Quote of the Day, 2010-02-08 by tgirsch

Conservative/Libertarianish blogger Say Uncle:

I’m lukewarm on the tea party folks. After all, they could have been protesting Bush’s big government too.

Side note (and, actually, the bulk of the post): The post he links to complains that the tea party movement is “dead” because Sarah Palin “hijacked” it. Bullshit. The tea partiers love them some Sarah Palin, and always have, as far as I can tell. You can’t hijack the movement that holds you up as one of its poster children (something I’ve never understood, by the way — you’d think they’d be Ron Paul types). Kleinheider also whitewashes the history of the movement a bit. Yes, there was genuine rage out there (though it was far less directed, I think, than most people seem to think it was), but the movement is a much smaller flash in the pan without the serious hype that Faux News gave it, and constant promotion by the very Armey/Palin types he complains about. Sure, there were some of Kleinheider’s preferred proto-libertarian types (aka, nuts) among the tea partying masses. But for the most part, they were dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, most of whom probably voted for Bush twice, and probably would have voted for him a third time given the opportunity.

Most of the libertarian folks I know (admittedly, there aren’t many) oppose the wars we’re involved in, albeit for different reasons than liberals do, yet there was no “end both wars” sentiment among the tea partiers. There really wasn’t much of a coherent sentiment running through the tea parties and all, other than being mad as hell in general. If they were mad about anything in particular, it was more about health care than bailouts, and they were mostly mad about health care proposals that nobody had actually made.

So, sorry, A.C., I just don’t see the same things in the tea party movement that you did. Seems to me that you’re looking at it through some seriously rose-colored glasses.

Bonus Quote: The Rude Pundit:

[Sarah Palin] makes George W. Bush seem like William F. Buckley.

(Noted for the record: I know he’s channeling Rahm Emannuel, but I still don’t like the title of that post.)

Super Bowl MVP? by tgirsch

For my money, it wasn’t Brees, although he did play very well, especially in the second half. It seems the QB always gets it when there is no obvious standout. But to me, there WAS another obvious standout: Garrett Hartley.

Think about it. Early in the game, when the Colts looked like they were going to run away with it, Saints drives kept stalling. And when they stalled, they kept calling on Hartley, a virtual rookie, asking him to make non-gimme kicks on the highest-pressure stage in all of football. And make them he did, connecting from 46, 44, and 47 yards. Miss any of those kicks, and the Colts, who were already moving the ball more or less at will on the Saints, would have started a drive with outstanding field position. Instead, he pulled the Saints to within 10-6, and then after the game got tight in the second half, he made his longest kick of the night to pull the Saints to within a point.

I know it sticks in the craw of some to award the MVP to a kicker, but without Hartley, the Saints get clobbered. Hartley gets my MVP vote.

UPDATE, cheap shot flame-bait edition: Frequent commenter Digglahhh probably thinks Peyton Manning was Super Bowl MVP.

The Sacrifices of Service Under DADT by KTK

Here is an article by a retired Navy officer who found she couldn’t live under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because, no matter how many sacrifices she was willing to make for the nation, the Navy wasn’t willing to support her the way it supported its other members without question.

Retired Navy Capt. Joan E. Darrah served 29½ years as a naval intelligence officer and was chief of staff and deputy commander at the Office of Naval Intelligence. She has received several awards: three Legion of Merits, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Navy Commendation Medals and the Navy Achievement Medal. Darrah lives with her partner of 19 years, Lynne Kennedy, in Alexandria, Virginia.

(CNN) — When I first joined the Navy, I had no idea that I was gay. I was well into my career when I realized this fact, but I was doing well as evidenced by the awards and promotions I was receiving.

In addition, I really enjoyed what I was doing and felt I was making a difference. So I opted to continue to serve, even though I knew that I would have to hide my true identity.

For most of my career in the Navy, I lived two lives and went to work each day wondering if that would be my last. Whenever the admiral would call me to his office, 99.9 percent of me was certain that it was to discuss an operational issue. But there was always that fear in the back of my mind that somehow I had been “outed,” and he was calling me to his office to tell me that I was fired. So many simple things that straight people take for granted could have ended my career, even a comment such as “My partner and I went to the movies last night.” . . .

I had pretended to be straight and played the games most gays in the military are all too familiar with — not daring to have a picture of Lynne on my desk, being reluctant to go out to dinner with her . . .

At 8:30 a.m. on September 11, I went to a meeting in the Pentagon. At 9:30 a.m. I left that meeting. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight No. 77 slammed into the Pentagon and destroyed the exact space I had left less than eight minutes earlier, killing seven of my colleagues.

In the days and weeks that followed, I went to several funerals and memorial services for shipmates who had been killed. Most of my co-workers attended these services with their spouses whose support was critical at this difficult time, yet I was forced to go alone.

As the numbness began to wear off, it hit me how incredibly alone Lynne would have been had I been killed. The military is known for how it pulls together and helps people; we talk of the “military family,” which is a way of saying we always look after each other, especially in times of need. But none of that support would have been available for Lynne, because under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” she couldn’t exist.

In fact, Lynne would have been one of the last people to know had I been killed, because nowhere in my paperwork or emergency contact information had I dared to list her name.

This realization caused us to stop and reassess exactly what was most important in our lives. During that process, we realized that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was causing us to make a much bigger sacrifice than either of us had ever admitted. Eight months later, in June 2002, I retired after more than 29 years in the U.S. Navy, an organization I will always love and respect.

The same people who go into conniptions about “supporting our troops” – and the troops themselves – will actively destroy the lives of troops who are gay. The military has not only eviscerated its own operational capacity, but they have put tens of thousands of their own members in an unsustainable bind that makes it impossible for them to do their jobs with any sense of comfort or security.  (Never mind the 68 Arabic and Farsi interpreters discharged while the Iraq war was at its highest peak or the more than 13,000 discharged under DADT altogether, never mind the hundreds of thousands living in fear and secrecy over the years – they also drove away the Chief of Staff of Naval Intelligence immediately after 9/11. Think that matters?)

Imagine going to your job every single day for 30 years knowing that you could be court-martialed simply for having a relationship. Imagine hiding everything about your life – even being afraid to meet your own partner in public – because your co-workers would literally put you on trial if they found out the simplest thing about it. Imagine denying and lying about your loved ones, watching everything you say every day to avoid making the mistake of letting it slip that they exist, wondering every time you go into your boss’s office, every day of your career, whether you will be fired and then tried by a military court, because you have a lover or a family.

And then imagine being expected to work like that – being expected to take on the highest and most sensitive responsibilities in the nation, even risk your life, under those conditions, for and with the people who stand ready to do that to you at any moment. And knowing that if anything happened to you, not only would your military “family” refuse to pay the slightest respect to your own family and loved ones, while falling over themselves to provide support, pay benefits, conduct ceremonies, and every other thing for the families of your comrades, but they would actively shut your family off from the caring process – deny all claims to benefit, refuse to let them receive your remains or make any decisions about your funeral, in fact not even bother to tell them you had died. Oh, and the little folded flag? They can buy their own. Gay families don’t get American flags, though why they would want one I can’t imagine.

That’s a Hint by Kevin

Wow:

Jenny Sanford, the estranged wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, told Barbara Walters in an ABC interview that her husband insisted they take the fidelity clause out of their marriage vows.

Those Who Would Give Up Their Liberty For Some Temporary Security Deserve Richard Cohen by Kevin

We are ruled by cowards and fools:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

Osama Bin Laden has already beaten Richard Cohen.  Cohen is so scared, so terrified that he is perfectly willing to throw away everything that keeps us safe in order to be protected from his terrors.  Maybe, just maybe, if the country was really fundamentally threatened by Bin Laden this might be justifiable.  Might.  But Bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  He cannot conquer it.  He cannot cripple it.  He cannot bankrupt it, directly.  He can kill Americans, in sometimes spectacular fashion, but he cannot threaten the well-being of the country as a whole.  And yet Cohen wants to legalize torture:

Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded,

Never mind that torture just doesn’t work. (And it doesn’t.  History has proven that torture is effective pretty only for getting people to tell you what you want to hear. )  It is a moral abomination, a strike against the best of our morals and a direct assault on the dignity of the individual.  It directly contravenes the Fifth Amendment and punishes a person who has not been convicted of the crime in question.  It either breaks the practitioners or turns them into monsters and it absolutely destroys the people it is practiced upon.  It is among the lowest forms of human behavior, the mark of the savage.  And Cohen wants to embrace in the face of what is, in historical context, a nothing of a threat?  What the hell would this coward have done in the face of a Hitler or Stalin? 

My wife and I talk about current events all the time, as probably surprises no one.  We have young children, so we sometimes uses euphemisms and talk around issues.  Recently the eight year old asked for details for something we were talking about, something that involved kidnapping in Haiti.  When we tried to talk around what we thought were the scary details, he said “No.  Tell me the whole truth.” 

Richard Cohen doesn’t have the strength of character of my eight year old.  He doesn’t want to know the whole, scary truth.  He wants the President to lie to him, to tell him that world isn’t a scary place, that 24 isn’t just a show, that torture is perfect and that nothing will ever, ever hurt him ever again.  The real world isn’t like that.  It is telling that my eight year old can face up to that and Richard Cohen cannot.

A Good Fight to Lose by Kevin

The GOP doesn’t want the Volker rule or the bank tax to pass:

A proposal by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to limit bank’s proprietary trading will be either be dropped or significantly modified in the Senate, lawmakers and staffers told dealReporter. Senate Banking Committee ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) said he opposes the so-called Volcker rule and the Obama administration’s call to levy a USD 90bn tax on banks. . . . Speaking to this news service on Thursday, Shelby said if Democrats push forward with the proposals they risk unravelling much of the bipartisan support already reached regarding the passage of financial regulatory reform in the Senate. Shelby said that the Obama administration risks losing Republican support for the bill if they begin to “politicise” the issue.

Obama should veto any bill that crosses his desk that does not have these components.  He – and the rest of the Dems – should spend the rest of the year running on the fact that the GOP doesn’t want to make banks pay for the money we used to save their hides and doesn’t want to take the most effective steps necessary to make sure the bans cannot ever ruin our economy in such a fashion again.  This is a case where the GOP is completely out of touch and where losing wont have immediate dire impacts.

It is not very likely that bank behavior will come to a breaking point anytime soon.  It takes a while for the conditions for complete meltdown to mature, so losing the regulation fight now will have no immediate impacts unlike health care, for example.  In return for losing, Obama and the Dems can highlight how out of touch the GOP really is.  It is losing well – losing now to set the terrain for a future victory.

Because the GOP really does seem to not understand the moment.  People are not upset because they want something different than the Dems.  82% of the Obama voters who voted for Scott Brown wanted a public option, for example.  The people are pissed because the Dems haven’t delivered on the change they promised and assume – because they don’t know how the filibuster is being used – that the Dems and their huge majority haven’t delivered because they don’t want to deliver. 

But the GOP appears to think that the public wants social security privatization and severe Medicare restrictions.  And, for some reason, it thinks that the status quo with respect to the banks is what people really want.  The Democrats and Obama have an opportunity here to make the 2010 elections about, in part, the fact the GOP really, really, really wants a return to the Gilded Age.  They are, at their hearts, the party of the aristocrats.  Obama should gleefully use a legislative defeat on the bank regulations to point out their top hat and monocles.

Amazon vs. Macmillan by Kevin

Amazon has apparently yanked all Macmillan books over a dispute about ebook pricing:

Motoko Rich, my colleague, spoke with a person who had a direct conversation with a person at Macmillan familiar with the conversations with Amazon. Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release. Amazon’s removal of Macmillan titles on Friday appears to be a direct reaction to that.

This move has, obviously, brought out a lot of chatter on the various lit and tech blogs.  Corey Doctorow and John Scalzi lay out the anti-Macmillan and pro-Macmillan positions respectively.  No one is really being pro-Amazon because, after all, who wants to side with a giant corporation that is taking your books away?

Well, I think I do.

First, keep in mind that this is not about authors or readers.  It is about two giant corporations fighting over who is going to determine prices and thus get the lion’s share of the profit in the ebook business.  Macmillan, as a corporation, couldn’t give two shits about its authors.  They don’t negotiate so tightly with agents over contract terms or drop underperforming artists out of the goodness of their collective hearts.  They intend to get every single penny out of the author’s work come hell or high water, and that means taking as much of that money out of the author’s pockets as they can without driving that author away. Similarly, Amazon isn’t dong this out of the goodness of their heart: they want to dominate the ebook business.  They are a corporation – they are genetically wired to fsck over consumers.

Macmillan is doing this because they want to sell ebooks for 30, the current list prices of a new hardback, at least.  Amazon is doing this because they want to dominate the ebook market and don’t care if they force publishers to take less money, as they figure they can either make it up in volume or use their market position to eventually raise consumer prices and/or force the publishers to lower their wholesale prices.  So why am I on Amazon’s side?  Because I don’t think that Amazon can dominate the market or that such domination will inevitably lead to the death of the publishing industry.

The largest seller of digital music in the country is iTunes.  It accounts for almost one quarter of all music, downloadable or not, sold in this country.  It set the price and conditions for the sale of downloadable songs years ago and even with its new variable pricing, individual songs are still generally sold for 99 cents (as a completely unrelated side note: when did the cent sign disappear from keyboards?).  And that last bit is key: despite the overwhelming dominance of iTunes, individual song prices have not cratered.  They haven’t because the low cost of entry into a digital distribution has allowed competitors, like Amazon itself ironically, to compete on its own turf.  Other competitors, like Microsoft and Rhapsody, have created new methods of selling music – subscription services – that did not and could not exist before the advent of broadband, mp3s and mp3 players.  I see no reason to believe that pattern will not repeat itself.

In fact, Apple itself is now moving into the ebook market with its new iPad and iBookstore products. And that is why I am largely on Amazon’s side in this dispute.  All indications are that, when the iPad finally debuts in March, it will contain books that sell for 12 to 15 dollars as a standard price.  Macmillan’s negotiating demand, in fact, is contingent on Apple being in the market and charging those prices.  And that is why I don’t want Macmillan to win this fight.  I don’t want publishers to get away with charging the exact same price – or more, for the convenience – for ebooks as for new hardcovers.  As a consumer, I think that is bad.  As a lover of books, I think that is bad for reading.

I want to see ebooks succeed.  They offer a number of advantages to paper books for serious readers  — convenience, storage advantages, updatable content, etc. They also, under the right conditions, offer a means for expanding book readership.  Books, today, are too expensive to be a true mass medium.  Why should I buy a book that costs as much or more as a blue ray movie or a years subscription to a magazine or twice as much as an all you can watch Netflix subscription?  I do it because I love to read, but the casual media consumer is probably put off, at least a bit, by the price of entry.  When iPads or something like them are as ubiquitous as smart phones, it will be easy for non-readers to gain entry to the book world through the same storefront they already use to get their movies, tv and songs.  But if moves are ten bucks and TV shows are two bucks and songs are one buck, how many of those people are going to pay fifteen to twenty for a book?

So that is why I am generally on Amazon’s side here.  Macmillan is angling for a way to price ebooks out of being a mass medium.  I don’t think that si good for me or for the publishing industry, so I hope Amazon wins this round.  Now, Amazon too would like to gouge someone – readers, publishers or both – and if I ever become convinced that they could end up in a position to do so, my position will very likely change.  But I don’t think they will be so, for now, and with some regret as this will hurt some of my favorite authors, I am pulling for Amazon to reign in Macmillan.

Brett Favre’s Offseason Daily Planner by tgirsch

Read it here. Hilarious.

The Way Forward for Democrats by tgirsch

Steve Benen is dead-on correct. Go read the whole thing.

H/T: Gary Farber

Don’t Abandon Ship by KTK

The inestimable Nate Silver at “538″ captures perfectly exactly what I’ve been feeling, down to the very last word:

Imagine for a moment that you’re a liberal. Oh, I know, that won’t be a stretch for some of you. Over the years, you’ve developed a pretty thick skin, since while you’ve won an election now and then, you haven’t had too many policy victories since … well, since forever.

But in the back of your mind, there’s always been hope. You have a deep sense of conviction — deeper, you think to yourself, than conservatives — that your positions are true and right and that sooner or later (more likely later) the rest of the country will wake up to this. You pride yourself on being patient, pragmatic, sensible. But you can’t be a progressive, can you, without believing in some sort of progress?

So then Barack Obama gets elected, whose very trademark is Hope, and whose very election signifies progress. He promises a lot of things, and you look over the political horizon and see large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, a logjam of popular, progressive initiatives, and a neutered and discredited opposition party. And you think to yourself: “Well, knock on wood, but this looks pretty fucking good!”.

And for a little while, things are pretty fucking good. Al Franken — Al Franken! — wins in Minnesota! Arlen Specter switches parties! Man, Republicans are so screwed! The stimulus wasn’t perfect (you’re vaguely worried about a couple of things that Krugman said) but you think to yourself: We’re going to be in the majority for a LONG time. There’s no need to blow our wad all at once.

Over the summer, the unemployment rate continues to go up, and the President’s approval rating continues to go down. But all of this seems like a natural enough part of the political process — the same economic cycles that got your candidate elected were going to cause Obama a few problems, weren’t they? The cute wittle tea parties have evolved into the town hall meetings — those are a little scary, actually. But the Democrats bounce back as resolved as ever to pass a health care bill, and the President makes a strong speech. And there’s always Sarah Palin to make fun of.

In the fall, you begin to see some of your friends on the left question the President. You remind yourself that you’re the Adult in the room, and that some people are never going to be happy — don’t they remember Ralph Nader? Truth be told, you have a few questions yourself, especially about the health care bill. But slowly and surely, it’s working its way through Congress.

The Democrats lose a couple of elections in New Jersey and Virginia — and man, what the hell did Maine just do on gay marriage? Copenhagen goes to shit. But then, on Christmas Eve, Ben Nelson votes for the health care bill! It’s not quite the bill you’d like, but it’s an awfully nice holiday gift — the biggest progressive achievement in years.

After the New Year, there are a few more signs of trouble. A bunch of Democrats retire. Polls — not just Rasmussen — show Obama’s approval below 50 percent. Then one shows that things are closer than expected in Massachusetts, where they’re having an election to replace Ted Kennedy. A Republican can’t possibly win the Kennedy seat, can he?

Yes. He. Can.

Oh, shit.

Which brings us to where we are today.

He goes on to point out that, whatever happens, nothing will get better if the Democratic base abandons the party. It’s true that the party is doing little to deserve loyalty, but it’s also true that it can only get worse if they go into the next election without bothering to pass any of the bills that are currently still on the table, and with no supporters at the polls. And it’s also true that, however that election turns out, Democrats will still have a lot of power, and the political cycle will give them both more and less of it as time goes by – and they will need just as much incentive and just as much prodding to do what they can when the time comes. Also, there are a lot of poker metaphors, some good stuff about not losing your head just because you get a run of bad breaks, and the valid point that the Dems have actually done pretty well so far, even with limitations, and could do better if they manage to keep it together.

Go read the whole thing. It will help. Some.

NHL And Facebook … by Kevin

apparently not a match made in heaven. This is from Commissioner Bettman’s radio call in show’s page

And it was pretty representative …

What Does a Brown Victory Mean? by tgirsch

It seems pretty clear that Scott Brown is going to win the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts. But what, exactly, does this mean? Does it mean that Massachusetts voters prefer the GOP platform to the Democratic platform? Almost certainly not.

In my estimation, the key to understanding this phenomenon, and by extension, this race, is recognizing the fact that voters, in the aggregate, are irrational. If you polled them on actual issues, Massachusetts voters are likely to prefer most of Coakley’s positions to Brown’s, and by wide margins (unless you think that state’s population has suddenly become anti-choice, anti-reform, and has started favoring big business, which is risible).

Some have argued that Coakley’s problem is that she chose not to run on the issues, but I’m not convinced of that (at least, that’s not entirely it). When you do detailed polling on the issues, the public at large (often even in the red states, but especially in MA) tends to prefer Democratic positions on most issues, from the environment to financial regulation to even health care. But since at least the time of Reagan, voters haven’t really voted on those issues.

I suspect what’s at play here is standard backlash — punish the party in power, whoever that is, when things aren’t going well — coupled with a bit of unease over too much power in the hands of either party. At the end of the day, it’s no more than that, and no less than that. Just as it was a mistake to conclude that huge Democratic wins in 2006 and 2008 meant that the voting public strongly preferred Democratic policies, it’s a mistake to make a similar conclusion here. The voters in Massachusetts are voting against the Democrat more than they’re voting for the Republican, just as nationwide voters were casting ballots against the GOP in 2006 and 2008. (I can’t find the link, but back in the summer, when the Tea Party movement was at its peak, conservative columnist David Brooks fretted that the GOP would learn the wrong lessons from their inevitably good performance in 2010, and embrace that fringe movement as having been what boosted them, rather than just voter disgust with the status quo.)

The problem for Democrats is that the GOP has always (in my memory, at least) been far, far better at taking advantage of this large-scale voter irrationality. Until the Democrats recognize this, and learn to manipulate it the way the GOP has so masterfully done over the last three decades, they’re going to be relegated to only transitory victories.

UPDATE: Completely on-topic:

Read This by tgirsch

Now. It does a find job of explaining, yet again, how we’re allowing the terrorists to win by reflexively overreacting to even their failed attacks.

Less vs. Fewer, Revisited by tgirsch

About a year ago, I posted an unexpected bit of flame bait in which I praised the correct use of the word “fewer,” where the incorrect word, “less,” is used far more often. LarryE in particular got his dander up, including chiding my linked primer, which he derided as boiling down to: “You use ‘fewer’ for counted things and ‘less’ for non-counted things. Um, except when you don’t.”

Well, the other day, a much simpler explanation occurred to me, and while I’m certain it won’t convince LarryE, it does make the question of which to use easy and accessible. Consider these two simple substitutions:

fewer: not as many
less: not as much

Basically, for any plural noun X, if you wouldn’t say “not as much X” (or even just “much X”), you shouldn’t say “less X,” either. When you’re in that supermarket line, you’re not booted out of the express line for having too much items, now are you? You’re booted out for having too many. Similarly, the Senate isn’t a dysfunctional cesspit because it has too much conservative douchebags in it; it’s because there are too many.

Now I don’t expect anyone not named David Dvorkin (or, if I’m lucky, maybe KTK) will actually agree with me on this, but I feel slightly better now that I have a simpler way to explain the difference.

A Good Start by KTK

From a photo spread in Foreign Policy online, my all-time favorite economic bottom line summation:

Nothing more to say.

Tight Race in MA by tgirsch

As you no doubt know by now, the GOP has a legitimate shot at pulling off an upset special election win, in Massachusetts of all places. If they pull it off, that would mean the GOP now has the 41st vote it needs to filibuster the health care reform bill.

My question is, would this wind up being a good thing for reform? If it simply killed the bill, of course not. But if, instead, the Democrats pushed it through reconciliation, this could result in a more liberal bill than what passed the Senate. And, in fact, it could end up resurrecting the public option. So why I’m certainly not rooting for the GOP guy here (from what I can tell, he’s a rank-and-file GOP schmuck, with zero positive agenda whatsoever, parroting the “cut taxes and spending” mantra that ruined the economy in the aughts), I’m not so sure it would be the end of the world for health reform.

What say you?

Just So’s Y’Know by tgirsch

If I don’t respond to your stupid and obviously wrong-on-the-merits remarks, it’s not because I’m conceding the argument, but because I’ll be out of town and won’t have much computer access until Tuesday. Never fear, you’re still wrong. I’ll be back to pointing that out to you on Tuesday.

P.S. No, Kevin, you don’t need to check in on the cats.

Worldnut Street Journal – Officially a Crap Winger Rag by KTK

The Wall Street Journal’s fast-fading journalistic credentials hit bottom today. Their editorial page – long a winger rag wrapped in a real paper – went off the deep end during the Bush years and is now swimming out to sea. But the news department claimed it was still in the business, much to the surprise of anyone who bothered to read it in recent years.

But the wingers can smell their own, and the Journal has been welcomed with open arms to the smelliest ghetto of far-right publication – a status they apparently requested, and do not seem to mind.

Here is the official press release regarding press credentialing to the Teabag Convention coming up next week:

We . . . do not have the space or resources to support the entirety of the press corp. . . .

[G]iven these practical limitations, we have approved the following press organizations:

Fox News
Breitbart.com
Townhall.com
The Wall Street Journal
World Net Daily

Yes, the Journal was chosen, from among journalists from a claimed 10 countries or more, to take its exclusive place alongside Fox News, Townhall, Breitbart, and WorldNet Daily. That is the journalistic level WSJ aspires to, and has achieved.

Just to illustrate what prestige that carries, note that, today, WND is running copy that includes “Lamb Born With Human Face”, “Birthers: Is Secret Service Spying on You?”, a running series titled “Evolution Watch”, and a vast number of weight-loss, survivalist, get-rich-quick, and religious scams indistinguishable from its “news”. Breitbart is running columns on “The Communist States of America”, “When SEIU is the Devil at Your Doorstep”, and “The Legumes of Disease: Michelle Obama’s Toxic Garden”. Fox and Townhall are, well, what they’ve always been.

Congratulations, Wall Street Journal! You got what you were striving for!

The rest of us are entitled to observe and infer.

Hat Tip: Ben Smith

Argumentum ad Verecundiam by tgirsch

You may have noticed that in on-line debates, people tend to throw out the “argument from authority” fallacy whenever you cite a source that they don’t like as evidence that you are right or they are wrong. More often than not, this objection is bullshit, as I attempted (not terribly successfully) to point out via ridicule here. In subsequent debates, it has become increasingly clear that we need a refresher course on just what does (and, more importantly, what does not) constitute a fallacious appeal to authority.

I addressed this point in comments here, but it was comprehensive enough and important enough that I thought I should recycle it into a front-page post. So here it is (below the fold).

Read the rest of this entry »

Bad Arguments Against Command Economies by Kevin

In an interesting post about a new book on modern capitalism, there is this example of why command economies fail:

My late colleague Evsey Domar, who was, among other things, a student of the Soviet economy, told us how the planning bureau began by setting production quotas for paper factories in tons per year. The result was paper so thick that it could not fit in a Soviet typewriter or anywhere else. So the clever planning bureau changed to setting quotas in terms of square meters per year. The result was paper so thin that even a member of the planning bureau could see right through it. The lesson is that it is so much simpler and more effective to tell paper producers that they have to compete to sell their paper to notebook manufacturers (who are also competing with each other), and live off the proceeds.

The reader is supposed to think to themselves “oh ho!  Those silly commies never could outwit the clever factory managers!”  but I don’t.  What I see in this example is not proof that command economies are inherently impossible.  I just see stupid people running the thing.  They choose easily manipulated standards and thus got manipulated. Better standards would have resulted in usable paper.

Markets are assumed to be better than command economies because market prices provide more accurate information faster than a command reporting system could ever do.  I am not so sure that in this era of ubiquitous communications and information overload that that is necessarily true.  Wall Street parasites bankers, after all, make money by finding differences in prices that exist for seconds or less.  There doesn’t seem to be any reason that information couldn’t be used to direct more wholesome economic activities.  The real arguments against command economies seem to me to be more about morals than about economic efficiencies.

Nothing particularly profound here.  It just struck me reading this article that a lot of our society’s arguments against command economies are based on the experience of a twentieth century command structure and don’t take into account twenty-first century realities.