of this writing, all the search results for “super straight” are articles by woke scold finger waggers explaining why its not okay to say, to be, or to accept as a legitimate sexual preference.
The reaction to him and the concept on all platforms pretty much went like this:
An example that is representative of the common hater-reaciton:
Make this make sense??? there is so much wrong with this- just say you’re transphobic and leave…and don’t make up terms like “superphobic” and say you go through more??? also- definitely NOT a part of the LGBTQ+ community#superstraight is absolute bullshit pic.twitter.com/alq7uvTDzp
Having a genital preference is okay among the activists – they just say that having a biological-genital preference is not okay. In other words – you’re allowed to be attracted to feminine esthetic, physical features, breasts and vaginas, but if so, you *have to* also be attracted fake breasts and fake vaginas. This is because even thinking of these anatomy parts as “fake” is offensive to trans activism which rests on the dogma that sex is defined by words, not biology. So if a cisgendered woman gets breast implants, its okay to still call those “fake breasts” colloquially, but if you use the term “fake” to refer to a biological male (who identifies as female) and her breast implants, then you are basically de-humanizing her with the reminder of her surgical alteration.
Titania McGrath, a woke-parody account, illustrated the opposition to super-straight in terms of the woke-Left’s take on sexualities:
Blaire White – a trans woman (lookin cute in this video, so evidently I’m not SuperStraight) talks about it here –
The “I’m a Mac / and I’m a PC” line of commercials from Apple that mocked the abilities and performance of Microsoft Windows software and the Personal Computers that ran them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHgKu81Tv9A
The criticisms were exhibited in amusing, memorable, and effective ways, so it was smart for Intel – recently dropped as a processor chip partner from Apple – to hire the “I’m a Mac” actor Justin Long for their own series of ads titled “Justin Gets Real” throwing shade at Apple and it’s custom M1 processors. Intel says laptops powered by Intel processors are better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gtRRMd2_UI
Other ads in the series have Long dunking on Apple’s lack of touchscreen Macs, the inability to plug more than one external display into M1 Macs (what? why is that a thing?), and a variety of different options available for laptops powered by Intel.
It’s all clever marketing, but dang Justin – where’s your loyalty at? In 2017, the actor starred in a series of Huawei commercials promoting the company’s Mate 9 smartphone. Meanwhile, the “I’m a PC” actor – who I met at LAX baggage claim in 2009 – has ironically stuck with Apple, appearing as a “one more thing” goof in 2020’s Apple MacBook announcement event:
Leftist pundit and publisher, Glenn Greenwald has been angering people on his side more and more with his obnoxious habit of being willing to tell the truth. This outrages establishment shills and partisans on both sides, but it’s never as prominent in any ideology as it is on the Left. The “Sports team Left” comprises of the overwhelming majority of collectivist/Leftist thought. “Sports team leftists” is a term I made up that refers to Lefties who root for their perceived team far more than any underlying ideology or truth that team allegedly represents. It is descriptive despite not being a very good term (not very good just because “sports team” as a modifier has a boomer sounding clunkiness to it like someone unironically saying they’re going to “the Walmarts”) because Leftism claims to be more of a morality than a political position when the reality is that its most vocal proponents are zero sum team players who exhibit the most closed minded viciousness against even the most polite dissent or disagreement.
Their anger at Greenwald in this case is that he pointed out that some of the most popular and prominent right-wing figures actually support socialist policies. He said this as a guest on a show produced by the right-leaning Daily Caller, and boldly included in his outing of socialists-on-the-right, Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson.
“Obviously the term ‘socialism’ carries a lot of baggage from the Cold War. It evokes, on purpose, the Soviet Union, or Castro, or Chavez, but I think what you are seeing is this kind of hybrid socialism that really is about nothing more than trying to sandpaper the edges off of neoliberalism” Greenwald noted.
The thing that triggered the choir in the cathedral is when Greenwald continued to say that he “would describe a lot of people on the right as being socialists,” such as former White House strategist Steve Bannon and “the 2016 iteration” of former President Donald Trump as a candidate, “based on what he was saying”, and that “I consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist”.
This is of course, factually solid at least with the citations of Trumps 2016 rhetoric and Tucker Carlsons economic policy positions he espouses on his Fox News show. I don’t know enough about the other people cited to be able to cite their economic positions from memory, but I sure can with Trump & Carlson. In 2019, Carlson supported Socialist-lite Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s so called economic populism (the name for what people use when they want to refer to socialism as practiced without using socialism as ideologically defined by a specific strain).
Greenwald further explained that their “right-wing populism, which really is socialism” (fact check: True), that “says we should close our borders, not allow unconstrained immigration, and then take better care of our own working-class people and not allow this kind of transnational, global, corporatist elite to take everything for themselves under the guise of neoliberalism.”
True again… Before it the Left had to leverage its reliance on allegations of hate and racism as a way to con minorities into supporting them, “open borders” in America was openly considered a corporatist move that only hurts the lower class so that rich people can get cheap labor. “Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” Bernie Sanders said on the topic in 2015. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.”
Greenwald supported the claim with his own example, pointing out that when it came to Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wanting “to give tens of millions of dollars to Amazon to bring an office to New York”, Tucker Carlson and self-identified socialist, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, agreed.
Greenwald attributed their agreement to people realizing “that neoliberalism doesn’t work” as his explanation of why they both supported the socialist position instead.
Their shared socialist position is wrong of course – New York was never going to “give” Amazon millions of dollars to open an office in the state – it was offering a tax break to the company if it chose New York for the job creating (and thus, ironically, tax revenue paying) addition the company could add to the states economy. AOC had asked for a similar deduction herself in 2012, but back to the lie in her position about it as a Congressperson: Phrasing the act of “people (or groups of people) keeping more of the money they earn” as a gift or giveaway is classic Socialist rhetoric because it starts with the premise that when an entity earns money, it has no right to it. Thus whatever the state allows it to keep is a gift or grant or giveaway rather than simply just “not stealing”.
Pointing out right-wing Socialism is a common Leftist argument
The econ Leftist argument to Repubs has always been that the supposedly “conservative” economics and/or figures they support are actually Socialist in nature. They dubiously try to claim that institutions like the police, military, and fire department – which enjoy solid support from the right – are actually “Socialist”. They’re liars and misinformed, of course – but the point here is that they argue it constantly. It is a standard talking point that comes up in popular dialogues frequently.
Glenn Greenwald points this exact thing out via prominent Republicans who are also economic populists /socialists & the Left gets pissed… over their own talking point.
Actually, “red-pilling” conservatives to the fact that their biggest leaders are actually economic populists and favor socialism isn’t a desperate plea to relevancy – its a necessary truth they need to hear to realize not everything “socialist” is bad because whether they realize it or not – they frequently support it.
The Leftist reactionaries got mad at this…
glenn greenwald has lost every ounce of integrity and critical thinking skills. pic.twitter.com/xH91NIfIBb
— ce🔆 of market socialism (@memeguider) March 4, 2021
^At least market socialists recognize that their talking points are devoid of integrity and critical thinking skills… they just did so by accident.
It appears that the reason these pavlovian zombies got mad is because they have become so narrowly tribal that the thought of people they hate agreeing with them – or more accurately – the confrontation that *they* actually agree with those people they hate – makes their heads explode.
Social media Lefties erupted in outrage – and the angry kind of outrage that disguises itself as effusive laughter to signal dismissal of a point that triggers them into a fear response that it might spread. Know what didn’t erupt? Rebuttals. Corrections. -Any kind of factual presentation of why he might be or provably is offbase? lol nah. The dude said that people they hate agrees with them and that is OUTRAGEOUS.
Greenwalds crime, in the person above’s estimation, is that by using the Leftist talking point that some on the right are Socialists as well, that makes him “not an ally to the Left”.
Others wanted to make sure people got the message that Greenwald – a Leftist – is “not a leftist” for pointing out that some prominent people on the right actually endorse Socialism. lolwut?
^At least this person gave a rarely found actual-reason for why they are triggered by this take: their correction is that Tucker Carlson, Trump, Bannon, & Le Pen aren’t socialists – they’re neofascists, as if that is a distinction with a difference. It isn’t. The Nazi’s were fascist-socialists (Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers’ Party) who demanded the nationalization of all industries; Something that this Greenwald reactionary appears to acknowledge:
^In other words – Nazi’s are the ‘bad-kinds’ of socialists and thus it must be kept a secret that they were socialists because it makes the brand look bad – and here jerknut Glenn Greenwald is all exposing the truth they’re trying to hide and allegedly doing so, er, in service to those people (as if any of the people Greenwald mentioned would be happy /consider it a shoe shine to be called a Socialist. lol).
Many iterations of fascism is just militantly enforced socialism, but the GroupThink on the Left is that “people I don’t like are fascists” rather than using the word historically and politically accurately.
This blue-check-mark sums up the reactionary response excellently by exposing the false assumption they’re all making: they think that because Socialism is good, then by pointing out the fact that (or in their ignorant estimations: what they think is not a fact at all)
What if I told you that Glenn Greenwald has always been this way? It's nothing new. He was defending rightwing extremists decades ago. Served as legal counsel for them and not in some "everyone deserves a defense" kinda way, either. The guy has always been this way.
And of course this is the theme the other haters were all operating on –
Glenn Greenwald loves white nationalists and anti feminists.
He’s told you all this in 1000 different ways, but every time he does this, everyone has amnesia over the 999 other times he’s done this.
— Monjula Ray 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@queerBengali) March 4, 2021
And that is the state of the Left, just as it has been my whole life: if you point out facts or make solid argument that appears to hurt the public marketing attempts made by the Left, then you are the enemy. Doesn’t matter if you’re right. Doesn’t matter if you’re using a Leftist argument that is common. If it appears like you are humanizing anyone who the Left seeks to demonize then you aren’t an ally and have to be dismissed.
Failed Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler has started a voter registration and voter integrity group to rival failed Georgia Democrat Stacy Abrahams voter registration and voter access group.
Former candidate Stacy Abrams (Left) & former Senator Loeffler (right)
The history
Democrat Stacy Abrams ran for Governor of Georgia in 2018 and lost to Republican Brian Kemp by about 55,000 votes. Finally acknowledging that she “didn’t win”, Abrams maintained that she “didn’t lose” as a way of expressing her belief in conspiracy theories that voter suppression and voter integrity laws cost her the title that she otherwise legitimately won from the voters (Abrams never conceded). After the defeat, Abrams went and did something about it and started two organizations to increase Democrat voter registration and attack Georgia voter fraud prevention laws to get them changed in a more favorable direction for Democrats. Her efforts succeeded and she is largely credited for Biden winning Georgia in the 2020 presidential election and both Democrat candidates for senate winning their runoff elections two months later.
Republican Kelly Loeffler was appointed to the senate by the victor in Stacy Abrams losing race for Governor, Brian Kemp, in 2019. The sitting senator Johnny Isakson announced that he would resign at the end of that year, citing health reasons, and in accordance with Georgia law, the Governor appoints a replacement to that senatorial term. Conservatives and President Donald Trump wanted Georgia Representative Doug Collins, who helped lead the House opposition to Trump’s first failed impeachment by Democrats but Governor Kemp chose businesswoman Kelly Loeffler who would have to defend the seat in the next years election in where both Georgia senate seats would be on the ballot. In November 2020, both Republicans, Loeffler and Perdue, won reelection, however, Georgia election law (along with 9 other states) dictates that candidates must get a minimum of 50 percent of the votes to be declared winners, and neither of the winning Republicans cleared that 50% hurdle due to multiple Republicans on the ballot splitting their vote. That triggered a runoff in January 2021 where the two senate seats got voted on again – and this time – both Republicans who won 2 months prior, lost to both Democrat opponents. Some key lies about the Republican candidates lyingly spread by their opponents and un-checked on the same social media outlets that just weeks prior were treating election misinformation as an issue they needed to correct, but those types of smears abetted by big corporations are typical. What was atypical of this election was the Republican stupidity in mixing their messages about the alleged fraud in the presidential election with a failed organized Get-out-the-vote effort as well as the most vocal lawyer fighting on behalf of investigation of the 2020 fraud claims condemning the Republican senate candidates. Regardless of the big tech election interference, Democratic smears, and Republican in-fighting idiocy, Stacy Abrams efforts in new voter registration and Georgian election law changes were again credited with the Democrats historic victory.
Loeffler’s new Georgia Voter Org
After Loeffler’s loss, I wondered if she would be useless and go back to the business world or if she would do exactly-this and try to do something about the reasons she thinks she lost. One month later and she has done the latter, starting an organization to promote election integrity and make future elections in the state more secure.
Loeffler’s organizations main goals will be doing the reverse of Abrhams Leftist group.
Abram’s organization, New Georgia Project (NGP), was founded to register Leftist and Democrat-leaning voters. Abrams other group “Fair Fight” was founded on the premise that rules around vote integrity are actually Democrat-voter suppression and focuses on challenging election laws and procedures to relax voting securities and other barriers.
Loeffler’s group “Greater Georgia” was founded on the premise that Democratic legal victories around voting rules are Republican-voter suppression and will focus on registering “conservative-leaning” voters and seek to promote “election transparency and uniformity”.
The objective of Loeffler’s Greater Georgia is to assure Georgians “that their voices are heard when they cast their ballot,” Loeffler said in a statement referencing the accusations of cheating and fraud around the Georgia 2021 runoff election.
Next move?
Due to the resignation that spawned Loeffler’s senate appointment, her opponent Raphael Warnock was only elected to the remaining time in that senate seats term, so instead of serving a full 6 year first time, Warnock will have to defend his seat again in the 2022 midterm election. Loeffler has not stated whether she will file to run against him in a rematch. Hopefully she won’t, since she was a terrible senator but she hasn’t ruled it out.
At the time of this writing, the Democrat who bested her in the election is being investigated for voter registration fraud for actions taken as board chairman for New Georgia Project, Stacey Abrams’ voter registration organization, in 2019. The Georgia State Election Board voted unanimously to investigate the allegations against Warnock and the Abrams group under evidence that it did not follow election law guidelines and further, “sought to register ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters”.
Loeffler’s group says it wants to expand voter registration to more communities with plans to reach out to groups that aren’t traditional Republican allies and reform elections by removing secretive fraud-shielding practices and policies with transparency measures and reforms as well bringing uniformity to elections so that county by county standards don’t differ so widely, which confuses voters and provides another shield for fraud in elections.
Our mission is to:
✅ REGISTER more voters.
✅ REACH more communities.
✅ STRENGTHEN transparency & uniformity in our elections.
Together, we will advance pro-growth, conservative policies that create more opportunities in our state!
“It’s deeply disheartening that a former US Senator would spend her time and her resources to publicly engage in the type of conspiracy theories that say that only certain Americans should be valued. That’s what Kelly Loeffler is proposing.”
That’s obviously not anything similar to anything that resembles what Loeffler is proposing, but it also doesn’t make any sense. It was delivered in a live interview on tv, so it’s probable that Abrams merely botched the prepared talking point and, one assumes, meant to allude to conspiracy theories about Georgian voter fraud in both the 2020 and 2021 elections. Instead, Abrams called “only believing certain Americans should be valued” a “conspiracy theory”, which… might be a theory someone somewhere has (though it’s not something Loeffler’s group ever said or implied but expressly states the opposite of) but lacks any “conspiracy”. Unless Abrams maybe meant to have said that Loeffler is conspiring to make some Americans valued less? Which would make Abrams the theorist and Loeffler the conspirer… who knows man.
It will be interesting to see how these dueling politicians and their competing voter organizations play out in the political theaters coming up.
Just a friendly reminder (and I do mean friendly. no one should be angry or jerky about this) that “clean energy” uses dirty energy. Specifically: electric cars use fossil fuels…
In case you are wondering: yes, coal is a fossil fuel…
Some just try to fool the public about this but others acknowledge the dirty fuel use in clean energy but claim that vehicles reduce carbon dioxide emissions cuz they use less fossil fuel than burning gas in a vehicle engine to make it go, but… the data isn’t conclusive that that is true:
The Greenpeace / Transport & Environment report’s research states that while PHEV manufacturers cite official test results showing CO2 emissions averaging 44g per km, they actually emit more like 117g per km in real use, which is much closer to the value for petrol and diesel cars of 164-7g per km. This is because the true emissions of a PHEV depend on how you drive it. If you don’t plug it in, a PHEV behaves like a conventional hybrid, except with about 200kg more batteries, which are being lugged around for no reason. Also, if you drive a PHEV fast, the fossil-fuel engine will fire up anyway, negating the emissions benefits of battery power.
Based on these findings, Greenpeace is arguing that car manufacturers are simply using PHEVs as an excuse not to stop manufacturing polluting internal combustion engines, and that this vehicle type should be banned alongside pure petrol and diesel in a decade or so as a result. Their arguments are not completely lacking in merit. Lots of people will have purchased a PHEV for the reduced tax due to their low official CO2 emissions, and once they’ve bought the car don’t care about driving it in a way that actually produces this ecological outcome. Both the manufacturers and owners can pretend to adopt green behaviour without actually bothering to do so.
In the 2020 election, both of the state of Georgia’s senate seats in Washington were on the ballot and Republicans kept the Senate by winning both of those state seats. But not so fast… Georgia law says you can’t just win, you have to SUPER-win – meaning, it’s not enough to just get the most votes – if the winning candidates don’t get over 50%, then they have to run again in a run-off election in January. And that’s what’s happened. and now (at the time of this writing) it is January. and both candidates are poised to win but probably won’t but she should, even though they’re terrible…
I can explain…
The 2 Democrats running against them are worse. They offer no improvement over their Republican challengers in any way that isn’t strictly ideological, and they are both woke talking-point peddling liars. That’s not to say that the existing Republicans “deserve” to win though – just that they should because they are politically better as they are more likely to vote against Biden administration agenda items like tax increases, more regulations that control our behavior in the name of some “its for the children!” type of emotional appeal (though, with the infantilization of minorities, the “for the children” part has been typically replaced with a patronizing “for these poor racial groups that don’t know any better”), and of course – the real reason the deep state ensured a Biden victory: BOMBS. Absolutely gotta bomb some third world countries (which I predict will start within Biden’s first month in office).
That’s obvious though. Most people know that. What most people don’t know is how bad these Republican candidates are so that’s much more interesting to me.
Here are some briefings on why they’re so terrible:
Kelly Loeffler
I’m not a mind reader, so I don’t know why Kelly Loeffler wants to be a United States senator, but that’s also the problem is that – I would have to be a mind reader to know why Kelly Loeffler wants to be a United States senator…
She isn’t an economics-issue’s Republican, anti-war Republican, culture-war Republican, or “stick it to the Dems” antagonistic Republican (which are the main factions of the outgoing Trump administration). She’s just… a Republican. The vibe I get from her is that of a housewife that wants to “be involved” and would normally put this energy into a local Parent Teachers Association or Home Owners Association but since she’s wealthy, decided to go into the senate instead.
Glenn Greenwald captures some of these qualities perfectly in these tweets:
"Hey, y'all, don't know if y'all know but I was born in Bloomington, Illinois, grew up in Illinois, and lived in Illinois until well into my adult life, and I love all y'all."
Even the fake Southern accent Hillary affected was more convincing than this:https://t.co/7dPTUk0guy
Loeffler was appointed to her senate seat by the Republican Governor of the state even though President Trump and grassroots conservatives wanted congressman Doug Jones instead. In her brief 1 year in the senate after this appointment, her biggest headline making moment was to be investigated for insider trading after suspicious stock investment moves that appeared to be influenced by knowledge she obtained from her position as a senator before the public knew the same information.
NEW — Sen. Kelly Loeffler Dumped Millions in Stock After Coronavirus Briefinghttps://t.co/qxKbzHXC2k
We don’t know if that’s valid or just looked suspicious but who cares because of all her other not-good qualities for the position.
David Perdue
What a shmuck this guy is. He’s all the emptiness of Loeffler except he’s been in there longer, doing nothing useful longer, plus he still has the same exact negative regarding the insider trading accusation. lolWTF?
David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are both quite clearly corrupt and dishonest and there's just no getting around that fact. https://t.co/z76vKVoKYj
While Perdue’s Democrat opponent Jon Ossoff keeps lying on the campaign trail and would be (will be?) a terrible senator that won’t represent the people of Georgia accurately at all – Perdue is a coward, a phony, and evidently – a crook. Not evident by the accusation of such as that happens to everyone – but by his lack of defense. Ossoff called him a crook to his face at the debate – a bold move for a crook and a liar to make – but came out looking like a hero because Perdue was just like “oh wut-everrr” (that’s a synopsis – not an actual quote). Perdue didn’t like being called out so bluntly in that debate that he didn’t show up to the next one, which gave Ossoff the chance to just rattle off every talking point in his Notes app completely unchallenged. lol. Great. What possible excuse could there be for this? I can think of none, but I shouldn’t have to think of any because Perdue should have made it known. He didn’t make a valid excuse known because he didn’t have one. Coward.
I hope he doesn’t lose because senators are just vote-bots and he would vote for better policies than Ossoff, but if/when he does lose – he will have earned the defeat. Loser.
Summary: Tens of thousands of Twitter users misunderstood reporting about Georgia’s Floyd County recount revealing “800 for Trump” when it was featured as a trend on the platform, and mercilessly mocked and bullied Trump supporters in a straw man fallacy over their own mistake. Twitter didn’t correct them.
Math is hard (*not sarcasm) – however…
I admit that I am comically bad at math, myself. But I also don’t mock others for being bad at math. Glass houses and all.
I was not one of the people dunking on Brian Williams and Mara Gay and MNBC’s producers for covering a tweet that claimed a massive mathematical falsehood, endorsing it as true, and no one down the line realizing the mistake they were making in misunderstanding the numbers in front of them. The tweet they all thought was so profound was a blue-check-mark saying “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over.” -Which most people immediately laughed at but I admit that when I first read it, I was like “so what’s the error?” for a solid way-longer-than-I-should-have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWqJCeY8cD0
After a minute my brain caught up to realize that “500 million” isn’t “1 million, 500 times” the way the author and pundits thought – it’s one dollar 500 million times (about enough to give every American $1.53).
However… The issue so many people got wrong about Georgia’s recount isn’t just a misunderstanding of math at play like the pundits in that MSNBC flub. This time, nearly 100% of the tweets making the math mistake were using that mistaken perception to ridicule Trump and Trump supporters, often accusing both of the thing they were actually guilty of (also called Narcissistic Projection).
What happened in Georgia
In Georgia, a statewide recount of votes in the presidential election was started over the weekend and on Monday (November 16th) revealed that over 2,600 votes in Floyd County had not been counted.
The blame for how this happened lays in an unknowable area in between human error, human intent, and the error or intent in the system of Dominion tabulating machines (the same system Trump alleged was falsely tabulating votes against him)… Specifically – a human evidently failed to load a memory stick for the tabulations of an entire voting machine and this was only found out a week after the election and only because of the scrutiny happening from the required recount. So opinions will vary between human accident, human intent, and a flawed system by Dominion that allows such an error by a poll taker to occur.
At the time of this writing, the statewide recount is still going on, with the deadline for completion being before Thursday (11:59 p.m. Wednesday).
The Error…
Local source, Coosa Valley News, reported that of the 2,631 ballots, “that it appeared that between 1,600 and 1,900 were cast for President Trump.” – which means that the votes that would have been left uncounted had this scrutiny not happened, favored Trump nearly 2 to 1.
Democrats on Twitter misunderstood that math, thinking the report was the opposite: that the roughly 800 votes for Biden in that batch of nearly 2,000 were a measly 800 votes for Trump.
“800 for Trump”
So many people on Twitter were tweeting mocking-LOL posts that the recount Trump supporters wanted in the state of Georgia was actually yielding over a thousand new votes for Biden and only 800 for Trump that “800 for Trump” started trending. “Trending” pages are created by Twitter editors to highlight round-ups of tweets with words and phrases that are in current high volume.
Featuring this in the side panel like that led to even more people posting with the same misunderstanding of what “net votes” means and of course none of them checked the math on their confirmation bias causing the repetition of the math error to appear in tens of thousands of tweets and retweets.
The correct response, even with this misunderstanding, is to be glad that new votes were counted that otherwise would have – not just to pretend to like Democracy when all you really care about is your candidate of choice winning – but also because this doesn’t change your candidate of choice still being the winner (so far) so there is nothing in it for you to gloat on your political opposition. You could just take the high ground and be like “yay Democracy” and support every legal vote being counted, assured that you’re still getting your way.
Instead – thousands of Tweeters couldn’t help themselves in kicking the other side when they’re down and used their false perception as club to attack.
Twitter, which has been censoring and “correcting” with vague warnings, Donald J Trump’s official account (but not Biden’s) in the months leading up to the election and especially afterward any time he tweets anything about the election (literally anything – not just disputed claims) put no correction, alert, or attempt to curtail the misinformation about the election that was spreading through any of these tweets.
As an example, take this tweet of Trumps saying that the numbers of his votes are “up big”, which they were at the time (11:49pm, November 3rd), so that was disputed by no one. After midnight, however, vote counting in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin stopped – something I don’t think has ever been done in modern (say, post 19th century) American vote counting on election night – new gluts of votes came in, and the tides started to turn. Trump accurately said he was up in the count and raised attention to the fishy behavior and for that Twitter says “not so fast”:
Keep that standard in mind while looking through the trending page for this “800 for Trump” lie as none of them have corrections by Twitter A.I. or manual editors despite the content they’re gloating about with soppy-wet sarcasm is actually the opposite of what really happened:
https://twitter.com/TimOBrien/status/1328522859224965120 ^Tim O’Brien is an anti-Trump blue-check-mark columnist for Bloomberg and author of Trump Nation. The tweet above was screenshotted before being deleted and can be seen here:
Math and science aren’t strengths for Bloomberg journalists.
Well look what we found – 1,600 uncounted ballots for Biden and 800 for Trump. So @JasonMillerinDC is excited the Biden lead is GROWING? https://t.co/U4d8puya1G
Notice how many of these people touting math while failing the math of the claim. Hundreds of the tweets I looked through were ones like this where they are commenting on an accurate tweet (in this case, by Brendan Keefe) with their ignorance:
This one gets extra points for including the “let me get this straight” trope + “do they not know [the thing I myself am misunderstanding], or am I missing something?”
What's that you say? Trump's recount found 1800 more votes for Biden? and only "800 for Trump" — sounds like we get to celebrate Biden's victory in Georgia all over again! pic.twitter.com/URlOCpvnVx
I thought for sure this next one was a satire because they ask “since when did [thousands] become thousands?” In addition to the other falsehoods. Yikes.
Since when did 2600 become thousands?
Also only 800 for Trump
and
1800 for Biden, benefits Biden not Trump because NEWSFLASH: 1800 is more than 800. https://t.co/0nM5dRxKHl
This guy with almost 40 thousand followers self-own’s with the roast “Maga. Because learnin’ is hard.” in his tweet showing that learnin, for him, is in fact difficult.
So in the GA recount, trupmworld is celebrating 800 for trump, but ignoring the other 1,800 votes found for Biden.
^his bio identifies him as “Author of Goodnight Loon: Poems & Parodies to Survive Trump, and Goodnight Loon II”… Dozens of comments joined in his ridicule with various versions of the GOP being bad at math – again – while being the ones making the ridiculous math error.
The sarcastic struggles to understand their own mistakes continue:
Many were probably misled by this popular Leftist account with almost a million followers, whom I have caught fudging facts at least 4 other times this year:
The irony of saying “you can’t make this shit up” – literally about shit that the speaker of the phrase made up:
So the MAGA folks where calling fraud whent hey found 2600 uncounted ballots in Floyd County, GA… And 1800 are for Biden and 800 for Trump… You just can't make this shit up … https://t.co/7iMpstuyEI
Will these people delete their mistakes? So far none of the above have corrected or retracted in follow up tweets as new people keep Liking and retweeting the falsehoods in their original posts.
I predict a lot of checkmark Dems will be deleting their 800 for Trump tweets tomorrow, because math.
Sadly – I saw at least a dozen tweet replies being even MORE snarky and sarcastically dismissive even after the corrections were made because they just didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to look it up, and just stuck with the original narrative. Basically all of them went along this tone and line of logic:
2,600 ballots extra in the recount. It’s math not opinions. I’ll help you 800 (Trump) ballots + 1,800 (biden) ballots = 2,600 ballots.
tax season must be hard for you, if you need more math Help, I have a 1st grader, Fundraising for 2024 blue candidates in Arkansas
^That one is the best representation of all of these as it wraps up every trop into one reply:
over confidence of something they’re dead wrong about,
attacks someones capability in sentences riddled with typos and grammar mistakes,
brags about how they are actively recruiting people to be as ignorant as themselves
“ur so stoopid but I’ll explain it to you, you poor dumb thing: [total falsehoods]. Get it now, looser? Lol I win. Nobody’s smart but me!”
“It’s math not opinions”…
How / Why this happened…
The information in these tweets are technically “lies” since the content is untrue and easily verifiably so, but I doubt even one of these people are “lying” (saying something *knowing* it is untrue). Rather, this confusion stemmed from Democrats reading that “Trump could gain nearly 800 net votes” and, since none of them have ever run a business, simply didn’t know what “net” means. That ignorance combined with confidence and a fighting attitude to stick it to the Trumpkins resulted in the mass misinformation train of people bathing in their own errors and feeling like super winners about it.
If the “net 800” thing makes sense to you then skip this paragraph. If you’re still absorbing those words the way I did with the MSNBC flub because math is hard (again: not being sarcastic), then just remember that economically, “net” means the total of something after its deficits. Think of the word “net” like a physical net that you carry something in and that something being what you get to take home. As in – if our lemonade stand pays $24 for ingredients and earns $25 in sales then we sold $25 worth of product – but the “net income” (profit) for that round is only $1 (income minus expenses, which here is 25-24). This is important because Democrats want to tax and regulate businesses while not understanding – and making no effort to understand – businesses they want to tax and regulate. Many of you here no doubt thought my lemonade business example of just $1 profit ($25 in sales minus $24 in expenses) was silly because its either unrealistic that even a small business would make such a small profit margin, and/or even if they did then “oh well” because they shouldn’t be in business if they can’t earn enough to pay half of that dollar in taxes to the government (which didn’t help buy, make, or sell anything but still gets paid) plus a government forced hourly minimum wage to anyone the lemonade biz hires. My example, however, uses the average profit margin of the restaurant business, which is 3-5% (4 percent of $25 is $1).
And that’s what makes this important to spotlight. Not that people got a thing wrong or even that they were jerks about it – but that a billion dollar mass media corporation is actively censoring opinions by the President that they don’t like while not only giving safe haven to verifiable falsehoods but actually featuring them as a highlight for people to go check out.
Something to be aware of.
——————————-
Update: The following tweets originally included in this post were deleted by their [presumably embarrassed] authors so I replaced them with others above but saved the list of shame for posterity since despite being so nasty about it, NONE of them corrected their mistake in follow up tweets (correct me if I missed anyone who did) after having misled the thousands who read it – they just quietly deleted the lie and moved on.
^(the last two was a pair of those who doubled down on the falsehood when corrected by multiple people before ultimately realizing their critics were right and deleted it all)
Reminder* that elections in the United States balance the representation between minority and majority states via the Electoral College, which gives each state an electoral number based on its population. The candidate who reaches 270+ is the winner.
A further Reminder on how predictions work: Prediction models are not intended to be accurate – they’re intended to be useful. Let me say that again: Prediction models are not intended to be accurate in specificity (otherwise everyone would know for sure the outcomes) – they are intended to be *useful* (eg: a directionally-accurate temperature to glean data from). Such models are not formulated to place specific bets on the details of the predictions – their purpose is for a wider accuracy that takes into account many variables that can and will change between the predictive model run and the actual result.
Presentation notes
You’ll notice that the titles of these maps orbit around one candidate and are not neutrally stated. That is because re-election voting years are typically referendums on the sitting President, and as such the result scenario titles here are framed around the incumbent, which this year is President Donald J. Trump.
The data I’ve seen suggests 4 scenarios:
Trump Wins Narrowly
Trump Loses Narrowly
Trump Loses Bigly
Trump Wins Bigly
Considering all of the above – here are the 4 more likely projections, explained. Remember that the winning number is 270. Enjoy.
Trump Narrow Win: 279
In this scenario, Trump picks up no states from his win in 2016 and loses Michigan, and Wisconsin, but keeps Pennsylvania – all of which which he won that year, then he still makes it past 270 to win re-election.
Trump Narrow Loss: 259
If Trump loses his 2016 won states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, then Joe Biden will squeak a win out at 279 electoral votes. This scenario and the one above all hinge on Pennsylvania, a must-win state for the math to work in the Presidents favor.
Trump Big Loss: 182
Call this one the “The Polls Were Correct” Map. This is what the polling throughout 2020 predicted according to ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight and the RealClearPolitics polling average: Trump loses formerly solid-red states of North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, loses states Obama won in Florida and Iowa, loses states he won in 2016 in PA/MI/WI, and fails to pick up a single new state from his 2016 victory, handing Biden a 356 landslide.
Trump Big Win: 322
If Trump keeps all of his 2016 wins and adds states where he only narrowly lost then the ones most likely to flip would be Minnesota and Nevada and one of Maine’s electoral split votes, giving Trump a 322 blowout.
My data suggests a narrow win, but if I had to bet money, I would lean closer to this big win scenario.
Bonus scenario: Total Landslide for Trump It should be noted that, while not likely, a landslide scenario is not impossible (though, just because of the way the human brain reads “not impossible” into their own confirmation bias’s, it’s important to repeat that this is not likely). Such a not-impossible scenario would take the “Trump Big Win” map above and add Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia – all states George W. Bush won in 2004 – going to Trump. Again – sorry for even bringing it up when it requires this many disclaimers but – Polling and recent political climate in these states does not forecast this, but in a year where COVID wasn’t a factor and some other tweaks to the political climate were made – this could be a thing.
Bonus scenario 2: Total Landslide for Biden Add Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, and… Texas.
Bonus scenario 3: A Tie… This gets teased every year since the close 2000 Bush vs Gore election, but hey – it’s possible. If this were to happen, the way it would likely pan out is with Trump picking up no new states and retaining the victories from his 2016 map except for just Michigan and Pennsylvania. If that were to happen then each candidate has 269 votes – just one shy of the winning number.
The Constitution is clear on what happens in such a case: If there is no winner in the Electoral College, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 3 states that the decision of who becomes President goes to the House of Representatives while the Senate picks the vice president. That means that depending on the house and senate election results, there could be a President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris administration…. yikes.
If neither the Senate nor the House can pick someone, then the third in line for the Presidency becomes acting President until both chambers of Congress decide on someone. That 3rd in line spot is the Speaker of the House – in this case, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. as Madam President for at least a period of time…
Walmart has announced a subscription service they’re calling Walmart+ for $100 a year that gives members unlimited free shipping from Walmart.com, free same day shipping from Walmart stores, and 5 cents off per gallon on gas at their stations (Sams Club – a Walmart subsidiary – gas stations not yet included but the company says they will be soon). That’s basically it for now. You can also skip lines in Walmart stores and pay with your Walmart+ account and just walk out the door or something.
The name is boring, adding another Plus branded subscription service to the AppleTV+, Disney+, but – Is it worth it?
You may have noticed by that list that the perks are as generic as the service name. Despite the analyst headlines and overwhelming consensus that this is “Walmarts answer to Amazon Prime”, this is clearly not designed to compete with Amazon Prime like the media hot takes are claiming. More on that in a minute.
The major missing feature is video… Amazon Prime includes movie and tv show streaming in its service along with a bunch of other perks like free cloud storage for photos that most users don’t take advantage of and Walmart isn’t offering anything like that at launch. They could have as the company used to own video streaming streaming service Vudu that offered free and paid streaming rentals and sold it for some reason to Comcast’s Fandango who wanted it for who-knows-why (Fandango already has a streaming service that does the exact same thing Vudu does and its parent company Comcast owns NBCUniversal which already streams its own content on its apps and the newly debuted Peacock streaming service but they wanted one more streamer). Making the lack of video in Walmart+ and Walmarts sale of Vudu even stranger is that at the same time all this is going on, Walmart also wants to co-parent Tik Tok with Microsoft as the phone based short video making/watching app looks for a buyer.
So for whatever reason, Walmart isn’t trying to compete with, er, their biggest competitor, Amazon, who debuted Prime 15 years ago. This is a defensive move to retain customers within their Walmart ecosystem to help dissuade more people from defecting to Amazon for their shopping needs, not an offensive move (at least not yet) to compete with Amazon users who already buy most of their delivered goods through Amazon.
BUT – the one thing that would make Walmart+ worth the hundy a year is the same day free delivery from local stores. That one is a winner because many Walmart stores are also grocery stores so that means unlimited free same day delivery on groceries without having to tip a deliverer (I’m assuming) and without marked up prices like grocery delivery services such as Instacart instates on all the items they make available with their partners.
Walmart+ launches September 15 so will be looking into it more but at this point I’m thinking it’s a probable buy for that reason.
Retired Marine General James N. Mattis was Trumps first Secretary of War Defense but resigned in protest after failing to convince the President that he needed to blow up more countries. Now, the same Mattis who said we needed to keep fighting an 18 year long war, bomb more people, police more nations, ultimately resigned from the administration when it pulled troops out of Syria instead of following his advice to put more in, and now sits as a board member for General Dynamics (aka one of the largest defense contractors in the US) thinks President Trump is bad?… lol. Filed under “No freakin doy”.
Mattis has been laying in wait to come out against Trump in an effort to damage/prevent his reelection bid. He finally made his move in a public condemnation over Trump traveling across the street during a press conference to a church near the White House that was the victim of arson by “protestors” (cuz setting buildings on fire is an appropriate method of free-speech expression, right?) the night before. Mattis said he was angry and appalled, mainly over the Presidential security detail clearing protestors who were blocking the way and accused Trump’s message of unity in front of the victimized place of worship of trying “to divide us.”
About James Mattis
General Mattis was named President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense in December 2016, a month before the new administration was officially sworn into office. He was frequently referred to a “Mad Dog” Mattis, which the L.A. Times said was a nickname his troops gave him “behind his back” after the battle of Fallujah in 2004 where he reportedly ordered attacks on ambulances and aid workers, prevented civilians from escaping, and posed for trophy photos with the people they killed. Under his command, Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium reportedly had to be turned into a graveyard. Whether the troops meant the nickname of comparing Mattis to an insane animal as a compliment or not is disputed, but the nickname stuck and was used by Trump around his nomination time. Less understandable as “maybe they mean it as a compliment?” is his nickname as “The Warrior Monk”, alluding to his 40+ year long war related career and the fact that he has never been married.
I could find no record of any additional nickname alluding to the apparent laziness and alcoholism of both his eyeballs which sport obscene beer bellies.
Mattis appears to have been, during his military career and beyond, the sort of war loving military man that Hollywood thinks everyone in the military upper ranks is. In 2005 there were calls to discipline him for saying it was “a hell of a lot of fun” to shoot the Taliban, who “slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil.” Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) commented on that saying “We do not need generals who treat the grim business of war as a sporting event. These disturbing remarks are indicative of an apparent indifference to the value of human life.” I disagree, because – it was the Taliban, after all, (and to be fair: CAIR is also designated as a terrorist organization by the UAE) but nevertheless, Nihad didn’t know how deadnuts spot-on he was when he described Mattis in exactly those terms. This Slate article on Mattis from 2010 depicts his attitude about using human beings as canon fodder to the degree that the dude is even against his men wearing helmets on their motorcycles cuz he only wants risk taking dudes ready to get hurt and die within his ranks. If you think that interpretation sounds exaggerated then you tell me what *you* gleaned from this portion of the piece:
Maintaining this culture of ferocity is why Mattis bristles about excessive hand-wringing over Marines who might want to ride without motorcycle helmets. Marines need to be risk-takers. That’s why the corps advertises at extreme sporting events. Ferocity is part of what the corps works to build in boot camp, and it is central to its storied history and traditions. If that’s the kind of spirit you need to fight wars, then you have to accept that the kind of person you want is going to sometimes ride at 120 miles an hour on a bike and hurt himself.
In and out of the Trump Cabinet
This history and “Mad Dog” approach to warfare made some question how well he would fit into Donald Trumps administration, which was promised during the campaign to be decidedly more anti-war than any of the previous Democrat or Republican administrations in living memory. The Mad Dog was portrayed as an anti-torture advocate who would bring a Trumpian aggressive attitude to a foreign policy that was decidedly non-aggressive in a sort of “speak loudly and carry a big stick, but leave that stick at your side until absolutely necessary” (paraphrase) type approach.
Turns out, the fit wasn’t so great.
Mattis finally left the administration in frustration over being unable to convince President Trump to escalate war rhetoric, drop more bombs, send more troops, or start any of the new wars he was looking forward to commanding from the White House. The last straw that caused him to resign in protest was when Trump, against Mattis’ reported wishes and advisement, and hopes and dreams of spilling more blood for no good reason, had US troops removed from Syria.
This made sense to Trump, whose approach to war is more practical, eg – along the lines of “defeat the enemy and get out”, while such an approach is an outrage to warmongers who see every excuse for conflict as a potential for more escalation.
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.
Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing? Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight…..
I said on the day of his departure from the administration that he was biding his time to use some bullsh*t “Trump is bad for the American Way” appeal to Trumps base (well, specifically I predicted that he would just use “conservative appeals”) to try and peel them back into the hawks nest but I said it would likely come closer to the election. Indeed, that same month it was revealed that Mattis had explored a potential run for President to defeat Trump and Make America War-focused again.
“Shocker”… Mattis rebukes Trump in election year
While Mattis ultimately decided not to run against Trump in 2020, his commitment to seeing the President he served under get removed from office remains strong and he finally pounced this month, claiming that Trump is bad for “the Constitution” or something.
The statement had a bunch of tired talking points like Trump being -gasp – “divisive” (as if THIS was the big secret revealed) and referring to Trumps press conference that showcased St Johns church – an area landmark damaged by the fires that were part of the devastation from the riots “protests” the night before and continuing into the next day – as a “bizarre photo op” (“wtf is all this calling for peace crap??” he must have furiously exclaimed) and express outrage that the President said he would bring in the U.S. Military to protect and defend the country if the domestic terrorism didn’t stop.
Read this portion of his complaint and you can almost feel Mattis’ heartbreak at learning of such a crushing proclamation antithetical to everything he believes in regarding the countries armed forces – that his precious tools of death would be used, not as pawns in foreign countries, but on American soil protecting actual American citizens from harm.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
These checklists of outrages about “divisiveness” and “photo ops” (ie: every single thing a President does in public) are all obviously designed to blow a kiss to the corporate press already circulating those same talking points and try to lend them some seeming credibility from his stature as someone who loves killing people.
Not sure why Mattis thinks the Constitution contains the rights for mob gatherings to impede the travel of the President for any reason (I checked. It doesn’t) – even/including if it is for a demonstration in the street to showcase that you think racism and/or murder is bad. Given his history, he was also presumably super angry that only strictly non-lethal tactics were used to clear the mobs out of the way for the president to visit one of the sites their movement tried to destroy and tell the American people he would put an end to such destruction.
Of course the point of all this is to seize the opportunity to get the President some negative news coverage at a time when his leadership was doing way too well for comfort. While the corporate press succeeded in whipping up an international frenzy of hate and outrage causing violence (that the main anti-Trump fake-Republican group wasted no time cutting into ads) over the seemingly unjust killing of a black suspect in Minnesota during his arrest, the coverage doesn’t appear to be doing much to dent Trumps reputation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the incident occurred in a Democrat city, under a Democrat mayor, by a Democrat union, and under a Democrat prosecutor, Democrat attorney general, and Democrat Governor, with Republican President Trump (the same guy who undid the worst damage from the Democrat crime bill of the 90s last year) being the only one who acted swiftly for justice in the situation.
While it was never a secret that Mattis, like others in the so called deep state coup participants, wanted Trump replaced with someone easier to convince into sending troops and bombs and bases and money around the world at pre-Trump levels in the Presidency again (whether that be himself or Joe Biden, or future Republicans running for office under a cloud of “see?? Trump lost and you will too unless you fall in line on war games”) this wasn’t common knowledge to the average observer and thus gave weight to the intended effect, which was “respected General turns on Trump”.
Whether any Conservatives at all who like the President will be duped by this charade remains to be seen (the Senates most Trump-critical Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Mitt Romney (UT) both praised Mattis’ comments), but at the time of this writing is rather doubtful given the easy-to-reveal history of Mattis’ opposition for the platform of de-escalating violence that they voted for.
Trump haters, on the other hand are all in on this talking point, and Mattis citing the Constitution I guess makes them feel like they have some cover for becoming war shills in the name of justifying their hate for the President because he pens mean Tweets.
At the last minute before I published this post, I saw this tweet from Rich Higgins, a the former director for strategic planning in the National Security Council, making the following claim about Mattis:
