Stuff to Discuss

Miss Lucy seems to be fading away. I can still get some purrs out of her, but she is very thin and mostly wants to sleep now. And today’s news is mostly depressing, and there’s nothing nagging me to write about it. Here are just some short bits —

Is Jim “Gateway Punidt” Hoft really the dumbest man on the Internet? Isn’t that a bit like trying to determine the dirtiest gas station restroom on Interstate 80?

Nate Silver says generic ballots may underestimate Democrats. Josh Marshall says that generic balloting is looking a bit better for Democrats lately, but this is more because Republicans are dropping than Democrats are rising. BTW, Josh’s charts didn’t display for me in Firefox, but they did in Chrome.

You might remember I wrote a post awhile back pointing to our buddy William Teach proclaiming that Paul Krugman is always wrong. I tried to get Teach and his readers to provide me with real-world examples of something Krugman actually wrote that turned out differently from how he predicted it would turn out, and they couldn’t come up with even one. In fact, it was painfully obvious that the lot of them (a) never read Krugman and have no idea where he stands on anything, and (b) wouldn’t recognize the “real world” if it bit their butts.

Today, Krugman writes about people who email him saying he is always wrong. He points to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, National Review, etc., and what the True Believers must have believed —

In 2006 you would have believed that there was no housing bubble.

In 2007 you would have believed that the troubles of subprime couldn’t possibly spread to the financial system as a whole.

In 2008 you would have believed that we weren’t in a recession — and that the failure of Lehman was unlikely to have bad consequences for the real economy.

In 2009 you would have believed that high inflation was just around the corner.

At the beginning of 2010 you would have believed that sky-high interest rates were just around the corner.

Finally, if any of you are familiar with Brad Warner (and if you aren’t, don’t be concerned), I have a review of Brad Warner’s latest book on the other blog.