Come on, people! Didn’t we learn anything from Aesop and his boy that kept lying about the presence of some wolf? After “crying wolf” only three times, the villagers stopped listening. Only if we were so enlightened today. If memory serves me correctly, when the wolf did in fact show up, many of the flock were killed. And I also remember one version of the fable that included the lying boy getting his “just deserts”, if you will. Moral delivered nicely – liars will not be rewarded. If Aesop were alive today, however, his fable would take on a completely different look. The wolf would morph into a symbol for racism, which makes for the perfect villain, as it is almost impossible to disprove. The onus would fall on the villagers, who would be too busy arguing with each other to agree on anything, or for that matter, take any action. And without a counterweight to the racism claims from the boy, he would grow into a man, landing a job as a politician, an activist, or even a cable TV pundit. As members of the village, we all must band together and learn from the original fable? For as long as we let these claims go unchecked, without holding the “boys” to account, we are harming the very flock we are trying to protect. Time to wake up and give the “good ole boys” their just deserts.

Over and over and over, arrested rioters say what spurred them: Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/09/over-over-over-arrested-rioters-say-what-spurred-them-trump/ This article represents the type of journalism that is rampant in our society today. I call this technique "The Guilt By Association", with a hint of "Sell the Headline". The article is strewn with critical thinking fallacies, starting with the Appeal to Emotion in the opening paragraph. • The riotous mob was largely made up of supporters of President Donald Trump, who’d called on his base to come to Washington on Jan. 6 for a “wild” protest of election results he’d spent months trying to discredit. That morning, he encouraged those who had made the trip to fight for their country and to march to the Capitol. They did. The writer then slips into the fallacy of Causation/Causality, citing innocuous, irrelevant quotes from rioters who were arrested: • “Trump asked all the patriots to show up, so I did.” • “he came as a part of a group effort, with other ‘patriots’ from Arizona, at the request of the President that all ‘patriots’ come to D.C. on January 6, 2021.” • “the president asked for his supporters to be there to attend, and I felt like it was important, because of how much I love this country, to actually be there.” • “Trump wants all able bodied Patriots to come.” Next, comes the Red Herring, using 2 "alleged" social media posts. • “IM THERE IF TRUMP TELLS US TO STORM THE F---- CAPITAL IMA DO THAT THEN.” • “President Trump is calling us to FIGHT!” And just for good measure, adds the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy to seal the deal, with two unnamed sources. However, the kicker comes in the last paragraph, when the writer actually comes clean, writing "This doesn’t prove the prosecutors’ case in the impeachment trial." I implore everyone to read past the headline and use critical thinking skills. Please add your comments about this article.

A Decade Into the Fracking Boom, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Haven’t Gained Much, a Study Says https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11022021/fracking-boom-natural-gas-report/ In an effort to ferret out Fake News, I tend to gravitate toward "news" articles that on the surface seem a little fishy. And with the algorithms populating my daily feed, the articles tend to have an energy focus to them. Most click bait consists solely of a provocative headline, but for me, I look at the source of the article as well. I hit the mother lode this morning - a study published by "Inside Climate News" stating that the fracking boom has failed to deliver on its promise. In short, the article uses a myriad of statistics analyzing employment and wage growth over the last decade in the top fracking counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. And guess what? The article states the fracking boom was a big bust. The selection of the data set in this article may seem like the Texas Sharpshooter or Cherry Picking fallacy, but in fact, the very nature of the argument coupled with the nature of the oil business negates that fallacy. The author sets forth a binary argument on the fracking industry - using counties with a high GDP due to fracking, an increase in employment and wage growth equates to success, and a decrease in employment and wage growth equates to failure. On its face, this seems like a very straightforward approach. But not so soon - the main fallacy in their study is the Lying with Statistics fallacy. The author failed to correlate the county of residence for the employees of the fracking counties. The very nature of the oil business is such that the majority of the activity is in rural counties with very low populations. The employees reside in the neighboring counties, which have far more infrastructure, e.g. restaurants, entertainment, medical, etc. Now, this does not mean that the assertion in the article is incorrect - it merely means that the author wasted a great deal of time proving absolutely nothing.