The Daily Liar
Today Sean Spicer said:
"... the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."
Of course, there has been no such thing.
nytimes.com: Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers
drummerboy said:
Today Sean Spicer said:
"... the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."
Of course, there has been no such thing.
Adjective-free, it's up about 2 percent from two years ago, according to the Mother Jones article that included that graph (which -- with y axes on different scales, an x axis that starts well above 0 and no key stating that figures are in the thousands -- has its own struggle with factual representation).
yer point?
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
Today Sean Spicer said:
"... the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."
Of course, there has been no such thing.
Adjective-free, it's up about 2 percent from two years ago, according to the Mother Jones article that included that graph (which -- with y axes on different scales, an x axis that starts well above 0 and no key stating that figures are in the thousands -- has its own struggle with factual representation).
"Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the top of the gathering with Republican and Democratic lawmakers rehashing the campaign. Trump also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.
As disturbing as President Trump's incessant lying about illegal voters is, the first sentence is equally unsettling to me. Even at the CIA, he went through his campaign rehash. It's the introduction to nearly every statement he makes, even in a private setting with members of Congress who obviously know how the election went. He's getting dangerously close to Norma Desmond watching old, silent movies.
oh, I think he's well past the Norma Desmond point.
Stoughton said:
"Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the top of the gathering with Republican and Democratic lawmakers rehashing the campaign. Trump also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.
As disturbing as President Trump's incessant lying about illegal voters is, the first sentence is equally unsettling to me. Even at the CIA, he went through his campaign rehash. It's the introduction to nearly every statement he makes, even in a private setting with members of Congress who obviously know how the election went. He's getting dangerously close to Norma Desmond watching old, silent movies.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-illegal-ballots-popular-vote-20170123-story.html
I still don't get it, but OK.
DaveSchmidt said:
That figures don't need adjectives or convoluted charts.
OMG. Just when you think nothing can shock you anymore, you see this. I can't.
jamie said:
SAD . . . can we impeach him for embarrassing himself?
When I hear DJT speak, he reminds me of a professor I had who cautioned us to not be "fillers." Fillers, he said, were people who because of lack of preparedness, winged it, and usually, miserably. Fillers believe that if they say enough words - filled the air with words - no matter how incoherent, they'll sound intelligent and fool those of us listening. DJT is very much a filler. Surely they didn't teach this tactic to him at Wharton.
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
Today Sean Spicer said:
"... the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."
Of course, there has been no such thing.
Adjective-free, it's up about 2 percent from two years ago, according to the Mother Jones article that included that graph (which -- with y axes on different scales, an x axis that starts well above 0 and no key stating that figures are in the thousands -- has its own struggle with factual representation).
better to look at longer term trends instead of the past 2 years or 8 years.
In raw-number terms, the number of federal employees is nearly the same today (2.8 million) as it was when Barack Obama took office (2.79 million). It is also similar to the number of federal employees at the end of the Clinton administration (2.75 million) and lower than at any time during the Reagan administration (when it peaked at 3.15 million).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/23/the-trump-administration-just-told-a-whopper-about-the-size-of-the-federal-workforce/?utm_term=.bfb3c87ebd4d
BTW - I find that graph I posted perfectly clear. It's quite an elegant representation of two different but related curves, actually.
required reading:
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/1930824130
drummerboy said:
BTW - I find that graph I posted perfectly clear. It's quite an elegant representation of two different but related curves, actually.
required reading:
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/1930824130
"Each part of a graphic generates visual expectations about its other parts and, in the economy of graphical perception, these expectations often determine what the eye sees. Deception results from the incorrect extrapolation of visual expectation generated at one place on the graphic to other places."
No need to belabor our disagreement about the graphic's merits. Just noting that my bugaboos are rooted in the kinds of issues that Tufte discusses in Chapter 2.
ml1 said:
better to look at longer term trends instead of the past 2 years or 8 years.
No argument here. I was simply sharing, in actual terms, the increase that Spicer was probably referring to.
DaveSchmidt said:
No argument here. I was simply sharing, in actual terms, the increase that Spicer was probably referring to.
couple of reactions to that. When a guy is lying his face off (and "dramatic expansion" is a lie), how dow we conclude what he's referring to, and does is matter?
my other reaction is that trying to explain it lets the liar off the hook.
ml1 said:
DaveSchmidt said:couple of reactions to that. When a guy is lying his face off (and "dramatic expansion" is a lie), how dow we conclude what he's referring to, and does is matter?
No argument here. I was simply sharing, in actual terms, the increase that Spicer was probably referring to.
my other reaction is that trying to explain it lets the liar off the hook.
I was curious what the increase, if any, really was. I thought others might also be curious and figured I'd spare them the search. No explanation was intended.
touche
I still think it's a good graph though. 
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
BTW - I find that graph I posted perfectly clear. It's quite an elegant representation of two different but related curves, actually.
required reading:
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/1930824130
"Each part of a graphic generates visual expectations about its other parts and, in the economy of graphical perception, these expectations often determine what the eye sees. Deception results from the incorrect extrapolation of visual expectation generated at one place on the graphic to other places."
No need to belabor our disagreement about the graphic's merits. Just noting that my bugaboos are rooted in the kinds of issues that Tufte discusses in Chapter 2.
ml1 said:
better to look at longer term trends instead of the past 2 years or 8 years.
No argument here. I was simply sharing, in actual terms, the increase that Spicer was probably referring to.
The liars double down on the lies. This is the drill from here on in.
nytimes.com: Trump Won’t Back Down From His Voting Fraud Lie. Here Are the Facts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/unauthorized-immigrant-voting-trump-lie.html
kibbegirl said:
When I hear DJT speak, he reminds me of a professor I had who cautioned us to not be "fillers." Fillers, he said, were people who because of lack of preparedness, winged it, and usually, miserably. Fillers believe that if they say enough words - filled the air with words - no matter how incoherent, they'll sound intelligent and fool those of us listening. DJT is very much a filler. Surely they didn't teach this tactic to him at Wharton.
I bet he learned it as a survival technique.
I saw a good meme today, which is, unfortunately true. It has the Baby Man's face, and the caption:
I can lie faster than you can fact-check.
This is short, interesting (imo) and a little depressing....
"Trump's Lies vs. Your Brain"
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658
mjc said:
This is short, interesting (imo) and a little depressing....
"Trump's Lies vs. Your Brain"
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658
In other words, the brainwashing can win:
A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible. It’s little wonder that authoritarian regimes with sophisticated propaganda operations can warp the worldviews of entire populations.
“You are annihilated, exhausted, you can’t control yourself or remember what you said two minutes before. You feel that all is lost,” as one man who had been subject to Mao Zedong’s “reeducation” campaign in China put it to the psychiatrist Robert Lifton. “You accept anything he says.”
paulsurovell said:
With each passing hour, I'm less and less afraid of Mike Pence.
You might want to read up on him. He is scary in a different (more focused, more efficient, in many ways more backwards) way.
sprout said:mjc said:In other words, the brainwashing can win:
This is short, interesting (imo) and a little depressing....
"Trump's Lies vs. Your Brain"
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658
A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible. It’s little wonder that authoritarian regimes with sophisticated propaganda operations can warp the worldviews of entire populations.
“You are annihilated, exhausted, you can’t control yourself or remember what you said two minutes before. You feel that all is lost,” as one man who had been subject to Mao Zedong’s “reeducation” campaign in China put it to the psychiatrist Robert Lifton. “You accept anything he says.”
This is EXACTLY why I always say not to search for a grain of decency or a morsel or good policy. There is none. Every single thing he does is for the purpose of gaslighting us, getting us off balance, getting us to be in perpetual conflict, to keep us ungrounded, playing the people against each other. Do not be lulled when you hear a kernel that appears "reasonable." It's not. It's done to keep us off balance.
And if you are wondering how he does this, how he thinks up these things, how he knows how to constantly keep us off balance: It is essential to who he is. He doesn't have to give it a moment of thought. It is characterological, it's what he's made of. To him, it's as natural as having breakfast. Just as some people are natural-born athletes or musicians, DJT is a natural-born narcissistic gaslighter.
yeah, Pence is as much a liar as Trump is, at least on substantive policy issues - he has to be, it's part of being an extreme-right-wing kook.
President Pence won't go off half-cocked like Trump, but other than that, you should still be scared of Pence.
South_Mountaineer said:
paulsurovell said:
With each passing hour, I'm less and less afraid of Mike Pence.
You might want to read up on him. He is scary in a different (more focused, more efficient, in many ways more backwards) way.
If we haven't figured it out yet, he's a hustler. He's the same dude that swindles people out of their homes with bogus mortgages. He's the same dude that runs scams on the stock market in boiler rooms. He's the same dude who has one family in Astoria and another one in Sunnyside. A hustler.
wapo.com: Trump seeks ‘major investigation’ into unsupported claims of voter fraud
wapo.com: Sales of George Orwell's "1984" Spike
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I figured we should have thread to keep track of the lies that will daily be emanating from the White House.
ETA: I guess we shouldn't forget about the lies coming from Congress. I was reminded of this while I watched 60 seconds of Pauy Ryan and Mitch McConnell lying through their teeth about Obamacare.