Tucker Carlson's new doc

[Thomas B]

I have gone ahead and subscribed to the Tucker Carlson Network so that I can see his attempt to mainstream the 9/11 conspiracy theories. The trailer doesn't reveal much, and nothing new, but this will no doubt have some effect on the movement. I'm going to watch these episodes (they drop on September 23) somewhat charitably, as is my wont, but I hope some more skeptical people here will join me and challenge my interpretations. I figure this series marks something like what happened with JFK in the late 1980s and early 1990s (especially with Oliver Stone's movie). That is, probably very little will come of it, except that it will establish some key elements of the mythology we'll be living with for the next few decades.

 

[econ41]

Noted.
Let us know if he raises anything new.
As I have said multiple times, the one area where debate has been limited is in the realm of political decision making. Both the sharing of responsibility for decisions about the events and the whole domain of post event support of affected persons.

I remain sure there is no "space" in the taxonomy of the technical events to allow for any significant new issues affecting that technical domain.

 

[Thomas B]

Let us know if he raises anything new.
As I have said multiple times, the one area where debate has been limited is in the realm of political decision making. Both the sharing of responsibility for decisions about the events and the whole domain of post event support of affected persons.

I've watched all five episodes and I'd say the bulk of the series goes in this direction. It is basically an argument for another commission to hold officials responsible, either for what were at least intelligence failures and mistakes (to the point of negligence) that let 9/11 happen or for opportunistic exploitation of the tragedy (to the point of self-enrichment) after the fact.

It also makes the well-known case that the 9/11 Commission was a cover-up organized by Zelikow.

I remain sure there is no "space" in the taxonomy of the technical events to allow for any significant new issues affecting that technical domain.

There's nothing new here, as far as I can tell. Mainly focused on WTC7, raising anomalies that have all been addressed at Metabunk. It may attract new audiences to the rabbit hole, but it seems to be the same hole we're all familiar with here.

I'll probably have another couple of watches and will report if I spot anything worth talking about.

 

[econ41]

Thanks for your response.

It is basically an argument for another commission to hold officials responsible, either for what were at least intelligence failures and mistakes (to the point of negligence) that let 9/11 happen or for opportunistic exploitation of the tragedy (to the point of self-enrichment) after the fact.

That is the direction I suggest has not been adequately or legitimately discussed.

It also makes the well-known case that the 9/11 Commission was a cover-up organized by Zelikow.

Whether or not it was a "cover up" the reality is that it was a creature of its time. A political first step. There is no point circling the criticism - there is a need to move forward with legitimate criticism of any inadequately addressed issues and, secondarily, the reasons they remain unaddressed. IMO resolving the problems, if any remain, is more important than debating blame.

There's nothing new here, as far as I can tell. Mainly focused on WTC7, raising anomalies that have all been addressed at Metabunk. It may attract new audiences to the rabbit hole, but it seems to be the same hole we're all familiar with here.

That agrees with my understanding of the status of debate. Including that many of the technical issues were discussed earlier and on forums other than Metabunk. But, I think, most technical issues have also been conclusively addressed here.

I'll probably have another couple of watches and will report if I spot anything worth talking about.

Thank you.

 

[Aaron3]

Any updates on your watch? I'm about to dive in and hoping you can save me the time. Are people able to comment? Any interesting discussion? I saw Young Turks are getting into it.

 

[FatPhil]

Any updates on your watch? I'm about to dive in and hoping you can save me the time. Are people able to comment? Any interesting discussion? I saw Young Turks are getting into it.

Beware, TYT are similarly "hyperpartisan" according to AdFontes Media, although they are slightly more reliable.
TC: Reliability: 19.07, Bias: 23.89 https://adfontesmedia.com/tucker-carlson-tonight-bias-reliability/
TYT: Reliability: 25.07 Bias: -24.90 https://adfontesmedia.com/the-young-turks-bias-and-reliability/ .
TC's scores may be a little dated, of course, but so could everyone's.

 

[Ann K]

Beware, TYT are similarly "hyperpartisan" according to AdFontes Media, although they are slightly more reliable.
TC: Reliability: 19.07, Bias: 23.89 https://adfontesmedia.com/tucker-carlson-tonight-bias-reliability/
TYT: Reliability: 25.07 Bias: -24.90 https://adfontesmedia.com/the-young-turks-bias-and-reliability/ .
TC's scores may be a little dated, of course, but so could everyone's.

This is an older article (2014) from the New York Times (and therefore a good deal of it is about Obamacare) but well worth reading to help you from falling into the trap of using "bias" statistics as a meaningful measure of the difference between the parties.

"The facts have a well-known liberal bias," declared Rob Corddry way back in 2004 — and experience keeps vindicating his joke.
.........
As Chait says, the big Obamacare comeback and the reaction of the right are a very good illustration of the forces at work.

The basic facts here are that after a very slow start due to the healthcare.gov debacle, almost everything has gone right for reform. A huge surge of enrollments more than made up the initially lost ground; the age mix of enrollees has improved; multiple independent surveys have found a substantial drop in the number of Americans without health insurance.

Opponents of Obamacare could respond to these facts by arguing that the whole thing is nonetheless a bad idea, or they could accept that the rollout has gone OK but call for major changes in the program looking forward. What they're actually engaged in, however, is mass denial and conspiracy theorizing strongly reminiscent of their reaction to polls showing Mitt Romney on the way to defeat, or for that matter evidence of climate change. Acceptance of the facts is, well, unacceptable.

Nothing illustrated this better than the reaction to Ezra Klein's own note about the resignation of Kathleen Sebelius, which was intended as analysis rather than advocacy; Klein simply made the fairly obvious point that the HHS secretary was in effect free to resign now because Obamacare has been turned around and is going well. But Klein's statement was met with a mix of outrage and ridicule on the right; how dare he suggest that the program was succeeding?

Why is it, then, that the right treats statements of fact as proof of liberal bias?

Chait's answer, which I agree is part of the story, is that the liberal and conservative movements are not at all symmetric in their goals. Conservatives want smaller government as an end in itself; liberals don't seek bigger government per se — they want government to achieve certain things, which is quite different.

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/on-the-liberal-bias-of-facts/

 

[FatPhil]

This is an older article (2014) from the New York Times (and therefore a good deal of it is about Obamacare) but well worth reading to help you from falling into the trap of using "bias" statistics as a meaningful measure of the difference between the parties.

"The facts have a well-known liberal bias," declared Rob Corddry way back in 2004 — and experience keeps vindicating his joke.
.........
As Chait says, the big Obamacare comeback and the reaction of the right are a very good illustration of the forces at work.

[...]

Why is it, then, that the right treats statements of fact as proof of liberal bias?

Chait's answer, which I agree is part of the story, is that the liberal and conservative movements are not at all symmetric in their goals. Conservatives want smaller government as an end in itself; liberals don't seek bigger government per se — they want government to achieve certain things, which is quite different.

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/on-the-liberal-bias-of-facts/

That article makes a good point well, thanks.

However, my caveat was more that certain levels of "bias" are an indicator of *commonality* between *adherents to* the two parties. Both major US parties have a proportion of fanatics who are prepared to put facts and reason to one side in order to, one might even say religiously, push their predetermined narratives. The size, and influence over the two parties, of those two competing factions might not be comparable between the two.

As an external observer, I can recall far more right-motivated instances of where facts and data have, often unreasonably, been pushed aside simply because the source was from the wrong party than left-motivated ones. And it's not just the facts and data being pushed aside, it's the people and the institutions behind them too. Of course, Trump is a special case with his BLS/CPI/Food Insecurity data purges, he might even be dismissed as an outlier (so tempting to mistype that), but examples go back decades.

Thinking of something purely economic, look at the Fed Chair, for example. When the data says that a Republican (Reagan) nominee (Greenspan) seems to be doing a decent job, the following Democrat (Clinton) re-appoints him. Later, when the data says that a Republican (Bush) nominee (Bernanke) seems to be doing a decent job, the following Democrat (Obama) re-appoints him. <fx: record skip> Later, when the data says that a Republican (Trump) nominee (Powell) seems to be doing a decent job, the following Democrat (Biden) re-appoints him. Ooops, what did we just skip? When the data says that a Democrat (Obama) nominee (Yellen) isn't doing any worse a job than any of the others so far mentioned (GDP growing at the same rate, CPI range-bound and better than Greenspan and arguably Bernanke), the following Republican (Trump) replaces her. Which could be cited as a data point indicating that data-averse actors have a far deeper influence over one particular party than the other.