The KrugMan Speaks

...also, Today's Best Blog Line is the one hi-lited below:

Three Unsayable Words

Brad DeLong finds Allan Meltzer inveighing against quantitative easing, and notes that Meltzer’s story (in which it’s all Obama’s fault) is completely at odds with data on both investment and interest rates.

But there’s a larger story here. Some readers may recall that four long years ago Meltzer warned, in the direst of tones, that we faced a looming danger of inflation from expansionary Fed policy. Those of us who had studied Japanese experience, and more broadly thought through the implications of the liquidity trap, shot back that this was foolish — even if the Fed greatly expanded its balance sheet, the funds would just sit there, for example accumulating as excess bank reserves.

So here we are, with inflation low and falling despite a huge Fed expansion, and with Meltzer himself pointing out that the bulk of that expansion just sat there, largely in the form of excess reserves. In a better world, Meltzer would say the three unsayable words — “I was wrong” — and maybe even admit that the other side of the argument had something to it.

But no; his predictions didn’t go completely wrong because his analysis was wrong, it was all the Affordable Care Act, or something. And like so many people who originally raged against easy money because it would cause inflation, the failure of inflation to take off has simply led them to invent new reasons to take the same hard-money position.

And I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to think of a single prominent conservative economist who has responded to the complete failure of his predictions by changing his views. This has long since stopped being merely an analytical issue; it has become a moral issue, a test of character. And almost everyone on that side of the debate has failed.

Dr K just keeps pluggin' away - and may Zeus bless him for that. I don't get a lot of what Krugman has to say, but I think it's important to find people who seem to be looking for the same kind of Uppercase-T-for-Truth that I'm looking for. And if it doesn't quite fit my political leanings, then I have to change my thinking, not just keep scratchin' around for "facts' that seem to bolster my preconceptions.

Krugman strikes me as the kinda guy who will never say anything as stoopid as, " It isn't that (insert name of bullshit ideology here) failed us; we failed (bullshit ideology)."

Find that truth and stop working so hard to maintain your self-image as some kind of oracle. What Would Krugman Do?

A Coupla Cents Worth

This one's making the rounds, and of course, in the end, the Repubs are actually cheering a woman for doing what an awful lot of 'em think is justification for taking a pot shot at her next time they see her on the street.

This has been put together with the fact that while Ol' 3-Things Rick was busy sucking up to 'the base' by trying to slut-shame Ms Davis, one of his prison wardens was carrying out Texas execution #500.  But being Irony-Challenged is just kinda who they are and how they roll.



That's plenty to gripe my ass right there, but what really gets me is that whenever I hear this strain of argument - the one about giving everybody a fair chance blah blah blah - some things just naturally pop into my brain: first, how come the fetus gets a fair shot to have "every possible advantage" (which will have to include spending huge amounts of tax dollars to enforce criminalization of abortion) but its 8-year-old sister deserves nothing but cutbacks in the SNAP benefits that make it barely possible for her to get whatever third-rate education she has to struggle for in a semi-shitty school that became kinda shitty because of Wingnut Austerity & Privatization, and so they can't afford to do any better?

Second - when these 'conservatives' are waxing idiotic about 'the unborn', why is every fetus automatically destined to become Bill Gates or Albert Schweitzer or Wendy Davis, while apparently none of 'em could possibly have grown into the next Klaus Barbie or Richard Speck?

It's like when somebody decides they can "channel a past life"; everybody's a great warrior, or a noble, or a high priestess, or some heroic figure; and nobody's ever some regular schmuck who sucked at his job and tried to fuck his sister-in-law when he was drunk, and then wandered off into the woods and got eaten by a wolverine.

The point here, Governor Derringer-dick, is that Wendy Davis is the only one in any room at any time under any circumstance who has the brains, and all the information necessary, and the fucking right to make healthcare decisions for Wendy Davis.

You don't like abortions?  Don't get one.  Seriously.  Butt out and find something useful to do with your time and my money.

Nice Little Joint Ya Got There, America

...be a shame sump'n bad should happen to it.

And as long as we're casting ourselves in the role of oppressed victim, let's not forget about the delicate sensibilities of Macho Jesus:

And shit, while we're at it, we should put together another cringe-worthy campaign slogan (and don't forget the graphic) that encourages our fellow Goddies and Cristianists to do the Blow Job Mime - I just can't wait to see what the Libruls can do with Photo Shop on this one.

Today's Rude Pundit

RIpped entirely from The Rude Pundit's blog:

6/21/2013

In Brief: On the Continuing Need to Shove a Can of PBR Up the Elitist Ass of David Brooks:
Every once in a while, New York Times columnist David Brooks strays into the Rude Pundit's 'hood and writes about the world of the university. The Rude Pundit, see, is a real and actual perfesser, not someone who playacts as one, as Brooks did in his recent stint teaching a course in "Humility" at Yale. (Here's a hint: if you own a $4 million dollar house because your $1.6 million house wasn't cutting it, you don't have the right to teach a brain-damaged dalmatian about humility.)

Today, in his column (if by "column," you mean, "the smug pronouncements of a dilettante intellectual fraud"), Brooks mournsthe decline of "the humanities" at colleges. And who does he blame for the fall-off in humanities majors? Fuckin' professors, man, and their fuckin' politics. See, "the humanities are not only being bulldozed by an unforgiving job market. They are committing suicide because many humanists have lost faith in their own enterprise." Is that what we've done? That wasn't just existential nausea at reading Brooks?

Please, person who doesn't teach in the humanities, do go on and tell those of us who do what we're doing wrong: "The job of the humanities was to cultivate the human core, the part of a person we might call the spirit, the soul, or, in D.H. Lawrence’s phrase, 'the dark vast forest.'" Yes, indeed, it was always about idyllic afternoons, laid out on the manicured grasses of the quad, quoting Eliot and Schopenhauer just enough to soak the panties of sighing coeds. "The humanist’s job was to cultivate this ground — imposing intellectual order upon it, educating the emotions with art in order to refine it, offering inspiring exemplars to get it properly oriented." Until those pesky sexual harassment lawsuits put an end to all that cultivating by professors.

But we haven't gotten to the meat of the matter: "Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender." That's right. Oh, for the days when white male professors could teach the white male canon and the universality of their whiteness.

Fuck, David Brooks is the Paula Deen of the Times op-ed page.

Here, Davy Boy, let this professor, one who doesn't teach privileged little shits how noble other privileged little shits are, give you a lesson: The "decline" of the humanities, from 14% of majors in the 1960s to 7% now, has happened not because the big, bad, evil cultural anarchists came in and demanded their pound of canonical flesh. No, see, what has happened to the humanities happened on multiple levels. Conservative fucks like you attacked them as invalid because we decided that things like race, gender, and class mattered because the university opened up to more people of different races, genders, and classes (and, you dunce, class was a huge category of study in the 1930s until red-hunting administrators got a few Marxist scalps and that approach to the humanities was squashed until the 1970s). Add to that the corporatization of the university: schools seek big-ass grants and donations, and those generally come from big-ass companies who want to fund things like business, science, and technology, not the history department. Add to that the destruction of secondary education by "reform" minded people, generally conservative fucks like you, which makes the humanities into another bubble to be filled on a yearly standardized test. Add to that the establishment of Education as a major area of college study, one that has exploded in the last couple of decades and has taken many humanities majors with it.

But, no, really, go ahead and blame those vile feminists and Marxists and multiculturalists and others. It's so much easier than actually solving the fucking problem.

The Honorable Ms Duckworth

Tammy Duckworth does more for us in a 4 minute reaming of a Small Business Phony than Joe (the deadbeat) Walsh managed to do in his full term.

Today's Pix

Today's Haiku

Five syllables here

Seven more syllables there

Are you happy now?

Why Does "The Media" Suck So Bad?

Well, here's a pretty good example from NYT, "reporting" on the special session in Texas, where Repubs were trying to jam thru a bill to kill abortion rights in at least half of the state.

“With all the ruckus and noise going on,” Mr. Dewhurst said, he could not complete administrative duties to make the vote official and sign the bill. Senate Democrats and women’s right’s advocates said the real reason the vote could not be made official was a time stamp on official documents that showed the bill passed after midnight. The Legislature’s official Web site first posted that the Senate’s vote occurred on Wednesday, after the midnight deadline, but the date was later changed to Tuesday for unknown reasons.

Yo, NYT Editors; that last bit there - the date was later changed to Tuesday for unknown reasons - that's why nobody trusts what you guys put out any more.

Yes, you need to maintain something like a Veneer of Integrity, and you need to avoid making unfounded accusations of wrong-doing.  OK, we get that.  But "unknown reasons", and you just leave it at that?  That's strictly bush-league surface-level reporting; any high school monthly could come up with something better than that.

Maybe you could ask a question or two that might be germane to the proceedings in some obscure tangential way; like, oh I dunno - is it common for the time stamp to be changed like that?  When was the last time a time stamp was changed?  Is it legal for someone to change a time stamp after the fact?  Is there anything in the Ethics Handbook or in the Rule Book about such things?

So why do we think you guys suck at your job?  Because you suck at it.

Ashamed Of My Name

With the possible highly probable exception of the Bread-Mold-As-Brain-Tissue Wing of The Party That Dares Not Speak Its Name, Chief Justice John G Roberts - NO FUCKING RELATION TO YOURS TRULY, BTW - will not be remembered fondly.

Does the name Roger B Taney ring any bells?  How 'bout Melville Fuller?

I'm trying to stay with my doctrine of Judge Slowly here, but the SCOTUS ruling on Section IV of the VRA yesterday looks like another Monument to Stoopid.

Here's the metaphor: Very few people are robbing banks any more, so we can safely get rid of the law that makes Bank Robbery a crime.

We go now to Charlie Pierce for some brain bleach:

Today Among People Who Wear Robes

A Little More On The Voting Rights Atrocity

Even More About Today's Voting Rights Atrocity

We are so fucked.

DumFux News

I'm sure they'll say it was just a joke; a little self-deprecating silliness - cuz hey, that's what all the Libruls are saying about us anyway.

But the one thing you have to know by now is that you can't bring the funny if you don't bring the truth.