The documenting of junk science is hardly new. I recall reading skeptics taking on bullshit studies back in the 1980’s. I’m old and my mind is slipping, but I think the term “junk science” was in use back then, but I may be misremembering. Alar is probably the first example I recall reading about, where the “science” turned out to be complete bullshit. DDT is the most famous example.

Still, the debunking of pseudo-science from the usual suspects goes back a ways. It is generally tangled up in some cause, claiming to be about fending off an emergency. Anthropomorphic Global Warming is looking like the Godzilla of all junk science. The shadow of Rachel Carson will be with us forever.

The rise of the fake nerd has only made it worse. Fake nerds, as I have written about before, are all around us these days. Pretending to be tech savvy is one part of it. Another is the use and abuse of statistics. The sporting press is being over run by guys with a couple of stat classes, carrying on like they are Bill James. Nate Silver is making a career out of it.

The mistake all of these guys make is in thinking statistics are science. That’s not the case. Science uses statistics, but it also uses hammers and blow torches too. No one calls a carpenter a scientist or a geek, yet the typical carpenter is more empirically minded than most of these nerds. He understands cause and effect.

Anyway, fake science has become the religion of the fake nerd cult. Take any amount of wishful thinking, slap on some statistics, scientific jargon and you have catnip for the fake nerds. This story is a great example.

The human race is really starting to feel the consequences of their actions. One area we are waking up to is the massive amount of pesticides we spray (especially in North America) on our food that has not only been linked to human disease, but a massive die off in the global bee population within the past few years.

A new study out of Harvard University, published in the June edition of the Bulletin of Insectology puts the nail in the coffin, neonicotinoids are killing bees at an exponential rate, they are the direct cause of the phenomenon labeled as colony collapse disorder (CCD). Neonicotinoid’s are the world’s most widely used insecticides.

Right away you see one of the hallmarks of fake science. That’s the apocalyptic warnings about humans living better than they deserve. In this case, it is the use of chemicals to ward off horrible plagues and produce more food.  Then you have the “case is closed” assertion that tells you the case is anything but closed. The fact that science is an ongoing debate is lost on the fake nerds, because they have no science.

For this study, researchers examined 18 bee colonies at three different apiaries in central Massachusetts over the course of a year. Four colonies at each apiary were regularly treated with realistic doses of neonicotinoid pesticides, while a total of six hives were left untreated. Of the 12 hives treated with the pesticides, six were completely wiped out.

This is an example of the classic logical fallacy they used to teach kids back in the olden times. It goes like this. If A then B, therefore if B then A. This is the error of affirming the consequent. In this case, overuse of this pesticide results in fragile bee colonies. There may be many reasons for fragile bee colonies. At best, this study suggest there may be a relationship between pesticides and fragile bee colonies.

Real scientists, like this guy, understand that there can be many causes to a single consequent. Those causes can interact with one another to mask and amplify their effects. Teasing out the true causal relationships is difficult. Correlations can help locate causes, but they often lead us astray.That’s the plight of the fake nerd. They believe they are empirically minded, but fall for this sort of nonsense. The result is a flood of junk science.

Looks like the Man is going to throw FedEx in jail.

FedEx Corp. (FDX:US) was accused in a federal indictment of delivering prescription pain pills, sedatives, anti-anxiety drugs and other controlled substances for illegal Internet pharmacies. A conviction could be “material,” the company said today in a regulatory filing.

The operator of the world’s largest (FDX:US) cargo airline was indicted on 15 counts of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and misbranded drugs and drug trafficking that carry a potential fine of twice the gains from the illegal conduct, alleged to be at least $820 million for it and co-conspirators. FedEx delivered drugs to Internet pharmacies that supplied pills to customers who filled out online questionnaires and were never examined by doctors, knowing these practices violated federal and state drug laws, according to the federal indictment.

The company vowed to fight the charges, saying it can’t be responsible for the contents of the 10 million packages it transports daily and that policing customers would violate their privacy.

“FedEx is innocent of the charges,” Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Memphis, Tennessee-based company, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “We will plead not guilty. We will defend against this attack on the integrity and good name of FedEx and its employees.”

Well, FedEx is not getting a free pass because they tried to protect the privacy of criminals engaged in criminal behavior. That’s called aiding and abetting. That said, it is unreasonable to hold a shipping company responsible for the packages. Unless there’s proof FedEx knew about it or should have known about it, the Feds are spinning their wheels.

FedEx said yesterday it repeatedly asked the government for a list of illegal pharmacies so it would know which ones not to do business with. The U.S. never gave it such a list, it said.

The company knew it was delivering drugs to dealers and addicts, with couriers in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia expressing concerns circulated to senior managers that FedEx trucks were stopped on the road by online pharmacy customers demanding packages of pills, according to the indictment. Some delivery addresses were parking lots or vacant homes, prosecutors said.

“This indictment highlights the importance of holding corporations that knowingly enable illegal activity responsible for their role in aiding criminal behavior,” U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag in San Francisco said in a statement.

The illegal deliveries began in 2000, Haag said, and FedEx continued to do business with one Internet pharmacy whose manager had been arrested for violating drug laws. She said the company also served a fulfillment pharmacy that supplied Internet pharmacies that were shut by law enforcement, with their owners and doctors convicted of illegally distributing drugs.

OK, that sounds bad. If the Feds can back it up with proof, then it is clear the company engaged in illegal conduct that they knew to be illegal. But, there’s a problem. The “company” did not do anything. People working for the company made these decisions. Why are the Feds going after the share holders? Surely, they could press the employees to dime out the people who made the decision to commit these crimes. Conspiracy to distribute class A narcotics is a big crime carrying big time.

It is the fundamental problem we face as a country. We no longer arrest and prosecute rich people. In the 80’s, the S&L crooks went to the can in big numbers. Even Michael Milken did time. In the Clinton years that stopped and the law no longer applies to the ruling class. Exactly one guy from the Enron scandal went to jail. No one from the dot-com scam went to jail. No one from the mortgage meltdown went to jail.

If we get back to sending rich people to the can when they screw up, a lot of what ails us will fix itself. Want to see the ruling class get religion? Send a few of them to Angola State Prison.

I’m fond of saying that America has been colonized by pod people. They look like us and they make noises that sound like us, but they are not us. They are, at the minimum, foreign. They don’t want what we want. They don’t love what we love and they don’t see the world as we see it. Our political class may as well be from Kenya or Indonesia. They look at us like foreigners in our own lands. This editorial from the Lunatic Times is a good example.

There is a reasonable way to confront the influx of Central American children at the southern border, and the White House is getting it mostly right.

No rational person believes this. You have to be divorced from reality to think the White House is handling this well. Yet, the lunatics at the NYTimes print such nonsense without even bothering to acknowledge the alternative.

It has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to pay for more immigration judges, for legal assistance to children and parents, and to help care for tens of thousands of children in shelters in Texas and elsewhere.

The request seeks more money for the Border Patrol, and for speedier prosecutions and deportations of adults with children, repatriating migrants and addressing causes fueling the exodus in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. And it includes an ad campaign to urge parents there to keep their children at home.

The request would be a good step toward tackling the problem, though it should have included much more for immigration lawyers and humanitarian aid, and less for agents and drones at the border. Congress should swiftly approve it, since it contains pretty much everything that lawmakers — even President Obama’s Republican critics — have been demanding.

But instead of supporting the package, Republicans are throwing up roadblocks. And through dangerous overreaction, some are urging actions that would make the situation worse. They want to make the children’s deportations speedier by amending or repealing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a 2008 law signed by President George W. Bush that gave new legal and humanitarian protections to unaccompanied migrant children from countries other than Mexico or Canada.

If this were posted to the Onion, you would not have to change a word of it. These people really believe this stuff. In order to believe such nonsense, you cannot be living in America and keeping tabs on the news. That, or you are suffering from mental illness. Yet, these people are in charge of our country. How is this different from the attitudes of the French royal class during the reign of Louis XVI?

The Red Team keeps chanting about how the solution to immigration begins with securing the border. That’s self-delusion. We face the dilemma colonized people have always faced. The solution begins with buying the wood for the gallows to be built on the Mall in Washington. It’s only then that we have truly faced up to what we have to do to fix our country.

I saw this linked to Drudge the other day and I meant to comment upon it.

Doctors, teachers, care workers and former police officers are among more than 600 suspected paedophiles arrested following a massive nationwide police operation.

The unprecedented investigation, involving every police force in the UK and coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA), took six months to complete.

The operation initially targeted people suspected of accessing indecent images of children online, but some of those arrested have now been charged with a wide range of offences, including serious sexual assault.

A total of 660 people were arrested as part of the operation and spokesman for the NCA said more than 400 children throughout Britain had been safeguarded.

Many of those arrested were people who had access to children in the course of their work. The majority had not previously been on the police’s radar and had not previously been arrested for sex offences.

I like reading Ambrose Evans-Pritchard most of the time. When he is writing about the EU, he brings a sober analysis to the topic, without getting too hysterical. Sure, bad policy will lead to catastrophe eventually, but it takes a long time and you have plenty of chance to change course.

Too often, policy debates are caste as dire emergencies that are about to doom us to a new dark ages if we don’t act now. It is too late for debate when the meteor is in the sky so if we are having a debate it usually means we have plenty of time to sort through our options.

Anyway, when he starts talking about his pals in the financial elite, he turns into the typical CNBC jabber-mouth.

The US Federal Reserve has begun to pivot. Monetary tightening is coming sooner than the world expected, with sober implications for overheated bourses, and for those in Asia, eastern Europe and Latin America that drank deepest from the draught of dollar liquidity.

We can expect a blistering dollar rally, perhaps akin to the early 1980s or the mid-1990s. It is fortuitous that the BRICS quintet of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have just launched their $100bn monetary fund to defend each other’s currencies. Some of them may need it.

America’s unemployment rate has fallen from 7.5pc to 6.1pc in 12 months. The country has been adding 230,000 jobs a month in the first half of this year.

In the various places where I perform my act, I’m fond of calling progressives “lunatics” and “fanatics” whenever the opportunity arises. In comment threads, I do it to irritate the lunatics and fanatics. Here, it is about clarity. Someone who thinks we should “do something” to help the poor or needy is often just soft hearted and soft headed. The former is admirable and the latter is forgivable in most cases. Usually, these are people who will accept limits and logic when pressed. You can explain to them that shoving a bunch of tax dollars into a program will make things worse, not better.

Then there are people who cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, not matter how strong the argument. These people are fanatics who believe what they believe and will never stop believing those things. Their dedication to the cause is so tangled up in their sense of self they can no longer distinguish where the causes ends and they begin. Asking them to give up the cause is akin to asking them to commit suicide. Lunacy is is when the fanatic is ready to destroy everything in order to achieve their aims.

As thousands of illegal immigrant children are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, House Democrats pushed for more amnesty, guest-worker visas, $3.7 billion in funding, and more lawyers for illegal immigrant children during a Tuesday Twitter town hall on immigration.

Their message to illegal immigrants was, in the words of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), “our doors are open.”

“We are all connected. We can’t just build a wall or a fence and say no more,” Lewis said. “This is America. Our doors are open.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has said she would rather pass amnesty legislation than become Speaker again, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring an amnesty bill to the floor so it can pass with support from Democrats. Boehner told Obama after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was ousted for his embrace of amnesty that Congress would not vote on an immigration bill this year. Boehner did suggest, though, that Congress could pass amnesty legislation next year.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) claimed America already has “extensive border security” while Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the well-being of the illegal immigrant children “must be our first priority.”

Theses lunatics don’t care about the migrants. How can they? Many of them are gangsters and criminals. Others are just dead beats looking for welfare checks. Still others are being thrown out of their native lands as they are a burden. What these lunatic politicians do care about is breaking the back of traditional America. They hate you and they want you dead, even if it means blowing the whole country up.

Reps. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Steve Horsford (D-NV) pushed for more guest-worker visas, which are coveted by big-business and high-tech interests, that would lower the wages of American workers. Numerous scholars and studies have concluded that America has a surplus – not a shortage – of high-tech workers.

There’s a great example of the fanatic. The facts say we don’t need to import foreign workers, yet they persist in demanding more cheap labor for the robber barons of Silicon Valley.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) said taxpayers should pay for more lawyers for illegal immigrant children, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) went further, saying “every” illegal immigrant child should get legal representation.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) insisted that amnesty legislation would “raise wages” even though the Congressional Budget Office determined that the influx of more foreign workers would lower the wages of American workers. For that reason, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow wrote a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus urging them to vote against amnesty bills that would detrimentally impact black Americans at the lower rungs of the economic ladder the most.

The contempt these people have for you is breathtaking. Rangel hates you so much he is willing to put his House seat at risk to fill up your town with Latin American peasants. Think about that for a second. How can anyone bargain with a madman willing to die for his cause?

Maybe this is the inflection point and we are headed for a crack up. I don’t know. Maybe normals will wake up and begin treating Progressives like the Chinese treat Falun Gong. Maybe the illegals will get to the lunatics first and do the job Americans refuse to do.

Even mendacious degenerates can say something useful on occasion. John Edwards, a guy of low morals even by the standards of politics, used to campaign on the idea of two Americas. His formulation had it where one America was for the lumpenproletariat and the other for the giant lizard people he promised to slay with his bare hands.

The oleaginous sociopath tacked on all sorts of nonsense, but the idea actually got some traction, despite it all. My sense is people feel the country is coming unglued and anything that speaks to that, gets their attention. Charles Murray has a whole big book on the idea.

I’m always a little suspicious of such talk. When it comes from a dickhead like John Edwards, I know it is intended to trick people out of something, like their vote. Even when it comes from less revolting public figures, I’m a little skeptical. It just seems like an easy way to build a convenient theory. America is a big country and that means lots of weirdness. The South has been vastly different from New England since the founding. California will always be a bit strange compared to the rest of the country.

That said, stories like this give me pause. I’m a gun nut. I like guns and I have a lot of them. To quote the late great Phil Graham, I have more than I need and fewer than I want. Further, I’m a 2A absolutist. I think the government, at all levels, must show overwhelming evidence of a compelling state interest before infringing on the citizen’s right to bear arms. Practically speaking, that means the state has no business in the types of fire arms I own, where I keep them and where I take them. If I want to walk around with a pistol strapped to my hip, that is my business. That said, I can live with concealed carry and instant background checks.

Now you know where I stand.

I have friends who have never held a gun. I have friends who truly believe that owning gun will cause the owner to murder people. There are a lot of people in New England who think guns should be banned and the police should go door to door making sure no one has a gun. I know a few of them. A lot of the anti-gun sentiment is simply mindless hysteria, but a big driver is culture. Guns are now associated with downscale whites who hunt and shop at WalMart. Guns are southern, like Christianity and NASCAR. Odds are, most of Connecticut is happy that Gun Valley is moving south.

It is convenient to think guns are an outlier, but there are a range of issues where the country’s regions are going in different directions. Military service is one example. According to people who study these things, Southerners are much more likely to enlist than Northerners. Marriage rates and divorce rates are following a similar trend. Church attendance is the one that jumps off the page. But what strikes me about the gun issue is that people are actually moving around the country to get away from those with whom they no longer agree. We are physically self-segregating on the national level.

Maybe it is just temporary madness and it will pass. Maybe something else will come along to jam us back together. Maybe we were always this different and mass media is making it more obvious. I’m not that smart. On the other hand, maybe John Derbyshire is right and we are balkanizing. In a generation or two we will go our separate ways. Pat Buchanan has been talking about the crack-up for years.

Again, perhaps it has always been so, but it sure feels like we are coming unglued. If Texas broke away, I’d probably move there and become a Texan, rather than American. The same is true of the Old South. If New England decided to join Canada as a province, I’d shrug and wish them the best. It’s not that I’m rooting for it. I’m just tied of being around and being ruled by people who hate me. Sometimes, divorce really is the best answer.

I’ve been calling this one for a year now. Fake Indian will be the Democratic nominee. I think she will win if the GOP nominates another idiot.

Shepherdstown, West Virginia (CNN) – Fake Indian doesn’t roll deep.

The Massachusetts senator and reigning champion of progressives everywhere arrived right on time Monday afternoon for a campaign event in West Virginia, this one for Democratic Senate hopeful Natalie Tennant, Fake Indian’s latest stop in a national political tour boosting 2014 candidates. Her slight frame slid gingerly out of the passenger side of a blue SUV – her own car, with Bay State plates – and she greeted a volunteer with a golly-gee smile.

“Oh! Looks like it started to sprinkle out here!” Fake Indian said, peeking up at the sky.

There was no entourage, no security detail. Just an aide left behind to park the car. Not knowing where to go, Fake Indian wandered right into the side entrance of the Clarion Hotel in Shepherdstown and strode up to a police officer standing idly.

Fake Indian is playing on the lunatic’s long love affair with the Jeffersonian Democrat. That’s the man-of-the-people sort of pol who has all the guile and sophistication of an aristocrat, but the common touch to connect to the folks. Sort of a decaffeinated Hitler.

“Hi, I’m Fake Indian, the senator from Massachusetts,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Well it’s nice to meet you!” the officer replied. Her aide arrived, conveniently in time to box out an advancing reporter, and escorted her down a hallway.

The low-key arrival was not, it turns out, an indicator of the reception she would receive inside.

In a ballroom packed with nearly 400 West Virginians, Fake Indian was greeted like a bona fide celebrity, met with multiple standing ovations, a cascade of selfie attempts and a few shouts of “2016!”

What followed was a pugnacious and folksy speech packed with the kind of full-bodied populist rhetoric that has thrust her into 2016 presidential conversation alongside Hillary Clinton – whether she wants to be there or not.

“The way I see this, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, all those other guys on Wall Street, they’ve got plenty of folks in the United State Senate willing to work on their side,” she said, jabbing her hands into the air to make her points. “We need more people in the U.S. Senate willing to work on the side of America’s families.”

This is all nonsense, but it is good politics. The Stupid Party would be wise to take note. The Stupid Party should be playing the populist card. They are faced with a party of plutocrats and a president who thinks he is royalty. The GOP base is naturally populist. But, the morons running the GOP insists on pretending they are the party of the monopoly guy.

Tennant, she said, “is strong, she is independent, and she won’t let anybody roll over her.”

Fake Indian talked about her working class upbringing in Oklahoma, telling the story of her mother taking on a minimum wage job at Sears, an effort to save their home after her ill father could no longer work. She humble-bragged about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – the “little consumer agency” she helped launch – noting that it’s already recovered $4 billion from banks and credit card companies for American customers. And she bashed Republican opposition to her student loan bill, which would have lowered interest rates but was blocked in the Senate, saying the GOP’s first priority is defending big banks.

Fake Indian was never poor. Her family growing up was upper middle class. Her bio, like her heritage, is completely fake. If Lee Atwater was still alive, he would be salivating at the chance to deconstruct Fake Indian’s biography. But, the GOP is run by pimps and punks toting degrees in administration from elite colleges. Stomping a mudhole in Fake Indian is way too proletarian for that crowd.

I just noticed this. Ed Driscoll made me the quote of the day. My favorite Canadian has also become a fan. The other day, Red State linked to me in a blog post. I’ve never spent a lot of time reading Red State, but friends who do told me about it. The site that drives a crap load of traffic my way is American Digest. Maggie’s Farm is another site that sends a ton of traffic my way.

The funny thing is I never heard of these sites until they linked to me. I have recollections of reading Ed Driscoll somewhere, but I can’t recall the details. Al Gore’s contrivance is a big place. Regardless, it is good to be recognized and I appreciate the traffic. The more people who are exposed to the Tao of Z, the sooner I can start my cult and take over the world.

The ratings for the Chav Ball Final are in for the US market.

The full global tally is still a ways off, but the World Cup finished strong with U.S. viewers.

Capping off a record-breaking run for the FIFA tournament’s 2014 stay in Brazil, Sunday’s final between Germany and Argentina averaged 17.3 million viewers on ABC. Compared to the network’s total for the 2010 final in South Africa, the match was up 1.8 million viewers.

ABC, carrying ESPN’s coverage, was not the only network to air the game. Univision’s Spanish-language coverage also boasted a considerable showing with 9.2 million viewers. That’s up a shade from the 2010 final.

Looking at just the ABC-ESPN combo, the game stands as the third-most-watched soccer game in U.S. TV history. The U.S. match with Portugal set a new record several weeks ago with 18.2 million viewers, edging past No. 2: the the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final  at 17.98 million viewers.

For a final, this marks the most watched men’s World Cup championship game with U.S. viewers. And all told, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC improved their combined World Cup showing by 39 percent over 2010, bringing in an average 4.6 million viewers during the 64 matches.

Online, the WatchESPN app generated 1.8 million live unique viewers.

One of the important aspects of Chav Ball in America is talking about how popular it is with fans. The games are so horribly dull, the TV coverage spends a lot of time showing images of “passionate” fans looking passionate. I’ll just note that Hitler was passionate too. Passionate is not always a good thing.

Anyway, how does that hold compared to other quadrennial events?

About the same.

NBC and Nielsen were expected to release more detailed ratings information on Tuesday, but preliminary estimates show the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics averaging a strong 21.4 million viewers in primetime.

While down 12% from the 24.4 million who watched on average during the more time zone-friendly Vancouver Games of 2010, it’s up 6% from the 20.2 million average for the last European Winter Games in Torino in 2006.

The Closing Ceremony from Sochi on Sunday averaged about 15.1 million viewers, well below the 21.4 million who watched the final night from Vancouver (following that afternoon’s Team USA-Canada men’s gold medal game). It was up slightly from the 2006 Torino closer (14.8 million).

From a competitive standpoint, the Olympics have never been more dominant. For the first complete week of the Games (Feb. 10-16), NBC logged its most lopsided primetime victory in network history.

And the Olympics have helped NBC in other dayparts, including news. “Today” beat “Good Morning America” both complete weeks during the Games, while the Brian Williams-hosted “NBC Nightly News” had its most-watched week in eight years.

NBC paid $4.4 billion in 2011 for every Olympics through the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. The Peacock and its networks aired a record 1,539 hours over its 18 days from Sochi, Russia, including 230 on NBC Sports Network, 185 on the broadcaster and 45 on MSNBC.

Facebook released data on Monday for the Games, during which roughly 45 million people chatted about the Winter Olympics on the social media website — for a total of about 120 million combined posts, comments and “likes.”

So sorry Chav Ball fans. Watching your sport is as popular as watching a couple of homosexuals prance around in makeup and ice skates.