WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2026
The Five cavort and clown: Before we discuss The Five let's start with a simple question of analytical competence. It involves a pair of official statements by the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
On Monday, the PCSD issued the statement seen below. We agree with the Fox News Channel's Will Cain. Whatever the ultimate truth may turn out to be, this statement didn't quite seem to make sense:
PCSD: Monday, February 16
“To be clear, the Guthrie family—to include all siblings and spouses—has been cleared as possible suspects in this case. The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel..."
We agree with what Cain instantly noted on Monday's edition of The Will Cain Show. If Sheriff Nanos doesn't know who actually did commit this crime, it's hard to see how he can declare, with certainty, that some specific person wasn't involved in some way.
We didn't think that statement made sense—and then, you be the judge! Yesterday, the PCSD apparently issued this second statement:
PCSD: Tuesday, February 17
“...At this point in the investigation, the Guthrie family (including siblings and spouses) has not been identified as suspects.”
Many news orgs have treated that as a simple restatement of Monday's announcement. To see a reporter at Forbes do that, you can just click here. (CNN did the same thing on last evening's broadcasts.)
In fact, as Cain noted early in yesterday's show, Tuesday's statement differs greatly from Monday's declaration—or at least, it does so on its face.
Who knows? Maybe the PCSD thought they were simply restating Monday's declaration, but that isn't what they actually did.
Did anyone in the press corps ask? Full disclosure:
Verbal and analytical skills are sometimes remarkably sparse within our high-end news orgs.
Now for the rest of the story: As we've often noted, The Five is our flailing nation's most watched "cable news" show. Its viewership dwarfs that of any MS NOW or CNN show.
The Five is also a daily insult to the American project. We thought you ought to see the list of topics the five stumblebums pretended to discuss on yesterday's braindead show:
Segment One: Once again, for the second straight day, AOC's flub in Munich.
Segment Two: Members of the Democrat [sic] Party say the word "so-called" too much.
Segment Three: Should transgender people be allowed to own guns?
Segment Four: Rosie O'Donnell made a trip to New York.
Segment Five: Eric Swalwell wrote an erotic poem! (When he was 19 years old!)
AOC and Rosie and Swalwell oh my! Sadly, we've made none of that up.
We'll spare you an account of the sheer inanity put on display as the messenger children invented dim-witted, insulting speculations about O'Donnell's reasons for visiting New York.
As for Swalwell's erotic poem, the children never quite made it clear that they were talking about a poem the fellow wrote when he was a college sophomore.
The dumbness of the discussion about the offensive term "so-called" surpassed all human understanding, with Dana Perino winning the earnest cluelessness prize. She also played the world-class fool in offering mocking speculations about O'Donnell.
At any rate, make no mistake:
These corporate messenger children are propaganda clowns. They're dragged out on the set each night to engage in snark and insult and scorn and to do little or nothing else.
Out of all the gin joints in the world, the Ingrid Bergman character had to walk into Bogie's cafe! Similarly, out of all the serious news topics begging for clarification and analysis, the nitwits on our most watched show chose to turn tricks like those.
O'Donnell visited her children. Swalwell wrote a poem when he was 19! Also, Dems say "so-called" too much!
It's what these flyweights are paid to do—and the cast gets dumber at 10!
The New York Times won't report about this. The breakdown runs various ways.
ReplyDeleteKeep watching, Bob. With a bit a luck, they'll cure your horrible case of TDS insanity eventually.
...fingers crossed...
What would lead a troll to believe this is possible?
DeleteThis has to be one of Somerby's stupider remarks:
ReplyDelete"If Sheriff Nanos doesn't know who actually did commit this crime, it's hard to see how he can declare, with certainty, that some specific person wasn't involved in some way. "
You can rule someone out by examining an alibi. If they were out of the country beginning before the abducted person went missing and have not returned since the, they would obviously be incapable of doing the crime and could be cleared of suspicion. It can be declared that they were not involved "in any way." Somerby might concoct some fantasy involving paying someone else to abduct Guthrie, but that could be eliminated as a possibility easily, especially for relatives and spouses habitually uninvolved with Guthrie.
Somerby's idea that you can never prove anything with certainty and thus can never eliminate suspects is ludicrous in a police investigation context. They must eliminate unlikely suspects because following up on everyone connected to a person's life would be prohibitive given limited resources. But this also is not arbitrary. There are ways of eliminating suspects based on the nature of their relationship, motive, lack of evidence, inability to carry out a crime, and alibis (presence somewhere else at the time of the crime). Police are trained to do this. Somerby is obviously not. That makes his certainty that these relatives cannot be excluded with confidence offensive. These are people who love Guthrie and care about her. Assuming they cannot possibly be excluded as suspects when a police spokesman says they have been, maligns innocent people connected to the victim. Does Somerby forget that these are real people who he is assuming the worst of, despite police absolution?
This is not a logic game or nihilist puzzle but a crime with victims, beginning with Nancy Guthrie but including those who mourn her and are terrified about the outcome of this investigation because of that loss. And yes, even if she is 84, because people love their grandparents not just their children.
Osama bin Laden was out of the county "and have not returned since the [sic]", retarded Corby.
DeleteSomerby once again shows that he doesn't understand that humans reason based on probabilities not certainties or absolutes.
DeleteSomerby stopped learning new things before the concepts of fuzzy and modal logic were developed in philosophy and mathematics (by Latfi Zadeh at Stanford). It supplies the math needed to reason about probabilities with different likelihoods and conditionalities. That is how people think, not according to Aristotelian logic. So the kind of thinking people actually do has been formalized. Studies show how people think, not Somerby's ancient Logic 101 from Harvard or his convenient nihilist beliefs that nothing can be known for certain (when things can be known with high confidence and reliability if not absolute certainty).
Somerby never reads his comments so he will keep making this mistake over and over, sounding like an idiot, because of his ignorance. And that is before you start considering how police make decisions about probable guilt or innocence. Then we use juries and evidence to decide who did what, using a jury (which has been shown to make good decisions using a process that is well-studied and known to be the best available way of deciding guilt). Somerby appears to reject that too, so I hope he is not selected for jury duty, or has the honest to state to the judge that he cannot reach a conclusion given his philosophical beliefs, so he can be disqualified.
This sophistry is another reason why I hold a grudge against Somerby.
DeleteHow then was Osama bin Laden identified as the mastermind of 9/11? Perhaps because of his chain of association with others who were there?
DeleteGiven that you have no association with Osama bin Laden, and none with the victims or anyone else there, would you consider it right for prosecutors to continue to investigate YOU as a possible suspect in 9/11? If they targeted George W. Bush himself as one of the perpetrators would that be valid, given that they didn't yet know who did it? That is what Somerby is claiming. After all, Bush knew about it before it happened.
Delete"Verbal and analytical skills are sometimes remarkably sparse within our high-end news orgs."
DeleteOther skills and especially knowledge are sparse in Somerby's neighborhood.
Somerby's ancient Logic 101 from Harvard or his convenient nihilist beliefs that nothing can be known for certain (when things can be known with high confidence and reliability if not absolute certainty).
DeletePlease note that Somerby's oft-stated belief that nothing can be known with absolute certainty is not in any way in conflict with your statement that some things can be known with confidence and reliability.
Maybe you should try some Logic 101.
Logicians failed us. I learned that here.
DeleteBiden had a bad debate and was thereafter banned from politics, even if they couldn't remove him from the presidency.
ReplyDeleteHave we reached the point where AOC can be sabotaged by the NY Times who reported her ums and ahs and is now incapable of not bungling the response to a question, because the right is targeting her and they had nothing better to go after? Is she now supposed to abandon her unannounced campaign for all future presidential runs because The Five thinks she was insufficiently eloquent in one of her responses in Germany?
This is idiocy made possible by the histrionic reaction by the right and its lefty accomplices (George Clooney, Nancy Pelosi, Jon Favreau, Somerby posing as blue, and the New York Times) as the Republicans swift-boated Biden over his age following an exceptional and excellent presidency.
This is how it happens. Democrats who should know better jump on a red bandwagon over some triviality or lie out of fear of having an imperfect candidate or human being as president. We need to stop this, especially when it is clearly the right (The View via Somerby) advancing the criticisms. AOC is strong, has done a terrific job in Congress, and doesn't deserve a shrimp like Somerby to demean her performance by going along with red Fox propaganda. AOC deserves our defense, not an asshole like Somerby trying inch away from her on the team bench (not that he sits there anyway).
Biden was scuttled by a bad debate because it confirmed what most of us already knew. By comparison, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton would not have been hurt by a bad debate.
DeleteSimilarly AOC's flaws support what many of us believe: she's a lightweight. She has not done things that would indicate any expertise in foreign affairs.
Obama was considered a “lightweight”, an “implausible” candidate, as Somerby would have it, before he went on to beat a war hero and a business tycoon.
Delete"She has not done things that would indicate any expertise in foreign affairs."
DeleteIs it Day One yet?
Maybe this is why the police have ruled out Guthrie's family as suspects:
ReplyDelete"TMZ reported receiving a "highly sophisticated" ransom note as the search for Nancy Guthrie expands internationally to Mexico.
The FBI has reportedly expanded its search south of the U.S. border and asked law enforcement officials in Mexico to join the search for 84-year-old Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, who went missing three weeks ago from her Tucson home. Sources told TMZ they believe Guthrie could have been taken across the border, but it's unlikely it happened immediately after she was taken from her home."
This suggests that the existence of more likely suspects might be a reason why police would say they are no longer considering the family to be suspects.
It’s worse than you think, Bob.
ReplyDelete“Absolutely hysterical that reruns of Hannity at 2 am are now getting more viewers than every single show on CNN.”
https://x.com/greg_price11/status/2024151744461070703?s=46&t=oYvKLjVc8YzJIvwKoQTYBQ
About the same as Colbert's viewers on YouTube
DeleteCecelia has to be butthurt that Somerby would call her[sic] favorite cable performers din-witted propaganda spewing clowns, but those clowns know their audience of Cecelias loves its hatred, lies, cruel jokes, and propaganda because that’s their comfy place, so much so that they imbibe it a second time later at night.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:53pm, I enjoy and respect Bob’s thoughts. It’s an important blog despite,…and often because of you anonymouse jokers and cruel potty-mouthed critics/propagandists. It’s very affirming.
DeleteThere is something wrong in your life. Perhaps Mary Trump can recommend a good therapist.
DeleteAnonymouse 6:08pm, you’re here to insult a blogger every day of the week. That’s your life’s work.
DeleteWhat coincidence. A blogger is here every day to insult Democrats. That seems to be his life's work.
DeleteNote that Cecelia the snowflake didn’t argue with anything 4:53 says.
DeleteRep Delia Ramirez is a Democrat from Illinois, serving in the House of Representatives. Here are the things she has done to fight DHS/ICE and oppose Trump's fascism, from Simon Rosenberg (Hopium Chronicles):
ReplyDelete"Rep. Ramirez was among the first in Washington to understand the threat of what DHS was becoming under Trump-Vance-Miller, and has fought ferociously over the past year. Here’s a sample of some of what she’s done for all of us:
In April 2025, Rep. Ramirez became the first member to call for Secretary Kristi Noem to resign
In May 2025, Congresswoman Ramirez hand-delivered a letter to Secretary Noem requesting her resignation after confronting her with the unconstitutional, illegal weaponization of DHS.
In December 2025, she took the first step toward Noem’s impeachment and requested that the House Judiciary Committee conduct a complete investigation into the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s unlawful and potentially impeachable actions.
In January 2026, Congresswoman Ramirez and Congressman Seth Magaziner (RI-02) announced the DHS Use of Force Oversight Act to statutorily require a DHS policy on the use of force and de-escalation by agents.
In January 2026, Congresswoman Ramirez led 71 members of Congress to demand the House Committee on Judiciary immediately start investigation hearings on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s unlawful and potentially impeachable actions.
In our conversation Rep. Ramirez talks about a new bill she has introduced, the Melt ICE Act, which ends detention and electronic monitoring, and redirects ICE funding to community-based services in the communities must impacted by ICE’s terror campaign."
This is what we need from our Democratic elected officials. If you don't know what your Reps have done, ask them. Most of these acts are not rising to the level of press coverage but if all of our Democrats are working for us, then Trump and the right are surely feeling the pressure. They won't admit it, and Somerby will never tell you, but we can throw a monkey-wrench into some of the worst of their activities.
I am glad that Democrats are going to boycott the State of the Union speech. It will make it more obvious to people like those 13 disappointed Democrats interviewed by the NY Times, that Democrats are busy behind the scenes doing what they can to constrain Trump's worst impulses. Noticing what others are doing will make us feel less alone in our own struggles.
Trump called Jesse Jackson "a piece of work" and then repeated it "he was a piece of work..." while attempting to memorialize him. Meanwhile, Leavitt tried to tell a reporter that Trump wasn't racist. Right wing bigots are not qualified to know what is racist and what is not, when Trump cannot even show respect for a greatly admired black leader who has just passed away.
ReplyDeleteCalling a back man a piece of work because his effort to achieve civil rights was a nuisance to white America is not the appropriate way to eulogize him. We aren't at the place where we can all laugh together over that. And Trump would know it, if he weren't such a bigot.
It's ironic that Bob fault's FNC for devoting so much attention on unimportant stories, but also faults the NY Times for failing to report on an unimportant story. Namely that a lot of FoxNews people do a poor job. Lots of organs on TV, radio, the web, print do a poor job.
ReplyDeleteWhen you find that a lot of sources are all doing a poor job, perhaps the problem is that you don't understand what their job is, as they define it. Statistically they should mostly be doing an average job, so it is your conception of what they are attempting that is wrong, not their performance.
DeleteThe question is whether David or Somerby could do a better job. It is easy for armchair critics to point to poor performance without understanding the demands of the work. Somerby tried to be a journalist and failed, just as he isn't much of a blogger. It is really not much comfort to sit around and point out how others fail too. The day I see either offer a constructive suggestion, I will fall off my own armchair.
DeleteGood point @6:01, except that I can also compare the quality of today's sources with past sources. IMO The NY Times is the best source today, but it's stupendously worse than the same newspaper used to be.
DeleteInanity doesn't mean what Somerby thinks it does.
ReplyDelete"A neuroscientist revealed the "horrific dangers" of President Donald Trump's mental decline during a podcast interview on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteDr. Frank George, a neuroscientist and psychologist, joined political commentator David Pakman on "The David Pakman Show" to discuss Trump's mental state. George revealed that Trump is becoming more disinhibited, which is a sign that his dementia is becoming worse and that he will soon have "no guardrails" for his malignant narcissism.
"You get to the point where the classic, 'Hold my beer,' and then they do something really stupid," George said. "That type of disinhibition is exactly what we see with frontotemporal dementia. But in Donald Trump's case, what's being disinhibited is his underlying malignant narcissism. And that's the horrific danger of the whole situation." [Rawstory]
" Trump is becoming..." A psychological evaluation without ever meeting the person is useless and improper. A psychological evaluation of the future of someone you never met is worse.
DeleteDid you read the part about his underlying malignant narcissism? That’s a fundamental aspect of his character. Also, the doctor says Trump is becoming MORE disinhibited, meaning he already is disinhibited. And to top it off, Somerby would 100% agree with this assessment. Why are you here every day, dic, to contradict Somerby?
DeleteBob – mealy-mouthed pseudo intellectual, or not?
ReplyDelete