- The Propaganda Professor explains the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: the human tendency to create suspicious patterns out of pretty much nothing.
- The BIG event of my youth was the assassination of JFK. Of course it had to be a massive conspiracy. To think a deranged narcissist, acting alone, was responsible would be the moral equivalent of imagining that the President had died choking on a chicken bone.
CalicoJack in The Psy of Life traces those conspiracy theories currently threatening our democracy (Think stolen election) to proportionality bias.
- Uh oh. The massive conspiracy to crush conservative expression is regarded with remarkable calm by CATO’s Julian Sanchez
- Dave Dubya bravely faces entertaining conspiracy theories about millions of illegal votes. He is armed only with dull boring facts.
- Sarah Cooper applies the knife and gunfight rule:
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors says Wisconsin conspiracy Republicans are having a hard time keeping things together. They are spending hundreds of thousands to finance an investigation into the overly investigated 2020 election, kind of like the off-the-rails “audit” in Arizona. They hired a couple of retired police detectives as investigators.
Problem, though. After being exposed to the nature of the investigation, the investigators both quit. The Republican self-assigned to organize the replay says no problem. The investigation will just take a while longer, since there are no longer any investigators.
- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reviews explosive testimony from police officers who held back the Jan 6 rioters from their targets. A couple of those targets may become targets of the investigation.
- Andy Borowitz reports congressional Republicans are furious at Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for being on the investigating committee. So they have voted to force both to spend an hour with Ted Cruz.
- The Palmer Report reviews what we keep re-learning from conservo-news, that Jan 6 never happened. Buncha tourists was all.
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson gets impatient with Wisconsin conservative Ron Johnson:
- We kinda sorta knew this already, but now The Moderate Voice can look through actual documentation, newly revealed. Right after Joe Biden was elected President, Donald Trump demanded the Justice Department disregard the lack of evidence and just say the election was corrupt, then “leave the rest to me”.
- Scotties Toy Box watches the self-own as Senator Tom Cotton goes on Fox to accuse public health officials of trying to act in the best interest of public health.
Well! Can’t have that!
- Iron Knee at Political Irony says COVID and the COVID vaccine both carry risks, and briefly compares them.
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged ponders a mindset that regards masking, especially for kids, as too stressful compared to a disease that can lead to pneumonia, blood clots, strokes, death.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has uncharitable thoughts about anti-vaxxers who themselves contract COVID.
- Infidel753 watches the antics of American anti-vaxxers and foresees the greatest mass suicide in history: a self-genocide.
- Green Eagle sees the faint beginnings of a possible trend as Republicans flip on vaccinations.
I have a few cynical thoughts myself.
- Hackwhackers carries news about mandatory innoculation in the American Continental Army.
- Kevin McCarthy attacks Nancy Pelosi for reviving masking requirements for Congressional representatives. Tommy Christopher covers Tim Ryan rising to reply, slicing and dicing McCarthy into quivering little pieces.
- News Corpse sees the Fox Network mandating vaccines for its employees while blasting private companies that mandate vaccines for employees.
- Frances Langum watches an angry broadcast on the Fox network about an outrageous pamphlet from liberals urging White folks to withdraw applications to ivy-league colleges to make way for minorities. Turns out the leaflets are a right-wing hoax. Has Fox retracted the story? Could be. My superficial search didn’t find it.
- As Oregon manages to pollute the entire Northeast, Nojo seems a bit pessimistic about our chances at surviving self-destruction.
- driftglass resorts to documentation as a noted mainstream news personality finally sees the light on Republican extremism, then loses it, then sees the light again on both-sides-do-it-reporting, then loses it, and on and on. An entertaining, sort of, piece on the perpetually oscillating universe of Chuck Todd.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes to the opinion polls and finds that President Biden and Democrats are doing pretty well.
- In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist appreciates the latest episode of Billionaires in Space and gets tired of discredited economic theories that say Bezos, Branson, et al should pay more in taxes. After all, look how much they contribute to charity. Besides, economic theory is all very complex.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is asked why capitalism doesn’t work for everyone and dismisses the question as invalid. Capitalism simply allows everyone to work. And complainers are unmotivated people who resent the necessity of supporting themselves.
So… the Laffer Curve is proven at last!!
- PZ Myers kind of likes that Simone Biles values her own self worth more than the opinions of the authoritarian right. Are you listening, Piers Morgan?
- At The Onion, conservatives blast Simone Biles for robbing them of the opportunity to criticize her win.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a thought on the victory she has already won.
- Nan’s Notebook examines the circular reasoning we Christians use to justify the Bible as an infallible source of wisdom. Seems a fair enough criticism. I have republished my own thoughts a few times in the last few years.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce explains his journey from Evangelical to atheist. Toward the end, he sort of apologizes to friends and former parishioners “if my changing beliefs have unsettled you or has caused you to question your own faith. That was never my intent.”
That is gracious, of course, but I wonder why my Christian brethren find it necessary. Or why he has to deal with the occasional vitriol.
- Max’s Dad fondly remembers Woodstock as a sort of pre-MAGA that was started and populated by thugs and cruds.
- Useful knowledge. Reductress publishes 5 helpful questions you can ask your parents before telling them to put the dog on the phone.
- John Scalzi at Whatever apologizes to his new toilet and to us for the inevitable pun.
- I can finally sleep at night. The Journal of Improbable Research brings to us an important study by researchers in Califoria and Sweden on whether there was something wrong with Beethoven’s metronome.
- I may be old, but I’ll never be too old to be immature.
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is a fount of internet wisdom. But I’m ignoring all that. I can’t, I just can’t, let go of this meme about greeting earthlings.
- SilverAppleQueen knows why personal betrayal devastates.
– Podcasts –
It’s pretty clear that none of the chuckleheads criticizing Simone Biles have ever played competitive team sports.
If your best pitcher gets the yips in Game 7 of the world series, the manager balls in a relief pitcher. She got the twisties, which is vastly more dangerous than giving up hits, and took herself out of the game, to make way for [checks notes] another world-class gymnast on the team. Who lead them to the gold. The on to an individual gold in the all around.
This is what team sports are all about.