False
The Times notes some of Trump’s lies at CPAC yesterday.
“We have passed massive, biggest in history, tax cuts and reforms … for 45 years nothing has been passed.”
False.
The $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in December are not the largest in history. According a previous analysis in The New York Times, they amount to the 12th largest, as a share of the economy.
Also, Mr. Trump is not the first president in 45 years to enact tax cuts. Tax legislation was signed into law by Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Further, the cuts passed under Mr. Reagan and Mr. Obama were larger, as a share of the economy, than those recently signed by Mr. Trump.
The “for 45 years” is laughably Trumpesque – it translates to “as far back as I can remember off the top of my head.”
“We have massive energy reserves, we have coal, we have so much. And basically they say you can’t use it.”
This needs context.
Mr. Trump is referring to the Paris climate accord that his administration announced the United States was withdrawing from in June 2017.
Emissions reductions under the agreement are voluntary. So, contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim, coal consumption in the United States would not have necessarily been affected.
Ok ok ok but Paris is that place where nobody goes any more, except Trump, who saw this awesome parade there that he wants one just like it, but he don’t want no stinkin’ Paris ACCORD and don’t you forget it.
“Companies are pouring back into this country, pouring back. Not like — when did you hear about car companies coming back into Michigan and coming to Ohio and expanding? You never heard that.”
False.
The Reshoring Initiative is an advocacy group that works with manufacturing companies to return jobs to the United States from overseas. Its website lists dozens of instances when car companies returned manufacturing jobs to the United States over the past decade. For example, Ford announced it would move production of pickup trucks from Mexico to Ohio in 2015, and General Motors said it would build a type of Cadillac in Tennessee instead of Mexico in 2014.
Again, so Trump, with the Zero Theory of Mind. If he doesn’t know a thing, the thing doesn’t exist. He’s not aware of the Reshoring Initative, therefore it doesn’t exist. It never seems to cross his mind that he might not know something. Phrases like “as far as I know” and “to the best of my knowledge” and “I haven’t seen any reporting on” might as well be in Urdu as far as he’s concerned.
“Wages are rising for the first time in many, many years.”
False.
Wages have been rising for several years. In fact, wage growth in January 2018 was slower than what it was during the last few months of Mr. Obama’s term, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
Yes but he didn’t know that so it doesn’t exist.
Just a sample of their sample. He makes no apparent effort to get things right.
I fucking love that he clearly wanted to list off a bunch of things but could only think of one.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and Trump speeches.
He also said that the USA is the world’s largest producer of oil. Obviously Dear Leader thinks that production and consumption are the same thing.
He doesn’t need to pretend to care about truth. The debasement of public thought has gotten that low.
Greta Christina asked: ‘Do you even care if the things you believe are true?’
Right across any political scale you can choose, the answer is ‘no.’
John #4 – that goes right along with what my students believe. Whatever you think is true, it is true for you. That makes it true. Of course, one of the problems with this is that they then expect others who have a different “truth” to accept that their “truth” is the correct “truth”.
I have had debates with people, highly educated, intelligent people, in my theatre circle that honestly and truly believe that we can consider nothing true, because science will not give 100% certainty. The minute you introduce a spectrum of truth, or a probability, then their idea that has a 0.000002% chance of being true is as true as your idea that has a 97.000002% chance of being true. The worst of it is, that seems to hold even for things that violate the laws of physics, because “we don’t know everything about how the universe works, so how do you know that is true?”
I saw one such example last week in this awful play written by one of my friends in which the old “take that atheist” trope of a youngster defeating a grouchy old atheist with a single, well placed question brought this play to a creaking halt. The question? “How do you know Pythagorean theorem is true?” That one isn’t even hard. You can measure it for yourself. The extension question, after the atheist muttered “I just believe it”, was “How do you know it holds across the entire universe?” Zing. Take that, atheist.
Sorry, “alternative” facts don’t have the same force as “scientifically demonstrated” facts, any more than “alternative” medicine has the same force as “scientifically demonstrated” medicine. Anyone who thinks they do should immediately stick a jade egg up their vagina, sit over a steam bath, and see how quickly that makes them stronger, younger, richer, or more beautiful.
iknklast, #5:
And the men are supposed to stick their jade eggs where, exactly?
The true answer to “How do you know it holds across the entire universe?” is “I know it doesn’t”. According to General Relativity it’s true (approximately) only in regions of flattish space, which means not near a star and definitely not near a black hole.
Scientists know a lot more about the universe than theologians.
AoS, I think I’ll leave you to sort that one out…. ;-)
Right. And the playwright goes on to talk about a curved universe, though some physicists are now saying it seems the universe might be flat after all.
People have such a limited understanding of science at all, and physics in particular, that they think any question they can’t answer is unanswerable.