Golden Hammer Fallacy – FT#171

01 Apr Golden Hammer Fallacy – FT#171

Show Notes

The Golden Hammer Fallacy occurs when someone assumes it is sensible to rely on a single tool or method to solve every problem.

Trump

We started out by discussing Trump’s obsession with tariffs:

Then we looked at Dr. Oz’s obsession with ignoring medical science:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about all the problems Brexit was supposed to solve:

He followed that up by talking about all the problems rejoining the EU might solve:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Blackadder:

Then we discussed this clip from 30 Rock:

And we finished up with this clip from The IT Crowd:

Fake News

Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:

1. We’re going to have tremendous… tremendous goodies in the bag for women too. The women, between the fertilization and all of the other things that we’re talking about, it’s going to be – it’s going to be great. We’re joined today… fertilization. I’m still very proud of it. I don’t care. I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s OK. That’s not bad. That’s not bad. I’ve been called – I’ve been called much worse. Actually, I like it, right? I like it.
2. I’m like the father of IVF. When I heard about it – and they had a bad ruling in Alabama. A judge ruled that all clinics have to be immediately closed. And I was called by Katie Britt, great senator from Alabama, and she said, “You have no idea. So many women, they’re going crazy.” And I said, “Explain it. Just explain it.” And after about five minutes, I said, “Well, we can do that. That’s great. That’s helping us to have beautiful, healthy babies. That’s OK.” And I actually said – I wrote something out, and it was quite good, I must say, and it was very – it was totally supportive. And Alabama Legislature, the following day, passed exactly what I wrote.
3. But Kamala is crazy and a liar. Hillary lied, but Kamala is something else. She said I want to ban IVF, that I’m not for IVF, which is… the lying. I’m more for IVF than anyone. It’s fertilization. We’ve taken it away from Democrats, if anything. I came out in favor as soon as I learned about it, which… I understood it very quickly, and on behalf of the whole Republican party, I said we want fertilization. We want – what we want, actually, is for the insurance companies to pay for the whole thing, and I think we can do that. I really think we can make that happen.

Mark got it wrong this week, and is on 51%!

Texting Attack Plans to Journalists is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the DOD accidentally including a journalist on their Signal chat about bombing Yemen

The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about

• I’m really not sure what drives Trump’s apparent belief that vaccines cause autism. If I had to guess, it’s a combination of his extreme gullibility, his total disinterest in whether things are true, and the political capital he gains by appealing to conspiracy theorists. Former brain worm host and current head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, clearly feels the same way despite lying repeatedly about it in his confirmation hearings, but his belief is a more educated one. He’s read the studies, and has made a conscious decision to only accept the findings of the poorly run, discredited, and sometimes retracted ones that support his preconceived belief. If he’s aware of the extensive, international, sometimes decades long studies that show there’s no link, he’s determined to ignore them and pretend the jury is still out. At Trump’s direction, RFK has been tasked with studying the non-existent link, which has the antivax crowd all excited. They ask the rest of us – you know, the ones who believe in science – why we have a problem with that. If there’s no link, we should be happy to have it confirmed by this study.  If it hadn’t already been confirmed multiple times by multiple studies, none of which convinced the RFKs of the world, maybe they’d have a point. But even then, the most important thing would be to make sure this study is as reliable as possible. A large sample size, transparent methodology agreed and published in advance, appropriate blinding and controls, and experienced qualified researchers free of any conflicts of interest. It’s early days of course, so we don’t know about all that other stuff, but the work has apparently been assigned to a researcher, David Geier. Geier’s worked in this field before with his father Mark, who was a doctor. I say “was” not because he’s dead, but because he had his medical license suspended for endangering kids with autism by promoting unproven and potentially harmful therapies that combined puberty blockers with chelation therapy based on the theory that mercury in vaccines caused autism. On the plus side, David never had his medical license suspended, but that’s largely because he’s not a doctor – a fact not lost on the Maryland State Medical Board when they disciplined him for practicing medicine without a license. David and his Dad have published multiple studies together claiming to show a link between thimerosol and autism despite the fact thimerosol hasn’t been used in childhood vaccines in the US since 2001, and at least a couple of their studies have been retracted – the most ironic one being a study purporting to show conflicts on interests in the wide range of papers that dismiss the vaccine/autism link, which was withdrawn for undisclosed conflicts of interest. One of those might be the fact that David and Mark own shares in a company that develops treatments for ‘mercury intoxication’. As Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation noted, “It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism even though they don’t.”
• I always look forward  to the White House Easter Egg roll – it’s a throwback to simpler more wholesome times – the kind of thing that would appeal to the old-timey values of the GOP surely – The Egg Roll, which began during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration in 1878, has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion – a show of good faith on the part of the company to demonstrate their support for tradition and healthy eating and so what if there’s a little hint of “don’t forget to buy your eggs from us they’re great” going on. Well ever since it became a used car lot for EVs Trump’s White House is determined to get in on the Egg rolling action; “This is an enterprise. This is not your grandmother’s Easter Egg Roll where people lined up outside the gate and go and roll an egg and get a little gift bag and walk out,” said a former official involved in planning the event. Oh no there’s  a pitch document laying out sponsorship opportunities which includes logos for both the White House and Harbinger, which previously produced the event during President Donald Trump’s first term. Among the offerings for prospective sponsors: “Naming rights for key areas or elements,” “Sponsor logos featured on event signage,” “Custom-branded baskets, snacks/beverages, or souvenirs,” “Mentions in official event communications and social media posts,” “Acknowledgment in printed or digital event programs,” and “Inclusion in press releases and media interviews.” Sponsors can also gain access to an “invite-only brunch hosted inside the White House by FLOTUS,” tickets to the event, and a private White House tour. Richard Painter – who ran George W Bush’s Counsel office told CNN “That would have been vetoed in about 30 seconds in my day,” he said. “We’re not running this like a football stadium where you get all logos all over the place for kicking in money.”  Donald Sherman, the chief counsel and executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) added “I understand that there are corporate sponsors for the Easter Egg Roll, What I have not seen before is sort of the outright solicitation and the use of the imprimatur of the White House to give corporate sponsorship.” Yeah well look at what yellow-haired orange-faced Easter Bunny is in charge of the henhouse!!  And what did we get aerated about in England? Cadbury’s dropping the word Easter from the Cadbury Egg Hunt!
• While the vast majority of Trump’s picks for department heads and cabinet posts have been waved through by an entirely spine-free Republican Senate majority, last week he withdrew his nomination of Elise Stefanik for UN Ambassador.  She’d already been through a confirmation hearing and seemed likely to get bipartisan support, but her appointment would leave her House seat in New York’s 21st Congressional District open until a special election later in the year. The razor thin GOP majority in the House was cited as the reason for pulling the nomination, with the fact that Stefanik is essentially prepared to vote however Trump tells her being a distinct advantage. The reality is that at 218-213 they could cope for a few months without her, but Trump and Musk’s actions so far have been so incredibly unpopular they may actually be concerned about who would win that special election if it were to take place. Which seems crazy, since she won by 24% in November. Maybe it’s not that crazy, though, because there’s a special election coming up within 24 hours of this episode coming out in Florida’s 6th district. The seat used to belong to currently embarrassed National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who won the 2024 election by 33 points, and while recent polling shows the Republican candidate is still likely to win, the votes are within the polls margin of error. So, if you live in Florida 6th, get out there and vote for Democrat Josh Weil, because flipping that seat would (and should) scare the fuck out of Republicans who think their seats are safe.
• In a continuing effort to show just how bad a service Denmark is providing to nationals of Greenland U.S. officials went door to door in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk looking for residents who wanted to greet the second lady Usha Vance. She’s gotta be a better draw than EyeMakeup Model Vance himself surely? Indeed her office had announced earlier she would attend the national dogsled race and visit historical sites over several days. Apparently she had planned to meet with locals in Nuuk as well. Except no-one was interested – perhaps they’d come on National Hairwashing day – cos everyone seemed utterly unavailable even threatening them with Vance himself hosting a Max Factor party in each of their living rooms didn’t work. Suddenly the itinerary was scaled back drastically. The Vances then jointly visited the U.S. Space Force base at Pituffik, which is more than 900 miles away from the capital – perhaps everyone from Nuuk had gone there? Or Vance wanted to meet Steve Carrol and John Malkovich? Either way that’s just gonna make Trump and the Veep even more angry – come all this way to Greenland and can find no-one that’s not glad to be there? – except the poor US schmucks forced into exile at Space Force! As Caesar once said about Britain “Remind me why we’re annexing this godforsaken place again?”
• If Trump has mixed up the definition of “ally” and “enemy”, it sure would explain how he’s treating all the countries who used to have a good relationship with the US. Somewhat put out by his constant attacks, many people who had previously considered travelling to the US on vacation are making other plans. I wasn’t intending to visit during the Trump administration, but based on their current immigration procedures, if I was, I don’t think I’d even be allowed in. According to Le Monde, a French researcher travelling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the US “because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy”. I must admit, if pressed, that I have occasionally expressed my own personal opinions about Trump, and my phone is just one of the places you can find them, so I think I’ll be staying home for now. Fortunately, the French researcher was simply sent back to France, which makes me suspect he might be white. If he was, let’s say, off-white, then the destination might have been a notoriously violent El Salvadoran prison, especially if he had any tattoos. Doesn’t matter what the tattoo is – could be a soccer logo, could be representing autism awareness, if you’re brown and inked then Trump’s DHS is pretty sure you’re in a gang, and therefore are not entitled to any due process whatsoever. Of course, even being a fully legal permanent US resident AND being white might not save you. 34 year old Boston resident Fabian Schmidt travelled to Germany for a week to visit family and on returning home to the US found that the Green Card he’d held since 2008 had been flagged due to a dismissed marijuana charge in 2015. So naturally ICE detained him and subjected him to “violent interrogation” which ended up sending him to hospital. Yeah, I think I’ll wait another few years before heading to a GAM live show stateside.
• Nothing says Top Secret in a spy movie or a political drama more than when the hero is not able to say anything to anyone – not their family not even their spouses. Indeed some of the best dramatic tension comes from that very deliberate lack of communication in a relationship where communication is a cherished indicator of the fidelity of each party. The depths of trust, anguish and doubt are played out for the delight of the viewer and to the agony of the characters especially in what appear to be true-to-life episodes featuring military conflict and defence of the realm and so on. Yeah fuck all that if your former Fox-News-presenter-turned-defence-secretary Pete Hegseth. Not content with chatting war shit on a Signal group, why not just bring your wife along to work, especially if she’s former Fox & Friends producer Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, bring her to at least two meetings with foreign military counterparts during which sensitive information was discussed as reported by the Wall Street Journal – at NATO headquarters in Brussels no less (where allied defense officials discussed the war in Ukraine) and at the Pentagon (with the U.K.’s two top defense officials). Okay we get that Pete’s probably a bit nervous having never been involved in any sort of governmental role whatsoever in his life before and this may explain why Hegseth’s little brother has been tagging along, too, but in a more official capacity. Former podcast producer Phil Hegseth has joined the Pentagon as “senior adviser to the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and liaison officer to the Defense Department,” – hey so there’s hope for us to make a similarly mighty leap someday too I guess!
  And no, it’s not normal for a defense secretary’s brother to get senior-level Pentagon gigs. It’s also against federal law for a government official to hire, promote, or recommend their relatives for a job underneath them, though it’s possible the Hegseth brothers could avoid breaking that law if Phil is only considered a DHS employee. Pete Hegseth incidentally is currently overseeing an effort to fire as many as 76,000 members of the Pentagon’s civilian workforce (who are all other people’s family members). Pictures have also emerged of an Islamophobic tattoo Hegseth got on his arm, though it seems highly unlikely that will matter to anyone in this White House. And Pentagon officials also told CNN this week that Hegseth, as defense secretary, is indeed coming across as a superficial former-television personality who is out of his depth: “He’s a TV personality,” one of the sources said. “[A general officer] makes a recommendation, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’ [Former defense secretary] Lloyd Austin would never be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’ He’d be like, ‘We’ll take it under consideration.’”
• Minnesota State Senator Justin Eichorn is really trying to get Trump’s attention, and he’s been doing his homework on how to get into Trump’s good books in the hope, presumably, of a coveted job in the administration or a lucrative ambassadorship. Are ambassadorships lucrative? I’m not sure. I’ve always assumed they’re mostly paid in Ferrero Rocher. Anyway, it all came to a head one Monday last month for Justin, who realized the most important thing is comically obsequious flattery that only someone with an ego the size of a planet could be taken in by. The kind of thing that any normal person would assume you were taking the piss. So Justin introduced a bill into his State’s legislature to propose including Trump Derangement Syndrome as a form of mental illness. The bill defined TDS as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump,” which is already weird. I don’t know why he pluralized Presidency. Anyway, it continued “Symptoms may include Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump’s behavior.” Job done, you might think, but you’re forgetting that Trump comes up against that level of sycophantic toadying on a daily basis and barely even notices it any more. Have you seen the kind of stuff Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnock says about him? No, Justin needed something else to really stand out, so he did his research and figured out exactly the kind of people Trump loves to hang around with. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Jeffrey Epstein. So the very same day his TDS bill was filed, Justin went and got himself arrested for soliciting a minor for sex. The good news is that there was no actual 17 year old prostitute involved in the story, and Justin had in fact been exchanging messages with an undercover police officer. If all goes to plan Trump will pardon him and probably put him in charge of Children’s Services or something. You know, I feel like Justin and people like him are evil fucks who should go to prison, but maybe that’s just my Trump Derangement Syndrome talking. Rubbish is piling up in the streets of Birmingham as council workers strike over pay – pay the city council says it doesn’t have, the government is reportedly “monitoring the situation closely” – I wonder if they are monitoring the last time this happened when Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan oversaw the so-called winter of discontent in 1978-79 when rubbish piled around up around Eros in Piccadilly Circus and led to the election of Margaret Thatcher and 16 years of Tory rule. To offset that and remind everyone that “it’s fine you don’t need to vote the Tories back in you’ve got us” Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves is cutting welfare support for the disabled and long-term sick by £5bn in order to apparently continue to fill the £22bn blackhole left by the Tories and possibly the £5bn black hole left by upping the defence budget! At some stage Labour you are a) going to have to admit that it;s your economy now and no longer the other lot’s, and ii) tax the frickin rich and not pensions or savings or all of the other things we had to hold onto whilst suffering under 14 years of cut backs from the previous lot of heartless bastards. The problem seems to lie with the optics – I am sure there are lists of great things Labour are doing – I know cos i get sent them – but if they have an eye on the next election which would explain the squandering of a massive majority by doing timid babystep things instead of huge Nye-Bevan-invent-the-NHS size things, they don’t appear to be cutting through – the optics are not being handled well. Indeed Matthew Doyle – who worked for Tony Blair, and was brought in as Sir Keir’s communications director four years ago has resigned and The Labour Growth Group think tank has told MPS they need to be on Youtube and TikTok. Chris Curtis, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes and a co-chair of the LGG, said: “The centre left of politics has up to now failed to effectively establish a foothold in the online media ecosystem and we know we’ve got to change that. Right now we’re simply ceding the ground while algorithms mainline misogynistic and far-right content.” And we thought the only rubbish was piling up on the streets of Birmingham!

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