World Nut Daily founder, election fraudster, files complaint of election fraud

Via Joe.My.God, Joseph Farah, the braintrust behind World Net Daily and its infinite improbability engine powering every right-wing nutter conspiracy since its creation, has apparently filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission over the Obama win.

Am I suggesting that the recent presidential election was stolen through voter fraud and manipulation? Without a doubt. Do I have evidence? Yes, I have plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that it was committed by one side in the election in various ways. And I am convinced that at least 5 percent of the Democratic vote can be attributed to fraud – illegal voters, illegal campaign contributions, rigged balloting, intimidation at the polls, you name it. I’m challenging the Obama campaign on the acceptance of those illegal donations. I’ve filed a Federal Elections Commission complaint at considerable cost. I have no illusions that it will be easy to challenge a sitting president within his own bureaucracy. But I’m doing it. Meanwhile, some in the press would prefer that I be charged with voter fraud for efforts to expose the system. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Democrat machine tries something like that. That’s why we need your help. We’re fighting to preserve America’s freedom here – nothing less.

( http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/did-voter-fraud-swing-election/ )

No, I’m not going to link that. You can damn well copy and paste.

The Head Nutter is, as he implied in his last few sentences, apparently already being charged with election fraud for having built a Pakistani account through which he placed two donations to the Obama campaign — under the name Osama Bin Laden. So he’s doing this, I’d expect, to throw up chaff; to provide his nuttier fans with a “plausible” reason (to varying definitions of the word, naturally) why he’s actually being charged with the very thing he’s complaining about.

The worst part is, the wingnuts and conspiracy theorists will likely eat it right up, and will surely never notice that evidence of Farah’s own wrongdoing came to light eight days prior to this article. Meanwhile, all of Republicans’ failed voter suppression efforts and other failed attempts at tilting the playing field in their favour go completely unnoticed by these crusaders against liberalism. What is wrong with America that this kind of immunity to reality has gained such a foothold?

World Nut Daily founder, election fraudster, files complaint of election fraud
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Martin S Pribble on “The Hyper-Skeptic Problem”

Sorry. It’s shaping up to be another one of those weeks. Seems a lot of us around these parts are being struck with Real Life all at once. I don’t have it as bad as some, certainly, but I’m pretty swamped out at the moment. So I’m more than happy to spread around what few hits I can direct to others who are out there taking and throwing the punches that I wish I could be.

Like Martin S. Pribble, and his fantastic treatise on the “hyperskepticism problem” that I’ve touched on myself a number of times.

Hyper-skeptical viewpoints give rise to conspiracy theories, paranoid delusions, and, surprisingly enough, misinformation. The hyper-skeptical mind will not accept facts, much in the same way a religious mind cannot accept facts. The hyper-skeptic is so deeply entrenched in the idea of “not believing in anything” that the world becomes a huge bully, just trying to feed them falsehoods in order to make them “part of the system”.

It’s difficult to know how someone can arrive at a hyper-skeptical viewpoint. Could it be that there is no way to “know” anything, as all information is presented from information from another human mind (which could also be a delusional mind)? Added to this is the concept of “irreducible complexity”, one where a person may look at a situation, and step-by-step, ask questions that are increasingly out of the realm or scope of the original question or statement. Bill O’Reilly is famous for such questions, able to flippantly throw aside all claims by asking “But how did it get there?” when talking of unrelated topics such as tides.

The main point here is a concept known as “reasonable doubt”. It is an evidentiary concept, used both in courts of law (“A standard of proof that must be surpassed to convict an accused in a criminal proceeding”) and in scientific discovery (where enough evidence is presented that doubt is diminished beyond consideration). It is the standard of evidence to which we must hold all claims in order to evaluate their efficacy.

It applies in a lot of ways to the internecine warfare we experience in our atheist and skeptic communities. Every time one of us employs a sociologically sound and evidence-based scientific concept that conflicts with someone’s dearly-held point of view about some topic or another, you couldn’t hit the buttons on a stopwatch fast enough to measure how long it takes before the person presenting the concept is decried as dogmatic, shrill, or some other pejorative term that amounts to a shorthand for “they disagree with me, therefore they’re being mean to me, therefore they’re wrong”. The main examples that spring to mind immediately are the so-called “race realists”, the climate “skeptics”, and (yes, definitely) the anti-feminists and MRAs and misogyny-apologists.

While we call them “trolls” as shorthand, they certainly don’t think of themselves as such. Sure, they use troll tactics to derail and damage conversation, but they really, truly believe that there’s a scientific reason to be racist, that the evidence for global warming isn’t overwhelming, that Schrodinger’s Rapist and the concept of privilege are dogmatic and the real problem with gender. So while there’s no “for the lulz” aspect, these people are definitely trolls in the exact same way as the average conspiracy nutter with tin foil hats demanding that Obama prove he’s not a Bigfoot reptiloid from the alien planet of Kenya.

At any rate, go read Martin’s post. It’s top-notch.

Martin S Pribble on “The Hyper-Skeptic Problem”

The twenty comments in my moderation queue

I want to clear out the twenty comments I have pending moderation — the only twenty comments to hit moderation since I joined Freethought Blogs. These comments came from people who have earned “bans” (which, around here, means they can post but only I see it) for various reasons, and in one major case, from someone who wanted to keep arguing long after he was blocked for threadjacking, thread hogging, mistreating me and basically every commenter, and being a general douchenozzle. I post these not to legitimize anything anyone’s said, but because I actually care a significant amount more about free speech than some of these aforementioned douchenozzles seem to believe. I don’t particularly like any of the lines of argumentation proffered by the people in question, but I don’t, also, want to simply black-hole them because that just ain’t my style.

So, I’m going to post these comments here. Think of this more as my having stopped people from shitting on the rug, forcing them to shit in the chamber pot, where I’ll now dump out the contents for any interested parties to see. If you dislike anti-feminist sentiment, misogyny, specious argumentation, or DavidByron, I strongly recommend you skip this post. If you’re just looking for whargarbl, there’s plenty to be had here.

Goes without saying — expect the possibility of triggering language from misogynist fuckwits. Funny that it’s only them who landed there.
Continue reading “The twenty comments in my moderation queue”

The twenty comments in my moderation queue