COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Don't for one second think I mock Ms. McArdle (whose current COMMENT OF THE WEEK dates to 16 December) w/ the title of this item. Not one second.

Because this is as good a comment as any in 2009. (Comment of the month?) It gets both Megan (who's been on the radio twice in as many days) & the NPR part of radio.

The Ignorant Investor said...
NPR likes to show they are seeking out balance in their reports. For every quote from a person who knows what they are talking about, they need to have a quote from Megan to balance out the smart with the stupid.

January 31, 2009 12:42 PM

At It Again

 The rhetoric about unions always focuses on the workers, but an awful lot of the actual policy seems designed to enhance, not the power of the workers over their employers, but that of the union over the workers.

If you expected to find an actual example of this, you were wrong, wrong, wrong.

A Shitload of Shorters

I let the crap pile up again, time to start shoveling.

Euroskepticism is back in fashion:

The best part of the global economic meltdown is that I have a way to trash economic policies I don't like. Sure, the meltdown is the responsibility of my ideological comrades and a culture based around enabling greed and selfishness, but I'll never own up to it.

Mortgage cramdowns are a bad option:

If I keep framing the issue as homeowners versus unfortunately essential financial institutions maybe we can keep this whole issue of taking back bonuses from gaining ground. FFS, next someone will suggest that there's a whole bunch of people who got very rich off the problems underlying this meltdown who maybe shouldn't get to keep all those riches.
If we pretend the bank accounts of a corrupt executive class equal the banks themselves, maybe we can still save them.
The bank accounts, that is.

One more step towards gender-norming:

Now women have what I can only describe as a female version of Penthouse Letters.

If Megan were a good writer, we'd know whether that is a negative or positive assessment, but...

What's the matter with mortgage cramdowns?:

Why not make the cheeky bastards who run banks pay for their mistakes?
Axiom: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If you make the bankers pay, they will make you pay.

That axiom is a double negative, Megan. You're such an awesome writer.
Also, blackmail isn't a good argument, in the traditional sense.

How OJ Simpson may help keep Dick Fuld from stiffing his shareholders:

If I feign indignation over well publicized but comparatively minor shenanigans maybe it will give me cover for papering over far more serious misdeeds the rest of the time.

Good. Fast. Expensive. Pick Two.:

Here we see Megan grasping at straws. She's been wrong about everything, ever (the war, the economy, George Bush twice, 2x4s, jail the Jena 6, where's that recession, etc) but she's civil a total ass-kiss, so there.

The basic idea is that if everyone is afraid to spend money because they might be laid off, and sits at home in the dark, all the people who made money selling the things they used to buy will get laid off--and so will they, because they're part of "everyone". The government basically shocks us into a higher level of output by spending the money we're afraid to.
Though you wouldn't think it from the really quite shocking incivility emanating from the pro-stimulus side, the empirical evidence that this works in a large industrial economy like ours is basically nonexistant.

Unlike evidence that charter schools accomplish anything besides increased economic segregation.
Also, the New Deal didn't accomplish anything, dammit. Don't believe your lying eyes.
Finally, pro-stimulus people are mean, what with not being open to ideas from the very people who caused the crises we currently suffer from.

More on mortgage cramdowns:

Clearly, the fact that people disagree with me so vehemently shows that they have problems.

Back with more shorters after this commercial break.

English, Please

Sez Meg:

because wages are sticky downwards

I'm guessing that's probably econo-double speak for "working people get screwed by the very structure of capitalism," because if it meant that workers receive the value they create by their wage-slavery, they'd be making a big deal of it & not disguising it behind bullshit.

people who were in work

as opposed to those who are "out work?"

Also, the rigorously researched:

As a friend, another journalist, just told me, "I am slightly concerned that everything, here and around the world, really may go to some serious [expletive deleted] this year".

Megan, Megan, Megan. Put the period where it belongs!! Why do you hate America so that you write using British-style punctuation? We didn't have a Revolution so you could identify w/ our oppressors.

Apparently the last thing she learned was how to write, Limey-style. And then her brain froze, & she can't re-learn American ways. How very sad.

She Actually Wrote the Following

really:

So, layoffs have come to the McArdle household, making this a depression by the most commonly accepted definition. The startup my housemate works for has gone out of business, and as we sat around last night talking about the financial implications of this, I pondered the Paradox of Thrift.

Where do I even start?
Jebus.

Dear Megan,

This did not happen to you. The most important thing right now is not how you'll find a new roommate or cover the old one's share of the rent. Other people exist outside of how useful they are, or may be, to you. Most people realize this at some point in their teens. There was an episode of Growing Pains where Mike Seaver comes to this realization. You might have seen it. That's right, Kirk Cameron's fictional sitcom character was a more mature and emotionally developed person than you. Congrats.

Love,
Me

Oh, and she updated this post for clarity. Really.

Update: Sorry, let me be super clear that I still have a job. My housemate worked for a startup that got hit by the credit crunch. [Emphasis in original]

Wow.

Fuck

Bill Kristol is off the NYTimes OpEd page. Yay, right?
Fuck fuck, fuckity fucking fuck a fucked fuck of fucks who fuck fucking fucked fuckers fucked by fucking fuckozians.

It remains to be seen if Rosenthal fills the spot with a conservative or libertarian voice. But some of the writers he's spoken favorably of include the National Review's Byron York and The Atlantic's Megan McArdle.

Is Megan McArdle secretly a member of the Bush family? How the fuck does she fail upwards?
Oh, right, relentless ass kissing of every ass she sees. She might yet make enough money to overcome an utter lack of self-respect.

(via Instaputz)

Brain Damage

What explains Megan? We may have an answer.

Diet Coke™. Yes, Miss "I'm a vegan but I was doing it wrong so I have to stop it, pass the bacon, please" drinks Diet Coke™. So much for any pretended concern for her health. 

Diet Coke = aspartame = BRAIN LESIONS. Now we've a much better idea of why she's the way she is. 

And why she got some of those Sarah Palin-style cheaters. 

Brain.

Dead.

A Few Things We've Missed

Inauguration week is over, time for me to get back on the horse. Shorters, more or less.

Annals of awful advertising:

Old man yells at clouds.

How else do you shorterize this? Megan is yelling at ad copy for being unrealistic. Next she'll be claiming pornmakers use photoshop to make herpes sores go away.

Atlantic Business!:

What an amazing idea. In the midst of the biggest collection of financial crises since the you know what, how about trying to partially repurpose The Atlantic into a business trade rag based on the amazing talents and track record of one Megan McArdle?
The Atlantic is going out of business. I don't mean this snarkily, I mean if they think this is a good idea that will succeed in any way the people running it are so far removed from reality that collapse is the only possibility. I suppose David Bradley can keep it going so long as he stays solvent, but he'll be the only one reading it.

Question of the day:

Why am I the only one so politically tone deaf as to oppose helping people but favor more free money for banks?

John Thain ousted at Merrill Lynch:

I've actually developed quite a bit of sympathy for Mr. Thain. After all, he didn't create the mess at Merrill Lynch...

Heh, indeed.

Why is government IT so awful, Part III:

Because of regulations, duh. It might even be worth clicking over to this one, Megan doesn't realize how revealing she's being in it.

Huh?:

Nevermind the content of the post, if you hover over the url you'll noticed this is the fifth time Megan has used "Huh" (with or without the ?) as the title of a post. It's almost as if a pattern is emerging.

Politics hour:

As an aside, I have, in fact, been pretty impressed with Boehner so far.

Huh huh, she typed out "Boehner", huh huh.

Don't just stand there, do something!:

Stimulus is supposed to be, as Conor noted below, a short term and temporary strategy. But while it can ease the pain of a slowdown (at least in theory), as Tyler Cowen has been pointing out, the actual empirical evidence that massive government spending can shock an economy the size of ours into a permanently higher level of output is . . . well, it's sort of hard to find a wittily apt description of something that doesn't really exist.
There's a lot of solid Keynesian theory that says it will be so. But not that long ago we had a lot of pretty good theories from very smart economists about how this sort of financial crisis couldn't really happen again in the first place.

Once again, the failures of Friedmanites, Hayekians, and other free marketeers conclusively demonstrates the inadequacies of Keynesian theory.
Also, the fact that I haven't had a period in well over a month means Megan is pregnant.

Don't Blame Megan

the one armed man did it.

But not that long ago we had a lot of pretty good theories from very smart economists about how this sort of financial crisis couldn't really happen again in the first place.

This failure by Friedmanites, Hayekians, and other Randroids clearly shows that Keynesian theory is wrong. We, in the form of the government, shouldn't try to help people during these crises, because people like Megan who are ideologically opposed to the effort will find a way to fuck it up. The mere existence of Keynesian theory is what caused these crises, not the people who were in charge of our economic institutions over the last decade or so.

And remember, the fact that she was wrong just makes Megan an even bigger expert than that Krugman guy.

Take My Word for It

Too lazy to link, but apparently Forbes magazine named Matty-Y and Ezra Klein two of the 25 most influential liberals in the media.

I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the fact that Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd are also on the list, but holy-shit. What the fuck is going on?

Brad must be really proud of me for not mentioning how Matty-Y, by himself, is two of the 25.

How Can Megan Live W/ Herself?

Apparently one of The Atlantic's corporate cousins is Government Executive. Oh, the irony. 

Does Atlantic Media hope to get Supermarket Manager Monthly off the ground soon?

Good News For All!

In the finest tradition of the repressive, authoritarian right, soon The Atlantic will be in its own gated enclave.

We've also got something that a lot of you (and me!) have been wanting for a while:  registered comments.  Eventually they'll be migrating over here, too, but for now, I hope commenters will stick with the new page.

Why sure. I wouldn't want to be free to express myself, would I? I've been dying to keep some of, y'know, those people out of your comments there, Megan.

Those of you who do register, be prepared for a glut of "offers" from The Atlantic in your in-box.

We hope this doesn't mean that Megan will be forced to earn her keep by doing more econo-blogging & less pancake-blogging.

Jebus

it's like Megan's New Year's resolution was to make certain every post she writes is monstrously stupid. There's too much fresh dumb to even have time to go back over recent stupidity we've missed here. One thing is clear; Megan has decided to speak only in conserva-code. By "playing" dumb or coy she enables her readers to feel proud of spouting conservative delusions in the comments to educate her, and it's just a coincidence her ignorance plays directly into conservative talking points. She's not being ideological, she's just trying to make sense of this crazy world we all live in. That she tends to drift into authoritarian, trust the strong republican daddy, thinking is just a coincidence.
And congrats, Megan, on living in DC but not going to the inauguration. You've so internalized the snooty NYC "I'm better than a tourist, I'm LOCAL" mindset you made yourself miss history in the making. Nevermind that you're no longer local, having moved across the river, but now are one of those commuters you used to hate. Soon you'll be bitching about bike lanes and how you can't drive your Mini in them.
Anyhow, here's a few shorters.

In a political vacuum, no one can hear you scream:

Caroline Kennedy withdraws her name from consideration for Hillary's senate seat, presumably because Paterson wasn't going to give it to her. This is the reason she wasn't qualified in the first place. Kennedy was given much and did . . . not alot[sic].

As... "someone" pointed out in the comments, "alot" is not a word. Irony, however, is a word, and Megan questioning anyone's qualifications for anything, ever, is a good example of it. I'm glad Kennedy won't be my Senator (y'know), but she has done a great deal more in her life than Megan.

Do's and don'ts:

Megan linked to Breibart's Big Hollywood start-up. And not to mock it. I'd be angry if weren't such a ridiculously stupid thing to do. At least she's becoming increasingly honest that's she's simply a conservative, not a libertarian. Authoritarianism and libertarianism are mutually exclusive, except in her confused mind.

Grad days:

Has Megan mentioned lately how little awareness she has of the privileges she's been granted in life?

Partisanship, explained:

It only counts when the other side is doing it. It's like in sports, where a dirty player who cheats by bending the rules is gritty if he's on your team.
Also, don't forget to project.

"I'm happy that McCain is not president. But I'm unhappy that the people who booed Bush are happy. It's not enough to win. They have to gloat. Some of their happiness is just that conservatives, their enemies, are unhappy. So part of me can't resist wanting to return the favor."

(Megan is pretending someone said this to her. It's probably not true.)
You see, it's the left that bases their entire political identity on what they think their opposition doesn't like, so therefore they cannot be happy without oppressing conservatives by not agreeing with them. So the right is totally justified in eliminationist fantasies. In fact, this all has retroactively justified the 2x4 crack.
How dare we enjoy seeing the worst President in American history leave?

Public service announcement:

Ummmm, is it a public service to incoherently try to hype an inconsequential change in format without actually mentioning the change?

TurboTax denies responsibility for Geithner's mistakes:

Perhaps Obama's first act as president should be to introduce the reflexive into English in order to help business handle the increasing number of such delicate situations. One of the great charms of a language like Spanish is that no one ever screws anything up. Problems can be dismissed with an airy "se rompió"--it broke itself. The equivalent constructions in English, such as "mistakes were made", lack the elegant ubiquity.

I think she meant this sarcastically, but I bet even she's not sure.
And, obviously, this is another reason to switch to a Forbes-style flat tax. It's all about efficiency, not the wealthy getting yet another massive tax break.

It's so . . . stimulating:

Golf courses seem like a quite good way to get money out the door quickly; clearing land is relatively low-skilled work compared to high-speed rail projects. That means it can soak up any available labor you happen to have lying around, while specialized projects require specialized workers who aren't necessarily the same people thrown out of work by a collapse in the market for mortgage-backed securities.

I.... think I blacked out for a minute there, but yes, Megan is suggesting we build more golf courses to help fix the economy. I don't know how to snark that, or whether it's even necessary to.

This is getting long, so I'll come back later to look at the rest of today's stupidity. I'm sure you've seen Greenwald's wonderful smack down of Megan by now, but if not, there's the link.

Oh, This is New; Subtlety!

Hmm, Megan seems to be catching onto the fact that calling poor people worthless slobs that aren't worth our time directly doesn't go over well (It took her only 29 41 37 86 years!).

Extending unemployment benefits is one of the recession-fighting measures that everyone can agree on. But with two million people already in the extended benefits program, on top of the 4.6 million claiming regular unemployment, it's going to put a big strain on both the claim systems, and our pocketbooks.

Wait, Megan, you mean it costs money to give people money?!?!?!?!? HOLY SHIT! BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES! SEAL THE FLOODGATES! CLOSE THE PHONE LINES AND CUT UP THE CREDIT CARDS! POOR PEOPLE ARE TAKING OUR MONEY!!!!!! WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL ME?!?

I can feel myself being more libertarian already (ie my brain is shrinking). I've heard it's a common side effect or reading MM.

Someone is "A Little Confused"

Hey man, her words, not mine. She's understating, to be sure:

Everyone's hailing Obama's decision to suspend all Guantanamo trials for 120 days. But I thought the problem with Guantanamo was the people being held without trial. Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was being tried by the UCMJ, which as far as I know, is what you're supposed to use on enemy combatants accused of war crimes. Doesn't this just further prolong the incarceration of anyone who might be innocent?

Umm, anyone wanna answer this one for me? God, she's so uninformed it hurts.

America Drinks & Goes Home

Why does Glenn Reynolds (echoed by Megan, from whom the quote below) think that Americans are this fucking shallow?

It strikes me that this might be a golden opportunity for the Republicans, though.  The news post-election was filled with commentators pointing out that the first few times a person votes tend to seal their political identity.  Well, a president coming out strongly against the drinking age could put the next generation in Republican pockets for decades.

Oh, because 'Murkins are that shallow. I keep forgetting. (Wouldn't George Bush have been the ideal prez to have done this? Another golden opportunity squandered.)

"Our 'base?' Why, alcoholic grad students, & under-grads headed for the bar. Room, not exam."

These are principled, core values? As the right thrashes about trying to keep its political head above the "bitter swill of civil war and segregation" it's about to drown in, the gimmicks & obfuscations they will attempt to disguise the fact that George W(orst) Bush was completely & absolutely one of them, & that their not half- but un-baked, salmonella-ridden economic "theories" have crashed & burned w/ the financial system are surely going to be amusing, but something this pathetic, this soon? It is to laugh.

We should add that the WSJ piece ("Hopes for the Obama Presidency") includes contributions from Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Shelby Steele ("Black America Could Have Done Better") & Gov. Sarah Palin, who, in her usual brilliant way, titles her item "Tax Cuts and Fiscal Discipline," goes on for half of it about Alaska's willingness to drill & sell to the lower 48, & a quarter of it about "Mr. Obama and Congress must continue to guarantee a strong national defense by modernizing and equipping our armed forces; by treating active-duty military and veterans fairly; and by supporting the families of our service members." How much "fiscal discipline" do you think the gov. would like exercised over the defense budget?

Sarah Palin offers a more serious (or larger, at least) vision than Ole Perfess'r Reynolds. There's a condemnation.

I Like Pancakes Too!

Perhaps not as much as Megan does, but I don't "nest like the wind" either.

And look, Megan has a touching, if unoriginal sort of moment where something she's read before strikes her as usable & applicable, & then she blows it, either by a typo or by being an Internet smart-ass. That's the trouble w/ the web, you type "teh" when you honestly meant "the," & no one can tell the difference. That's why it is vital to spell check & proof-read one's work, young lady.

And speaking of "work:"

The ability to quickly lay hands on OMB information is a skill that has taken me years to hone, and provides substantial professional advantage.

[Cough, cough] "Professional?" Tall econo-blogging is a "profession?" ["Coughing" turns to fits of laughter] More work:

I'm working from home today, which is a holiday at the Atlantic, and MLK and civil rights are pretty much on nonstop loop on CNN. This morning I was thinking about the white man who tried to take Rosa Parks' seat.

Can you imagine? I'm confused. Did The Atlantic tell all employees to stay home, but work from their laptops? Is this Megan demonstrating her contempt for Martin Luther King, Jr., by working on the day dedicated to his memory? The less cynical among us (besides being suckers) will say: "Oh, no, she posted MLK's 'I have a dream speech.'" And she did. And the reaction that engendered? (Two of five, below:)

I'm going to pee in the punch here. To say that MLK was an advocate of civil rights is not really true. He supported civil rights for black people in the United States. He also actively and tirelessly campaigned for the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Vietnam, with all the death, suffering and oppression that entails.
Posted by Jim | January 19, 2009 10:44 AM

Yep, the cong had us up against the wall for sure, whoopin' on us six ways to Sunday, you bet.

Just like the way Hamas practically obliterated the IDF. When we [sic] we learn that we can never, ever win?
Posted by Obama's Seat | January 19, 2009 1:39 PM

And, doubtlessly unintentionally, Megan reveals that the the greedy, rapacious nature of our sordid species (& especially the current AmeriKKKan sub-species) makes libertarianism & other forms of oppressive selfishness completely un-workable.

The libertarians will hate it, I predict. But voluntary embrace of duty is the health of a small state--it's when people won't care for the collective that the government starts making them do it.

Of course, her very embrace of the concept of "duty" reveals how libertarian she is. K-Mart psychologizing tells me that if she gives up on the glibertarian stuff she might be able to cut down on the comfort food & syrup.

Inauguration Day Highlights

I got a new digital camera, so there'll be some higher quality cat porn in the future.
Pix.
One of those dots is Obama, moments from being sworn in.


You know what this is.


Also this.


And you should know who this is.


You better know who this is.


Exit shot.

Also, there's this little movie. Doesn't look like much, but it's Bush going out of view. His helicopter flew directly over my head on the way out. And yes, I flipped him off.

Tomorrow I sleep, then we begin to explore a new normalcy. Megan will still be a dim narcissist, tho, so the reality of this blog won't be changing toooooo much.

Now Hear This!

The smoking lamp is lit.Did M. McA. type anything? Does anyone care if she did?

Woah

Guys, uh, wow. We have a black president.

I never thought I'd actually see it.

Sweet.

It's Almost Over

the bad man
is going away.

Where's My Nesting Egg?

Time to drag out the perfect pancake recipe and the electric griddle, and nest like the wind.

You know it. Both the first commenter & I wondered about "nesting like the wind." Unless Megan's incubating more eggs for the flapjack recipe, nesting makes no sense. She's cocooning (Doubtless in her slankie or what ever the eff. Was it a sleeket?) not nesting. Like a big praying mantis-y insectoid queen. (Oooh, snap! And totally uncalled for. Praise Jah Rastafari for the anonymity of the Internet.)

"Like the wind " is ... is ... what can you say? Maybe McArdle's in her Mini motoring about, eating pancakes.


Note to self (& other hate-bloggers): Stop it w/ the guilt. Everything you're responding to has been placed before the public eye by your "victim." It's not as if you're prying into their private lives/trash-cans, pricing their counter-tops through the kitchen window or the like. (W/ those one or two stalking exceptions)

Moments later: Clicked to the Betty Crocker recipe. It's a fetishistic deal where the sacrifice must be prepared the evening before:

Several hours/night before: Soften 3 tablespoons (a little less than half a stick) of unsalted butter

The Intelligence Age Gap

Oh, Megan, you're so old and wise. Why, we need only look at your latest insightful piece about what it was like back in your day. From "The capitalist age gap", in response to Matty-Y saying the post office actually does a good job of hand delivering letters door to door for 40 cents:

I suspect that the real problem here is that Matt does not remember what the Post Office was like before FedEx and email--before, in short, the salutary effects of capitalist competition had made it clear that the organization had better shape up if anyone who worked for it wanted to continue enjoying their dizzyingly boring, but steady and lavishly benefitted, jobs. Or what the phone company was like before there were cell phones and long distance competition.

Megan, you're 34 32 47 36. Matt is 27. Matt remembers when there wasn't email. Matt remembers the time before cell phones. FedEx was founded in 1998. UPS has been around since 1907. Email wasn't commonplace until about the turn of the century. WHAT IN GOD'S FUCKING HELL ARE YOU FUCKING TALKING ABOUT YOU FUCKING DIMWIT?

Beyond that, what the fuck does FedEx have to do with anything? Last I checked, zero fucking people put letters in envelopes and have them sent FedEx. Matt was talking about fucking letter service, not packages. His point was that the postal service has been cheaply and reliably picking up and delivering letters door to door for-fucking-ever. That is just TRUE. Fucking TRUE. All the fucking pro-business masturbating about how it was only FedEx's competition that made USPS able to deliver letters is bullshit. And the idea that email, by providing competition, actually improved the post office? Are you retarded? Postage has skyrocketed since email became wide spread because people are sending FAR fewer letters. I know I'm just a lowly 26 year old, but even I remember when a stamp cost a fucking quarter. This of course, has nothing to do with any competence/incompetence on the part of the post office but is just a natural result of technological advancement.

And the phone company... THE FUCKING PHONE COMPANY??!!?!? Yeah, right, cause the entire communications industry is just a streamlined orgasm of reliable products and friendly costumer service. I constantly hear my friends gushing about how wonderful it is to be anally raped by their choice of, what maybe six different cell providers. Some of the nicer cell companies even use LUBE these days for only 80 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH (plus tax)! WOOO-HOOO! Why, I had a friend whose phone actually went four whole days without breaking one time. He was so thrilled with the wonderful life that capitalism had brought him that he sent Verizon and extra 50 dollars and an offer for a blow-job any time they want, just for being so extra fucking special.

For fuck's sake, the woman, you complain endlessly about every minor inconvenience in your world, and now you're trying to argue that things were even worse 15 years ago? God, you bitch about trivial shit all the fucking time now. I'd hate to think about what spending time with you 15 years ago was like.

There Are Now Fewer Than 90 Hours Left

(in the Bush Admin)

anyone else gonna be in DC Tuesday?
Yesyes, 4-5 million others, you know what I mean.
Truth is, I don't really feel like wallowing in Megan right now. I feel like I'm about to get out of jail. I'll be back soon, but we've got a little history to enjoy right now.


Apologies to those in Guantanamo and elsewhere who aren't getting out of actual jails in 4 days.

Fried Chicken and Watermelon in the Oval Office?

Wow, The Atlantic really is fucking retarded from head to fucking toe. I don't know what the article actually says, but how the fuck could they not see how horribly this magazine cover could be interpreted?:

Seriously, why not just Photoshop [When verbing a proper noun, do you still capitalize?-ed.] an AK-47 in one hand with the other giving the black power salute? I wonder if there will be a media circus.

UPDATE: HOLY SHIT! Reading this article.... I... uh.. DEAR GOD it scream for a take down. I'm working on it. Check back later.

Times, Well, Spent

McSleuth has found a minor instance of plagiarism. Apparently a single paragraph in a Times London article was lifted from a Fortune article that had been printed about 6 months prior. The paragraph contains some details about a surgery Steve Jobs underwent.

OK guys, calm down! I know, it's a crisis, but we need to stay focused. I, too, was terribly hurt to see that a writer pilfered a negligible amount of uninspired prose that contain readily available factual information. Fret not! Megan knows how to treat the broken heart; with humor:

It's possible that this is not plagiarism--that David Rose is actually Philip Elmer-DeWitt's alter ego and thus owns the copyright to that passage,

Oh man, that cracks me up! Where does she come up with those knee-slappers? Ahhh, I feel a bit better already. Still, though my wounds have been salved, I need to know that someone will seek justice in this horrible imbroglio!

I've emailed the Times for comment, and will report as I get any information.

PHEW! Megan's on the case. I can rest easy now. I'm sure, what with her tenacity and dedication, McGruff will ensure that justice prevails.

I just hope she doesn't get too distracted from her vital work of telling us useless crap and make "gee-whiz" comments about the economy. Oh good, looks like we're safe there, too.

PS Don't visit her main site. The idiot has a really annoying video for a Foreman Grill rip-off up that plays automatically when you go to her blog. I think, since she's realized that abject incompetence won't do it alone, she is now intentionally trying to annoy her readers away. After all, the fewer people that visit her blog, the fewer the emails she gets informing her of her failures and thus the less work she has to do. Everyone wins!

UPDATE:Case closed! No one escapes McArdle's crack detective work.

I'm Not A Doctor, Jim, I'm A Reiterator. Any Truisms I Can Repeat For You?

A bit here:

I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet.

A bit there:

Pancreatic cancer is nasty, nasty stuff.

Really? While I think it's generally known, from following celebrities who get it & die quickly, that The Big Pancreatic C is fatal, I'm not sure that there's an intrinsic extra-nastiness to it. (I used to call myself Dr. Jazs, but I wasn't a real doctor. Megan just plays a health care profits adviser on the Internet.) It's just usually detected or diagnosed so late in the game that there's no remedy for it.

But I'm not doing any more research than Megan did, for damn sure. Here's something else Megan wants to share w/ you: "Puppies are nice, & the sky is blue."

Shorter: Executives should have no privacy, except for how much money they're making & how they're making it.

Attack of the Bearclaw

One of the more annoying things about going to McArde's site on a daily basis is the visual and intellectual assaults the marketing geniuses of The Atlantic have decided to bombard their visitors with. Apparently their "Obvious question written in randomly-located neon sign" promotion is something they plan to stick with. It's bad enough that they think such a garish attempt at edginess is something to run with, but they also insist on out stupiding their premise with the dumbest questions on earth. For example:


"Is the doughnut doomed?" er, sorry, I meant "IS THE DOUGHNUT DOOMED?" Yes, cause nothing says "Think. Again." like screaming, in bright white neon, about the fate of the fucking donut.

Also, "donut" is the correct Americans spelling. Fuck Webster. I bow to Dunkin' Donuts before I bow to stodgy old English dudes that wanna tell me how ta speak. If you're gonna be all post-modern at least get the fucking vernacular right.

Werd.

Humor 101

Megan just doesn't get it, or, I must assume, anything else either.

Every time I see one of these things, I wonder.  Who the hell makes them up?  And why?  What do you get from passing your mediocre musings off as the work of a long-dead revolutionary?

So, Mlle. McArdle, you get no satisfaction from passing off your musings for money?

To what "mediocre musings" is she referring? None, really. Not "musings" at all, but an amusingly clever prank that may have put the fear of social justice in a few "traders." 

Laura of 11D says this quote is making the rounds of Wall Street.

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

Megan wasn't quite sure what to make of this ("technology" was a good give-away for me) but after what appeared to be (Gasp!) research on her part & a memory-probe 15 yrs. into her mind, plus blather,* her only conclusion was "What's anybody get out of this?"

A. Good. Laugh, you poor humorless wretch. 

*Megastats: 22 lines by Megan, eight lines quoted. 

Annals of Irony

Ms. McArdle links to this site, placing herself firmly mid-scale in the world of lying around. When the heat's been turned off, & you're desperately hoping to find work before the laptop battery runs out for good, you'll want one of these things. Good place to put your money, if you're one of the lucky scores of Americans w/ two (Or even three!) nickels to rub together. 

And the Slanket pitches itself between the two, playing to young middle-class anxieties about selfishness (Slanket donates small amounts of profit to various popular charities) and productivity (the website purrs, “Call in sick at work. It’s just one day.”) It’s creature comfort for people who don’t usually indulge in creature comforts, or at least like to think they don’t. This explains why, in the wake of the Snuggie, some Slanket partisans have rebranded their product as the "Web 2.0," “hipster” alternative. Sure, QVC and in-flight catalogs, its advertisers of choice, are hardly indie media, but infomercials make strange bedfellows.

Combine this w/ Megan's attempted mockery of a QVC product & we start to wonder. Is Megan going to go the Sarah Palin route, deny even Atlantic-level intellectualism, & join the new post-consumption, simple board games around the table by the hurricane lamp, real-American know-nothings? 

W/ no economy left to speak or type of, house-hold tips on making soap from hog rendering, feeding six for the price of two & the like may be the best direction for A.I.

While I Finish Getting Better

read this and this, if you haven't already.

Btw

there are now only 185.5 hours left in the Bush Admin.

8 Reasons to Hope the Megan is Never Really Trying to Procreate, Or: Finally, Some Good News

Megan's got a triple dose of dumb up today, but let's start with the good news. I'd like everyone to know that it is now 100% guar-un-TEED that we will avoid a depression. I know this, obviously, because Megan is convinced that we're in one already.

My reasoning for thinking of this as a depression, rather than a recession: roughly, that we don't understand how to get in or out of it.
(...)
This kind of perfect financial storm is a rarer bird, and no one has plausibly claimed to have mapped the way out yet.

Megan is possibly the only person on earth who claims that we don't know what's going on. I've read at least a dozen articles about the causes of this recession, and most of them are in agreement (except for the crazy bastards blaming the black people). Megan can't be bothered to acknowledge them, however, because that would expose her readers to the idea that overly free markets played a role in this calamity andwecan'thavethatnowcanwe?

Nope, instead it's just some "perfect storm" of three things coming together in an unprecedented fashion. Megan doesn't know what those three things are, but somehow she knows that they're there. I guess that's just the Catholicism in her, that faith in three undefined but all controlling entities. Who cares, though? As I mentioned, Megan thinks we're in a depression which means next quarter will show a rapid turnaround. You're welcome.



Also on the docket today,-because she wants us to.... uh... something? I don't know, maybe just show us that she reads The New Yorker-she links to this piece, an intelligent insight into the minds of a neurotic idiot that I couldn't be bothered to finish. The author trenchantly describes the fact that she's delusional and has spent herself needlessly into huge debt whilst being not very gainfully employed in order to furnish herself a certain lifestyle. A lifestyle that she appears to have never actually evaluated before sitting down to pen this 1000 word ode to her poor life skills. It's a real thinker piece, or I'm sure it gets to be one by the end that I got far too bored to reach.



Megan's most recent post once again makes us all thankful that she never procreated. Actually, maybe I wish she had as it'd have been hard for her to become a shitty hack blogger ruining a perfectly good magazine while serving time for child neglect. On errands:

If you are a towing a child (and his gargantuan supply of diapers), it is much easier to bind him tightly into a car seat than manhandle him onto the bus.

Megan's idea of motherhood; dragging children by their ears while carrying around 50 diapers and strapping them to car seats with knots that make their arms turn blue. What human thinks babies shit "a gargantuan" number of times per day?

And indeed, whenever I write anything at all in praise of city living, I am contemptuously informed that I only like it because I don't have kids.

Hmm, and yet somehow you know all about how hard it is to raise them...?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!? And for fuck's sake, Megan actually swallows that bullshit parents say about it being "easier" to raise kids in the suburbs? Um, no, parents do that so their children don't have to sit next to any black kids in school, not because they like forcing their child to be utterly dependent on them until driving age rather than until they're old enough to read a map. She even acknowledges that in her next paragraph:

But this is not, really, a very good argument against city living. Most people spend the majority of their lives these days neither being nor having small children. And small children are the ones that make suburban living preferable. Older children are much easier to deal with in a city, because after age eleven or so, they no longer need to soak up hours of Mom's time being ferried around.

She shoots down her own arguments now... is that progress?

That's not to say that we should force the suburbanites into the city, either. To each his own. But the mere fact that something is not convenient for toddlers, or their guardians, does not ipso facto mean we should discard it in favor of something that better pleases the Playskool set.

Right, civil engineering is so nanny state. I mean, Megan's all for pricing negative externalities into things so long as that means no one has to actually make any of the sacrifices (like moving out of the suburbs) that would be required to actually mitigate those externatlities. And what the fuck is that last sentence supposed to mean? Now she's arguing against the suburbs? Wasn't her introduction in defense of them? What the fuck is this woman blathering about? I swear, she takes a straight jacketed stroll through la-la land and calls it a coherent analysis. She doesn't even know what a fucking thesis is!

I really don't understand the people that think she's any kind of intelligent. I think she basically got her audience by giving a bunch of libertarian dorks a boner over the idea of a "Jane Galt" and has just been coasting on that ever since. In the comments section of the depression post there's oodles of people saying that if the government just sat back, everything would be fine. The post I mocked below about her car has all these morons making tangential declarations about declaring "if Megan the government fucked up registering her car so badly, imagine what socialized medicine would be like!"

Even When She's Smart, She's Dumb

Over at McArdle's house, we see she's finally managed to get her car into legal status. It's been in her possession since August, but - naturally - (ed. where do the spaces go when you insert a hyphen? Is that right? It never looks right, but neither does leaving any out.) it's not her fault.

Since this is an article about her, and she gets to complain about the government, it goes on for quite a while. Three pages and 28 bullet points of stupidity. Some of the more amusing bits in her chronology are things like "16. Thanksgiving" and "21. Christmas" because we all know how important the arrival of holidays are to the story of Megan performing a quotidian task like registering her car.

Surprisingly, she never comments on her own stupidity for doing things like buying a replacement mirror too small to cover her current one or insisting on going to a Mini dealership rather than a regular mechanic. Why would you buy a car whose closest dealership is hours away if you're going to moronically insist on getting even minor repairs done there?? Ah, the workings of the McArdle mind, so complicated and yet so nonsensical. Figuring her out is like finishing a crossword puzzle made by someone who doesn't know that "yndxly" isn't a word.

The previous post is a bit of masturbation about how great a book reader she is. Apparently now that Rove is making the ridiculous claim that Bush is an avid reader, it's vogue to be learned again. She claims that 600 wpm is "above average" but "not particularly impressive" which doesn't make sense, since that's two or three times the average. Is this some sort of faux-modesty or is she too stupid to even identify what few skills she actually has? The woman claims to have read four books in the first week and a half of the year and then whines about how she isn't keeping up her resolution to be a better reader this year!!! Why the hell would you even bother with such an outdated metric when so much reading is done on the internet? I mean, it's not like you HAVE to read only porn on the tubes, even if that's what everyone else does.

Man, she's dumb

Not Slacking

(on getting back into Atlas Shrugged), sick. When head no hurt, I get to it.

Megan McArdle, Gay Rights Activist

You stay classy, Rush:

Apparently Rush Limbaugh has developed a parody song about Barney Frank called . . . Banking Queen. Because you know what makes Frank such a piss-poor bank regulator? That's right, obviously it's who he sleeps with when he's not in Congress.
If Alan Greenspan's wife had been a swimsuit model, we probably could have avoided this mess altogether.

Thank god Megan is here to protect our poor, defenseless gay Congressmen from Rush. Gay folk are like polygamists, sure, they might be utter freakshows in Megan's mind, but you don't say it out loud. That's rude, and you never know when a gay man will have influence on your career.

If you want to be truly disgusted, check out the comments, where Megan's readers defend Rush and argue the joke was right on.

Sorry

I spent the last forty days in the desert. The entire time I was there I had this overwhelming urge, this non-directional impulse to do something. Unfortunately, I didn't know what that something was. Turns out that drinking water is good for you. I knew nothing at all about water--until, that is, I read a brilliant woman named Megan McArdle. Do you have some questions about water? Well golly the Atlantic higher a scholar on water, or an aquascholar. I'm assuming this is just a precis of her larger thesis, but here it goes:

Distilled water has some uses for cleaning. Bottled water for
drinking, however, is a total waste of space and money. It is tap water,
just tap water you've paid someone to pour and transport. I repeat, most bottled
water comes out of a municipal water system somewhere. If your tap water
tastes funny, buy a Brita filter.

A Technical Note

Megan's been at it at The Atlantic for over a yr. now, but she still can't get whichever loser is in charge of The Atlantic's website to make the "Remember personal info?" button in the A. I. comment section work.

Morality The Megan Way

First we get this, from a long bit of rental advice for newcomers to the Quaint & Sleepy Village By The Potomac:

The inauguration rental ads in the wrong place on Craigslist are still going strong, but they've been supplemented by clearly fraudulent ads aimed at the Obama folks.  I came across this myself during our house hunt, when I randomly discovered that someone was advertising my mother's place for rent, at a ridiculously low price.  A friend suggested we try to play the scammers, which would have been fun and instructive, but immoral, given that other people on Craigslist might be taken in by the ad.

I have no idea what she means by "rental ads in the wrong place" or "play the scammers," but wouldn't one want to stop whatever scam is going on? Wouldn't that be "moral?" How would "playing the scammers" be "immoral?"

The morality of scamming the government is, of course, another matter to Megan.

* One of my favorite doctors was running a Medicaid mill, which I faithfully patronized when I was uninsured.  She was charming, caring, and merrily full of ways to help me milk the system, which I had to politely turn down and pay her in cash.  Given the reimbursement schedule Medicaid offers, I couldn't blame her a bit.

No moral question of turning in the "milk the system" doctor? Well, doctors are special people. 

Here, she reverses her usual "poor people are dirt who deserve what they get (or don't deserve what they don't get)" shtick:

It seems to me that there is no good reason for Medicare and Medicaid to be two separate programs. Housecleaners are surely no less deserving of decent medical care than Palm Beach retirees, yet we arduously separate the two programs so as to lavish extra care on the more affluent class of beneficiaries. It's no good saying that the Medicare recipient earned theirs through contributions, because they didn't--people in the system now are net beneficiaries, not contributors. It's just that on average they're whiter, they speak better English and their subsidized lifestyles are considerably better upholstered. I'm not sure why any of these entitles them to a better grade of publicly provided healthcare.

I'm in complete agreement w/ this "merger" idea (as a wig job on the gummint dole, I'm not even sure if I have Medicare or California's version of Medicaid, MediCal) except for the "people in the system now are net beneficiaries, not contributors" bit. Like, whatever. Are they paying? Have they paid? Just because they're getting health care out of the system now doesn't mean they haven't paid in. 

Spare me your fucking economics trickery. And your bogus, bourgeois "morality."

OK, This Fucking Does It!

Megan, the literal Queen of Typos, which she seldom corrects, even when they're called to her attention, now has a hissy fit about a typo in a graphic on MSNBC. (Which, as I never tire of repeating, stands for "Mighty Sorry, No Body Cares.") What applies here? Physician, heal thyself? The biblical thing about casting beams out of your eye or whatever it is?

Or maybe just "shut up & get lost, I just can't take this garbage any more, what in the hell is wrong w/ you anyway, McArdle?"

Once Upon a Time

The Atlantic was a prestige imprint. Now...

Discovery of the day:

Last night I was out with a friend, attempting to have a serious analytical discussion about the adult video porn industry, and various recent challenges to its business model.
We gave up after realizing that there is no way to have such a discussion without constant double entendres. This was amusing, especially after the second gin-and-tonic, but more than a little distracting.

I really don't want to comment.

Almost 700,000 jobs lost in December:

I recently realized that over the past few weeks, without really noticing, I've slipped quite naturally into referring to the current crisis as "the Depression". I also realized that no one I've spoken to has challenged that description.

700,000 lost their jobs last month and all Megan can notice is how people respond to her choice of vocab.

Economists beat philosophers on list of top jobs:

Or so says the Wall Street Journal. Those long, flowing beards itch.

*snort*
To begin with, anyone who actually refers to themselves as a philosopher has likely written a "Philosophy of the Matrix" book or is Terence McKenna. It's pompous and bullshit. Today, philosopher is more like a title awarded to a select few, mostly posthumously, not a job description. (Though there are folk in Europe who work as general philosophers in a manner somewhat comparable to talk therapists. I doubt they're what the WSJ means.)
In any case, they presumably mean philosophy professors. Thing is, only the tenured, and tenure track, profs have it good in any sense, and even then academia is not really a fun place to be behind the scenes of. Committees and petty department politics and publish or perish suck. Not as much as risking your life for a shitty underpaid job, obviously, but the idea that "philosopher" is a great job is, as best I can tell, based on looking at old paintings and mistaking them for reality. Know how Descartes was able to sit around in his study pondering things? He was born massively fucking rich.
I don't really have a point to this rant, except maybe to say the WSJ should more clearly label their fiction pieces for the sake of mushbrains like Megan.

The end of property:

So it looks as if iTunes will be largely DRM-free by April. Will that save the music industry? I'm still not seeing a great deal of evidence that younger people who group up in an era when they didn't have to pay for music will start paying for it like those of us who grew up when the only way to get good sound without paying was to . . . er . . . steal it.

Or copy the tape. Or make a tape off a cd. Or listen to the radio.

I am assured by Larry Lessig fans that the bands will just make it up on concerts, and anyway, this is good for the smaller indie bands that right-thinking people like. I will be more convinced when I see an actual increase in the number of quality musicians who don't have to supplement their art with a job delivering pizza.

Apparently it's a new phenomenon for unsigned musicians to need a "real job", at least to Megan. That whole British music industry effectively being subsidized by the dole for decades thing must be made up. You see, a good friend of Megan's is a total guitar god who has all these beautiful songs and it's just so wrong that he isn't famous like Buckley was.
And only Megan has a friend like that, not every single human being in the western world below the age of 60.
She doesn't even realize she's worrying about the labels, not the artists.

See no evil, hear no evil . . . :

Meet Meaghan Cheung, the SEC investigator who missed the Madoff scandal. The friend who IM'd me says: "I almost feel sorry for this woman. ALMOST."
I feel sorry for her the way I feel sorry for everyone who does spectacularly stupid things, but it's hard to muster any special sympathy given her extensive whine that the Post ought to pick on someone else

Sure, Megan has spent her blogging career arguing against regulations, but so long as she has a lower level staffer or two to blame she'll never have to acknowledge the systemic failure the ideology she supported created.
And there's no obvious scapegoating going on when a rank and file member is blamed for a failure of these proportions. No clear failure of her superiors to take sufficient responsibility, no intentionally introduced flaws in the whole damned system that allowed and actively encouraged all manner of risky to clearly illegal behavior. Just one bad apple.

Expect many, many more individual bad apples to fall from the trees in the months to come. Megan has clearly established how she's going to respond to the Depression; claim she saw it coming and congratulate herself for it. Soon she'll be making a big deal of how she warned us all and we didn't listen. And everyone will get tired of me posting this.

Today's Dumb

I'm getting ready to jump back into Atlas Shrugged, but with major changes. Summarizing the plot was boring and painful, and I'm not going to keep doing it. Instead, I'm going to cherrypick moments of dumb from each week's selection and complain about how monumentally stupid they are, starting Friday. In the meantime, shorters.

They say the lights are always bright on Broadway ... :

Megan is wrong. Broadway has never been better. Why do I say this? Because Will Ferrell is about to star there as George Bush in "You're Welcome America". Fuck yes.

Obama goes the extra bipartisan mile:

I deduce from Obama's surprisingly aggressive bipartisanship that he fears there is a good chance that his stimulus package will cost a lot of money, and we will still be deep in the economic doldrums two years hence.

But by then all these problems with the economy will be Obama's fault, because he didn't allow the market to fix itself. Megan's memory will be very short come the 20th.

Patient, heal thyself:

If we allow people who have no experience with western medical systems to have self-controlled free access to such a system they tend not to know how to make full use of it. Thus we see that attempts at reforming our system will fail.

It's the thought that counts:

Think you got shafted this year? I point you to this. Count your new white cotton underwear, and your blessings.

(Fug the link.) Megan will not hear any bitching about Christmas being ruined by Dad being laid off or the like. She got hers, stfu.

Explicit costs, hidden benefits:

This is a wonderful post. Instafuckingracistasshole and Megan got caught in a real bind. You see, being libertarians they're naturally opposed to parents who choose to not to have their children immunized for fear of the rare but serious potential side-effects which are, today, often more common than the diseases being immunized against. Sad as I am to say it, I think I agree with Instadouche and Megan on this one, but she's about to make it ok.

[Instafuck sez]

Keeping a society functioning requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work by people who don't usually get a lot of attention--sanitation engineers, utility linemen, public health nurses, farmers, agricultural chemists and so on. Because the efforts of these workers are often undramatic, they are underappreciated and frequently underfunded. Politicians like to cut ribbons on new bridges or schools, but there's no fanfare for the everyday maintenance that keeps the bridges standing and the schools working. As a result, critical parts of society are quietly decaying, victims of complacency or of active neglect.

[Megan sez, my emphasis] That argument could be made, and perhaps should be made, just as well about financial and regulatory infrastructure. Though I'm not sure that there is any way to prevent 70-year events like the current mess, there are nonetheless decisions that seem lunatic, in retrospect. Why were Goldman, et al, allowed to lever up 30-to-1? Why, for that matter, did they want to? Well, because if you've gone for a long time without any problems, all you can see about the safeguards is that they're costing you money.
The problem is that it simply won't do to say that we ought to be institutionally risk averse. All of these arguments could be applied just as well to gay marriage or abortion law or universal health care, if you lean that way--it's no good just saying that it hasn't hurt Sweden, because the deluge might still await.
Libertarians, conservatives, and progressives all need a better metric for distinguishing between the areas where we're improving on problems, and areas where we're simply eating our institutional and cultural seed corn. Unfortunately, trial and error may turn out to be the best we've got.

This is one of those moments where I don't quite know how to snark Megan's droolings. There's no argument for why her and Instaprobablyadaterapist can ignore the obvious even to her applicability of their argument to regulation of financial markets, just simple, rank, hypocrisy. I'm curious as to why she felt the need to point it out for the rest of us.

Death be not proud:

I wonder if what Galbraith saw in the unusually low suicide statistics for 1929 was the confounding effect of crisis. Suicide tends to fall during crises--they take peoples' minds off themselves. So perhaps everyone outside of Wall Street was too busy watching the stock market collapse to think about the mess of their own lives--but suicide rates leapt for those on center stage. Certainly, there have been quite a few highly publicized suicides so far that can be directly attributed to the declining markets, and sadly, I doubt we've seen the last.

So don't worry about the effects of the economic troubles on the little people, they're actually being helped by having no money to buy a gun. Worry about the important people, when they die it matters.

N that's that. Hello Tbogg readers. Yes, I wish Clem would post more often, too.

Epic Fail

Build-your-own-credibility:

Nice little piece on the bubbliness of the art market recently. (Hat tip--er . . . one of the many blogs I read. It's been that kind of a morning). For some reason, it puts me strongly in mind of the book I've been reading: The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace. Perhaps because both involve rich people spending outrageous sums of money on something that WE PROLES will never get close to. [My emphasis]

Megan is not a member of the proletariat. She is a fluffer for the obscenely rich people she's pretending are the only real rich people. Were Megan actually proletarian, she'd have class consciousness. Megan is not upper middle class, that sub-class no longer exists. She is lower upper class. I am too, for good and ill, and I'm very familiar with the vanity Megan is indulging here. She does not have unlimited wealth, therefore she is not rich. So long as someone else can afford a lifestyle she cannot, she is just a humble prole. Sure, she goes on frequent vacations, but she doesn't own vacation homes. Stupid asshole.
The reason this is epic is she's still not done.

... housing markets really did change, thanks to things like zoning and environmental regulations that dramatically slowed the pace and scope of new development on the coasts. Credit brokers really did get better at assessing credit risk. it's just that housing didn't get as difficult to build, or credit risk as easy to assess, as recent experience showed.
Because we overweight recent experience, we overshoot on the bubbles. But if we didn't overweight recent experience at all, it would take us 100 years to notice that FICO scores were pretty good--or that many treasured innovations in liberal governance hadn't actually caused society to implode.
Is there some way to make us weight only, always, the right things, to never go too far in rewriting what we know about the world? Somehow, I doubt it.

Her ideological comrades possibly didn't succeed in permanently crippling the world economy with their unbroken string of greed fueled fuck-ups, so the whole assumed oncoming wave of reregulation of the financial markets we all unfortunately depend upon is ultimately unnecessary. Just a few simple human mistakes and a bad egg or two. Nothing to see here, people, let's move along now. The show's over, let wise old Officer McArdle sort out who's to blame, not the unruly mob of people who've lost their jobs and/or life savings.
She's never going to admit she was wrong, because that would require self-examination and the capacity to admit mistakes in an unqualified sense. Instead, she'll keep convincing herself she was right the whole time and it was the folk screaming about the need to regulate who FORCED the markets to become giant Ponzi schemes. The UAW did it, not Greenspan.

Randomness

I made a mix for other purposes, n might as well share it here, too. Here it is, if you want to hear a random collection of what I listen to.
What it is:

registerv1email - AHNULD!
Order Within the Universe - Axiom Funk
Spit On A Stranger (live) - Pavement
Memories of You - Thelonious Monk
Tala Matrix (live) - Tabla Beat Science
Freedom Rock (live) - Frank Black
Castles Made Of Sand - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Scud Attack - Painkiller
Letter To William S. Burroughs - Hunter S. Thompson
Mommy What's A Funkadelic - Funkadelic
We Had To Do The Show! - Michael Showalter
Machine Gun (live) - Praxis
National Anthem (live) - Radiohead
material@bonnaroo (live) - Material
Get Back - The Beatles

Enjoy, or not.

Canned Goods & Ammo

Should I (& I hope I speak for my colleagues here @ FMM as well) ever resort to the vulgar, lazy pandering of an "open thread," I extend an open invitation to anyone willing to do so to come to the editorial offices & plug me right between the eyes, or at least somewhere fatal between the ears.

Also (Megan asking the question at the bottom):

So why buy bonds? Stay in cash, and you get a very similar yield for much less risk.

How long 'til analysts start touting canned goods and ammunition?

Couldn't be soon enough for me.

Scrubbing One's Troubles Away

Not a word from Megatron since last yr. (We've been here every single day of the New Yr., & un-paid for it. Sheer labor of love.) Perhaps she's having another Freudian cleaning orgy.

After scrubbing my house from top to bottom after the move, the skin is literally peeling off my hands from all the chemicals.

[...]

I'm kind of obsessed by cleaning things like baseboards

Is there such a condition as merely "kind of obsessed?" Speaking of which, maybe I'm not as obsessed w/ mlle. as I thought, but have I missed something w/ this moving about? Is she moving every month? Did I miss a fascinating but interminable post on the whole thing & her solid M. B. A. reasoning on renting vs. pouring all one's cash down the toilet, or did she actually not share her entire existence w/ us peons?

Odds & Ends

Let's do a couple shorters, close some tabs in my browser.

Department of awful statistics:

Do as I say, not as I do.

Bonus dumb;

This is probably not the fault of the journalist; we rarely get to write our own headlines, and we've all had at least one that was gotten, unbeknownst to us, gloriously, hilariously wrong. But this is the wrongest I've ever seen.

Further proof Megan doesn't read her own work.

Quote of the day:

As Megan says, Americans need to get their heads above the debt. It would have been better if they had come to this conclusion gradually over the last 20 years instead of all of a sudden over Labor Day weekend, but there you have it.

Tigerhawk then went back to his vodka gimlet and Letter to the Editor complaining about allowing women in Princeton Eating Clubs like the good anachronism from 80 years ago that he is.
That paper hat looks stupid, guy.

Gazprom's woes:

Megan has finally recognized that being a conservative means she can now blame everything else in the world for the mistakes made by her ideological comrades. That those mistakes were so severe and far reaching that the whole world is suffering from them just goes to show that it must be the whole world's fault, not Friedmanites and Hayekians and a culture of non-regulation of massive, mostly imaginary, financial markets.

The problem with Israel-Palestine blogging:

... is that I almost have a sense of reality in this case, which leaves me feeling the whole thing is just tacky. I mean, let's have some oversimplified black and white takes on issues I can't even begin to frame honestly, dammit, not bloody reality.

Alright then.

Highly off topic

Courtney Love has a myspace blog. I know a meth addict who was born deaf who writes more coherently than she does. If you have a weakness for train wrecks, try reading the following portion of a post titled "peta etc whose that girl with the big boobies?/RICO statutes".

to a computer like at experian that "-" is a z or an r, its a etter, so Curtiss is Kelly Ipa Ripa i didnt take her for a soho gal 16 spring? 76 crosby? endless arkansas properties?
ho about mega proucer David Foster, David P Foster, David-Peter-Foster, Foster David D, etc, hsi akas go on for 102 pages it all fictiousness people on there but for the Fosters and Mark Consuealas and Kelly IPA< mine under courtney lovecobain no space is 98 pages and i get stuck being of all people axl rose, yep B A Bailey B baily ab bailey wa rose a rose all with 100s of iff addresses i get stuck being Pamela lee ANDERS , myneighbou and dear friend Pamela and Davids daughetr sara is also a good friend, since Knispel and Chapman is using their ssns and their ex spouses oh and Curtis leeorthmann is also Micheal Fleetwood and his ex, ythe rest like"Brian D amour:" are just nonsense , would you like me to scan it,? i think i can figure out how to do it now i have a scanner, they change information once i dissemnitae it, im actially wuite furious that my ag is governor gerry Brown and my senator BOxer and my Congressman Waxmen and ive ardently supposrted all of them and since the 4 trillio yep FOUR TRILLION in mortgage fruad annually in the usa 65% of it begings in the San fernando Valley depsite ending up in Houston or Metarie or Verdi Nev or 1200 pinbe island road plantation florida wich takes us to lesters llc in houston po box, and that takes us to a 96,000,000 apn in nyc again, why doesnt Merron l Kobane born 1900 get it? hes got ove 30 "properties: we all pay taxes on in california, and yet he doesnt exist or DAVE HEITMAN using KLurts ssn who has million dollar plus properties in CA and MAss, it is wierd to be called back by the AG of every NE state i call and and Southern one too and have to go there dragging my suitacse of papers as the information changes on the search sites not on merlin but on like people finders, Dawn Bell Kobane is now DAWN CICCONE KOBANE ha ha ha ha HA i guess we all get THAT joke but tell me, how does DAWN CICCONE KOBANE live at 482 COBAIN rod Jackson NJ wo whata bold devolepent move, is there such a place i looke donmy google maps and it didnt come up "49 avenue Cherry Plain NJ" or else how does Dawn Ciccone Kobane live at a 1.6 million dollar 516 86th street, apm 15820045 owner

That's just one random chunk out of several thousand items of text that are sometimes words. Later she says

NOW FOR THE RECORD I HAVENT TAKEN A NARCOTIC OR HAD ANY ALCHOHOL FOR NPW OVER FIVE YEARS.
if you want to call me eccentric or a witch bitch whatever you can i have never had any aspicartions that everyone "love" me, i truly DONT CARE expect for the people i care for

I really wish Courtney Love had a reality tv show. One of her dogs died by choking on one of her old breast implants. This woman is comedy gold.

(via firedoglake.)

Roughing it in the New Year

seems everyone has to make some compromises this year, even Megan.

So, the good news is that we found a house at the last minute, inked a lease yesterday, and are scheduled to move in on Friday. The news so bad [sic? what?] it is actually amusing is that Washington Gas denies that our house exists, and Comcast just informed me that they cannot schedule appointments in the new year because their dispatch hasn't yet released the schedule--at 3:30 in the afternoon on New Years Eve.

She might have to wait a day or two for cable service, and instead of, say, talking to the landlord about what the address is for the residence in the gas co.'s files is whineblogging about it.
Let's repeat, because the cable company wasn't in full operation mode the afternoon of New Year's Eve, Megan might not have cable right away, in a new house she's moving into at the last minute.
In 2009, this is happening. This isn't Soviet Russia, folks, it's the US, today. It could happen to any of us. No one is safe in this economy.