CSotD: Choosing to believe
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There are so many political cartoons now that are based on outright fabrication or deliberate misinterpretation that the Prime Directive is sorely tested each morning, because the part of the mission that says "made me think" is clearly being pinged by them.
But, since what they make me think is that either the cartoonist is a purposeful liar or a complete fool, I'll let David Horsey cover the phenomenon from a different angle.
His accompanying essay is based mostly on the rightwing anger and despair over the arrest of one of the ringleaders of the Benghazi attacks, and he links to a particularly fine blog post by Steve Benen which lists the inconsistent, delusional talking points with which the arrest is being attacked.
What I particularly like about Benen's observations is that he begins by noting that we are now living in a world in which recovering a POW is also very bad news, which really brings us to the overall topic as addressed in Horsey's cartoon.
There is, genuinely, nothing that could possibly happen under the Obama administration that would qualify as "good news" for a conservative movement that is increasingly dominated by screwballs. (And when the Democrats nominate Cindy Sheehan for vice-president, I'll entertain the "both sides do it" argument.)
Here's the thing: When the topic of climate change was first raised, my response was "well, hold on, because we've always had cycles …" and I think that level of skepticism is appropriate.
Once I got away from the claims and counterclaims and actually examined the science, however, it became clear that real science supported the idea of global warming and that the opposition science was similar to the counter-claims of the Tobacco Institute: Faux science based on proving a predetermined point and backed by financial interests with a stake in preventing corrective action.
But I'm willing to be lenient on that particular topic, because you do have to drill down a bit to come up with the reasons why natural cycles are not the force behind the changes being seen.
Which is to say that, while people who rant about "libtards" and "Obummer" are obviously not interested in facts, and somebody at the very top of the information chain is clearly and deliberately lying about the science, it's hard to say where stupidity and deceit are actively at work on this issue, as opposed to honest if misinformed skepticism.
On the other hand, stupidity, deceit and paranoid fantasies are having a field day on more simple issues like this one:
I like Darrin Bell's "can't see the forest for the trees" take on the latest ridiculous, counter-factual element in the nonsensical "IRS scandal," because that's a topic where it's hard to be so misinformed by accident.
For those who have avoided knowing how deep the stupid runs, the latest faux-outrage is that Lois Lerner, who angered the rightwingers by refusing to show up for her lynching claiming her Fifth Amendment rights in front of the investigating committee, apparently did not print out and file all of her officially-relevant emails as required by open-government laws.
And we all know how dedicated the rightwing is to open government.
The email is not all gone, of course. Only the ones where she kept it but the recipient did not (or, theoretically, I suppose, where the recipient wouldn't turn up in an investigation).
The reported facts in the matter, according to this non-hysterical explanation, are that the system only kept emails for six months, and that Lerner did follow the requirement of storing relevant (as opposed to "Have you got the stapler?" and "I'm taking my lunch now.") emails on her hard drive, but her computer was fried in a crash and the data could not be recovered.
It also appears to be the fact that they have recovered and turned over 67,000 relevant emails, including 24,000 from those other sources.
(Remember when the rightwing was demanding that every Senator and Representative read the entire text of the Affordable Care Act, rather than leaving it up to their staffers? Fair enough. Let us know when you're finished reading those emails, folks.)
Anyway, the story of the search-terms used to pick out potentially inappropriate IRS status filings for political organizations began to appear in February, 2012. The computer crash and attempted data recovery happened in July, 2011, before there was any need to "destroy evidence."
There is documentation to prove it, including this exchange, which is pretty clear, and begins here:
and ends with this:
This ain't climate-change-level science, people: Hard drives do crash, and sometimes data does, in fact, disappear without anyone wanting it to.
In fact, that second piece isn't quite the end of the exchange. This is:
And anyone with any shred of common sense would agree with Lerner's analysis: "Sometimes stuff just happens."
But, of course, stuff doesn't "just happen" in the phantasmagorical world of Truthers and Birthers and Bigfoot and Things That Go Bump In The Night.
Which makes it pointless to provide evidence. You might as well be arguing about Jake from State Farm's khakis.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(and not entirely unrelated to our main topic)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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