Barry Arrington

I am watching Waco on Netflix. I recommend it. My view of the Branch Davidian tragedy in a nutshell: David Koresh was an evil man who broke the law and needed to be stopped. The government’s actions to stop him were breathtakingly over-the-top cowboy antics that resulted in many needless deaths , including dozens of innocent children. I suppose I like the Netflix drama because its “no good guys” approach to the subject is similar to my own. The initial ATF raid stands as perhaps the most colossal law enforcement blunder in the last 50 years. Before the raid, Koresh was never “holed up” in the compound, and ATF could have arrested him without incident (much less loss of life) Read More ›

This is the lede from an April 23 article in Science News: I don’t understand this at all. The article purports to account for all deaths. Yet it states the death tolls only for “men” and “women.” The question that goes entirely unaddressed — much less answered — is how many deaths there have been among the other 57 genders? The trans- homo- bi- phobic editors of that journal must be called out and shamed for this callous inequity. It is a national tragedy that deaths among these groups are apparently not even being tracked, let alone analyzed. Sarcasm ends. Here is the headline from the article: So science tells us that gender in humans is binary and the biological Read More ›

Even the mouthpiece of the progressive movement (CNN) is waking up to a reality that was always glaringly obvious. In this story CNN reports on a new UN report: The world is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions” in just a matter of months, the UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation . . . “While dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic,” David Beasley told the UN’s security council. “There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.” . . . When added to the 821 Read More ›

Thank you to the UD News Desk for this article in which Coyne is quoted as saying this: The error is taking what is possible and making people think that this is what’s common or probable. **klaxon horns sounding** IRONY ALERT: The entire Darwinian edifice rests on this very foundation. Nice of Jerry to let us all know that it is an impossible foundation upon which to build any theory.

This account of the report states: Preliminary results from New York’s first coronavirus antibody study show nearly 14 percent tested positive, meaning they had the virus at some point and recovered, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. That equates to 2.7 million infections statewide — more than 10 times the state’s confirmed cases. Cue the science deniers: Jim Thibodeau and Orthomyxo, you’re up. How are you going to dismiss this latest study in furtherance of your calls for hysteria and panic at the expense of dispassionate reason?

Guess the sources of these statements: Worst case scenario planning encourages counterproductive overreactions in which law-enforcement techniques and drastic anti-civil liberties measures are used as the first resort, rather than the last resort. “the law enforcement/national security approach” to fighting a pandemic “converts the exception into the rule by treating everyone in the general population as a potential threat who warrants coercive treatment.”  we must ‘trade liberty for security’ is both false and dangerous A conservative media personality? Right wing blogger? Radical libertarian? No, no, and no. They are from the ACLU’s 2008 report “Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health—Not a Law Enforcement/National Security—Approach.” Because the ACLU saw this coming, they were prepared. Which is why it is Read More ›

Government is good at imposing overarching regulations. Making finely tuned (or even roughly tuned) adjustments to fit particular circumstances? Not so much. This is nowhere more apparent than in the government’s decision to shut down “elective” procedures everywhere, even though the need to so so varied in the extreme from place to place. This article provides some details on the fiasco. a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only Read More ›

There is an Internet meme going around concerning a statement attributed to Trey Gowdy. In the statement the following question is asked: Is it a mere coincidence that China unleashed the corona virus on the world just before the U.S. presidential election, especially in light of the fact that we are in a global trade war with China brought on by Trump? The obvious rejoinder to that question is the Chinese people have suffered as much, if not more, than anyone else. How could a government intentionally unleash a virus that was sure to wreak such havoc on its own people? In answering that question, take this into account: Xi stands in direct linear succession to Mao. Mao once said Read More ›

When Orthomyxo says so of course. In a recent exchange I asserted that COVID-19 deaths may be overstated. Orthomyxo got red in the face, stamped his rhetorical feet, and petulantly insisted that no COVID-19 numbers are without the slightest doubt understated. There is strong evidence, however, that they are overstated, and when he asked me for data to support that claim, I gave him data in the form of this statement from the scientific advisor to the Italian Minister of Health: “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two Read More ›

Joe Biden has just tapped Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief architect of Obamacare (and brother of “never waste a crisis” Rahm Emanuel) as an advisor on healthcare issues. Ezekiel is most famous for insisting that healthcare must be rationed, and the elderly must perforce get the short end of the rationing stick. The reason: he has a strictly utilitarian view of life, which takes no account of the inherent value of human life as such. He is also Jewish. Does anyone else find it tragically ironic that a Jew of all people would advance policy prescriptions that are in all but name based on the Lebensunwertes Leben principle? To be sure, Ezekiel has not advocated for outright euthanasia as the progenitors Read More ›

This is an excellent primer on the problem of beauty from a Darwinian perspective. Why Extravagant Beauty is Evolution’s Most Persistent Problem. It seems more reasonable, as Wallace believed, that extravagant beauty is likely to eject creatures from the gene pool. It requires more energy to develop and maintain and makes one highly conspicuous and attractive to predators. A quibble: I am not sure this is Darwinian evolution’s most persistent problem. There are so many candidates for that title, it is hard to keep count, much less come to a definitive answer as to which problem is the worst.

Some of those who oppose loosening the draconian restrictions the government has placed on economic activity argue that the restrictions are necessary because they will save lives.  That argument — while it may be made in good faith — is nevertheless profoundly blinkered and shortsighted, because the heartbreaking reality is that China’s criminal recklessness has put us between the Scylla and the Charybdis when it comes to the question of saving lives.  Lives are going to be lost no matter what we do.   We can continue stifling economic activity and maybe lives will be saved (though the science on that question is far from settled).  But there is a price to be paid for stifling economic activity.  We are Read More ›

Yesterday ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Mark Zuckerberg about his company’s policy of censoring posts that are intended to organize protests of the government’s shelter-in-place orders.  Zuckerberg said that Facebook takes down posts that it classifies as “harmful misinformation.”  Then he said this:  “At the same time, you know, it’s important that people can debate policies, can basically give their opinion on different things.” Translation:  You can debate policies and give your opinions on Facebook as much as you want just so long as you don’t step out of line and disagree with us about the government’s coronavirus response.  Before I go on, let me say this:  Facebook is a private company.  No one is forced to use it.  No one Read More ›

See here. The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April. This study seems to confirm the study reported in BREAKING: Stanford Study: COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate May Be Overstated By A Factor Of 85 It is becoming increasingly clear that we have closed the country down out of fear of a virus when the overwhelming majority of infections are so mild that the infected person never notices.

We are entering unprecedented and perilous economic times.  Today for the first time in history the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil went negative, with the May delivery plunging to -$36.73 per barrel.  Our fiscal policy makers are in panic mode as they try to stave off a deflationary spiral that could plunge the country into a deep depression. In this article I will discuss the government’s response to the current crisis, whether the law of unintended consequences will result in the destruction of the dollar, and possible replacements for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Government’s Plan Even before the crash of the oil market, Fed policy makers knew deflationary pressures caused by the COVID-19 crisis Read More ›