So Many Atrocities, So Little Time

One quick thing regarding Megan's recent post regarding Krugman--.

Megan writes:

Paul Krugman clarifies his point about temporary versus permanent spending:

Tyler's latest on temporary versus permanent government consumption clarifies what the confusion is over my very simple point. I don't think Tyler understands what I (and everybody else) means by government spending. I don't mean the government handing someone a rebate check; I mean the government actually, you know, buying something -- say, building a bridge.

Oh, Megan. Megan, Megan, Megan. What will we do with you? Besides mocking, of couse. No, Megan. Krugman is not clarifying his point. He's clarifying your confusion. Your wrongness. Your lack of right.

How dishonest can a person be?

More K-Lo

Kathryn Jean Lopez on Mel Gibson on women: In a day when “Take Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries” is an often-heard chorus in mainstream abortion debates, Mel Gibson’s understanding of women and his articulation of their unique mission could have remarkable repercussions. This new—or old, inasmuch as it is natural and commonsensical—kind of feminism, a focus on the different contributions of men and women and the different ways they live their missions, should make us all rethink how we live and love."

Mel Gibson on women: "What are you looking at, sugar tits?"

The Scent of Stupid Is In The Ether

Since my brain is too sluggish today to finish my League of Extraordinary Bloggers, how about a little hit-and-run?

Andrew Sullivan loves him some Jesus.

What I meant by the lack of choice [in belief] is that there have been moments in my life when I have indeed sensed the loss of faith or its slackening or, at one moment, its inversion. But even in its inversion - fifteen interminable minutes when I didn't wonder if God existed, but if God really was evil - the despair was lifted by a force greater than my own.
What has kept me believing is not, as I have experienced it, a conscious act of will. It is more an acceptance of God's grace. My experience of Jesus will not let go of me, however much I would like to let go of it. This element of faith - its involuntary pull as well as its voluntary push - is how I have found it.
One can only describe here and say: this is what human life is like.
I mean no more than that, but the internal wrestling never ends. The search for truth must always be first; and religion is nothing if it is not true. Which is why doubt can never be a danger. Banishing doubt is the danger.

Sullivan believes that belief is not a choice because he chooses to believe that God is giving him belief. Sigh. No wonder he's been so wrong about so much.

But thanks to Sully I saw this by Kathryn Jean Lopez:

After a morning of “Obama!” chants, I would have loved to hear some of the crowd — or the president-to-be — join Warren in praying the Lord’s Prayer.

Alas.

The crowd got into the Rev. Joseph Lowery’s much more entertaining (and controversial) closing prayer, which invited affirmation rather than supplication from those gathered. That prayer went down easier than Warren’s. But we’re not always that into Him when we’re thinking about us.

In a town of doers, it’s easy to forget Him, especially when your daily schedule is all about you — your campaign, your vote, your speech, your award.

But we need to be. Washington ought to take to heart not only the unintentional act of humility we witnessed surrounding the oath of office during the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, but some of the parting words of the 43rd.

During his final press conference, President George W. Bush, reflecting on his time in office said: “The phrase ‘burdens of the office’ is overstated.”

“Oh, the burdens,” he mocked. “Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?” He dismissed the “Why me?” question. Bush dismissed that question as “self pity.” “It’s just — it’s pathetic, isn’t it?”

Such a manly statement of responsibility and gratitude — and if you heard the whole thing, you know that he knew it was a great privilege to serve — should be an admonishment and a warning to a city of people who stand proud, but should also be willing to drop to their knees asking for forgiveness and, always, humility.

Yes, it is patheic. She believes what she wants to believe, just like Sullivan. The only difference is Sullivan is a bit smarter than Lopez. But then, aren't we all.

Well, maybe not. Peggy Noonan:

And there's a broad feeling one detects, a kind of psychic sense, some sort of knowledge in the collective unconscious, that we lived through magic times the past half-century, and now the nonmagic time has begun, and it won't be over next summer. That's not the way it will work. It will last a while.

There's a sense among many, certainly here in New York, that we somehow had it too good too long, a feeling part Puritan, part mystic and obscurely guilty, that some bill is coming due.

It's just something in the ether, not Bush's policies and Bush's Fed and Bush's party. Who could have known?

K-Lo Goes To Confession

X All Tied Up

K-Lo: Bless me Father for I have sinned. It's been two days since my last confession. But before I confess I have a question to ask. Father, I'm confused. Is it immoral to torture your enemies, like the Nazis did?

Father: Yes, of course, Kathryn Jean.

K-Lo: But were the Nazis really so bad? Nazis are always bad in the movies but Jonah says that Hitler wasn't really so bad and he liked puppies and kittens.

Father: Of course they were; they committed many, many atrocities while trying to wage world war.

K-Lo: But the pope was a Nazi so that means they were good.

Father: He was forced to join the Hitler Youth, Kathryn Jean, it's not the same thing.

K-Lo: But Jonah said that if you call yourself socialist you are socialist. So if you call yourself a Nazi doesn't that mean you are a Nazi?

Father: (firmly) No, Kathryn Jean, it doesn't. Didn't you study WWII in history?

K-Lo: I took history at Catholic U. but we never made it to the Enlightenment I'm asking because Mark Theissen said that if a country needs to kill people it is ethical to kill and torture them. You know, the just war theory. It's okay to torture the Iraqis because Saddam attacked us first and leaving him in power would be worse than invading. Mark said if you torture someone for a good reason it's not only okay, but it's moral and ethical.

Father: That's not exactly--look, Kathryn Jean, the pope frowned very heavily on our invasion of Iraq. He said it was a threat to humanity.

K-Lo: (coldly) What?

Father: He said---.

K-Lo: You take that back!

Father: Kathryn Jean, those are the pope's words.

K-Lo: The pope loves George Bush! And the war!

Father: No, Kathryn Jean. The late pope and the present pope are and were against the war for moral reasons. Only God may take a life.

K-Lo: Father, this is horrible.

Father: Kathryn Jean, I know you are against abortion because it is the taking of life. Surely you are against the death of other innocents as well?

K-Lo: No, no, not that, Father. It's---well, I might have done something wrong.

Father: I'm sure that whatever it is, you meant well. What did you do?

K-Lo: Father I just wanted to to help!

Father: Help whom?

K-Lo: See, there was a woman going into an abortion place that I was picketing....

Father: And...?

K-Lo: She works there, killing little babies, Father. She's a bad, evil woman. So I just asked her to come over to the car.

Father: To...?

K-Lo: Talk to me about her work.

Father: Then...?

K-Lo: I hit her with a blackjack and put her in the basement.

Father: Where...?

K-Lo: I kind of tied her to a board and poured bottled water on her face.

Father: And...?

K-Lo: Made her promise to never go to that horrible place again.

Father: (hopefully) Then you let her go?

K-Lo: Ah, no. If I released her she'd just kill again.

Father: Where is she now?

K-Lo: I tied her to a chair and left her in the basement. But it's okay, I gave her a soda with a straw and put my "Bibleman" tape on the tv for her to watch.

Father: Kathryn Jean, you go home right now and release that woman. The judge is going to be very angry with you.

K-Lo: Father, do we have to tell him? I promise I won't do it again. He'll have to forgive me if I confess, right?

Father: God forgives, Kathryn Jean. The justice system doesn't. You'd better call your lawyer.

K-Lo: (Sigh) Oh, well. Maybe the policemen will be single and he'll admire my morals and ethics and ask me to marry him and have his children for the greater glory of God.

Father: Or it's God's plan for you to make helping the helpless your life's work, Kathryn Jean. Perhaps being childless is God's plan for you after all. As well as a way of protecting children.

K-Lo: I just want to obey somebody, Father. I don't really care who. It's so hard to figure out the right thing to do.

Father: Very true, Kathryn Jean. Sometimes we just have to do what we think is right and hope for the best.

K-Lo: We have to think? I thought we just have to obey. Nobody told me we have to think, too.

Father: Suddenly everything has become perfectly clear.

I Thought We Are Adults

Shorter David Brooks: Authoritarianism is good.

Money quote: "Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life."

That's strange. I find my own meaning for my own life, and assume responsibility for correcting my own weaknesses. I don't need another adult or "institution" of adults to do it for me. But I don't think Megan McArdle is a brilliant econoblogger either, as Brooks does, so what do I know?

So Very Tiresome

Megan McArdle thinks she can school the late Tanta of Calculated Risk on cramdowns.

Most perniciously, factoring in the risk of house price depreciation will not
focus bankers on whether lenders can make their payments; it will focus them on
whether the neighborhood is likely to appreciate. Bankers will strenuously
attempt to avoid lending into "marginal" neighborhoods, which is where, any real
estate agent will tell you, prices fall farthest during a bust. That means
some exurbs, and a whole lot of cities. The more they factor in home price
risk, the less your qualities as a buyer matter--ultra-responsible yuppies
buying in a gentrifying neighborhood still look like an awful risk if you know
that house prices might fall, and your principal might at any time be written
down by 10%. And, of course, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy--if banks won't
lend on houses that have recently spiked in value, the value of those houses
will fall back to the level where banks will lend. It's hard,
in fact, to imagine a deliberate policy that could more effectively
halt the urban renaissance that has taken place in neighborhoods like
mine.

Subsidized crack in schools, maybe.

Among many other things, McArdle is ignoring the multiplying effect of securities. It's not just about her ability to get a loan to buy a house that will increase in value. That ship has sailed for a while.

The key problems here are bank capital and mortgage foreclosures. Foreclosed
mortgages are approaching about 10% of total mortgages, with an average recovery
rate of only about 50% of the mortgage value when the foreclosed home is sold.
The resulting loss of value, approaching 5% of the U.S. mortgage market, has
thrown the economy into disarray, because the losses have been borne by highly
leveraged institutions. For many institutions, each $1 of their own capital
(equity contributed by the company's own shareholders) has often supported $10,
$20, or even $40 of loans, security investments and other assets. As a result,
wiping out a few percent of their assets completely wipes out their own capital,
leaving customers and depositors without a “capital cushion” and triggering
withdrawals. This process started with the most egregiously leveraged companies
like Bear Stearns and Lehman, and continues to put stress on enormous but capital-thin institutions like Citibank.

As always, it's all about her. I don't know enough about economics to refute McArdle properly, but I know the dfference between thoughtful analysis and bullshit.

Death Shall Have No Dominion

Taylor Marsh criticizes Juan Cole for criticizing Barack Obama's bombing of Pakistan. Marsh says Cole is aiding the enemy. Cole says he's stating facts.

Bombing Pakistan unilaterally is illegal in international law where Pakistan has
not attacked the United States or where there is no United Nations Security
Council resolution authorizing such an attack. Please see the Charter of the
United Nations, to which the US is a signatory. If the US had a formal treaty
with Pakistan, signed off by the legislatures of the two countries, that
permitted hot pursuit of militants from Afghan territory, that would bestow a
basic legality on it. But the only warrant for the US to shoot Hellfire missiles
into Pakistan and kill Pakistani women and children along with militants, is the
Bush Doctrine, which I want to be abolished and which I had understood Obama and
his team to object to, as well. Contravening US treaty obligations and
international law is a war crime.

Marsh is in the wrong here. Every bomb dropped and life lost is a failure of morality, intelligence and leadership. Every single one.

The danger of Obama becoming mired down in Afghanistan and Pakistan is very real, and is obvious to anyone who knows the history of imperial interventions in the former. Warning Obama that he started out on a bad foot in Pakistan and suggesting that he take some time to consider charting his own, original course, is not injurious to Obama. Blind support for whatever he does is what would harm him.

Most people are authoritarians, in varying degrees--about 67%. They might argue or quibble or parse, but in the end they do what they are told and support their leader with very few questions, or none at all. That includes intelligent people who should know better, but who refuse to acknowledge that they are looking for something Obama can't give them, something they never had in childhood, or never had enough of. When parents demand obedience and reward or punish their children by giving or withholding love, the child grows up and continues this pattern. It is the foundation for his relationship with his religion and country as well, as they are often substitutes for parents in people's minds. God the Father and Uncle Sam are personified for a reason; we are familiar with the family unit, so we tend to think in those terms. Our country is our Fatherland, God is our father, and if the father demands obedience in exchange for love and acceptance, the authoritarian will act the same way towards God and his president that he does towards his father. We are human, and we will do anything, anything, to feel loved and accepted.

Even kill.

Would You Want This Man In Your Back Yard?

Via Think Progress:

"Fox Shows Photos Of Muslim Men: ‘Would You Want A Guy Like This Living In Your Backyard?’": Since President Obama’s announcement last week that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center within one year, Fox News has done its best to frighten its viewers about the rule....

This is one of the photos they should show. He's from the area, wears a beard and strange clothes, and keeps talking about overthrowing the old order. He could be violent and he travels with a pack of dangerous associates. Death to heathens!

Kathry Jean Lopez Is Racist

I just wanted to point this out:

Obama is—or appears to be—something blacks don’t see all that often—an
affectionate and loyal modern husband.

Blacks are not modern--they are uncivilized. Obama is--no, wait, appears to be a good husband. Obama, it seems, doesn't sleep around like all the other black men. Obama is affectionate--I have no idea what that means, except that Lopez shies away from sex. Conservatives love spouting crap like this because they want to initiate a debate in which they examine the sex lives of minorities in excruciating detail, while denouncing every aspect of their lives. They want to drag out AEI statistics and misinterpret data and say over and over, "But you do admit that the rate of illegitimacy among blacks is so high because of their inferior culture? Don't you? Don't you?"

It is how they prove their superiority to themselves and each other. If it weren't illegitimacy it would be immigrants or the "welfare state" or "entitlements." There will always be a scapegoat for people who take no responsibility for their actions.

Nobody Expects the Papal Inquisition!

Although elevating of the leader of what used to be the Inquisition to pope was a big hint.

Pope Benedict XVI, acceding to the far-right of the Roman Catholic Church,
revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops on Saturday, including
one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage.

The decision provided fresh fuel for critics who charge that Benedict’s
four-year-old papacy has proven increasingly focused on appeasing
traditionalists who are hostile to the sweeping reforms of the Second Vatican
Council in the 1960s that sought to create a more modern and open church.

A theologian resigned to the church’s diminished status in a secular world,
Benedict has favored a smaller church of more ardent believers over a larger one
with looser faith. But his focus on doctrinal debates has come at a
cost

So the pope wants fewer, more obedient Catholics, and doesn't mind alienating Jews, Muslims, women and rich liberal Americans to get it. I'm the last person to argue with the Church choosing to become poorer, smaller, and less relevant to the present.

Okay, That's Just Creepy

Mark Steyn, lover and former critic of musical comedy theatah, has something to tell us about himself and President Obama.

“Oh, yes, yes, yessssssss, we can!” I whimpered, as his smoldering eyes bored deep into the very core of my being and our souls met and I knew he was the only man who would ever win my heart, a heart beating so fast and loud I could barely hear what he was saying—something about executive orders, I think. “Oh, yes, give me one right now!” I cried, as my palpitating bosom burst the ties of my bodice causing my leg to vibrate so much my bustle fell off.

“Aye, you’re a comely lass,” said Squire Barack, as my tresses tumbled over my stays and his riding crop fluttered teasingly up my thigh. “But I don’t need to go a-wenchin’ in the White House Press Room.”

“No, please, good sir,” I begged, as he glided past me and gave a saucy wink to the chamber maid from the Washington Post.

Mark Steyn has a very, very strange approach to political matters. It begins and ends behind his zipper. For him, it's all about the penis, and lest you think I exaggerate or am merely using a metaphor, just read on--.

Here’s my favourite example [of global instability] from the last couple of years: in 2003, mass hysteria swept Khartoum after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men, causing their penises to vanish. According to the London paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, this guy came into some fabric merchant’s shop and ‘shook the store owner’s hand powerfully until the owner felt his penis melt into his body’. He was taken to hospital. Announcing a special investigative committee, the ‘Chief Criminal Attorney-General’ told the local press that ‘the rumour broke out when one merchant went to another merchant to buy some Karkady [a popular Sudanese beverage]. Suddenly the seller felt his penis shrivelling.’ Also, don’t accept any combs from infidels: according to another victim, ‘At the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. When he did so, within seconds, he said, he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis.’

The detail that caught my eye in the vanishing-penis hysteria is this: it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cellphone yet still believe that shaking hands with an infidel will cause you to lose your penis. That’s a state-of-the-art primitive. Sudan is an economic basket-case with a 27 per cent literacy rate that nevertheless has half a billion dollars’ worth of top Chinese weaponry imported via Iran. What if it started importing other kinds of technology from Iran? Or North Korea? What happens when the infidel-handshake-fearing chap is given not just a cellphone but a suitcase nuke?

But these days we’re the ones who’ve lost our penises. The wise old foreign-policy birds insist that nothing can be done — Islam and democracy are completely incompatible, old man; everybody knows that, except these naive, blundering Yanks who just don’t have our experience, frankly. If that’s true, it’s a problem not for Iraq this weekend but, given current demographic trends, for France and Belgium and Holland and the United Kingdom a year or two down the line. But, as it happens, it’s not true. The Afghan election worked so well that, there being insufficient bad news out of it, the doom-mongers in the Western media pretended it never happened. The Iraqi election will be imperfect but more than good enough. OK, that’s a bit vague by the standards of my usual psephological predictions, so how about this? Turnout in the Kurdish north and Shia south will be higher than in the 2001 UK elections.

But, beyond the numbers, when you look at the behaviour of the Shia and Kurdish parties, they’ve been remarkably shrewd, restrained and responsible; they don’t want to blow their big rendezvous with history and rejoin the rest of the Middle East in the fetid swamp of stable despotism. The Shiites, for example, have adopted a moderate secular pitch entirely different from their co-religionist mullahs over the border. In fact, they sound a lot less loopy than, say, Senator Barbara Boxer of California did accusing Condi Rice of being a liar last week and then going all weepy and a-waily and claiming victim status because Condi declined to agree with her.

[bolding is mine]

Steyn has made a career of attempting to whip up hysteria over the number of Muslim births. He seems to take it very, very personally. Notice how he begs for mercy before the masterful Brown Penis, yet cannot fight back. Could this man really be nothing but a pathetic, vicious creature who is ashamed of the size and performance of his penis? Is it really so small that he obsesses, indeed, makes his life's work, fear of the size and fecundity of the penis of the dark-skinned man?

And so is history made. Poppy was disappointed in Bush, and Bush wanted to prove him wrong. Cheney's ill health pushed caution to paranoia. The American people wanted to cling to their self-appointed exceptionalism. Steyn perhaps has a small penis. And people--other people, of course, usually browner people--die.

The Atlantic's New "Business Channel"

The Atlantic has created a business channel, a sort of pasty copy of Bloomberg's site. The new site's design matches the rest of the Atlantic's on-line sites; it is just arranged into a one-stop supermarket of business articles and columnists. Their mission statement includes the following:

Edited by Megan McArdle, who has been lauded by The New York Times' David Brooks as a "brilliant economic blogger," Atlantic Business delivers analysis and commentary from Megan and her team of outside experts, including professors, researchers, entrepreneurs, and journalists. The channel also features commentary from Andrew Sullivan, Marc Ambinder, James Fallows, and other Atlantic writers covering Washington and business. The channel's assistant editor, Conor Clarke, blogs here about economics and also maintains some of the site's standing features, including What We're Reading, our collection of the best business stories on the Web today.

One gets the feeling Megan is part of a nexus of experts that provide superior analysis to discerning readers. One would be wrong, for Megan has proven that she views economics and journalism as a way to promote her self-interest, instead of conducting analysis and promoting understanding.

The Secret Word Is...

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture links to Robert Proctor's new word: agnotology.

Agnotology: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.

I guess that would make Megan McArdle an agnotstic.

Wrong Again

The Cornerites don't care about facts and routinely misuse or deny them. Obama is inclusive towards atheists, so Yuval Levin scurries to note that so were other presidents.

I couldn’t tell you when it started, but I know that George H.W. Bush certainly spoke this way, Bill Clinton did it all the time, and it was an utterly routine element of George W. Bush’s references to American religion.

He "knows" that George H. W. Bush "certainly" spoke this way. Except he is certainly wrong.

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?

Bush: I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.

Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?

Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists

Did he lie or just assume that he knew the truth because he believes whatever he is told?

Greenwald and McArdle

FMM and I do our part to point and laugh and mock at Megan McArdle, but for true evisceration you need to go to the master, Glenn Greenwald. We can point out the flaws in logic and often fact; he can provide the proof to utterly refute and destroy bad argument.

This is what happens constantly -- ill-motivated and/or ill-informed people spout the most blatant falsehoods, using their venues and credentials to mislead others on these sorts of issues. I would love to know how many readers of right-wing journals continue to believe that a federal appeals court last week "vindicated" Bush's NSA warrantless spying activities even though that judicial decision (as even favorite GOP Law Professor Orin Kerr acknowledges) had nothing whatsoever to do with the principal controversy of whether a President has the right to violate Congressional statutes when spying on Americans. It really isn't that hard to refrain from writing about things or making statements about matters that you know absolutely nothing about, or at least to spend a small amount of time finding out before using a platform like The Atlantic or a large blog or a law degree to spout whatever pops into your head.

Just beautiful. Bravo, sir. Bravo. Read, as they say, the rest.

Megan Thinks. Village Idiots Wince.

Megan has decided to discuss the stimulus! How wonderful! How much wisdom we will gain!

The Obama team has made much of the fact that the stimulus bill will not contain any earmarks. But the prohibitions are getting weirder by the minute, as Tim Carney points out at Culture 11: [quote follows]. By the standards of stimulus, these are, frankly, bizarre. The logic of Keynesian stimulus is that the government borrowing and spending are itself the medicine that will jolt the economy out of a contraction of aggregate demand, aka "animal spirits". He famously suggested that, in the absence of better projects, the government might profitably pay people to dig holes, and then fill them up again. The point is to get money moving quickly. This is one of the major issues with the Obama plan's emphasis on infrastructure: big construction projects simply take time.

Less than half the money dedicated to highways, school construction and other infrastructure projects in a massive economic stimulus package unveiled by House Democrats is likely to be spent within the next two years, according to congressional budget analysts, meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession.

Gosh, that sounds confusing, as if nobody could possibly figure it out. And quite foolish. What could be the point of these pointless, meaningless, unconnected acts of stimulus? I guess we''ll never know and will have to wait and see with Megan. Who no doubt will be surprised to be disappointed.

Wait--didn't Megan say something about a government web site the other day? Let's take a look. Hmmm. [strokes chin] I think I'll google "white house economic stimulus." Then click on "economy." And there you are--a summary and Obama's speech on his economic stimulus plan. The summary shows the stimulus is supposed to both provide jobs and modernize our neglected infrastructure. In other words, instead of filling potholes and emptying them again, Obama will invest in expanding internet access, decreasing our reliance on oil, and updating neglected federal buildings, including schools. It actually sounds quite sensible, instead of "bizarre," as Megan says.

Oh, these next eight years are going to be fun, as conservatives attempt to deny that the last eight years actually happened, restore their reputations, cling to their jobs, and constantly attack Obama's attempts to clean up the mess Bush left.

If Only You Believe In Miracles, Baby

Kathryn Jean Lopez spent the inauguration at the March for Life, but did she have an alternate reason??

[...]I was over at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, on Catholic University’s campus late last night[...]

Sorry, honey, not gonna happen. You're going to have to find a guy like everyone else.

Less Mature Megan

Shorter Megan: Being a grown-up is boring. Let's talk about university. Again.

Irrelevancies

Bonddad Blog: The government is attempting to prevent a broad-based financial meltdown.

Calculated Risk: National Association of Home Builders: Prices to Fall 29% in 2009

Bloomberg: Roubini Predicts U.S. Losses May Reach $3.6 Trillion


Megan McArdle: A drinking age of 21 is an embarassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation.

Remember, Megan was arrested for underage drinking and ignored the punishment, which finally caught up with her over a decade later. No doubt that is why she can't manage to blog about the economy during the biggest crises of the past 70+ years.

If Megan had been blogging in the '30s she would have spent all her time complaining that her favorite dressmaker went out of business and that the apple sellers are taking away business from people with overhead.

One final note--I have to clean up my posts constantly; I correct mistakes, add links, and clean up awkward prose, so I don't worry too much about others' mistakes. But for McArdle to refuse to check her spelling is the height of laziness and unprofessionalism.

UPDATE: Jesus, she's getting even worse. She can't understand what's going on at Guantanamo, Obama's speech was conservative-bashing, liberals are gloating. I can't take her stupidity, pettiness and ego any more. She makes Ann Althouse look deep. What a spoiled child.

OMB? OMG!

Megan McArdle, Whiner-American, complains that, like, she totally has to click on her mouse twice to look at the President's budget. Like, for real!

Why is government IT so awful? It seems like the first thing people are going to want, when they go to the Office of Management and Budget, is, like, to look at the Budget. Yet the budget isn't even on the OMB servers, apparently--it's hosted at the GPOaccess site. I have, to be sure, seen private websites that were this awful. But not that many, and the companies that had them usually either redesigned them right quick, or went out of business. Instead the government has preserved all the problems with the old site, added new ones, and given us in exchange . . . a glossy photograph of Barack Obama looking solemn.

I am sure that there is some stupid bureaucratic logic behind putting the budget information elsewhere. But I'm not sure my heart can stand finding out what it is.

Geeze, what a drama queen. Maybe her disappointment is affecting her nerves.