After a brief gastritis-induced hiatus, Megan McArdle has resumed (via) her reign of terror at her new Daily Beast digs. FDR is a an “economic idiot” because shut up, that’s why. I liked this comment summing up glibertarian economic ideas:
I’ve started to think that the whole point of Libertarian economics is to generate enough science-y sounding “theories” that they can ignore empirical evidence. FDR’s an idiot, we can prove it, no need to look at boring stuff like economic outcomes.
More and more, I subscribe to the honeypot theory of the Daily Beast. Tina Brown is gathering all the empty, inane second-to-third tier pundits together in one place. Fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.
JPL
The growth of the middle class was all an illusion.
Valdivia
Is there a more vapidly obtuse libertarian contrarian than her?
smintheus
Maybe the idea is to bankrupt the Daily Beast and take all their careers down in one fell swoop.
Paula
Eric Rauchway via Brad deLong:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/07/eric-rauchway-megan-mcardle-says-something-wrong-on-the-internet.html
smintheus
@Valdivia:
Isn’t this all kinda redundant? ‘Libertarian’ pretty much says it all.
RossInDetroit
I still read Tomasky, though the comments section is the biggest trollfest you’ve ever seen. I wish he was still at the Gaurdian.
Bob2
DougJ, wasn’t life so good while she was on hiatus?
No howlers for 5 months.
(edit: okay i know there were a couple minor ones via her twitter and other crap, but c’mon, no full length ones)
Valdivia
@smintheus:
ha ha. I actually concede that contrarian was not needed but the vapidly obtuse is all her though.
amk
ezra klein
No, ‘Obamacare’ isn’t ‘the largest tax increase in the history of the world’ (in one chart)
MattF
@Paula: Uh, wow. Shredded McArdle with bits of cheddar and sour cream. We should bear in mind that DeLong is a historian as well as an economist, so one may assume he cited this passage because it made him feel glad all over.
norbizness
Homer: All that counts is that we’re alive and rubbing elbows with the greats. [gasps] Ooh, there’s Ross Perot, Dr. Laura, Spike Lee.
Bart: Wait a minute, they’re not so great.
Homer: Okay but there’s Dan Quayle, Courtney Love, [increasing panic], Tonya Harding, Al Sharpton, Ah! Tom Arnold! What the hell’s going on?
Bart: [looking out porthole] Wait! Only that ship’s going to Mars. Ours is headed for the sun.
Arnold: Yeah, ain’t that a kick in the teeth? I mean, my shows weren’t great but I never tied people up and forced them to watch. And I could’ve, because I’m a big guy and I’m good with knots.
IamNoYoda
Never visited the site ever since they signed up Howard Kurtz.
smintheus
@amk: Good link. Not surprisingly, the majority of those tax increases fall on the wealthy.
The Republic of Stupidity
Hey… who amongst us hasn’t been guilty of rubbernecking whilst driving past a good car crash on the freeway?
RossInDetroit
@amk:
Thanks for that. I Facebooked it because my ‘winger friends may have gathered the scattered pieces of their heads over the weekend, making them ready for exploding again.
MattMinus
I’m convinced the beast is just an industrial trolling operation. When sullivan gets the vapors over the phrase “war on women” and then immediately and without irony opines about the war on gays, he has to be doing it on purpose. People jumping all over you for being dumb must drum up more hits than anything else.
I doubt McMegan is in on the scam, but it would explain why she keeps being rewarded for sub-moronic work. If she wasn’t a mathematical illiterate, they’d have to ask her to fake it.
Jose Padilla
Does anybody know why she moved to the Daily Beast? It seems like a step (maybe two) down from the Atlantic Monthly. I figured the Atlantic kept her around because she seemed to have a huge following and they generated a lot of clicks. At least that’s the only reason I could think of.
jurassicpork
Hey, guess what? Today’s Welcome Back to Pottersville’s 4th anniversary.
amk
@RossInDetroit: yeah, I had one libertariantard on twiiter throwing at me a heritage linky saying it’s obamacare is the costliest plan evah and ‘murka couldn’t “afford it”. I asked him if he knew that it was a heritage plan to begin with and then silence.
RossInDetroit
@amk:
Two of my FB friends have already Shared that Klein article and chart. For good measure I threw in this Business Insider chart comparing government spending change from St. Ronaldus Maximus through Obama:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-28/news/30673024_1_government-spending-obama-and-reagan-reagan-recovery
MattF
Speaking of Galtian overlords, this from Paul Ryan (who, you may recall, is Chairman of the House Budget Committee):
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/paul-ryan-bashes-obamacare-because-rights-come-from?ref=fpblg
I don’t know, but that worries me, in an OMFG sense.
Linda Featheringill
BTW, a little further down on the Brad DeLong blog is an excellent, plain English summation of SCOTUS action on Obamacare:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/07/my-little-golden-book-of-the-aca-supreme-court-decision.html
General Stuck
There is so much bullshit writings with agendas on the internet these days, you can go crazy reading too much of it. The Beast is not on my menu, as they are one of those websites, like Huffpo, that are published with the mission to draw in for clicks and profit, with the latest direction of blowing pol winds. The cotton candy of political news, empty calories for empty minds.
I do read what passes as the intelligentsia for the right wing, usually a few blogs that can tell me what flavor of carrion the nutters are feeding on at any given point in time. Mostly from this pretty good aggregater. Or off Memerandum.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t.
Why anyone would want to read and believe someone who can’t even operate a calculator is beyond me.
Blenderella should stick to her kitchen appliances.
maya
“Honeypot theory”?
It’s more like the Dog-shit Theory – McMeagan is just the butterfly amidst the other flies.
Linda Featheringill
@MattF:
Rights come from God.
I saw that. The logic escapes me, unless is it “All good things come from God and therefore it is a sin for us to try to help each other.”
In truth, I don’t understand his theology either.
Ash Can
If Tina Brown does indeed have a master plan to gather all the worst hacks into one self-contained freak show and send it rolling off the journalistic cliff, my opinion of her will improve considerably.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@MattF: A question I’m going to start asking my winger coworkers whey they spout this off: “Why are you willing to trust someone who will kiss Jesus in public for 30 pieces of silver?”
Raven
@Ash Can: And she says “sort of” every other sentence!
Schlemizel
sadly, I think Hotel California told us what to expect:
“They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast.”
There is just too much money to be made from milking the morans
Ash Can
And in other Republicans-being-goofy news, anybody want a good laugh?
GOP: Obamacare is a TAX!!OMGeleventyonez
Romney campaign: No it’s not.
(Yes, the last line is a link.)
Raven
@Ash Can: No it’s not.
redshirt
Who watches “Angel” in the mornings on TNT? Am I the only one? Cuz just co-incidentally, they killed “The Beast” this morning. Awesome episode.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid of this woman. It burns!
Amir Khalid
My first thought was that DougJ was referring to the Disney Beauty and The Beast.
ericblair
The Golgafrincham B Ark theory of media. Wish it were true, but I can’t sign on to any conspiracy theory where a bunch of greedy arrogant wankers would have to lose now for benefit later. That also goes for any “Lulling Us Into A False Sense of Security!!one1!” theories like Obama not-gun-grabbing or Roberts turning into a double agent to screw us real good ten years from now.
kindness
Oh, too bad. Can we send Megan a get well gift? What was it that caused the gastritis? I’ll see if I can send her lots more. Why? Because if I don’t read Megan or about Megan for any period of time I feel physically & mentally better.
Bulworth
I’m currently reading Robert Caro’s first book on LBJ: The Path to Power, and am now in the section on the New Deal. LBJ, while only a congressman’s secretary, was instrumental in helping thousands of his district’s farmers get aid and keep their farms.
But of course, none of this matters because FDR was an idiot.
BTW, despite the aid the New Deal provided and the necessity for it, many of the wealthy in Texas and elsewhere opposed it because “socialism, communism, too much spending, government intrusion of libertay, etc”. Some things never change.
Ash Can
@Raven: Who calls it what is beside the point. What’s cracking me up is how the Romney campaign is going so far off the reservation here.
burnspbesq
How many more data points do we really need before we can state that the hypothesis “McArdle has nothing useful to say, and should be ignored” has been proven?
kindness
I see the comments are disabled over at Megan’s portion of the Daily Beast. I hope that wasn’t written into her contract. I was 86’d from Megan’s slice of the Atlantic. I’m hoping I can up my game at the Daily Beast.
Snarki, child of Loki
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I prefer not to look, when there are great globs and spashes of brain all over the cars, the highway, bystanders, the traffic signs that were so strenuously ignored, some of the nearby bushes, up on the overpass, and even a glob obscuring the pilot’s view on the hovering traffic helicopter, which is now getting disturbingly wobbly.
Who would have thought that a bear of so little brain could splatter it so far and wide? Truly, McArdle has talent.
Scott
The attempt by wingnuts to de-legitimize FDR’s legacy is truly amazing to me.
For more than fifty years, he was universally regarded as the man who saved the country from the Great Depression. No conservative would dare speak ill of him during that time, because people remembered. They lived through it.
Today’s conservatives have no such difficulties. Most of the public remembers little of history and the rest just agree with whatever stance their ‘side’ takes.
It just pisses me off that these same people who hold Reagan up as a great president, after all the scandals and indictments and other bullshit, try to tear down the accomplishments of a truly great man.
Maybe he should have been a Hollywood actor who looked good in a cowboy hat.
Roger Moore
@smintheus:
The more likely outcome would be for the worst of them to fail upward. We are dealing with 21st century media, after all; failing upward is what they know best.
Also, too:
FTFY.
Bulworth
@Scott: Reagan? Reagan was a communist and a baby-killer. The reichwing is back to luving them some Calvin Coolidge, the president who really saved us from the Great Depression, or would have prevented the GD if he had been able to run again, etc.
Napoleon
@Bulworth:
Wait until you get into the later books.
WereBear
@Bulworth: Ooooh, there is so much good stuff ahead of you!
Bulworth
@Napoleon: I’ve already read Master of the Senate and Passage of Power.
Yeah, LBJ was a real dick in the Senate sometimes. Hell, he’s a major ashole in much of Path to Power. But he made gubmit work for his constituents.
danimal
@burnspbesq: How many points of data are needed to assess your hypothesis???
I’m quite certain it’s a negative number at this point.
-10? -100? I’d say we’re about 500 posts past the time to assert that McMegan has nothing useful to say and should be ignored.
Scott
LBJ wasn’t so much an asshole as he was a shrewd politician. He rose slowly, making friends with the important people, found out where the bodies were buried, and then grabbed people by the balls to sway them to his way of thinking.
And one thing’s for sure: No elections would be stolen unless he was the one doing the stealing.
Origuy
@Ash Can: Raven was telling you that your link “No it’s not” is busted. Looking at the page source, in the a tag, there is only a / where the href= attribute is supposed to be.
birthmarker
DougJ, what was the last McArdle article at the Atlantic that caused the uproar? I remember it being maligned here, but I can’t remember the topic.
Then she went on hiatus to write a book, now she’s changed employer?? Sounds like the F word to me.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
I’ll admit to reading David Frum (first at Frum Forum and then at D.B.). Part of that whole “Know what your enemy’s thinking” thing. It’s been engaging watching him discover that his political party is loaded with turds and bigots and idiots….
Anoniminous
Right Wing Economics in total is a blather of pseudo-science persiflage. This is due to the facts (1) they do not understand, grasp, deal with, look at, ascertain, comprehend, cognize, think about, & etc. an economy is a Complex Adaptive System and (2) the basic axioms of their economic hallucination are straight from CloudCuckooLand.
In the light of current knowledge of dynamic systems, mathematics, and logic the Right Wing is off in search of philogiston, epicycles, and the aether.
catclub
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): One would hope he already knew that his party was full of idiots and bigot and turds ( oh my).
The amazing thing is that he is writing it down in public.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Well, catclub (#55), he’s one of several who’ve undergone a rather public epiphany… wasn’t Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs regarded as pretty conservative for a time? Of course, David Mamet apparently went the other way. I guess both sides really do do it!
DougJ
@birthmarker:
She wrote ten consecutive posts on how awesome the Koch are. Her husband works for the Kochs.
Bob2
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.):
Charles Johnson was driven insane by Iraq really. His epiphany was a bit like Cole’s. Sullivan’s is still half-assed.
David Brock ended up creating Media Matters. There are a few others.
Rathskeller
So she was fired? What happened?
Raven
Here are maters and okra from our garden and, gasp, corn from Saturday’s Farmers Market.
M. Bouffant
@Rathskeller: She wasn’t FIRED as such, but I suspected that her book-typing “leave” would end w/ her being employed elsewhere. It may have something to do w/ Sullivan, who was probably responsible for her gig at The Atlantic in the first place. She follows him like a lost puppy.