Rep. Lauren Boebert went on TV—well, Real America's Voice, anyway—to claim that Texas hasn't had a single COVID-19 death since it lifted its mask mandate on March 2. Needless to say, it takes about 60 seconds to get the real data from the CDC:
Texas was heading steadily downward, but within 30 days of ending its mask mandate deaths from COVID-19 went back up. Total deaths since March 2 amount to a bit less than 4,000. And how is Texas doing now?
Texas is currently one of the worst states for COVID-19 mortality.
So why would Boebert say something so ridiculous? The best answer, I suppose, is that it's Lauren Boebert. What do you expect? But the other answer is that this is an example of Republicans literally being able to say anything. They know their audience will believe them, and they'll never be fact checked in any sense that will hurt them. So if you're going to make stuff up, why not go whole hog?
This is, in my view, by far the most malignant thing about the contemporary Republican party. If they were not able to propagate anything they make up without getting in trouble, they wouldn't be able to get away with all the other crap they do. This ability to lie with impunity is fundamental to their actions.
THIS. Trump's secret sauce wasn't saying the quiet parts out loud; it was that he lied voluminously, effortlessly, with impunity.
Nowadays every Republican know they can lie and lie again and not get checked on it (mostly). The Democrats? Well, the very serious and not-partisan-at-all MSM still expects them to tell the truth. Of course.
"President" Biden said that a black guy invented the light bulb. Was he
a. Lying and trying to tell his black audience what they wanted to hear
b. Lying because he actually believes 1619 project type twaddle.
c. Lying because he 'Googled' "American Inventors" and every single image that came us was a black dude
or
d. Just sundowning.
Here's what Snopes says about the event (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-black-man-invented-lightbulb/).
Had Biden said "Edison's light bulb wasn't practical until a Black man on his team improved it, but you don't hear about that," he would have been correct and made his point about history as it is taught. But he didn't.
Did he just make it up, or had he heard something about Lewis Latimer and not understood what he heard? Or, more likely IMO, he heard the factoid in casual conversation with somebody else who had it wrong, or who exaggerated, and Biden failed to fact-check it before using it.
"Or, more likely IMO, he heard the factoid in casual conversation with somebody else who had it wrong, or who exaggerated, and Biden failed to fact-check it before using it."
Perhaps you should give a freshman working Mom representative who has a GED the same leeway you give an law school graduate 100 year senator.
But actually Latimer, a very accomplished individual no doubt, invented a process for improving the *manufacture* of carbon filaments. And further, the context of Biden's remarks were more political/ideological than your Snopes quote allows. He was claiming that 'real' history was being hidden (like those figures), the white man was taking credit for the Black man's invention.
Lauren Boebert is subhuman garbage.
Absolutely the welfare queen archetype that her side condemns.
Just like her mother, Sarah Louise Palin.
Good to have the Klansman's input here.
I'm not a Klansman, or even a clansman. I am a white person who advocates for the ethnic group I self-identify with.
The Honorable Representative Lauren Boebert (R - GED) is proof of another venerable Republican's admonition, "A mind is a--... It's a terrible thing to lose one's mind".
Ah, the party of the working class and trodden down strikes again...
Nothing workingclass about newspaper scion J. Danforth Quayle!
LOL. Quayle. Haven't though of him forever.
At least you could have gone with Carlson heir to Este Lauder or Heinz baked beans or something.
Nah.
Tucker is an unaccomplished stepcunt of the Swanson fortune.
Dan Quayle is the real genetic deal Holyfield.
You should probably switch that map to the population-normalized mode. At roughly 1 death per 100k population over the last week, Texas is still worse than average, but it isn't quite as stark. California, by contrast, is sitting at 0.2 deaths/100k/week.
Your broader point about Boebert and her fellow-travelers is spot on.
I endorse this.
Texans can't handle the truth. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/texas-history-1836-project.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Scanned the article.
Seems they are banning the use of 1619 Project stuff in their history curricula. That would put them on the side of the truth, as that 'Project' has been soundly and negatively critiqued by real historians.
They can't tell the truth about the Alamo.
Texas doesn't lose. Ever.
Just don't look at the Longhorns football performance since the 2006 National Championship game.
"soundly and negatively critiqued by real historians."
Sure it has.
Here's an article in the the John Birch Society's New American on it
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/
Oh wait, that seems to be the Atlantic...my bad.
1 per 100k per week is not worse than average for the United States. They seem to be doing all right, really.
Why would Boebert say this?
'Cause if you question her.............she'll shoot you
Surprised she didn't do just that to El Pepe Maximo at the Address to the Joint Session.
"So why would Boebert say something so ridiculous?"
Because she's dumb as a sack of hammers and her staff have given up trying to get her to shut the hell up.
It's hard to believe the graph for deaths in Texas is accurate.
Texans can't handle the truth. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/texas-history-1836-project.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
POST THE KEY FOR THE CHART
Kevin is in CA--they never post keys, label any axis, etc. It's common knowledge amongst academics. You just look at the first chart,, and, it's like, oh they must be from....CalTech?
😉
So why would Boebert say something so ridiculous?
Realistically, because what is happening is that Lauren Boebert, an acknowledged leader of the Tribe, is saying something good about Texas, a state widely associated with the Tribe, with respect to a topic about which the Tribe has strong opinions that differ sharply from those not of the Tribe.
Its substantive content, like its truth, is irrelevant. It expresses loyalty to the Tribe and hostility to those not of the Tribe. That's all, and that's all that's needed.
An awful lot of public pronouncements by Republican politicians these days are basically this. They are cheerleaders on Adderall at an endless junior-high pep rally in hell.
Love your idea of tribes. My comment was posted before I read yours.
The salient part of your description is that this _all_ there is to it. Nothing more. Phatic communication only, and that dialled up to 11.
Oh, that explains it. Her nose is kinda big after all.
[slow clap]
If you have a reliable audience eager to lap up lies that serve your purpose, why even bother with the truth? America is rapidly turning into the proverbial island with two tribes, one that always lies and the other that (almost) never lies. The problem for an outsider is how to navigate your way through the island of American politics.
"Siri, play 'Crime Scene, Pt. 1' by the Afghan Whigs*..."
*Fronted by Greg Dulli, who is now only the second biggest asshole from Dayton, OH, ever since J.D. Vance came to town.
Don't know the Afghan Whigs or Dulli, but have a nodding acqaintance with Vance - so I get the jist.
Much like CRT advocates, she mutters dialectical nonsense for her handlers. Tribe??? Yeah, rich globalists who she extracts wealth from.
Another random example: Ron Johnson saying yesterday that "Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the security of the Capitol". He must have known this was a lie. Democrats can't do anything much to counter this torrent of lies. It's up to the media to integrate fact-checking in every story it publishes as a routine part of publication.
Then do the same thing to Republicans. Who owns the Russian Central Bank??? These same owners then fund the Republican party, via trafficking/money laundering. Why did Russian backed trafficking surge during the Trump era while deportations fell? Instead all we get is Jesus Christ posing McGovern Republicans.
You people simply aren't real Democrats. If Biden can get Trump to flip, the Oligarchs/Putin regime is in trouble. Real real trouble. So is the identity wing of the Republican party, which is the main beneficiary of cleaned money.
Democrats can't do anything much to counter this torrent of lies.
Well, actually, the hell they can't. They have as big a firehose as the Republicans, and at least for right now the media are receptive. If Dems had the same kind of combination of message discipline and blood lust as the Republicans, they could do every bit as much damage -- maybe even more, because they'd have actual facts on their side.
The questions are, (1) can they, and (2) if they can, is now the time. For a change, I am not entirely pessimistic regarding either their ability or their sense of timing.
'It's up to the media to integrate fact-checking in every story it publishes as a routine part of publication.'
There's a word for that: JOURNALISM.
As long as you lump everything under the vague rubric of "media" you are doing the work of the GOP propagandists for them....
That's a really weird looking graph. Did the source or reporting methodology completely change in early April?
Almost the Covid data...deaths, cases, etc has that weird 7 day (approx) sinusoidal shape to it. Has to do with days deaths are reported. Here of course it looks way exaggerated. Too bad the source data isn't linked.
It looks more like a 3 day moving average than a 7. Go to Worldometers -Covid Updates- USA-Texas and scroll down to the graphs. Check the 7 day average for deaths, then the 3 day average and you will see what I mean.
Yes, Texas stopped reporting deaths the way they used to and started waiting for coroners' reports or something like that. Which conveniently left a hole where no deaths were being added for a while, followed by those bumpy daily numbers after that. But the real rate isn't zero and never was.
Thanks!
'They know their audience will believe them, and they'll never be fact checked in any sense that will hurt them'
And n ow, in a cravenly corrupt move that should surprise e3xactly nobody, the GOP has started going after Fact Checkers....
Because obviously FACTS have a liberal-bias and are therefore partisan and unfair.
Let's not forget that Texas, in its infinite "wisdom", just caused millions to lose power through epically short-sighted and corrupt policies.
Abbot certainly hopes you will.
That's a funny way of saying Obimmer continues to see his selection of winners & losers in alternative energy investment be an abject failure.
Windpower in Texas is the new Solyndra.
The Atlantic just had a write up on this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/texas-mask-mandate-no-effect
Basically, pronouncements have little effect on behavior.
It should be noted that just because conditions are ripe for an outbreak, that does not mean an outbreak will happen, and certainly not immediately. Sort of like wildfires. Conditions may be ripe across a state, which means there will be some--but not that the entire state will burn. And you can not predict when exactly things will flare up.
They've been at this since 2012:
https://thehill.com/video/campaign/262489-rep-chaffetz-confronts-candy-crowley-on-libya-fact-check-