"How Long Before I Actually Have To Turn Something In?"

A tip of the Bouffant chapeau to enabler (Or should that be co-dependent?) Susan of Texas, who is teasing us w/ a hint she's onto something concerning Megan's welfare payments.

This is the specific tip earner, though, referring to McArdle's leeching from the private sector:

Outlining a better policy model for thinking about failures at the individual and institutional level will be the focus of her fellowship.

We can hear it now: "Poor people should start saving their money, preferably at an unregulated & uninsured bank."

A Thousand Wordsworth

Blame Susan, in the comments to "A Kitten Quandry." If she hadn't mentioned it, you can bet the next bubble that I wouldn't have heard of it, looked for it, or made it available here.

Also bet that I haven't looked at it yet, & may never. I can tell you that cokehead Kudlow goes to Ms. McArdle for the opening; if you want to see & hear, you can get a glimpse & bail before the other wankers (from the American Enterprise Institute & the usual suspects) start, & before the application of knitting needles to eye-balls & ear-drums seems a viable alternative to continued viewing & listening.

Commenters please note: This site does not discriminate on the basis of physical appearance. Please avoid any comments about how odd/butchy anyone looks (Has she given up already now that she's latched onto a husband? Or did the make-up person tell her she'd look good that way? Dirty filthy creative types: They're all unionized socialists!) the color of anyone's lipstick, & Kudlow's elitist white collar & cuffs & flag lapel pin (Is he so fucking stupid/brain-damaged by the blow he no longer even knows which fucking country he's in, for tax evasion purposes?). Thank you.

Trivial

It's almost Spook Night, & what better time to re-enter the overgrown elfin horror of Megan McArdle's mind? The woman who can't spell her favorite word, even when spotted the "e," would like us to pay some attention to some stuff she's typed about something else.

When we were considering the stimulus, I got asked frequently whether it would work.  That very much depends on what you mean by "work".  If the question is:  "can I increase the size of a measured variable by boosting one of the components of that variable," then the answer is undoubtedly "yes"--but this is trivial.

Well, that depends on what the definition of "works" is, doesn't it? And maybe we aren't ready to deal w/ this. A clue for Mlle.: The question (she asked it herself) was "Will the stimulus work?" Not, "Ha ha, would you type something obvious & not funny even as sarcasm while avoiding the truth about the stimulus?"

We borrowed a bunch of money from abroad, and that was going to show up as an increase in GDP.  But as I wrote in our November issue, GDP is at best a proxy for our well-being, not a direct measure of it.  It's often a good proxy.  But it's never perfect, and it's very easy to manipulate with certain sorts of government actions, most notably borrowing a ton of money from the global capital markets.

I am on the edge of my seat awaiting the McArdle Index, so we can begin measuring our well-being w/o the irksome proxy of the GDP.*

Megan asks four questions, one of which is

2)  Are employment and compensation growing?

Funny, considering wages have been essentially stagnant since the Reagan era, & that, after all is good for Megan's America. Unless "compensation" is code for more bonuses for Wall St.

Elements of Style©:
How to type as if you graduated from a not really bad junior high school:

We borrowed a bunch of money from abroad
borrowing a ton of money from the global capital markets

Next wk., we'll find out that we've borrowed a bunch of tons of money.

Also fascinated by this sentence:

The things I think we really want to know about the economy are

The horror of the overgrown yet still elfin mind. Boo!

* One of the axes of the "McArdle Index."

A Kitten Quandry

I know, I've been slacking still. Busy week, now with a new twist. There's a kitten in my basement. A small, I'd guess about 12 weeks old, (oops, more like 5 months) all black very friendly and loving little male kitten. He's hard to photograph, being all black and an always moving kitten, but here's some shots to get the idea.




I just discovered him a couple hours ago tonight, so I'm not sure what to do with him. For the moment he has to stay in the basement in case of sickness he might give Binkley, but he now has a large amount of food and water, a litter, and a warm bed so he should be ok until the morning (plus I put his bed in the boiler room where it's warm). I'm tempted to keep him, but I think Binkley prefers being an only child. In any case I have to get him checked out tomorrow, and if anyone in the NYC area reaaaaaaaally wants a cat, he's an incredibly friendly little guy. And if anyone knows a good animal rescue/shelter/vet in Brooklyn do plz share.
The disturbing part of the story is the super was in the basement yesterday, apparently mentioned the kitten to the building owner, but left it down there locked in, with no food and only dirty rain runoff for water. In other words, my super is a huge asshole. I'm glad I heard the little guy crying.
*end random digression*

Mocking Me

That fucking ...... GARRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Creepiest Words Ever Written

The father of Sarah Palin's grandson will go ahead with his much-hyped Playgirl shoot in mid-November "in order to get the pictures out for the holidays"

In the immortal words of Bauhaus, wipe away my eyes, for I have seen too much . . .

It's a synergistic orgy of insipid shit. I am going to fucking kill someone. She did it on fucking purpose. I know it. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. You WILL read about murders in Berkeley today.

Trying to Be Charitable

So, I really don't want to read it this way. Admittedly I skimmed large portions of it. I'm pretty sure that Ross Douthat is actually saying that Anglicans and Catholics need to team up and take on Islam.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

It's not entirely clear, but he really seems to be saying that the "foe" is Islam in Europe (for the Catholics) and Africa (for the Anglicans).

The man is calling for another fucking crusade.

In the pages of the New York Fucking Times.

Fuck it.

Just..... Fuck it.

I am going bowling.

Oh, Yeah, Weren't We Getting Someone Fired?

No, we really weren't. But let us dream. My thoughts on the week:

1) Megan doesn't know what a link farm is. It continually amazes me that someone whose ostensible job is to write doesn't even bother to get the basic things right. Link farm is a common phrase, yet she can't be bothered to throw it into google before she starts using it thrice weekly to show us stupid articles.

2) Somehow this hasn't gotten mentioned: Megan is reposting Glenn Beck clips again: Only this time, approvingly! Yes! Of course! When a women says something about Mao and Mother Teresea being her favorite philosophers any reasonable person who knew that Mao hated religious people and Teresea was possibly catholic would think she was being literal. Here's Megan in the comments:

Guys, it was a moronic thing to say. That's all. This does not mean Obama is a communist, etc. It just means that his communications director said something moronic. And it was moronic. Beyond calling Chairman Mao one of her favorite political philosophers, her speech is borderline incoherent.

Guys, just cause we say Megan McArdle should be fucking fired doesn't mean she's incompetent, lazy and stupid. It just means we think she should be fired. I don't know how you could possibly think we're saying there's anything wrong with her just by constantly linking to her disapprovingly.

Later she says:

Matt, the problem with this quote is that it is precisely the attribute she is praising--Mao's indifference to the opinions of others, as well as a pig-headed unwillingness to acknowledge the potential downsides of his actions--that caused the millions of deaths. It's one thing to approvingly quote Roman Polanski on film. It's another thing to approvingly quote him on sexual morality.

Which is a major speaking comprehension fail as the speaker was quite obviously talking about perseverance. Which is cool. I mean, I can't understand Hugh Jackman so I guess Mille is allowed to not understand whatever this woman's name was.

3) And finally for my little morning "Oh, yeah, I should do my job sometime this month" we've got another example of Megan just setting 'em up in her own mind so she can knock 'em down on her blog.

I have to admit, I'm kind of shocked by the number of people willing to advance the theory that political speech done by trade associations is not real political speech, or that it's okay to use the threat of regulatory punishment to shut down political speech just as long as you don't actually seize the printing presses.

How many kinds of fail can we count in here? Well, first I'm kind of shocked that she doesn't link to a single person saying that. Maybe there are some people out there. Next to some unicorns and a pot of gold. Second, we've got the absurd proclamation that Obama is threatening to muzzle the insurance companies, which makes sense if time goes backwards and the study to which she is vaguely alluding happened before Obama decided to take on health care. Third, we have this crazy bum-fuck confusion about what freedom of the presses means, or, rather, what it's paired with ie freedom of fucking speech in general. Guess what doesn't matter? WHO THE FUCK SAYS WHAT! The whole "printing press" bullshit or whatever she's talking about just doesn't make any fucking sense. I believe now we're two out of ten for misinterpreting the bill of rights.

The real hilarity comes with her hypocrisy, though. What is Obama doing other than painting his opponents with the evil obstructionist brush? To be sure, that's a legit crit if you happen to be able to find it, but it's not exactly a new thing for McArdle. You don't have to scroll down very far to find notations of her pointing out how bad brown people are. It's not like she wasn't making up violent anti-war protesters in her brain and threatening to bash their heads in.

And we're done.

Cat Porn Interlude

Binkley would like some attention, plz.



And so he shall receive it.



That is all.

We All Can Be Idiots Sometimes

even Matt Taibbi. (Yes, more off topic baseball stuff.)
Taibbi suffers from rabid anti-Yankeedom, a tragic condition which impairs one's capacity for logic and leads to otherwise intelligent people making absurd claims like the Yankees would suck this year or that Brian Cashman is somehow a worse GM than someone like Dayton Moore. It also leads to a position of cognitive dissonance where instead of the franchise spending revenues on payroll anti-Yankee fans argue the Steinbrenner family should be further enriched, and further idiocy where this fact is repeatedly denied without any reasonable cause. The Yankees have, by a substantial margin, the highest revenues in the game, so by all rights they should have the highest payroll. Yes, there is an inherent imbalance between the ability of the Yankees and, say, the Royals to compete, but that doesn't make it the Yankees' fault the Royals have sucked for almost two decades, that's due to simple bad management.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bothered by most anti-Yankee crap, though it does irk me a bit when otherwise intelligent liberals vent their inner jock bigot and call me sometimes quite horrible things for daring to root for a team they don't like. I was picked on a lot as a kid for being smart, but I was always big enough to fight back so I still have an urge to do so. But Taibbi's style of idiocy just makes me laugh. As Reverend Said said in Oz, "God does not need you to protect him from morons".
I don't understand the Taibbi fandom, tbh, even separate from one bad piece from 6 months ago. He picks targets we on the left don't like, sure, but he himself isn't that impressive, especially when he decides to pretend he's the heir of HST. I see Taibbi as just as much of a careerist as Ezra Klein, just on a slightly different path.

(Just for the record, and as an olive branch to those who, not being fans of the team, focus more on the legitimate problems in the structure of MLB, I will say the team should not have received public subsidies for their new stadium, if they even truly needed a new stadium. And neither should any other team. I might also be the only Yankee fan who's both in favor of the luxury tax and the Yankees perpetually paying it.)

Shorters

because I'm lazy and they're easy to pound out while watching Sabathia and the Yanks make this a good fall.

Scoring the Baucus Bill: Tax Dynamics:

Concern troll wants you to remember stuff costs money, which means we shouldn't do stuff, unless it involves blowing up brown people and their stuff.

Three Books to Change Your Mind:

Instead of laughing at, not with, PJ O'Rourke I'd like to highlight this line from Amazon's description of The Elusive Quest for Growth;

The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work.

And remember, conservative ideology didn't fail, Bush failed conservative ideology.

The UAW's New Conflict of Interest:

To review, executive level compensation being driven into the stratosphere by conflicts of interest isn't a biggie, especially if we're talking about bankers getting rich off bad mortgages their bank never planned on owning long term, but union workers demanding slightly less when they're working for themselves is deeply troubling insofar as a group Megan dislikes is continuing to exist.

Do Private Insurers Subsidize Public Programs?:

Does cost shifting exist? Do hospitals actually use private insurance to subsidize inadequate reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid? Insurers claim it does, but they would, wouldn't they?

No comment from me needed.

"We Will Control Healthcare Costs, Because We Have To":

Once again, concern troll would like to remind you that doing stuff costs money, and ask that you not remember the tax cuts and war she supported which have no relation to any debt incurred providing basic medical care for the American people, nor any relation to our national debt at all.

That's enough for now. The Yanks just won, I think it's time to smoke some pot.