McArdle: We Are Not Bonobos!

I'm pretty much at the point where it's easier to find commentary about Megan than it is to visit her & deal. Probably not a good sign for my mental health, but the increase in "How can this person be so ob-fugging-tuse?" items recently is an indication that our mission here has not been completely in vain.

I'm not familiar with Ms. McArdle's work, but if she's got a gig at The Atlantic, which is one of the most respected magazines in the country, presumably this is far below her usual intellectual standard.

Benefit of the doubt. Those scientists/academics do live in one hell of an ivory tower, don't they?

Wonderful as it would be if Ms. McArdle's opinion of our book were to change when/if she gets around to actually reading it, I'm not holding my breath because I don't think she's responding to the substance of the book at all; she's responding to what it makes her feel, which is something entirely different.

SNAP!

I Remember My First Primary

Holy shit. I bring you the Comment of the Day:

I think that one of the biggest obstacles to reform is not one particular party ,but the simple fact that Iowa votes first in the primaries.

Next, Megan will be shocked -- SHOCKED I say -- to learn that the electoral college has it roots in slavery.

How does someone whose job it is to know things about politics find it SHOCKING NEWSWORTHY ZOMG WHYWASN'TIINFORMED to hear that Iowa gets more attention than other states?

Furthermore, there are about 65 other states in the mid-west which are pretty much giant farms and 1/4 of the food grown in America comes from California. So, what the fuck are you talking about, Walter?

Screw The Main Stream Media Bloggers Too

Oh, for crap's sake, already!

Snark Hunting Susan notes it a wk. ago, brad notes that she noted it; a wk. later it's all over the Media Village blog-o-sphere, w/o any credit. (Which would seem to be the least they could do, as none of us are exactly in it for the money.) Or did it just take them a wk. to wade through the WaPoo chat & notice? Of course, they don't even credit each other: "A colleague points me to this." Not a recommendation either way.

brad adds:

Matty Y. has even reduced Susan to "Washington Post readers", probably because she's one of them DFH's who got the war right.

Thanks to commenter cd over there for linking to us, tho. For those MY readers just getting here, it was Susan who asked that question. Go read her, you'll be smarter for it.

"I know for a fact that people like you think you're pretty darned funny. But you aren't."

Nahgunna play my homeless card here; this commenter of Megan's spouts the party line as well as I can, & he gets apocalyptic!

EconocataclysmJuly 29, 2009 9:42 AM

Megan said:

"In practice, what are you going to do with a family that insists on waiting for the perfect Section 8 apartment or assisted housing option to emerge?"

The subtext of this statement is that people who can't get a job are "just lazy". Or, when a speculative bubble has raised the rent on a one-room shack in a crack neighborhood to a little more than you make in a month that something is "wrong" with you.

So, please tell the audience exactly how much time you have spent homeless.

(sound of crickets chirping)

Thought so.

It's real hard to find a job when you have no place to live. Hygiene problems as well as problems storing your stuff, what little you have left, become very serious. And then, of course, since we offshored all of our production and those mythical "information jobs" never appeared to replace them, there might not actually BE a job for you to get even if you could work out all of the logistics of sleeping in a gutter and somehow managing to look presentable enough to GET and KEEP a job. Not to mention GETTING TO A JOB. The public transportation systems in most parts of the country are laughable, assuming even that you CAN afford to use them.

All things you have absolutely NO direct experience of. Therefore you really have nothing to say about the subject that is worth listening to.

No, seriously. You don't.

I know for a fact that people like you think you're pretty darned funny. But you aren't. And the unfunny-ness of this situation is only becoming more apparent by the day. All of those homeless in NYC are about to have LOTS of company. People who have never had the experience of homelessness in their entire lives suddenly losing everything as jobs dry up and the balloon terms in their once so easy looking mortgages start slapping them in the face.

People who will never again buy the line that people who can't get work are "just lazy".

Tens of millions of them. And they vote.

The financial holocaust that was just triggered by the pigs in the financial sector is going to make the 1930's look like a beach party. "Temporary Shelters" will become permanent tent cities. The streets of our cities will be teeming with armies of the newly disenfranchised, all looking for someone to blame.

And as for you... I hope you put all that lovely cash of yours in gold. Because if you didn't, you'll be starving along with the rest of them. Because right-wing pundits who make a living by blaming the poor for being poor are going to go out of fashion faster than the hula hoop.

-Jay Randall

http://www.econocataclysm.com

I'm A Moocher, Looting The Work Of Others

As no one here got to this Mega-item (I've a vague memory of scanning it, noticing that my hair was starting to hurt, & moving along) why not enjoy it from the perspective of the sort of person who is an "adult," has written books on, if not the economy, then right-wing presentation of economic issues, & gets TNR to pay him to do this sort of thing?

So McArdle's comparison -- some countries have cut taxes and thereby raised revenues, some countries have controlled costs with universal coverage -- turns out to be true if you replace the first "some" with "zero" and the second "some" with "all." Other than that, great comparison!

There does seem to be a pattern here of McArdle trying to explain away the influence of supply-siders on the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Two years ago, in response to me, she huffed that Laffer Curve devotees amounted to no more than a tiny fringe within the GOP. ("This motley collection of names is hardly proof that the Supply Siders Have Taken Over the Building.") Shortly after, in a hilarious bout of karma, McArdle had a book review spiked by a major conservative publication because, in the course of her otherwise orthodox argument, she noted that the Laffer Curve does not depict present-day tax rates in the U.S. (I would say better evidence of McArdle being wrong was the fact that the last Republican president and every GOP primary candidate in the 2008 election asserted that tax cuts could revenues to grow.)

So then, in the course of issuing a mea culpa, McArdle asserted that the same dynamic exists on the left with regard to unwillingness to criticize teachers unions. It was quickly pointed out that criticizing teachers unions is not only common but practically de rigeur among liberal columnists, magazines, think tanks, and even elected officials. So now, in her quest to show that it's not just conservatives, everybody does it, she's reaching for an even more preposterous comparison.

--Jonathan Chait

We'll scout about; perhaps Ms. McA. responded. Well, no. Not only no response, but the very next day runs an item about that ol' Laffer & his curve that makes no mention of Mr. Chait's rebuttal or takedown or vicious blog slam or whatever.

How Could They Possibly Sell for More Than I'm Willing to Pay?

Megan tells us "Why I Think the Housing Bubble Has Not Yet Bottomed" because there are a few retards out there who, incredibly, want Megan's opinion on things.

The reason housing prices haven't bottomed, she says, is because the people selling this condo are asking more than it sold for 4 years ago. Naturally, she's not looking at the multitude of graphs showing the national housing price is still well above historical norms. Nope, she's armed with an anecdote. For those too lazy to click, the listing is in the heart of a good neighborhood in the middle of DC.

Now, for someone so convinced housing prices haven't bottomed, it's a bit odd she's looking at house listings. That's, of course, not the stupidest thing she is doing, though. The stupidest thing is here is that she doesn't know anything about housing prices save that they're down. Anyone who is a modicum of informed would know that they're down in some areas but relatively unchanged in others. Those other areas typically being in the center of major metropolitan areas; you know, like downtown DC. To wit, commenter Jim:

Are you familiar with comparable sales? Looks like the going rate for a 900-1000 sqf 2 bed 1 bath condo within a couple blocks of this one range from 485-540K over the last 6 months (6 sales). Seems to me they are already at the low end of this range. Perhaps their realtor knows the market better than you do?

An expert knowing more than Megan? NEVER!

Oh, and thanks, Jim. As soon as I read it I knew she had to be wrong along these lines. I'm glad I didn't have to do the legwork myself to prove it.

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?"

Spiky Gray Hair Salon®

Re: brad? Finals? End of semester something or another?

brad mentioned when he started this lovely web log what an admirer of Camille Paglia he was. Here's her latest typing, as first noted at the inestimable TBogg's. We're only sorry it was published just before The Ill. Gov. was arrested. Think what she could have gotten out of that.

A short enough example:

Because seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on native soil, many Americans, particularly urban professionals, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security. 

Oh, those Uppies. They've let themselves be lull-a-bye-ed. Those city dwellers [Who are, essentially, the target class. — Ed.] should be just as scared as all the hicks out in the middle of Heartland nowhere.

God, She's Such an Idiot

I present to you, in full, "All sugars are equal, but some are more equal than others":

I've long been skeptical of the claim that high fructose corn syrup was especially evil; too many of these diet claims are the nutritional equivalent of "electromagnetic fields are giving me cancer!" But Derek Lowe makes a convincing case that it's at least possible.

First, we get the usual idiotic and uncapitalized title. Note to Megan: Taking some completely irrelevant well-known phrase and replacing one the words in it with what you're writing about does not produce a clever title. At all. Just stop. For the love of fucking God, just stop!

Then, she goes on to compare the belief that fructose is worse than sugar to the belief that electromagnetic fields cause cancer. Where to begin? Let's start by asking "How stupid do you have to be to flippantly dismiss that your body weight might be affected by THE FUCKING SHIT YOU PUT IN YOUR MOUTH?!?!?!?!" After we've asked that, let's go on to point out that electromagnetic fields don't exist. There are electric fields and there are magnetic fields, but there are no electromagnetic fields. Assuming she meant electromagnetic radiation, well, she's still being stupid. EM radiation encompasses all forms of light. That includes, among others things, X-rays, Ultra-violet light, microwaves and gamma rays. Those are just some of the kinds of EM radiation that CAUSE FUCKING CANCER.

As you were.