He's Really Quite Stupid

I don't need to add a word.

I Was All Set To Apologize .... [Jonah Goldberg]

for accidentally calling Will Wilkinson a "statist" in my post
yesterday, since it seems to have annoyed
Will and it was not my intent to call him a statist. So I went and reread my
post and discovered I didn't call him one, even by accident. Beyond that, I will
await his longer response.

Update: From a reader:
I'm puzzled by your latest on him. As I read his
post, he's not saying you said he's a statist. He's saying he is a statist
(i.e., not an anti-statist, like conservatives).

Me: That's not how I read him. I take him being sarcastic about an
accusation he thinks I made, which I didn't.

Update II: Maybe I'm wrong. From another reader:
Wilkinson wasn't being
sarcastic when he said, "I'm a statist!"; he was taking you to mean,
essentially, "anarchist" by "anti-statist", and he pointed out that he is in
favor of a state, albeit a limited one. Hopefully there'll be a further dialogue
to clarify what exactly you meant; at this point, I feel like the two of you
more or less agree about what you're talking about, and you're just getting
confused by each other's terminology.

Update III: From a friend:
Wilkinson is not being sarcastic, at least
not in the way that you think. He’s pretending not to know what you meant by
“anti-statist.” It’s a really [redacted] rhetorical ploy, and one I’m surprised
to see from him. As a libertarian, I’m sure he’s gotten the “What, you don’t
think we should have any government at all?” line from liberals a thousand
times.

........

How Much Does the Stimulus Weigh? [Jonah Goldberg]

Via Instapundit, Dave Foulk says it's 86,759 tons — in one dollar bills. That's more than an Iowa class
battleship. In pennies, that'd be 216,898 tons, which by my rudimentary math is
what scientists call, "even heavier."

Update: For the record, I went with the weight of a penny at 2.5 grams.
What I idiotically didn't do was multiply by 100. Anyway, I got this from a
reader:
OK, first Foulk is off by a factor of 10, it should be 866,740 tons
(787 billion one dollar bills each weighing 1 gram divided by 454 grams per
pound divided by 2000 pounds per ton). Next you say the weight in pennys
would only be 2.5 times the weight in dollar bills (86,759 tons versus 216,898
tons). A penny weighs 3.1 grams versus a 1 gram dollar bill (close to 2.5
ratio) but of course there are 100 pennys per dollar, so weight in pennys would
be about 268,000,000 tons.
02/18 02:24 PM