Thomas Frank has a good piece today about my favorite topic, the difference between the public’s overwhelming support for the stimulus package and the punditry’s contention that the last three weeks have doomed the once-promising Obama administration: It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject — whether from the left …
To edit or not to edit
I realize some of you may be sick of my Washington Post chat fixation but I found this interesting: Raleigh, N.C.: Good afternoon. What are the ground rules for the roundtable on “Meet the Press”? For example, if someone argues that Obama is bad because the sky is purple, are you allowed to say, no, …
Time to clone Nate Silver
This piece by Sharon Begley makes me rethink my desire for Newsweek to go bankrupt. It’s about a study of done and how to tell which ones are likely to be right: The best predictor, in a backward sort of way, was fame: the more feted by the media, the worse a pundit’s accuracy. And …
The sorry state of economics
Greg Clark of UC Davis has a fascinating post at the Atlantic about the sorry state of contemporary academic economics: as we have seen this year on the academic job market, macroeconomists had turned their considerable talents to a bizarre variety of rococo academic elaborations. With nothing of importance to explain, why not turn to …
Late night Eric Cantor video
You’ve been hearing a lot about Eric Cantor over the last few days, but you’ll really be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t watch at least part of this bizarre video that he put out in 2007. I wasn’t able to figure out what it was about, but Clay Risen of TNR says it’s …
The War Against George Washington
I’m pretty sure the check-out guy at Target said “Happy Presidents’ Day” to me, rather than the customary “Merry George Washington Day”. Apparently, it’s all part of TWAG: And yes, today’s federal holiday is still, and always has been, declared in federal law, as Washington’s Birthday, not any so-called amorphous “President’s Day” requiring celebrations of …
The lede and how to swing it
Amy Sullivan’s piece on the 2010 census has a big picture of Judd Gregg at the top and begins: When Republican Senator Judd Gregg announced on Thursday that he no longer wished to be the Commerce Secretary nominee, he said that the decision was based in part on serious disagreements with the Obama White House …