Prediction failure

I'm going to make a radical suggestion, here.

If you make a prediction, and what you are predicting fails to materialize, there is something fundamentally wrong with your model of how things work.

That's the way it goes in science, you know?  Scientists build theories -- models of how a system operates -- then use those theories to generate predictions.  If experimental data proves to be inconsistent with the theory's predictions, then it's time to revise the theory, or else trash it entirely.

It's a pretty elegant system, and not really that hard to understand.  So why is this so antithetical to the way a great many people think?  Because just recently, there are a group of people who have had their predictions fail, over and over, and all it seems to do is make them louder in defending it the next go-round.

Let's start with the whackjobs who thought that the military exercise Jade Helm 15 was a thinly-veiled cover for a end run by the federal government that would result in a takeover of Texas, the declaration of martial law, the widespread confiscation of guns, and the execution of citizens who objected.  The conspiracy wingnuts who believed this went so far as to hold rallies, demand public meetings in which explanations were demanded from military leaders, and send out armed monitors to keep track of what the troops were doing out there in the desert.

And then... and then... none of that stuff happened.  Jade Helm ended on September 14, Texas is still Texas, no martial law has been declared, Americans are as heavily armed as ever, and the government's stockpile of guillotines is still unused.  I wonder if we can get a refund on them?  I bet they kept the styrofoam packaging.

But are any of the militiamen types who were running about thumping their chests in June standing up, red-faced, and saying, "Wow, I guess we were wrong.  What goobers we are."?  Not that I've heard.

Then we have the ever-entertaining Glenn Beck, who has been claiming for years that the End Times are starting.  Every time something awful happens -- which, admittedly, is pretty much every day, global conditions being what they are -- Beck says, "This is it!  We're in for it now!"  And then... the world doesn't end.

Kind of anticlimactic, that.

About a month ago, Beck said the following on his weekly radio show:

What's coming is God saying, right now, to us, 'Please don't, please stand up, please!  Please stand up and choose me.  Please choose me.  If you don't, I can't protect you anymore.  Don't you see what is happening in the world?  Don't you see what's coming your way?  I want to protect you!  If you don't choose me, I can't!  We've made a deal: I'm your God, you're my people; if you reject me as your God and you pick other gods, I can't take you as my people any more.'

"This is not the run of the mill time anymore.  This is not 'it's coming' anymore.  This is it, gang.  This is it.  This is everything I've warned about, everything that I've worried about and I think it's going to happen so damn fast it'll take your breath away.  When it starts to go, you're just going to be 'what?'  Remember when I said at some point evil will just take off its mask and say, 'Raar'? It's going to happen.  Soon.

And what happened was more or less: nothing.  No calamities, no horrific events taking our breath away, and no evil going "Raar."  Just your ordinary stuff that has happened all along.  But does Beck say, "Hmmmm.... maybe I really don't have a direct pipeline to god?"

Of course not.  He just revises his prediction.  "Okay, maybe not soon soon," he basically said, on his show this week.  "But still soon.  You'll see."  Now he's saying the stuff he has been predicting was imminent for the past five years is all gonna happen in 2016.  "I'm terrible at timing," he said, as if that didn't somehow call into question his entire worldview.

Jeremiah Dictating His Prophecies to Baruch (Gustave Doré, 1866) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons

Then we had messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who last year predicted that "the Shemitah" -- a cataclysmic event that will usher in the days of the messiah -- would occur on September 13, and would manifest as a massive stock market crash and resultant economic collapse.  But last Sunday came and went with no cataclysm, which was pointed out to Rabbi Cahn by Pat Robertson on The 700 Club.

Man, it's kind of sad when you're so loony that Pat Robertson calls you out.

Cahn immediately went into backpedal mode:

Nothing has to happen.  You can't put god in a box or he'll get out of it.  The stock market wasn't open on Sunday, so you can't have a crash.  But what's happening with the Shemitah is, there are several templates in the book about how the different ones have come in the past forty or fifty years.  This one has... two of them have had a crash on Elul 29 [the Jewish calendar date that corresponded to September 13], but this one has a different pattern, and that's what this has done.  This is called the pattern of this [sic].  When the Shemitah has happened in the last cycles, what has happened is that in the days before the last day, the stock market, which has been ascending, the Shemitah changes that direction, and it starts to descend.  That has happened in this one as well.  It started in the summer...  It has followed the major pattern.  And this time is called the Shemitah's wake, and sometimes you have the worst crashes occur then, so we'll see what happens.  

Bad things will happen!  Maybe on the date I said, but if not then, they'll happen either before or after that!  Like the stock market going up and then going down!  Because that never happens unless it's ordained by god!

People complain when the weather forecasters get it wrong occasionally.  These bozos, on the other hand, can have a zero batting average, and they continue to get television interviews and have weekly radio shows.

I don't get it.  I mean, I know that the folks who made the predictions themselves are interested in face-saving -- but why don't their followers go, "Whoa.  These people are crazy."?  Instead, every time some new apocalyptic nutjob pops up, spouting prognostications of doom, there are large groups who simply follow along, baaing softly, seeming not to notice that such forecasts have been wrong every single time.

It may be the only undertaking in which a zero success rate doesn't have any effect whatsoever.

Okay, maybe I'm being overly optimistic to expect that people would apply the principles of scientific theories to beliefs that are fundamentally unscientific.  But you'd think that human nature -- which, as far as I've observed, carries with it a dislike for being duped -- would kick in at some point, and the conspiracy theories and apocalyptic prophecies would not gain traction any more.

Never seems to happen, though.  

But it'll happen in 2016!  On February 10!  You'll see!  The whole human race will abandon superstition, and the days of goofy counterfactual beliefs will be over!  Thus sayeth the prophecies!

Cross my heart and hope to die.

May Texas be safe from tigers

Well, this is it, folks.  Jade Helm 15, the two-month United States Army training exercise in Texas and New Mexico, has begun.  The guillotining of innocent civilians should begin presently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, that's apparently what a significant percentage of Texans believe.  There are numerous conspiracy theories regarding what appears to be a completely legitimate military operation, under the supervision of senior officers who assure us that every effort will be made to prevent the exercise from interfering with the lives of ordinary citizens, to the point that an article about the various angles on the conspiracy appeared in Army Times online magazine.  The author, Kyle Jahner, outlines them thusly:

1. FEMA-sponsored dome-shaped hurricane shelters are actually being used to imprison non-sheeple who "foment insurrection," i.e., object to Jade Helm and the declaration of martial law that is soon to follow.
2. The dead bodies of said insurrectionists are going to be carried to their final resting place in BlueBell Ice Cream trucks.
3. The command centers for planned takeover of Texas are some abandoned Walmart buildings that were observed to have razor wire on their roofs.  (Walmart spokespeople have said that the razor wire was to prevent break-ins.  Ha.  They would say that.)
4. The whole martial-law thing was motivated by NASA's discovery that there's going to be a major asteroid strike in September of this year, which will result not only in a great big smoking crater, but in the southern United States turning into something that resembles Mad Max: Fury Road, only better armed.  And we can't have that.
5. The Russians are secretly funding the secessionist movement in Texas, because they'd like to see America crumble.  So the people who are against Jade Helm are actually fighting against the evil Rooskies, or something.  (Yes, I know that makes no sense whatsoever.  Don't yell at me.  I'm not the one who believes this.)
6. Ultimately, the whole thing will lead to Barack Obama coming out with the fact that he has never intended to step down in 2016, and his crowning as Exalted Emperor Barack I.

Far be it from Texans to take any of that lying down.  So it will probably surprise no one that a group in Texas has formed a "Counter Jade Helm" citizen surveillance group, intended to keep an eye on things and report back when decapitations start occurring in Walmarts and the headless bodies are carted away in ice cream trucks.

The whole thing is being run by a guy named Pete Lanteri, a dubiously-sane former Marine who claims he founded Counter Jade Helm in order to keep an eye on things and make sure that there was someone watching what the government was up to, but whose recent behavior makes him sound like a dangerous lunatic.  When Lanteri got trolled on Facebook -- because that never happens, right? -- he responded both on Facebook and Twitter with a string of invective that certainly doesn't help his case any.  He began by closing the Counter Jade Helm Facebook page to the public with the following friendly message:

Since the huge media attention Counter Jade Helm is receiving, the fb page is being attacked by libs, conspiracy nuts, and the other 90% of useless fucking Americans.  To fix this I am creating individual state group pages closed to the public.

When a supporter responded, "They are causeing [sic] such a division in this GREAT NATION a second REVOLUTION IS NEEDED VERY BADLY," Lanteri said that basically, he couldn't agree more.  "I can't wait to kill thousands of these fucks, man!!!" he wrote.

In other bons mots from Lanteri, we have:

Here's hoping we're in a shooting war to save this country by next Fourth of July!!!!  Semper Fi Patriots!!!! 

People you should all be making lists of commies/marxists/islamists in your neighborhoods.  All the teachers, school board members, politicians etc. who are anti US Constitution need to be identified and addresses known so when it comes time to round them up we know exactly where to start looking.  They will be arrested and tried for treason!!!! 

Why can't Geraldo Rivera, aka twatwaffle, be in a church when it gets shot up? 

More dead equals more dead dems.

About African Americans in general, he had the following to say:  "War on White People continues!!!!  [Blacks are] a Failed Race."  He even attacked Pope Francis, regarding his stance that weapons manufacturers were complicit in the escalating worldwide death rate from guns, saying, "Fuck this asshole!!!  EVERY ASPECT OF AMERICA NEEDS A FUCKING PURGE!!!!"

[N.B.:  I may have miscounted the number of exclamation points, but otherwise, these quotes are as written.  And yes, apparently he does think that Pope Francis lives in the United States.]

So here we have a man who is apparently in favor of murdering members of a political party that makes up about half of American citizens, who is apparently a vicious racist, who wants anyone who disagrees with him tried for treason, and who is hoping for a violent revolution, leading a group that is monitoring heavily-armed military men engaged in a Special Ops training exercise.

Nope, I see nothing whatsoever that could go wrong with that.

So we've got to make it till the end of August without an incident, which I hope fervently will be the case.  But you know what's craziest about all of this?  If what military leaders are saying is true -- that Jade Helm really is just a training exercise -- and nothing untoward happens, all it's going to do is reinforce Lanteri's conviction that it was their vigilance that prevented the Evil Convoy of BlueBell Ice Cream Trucks from doing their dirty work.  Because you can't win with these people, you know?  No matter what happens, they never shift their ground.

Just yesterday, in fact, I saw a post on Facebook about how during Obama's presidency, the number of gun sales has increased.  The comment was something like, "Ha!  Obummer's efforts to repeal the Second Amendment and pass laws to take away everyone's guns sure have been successful!"

Or maybe, you moron, he never intended to repeal the Second Amendment in the first place.  But of course, I'd never expect you to admit that.

It's like the old story about the guy who would show up at his friend's house for a visit, but before entering the house would fold his hands in a prayerful attitude, close his eyes, and say, "May this house be safe from tigers."  This went on for some time, and finally the friend had had enough.

"Come on," he said.  "Tigers?  This is Ohio, for pete's sake.  There's probably not a tiger within a thousand miles of here!"

And the guy gave him a contented smile and said, "It works well, doesn't it?"

Opening the floodgates

I was discussing with a friend a couple of days ago the devastating floods that have hit Texas, caused by an aberrant weather pattern that is showing no signs of going away any time soon.

"Given that there are so many climate change deniers in Texas," my friend asked, "what do you think they'll blame it on?"

"Oh, I dunno," I responded.  "Probably gay people and President Obama, I'd guess."

You know, there are times I'd rather not be right.

Flooding in Houston [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just yesterday, a woman who called into Bryan Fischer's American Family Association-sponsored radio talk show Focal Point had the following to say:

If God is judging Texas, it’s because of the witchcraft and sodomy that we’ve allowed to run rampant...  [T]he places that are underwater [are] are overrun with witchcraft and sodomy.  If you go into those areas, you can just see it...  Houston has a whole area that is like Sodom and Gomorrah.  It even has a sodomite mayor.

What I'm wondering is how god could design a flood that would only hit witches and gay people.  I mean, it's not like there's any way to stop flood waters from wiping out pretty much anyone in their path, so unless god in his Infinite Wisdom and Mysterious Ways induced all of the sodomites and witchcraft practitioners to build their houses on low ground, he's pretty much smiting everyone at the moment.

It brings up the rather amusing mental image of god at a a giant computer that has a map with flashing red lights every time someone has the wrong kind of sex, and a pull-down menu for different kinds of natural disasters that can be unleashed.  "What?  Fellatio in Tulsa, Oklahoma?  THIS CALLS FOR A TORNADO."

But you'll be relieved to know that there's not just sex and witchcraft behind the floods, there's also the looming, sinister, evil, all-powerful figure of...

... Barack Obama.

Why would President Obama send floods to Texas, you might ask?  Is it just because Texas is conservative?  Because if that's it, he should be flooding most of the southeastern United States.  There has to be more to it, right?

Of course, right.  Obama is flooding Texas because they caught on to what he was doing regarding Jade Helm 15.

For those of you who have not been keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories, Jade Helm 15 is a set of military maneuvers taking place in Texas that were a front for a government takeover of the state that was so top-secret that the Army announced what they were intending to do three months early.  That's how sneaky these guys are.  "I have an idea!  Let's confuse and confound them by telling them all our plans!  They'll be so baffled by this ploy that when we follow through with them, they'll be caught completely unawares!"

So apparently Obama got mad that the Texans were on to his cunning plot, and weren't just cooperating and letting him and his thugs declare martial law and herd everyone into FEMA Death Camps conveniently disguised as WalMarts.  He got so mad, in fact, that he used his super-powerful weather weapons to teach Texas a lesson.  Says writer Susan Duclos:

As I'm looking through breakingnews [sic] headlines, and seeing the continuous references to the extreme weather so concentrated over TX, and coupled with the continuous chemtrailing that happens throughout the US, I can't help but think that what is going on right now as part of the Jade Helm "exercize" [sic], could not actually be the domestic roll out of weather warfare on an agressive [sic] scale. We know they can control the weather to at least some degree. We know that the chemtrailing over CA and in the Pacific moddifies [sic] the jet stream to both keep CA dry and to force that precipitation east towards TX and other southern states.  We know that Jade Helm is "pretending" that TX is a hostile enemy that must be engaged.  The millitary is already rolling out across the state as part of this "drill".  Why then, is it not reasonable to assume that as part of this "mock civil war drill" that they would not practice using the tools that they have in their arsenal?

Let me just recommend, Ms. Duclos, that you not only use your computer's function called "spell check," that you consult a dictionary and look up the definition of the word "reasonable."

So there you have it: this isn't a weather event, it's either a punishment by god for gay sex and witchcraft, or it's the result of a weather weapon wielded by Barack "Professor Evil" Obama.  Myself, I just hope that the rains stop, because there's been enough devastation and death already.  And also so that these loons will shut up and go back to their previous hobby, which is probably pulling on the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.

Wagging the dog

On Saturday, we looked at the wild conspiracy theories that have arisen around the military exercises called "Jade Helm 15" that are scheduled to take place in the southwestern United States this summer.  The conclusion I came to was that you had to be a major nutjob to believe what Alex Jones and his ilk were claiming -- a statement that comes pretty close to a tautology.

Unfortunately, further developments have shown that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is, by this definition, a major nutjob.

Abbott has informed Major General Gerald Betty that he is deploying the Texas State Guard to make sure that the planned military takeover of Texas doesn't happen.  Abbott wrote:

To address concerns of Texas citizens and to ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure, and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity, I am directing the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15.  During the Operation's eight-week training period from July 2015 to September 2015, I expect to receive regular updates on the progress and safety of the Operation. 

During the training operation, it is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.  By monitoring the Operation on a continual basis, the State Guard will facilitate communication between my office and commanders of the Operation to ensure that adequate measures are in place to protect Texans.

To make matters worse, we find out that a man who is running for president of the United States also considers Jade Helm a serious threat.  It will probably come as no surprise, however, that the contender I'm referring to is Ted Cruz:

My office has reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise.  We are assured it is a military training exercise.  I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don’t trust what it is saying.

 Of course, this is not the first wacko idea that Cruz has fallen for.  When he found out about Agenda 21, a non-binding environmental action plan for sustainable development that was drafted in 1992 by the United Nations, Cruz wrote:

Agenda 21 attempts to abolish “unsustainable” environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. . . . Agenda 21 subverts liberty, our property rights, and our sovereignty.

Right.  Because non-binding resolutions that no one has acted on for 24 years are all about destroying American sovereignty.

Oh, and don't you think that Ted Cruz looks exactly like a blobfish?

But I digress.

The whole Jade Helm thing, though, seems to be spiraling out of control.  Over at the dubiously-connected-with-reality website Personal Liberty, we find out that we need to panic even more because an anonymous guy found out from a friend of a friend that there are trains with shackles on them:

Let me drop a bombshell that I have not seen you address.  There are trains moving throughout Texas that have shackles inside some of the cars.  I have not personally seen them, but I know personnel that have seen this.  This indicates that these trains will be used to transport prisoners of some sort.  I know from reading your articles that your default belief will be that these are for American political prisoners and will be transported to FEMA detention camps of some sort.

What is a little scary about all of this is that when you get heavily-armed people scared over nothing, they react, and pretty soon that nothing turns into a great big something.

In other words, you have the insane tail wagging the slightly-less-insane dog.

So I'm glad that there are at least a few voices of reason, such as Republican Senator Todd Smith, who wrote a letter to Governor Abbott that began thusly:

Let me apologize in advance that your letter pandering to idiots who believe that US Navy Seals and other US military personnel are somehow a threat to be watched has left me livid.  As a 16 year member of the Texas House and a proud patriotic AMERICAN, I am terrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to standup to those who do.  I’m not sure which is worse.  As one of the remaining Republicans who believes in making decisions based on facts and evidence -- you used to be a judge?  I am appalled that you would give credence to the nonsense mouthed by those who intend to make decisions based on internet or radio shock jock driven hysteria.    Is there ANYBODY who is going to stand up to this radical nonsense that is a cancer on our State and our Party?  It is alarming that State Republican leadership is such that we must choose between DEGREES of demagoguery.

 To which I can only say: Amen.

Of course, "listening to the voice of Reason" is not something we've seen people do much lately, especially when the loonies have whipped up a frenzy.  So I can only hope that wiser minds prevail, and the nutjobs quiet down, and whatever military exercises they have planned for this summer go off peacefully and without a hitch.  It would be a terrible thing if the conspiracy theorists turned out to be right, not because they were right from the beginning, but because the fear they'd incited created the very situation they were yelping about.

Scooby Doo vs. Jade Helm

For the past seven years, we've heard over and over that President Obama is planning on taking away our guns, outlawing Christianity, rounding True Americans up into FEMA- run death camps, and establishing a fascist dictatorship.

I think if my American readers will take a moment to look around them, they can confirm for themselves that none of this has happened.

You would think that a zero-percent success rate at predicting the future would induce some of the loonies who have been spouting this nonsense to reconsider their arguments.  You would think that if, after seven years, there's been no sign of a Liberal Gestapo forming, people would say, "Wow.  I guess I was wrong about all of that.  What a goober I am."

You would be wrong.

New from the "No, really!  Listen!  This time it's real!" department, we have the contention that Jade Helm 15, a military operation in the southwestern United States, is a cover for the impending takeover of Texas.

Why Texas?  Well, insofar as you can ask any kind of logical question about this claim, apparently Texans think that it's because they're the last bastion of patriotism, and Obama wants to shut 'em down.  Or something like that.  Bastrop, Texas resident Bob Wells summarized the idea thusly:

It’s the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany: You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police.  They’re gathering intelligence.  That’s what they’re doing.  And they’re moving logistics in place for martial law.  That’s my feeling.  Now, I could be wrong.  I hope I am wrong.  I hope I’m a 'conspiracy theorist.'

The unspoken punch line, of course, was "But I'm not."  And all of this is despite the efforts of military leaders to quell the panic.  Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria was sent in to a public meeting to clarify what was going on and answer any questions, and he was met with this sign:

[image courtesy of photographer Jay Janner and the Austin American-Statesman]

Lastoria soldiered on despite the crazy-talk.  No, there wouldn't be soldiers running around gunning down innocent civilians.  The whole thing was pre-planned to take place in remote areas, and they'd made a map available of where the operation was occurring.  Soldiers participating in the activity would be wearing orange armbands, so that anyone who saw them would know who they were and what they were doing.

The whole thing, Lastoria said, was to train soldiers in how to work in hostile areas.  They were not implying that Texas was a hostile area.

Although he may well have changed his mind on that point after the meeting.

And of course, such a claim wouldn't be complete without Alex Jones fanning the flames.  Jones, who amazingly enough is still on the air even though he (1) has been batting zero, prediction-wise, for decades, and (2) apparently has three-quarters of a pound of LaffyTaffy where most of us have a brain, opined thusly on his broadcast InfoWars:

[Some] eerie footage out of Fort Lauderdale shows troops conducting a martial law-style drill under the cover of night training to intern citizens.  The secretive drill directly dovetails with the Jade Helm military exercises, in which 1,200 special forces troops will descend on ten US states for domestic training...  I happen to have met the governor when he was attorney general years ago. I happen to know, somewhat, his chief of staff. I happen to know multiple billionaires that know the governor very well and have had dinner with him and he’s stayed at their house, and they tell me he knows exactly what’s going on...  Texas is listed as a hostile sector. Of course we are. We're here defending the republic.

And apparently this ties into a claim that they're using abandon Wal-Mart stores as operational headquarters.

Oh, and people have seen said Wal-Marts being filled with empty coffins, for when the military launches their actual plan and starts slaughtering people.

You know, I'm perfectly willing to believe that our government has sponsored some pretty shady deals, and I'm sure that we don't know 5% of what is actually going on.  Fine.  But if there really was some kind of super-secret plan to stage a military takeover of Texas as a means for establishing a dictatorship in the United States, do you really think that:

1. They'd hold question-and-answer sessions to tell everyone about it?
2. They'd publish a map telling people where the operation was taking place?
3. A certifiable wingnut like Alex Jones would correctly figure out what's happening?
4. The participants would take the amazingly covert and secretive step of wearing orange arm bands, for fuck's sake?

And you'd also think that after years of claiming that the United States was going to go down in flames, and being wrong every time, that no one would be listening to Alex Jones any more.

But the way these things work is that the people who rant about them think, afterwards, when nothing untoward happened, that it was only their bravery and selflessness in speaking up that stopped the evil government from succeeding in their evil plans.  You can almost hear the government leaders saying, "Drat!  We'd have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids and your stupid dog!"

You can't win.