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.

Category: Football, Science, Sports

In The Mailbox: 05.17.22

Posted on | May 17, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Extremism in Slow Joe’s America

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Trust The Experts, They Say
EBL: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Twitchy: Elon Musk Will Vote Republican For The First Time, also, Far Left Propagandists Media Matters Slam Fox News Reporter Bill Melugin As “Far Right Propagandist”
Louder With Crowder: Twitter Engineer – “We’re Commie As F**k”
Vox Popoli: Why Women Shouldn’t Lead, The Enemy Behind The Empire, and Doctor Strange 2 Review

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Keep Finland & Sweden Out Of NATO
American Greatness: Biden Sending Troops Back To Somalia, also, #BLM Has Over $42 Million In Assets
American Power: The Age Of Rationing
American Thinker: When You Label Half The Country Racist
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily National Geographic News
Babalu Blog: Biden Lifts Travel Restrictions To Cuba, Revives Obama’s Failed Diplomatic “Thaw”
BattleSwarm: The Left Is STILL Trying To Erase The Scalise Shooter, also, Green Delusions Cause Chaos & Death
Behind The Black: Pushback – Parents & Teachers Sue To Prevent California Schools From Teaching Anti-Semitism, More Red Chinese Space Junk Crashes In India, and Pointy Rocks On Mars
Cafe Hayek: Applauding Jeff Jacoby’s Busting Of Trade Deficit Myths, also, Fauxcahontas Encourages Resource Waste
CDR Salamander: Force Design 2030 – Futurism, Imbroglio, Or Creative Friction?
Chicago Boyz: Ready To Ride
Da Tech Guy: The Cost Of Living In Bubble World, CNN+ Edition, Report From Louisiana – In Shocking News, Canned Curriculum Doesn’t Work, and A Black Woman For The GOP
Don Surber: The Brainwashing Of America, WaPo Pushing Polygamy, and Virtue Signaling Cost Disney $89 Billion
First Street Journal: Would-be Armed Robber In Philly Gets Death Sentence, also, The Left Wrings Hands Over Ten Killed By Deranged White Shooter But Ignores Wholesale Slaughter Of Young Black Men By Other Young Black Men
Gates Of Vienna: The Knockout Game Comes To Antwerp, The Gender Agenda, and The Inexorable Islamicization Of German Schools
The Geller Report: #BLM Founder Paid Her Baby Daddy $970,000 For “Creative Services” And That’s Not All, also, 234,800 Migrants Encountered On Southern Border In April – Most In A Century
Hogewash: Sonification – NGC 1569
Hollywood In Toto: Winston Marshall Reveals Toxic Side Of Modern Artists, also, Firestarter Then & Now
The Lid: Retired Russian Colonel Indicates The War Is Lost – On Russian TV
Legal Insurrection: Seventeen States Sue EPA For Letting California Set Vehicle Standards, Elon Musk Demands Transparency On Fake & Spam Accounts Before Twitter Deal Moves Forward, and NY Redistricting Turns From Democrat Triumph To Washout
Michelle Malkin:
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Other Side Of The Story, also, Things Could Be Worse
Outkick: Deadspin Argues That White Fans Enjoying The NBA Is “What White Supremacy Looks Like”, LSU/FSU Game Sept. 4 Will Be In Prime Time On ABC From The Superdome, and ESPN Can’t Deny It’s A Political Organization After Mina Kimes Promotes Democrat Karen Bass
Power Line: The Verdict Is In – #BLM Is A Fraud, also, Doocy’s Brain Teaser
Shark Tank: Florida Sugar Cane Growers Attack Brian Mast
Shot In The Dark: Bridge Over The River Why, also, A Piece Of The Action
This Ain’t Hell: Vandals Target RI Marine Memorial, It Ain’t The Chips, and Senate Moves $40 BILLION Ukraine Security Bill Forward
Transterrestrial Musings: Schmidt’s Meltdown, also, Horse Soldiers & Ukraine
Victory Girls: FDA Suddenly Cares About Babies, Strikes Deal With Abbott To Reopen Formula Plant
Volokh Conspiracy: Florida Bans Residential Picketing “With Intent To Harass Or Disturb” – But What Does That Mean?
Watts Up With That: Can California Really Achieve 85% Carbon-Free Electricity By 2030? also, The ESG Community Lacks An Understanding Of What Crude Oil Is Used For
Weasel Zippers: Here’s Senator Joe Biden Justifying The Racist Beating Of Rodney King, No Joke – This Is The Cover Of The SI Swimsuit Issue, and Nadler & Mahoney Will Have To Face Off In Same District Under New Map
The Federalist: If Roe Is Overturned, Bishops Can No Longer Let Catholics Off The Hook, Spending Mindlessly On Ukraine Is A Threat To Our National Security, and Tax Documents Further Expose #BLM As Multi-Million Dollar Grift
Mark Steyn: Peg O’ My Heart, The Truth Dribbles Out, and Pining For 2019

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Category: Linkagery

A Deadly Hate Crime That Liberals Probably Can’t Blame on Tucker Carlson

Posted on | May 17, 2022 | 3 Comments

Say hello to David Wenwei Chou, 68, a resident of Las Vegas, who drove to Orange County, California, with a plan to murder Taiwanese people:

“We believe, based on what we’ve discovered so far, that he specifically targeted the Taiwanese community, and this is one representation of that Taiwanese community,” said Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, referring to the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, which was the target of the attack. . . .
Among the evidence recovered, Barnes said, were notes written in Chinese that Chou left in his car showing he did not believe Taiwan should be an independent state from China. Law enforcement sources said investigators recovered a handwritten note in his car setting out his motivations and thinking for the attack.
Chou was born in mainland China and at some point relocated to Taiwan before moving to the United States, according to Barnes. The sheriff said it appears Chou had an issue with Taiwanese people because of the way he said he was treated while living there.
It is not clear how long Chou lived in Taiwan, but Barnes said he has been in the United States for years and is a U.S. citizen.
The FBI has opened a federal hate crime investigation into the shooting, according to Kristi Johnson, assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Los Angeles office. That would be in addition to any local charges filed in Orange County.

Is there a Chinese-language broadcast of Tucker Carlson, in which he incites hatred among Chinese immigrants? Because liberals in the media assure me that he’s the source of all hate in America.

This reminds me of how anti-Semitic and anti-Asian hate crimes were spiking a few months ago, but because the perpetrators were black, liberals didn’t want to talk about the problem. You eventually must realize that Democrats only want to talk about “hate” when it can be used as a way to scapegoat Republicans. Certainly they don’t want to talk about violent crime as an issue, considering how crime is out of control in the very places where Democrats have the most political power. But it’s too early in the morning to get started on Chicago . . .

Category: California, China, Crime, Racism

In The Mailbox: 05.16.22

Posted on | May 17, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.16.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

So far I’ve gotten exactly zero input from the Loyal Commentariat on the impending Smittypalooza, which leads me to believe that it might boil down to me, Smitty, & Stacy sitting around a table in Leesburg or someplace and yakking at each other for an hour or two. Which would be no bad thing, mind you…but anyway, if y’all in the DC area have a preference for when and where we want to do this, speak up soon.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Gatekeep your hobbies, friends.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: “Settled Science” Sent An Innocent Man To Prison For 30 Years
EBL: Old, Chicom “Lone Wolf” Attacks Taiwanese Christians In California, and Operation Mincemeat
Twitchy: Eric Swalwell Apologizes To House GOP, also, Bill De Blasio Doesn’t Understand The First Amendment
Louder With Crowder: New WHPS Even More Inept Than Bad Orange Woman, also, Chris Rock – “Once You Sh*t In Somebody’s Bed, You’re Guilty Of Everything”
Vox Popoli: Why Washington Wants WWIII, The Consumer Costs Of War, and Another Wind-Up Toy
Stoic Observations: The Ride Along

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Vote As Hard As You Can In A Rigged System
American Conservative: Covid Failure, also, The Comeback Of Rand Paul
American Greatness: Cancel Yale Law School, also, Assassinating Elon Musk?
American Power: Great Replacement Theory
American Thinker: Victor Davis Hanson’s Magnum Opus, also, Democrats Blame Inflation On Greed Instead Of Their Own Policies
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: New Democrat Outreach To Latinos Employs Cuban Communist Propaganda, also, Dictatorship’s Own Statistics Show Cuban COVID Deaths Five Times Higher Than Official Figure
BattleSwarm: Greatest Movie Comedy Of All Time? also, Ukraine Launches Successful Counteroffensive
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, Update On SLS Preparations For The Next Dress Rehearsal, and Curiosity Climbs On!
Cafe Hayek: Seek Little-T Truth, Reject Those Who Peddle Big-T Truth, also, More On The Dangers Of Price Controls
CDR Salamander: The USN’s Port Arthur Problem, also, Who Is Helping Ukraine Build The Riverine Force They Need?
Chicago Boyz: Random Pic
Da Tech Guy: An Odd Judge & Other Thoughts Under My Fedora, Firewood & Breast Milk, and Mike Myers’ Netflix Debacle
Don Surber: “Trumpism Is Bigger Than Trump”, Barnette & Mastriano Snub The Press. Good! and Birth Is The First Human Right
First Street Journal: I Don’t Want To Be An A*****e, But…, also, Our Freedom Of Religion Vindicated!
Gates Of Vienna: The Abolition Of The Soul, A New NATO For A New Cold War, and Does Poland Have Designs On Western Ukraine?
The Geller Report: Pennsylvania Court Rules Mail-In Ballots Unconstitutional, also, White House Blames American Moms For Baby Formula Shortage
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, I’m So Old, and Imaging A Black Hole
Hollywood In Toto: The “Let Them Eat Cake” Celebrities, also, Woke Screen Rant Pummeled By Its Own Facebook Fans
The Lid: Liberal Maggots Blame Tucker Carlson For Buffalo Shooting, also, Biden Lawyers Already Preparing For Red Wave Of Investigations
Legal Insurrection: The Left Has Been Building “Social Justice” Infrastructure In Education For Decades, Texans Asked To Conserve Energy After Six Plants Go Offline During Heat Wave, and Oberlin College Appeals To Ohio Supremes In Gibson’s Bakery Case
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Nebraska – Honestly, It’s Not for Everyone
Outkick: Jack Nicklaus Blames Cancel Culture For PGA’s Move From Trump-Owned Course, NBC Cuts Drew Brees As Analyst After One Season, and Max Scherzer Refuses To Let Japanese Ambassador Throw Ceremonial First Pitch
Power Line: Weakening Of Warming Or Cooling Trend? also, Justice Thomas On The Leak
Shark Tank: Demings Accused Of Flip-Flopping On Abortion
Shot In The Dark: How Can You Tell The Strib Is Lying About Republicans? also, The Music Of The Spheres
STUMP: U.S. Gun Deaths Are Mostly Suicides, Not Homicides
The Political Hat: European Union – The Stasi Redux? also, The Laws All Being Flat
This Ain’t Hell: RIP Randy Weaver, Netflix – No Room For Woke, and No Good Deed
Transterrestrial Musings: A Tour Of Starbase, “Let Someone Whack You”, and Margaret Atwood
Victory Girls: Karine Jean-Pierre – Everything Is Racist, also, Great Replacement Theory Hysterics From The Media
Volokh Conspiracy: Akhil Amar On The Draft Dobbs Opinion, also, Why The Texas Social Media Law Is A Threat To Freedom Of Speech
Watts Up With That: Climate Change Didn’t Cause South Africa’s Tragic Floods, also, Wind Turbines Out West – Epilogue
Weasel Zippers: Kamala Harris, America’s Greatest Orator, While Congressional Staff Gets Free Peloton & Booze, Your Baby Gets Nothing And You’ll Like It, and Wisc. School District Investigating Middle School Students For “Misgendering”
The Federalist: Liz Cheney Weaponizes Racial Division For Political Power, Is San Francisco’s Soft On Crime DA Headed for A Recall? and 75% Of Americans Think Biden Is Taking The Country In The Wrong Direction
Mark Steyn: Disinformation No, Disagreement Yes, Double Cross Double Feature, and Blades & Boxers

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Category: Linkagery

Personally I Blame Ruy Teixeira

Posted on | May 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Personally I Blame Ruy Teixeira

Hang on a minute, and I’ll explain why Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress is the real inspiration for the mass shooting in Buffalo. First, however, the usual suspects have been busy:

Rolling Stone is facing severe backlash on social media after publishing a commentary article suggesting the 18-year-old suspect in the Buffalo shooting was a “mainstream Republican.”
The article suggests that right-wing extremists are commanding the Republican Party and pushing hateful and delusional rhetoric that channels both the “great replacement” theory and white supremacy.
The “great replacement” theory is “the idea that white people, in the United States and white-majority countries around the world, are being systematically, deliberately outbred and ‘replaced’ by immigrants and ethnic minorities, in a deliberate attempt to rid the world of whiteness,” according to the Rolling Stone article.
The theory has served as the inspiration for numerous terror attacks and fueled a “gnawing fear of a minority-white America” that has consumed conservative politics in the country, the article posits.
Thus, rather than a lone wolf, the shooter in Buffalo is a “mainstream Republican” who is “gripped by a racist delusion,” according to the commentary article.
Many on social media have not taken kindly to that suggestion and have ripped Rolling Stone online.

Now, I am less interested in “replacement theory” than I am in replacement fact — that is to say, rather than speculating about future contingencies and seeking scapegoats — it’s much more helpful to ascertain what is actually happening now, and figure out why it is happening. Conspiracy theories and science fiction scenarios about a dystopian future aren’t my stock in trade and (it should not be necessary to say) I am against mass murder.

Also, I am against Democrats like Ruy Teixeira.

You see, in 2002, he published a book entitled The Emerging Democratic Majority, which not only inspired a lot of triumphalist chest-beating about our Glorious Progressive Future, but also inspired an explicitly anti-white rhetoric by Democrats. Every time they lose an election, Democrats now scream “voter suppression” and claim that Republicans are basically trying to re-institute Jim Crow. It is this trend — for which Ruy Teixeira bears direct responsibility — which has fueled the kind of demographic-related Fear and Loathing of which Peyton Genron is the latest gaudy example. Exactly how is murdering a bunch of random people at a grocery store in Buffalo counted as a “win” for anybody’s cause? If random massacres are part of your Grand Strategy, maybe you need to rethink whatever movement you claim to be representing.

As it is, the death toll in the Buffalo shooting is twice the number shot to death this past weekend in Chicago, although 28 others were wounded in Chicago. More than 1,000 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year, including 200 fatal shootings. But none of those shootings gave liberals a reason to blame Tucker Carlson, so you probably haven’t heard too much about them. As for the whole “Great Replacement” scare, I’ve got six kids and five grandchildren already, so you can’t accuse me of slacking off in the demographic department. If y’all ain’t keeping up, that’s not my fault, just like it’s not my fault if some teenage dweeb from the suburbs of Binghamton, N.Y., goes berserk in a grocery store.

By the way, I managed to download a copy of the shooter’s “manifesto,” in which he explains that he is (a) a graduate of a public high school in New York and (b) an engineering major at the local SUNY campus. So, if we’re going to blame somebody, how about the New York public school system and engineering majors? The FBI needs to get busy compiling a dossier of future mass murderers who fit this profile.

Meanwhile, it’s almost 8 o’clock here, so I’ll have to log off and watch Tucker Carlson as he gives Super-Secret Marching Orders to Would-Be Mass Murderers. It’s must-see TV, I tell ya . . .

Category: Crime, New York, Racism

Ukraine: Donbas Battles Intensify

Posted on | May 16, 2022 | 1 Comment

Following up on Saturday’s post (“Ukraine’s Victory in the Battle of Kharkiv”), the situation in the Donbas region will likely dominate developments in the Ukraine war over the next week. You can click on the map above to see it full-size. The northeastern sector has three distinct crisis points: First, the Russians are attempting to advance from Popasna, threatening Bakhmut; second, 35 miles north of Popasna, Sievierodonetsk is surrounded on three sides by Russian forces; and third, 40 miles west of Sievierodonetsk, Slovyansk is threatened by Russian forces advancing from Izyum. However, Ukraine claims to be counterattacking on Izyum, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Ukraine began a counteroffensive toward the eastern city of Izyum aimed at disrupting Russian supply lines into the Donbas region, officials said, as Ukrainian forces continued clearing villages north of Kharkiv . . .
Russia has established the forward headquarters of its operations to conquer Donbas in the town of Izyum, which straddles the Siverskyi Donets river in the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian troops have begun to push successfully toward the town, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, Oleh Synehubov, said Saturday.
“The Izyum direction remains our hottest point. That’s where our armed forces have begun a counteroffensive,” he said in a video address. “The enemy is retreating in some directions, which is the result of the character of our armed forces.”

Now, if this is true — a big “if,” because there is no confirmation of exactly where this counteroffensive is occurring or where the Russians have retreated — then the Russian threat to Slovyansk may soon be reduced. Still,the Russians maintain threats at many places in a long front from Oleksandrivka, near Izyum, all the way around to Popasna, then down to the southern front which is another story in itself.

While we await confirmation of Ukrainian success near Izyum, it seems to me that a crucial point is around Lyman, where the Ukrainians hold a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Siverskyi Donets river. This is crucial because as we have recently seen (“Ukraine Wipes Out Russian Battalion at Attempted Pontoon River Crossing”), getting across a river in a war zone is very hazardous. Possession of the Lyman bridgehead on the north bank of the river gives the Ukrainians a base from which to launch attacks that could threaten Russian supply lines, and thus relieve pressure on other parts of the front. Click the map below to enlarge.

If the Ukrainians could reinforce Lyman and launch a counterattack toward Zarichne and Kreminna, this would force the Russians to retreat from the river at Yampil and would also relieve pressure against Sievierodonetsk. Clearing the Russians from the north bank of the river would then allow the Ukrainian forces now holding the south bank to cross over and join the counteroffensive. Of course, it’s very easy for a civilian to point at a map and say, “Attack here,” and a much more difficult task to organize and execute such an attack. The Russians have had weeks to dig in around Zarichne and Kreminna, so that driving them out would almost certainly require heavy fighting.

Do the Ukrainians have the necessary reserves for such an attack? We know that the West is pouring weapons and other equipment into Ukraine; we don’t know if the Ukrainians have enough trained manpower to put all these resources to effective use on the battlefield. When this war started 11 weeks ago, something like 200,000 volunteers were quickly enlisted, and we can assume that most of those volunteers are now sufficiently trained and equipped to be deployed in combat. Given the emergency circumstances, many of them must already be combat veterans by now. Probably it wouldn’t take more than 10,000 fresh troops — if well-equipped and competently led — to break through the Russian defenses north and east of Lyman. Yet it seems that, rather than organizing their volunteers into brigade-sized units, Ukraine has instead deployed them piecemeal around the several fronts.

So the question is whether Ukraine can assemble a strike force for the kind of breakthrough effort I’ve described. Something like this must be attempted somewhere in the Donbas theater, because Ukraine can’t keep playing defense and let the Russians have the leisure to pick and choose their points of attack. That’s a formula for slow-motion defeat. Given the success Ukraine has already had at repelling the Russian invaders from Kyiv and Kharkiv, they ought to be able to seize the initiative somewhere, and the Lyman bridgehead looks like a good place to start.

Category: Russia, Ukraine

Rule 5 Sunday: Anya Forger

Posted on | May 16, 2022 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

He’s a top-ranked spy. She’s a master assassin. Their adopted daughter is a telepath…and none of them know the others’ secrets. That’s the plot of Spy x Family, which has been adapted to an anime currently running on Hulu. The mom is hot and the daughter is almost intolerably cute, and I’m looking forward to watching it when it finally comes out on DVD. Have some wallpaper of the happy family.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Exasperated Americans Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: MAGA – Make Press Secretaries Great Again, Bad Orange Woman Retires, Fred Ward RIP, What Did Babies Rely On Before Baby Formula?, Kathy Barnette For U.S. Senate, Vintage Hollywood Mothers Day, and The Shirelles

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Jennifer Connelly, Fish Pic Friday – Sweetertea, Thursday Tanlines, Virginia Being Invaded, Wednesday Wetness, Some Tuesday Tattoos, The Monday Morning Stimulus, America is Too Corny, Sunday Sunrise and The Sheep Look Up.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Mirage

Posted on | May 15, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Mirage

— compiled by Wombat-socho

We’re almost to the end of the 1970 draft in Pete’s continuing draft league, and I feel pretty good about the Senators’ chances this coming season. I managed to keep the offensive and defensive core of the team intact while adding some good replacements for departed players and some solid backups at key positions.
Picked up the Klaus Schulze album Mirage from Amazon this week. I don’t like it as much as Picture Music or Moondawn, but it’s still excellent, relaxing electronic music.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.