When Liars Figure

The computer model is not God. After I got my MS in Statistical Analysis and Research Methodology, I was involved with all manner of “modeling” for a number of years. I can tell you, computer models are nothing more than a “black box” containing somebody’s theories and (and this is not an unimportant consideration) future career prospects. That black box has crank on it. When the crank is turned, a set of data (which in itself might have been collected in a biased way) is ground through an analytical process according to that somebody’s understanding of the universe. 

Computer models, in short, are made by people and they can only magnify the good or bad in the people that make them. Meteorologists, for instance, used to be called “weathermen” back in the days before their predictions reached a level of accuracy that inspired any confidence at all. Now, after developing their information gathering equipment and fine tuning their understanding of actual weather conditions, they are somewhere close to correct most of the time. Most of their biggest mistakes nowadays grow out of what is sometimes referred to as the “abundance of caution”. That is to say, if there is a possibility of extreme and dangerous weather, no matter how small, the weight given to that possibility in their predictions is subject to magnification for reasons other than “science”. Of course, that does not stop those predictions from being pumped up with more urgency. Media hysteria and governmental edicts often ensue.

So, if extremely accurate information about how present conditions, analyzed in the light of long term, meticulously collected and curated knowledge about those conditions, might effect the next 18 to 48 hours of local weather sometimes fail, how much faith should we put in predictions that stretch far into future weeks, months, years and decades. This is especially true if those predictions are made by models that are built on poorly collected data and run through a black box of assumptions that are no more than guesses and opinions. Even more so, when those predictions are mixed with social opinion and political priorities why would we have any trust in them at all?

We should not trust them. The track record of all of the most notable computer models used by politicians (mostly on the left) to make changes in our government and our lives have all proved out to be complete failures. Of the 50 reliably predicted catastrophes  generated by “scientific” modeling since 1967, not a single one has actually happened. In the sixties it was world wide famine by 1970. In the seventies it was the “coming ice age”. In the eighties it was “Peak Oil”. Now, Global warming has drifted into climate change.

It is an evil racket of politicians (who are only interested in getting reelected year after year) leveraging the avarice and self-interest of corrupted scientists (who live from government grant to government grant) that gives fodder to the elitist and biased media (who survive the collapse of real information by pimping bad information in exchange for “access”, punditry positions and more bad information). 

This is what you get when there is more in it for everyone to “scratch each other’s backs” than to stand up for some form of integrity or truth. Panic and fear are being used to reinforce the authority of entirely self-interested charlatans who pose as concerned saviors and (where have we heard this before) public servants. 

Just consider the naked hypocrisy of a Barak Obama buying a multi-million dollar waterfront home a scant few yards above sea level. He made that kind of money, in  large part, by sounding the alarm for years about the rise of sea levels predicted by computer models, that in turn were based on computer models of “global warming”. 

It’s not just a political game they are playing because they believe in socialism. These are hypocrites and fools of the first degree. It is careerism and greed in a very short-sighted and destructive form. They are constantly pushing narratives that are harmful to the nation and to the people who live here for their own purposes.

Two days ago, we saw the computer models stripped entirely of their scientific divinity. The pollsters failed utterly. The blue wave turned into a purple trickle. The defeat of Republican senators predicted by vast margins was actually truer in the reverse. Most of the contests were not even close. Far from increasing their hold on the House of Representatives, as so confidently predicted, the Democrats lost two seats. While the presidential election is still contested, the huge margins of defeat predicted for president Trump on a state by state basis were shown to be lies and now seem only to be supported at all by wholesale voter fraud.

It used to be true that “figures don’t lie”. That was in a time when the figures were as honest as possible and you could see whether numbers were collected honestly and then put into simple, forms like lists and cross-tabulations. Now there is an entire industry based on collecting biased data and grinding it through advanced statistical models that are too complicated to understand and where one assumption builds on the next. A single tiny shift in basic assumptions can twist the theoretical model until it represents a universe of apocalyptic dangers where none exist. This is the time when liars figure and the figures lie.

Disposable Joe

Joe Biden’s candidacy is built on his three outstanding “abilities” : Electability, Plausible Deniability, and (after he is elected) Disposability….

Electability

Electability was what got him the nomination. The back room cabal of the Democrat Party thought that Biden was the most electable that they had so they pulled strings to get him the nomination. Recall that Biden was not doing all that well in the polls and early primaries against Bernie Sanders. In fact if the already defeated Elizabeth Warren had not stayed in the race, bleeding away progressive votes from Sanders, until Biden had it wrapped up Sanders might now be the Democrats leader coming into nest Tuesday. 

Plausible Deniability

Tony Bobulinski, a former key man in the Biden Family Racket, appeared on the Tucker Carlson show and drew the outlines of the shady practices that enriched Joe and his family on the backs of the American people. At one point Bobulinski talked about how he came to the conclusion that what they were doing was not right morally and for most people would be a crime. Bobulinski related a conversation he had with James Biden, Joe’s brother.

“I remember saying, ‘How are you guys getting away with this?’ ‘Aren’t you concerned?’” he told Carlson.

He claims that Jim Biden chuckled.

“‘Plausible Deniability,’ he said it directly to me in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel,” he said.

It highlights the fact that Joe Biden has been living on the mere idea of plausibility for most of his career, never most so than in this election cycle. Even before he went into politics he has been stealing ideas, wholesale chunks of speeches and written words. He has become uber wealthy on a senate salary that has never gone higher than $175,000 a year. His immediate family has accumulated fabulous wealth through government contracts and no show jobs with organizations in countries Joe has had responsibility for in his posts and senator and vice president. He has skated by with all of that because of the fog of plausibility conferred by his position, political correctness and his connections to the power brokers of the Democrat party. Nobody in a position to do anything about it, it seems, has been interested in truly evaluating the actuality of his plausibility.

If this is all very insubstantial, it is even more mysterious that he is now so close to becoming the what would plausibly be the first temporary president of the United States. Finally, in the twilight of his life, dispoability has become his defining attribute. 

Disposability

The frail, confused, mumble-mouthed character we see at pathetic rallies and in zoom calls is arguably less presidential than anyone you could pick at random out of the Omaha, Nebraska phone book (if you remember what they were). But that is of no consideration for the cabal that put him forward. Nancy Pelosi has already been doing exploratory drills on using the twenty fifth amendment. The twenty fifth amendment, you may already know is that law which would enable the removal of a sitting president if he were deemed incapable of discharging his duties. You only have to watch and listen to Ol’ Joe for a little while to know that his handle on the Oval Office will be thoroughly greased up by his “supporters” in the party apparatus who can’t wait to do all the things they can’t convince us to vote for. 

Have no doubt, he will be disposed of if voted in. After that, the deluge.

Is the Iceberg Going to Win?

The Titanic collided with the iceberg at 2:20 on the morning of April 15th 1912.

For the United States of America, it is now 2:15 AM. Like the Titanic, we are steaming along in our great ship of state and we are headed straight for our iceberg. Icebergs are elusive in a way, it is well known that only 10% or so will be visible above the water line. Then too, in the physical world, they eventually melt away leaving no evidence in the sea around them. There is a different kind of iceberg out there in our national life and if we look hard enough we can see the top of it now. If it wasn’t visible before, that’s maybe because we weren’t paying the right kind of attention. Or, possibly, unlike a “real” iceberg, the most frightening thing about this iceberg is that it seems to be getting larger all the time and it is just now becoming big enough that we can no longer avoid seeing it.The evidence is piling up now and all you have to do is look at it and add it up. The first ripple that many people noticed was the curious death of Jefferey Epstein. That man, on suicide watch with security cameras and guards and surveillance all around him turned up dead in his cell in a position and with injuries that more than one expert say are not consistent with suicide. It became a viral joke on the internet. A government investigation pronounced it a suicide and since the victim was an obviously unsympathetic character the matter was left to die as a source of humor.

Another ripple that will soon fade uninvestigated is the odd disappearance and even weirder reappearance of Tucker Carlson’s USB Drive. Carlson made the mistake of mentioning the storage device on his show and telling his viewers that it was on its way to LA from New York that night by overnight delivery service. That night, according to an early report, in a secure UPS handling facility the envelope was opened and the contents “disappeared”. Later that day the drive was said to have been on a supervisor’s desk after having been “found” by a low level employee. At the time of this writing Carlson has only said that:

  1. It is now in his possession. 
  2. He has witnesses who saw the envelope being securely sealed.
  3. UPS says that it is not a case of the envelope being opened accidentally by a machine.

Carlson says that the drive is now being evaluated. UPS refuses to give any more information about how this all happened.The human mind is predisposed to identify patterns and if these seem to fit a pattern, I would agree. I tend to believe that Epstein did not kill himself and the drive did not slice its way out of the envelope and throw itself on the floor in the UPS building. I’m thinking that Epstein and the USB drive ran into the same iceberg that is floating through American waters today. There are lots of other pieces that seem to fit but we just don’t know- the Russian Dossier, the murder of Seth Rich, all of the dead people and prisoners the Clinton family has left in its wake, the political and personal takedown of Mike Flynn, the cruel abuse of power and the media in the Roger Stone affair. The weight of it all is gigantic, iceberg-like.The defining characteristic of that iceberg is that it hides very well. Ninety percent of it will never come to light. But there will always be ten percent the is visible. Donald Trump could see all this even before he became the president. He talked about it and made it a point that he would deal with it. For more than three years now President Trump has been repeatedly blocked and betrayed by the most invisible and powerful agencies in the United States. The so-called intelligence community. They have fabricated Russia conspiracies, aided his political opposition and tried in every way to subvert his presidency. They have done this because Trump, from the very beginning has been warning us against the NSA, CIA and the FBI and what they do and what they know about all of us. Let’s not forget that, none other than Chuck Schumer had said this:“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”There it is- The leader of the Democratic party has surrendered to spies and covert agents. The very best spin you could put on this is that he has betrayed his responsibility to protect us from them. The worst interpretation is that he is in league with them.So with the Democrats and the Never Trump Republicans in their pockets, what else can the rest of us depend on to detect the iceberg and keep us safe? Well, in past decades, the news media would be our last recourse but where are they now?With only a few exceptions they are bought out, cowed, infiltrated and otherwise entirely subverted. With John Brennen, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, George Stephanopolis, Jake Tapper and so many others feeding us only the news they think we should see, most of the American people are blinded. The networks, newspapers and most of cable TV have frozen their faces and their scruples and become part of the iceberg’s camouflage . They are the very water, enabling the iceberg to hide in plain sight. The iceberg is out there it has begun turning off your knowledge. Next will be your independence. They are horrified that president Trump has reduced regulations- even though that has ignited better economic growth than this nation has seen, perhaps ever. Regulation is one of the ways they control you. To them, control is much more important than prosperity. They are close to taking your voice away- just try to tweet about any of this – put it on your Facebook page. They are also after your guns and any other way that you could protect yourself. They do not want you to feel safe and secure on your own- only at their pleasure and grace.If some of this is “conspiracy theory” I admit that you cannot know for sure. I might be wrong about a piece or two. I will tell you this, without reservation- if you vote for Joe Biden and he wins, the iceberg will win. Eventually, the entire ocean of politics will be frozen and there will be no escape. 

Trump the Omertà Buster

Omertà is a lie- the lie of silence. It derives from a Sicilian word umiltà, which means humility- in the sense of subjecting one’s self to a code of secrecy and feigned ignorance. It is never practiced for honorable or decent reasons. It is the rock that ugly things are hidden under. It is a credo of gangsters and racketeers. Politics is never more than a few steps away from racketeering. When Omertà is in play there is a racket present – you can count on it. And Omertà is everywhere in our politics these days. Our public discourse is blocked and bloated with a constipating mass of subjects that are forbidden- The correctness Omertà. Every one of those unspeakable subjects is the marker of a racket that is protected by the silence. 

From time to time an arrogant politician will try to create a protective Omertà around of their own. They do this by trying to create the impression that anyone who disagrees with them is in some way invalid or defective. This is what Hillary was caught doing with her “deplorables” remark. As singularly unsuccessful as that particular attempt was, it was a visible and instructive instance of the wide-spread and very successful protective Omertà that made it impossible for pollsters to do an accurate assessment of the elections of 2016 and, I believe, confounding them again in this election year. 

There are many others but here I want to talk about The Ultimate Level of Omertà. The barnacled, algae encrusted hull that all the others cling to.

The deepest and most dishonest level of Omertà is the one that produces the persona of The Public Servant. It is axiomatic that politicians may go into politics penniless but the great majority of them leave office with a great deal of wealth and power. The longer they serve and the higher in government they rise, the richer they get. It works on both sides of the party divide but the greatest irony is among the Democrats. The spectacle of, even the avowed socialists like Bernie Sanders, a man who never had a real job until he became the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, making millions on his and his wife’s political connections and real estate shenanigans. Is only the most obviously preposterous example. 

A more immediate and important example is Joe Biden. Mr Biden has parlayed his bland, squinty-eyed persona and remarkably corruptible morals into a nearly 50 year career in the politics and a fabulous lifestyle. He had been widely acknowledged to be an facile and prolific liar by even the liberal media before being nominated to challenge the Trump presidency, but he is now surrounded and supported by a cocoon of Omertà spun by that same media. 

I’ll leave aside, with only this mention, the belittling and betrayal of Tara Reade. After all, the media have long since realized that that one backfired on them when the vast majority of the victims of that righteous inquisition turned out to be Democrats and their contributors.

This is the most corrosive Omertà- the willful creation of an image of a person that keeps his real nature, and thus his deeds, hidden. The result is that he gets to proclaim himself a “Public Servant” while primarily servicing himself and his family- a “Self Servant” if you will. 

The mountains of emails and insider testimony now coming to light about his son’s “business ventures” and his connection to them reveal the result of this kind of Omertà. If nobody bothers to figure out who a politician really is, or notices even when he is careless and obvious, he will almost always become arrogant and greedy. 

All Joe has had to do all these years is appear amiable and repeat platitudes about making life better and more equal. His pandering to credit card companies, deals in Iraq and junkets to Ukraine and China elicited questions from only a few brave souls like Peter Schweitzer and John Solomon who the rest of the media sequestered and ignored. They are ignoring still. Save for pronouncing it a Russian fake or “a waste of time” they give the whole corrupt subject a severe leaving alone. 

The Omertà of “The Public Servant” image has protected Mr Biden very well until now. It has portrayed him as a nice guy and a friend of “the little guy”. Even as his family grew rich and, in the process, compromised the interests of the country. That image, created and protected, by his cadre in the media keeps the logical questions suppressed. Let’s just name a few: 

Why did he take his drug addicted 50 year old son with him on Air Force Two to China and other places and who paid the expenses?

Where did an utter failure like Hunter get the ideas for all of those scams?

How did Joe get rich on a Senatorial Salary that ws never more than $174,000 a year?

If you ask those questions are you impugning a fine and honorable “Public Servant”? The media have loaded up the image barricade so that you know that is how you will appear. But, while the media serve their own political ideology by protecting Joe and his family (and the Clintons before them), who is watching out for the rest of us? 

What the Bidens have done is not a victimless crime. They have contributed to the erosion of our country and our people. With their complicity (or conspiracy!) to sell off (and allow the theft of!) intellectual property to competitors and possible military adversaries, they have impoverished and endangered us all.

How to End the Omertà

As I wrote, this happens on both sides of the political divide and that is the very reason that President Trump is hated and feared even by many in his own party. He is not of that ilk. He is much more than a “Public Servant”. He is an authentic individual who has no need to rig his position for “Self Service”. He has promised to exposed the racket that public service has become and he has made a fair start at it. He is not pretending to be bland and folksy while making out like a bandit as Joe Biden has done. He is not, like Kamala, a pampered daughter of College professors pretending to be a “down-with-it” African American who erupts in hollow laughter at nothing funny. Everything he says is open and sincere and thereby dangerous to the phony “servants” around him and their confected personae. He is the Omertà Buster.

He explodes media pretense with every thing he does. His advisors have been consistently wrong in advising him to change his style. He doesn’t care if you see the real Donald Trump because he is real- not servile. He has kept his promises. He has led us to a level of prosperity that others wanted us to believe was not possible. He is our best hope to get rid of the servile thieves that have come to infest our government and all of our public life- to end the Omertà. 

Here is the ultimate irony – Trump, unlike Obama and Biden, is the Real Hope and Change. All hail the Omertà Buster.