WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2025
And we don't mean about Ukraine: We start today with a news report in the New York Times. At issue is the mental / cognitive / intellectual functioning of the whole human race—of "the whole wide universe."
In fairness, everybody makes mistakes! Remarkably, it sounds like the "super geniuses" at DOGE may even have made a mistake:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.
Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But it appears that the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.
Dual headline included, that's the way the report begins. For the record, and speaking of various kinds of mistakes:
The principal headline says that DOGE did make a mistake. The sub-headline says it only may have.
At any rate, whatever! DOGE was claiming that it had saved $8 billion by canceling a project it didn't think was worthwhile. In fact, the actual figure may be only $8 million! That would be one one-thousandth of the reported amount.
Later, the Times report notes that $2.5 million of the $8 million has already been spent on the disfavored project. That means that the actual saving would be only $5.5 million—roughly one twelve-hundredth of the total claimed.
Meanwhile, and for the record: Is it possible that the canceled project was actually worthwhile? That, of course, is a matter of judgment! Sometimes, money can be saved in ways which may not be wise.
Was $8 billion saved by DOGE—or was it really $5.5 million? At this point, only The Shadow knows!
The Shadow knows, plus every poor soul in "the whole wide universe" who watched The Five last evening. Not to mention the things which were said on the Gutfeld! program a mere five hours later.
Sad! Yesterday, at 5 p.m., the most watched program in American "cable news" started by heralding the claim that $55 billion had been saved by the "super geniuses" at DOGE.
(DOGE "estimates they have saved taxpayers $55 billion and counting." That was enthusiastically said in the program's opening minute.)
Moments later, Harold Ford—an appalling shell of his former self now that the commander has been elected—went ahead and acted like that "estimate" was an established fact. As you may know, Ford is cast as the liberal in the group—as the one who's supposed to push back!
(For the record, Ford has become an utter embarrassment with President Trump back in office. It's long past time to frog-march him away from the set of this imitation "news" show.)
At any rate, sad! That estimate became an established fact for those who were watching The Five. Five hours later, the gruesome host of the Gutfeld! program opened his show with an astonishing array of unfounded claims attributed to the same outfit.
Has DOGE really saved $55 billion? If so, has it done so by terminating contracts for programs which may actually be worthwhile?
No such questions will ever be asked on Fox News Channel programs. Also, the New York Times will never report or discuss this fact about this powerful "cable news" channel. Within the dueling madnesses of our discourse, it simply isn't done.
Bob Dylan was hot a month ago. We think today of the lines he wrote when he was still very young:
And for every strung-out person in the whole wide universe
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'.
One of those freedoms has become the unfettered freedom to play remarkably fast and loose with the most elementary facts! Yesterday, we saw the commander make an extremely odd factual claim—and at this point, we aren't even discussing what he said about Ukraine!
What did the commander say on last night's Hannity program? The program was taped late last week. What did the commander say?
Before we show you what he said, we want to show you some established facts. These facts concern a matter no one actually cares about. We refer to the performance by American students in the most recent administrations of the two major international testing programs, the PISA and the TIMSS.
How did American kids stack up against the rest of the world in those testing programs? We'll let the NCES tell you. Here are the basic scorecards from those most recent tests:
Performance by U.S. students, 2023 TIMSS:
In 2023, U.S. 4th-graders’ average score on the TIMSS mathematics scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 28 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 21 education systems.
In 2023, U.S. 8th-graders' average score on the TIMSS mathematics scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 18 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 19 education systems.
In 2023, U.S. 4th-graders’ average score on the TIMSS science scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 39 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 11 education systems.
In 2023, U.S. 8th-graders' average score on the TIMSS science scale was higher than the average scores of their peers in 27 education systems and lower than the scores of those in 11 education systems.
That's the way it went on the TIMSS. As always happens on these major international tests, American students outperformed their peers from some other nations, were outperformed by some others.
In the dying realm of actual fact, it went the same way on the most recent PISA:
Performance by U.S. students, 2022 PISA:
Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average reading literacy score was higher than the average in 68 education systems, lower than the average in 5 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 7 education systems.
Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average mathematics literacy score was lower than the average in 25 education systems, higher than the average in 43 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 12 education systems.
Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average science literacy score was higher than the average in 56 education systems, lower than the average in 9 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 15 education systems.
For the record, U.S. students always rate most poorly on the PISA math exam. Here's the way their scores shook out in 2022 when compared to OECD nations only:
Compared to the 36 other participating OECD members, the U.S. average in mathematics literacy was lower than the average in 21 education systems, higher than in 6, and not significantly different from 9.
Our students were outscored by 21 of the other 36 nations. On every other PISA / TIMSS test, U.S. students ranked substantially better than that.
That brings us to what we saw the commander say on last night's Hannity program. Determined to fix our American schools, he authored these puzzling comments:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (2/18/25): School! I want to bring school back to the states so that Iowa, Indiana—all these places—Idaho, New Hampshire—there's so many places and states.
I figure 35 really run well. And right now, it's Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, China—China, can you imagine, has top schools! We are last!
So they have a list of forty countries. We're number 40. Usually, we're 38, 39. And the last time, we were number 40.
Hannity just sat there and took it! He probably knew that what was being said seemed to be crazily wrong.
"Usually, we're 38, 39. And the last time, we were number 40?" Where in the world did those numbers come from? No one will ever ask!
Meanwhile, and just for the record:
The four states mentioned by the commander don't stand out, in any particular way, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the gold standard of domestic public school testing. (White kids in three of those states score below the national average for that demographic.)
Also, if 35 of the fifty states are "running really well," it's hard to figure how we could have ended up dead last around the world.
(As far as we know, when China participates in these programs, it still tests only in a small set of high-end jurisdictions. But so these pseudo-discussions go.)
None of this made any sense, but this is who and what we are. Also, this is who and what the commander unmistakably seems to be at this point in time.
This is a function of who and what our very primitive "public discourse" has been down through the years. No one actually cares about this general topic, and no one ever has.
Yesterday, alas! Viewers of The Five were offered that claim by DOGE as an established fact.
Also, viewers of Gutfeld! saw the program's astonishing host rattle off an array of utterly bogus claims, right at the start of his program. None of his guests voiced a peep of complaint. None of his guests ever do.
Viewers of Hannity saw the commander make a set of very strange claims about American students. Then too, we come to what the commander seemed to say about who started the war in Ukraine!
This is the business we have chosen, in part through the failure of our major news orgs in Blue America. We that, we offer a question:
Is any form of "mental disorder" involved in any of these claims or previous practices? In a way, we're sorry we headed down that long and winding road this week. We say that for two basic reasons:
For starters, our journalists are never going to consider possible mental illness ("mental disorder") in their discussions of political figures. Also, it's as we told you yesterday:
"Mental illness" is hard! Conceptually, mental illness is very hard—hard but fascinating.
We'd love to see the fascinating topic discussed at substantial length. Is there even such a thing as clinical "mental illness?" (Some professors have said there isn't.) Assuming that there is, what does some such diagnosis actually tell us about the person in question?
We'd love to see that discussion, but it's never going to happen. Despite the praise we heap on ourselves, our public discourse is too primitive to handle any such topic.
Simply put, we humans aren't especially sharp, and we never have been. That's even true in the Lake Wobegon of our flawless Blue America, where the journalists are all above average.
Early in his first term in office, claims were made about the alleged mental illness of President Trump. Tomorrow, we'll return to what was said at that time—and those claims were made in the clinical sense, not in a colloquial manner.
Is something wrong with the gentleman's mental health? How about with our own? How about with "every strung-out person in the whole wide universe?"
Over here in Blue America, our own failures to deal with reality have helped bring us to the current dangerous place. In our view, those failures became extreme over the past several years, as a Democratic president seemed to be in a fairly obvious state of decline.
With respect to the person who played a key role in the prior discussion of the commander, no one could possibly call her a slouch! But the woods, though lovely, are dark and deep, and we the people have wandered about in a state of incomprehension.
Did Ukraine really start the war with Russia? It sounds like that's what the commander has now said!
As for us, we're going to take the rare earth metals! Russia will take some land.
Is this the world we've somehow chosen? Have we been like the fictional townsfolk of Oran? Has "mental health," or the lack of same, somehow been involved?
Tomorrow: No one could call her a slouch
