Patterico's Pontifications

10/20/2021

Washington Post “Fact-Checker” Fact-Checks Republican Senator on Issue of Whether “Squid-Brained” is a Compliment

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:50 am



Another day, another silly partisan “fact-check” from the Washington Post. I almost don’t care about the substance of the fact-check (although I will say I few words about it below) because I became distracted by this absolutely awesome parenthetical in the piece, which amply illustrates the snickering, smug, absolutely bonkers desperation to label Republicans liars:

Kennedy, who once served as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Revenue, repeatedly said Americans’ “intimate financial details” would be collected, and he called it a “squid-brained idea.” (Scientists say squids and octopuses are the smartest invertebrates.)

(ACKSHALLY squids are super smart SENATOR)

As for the substance of the article, the “fact checkers” assign three Pinocchios to a Republican assertion that new legislation will provide the IRS with an intrusive level of detail into most Americans’ bank transactions. Democrat lawmakers’ take: the law doesn’t provide for that. Republican lawmakers’ take: OK, but the law gives substantial authority to the executive to write regulations that could well lead to intrusive scrutiny.

Then the fact-checkers conduct a detailed discussion of the specific language of the proposal, survey case law on bureaucrats’ ability to include new requirements for financial institutions via a broad grant of regulatory authority, consult several non-partisan experts on the subject, and come to a sober and reasoned conclusion on the matter. LOL, that previous sentence is a lie. More like, they ask one partisan expert from each side and then slap THREE PINOCCHIOS on that puppy, mainly based on the Dem spokeshole statements, and call it a day.

I’ll pay the “fact-checkers” this one compliment: their analysis is very squid-brained.

33 Responses to “Washington Post “Fact-Checker” Fact-Checks Republican Senator on Issue of Whether “Squid-Brained” is a Compliment”

  1. Interestingly enough, the Democrats have belatedly realized how horrible the optics are of allowing the IRS to look into every single bank transaction above $600, and have now bumped that figure up to $10,000. It’s truly amazing the unforced political errors that the Biden Administration — “the adults in the room,” “the competent and experienced Washington veterans” — are making every single day. And even their media enablers are now starting to acknowledge how disorganized and unfocused the White House is, as witnessed by the pointed questions that Jen Psaki is (at long last) starting to receive, and the incredulity with which her answers are quite often received.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  2. And it goes without saying that “fact checks” such as these greatly influence how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest of them determine what are legitimate facts and what are disputed facts, and will tag posts, tweets, and videos accordingly. It’s almost as if big media is colluding with big tech to do favors for Democrats and the progressive agenda, but perish the thought.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  3. Grilled squid over wood coals with a soy, ginger,garlic, brown sugar, soy glaze.

    mg (8cbc69)

  4. I’ve been meaning to bring up fact-check-check.com

    Maybe I’ll get around to it soon.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  5. Total Information Awareness started out to “protect us from terrorism”, but it is no surprise to anyone that the IRS was always standing in line.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  6. I just keep remembering what BHO supposedly wrote about JB.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  7. Re- Breaking 911:

    “DOOCY: “Why is the administration flying thousands of migrants from the border to Florida & New York in the middle of the night?”

    PSAKI: “Well, I’m not sure that it’s in the middle of the night…”

    DOOCY: “2:30 AM, 4:29 AM…”

    PSAKI: “We are talking about early flights…””

    Some people describe hate for one’s own country and serial incompetence as ‘unforced errors’.

    Some people voted for this.

    It’s only ‘amazing’ if you ignored all the warnings.

    Obudman (cef237)

  8. @7 What did he supposedly write?

    norcal (b9a35f)

  9. @8. Faith forbid that detained illegal aliens should fly redeye. What’s this Doocy person going to do next? Go and cry in front of a chain link fence?

    nk (1d9030)

  10. Fact checker Psaki gives Doocy three big fat pinocchio noses.
    “Middle of the night is 12:00AM. Next question”

    steveg (e81d76)

  11. I knew about octopuses but I just looked up that it’s also true about squids. They have the one “big brain” but they also have “little brains” here and there on their bodies which operate independently without “orders from the top”. Which makes “squid-brained” an apt allusion when applied to government.

    nk (1d9030)

  12. If I may add a small fact to the discussion: Some years ago, I attended an octopus release down on the Seattle waterfront. This gave me a chance to ask an actual octopus expert this question: Smart animals are typically social, live long lives and have few offspring. Octopuses are solitary, short-lived, and have, potentially, many offspring. So why are they smart?

    The expert began by saying that they weren’t all that smart, about as smart as rats. So “squid-brained” would be approximately equal to “rat-brained”, assuming squids and octopuses are about equal in intelligence.

    So they are smart for invertebrates, but that is like saying a man is tall — for a dwarf.

    (I noticed that the fact check wasn’t done by Glenn Kessler, for whom I have a lot of respect. The others who do fact checks there — not so much.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  13. One, some fact-checkers are better than others. Rizzo is no Kessler, for example.
    Two, another word for a decent fact-check is reporting, i.e., a good journalist does it as part of his/her regular job.
    Three, it’s easy to take a few poorly conceived fact-checks and make generalizations across the whole genre, but I think it’s ill-advised to go that way. There are some useful sources out there, Kessler being one of them along with conservative-leaning and never irrelevant Dispatch.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  14. Have no fear: Trump is going to launch his own social media platform, called TRUTH. Or maybe PRAVDA.

    https://www.engadget.com/trump-truth-social-061457538.html

    Finally we’ll be free of the MSM’s lies. Just think: pure Trumpist TRUTH!

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  15. “Middle of the night is 12:00AM. Next question”

    In my house that’s “late evening.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  16. Some people voted for this.

    Well, give them a choice that better next time. Make them choose between two idiots and they might pick the wrong idiot.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  17. Middle of the night is 12:00AM. Next question”

    In my house that’s “late evening.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/20/2021 @ 11:25 pm

    In my house that’s “midday”. 🙂

    norcal (b9a35f)

  18. On further thought, squids and octopuses could be called literally scatterbrained.

    nk (1d9030)

  19. Middle of the night is 12:00AM. During Daylight Savings Time, it’s actually about one hour later.

    The middle of the night today near where I mm in Brooklyn is 12:40:45 AM

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  20. The middle of the night had been getting earlier by one minute every three days around the time of year. The change is slowing down. It won’t get any earlier than 12:39. Then, on November 7/8 it will change to 11:39. Then, it will start getting later, the next week until it reaches 12:10 on Thursday, February 3, where it will remain for 17 days, and then start getting earlier on Sunday Feb 20 (actually a bit earlier, if you look at seconds.) On March 13, 2022 (or rather the next day) it will jump from 12:05 to 1:05.

    The middle of the night (or midday – they are 12 hours apart five or take some seconds) will continue getting earlier till 12:52 on Thursday, May 5, where it will remain for 18 more days through Monday, May 23. Then it will get later, till 1:02 am, on Tuesday, July 9. It will stay there till Sunday, August 31, and then start getting earlier again.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  21. The thing is that Biden was hoping to keep their arrival unnoticed, except by the people close to them, since they won;t cause any trouble. But the immigration haters will not let anything be done quietly. And they casually make incredibly implausible and false assertions.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  22. And they casually make incredibly implausible and false assertions.

    Like “illegal immigrants are being sent around the country in the dead of night to hide their numbers” is false because there were other motives? Or because it was “early morning”?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  23. Fauci lied people died . No fact check needed.

    mg (8cbc69)

  24. The DuPage County jail (that’s the DuPage County next to Cook County in Illinois) contracts with Texas prisons to keep Texas prisoners. There could be lots of reasons why. From overcrowding to breaking up prison gangs to protecting them from rival gangs to keeping their families in Texas from visiting them. Which is the one you want to exploit for your agenda?

    nk (1d9030)

  25. “their analysis is very squid-brained.”

    It is, but not sure you’re really getting the metaphor or the image it’s properly intended to evoke.

    “In 2009, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi applied the most apt metaphor for Goldman Sachs that anyone has yet come up with, calling the bank “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.””

    Which is precisely what the metaphor was intended to evoke: amoral grasping for resources by any means necessary regardless of the aftereffects, except by government instead of ‘private’ enterprise, though to be honest the revolving door is so prevalent that the personnel have probably already crossed between the orgs many times.

    “unforced political errors”

    They’re not “unforced political errors”, they’re “opportunistic predatory ventures.” They”ll literally try anything they think they can get away with to squeeze more money out of the commoners, in literally the same way that Soviet commissars did.

    Rationalizing and minimizing the various terrible effects of the regime policies under the guise of “Fact Checking” daily is literally their full-time job, there’s no air of ‘desperation’ about it, it’s their entire profession no matter what emotional state they do it in.

    The proper attitude to take isn’t one of smug condescension, but grim resolve to remove these squidheads wherever you find them.

    ” have now bumped that figure up to $10,000.”

    Oh, so they just decided that robbing small businesses instead of individuals was easier to get away with and more cost-effective. Will you be hyuck-ing over how SILLY and POORLY EXECUTED this theft was in the future?

    “even their media enablers are now starting to acknowledge how disorganized and unfocused the White House is,”

    I’d say that the gang of thieves who stole the election is now using their power to rob the rest of the country just fine, given the absolutely terrible state of even rhetorical ‘opposition’ to them that I’m reading. Burglars rarely care about the state they leave the joint in after they leave.

    Resistance Style Guide (c04f86)

  26. And they casually make incredibly implausible and false assertions.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/21/2021 @ 7:45 am

    Like “illegal immigrants are being sent around the country in the dead of night to hide their numbers” is false because there were other motives? Or because it was “early morning”?

    No, not that one (although it is falsely implied that there is great danger, that they are going to rob people, and that that’s why they need to keep it secret.

    Biden wants to keep it secret because of politics.

    It’s not like he as any reasonable alternative anyway. He hasn’t got a magic wand, and neither did Trump.You notice they never say exactly what Trump did.

    I said the word “and”

    they will not let anything be done quietly refers to one thing: The headlines they are making out of thus.

    Thatthey they casually make incredibly implausible and false assertions refers to another. Like claiming that 20% are infected with Covid.

    which means I am relating ir ri

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  27. The words after “and” relate or refer to something else other than the mere fact that they are not being allowed to do things quietly. Not on this issue.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  28. $600 is the amount of gambling or lottery winnings that needs to be reported to the IRS. Thus was something else. Thia one would have required banks to report to the IRS once a year, the total amount f money that was deposited in the account over the course of a year, outside of payroll checks or payroll direct deposits or things for which 1099 forms would be expected to be filed. From institutions.

    Of course, this would have gotten many people getting food stamps, or Medicaid, or applying for federal aid for education and the like.

    So now they raised it to $10,000, But this is over the course of a year, or $833 a month or more.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  29. Squid brained.

    You harvest squid by taking a boat out at night with a line of bright lights. You turn on the lights, the squid swim right up to the boat and you just scoop them out of the water.

    Xmas (042535)

  30. You just cannot make this stuff up:

    Going by the name Truth Social, the new Trump platform is billed as a way for him (and all of us) to “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” most especially Twitter and Facebook, which have banned him for repeatedly violating their terms of service. Speaking of terms of service, Truth Social’s terms forbid users from saying anything to “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.” At last, free speech has been restored to the Internet!

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/21/trump-social-media-political/

    Free speech for me, not for thee!

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  31. Although it is fun to look at liberal echo chambers like the WaPo comment sections. They seem to think that Trump invented wingnuttery, when they aren’t much better themselves.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  32. Squid brained would be a compliment for the Mayor of Chicago
    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2021/10/21/sheriffs-to-vaccine-mandating-chicago-mayor-pound-sand-n1525695

    “It doesn’t make sense to say I only want my residents touching vaccinated people, but I’m going to send all these potentially unvaccinated people from other municipalities to replace them,” said DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, pointing out the illogical nature of the request.

    Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain punched another hole in the argument for providing mutual aid. “I don’t feel like the onus is on us to go in there in an emergency situation that was created by poor government and a lack of support the officers receive.” He’s not the only sheriff to feel that Lightfoot’s decision to send home able-bodied officers is her choice and not his problem. “You make that decision, you figure out how to keep your city safe,” said Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird.”

    steveg (e81d76)


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