In The Mailbox: 05.20.22 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | May 20, 2022 | 1 Comment

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Next week I’m heading to the DC area, so who knows?Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Gatekeeping done right.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: RIP Vangelis, also, Testosterone Treatment Turns Democrat Voters More Conservative
Twitchy: Archbishop Cordileone Drops The Hammer On Nancy Pelosi, also, “Nice Knowing You, Robby”
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk Hits Back Hard On “Politically Motivated” Sexual Harassment Hit Piece
Vox Popoli: It’s All Fake
According To Hoyt: It Has To Die Here, I’m Digging Holes, and Global WHAT?
Monster Hunter Nation: “Why Won’t Men Read My Preachy Literati Bullshit?”
Stoic Observations: Even The Rat Was White

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Patriarchal Man
American Conservative: The Two Faces Of Originalism
American Greatness: Antifa Agitators In Atlanta Allegedly Attempt To Firebomb Police, also, Hillary’s Ex-Campaign Manager Testifies That She Personally Signed Off On Alfa Bank Smear Of Trump
American Power: Well, At Least It’s Not A Dude With A D***
American Thinker: Biden’s America Rots From The Head Down
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Eighth Annual Commencement Speech Friday
Babalu Blog: Another Building Collapses In Havana, also, Cuban Power Outages & Food Shortages Cause Violent Protest; Government Responds With “Acts Of Repudiation”
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 20
Behind The Black: Pushback – Two Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants Fired For Asking Questions File Lawsuit, Pushback – Five Bowling Alleys Sue Gov. Whitmer, and Starliner Reaches Proper Orbit Despite Thruster Problems
Cafe Hayek: “Deflating Arguments For Inflation”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Cause & Effect, or, Why The Media Has No Credibility – Elon Musk Edition
Don Surber: Alaska Airlines Goes Woke & Gets Sued, also, New Poll Devastates CRT, LGBT Classes
First Street Journal: Why Is Larry Krasner Wasting Time & Money Trying To Set Criminals Free?
Gates Of Vienna: Games Of Life & Death, also, Culture-Enriching Romance Goes Horribly Wrong In Dresden
The Geller Report: DOD Issued Contract for COVID-19 Research In Ukraine Three Months Before COVID-19 Officially Existed, also, Netflix Fires 150 Employees In Wake Of Woke Decline
Hogewash: Are They Laughing At Us?, 36 Galactic Mileposts, and Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Klavan’s The Uncanny Set For World Premiere, Would George Carlin Be Bill Maher Or Howard Stern Today? and 17 Killer Elvis Costello Song Lyrics
The Lid: U.S. Carriers & Amphibious Assault Ships Making Red China Nervous
Legal Insurrection: Progressive Rep. Torres Accuses DCCC Chair Of Racism As Panicked NY Dems Form Circular Firing Squad, UNC Chapel Hill Journalism School Denied Accreditation For Lack Of Racial Diversity, and Fla. Redistricting Map Favoring GOP Reinstated By State Appeals Court
Michelle Malkin:
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: NBA, NFL Silent On #BLM’s Questionable Spending, Nick Saban Apologizes, and College Football Moves From Communism To Capitalism Overnight & Chaos Ensues
Power Line: That Which Cannot Be Said, Freedom Is Fascism? and Is The New Deal Unconstitutional?
Shark Tank: Rep, Byron Daniels Calls Out Biden’s Attempt To Blame Gas Prices On Putin
Shot In The Dark: The Most Valuable Commodity Will Be Corrugated Tin For The Roof Of Your Hovel, also, What Did Rochester Ever Do For Them?
STUMP: U.S. Mortality Trends Through The Pandemic
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Conservative Search For A Foreign Policy
This Ain’t Hell: One Sheriff’s Race, Two Cases Of Stolen Valor, Valor Friday, and Benefit Thief Thomas Wayne Hudson Passes
Transterrestrial Musings: Confession, Elon Musk, and Roger Angell
Victory Girls: As Elon Predicted, The “Dirty Tricks” Campaign Unfolds
Volokh Conspiracy: No, Joan Biskupic, Justice Thomas Did Not Take A “Surprising, Public Jab” At Justice Roberts
Watts Up With That: Which Woke Mediocrity Will Replace The Outgoing UN Climate Chief? also, Blackouts…Because Climate Change! Blame Natural Gas!
Weasel Zippers: Interior Secretary Haaland Can’t Say If It’s Better To Produce Oil In The US Or Venezuela – “I’m Not An Economist”, also, Biden Support Among Hispanics Craters
The Federalist: Missouri Legislature Takes An Axe To Zuckbucks In State Elections, also, Reluctant Witness Devastates Defense Claims In Sussmann Case
Mark Steyn: A Nation Once Again

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Good-Bye, Disinformation Commissar!

Posted on | May 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Good-Bye, Disinformation Commissar!

The screen shot above is from November 2021, when Nina Jankowicz was a guest on MSNBC talking about “disinformation” on Facebook. Suffice it to say that Jankowicz was a “Russian collusion” truther, whose 2020 book How to Lose the Information War included what a friendly reviewer called “a fascinating examination of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election” as supposedly exemplifying “the experience of countries targeted by Russian disinformation.” This was the central thesis of the Clinton campaign’s claim that Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate, i.e., that Hillary Clinton didn’t actually lose in 2016, but rather that she was cheated out of the presidency because of “Russian interference.”

We could examine at length the harmful impact of the “Russian collusion” hoax, and examine also Jankowicz’s role in promoting that hoax, but the point is that her selection to head the Department of Homeland Security’s newly-created “Disinformation Governance Board” was certainly not a coincidence. That is to say, Jankowicz was recognized by Democrats as a reliable agent with a solid record of promoting (indeed, producing) partisan smears intended to shut down opposition.

That’s what the “disinformation”/“misinformation” wars are actually about. For the past six years, going back to the 2016 campaign, Democrats have weaponized the accusation that Republicans were not merely wrong, but were secretly in cahoots with the Kremlin — traitors acting on behalf of a hostile foreign regime. And after all the investigations attempting to prove that bogus claim, which originated with the Clinton campaign and was used to assert that the 2016 election was stolen, then the Democrats turned around and asserted that anyone dubious of Joe Biden’s election in 2020 was a “threat to democracy.”

Thus, in order to protect “democracy,” any and all opponents of the Biden administration must be silenced. Or so the argument seems to be: Democracy requires censorship, and the First Amendment be damned.

All of that is preamble to the story by the Washington Post‘s Taylor Lorenz which reported that the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) plans have been “paused,” a decision that Lorenz blames on “far right” attacks on the saintly non-partisan Jankowicz:

In naming the 33-year-old Jankowicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in the field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent and important issue. The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.
But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating.

There is a lot to digest in that 106-word passage, with its thumbnail summary of Jankowicz’s career. The phrase “multiple nonpartisan think tanks” is a way to fluff up a resume that includes (a) a stint at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, (b) a postgraduate fellowship in Ukraine funded by the Clinton Foundation, and (c) her current employment at the Wilson Center. The best way to explain her “extensive experience” is to cite Jankowicz’s own description of what inspired her to write her book:

Out of graduate school, I worked for the National Democratic Institute, an organization that provides training and support to democratic activists around the world. I worked on programs in Russia and Eurasia. We were often the victims of Russian propaganda, which sought to paint us “CIA-sponsored instigators of color revolution” (we weren’t). I’ve always been interested in the effects of social media on society, so when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened, I felt a strong pull to go there and work on issues related to disinformation. As a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow, I advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. I watched from Kyiv as the U.S. election unfolded and America woke up to the threat of information warfare. That’s where the idea for the book was born.

Notice first her flat assertion that the NDI is not a CIA front sponsoring foreign revolutions. NDI is merely supporting “democratic activists around the world” — you say “to-may-to,” I say “to-mah-to.”

Remember the allegedly spontaneous outbreak of revolutions in the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011? Did the NDI play any role in that? Were they supporting “democratic activists” in Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc.? At whose behest did such “support and training” take place? Do you expect me to believe that the NDI would have been training “democratic activists” in such countries without the explicit approval of the State Department (to which the CIA is joined at the hip)? We may be charitable toward Jankowicz and assume she really didn’t know NDI was part of CIA operations or, alternatively, we may suppose she’s just doing what CIA operatives always do — i.e., deny that they’re CIA operatives.

Excuse me for belaboring this point, but did you know that, when Jankowicz was at NDI, the institute was led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and that in 2011 — the same year as the “Arab Spring,” which we’re supposed to believe was totally not a CIA operation — the keynote speaker at the NDI’s Democracy Awards Dinner was none other than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? But of course NDI is just an independent non-partisan think tank, right? That’s what Taylor Lorenz expects us to believe, and you must be some kind of “far right” conspiracy theorist (or perhaps a Russian agent) if you doubt it.

So there was the allegedly non-partisan Jankowicz, working at NDI — totally not a CIA front — “when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened” (note the passive voice) and she grabbed a Fulbright fellowship that put her in Kyiv, where she “advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues.” The association between the Clinton Foundation and the Fulbright fellowships is no secret, and so when this revolution in Ukraine “happened” in 2013-2014, Jankowicz left NDI to become an adviser to the new regime in Kyiv. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure, but probably Vladimir Putin has his doubts.

Let anyone investigate what happened in Ukraine in 2013-2014, a revolution that ousted the Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych and installed in his place the U.S.-friendly Petro Poroshenko, and ask yourself, “Was the Obama administration pleased by this result? Was this an outcome that the Obama administration, shall we say, encouraged?”

It was in April 2014 — in the wake of this Ukrainian revolution that just “happened,” and which only a far-right conspiracy theorist might suspect was instigated by the CIA — that the Ukrainian gas company Burisma hired a certain vice president’s son as a member of its board of directors. Less than two years later, when a Ukrainian prosecutor began investigating Burisma, Joe Biden told President Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor, or else the U.S. would withhold aid to Ukraine.

This was what was going on while Jankowicz was giving advice to Poroshenko’s foreign ministry on “strategic communications issues.” You may be surprised to learn (that is, if you’re stupid enough to believe Taylor Lorenz about this “non-partisan” stuff, it may be surprising) that Jankowicz literally campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and donated to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020. So she’s up to ears in it and — yet another amazing coincidence! — “as the U.S. election unfolded” in 2016, when Hillary notoriously lost, she got the idea for her book about “disinformation.” Jankowicz was and is a “Russian collusion” truther, and the fact that she, of all people, was appointed as director of a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security tells you everything you need to know about what’s wrong with the Biden administration.

What’s going on in Ukraine this very minute is a direct result of the kind of dangerous meddling that the Obama administration pursued in so many countries. First with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and later with John Kerry, the Obama administration was so busy promoting “democracy” (as they viewed it) overseas that they completely lost sight of whether such shenanigans might produce results harmful to U.S. national interests. The deaths of four Americans at Benghazi was just the most glaring of the unintended consequences of the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy, and the fact that Benghazi was the site of a CIA compound sort of gives away the dirty little secret of why the 2011 Arab Spring just “happened,” in the same way the Ukrainian revolution “happened,” which is to say, not by coincidence.

Look, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I’m not naïve, either. The Arab Spring had all the hallmarks of a CIA operation, and so did the 2013-2014 revolution in Ukraine. Someone at the White House or Foggy Bottom decides they want certain outcomes in foreign countries, and somebody at the CIA is assigned to get the job done. Sic semper hoc. You can look up the history of CIA-sponsored revolutions and if you think that kind of stuff ended with Allen Dulles, you’re a damned fool. Jankowicz ridicules the accusation that NDI’s training of foreign “democratic activists” was linked to such CIA operations, which tells me either (a) she’s a damned fool or (b) she thinks the rest of us are damned fools.

Time to wake up and smell the Deep State, my friends.

But oh, says Taylor Lorenz, Jankowicz was a victim of the “far right”:

Just hours after Jankowicz tweeted about her new job, far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted tweets accusing the Biden administration of creating a “Ministry of Truth.” Posobiec’s 1.7 million followers quickly sprung into action. . . .
Posobiec’s early tweets shaped the narrative and Jankowicz was positioned as the primary target. Republican lawmakers echoed Posobiec’s framing and amplified it to their audiences. . . .
The week following the announcement, approximately 70 percent of Fox News’s one-hour segments mentioned either Jankowicz or the board, with correspondents frequently deriding the board as a “Ministry of Truth,” according to Advance Democracy. The Fox News coverage was referenced in some of the most popular posts on Facebook and Twitter criticizing Jankowicz.
Dozens of websites including Breitbart, the Post Millennial, the Daily Caller and the New York Post began mining Jankowicz’s past social media posts and publishing articles to generate controversy.

You can read the rest of that, but you see Lorenz is encouraging readers to believe that if (a) actions of the Biden administration (b) are criticized by Republicans, then this must mean that (c) the criticism was wrong, and therefore (d) Nina Jankowicz is a victim of “disinformation”! This is either a tautology or a non sequitur, but whatever you call it, the line of argument advanced by Taylor Lorenz does not withstand scrutiny. She minimizes Jankowicz’s problematic past and treats as self-evidently false the belief that what DHS was undertaking was an effort to set up a federal “Ministry of Truth” with Jankowicz as commissar.

Lorenz expects us to accept without question that creation of the Disinformation Governance Board — my friend John Hoge used Cyrillic letters for the acronym — should not have been the least bit controversial, and that the choice of Jankowicz to head this novel agency should have been similarly non-controversial. What are they smoking in the offices of the Washington Post? Or, for that matter, what are they smoking at the White House, if they thought they could get away with this?

Well, congratulations to my “far right” friends for putting a stop to it.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Biden’s aborted Truth Czar (@wiczipedia): “The Disinformation Governance Board was the victim of disinformation … [Critics] completely mischaracterized its mission. Frankly, this childish behavior is endangering our national security now.” pic.twitter.com/oWSxFAfEC9

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 20, 2022

If you oppose Homeland Security's Disinformation Board or criticize the views and statements of the cartoon person to run it, then it means you are harming US National Security. https://t.co/BNQbwQub1T

— andrew (@ClassicalZoomer) May 20, 2022

Category: Conspiracy Theories

In The Mailbox: 05.20.22 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 20, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.20.22 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I actually thought I was going to get this out last night, but then I ate dinner and *thud*.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

It’s everywhere.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Armed Self-Defense, South African Edition
EBL: The Horrific Sex Trafficking Story You’re Not Hearing Enough About, also, Nina Jankowicz, You’re Fired!
Twitchy: Nicole Wallace – The “Typhoid Mary Of Disinformation”?, also, At Least 30 Senior White House Staffers Owe On Student Loans
Louder With Crowder: Twitter Exec Who Mocked Asperger’s Flees From James O’Keefe, Tries To Hide In Comedy Club
Vox Popoli: Three Steps Forward, also, Beyond Cringe

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: An Ode To Perth
American Conservative: Towards A Republican Counter-Elite
American Greatness: Democrat Witnesses Claim Men Can Get Pregnant, also, What Great Replacement? Oh, That One!
American Power: The World Order Reset
American Thinker: The New Racial Hatred
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Equal Protection News
Babalu Blog: Florida Democrats & Media Left Reeling After Biden’s Concessions To Cuba & Venezuela
BattleSwarm: Fifth Circuit Court Starts Dismantling The Administrative State
Behind The Black: Technical Issue On New Shepard Delays 5th Passenger Flight, Russia Launches Milsat With Soyuz-2 Rocket, and ESA Releases New Images From Solar Orbiter
Cafe Hayek: Open Debate Is Not A Luxury Only For Calm Times
Da Tech Guy: What It’s Like Being Married For 34 Years, also, Never Thought I’d See Freedom Become A Four-Letter Word In The U.S.
Don Surber: GOP Primary Vote Up 30%, Democrat Down 6%, also, Censorship Won’t Stop Black Murders
First Street Journal: DHS “Pauses” Creation Of MiniTru, also, Comment Rescue – Elwood P. Dowd On Prenatal Infanticide
Gates Of Vienna: A Nice Culture-Enricher Gets Himself In Trouble, Guys & Dolls, and The Jab Is Harmless Because The Court Says So
The Geller Report: Elon Musk Warns Biden – Democrats Moving Economy Towards Venezuela, also, Clinton Lawyer Sussman Lied To Feds To Destroy Trump
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, A Black Hole Primer, and Truth & Disinformation
Hollywood In Toto: Kevin Sorbo – Walt Disney Is Spinning In His Grave, also, Why Sam Raimi’s Take On Doctor Strange Disappoints
The Lid: Hi, I’m From The Census Bureau. Give Me All Your Money Or I’ll Shoot.
Legal Insurrection: Illinois State Requires Students To Take DIE Course To Graduate, Biden Invokes Defense Production Act For Baby Formula, and Sen. Warnock Pushes Biden To Forgive Student Loans
Nebraska Energy Observer: Betrayal
Outkick: Stephen A. Smith Discusses Supposed “No Politics” Rule At ESPN, Jimbo Fisher Goes Off On Nick Saban, and Is Nick Saban Mad Because He Got Caught Following The NIL Rules?
Power Line: The War On American Energy, also, Musk FTW & The Progressive Roots Of “Replacement Theory”
Shark Tank: Gubernatorial Poll Update – Can Anyone Beat DeSantis?
Shot In The Dark: While We Wait On The SCOTUS Ruling, also, Lost
The Political Hat: California Madness – Discrimination Via Non-Discrimination Compliance, Government Lying To Convict The Police, and Outsourcing Fixing The State
This Ain’t Hell: Texas Man Arrested On Charges Relating To Stolen Valor, Captain Who Motorboated Subordinate During Promotion Ceremony Allowed To Retire, and Trouble In Paradise
Transterrestrial Musings: Alien Invasions, Justice Is Coming, and We Battle the Left
Victory Girls: DOJ Employees Want Leave For Out-Of-State Abortions
Volokh Conspiracy: Academic Freedom & The Mission Of The University
Watts Up With That: German Conservationists Defeat Lunatic Greens In Battle For “Grimm’s Fairytale Forest”, also, North America May See Natural Gas Prices Follow Global Ones
Weasel Zippers: Reminder – Gas Was $2/gallon At This Time Under Trump, also, Bill DeBlasio Running For Congress
The Federalist: NY State Taxpayers To Pay $220 Million For Illegals’ Health Care, How The Left Has Poisoned What It Means To Be Healthy, and The Birth Control Industry Is Neither Liberating Nor Pro-Woman
Mark Steyn: In Service Of Truth

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 05.19.22 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | May 19, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.19.22 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1721
357 Magnum: How’s That Criminal Justice Reform Working Out?
EBL: Black Grift Matters
Twitchy: Elon Musk Compared To Mike Lindell By Small Group Of Losers On Twitter, also, Miles “Anonymous” Taylor Flounces Out Of The GOP
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk Discovers Half Of Joe Biden’s Followers May Be Fake
Vox Popoli: Interview With Susan Cooper, also, Believe Them

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Lawyers Cause Homelessness
American Greatness: How Dare He Pick On Communism? also, Sarah Palin Dishes On Trump, Her Congressional Run, & Love
American Power: LAUSD Hemorrhaging Students, Poll Says DA Boudin’s Chances Bleak, and Buffalo & The Myth Of Racist America
American Thinker: “Leftugees” On The Move
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: The Castro Regime Tightens Its Grip As Biden Relaxes Restrictions, also, Biden Announces U.S. Will Now Ease Restrictions On Venezuela
BattleSwarm: Antiracist Baby Cancelled
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, SpaceX Successfully Launches Another 53 Starlink Satellites, and A Giant Elliptical Galaxy
Cafe Hayek: TTANSTAAFL, also, Budgetary Rules & Norms Matter
CDR Salamander: Turkey Skunks The NATO Party
Chicago Boyz: Memes, Political Persuasion, and Political Intimidation
Da Tech Guy: DaTechGuy’s Third Law Of Media Outrage, NBA Playoffs Edition, Something Smelly Here At #BLM? and Five Thoughts Having Little Or Nothing To Do With Politics Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Disney Moving 2000 Jobs To Florida, also, CNN To Give Chris Wallace A Sunday Night Show Nobody Will Watch
First Street Journal: The Philadelphia Inquirer Is Still Covering For Tax Cheat Larry Krasner, also, Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Death By Cop, Och, The Puir Wee Syrian Bairns!, and The Droning Of Transnistria
The Geller Report: Valerie Foushee Beats Squad-Backed Israel-Hater In NC-4 Dem Primary, also, GoFundMe Shuts Down Fundraiser For Eight-Year-Old Vaccine Injury Victim
Hogewash: Don’t Know Much Biology, Democracy Dies In Derpness, and Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Feminist Men Will Scare Everybody Silly, also, George Carlin’s American Dream (Mostly) Avoids Political Pitfalls
The Lid: What Happens In Vegas Schools Doesn’t Stay In Vegas Schools, also, DHS Memo Reveals Pro-Abortion Activists Plan To Burn Down The Supreme Court & Murder Justices
Legal Insurrection: The Backlash Against Woke Corporate America Is Real, Chuck U. Schumer Accuses Tucker Carlson Of Pushing “Replacement Theory” But Cowardly Refuses Invite To Come On Show, and UCF Prof Fired After Tweeting “Black Privilege Is Real” Ordered Reinstated With Tenure & Back Pay
Michelle Malkin: The Prosecution Of Idaho Mom Sara Brady
Nebraska Energy Observer: America & Brexit Britain – Onwards & Upwards
Outkick: Kelvin Sampson Says If You Want To Slow Down NIL & Transfer Portal, “Make Them Sit Out A Year”, Red Bull Silent After Being Called Out By Female Skateboarder Over Trans Competitor, and Nick Saban Says Texas A&M “Bought Every Player On Their Team”
Power Line: Biden White House Shuts Down The DGB, Loose Ends, and Vaccination Blues
Shark Tank: Rubio & Gillibrand Come Together On Veterans Bill
Shot In The Dark: The Black Hole Of Afghanistan, Carry On Wayward Renegade…, and The Echo Chamber Comes To You
The Political Hat: A Strong But Grounded Foreign Policy
This Ain’t Hell: Just In Case You Missed It, This Should Piss You Off, and Audit Reveals Half Of Biden’s Twitter Followers Are Fake
Transterrestrial Musings: Green Delusions, also, A Red-Pilled Treehugger
Victory Girls: Twitter Exec Mocks Musk, Advocates For Censorship
Volokh Conspiracy: Bryan Caplan On “Misinformation About Misinformation”, also, Bad Day In Court For The Administrative State
Watts Up With That: 90% Of Aussie Climate Skeptic Voters Believe In Climate Actions, also, “Negative Electricity Prices & The Production Tax Credit”
Weasel Zippers: U.S. To Lift Sanctions On Venezuelan Oil Rather Than Drill More In America, also, Ballot Problems Abound In Pennsylvania – Again
The Federalist: Elon Musk – Democrat Hate Drives Me To Vote Republican, Federal Judge Blocks Biden From Requiring Religious Objectors To Bankroll Gender Experimentation, and DOD Schools & Hospitals Are Pushing Transgender Ideology On Kids
Mark Steyn: Selective Grief, also, The Controlled Demolition Of Everything

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Category: Linkagery

Not His Lucky Day

Posted on | May 19, 2022 | 1 Comment

Say hello to Damian Devonta Felton and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because he is no longer among the living. Felton was one of three suspects accused last year of murdering Amond Norwood in Macon, Georgia. According to a motion filed by Felton’s lawyer, “Felton had been playing dice with Norwood . . . the evening of May 6, 2021. The two had a fight that was said to have been broken up by two other men, Margaton Dudley and Jerome Beasley.” Felton claimed that he left the house and that, after he was gone, Beasley killed Norwood.

Apparently this argument was sufficiently persuasive that a judge released Felton from the Bibb County jail on $75,000 bond last Friday.

Friday the 13th, that is. Talk about your ominous coincidences . . .

By Saturday morning, Felton had been shot dead.

Police have not yet identified any suspects in Felton’s slaying, but as my brother Kirby says, “Karma has a Glock.”

Category: Crime, Georgia

Bedlam in Bellingham

Posted on | May 19, 2022 | Comments Off on Bedlam in Bellingham

Joe Biden got 61% of the vote in Whatcom County, Washington, which probably explains something about how Jenn Mason got elected to the school board in Bellingham. In case you haven’t heard — maybe you’ve been off the Internet all week, I don’t know — Mason is also the owner of Wink Wink, a “sex shop” in Bellingham. For some unfathomable reason, every good-sized town in America has one of these “sex shops,” selling vibrators, lubricants, lingerie and other such merchandise, despite the fact that all this sort of stuff can now be ordered via Amazon or other online vendors. Excuse me if I seem a bit vanilla or even prudish in this regard. While I was quite the wild man in my youth, three decades of marriage have perhaps tamed my libido somewhat. On the other hand, I was never into the whole whips-and-chains BDSM role-playing thing to which “sex shops” like Wink Wink seem to cater.

While it’s a free country and people can do what they wish in the privacy of their own homes, what kind of weirdos get off on pain and humiliation? The Lincoln Project? But I digress . . .

Mason’s shop offers instruction in classes with titles like “The Fine Art of Fellatio,” “Sex Toys 101,” and “Feeling Myself: Self-Pleasure Pointers.” Who attends these seminars? Who really needs this instruction? If you can’t figure it out on your own — perhaps your technique is not quite a “fine art” — do you imagine the answers are to be found in a class taught by a sociology major from Western Washington University? Do we have any testimonials to Mason’s sexual prowess? Did all the frat boys at WWU praise Mason for her mastery of “The Fine Art”?

None of this would have come to my attention, were it not for the fact that school board member Mason decided to invite students to her shop!

These are some images from inside her sex shop. pic.twitter.com/TYL701t2Qt

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 18, 2022

pic.twitter.com/8Epr5buhwm

— Derek Dryden (@DerekSDryden) May 18, 2022

Why is Jenn Mason not under arrest on felony charges?

Imagine if some random stranger, lurking in an Internet chat room, invited your child to a dildo shop to talk about sex. You’d call the cops and have the creep arrested. But through the rainbow magic of LGBTQ “inclusion” — a phrase that functions to deflect all criticism in a place where Joe Biden got 61% of the vote — this “celebration” of “queer youth” apparently didn’t raise any eyebrows in Bellingham.

Where is Anita Bryant now that we really need her?

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Category: Education, Gays, Washington State

Why Don’t We Trust the ‘Experts’?

Posted on | May 18, 2022 | Comments Off on Why Don’t We Trust the ‘Experts’?

One of the great fools of our age, Tom Nichols, published a book a few years ago with the title, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, about which I’ll quote Wikipedia:

Publishers Weekly said that “The crux of the book’s argument is that… the American public have grown increasingly hostile to expertise” and described The Death of Expertise as a “highly researched and impassioned book that’s well timed”, further noting that “Generally, Nichols displays strong reasoning, but at times he goes off the rails. It takes some time [in some sections] for him to make his point”.
Kirkus Reviews described The Death of Expertise as “A sharp analysis of an increasingly pressing problem”, although Nichols (who “sounds less like an alarmist than like a genial guide through the wilderness of ignorance”) fails to propose a satisfying solution. Andrew Joseph Pegoda disagreed on the last point, writing that The Death of Expertise “does what good books do… and provides some possible solutions”. Pegoda also described The Death of Expertise as “extremely interesting, important, and timely” and said that “Nichols, in short, provides a brief History, informed by psychology and political science, of what he argues is a new phenomenon whereby people in the United States are not just regularly wrong or ignorant but ‘proud of not knowing things’“.

Now, I will be generous enough to stipulate that Nichols has a point, namely that we live in an age when it is common for people to overestimate their own abilities and knowledge. Some people believe that, because they can do a Google search about a topic, this puts them on the same level of expertise as a genuine expert.

Such pseudo-expertise, as we might call it, explains why every journalist with a blue-check Twitter account suddenly became an expert in epidemiology as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, then just as suddenly became an expert in Eastern European affairs the moment Russia invaded Ukraine. If tomorrow the Earth were invaded by aliens from another planet, the same Twitter know-it-alls would instantly begin offering their opinions as experts in the field of extraterrestrial life.

This kind of fake expertise can have serious consequences. The loud clamor of voices demanding a maximum lockdown response to COVID-19 resulted in devastating harms that, in hindsight, were entirely unnecessary. Especially in terms of school closures, the evidence is now clear that (a) children were never a high-risk group for the disease, and (b) keeping schools closed for months produced enormous educational losses. Compare the per-capita COVID-19 death rate in maximum-lockdown states like New York (3,554 deaths per million population) and Michigan (3,619) to Florida, which re-opened in May 2020, with death rate significantly lower (3,457). The states that imposed onerous restrictions and kept them in place for months on end didn’t really save lives, yet the advocates of lockdown policies claimed that The Science™ was on their side, so that if you questioned their policies, you were accused of being “anti-science.” The Science™ turned out to be a cult, and Doctor Fauci was the High Priest of that cult. The fact that Fauci had impressive credentials as a genuine expert makes the failure of The Science™ all the more devastating, and yet so powerful is the cult mentality that his followers won’t even admit they were misled.

Believe it or not, there are still people walking around wearing cloth masks, believing that this protects them against infection despite all evidence to the contrary. My daughter flew back from college this week, and when I went to pick her up, I was astonished by the number of people wearing masks in the airport. While the airlines may require masks while you’re on the plane, there is no such requirement in the airport, and if you didn’t catch COVID-19 while you were encased in a pressurized cabin with 200 other passengers, why would you imagine you were at risk just walking through the airport? But cloth masks simply don’t work, in terms of protecting against the virus, no matter what the cult of The Science™ would like you to believe. Alas, I have digressed . . .

The case of Anthony Fauci and COVID-19 illustrates my point that what Nichols calls The Death of Expertise is mostly a case of suicide — that is to say, the “experts” have discredited themselves, on issue after issue, in controversy after controversy, so that if people no long trust the “experts,” it is the experts, not the people, who are to blame.

Notice that, in the subtitle of his book, Nichols asserts that someone — who? — is waging a Campaign Against Established Knowledge:

A kind of intellectual Gresham’s Law is gathering momentum: where once the rule was “bad money drives out good,” we now live in an age where misinformation pushes aside knowledge. This is a very bad thing. A modern society cannot function without a social division of labor and a reliance on experts, professionals, and intellectuals. (For the moment, I will use these three words interchangeably.) No one is an expert on everything. No matter what our aspirations, we are bound by the reality of time and the undeniable limits of our talent. We prosper because we specialize, and because we develop both formal and informal mechanisms and practices that allow us to trust each other in those specializations.

The essential problem with this argument is that it is un-American.

America was established by pilgrims, pioneers and frontiersman who, having left behind the civilization of Europe, created a new civilization by their own labors. The pioneer in his remote cabin in the wilderness had no “experts” to tell him how to do whatever it was he needed to do to survive. Thus, he had to be self-reliant, operating on a trial-and-error basis or else trusting in traditional methods — knowledge passed down from preceding generations — just to be able to support himself and his family amid challenging circumstances. It is from this pioneer heritage that the American spirit of “rugged individualism” emerged, and this is the spirit which Nichols denounces as “a very bad thing,” a threat to “modern society.” Americans like to do things for themselves, rather than waiting for some “expert” to tell them how to do it, and you sure as hell don’t expect Americans to seek permission from “experts” to form their own opinions of matters. This is the real heart of what Nichols is up to, in bemoaning public hostility to “experts.” It’s not so much about knowledge as it is about opinions. Tom Nichols was of the opinion that Hillary Clinton should be elected president, and he became angry because enough of us disagreed that Donald Trump got elected instead.

That’s the real bottom line for the whole #NeverTrump crowd — from the moment Trump rode down the escalator in June 2015, these “mainstream” Republicans decided he should not be president, and set about trying to prevent him from getting the GOP nomination. The first problem was, the #NeverTrump crowd was unable to coalesce around an alternative early enough to turn the primaries into a two-man race. The second problem was, Trump attracted to his campaign a legion of supporters who had never voted in a Republican primary. So while the anti-Trump votes in the primaries were divided up between a bunch of other rivals — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie, et al. — Trump kept stacking up delegates. But having invested their egos in the #NeverTrump jihad, his critics in the pundit class (the whole Bulwark crew, the Lincoln Project crowd, Max Boot, etc.) could not accept defeat, and instead doubled-down, becoming de facto Democratic Party operatives, whether they were willing to admit it or not. And what they were most angry about was that stupid voters got to decide the election, thus violating the “social division of labor” whereby pundits like Tom Nichols get to decide who is elected president.

You see what I mean in calling this “un-American”? The pundits who claim they’re trying to save “Our Democracy” don’t really believe in democracy at all. But again I digress . . .

What got me thinking about the crisis of the expert class wasn’t presidential politics or the COVID-19 pandemic. No, it was football.

In case you never read my blog before, I’m a born-and-bred University of Alabama fan and, when the New England Patriots drafted our quarterback Mac Jones in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft, I instantly became a Patriots fan. In doing so, I found a new class of experts to hate — the commentators, columnists and TV analysts who get paid to talk about the NFL. Some of these guys are actually OK, like Evan Lazar, who can analyze video with an astonishing level of insight. Some of them, on the other hand, are utterly evil. No, I’m sorry, let me restate that — one of them is utterly evil, namely Nick Wright of Fox Sports, a Kansas City Chiefs fan masquerading as a neutral commentator.

None of the other NFL pundits are pure evil like Nick Wright, but there is a notable bandwagon effect among these alleged football experts. Today I was checking ESPN’s site on my phone and noticed an emerging consensus that the Buffalo Bills are the team to beat in 2022.

This is not an unreasonable expectation. The Bills have an excellent quarterback, Josh Allen, and a tough defense. They have won the AFC East division two years in a row, made it all the way to the AFC championship game two years ago, and this past season lost a divisional playoff to the Kansas City Chiefs in an overtime thriller. It is thus a reasonable guess that Buffalo will be among the top contenders when the NFL season kicks off this fall. But (a) the Bills have never won a Super Bowl and (b) they haven’t been to a Super Bowl since the early 1990s.

If you say I am prejudiced against the Bills, I won’t deny it because, of course, they’re the rivals of my Patriots in the AFC East. But I daresay there may be elements of prejudice in the consensus of pundits who think Buffalo can make it to the next Super Bowl. One of the reasons the pundits like the Bills so much is because Josh Allen is one of those “mobile, athletic” quarterbacks who play the kind of run-and-gun “schoolyard” football that all the TV commentators love. The pundits seem to agree that this style of play is the future of football, and more traditional drop-back passers are dinosaurs on their way to extinction. As much as fans might enjoy the run-and-gun style — and that shootout between Allen and Patrick Mahomes in the divisional playoffs was one of the most exciting spectacles in NFL history — there are downsides to relying on the “mobile, athletic” quarterback. Typically, they don’t last very long in the NFL, where all it takes is one hard tackle to wreck your knee or ankle and there goes your precious “mobility.” Last year Josh Allen was the second-leading rusher for the Bills, with 763 yards on 122 carries, but how much longer can he keep that up? Trust me, as a Patriots fan, it was agonizing to watch New England’s defense try to catch Allen, who ran for 66 yards in the Wild Card playoff game. Sooner or later, though, Allen’s going to get wrecked. He cannot defy the probabilities forever — or at least, that’s my view, as an unapologetic fan of the Patriots and their old-fashioned quarterback Mac Jones.

My opinion, however, is that of a fan, not an expert. And what is the track record of these professional NFL pundits? Well, I decided to check. Last year, in their season preview, CBS Sports had seven of its personalities — Jason La Canfora, Pete Brisco, Will Brinson, Ryan Wilson, John Breech, Jared Dubin and Jonathan Jones — predict (a) the exact order of finish in each of the eight divisions of the NFL, (b) the six teams to get Wild Card playoff berths, (c) the teams that would make it to the Super Bowl, and (d) who would win the championship.

How many of these experts correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner?

Zero. The number is zero.

Still, some of them were close. Two of them (La Canfora and Wilson) correctly predicted that the Los Angeles Rams would win the NFC West division, and four others (Prisco, Brinson, Breech and Jones) had the Rams making it to the playoffs as a Wild Card. So six of the seven experts at least correctly predicted that the Rams would be in the playoffs, and two of those (Dubin and Jones) actually picked the Rams to win the NFC championship. But none of them — zero — figured that Coach Sean McVay and quarterback Matt Stafford would take L.A. all the way to victory in the Super Bowl. Two of the experts (La Canfora and Prisco) had the Tampa Bay Buccaneers returning to the Super Bowl as NFC champions, and La Canfora thought the Bucs would win it all. Wilson and Breech expected the Green Bay Packers to win the NFC title, with Breech predicting that Green Bay would win the Super Bowl. Brinson thought the San Francisco 49ers would be Super Bowl champs. In fact, the Buccaneers lost to the Rams in the divisional playoff, the Packers were beaten by San Francisco in the other NFC divisional playoff, and the Rams beat the Niners in the NFC championship game.

So while none of these experts correctly predicted the Rams as Super Bowl winners, they at least were fairly accurate in predicting the teams (Green Bay, Tampa Bay, San Francisco and L.A.) that in fact proved to be the main contenders for the NFC title. As for the AFC, however . . .

Oh, my goodness gracious!

Five of the CBS Sports experts (La Canfora, Prisco, Brinson, Wilson and Breech) predicted the Buffalo Bills would take the AFC championship, with Prisco and Wilson picking Buffalo to win the Super Bowl. As previously explained, the Bills lost a divisional playoff and thus didn’t make it to the AFC title game, much less win it. The team that beat Buffalo, the Kansas City Chiefs were picked by Dubin and Jones not only to win the AFC championship, but also to win the Super Bowl.

Well, at least the Chiefs made it to the AFC title game, but they were defeated there by Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals.

Guess how many of the CBS experts predicted that the Bengals would be in the playoffs? The number is — you guessed, didn’t you? — zero.

All seven of the CBS Sports experts picked the Bengals to finish fourth — i.e., last place — in the AFC North division. Five of the experts (La Canfora, Prisco, Wilson, Dubin and Jones) predicted that the Cleveland Browns would win the AFC North. In fact, the Browns went 8-9 and finished third in the division. Brinson picked the Baltimore Ravens to win the AFC North, but they also went 8-9 and, because of tiebreakers, placed fourth in the division. Breech was the least wrong of the experts in terms of predicting the AFC North winner, as his pick was the Pittsburgh Steelers, who finished second and lost a Wild Card playoff to the Chiefs.

How was it that nobody — not a single one of these CBS Sports experts — thought the Bengals were a playoff contender? How was it that the eventual AFC champions were a unanimous choice by these experts to finish dead last in their division? To give credit where credit is due, all seven experts correctly predicted the winners of the three other AFC divisions (Bills in the East, Chiefs in the West, Tennessee Titans in the South), and all of them also got the exact order of finish correct in the East (Bills, Patriots, Miami Dolphins, New York Jets). Breech correctly picked the final order of finish in the AFC South (Titans, Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars). Nobody got the order of finish correct in the AFC West, however, because the Las Vegas Raiders (whom the experts predicted to finish third or fourth) ended up in second place. Prisco picked the Denver Broncos to finish second in the AFC West; in fact, the Broncos at 7-10 were last in the division. The other experts predicted the L.A. Chargers would finish second in the AFC West, but they were third. Of the many wrong predictions about who would get the AFC Wild Card playoff berths, La Canfora, Wilson, Dubin and Jones incorrectly picked the Chargers and Ravens for two of the three slots. Brinson and Breech wrongly predicted the Chargers and Browns. Prisco got two of the three Wild Cards correct, missing only with his pick of the Broncos. All seven correctly predicted that the Patriots would win a wild card bid. But none of them — zero — picked the Bengals.

Generally speaking, these experts produced a carnival of wrongness. Yes, they got some things right — the easy stuff, like figuring that the Chiefs, Bills, Packers and Buccaneers would be playoff contenders. But even though all of them predicted the Rams would be in the playoff hunt, only two thought the Rams would make it all the way to the Super Bowl, and none of them thought McVay’s team would win the Super Bowl. As for their AFC predictions, everything got completely wrecked for the experts by Cincinnati and their second-year quarterback Burrow.

It’s easy to see why the Bengals were underrated. Nobody anticipated what the reunion of Burrow and his LSU teammate, wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, would mean for Cincinnati. Burrow and the rookie Chase connected on 81 passes for 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns. For the season, Burrow completed 70.4% of his passes for 4,611 yards and 34 TDs. This was a remarkable improvement from Burrow’s rookie year and — just incidentally — Burrow isn’t one of those run-and-gun quarterbacks that NFL commentators rave about. Neither is the Rams QB, Stafford. Both of them are old-fashioned dropback passers, and so the bandwagon effect among the CBS Sports experts (who thought Mahomes and the Chiefs or Allen and the Bills would win the AFC) is readily apparent as a source of their total wrongness about the Super Bowl.

What does this say about Tom Nichols or Anthony Fauci? Not much, directly. But indirectly, the wrongness of the CBS Sports “experts” does illustrate the general credibility problem of our media-certified expert class. Once upon a time, wrong predictions would be forgotten because, despite the durability of the printed word, few people could be bothered to go to the library and do the research necessary to find who had predicted what. Thanks to near-universal computer access, however, anyone can now do this kind of research and publish it on the Internet.

Bad news for the experts — the Internet never forgets.