Friday, April 3, 2009

I Like It When She's Lazy

makes it easier for me to keep up in a sort of timely manner.

Department of awful statistics:

I know more about formal logic than Megan, but does anyone know if it's possible to ad hominem a statistic? Sure, at heart she's engaging in standard issue sophistic false equivocation, but this goes deeper. It's like she's personally offended by the simple fact that in recent history Democratic Administrations have, with the somewhat qualified exception of Carter, been generally better at not fucking up the economy, and she's going after that fact personally. Megan might as well be talking about Naomi Klein in the following, she's so rabid;

But I expect that four years from now, we'll still be having the same conversations with proponents of "cancer clusters" and Democrats convinced that they can scientifically prove that Democrats are better for GDP by doing ham-fisted regressions of Democratic presidencies with a few tightly correlated economic variables. What's the mechanism? What makes electric power lines cause cancer, but not the earth's vastly more powerful magnetic field? What policies did Harry Truman and Bill Clinton have in common (but not with Richard Nixon) that caused this marvelous confluence? Well, maybe we don't know the mechanism exactly, but never you mind: just look at that bee-yoo-ti-ful correlation!
Yes, Megan is now an expert on the contributory causes of cancer. No, I didn't know she went to medical school and/or has a research PhD, either. Maybe she went MD/PhD and is just too humble to mention it.
Also, Megan? Truman and Clinton didn't enable the rich via targeted tax cuts and turning a blind eye to their financial shenanigans. (Ok, Clinton kind of did.) Truman went after war profiteers. Clinton kept the flat tax from becoming a reality, at least. If you let Federal money enter the economy as a whole, instead of going straight into the pockets of the already rich, the economy will tend to improve. I guess the obvious nature of this is what pisses Megan off so. Even she can clearly see how wrong she is.

Why Did so Many UAW Workers Stay?:

I can't even... wha....
Obviously, there's one big reason: few of them could earn comparable wages anywhere else. But there's also the problem of worldview. Management's fractious relationship with the unions over decades had built up a huge reservoir of distrust among the workers, as one of my commenters points out:
I've worked at UAW assembly plants as a supplier and the average UAW worker gets their news through "the grapevine." Up until recently one of the popular views was that the big 3 weren't actually in trouble and that management was cooking the books to show a loss in order to demand concessions from the workers and break the union. It may seem silly but I have heard this from several workers at several plants. I don't know how to explain it other then most UAW workers have an absolute distrust of management.
Yes, why didn't these unionized workers walk away from their jobs? Don't they realize they're in unions?
Shit, why don't restaurant customers get up and walk away from their tables when their entrees are brought out?
I'm dumbfounded. What is it Megan thinks UAW workers should do? Move to India and learn IT?
Oh, right, she thinks they should curl up and die. Because she's an asshole, and she's empty inside.

More Media Meltdown:

The ongoing implosion of the media is only funny when it doesn't involve members of Megan's network. These are her future career options going down the tubes, people! What if David Bradley's helicopter goes down? Can't you see Megan doing a Hudson from Aliens impression? It's game over, man!

10 comments:

Downpuppy said...

That somebody could write a column explaining statistics who's apparently never heard of Bayes, much less understood the difference between correlation showing up when investigating a possible relation and the inevitablilty of finding 2 similar graphs in an infinitely large random collection still pisses me off.

clever pseudonym said...

She's not being lazy. Srsly. She's at a Brookings conference.

I can't believe she actually typed the word "Srsly" at the fucking Atlantic.

Parmenides said...

Its not enough that she is at the Atlantic and I look at the idiocy that she spews every once in a while, but I was listening to NPR and fuck if she wasn't on talking about the economy. It was just as dumb as normal but now she's invading what I thought was semi competent news. Who does she have pictures of, I don't understand this.

spencer said...

She was on NPR???

God *damn* am I glad I didn't give them any money during their last few pledge drives.

blivet said...

Marshall, I wonder the same thing. How can this be? Why do they want her on the air? For God's sake, her opinion is just about worthless.

This is at least the second time she's been on NPR. This time I reflexively turned the radio off as soon as I heard the host say her name.

brad said...

She's becoming a semi-regular.
NPR was targeted by the Bush Admin a few years back and some substantial changes were made in management.
I pity poor Terry Gross, considering the morons she's had to sit down with since.

ChicagoEd said...

Stop calling Megan lazy. She's the hardest working tallest female econoblogger going. Look at her output yesterday. She posts that she hasn't been posting lately because she's been on deadline and even though she's the editor she still had to get the thing written when it was due. Then she goes to Brookings for a lecture in the morning but promises to post again right after they all have lunch, but for some unforeseen reason doesn't post again that day, which happens to be a Friday. Meanwhile Conor Clarke is over at the business channel posting his little ass off, racking up at least five posts during the time Megan's busy at her important lunch meeting--his last post clocked in at 4:15 p.m. which is of course a record for the latest Megan-related work-related activity to take place on a Friday afternoon in the whole history of humanity. Does anyone else see where this might be headed?

Susan of Texas said...

Let's see--on the one hand we have a woman hired when Bradley was lavishing money on the Atlantic. But times are harder now, and a younger person who would work for less money is making himself indespensible.

Will the free market do in our Megan? I can't wait to find out.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Megan is now an expert on the contributory causes of cancer. No, I didn't know she went to medical school and/or has a research PhD, either.

You don't have to have any medical expertise to know that cancer clusters often happen by chance, it's widely accepted. Just google it or something.

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