Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

This fight is for everything.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

You cannot shame the shameless.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

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Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    Morbo

    That’s funny, I’ll bet you’d be hard pressed to find someone outside of glibertaria who likes how Megan uses data.

  2. 2.

    dj spellchecka

    at the risk of igniting a flame war, i enjoy andrew’s blog…BUT he doesn’t know the first thing about economics….his ignorance on the subject is really quite remarkable

  3. 3.

    Zifnab

    Even assuming Megan wasn’t a total shill, is that even an argument, or just an appeal to Megan’s fee-fees?

  5. 5.

    Tonal Crow

    When a Republican says “empirical”, she means “derived via pettifogging from one or more of my favorite dogmas”.

  6. 6.

    jacy

    McMegan doesn’t so much use data as just wads it up and tosses it haphazardly in the general direction of the wastebasket, then it lays around on the floor for a while and gets tracked away on the bottom of someone’s shoe, never to be seen again.

    I’ll say it again, reading McMegan can actually make you dumber.

  7. 7.

    Tonal Crow

    @jacy:

    I’ll say it again, reading McMegan can actually make you dumber.

    Republican pundits are WMD: weapons of mass dementia.

  10. 10.

    gbear

    It doesn’t exactly read like a ringing endorsement, more like ‘will you get off my fucking back if I post something??’ All that means is that they may be circle jerking, but maybe not enjoying it. It’s still a dumb move by Sullivan.

  11. 11.

    brendancalling

    totally OT, but to the person who asked if hops will grow in South carolina, the answer is yes, but they like a lot of water.

    totally ON-topic, reading megan mcardle has indeed made me stupideder.

  12. 12.

    Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions

    The best thing about Weigel’s recent stint at Smalltown Boy’s place was that the Atlantic bloggers finally stopped fluffing each other and actually engaged in substantive debate (and yes, I’m including TNC in this, who’s had absolutely nothing to say about Megan’s revisionist history of the Civil Rights era).

  14. 14.

    dj spellchecka

    @dougj…i think saying anything nice about andrew in some quarters is flame bait, not the part that he’s an ecomonic illiterate…i suspect there’s broad agreement on that, once it’s pointed out…cheers

  15. 15.

    beltane

    Teh math, it is too hard for McMegan. How dare Elizabeth Warren do the numbers thingy whatchamacalit better than McMegan.

    If Sarah Palin can compare herself to Shakespeare, we should start comparing McArdle to Euclid.

  16. 16.

    dj spellchecka

    @btd…only because that was the subject under discussion here…he’s also pretty clueless when it come to race and his recent freakout over journolist was wildly off the mark

  17. 17.

    John Cole

    What is even more annoying is that on some of the pieces McMegan is butchering and attributing to Warren, Warren is actually the third author. Often times the third author on pieces like that is someone there specifically for an area of expertise, such as tying together theoretical implications that might be otherwise missed, ensuring that methodology is sound, or relying on that person’s vast knowledge and past work to provide reliable usage of extant research in the field. Not to mention the article has to be then peer-reviewed by other experts in the field. Then some hack cobbles together a bunch of opinion pieces (where is McMegan’s contrasting research or her usage of literature other than the much smaller Delaware study that Rortybomb annhilates), and predictably another economic illiterate, Sullivan, comes along and says it is interesting. You don’t get to just weakly and ignorantly opine on this kind of thing, you need to produce some sort of evidence or research to back up your arguments. McMegan doesn’t. McMegan can’t.

    After Betsy McCaughey at the TNR, you would think Sullivan would have some shame.

  19. 19.

    Waingro

    I’m all for reminding people that McArdle is a horrible asshole and a pseudo-intellectual poseur, but it’s important to remember that she’s ultimately a cog. An infuriating twit with the self-awareness of a literal cog, but still.

    She has a job because she says what the ruling class wants to hear:

    After all, why is McArdle so excruciating? It’s not because she is Wrong On The Internet. It’s because she is Wrong On The Internet while in a position of influence and power.

    And why is she in this position? Is it because David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic, wants to employ people who work hard to present an accurate picture of the world, and McArdle has somehow fooled him? Or is it because David Bradley wants to employ people who work hard to dishonestly slime Elizabeth Warren?

    And why is she in this position? Is it because David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic, wants to employ people who work hard to present an accurate picture of the world, and McArdle has somehow fooled him? Or is it because David Bradley wants to employ people who work hard to dishonestly slime Elizabeth Warren?

  20. 20.

    Katie5

    One look at the debacle over the Statistics Canada long census form demonstrates that not only do right wingers hate empirical evidence but ridding themselves of empirical evidence suits their long term goals.

  21. 21.

    DougJ

    @John Cole:

    I think he is contractually obligated to fluff McMegan, FWIW.

    Which is totally different than and not as bad as being on JournoList.

  22. 22.

    Redshift

    Megan doesn’t like how Warren uses data:

    And to think, that link could have been changed from fawning to truthful just by adding “i.e., to accurately support positions that Megan disagrees with.”

  23. 23.

    Warren Terra

    @John Cole
    Without commenting on McMegan’s idiocy, I mightn’t place importance on author order; in other fields author order is very meaningful, but I’ve heard in Economics it’s often alphabetical.

  24. 24.

    Waingro

    I’m curious when you might ever accept that Sullivan himself is a joke.

    he’s also pretty clueless when it come to race and his recent freakout over journolist was wildly off the mark

    After Betsy McCaughey at the TNR, you would think Sullivan would have some shame.

    To understand Sullivan, you have to remember one important thing- he’s a overemotional dumbass who happens to be an excellent prose stylist.

    He doesn’t know shit about policy, other than optics and which way the wind is blowing.

    It’s nice that he’s saying less stupid shit than before and that he’s not Glenn Beck, but really, does he expect a fucking cookie?

  25. 25.

    Bill Murray

    @jacy: McMegan totally uses data. She writes her conclusion, then makes up (or sometimes misinterprets others work) data to fit the conclusion. Then she runs that baby. That right there is how MBAs roll with the maths

  26. 26.

    beltane

    @Waingro: I understand that this is her job, but none of this explains why she is so awful at her job. There are plenty of right-wing economists who of presenting the propaganda. If McArdle displayed even a smidgen of competence, we’d be attacking her arguments, not mocking her lack of basic math skills.

  28. 28.

    Allison W.

    It was pretty disappointing to see Sully link to McCardle, but he usually links to a few people that lack credibility.

  30. 30.

    Irishnana

    I know this is off-point, but the HP ad completely obscures the post beneath it, making it literally impossible to read. There is no close box. Officially HATE this!

  32. 32.

    Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions

    @Bill Murray:

    I’m not given to hyperbole, but if Sully tries to martyr himself over his support of The Bell Curve one more time, I’m swearing him off forever.

  33. 33.

    Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions

    @DougJ:

    I doubt it’s contractual, I think it’s just a gentleman’s agreement. TNC hates it when people call Megan a moron in his comments section.

  34. 34.

    Marc

    Sullivan has been honest about confronting his past mistakes, and he has been superb on the subject of torture and about uncovering the rot in modern conservative thinking. He’s been brave, and I think correct, on confronting the distorted discussion of Israel in the US. I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, because he does have conservative instincts. But the tribal us-or-them attitude on display here is rotten to the core. And it’s far, far too common in the blog domain.

  35. 35.

    Warren Terra

    Marc, I’ll grant he’s good on torture and some other issues, byt he’s been anything but forthright on several major past errors – the infamous “fifth column” comments especially.

  36. 36.

    BTD

    @John Cole:

    Sullivan has no shame. You guys should know that by now.

    Need I remind you of the years where he was on a jihad against Krugman and was Donald Luskin’s biggest cheerleader?

  38. 38.

    BTD

    @Marc:

    No he hasn’t. Where has he owned up on Fifth Column? Betsy McCaughey? Charles Murray and the Bell Curve? Pimping Luskin and attacking Krugman?

    He has not owned up on any of this.

  43. 43.

    El Cid

    If you say that you are depending on empirical data then it makes it true, like a magical phrase. You don’t actually have to get or know actual empirical data.

  45. 45.

    Avid Reader

    That’s hilarious, I just saw this on Sullivan’s and thought: “It’ll only be a matter of minutes before someone over at Balloon Juice points to this with a snarky post.” Sure enough, popped over here and… TA-DA!

  46. 46.

    dj spellchecka

    @btd…no problemo…i understand that sully have lots of haters [and with good reason]….my “clueless about race” comment ties directly into the whole “bell curve” fiasco…. i’m more surprised that anyone would think he’s NOT controversial…cheers

  47. 47.

    QDC

    @Warren Terra:
    @John Cole:

    I have no idea whether the order of the authors is important, but neither of the two papers was published in an econ journal. One was in a medical journal (American Journal of Medicine), and the other was in a health policy journal (Health Affairs). Both journals are peer reviewed.

    Incidentally, the papers have the same authors, and they are in a different order. Alphabetical in AJM and not so in HA.

    Oh, and this stuff is basically my field, and I would encourage Megan McArdle, to submit her research with alternative conclusions to peer reviewed publications. The dataset is public, after all, and we know what a math whiz and expert on empirical methods she is on account of her Chicago M-fucking-BA. Either that or STFU.

  53. 53.

    Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions

    @Keith G:

    He sort of apologized for that, but…yeah. Holy shit. He really hates it when other journalists aren’t as obsessed with Sarah Palin’s vagina as he is.

  54. 54.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal

    @Waingro:

    To understand Sullivan, you have to remember one important thing- he’s a overemotional dumbass who happens to be an excellent prose stylist.
    —
    He doesn’t know shit about policy, other than optics and which way the wind is blowing.

    I disagree slightly. He’s an overemotional drama queen who happens to be an excellent prose stylist. He is functionally innumerate, and is thus prone to being badly wrong on any subject that involves quantitative analysis.

    That’s why he can be good on torture: there’s no math. It’s just a moral question.

    That’s why he continues to defend The Bell Curve: He doesn’t understand the arguments against it. There’s no point in arguing with him about it, because he’s lost at the beginning. Murray has numbers, the critics have numbers and Sully has no idea what either of them are saying.

    I don’t know if he has a learning disability and can’t grasp quantitative concepts, or if he’s just a lazy dumbass who can’t be bothered to learn even the basics. Frankly, I don’t care. Anytime one of his posts includes a number, stop reading it and go on to the next one. I don’t care if all it was was a street address; he’s going to fuck it up.

  55. 55.

    dj spellchecka

    so ultimately sully’s shout out to mcmegan is a toofer…he doesn’t understand economics and he keeps the faith with the atlantic’s version of “the 11th commandment.”

  56. 56.

    Arclite

    I said this the other day, and since then, there has been at least one mention of mcmegan on this site. She needs her own tag!

    Or maybe not. Who wants to go look her crap up anyway…

  57. 57.

    FlipYrWhig

    What is the matter with this person? Who put Megan McArdle in a position that what she cares about any fucking thing deserves to be shared with the world? It’s fucking ridiculous. It’s like James Inhofe talking about climate change. They don’t know remotely what they’re talking about, they just know that they’re right.

  60. 60.

    trollhattan

    I feel like an idiot even asking (familiar territory, but hey): why does The Atlantic employ this nimrod and obvious fraud? To make Goldberg look good? Ain’t working.

    That she’s in the same group as Coates and Fallows is simply galling, and taints them all. It’s not as though she’s a pinch of (red, designer) salt in the bouillabaisse (“for a soupçon of balance”) she’s a fucking vial of mercury.

  61. 61.

    currants

    @toujoursdan:

    No flame war here either, though I quit reading him about a year and a half ago or so. Used to like reading his blog, but his strident and obsessive anti-choice posts (don’t get me started on his religion posts) drove me up a wall. I mean, he’s a gay male, right? For that specific reason I think he should just STFU already–it’s not a choice he’s ever going to have to make (okay, fine, maybe I’m irrational).

  63. 63.

    liberty60

    I love how the underlying thrust of McCardle’s post is to refute refudiate the notion that medical bills cause, contribute, add to or otherwise make bankruptcies happen.
    I can only attribute this to the blindness of people who really don’t have to worry about finances, who refuse to acknowledge that for many middle aged people, a sudden illness and medical debt of upwards of several hundred thousands of dollars IS a catastrophe, not paid off with a subtle reshuffling of some investment account somewhere.

    Funny how every glibertarian I ever met was young, healthy, well employed.

  64. 64.

    Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions

    @liberty60:

    “Funny how every glibertarian I ever met was young, healthy, well employed.”

    And white. Well, maybe Asian.

  68. 68.

    J.W. Hamner

    What I find most impressive about this whole thing is how little McCardle was able to come up with to criticize. I know in my field you could come up with a laundry list of faults on even the best papers in a couple of minutes… research is done on a continuum and no paper is the final word on a subject… and yet all of her objections are extraordinarily weak and extremely dubious. I guess that’s a strong testament to the scholarship of Warren and her collaborators.

  69. 69.

    Leisureguy

    Useful info re: Megan and Jeffrey Goldberg:

    1) Views from the reading/subscribing public are influential.

    2) The standard form for Atlantic email addresses is [email protected] — e.g.,
    [email protected]
    [email protected]
    [email protected]

    3) The people of influence are:

    the owner, David Bradley: [email protected]
    the editor, James Bennet (note spelling) [email protected]
    the online editor, Bob Cohn [email protected]

    Use this information wisely and only for good.

  71. 71.

    Bernard

    the whole idea behind thinking with or for membership in a “tribe.” If a Tribe actually believes in facts, reality as it is, that a good start. that whole fact based reality vs. the faith based reality of Trust Me, I Know . that is why it is a good “tribe” to be a party with and of. of course, i could also choose to be an idiot and believe the nonsense of the “right thinkers,” and follow the Tribe way, lol. problem with that is i prefer not to be quite that stupid and easily led.
    i have no problem with following a reality based thinking Tribe, though. I’ve seen what happens where Non reality based/faith based thinking get used. lol any refudiators here!

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