Doughy, Happy People

Jonah Goldberg has done a lot of foul things in his time, but smearing his Snickers-covered hands over Angel is one of the worst. He's a little boy in a manpire's world.

Payday

Megan McArdle defends payday loans. You don't want to know the details.

The Usefulness of Sarah Palin

One of Megan's commenters makes some very interesting points about Sarah Palin, with which I totally agree.

America’s elite and Palin-haters worldwide should not be so quick to dismiss or disregard the future of Sarah Palin. No other national political figure so completely fills Middle America’s vacuum of frustration and hate for the Left and Right as Sarah Palin.

In a way, these people are wiser than any partisan. They realize that both sides are doing very little to help the middle and lower classes. They just can't figure out who to blame or who will rescue them.

Middle America has been abandoned by the Left and Right, who have saddled it with a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, an unnecessary and costly war, a soaring deficit, and an overall neglect of the pocketbook issues that impact Middle America every day. Where are job creation, quality public education, affordable health care, and fiscal responsibility, to name a few?

Middle America is mad as hell at the Left and Right and they just might be willing to roll the dice on someone like Palin, who lacks an Ivy League education, is a working class hockey-mom with a disabled child, and who has blue-collar roots like many of the folks in Middle America. The status quo on the Left and Right have produced nothing material for Middle America, which may toss conventional wisdom into the toilet and throw the lever for Palin, figuring it has nothing to lose, and it may be right.

The Ivy League educated on the Left and Right have delivered little to nothing for Middle America, perhaps precisely because they are out of touch with the issues that someone like Palin understands personally.

"Middle America" does not look beyond the surface, and rejects anything it does not want to see. Palin's followers have an almost transcendent ability to explain away Palin's weaknesses. Desperate people will go with the leader who seems to understand them and fills their emotional needs.

However, to say that Palin is a salmon swimming upstream is an understatement. The results of a CBS News survey released Monday indicate that 66 percent of respondents do not want her to run for the White House in 2012. Seventy percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research poll said she is not qualified to be president.

More difficult for Palin is the fact that the trend is not her friend—public opinion is moving in the wrong direction right now.

In the CBS survey, 43 percent of GOP respondents said Palin would have the ability to be an effective president. Only 11 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents agreed.

However, there is an opportunity for Palin among independents, where Palin’s rating is 41 percent favorable, and 48 percent unfavorable, according to Gallup.

These numbers are not great, but there is plenty of time if she can move the needle by appealing to Middle America and independents, which is where elections are won or lost.

Clearly, Palin has put the monkey on her back, especially with her resignation from Alaska’s governorship in July, a self-inflicted wound that will be difficult to explain away. However, don’t put it past Palin to put lipstick on this pig and paint herself as a victim of politically motivated and baseless ethics charges that prevented her from successfully serving the people of Alaska, forcing her to do the noble thing and take the bullet by resigning.

It's pretty easy to lie to people. They are very reluctant to challenge the word of someone who is given authority.

We can say what we want about Palin, but no Republican in recent history has created such frenzied excitement across the country as she has. Just take a look at the fervor she stirs as she wheels across Middle America on her book tour.

Perhaps this is a misreading of the tea leaves, but one could argue that she creates a wee bit more excitement than Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, the two Republican front-runners for president in 2012. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman just may be queen.

A. Muser
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com

See this comment below, in which a No Tax For The Rich advocate throws his support behind Palin, who would serve corporate interests very well. She is an idiot, but she is a very, very useful idiot.

Also, heh.

Reply

Lemmy Caution (Replying to: AmericanMuser) November 19, 2009 3:21 AM
I liked conservatism a lot more when conservatives were elitist, overeducated snobs, rather than angry, resentful populists.

The participants are the same, only the image has changed. Palin is in the right place at the right time, and her image would serve the needs of the elite.

The Morality Of Thrift

As part of her continuing effort to shift blame onto individuals for our present financial difficulties, Megan McArdle writes about financial self-help guru Dave Ramsey.

Ramsey offers some investment advice (much of which would have struck horror in my business-school professors), but for most of his followers, the main attraction is a simple program: give 10 percent of your income to charity, save 15 percent for retirement, build up a sizable emergency stash and a college fund for your kids, and above all, stop borrowing money. Ramsey devotees pay cash for everything they can. They are allowed only one exception to the no-more-debt rule: a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage. He is so serious about shunning debt that his Web site takes only debit cards; try to pay with a Capital One Visa, and the system rejects the card, then tut-tuts at you. These simple, austere, unbreakable rules are, as Ramsey likes to say, “the advice that God and Grandma gave you.”

Most things sound a lot crazier from the outside, and so once I’d decided to write about the friendly, slightly bombastic man on the television screen, I thought I should try his program, as outlined in his book The Total Money Makeover. At the beginning of August, I had dutifully sat down with Peter, my fiancé, to draft a budget. Once we’d given every dollar a name (as the book puts it), I drove to the bank and withdrew 1,800 of them. Huddled over the wheel to hide this stupendous wad of cash from prying eyes, I doled out the money among various envelopes for groceries, parking, entertainment, clothing, and so on, as recommended by Ramsey—and, funnily enough, by my grandmother, who invented a nearly identical system to manage my grandfather’s meager earnings from delivering groceries during the Great Depression.

And P. Suderman's contribution was...? It's hard to calculate McArdle's Money Morality Level without knowing if she's budgeting for one or two. It's either $450 a week or $225, for food, clothing and entertainment. That's not too bad for a professional, but is still a lot of money. Surely she could have a cheaper car, take the subway, or carpool? As for food, we know she is not too proud to shop at a big box store, believes in making sandwiches for work and has cut down on dining out, so how much could two busy professionals spend on food?

Sticking to a budget had its humiliations.

It’s also hard to spend cash, because so many people look at you funny when you try. The very first day, I spent almost 20 minutes trying to check out in the “better dresses” section of a department store. The saleslady stared at the hundred-dollar bill in her palm as if I’d just handed her an eel. After a series of plaintive looks at my obviously card-free wallet, she started stabbing at the cash-register keyboard with a sort of bleak despair. To my immense surprise and relief—and clearly, also to hers—the cash drawer eventually opened.

According to conservatives, every store clerk in the US is a drama queen, quivering with emotion under the stern yet commonsense gaze of sturdy, competent conservatives. Yet McArdle handed the clerk paper money anyway, demonstrating her moral resolve and social courage, as the clerk managed to gird her loins, conquer her despair, and hand brave, brave McArdle her change and receipt.

Obviously stylish clothing is very important to McArdle*, but why can't she give up "better" dresses for Commonsense Conservative dresses? Does she think she's "better" than everyone else? Maybe, as her commenters might say, she is overspending on clothing in a futile attempt to regain her lost youth because she has a younger mate.

Several paragraphs follow in which McArdle confesses her greed and ideology gave her permission to spend beyond her means and she graduated a hundred grand in debt. More paragraphs tell us that debt can be bad, and people sometimes spend too much. McArdle tells us Ramsey has nothing but scorn for people like her, and that facts back up his teachings that expensive schools don't necessarily translate into higher earnings. McArdle, who reveals that she is still paying her student loans at the age of 37 but hopes to pay them off in a few years, rejects Ramsey's conclusion.

But there is also evidence to the contrary; and what nice upper-middle-class family is willing to, well, gamble with their child’s financial future?

And that evidence would be where...? Based on...? By...?

McArdle rejects one more aspect of Ramsey's program; its evangelism.

Though I did take the audio CD of Ramsey’s personal witness being handed out free at the exit, I’m afraid that Jesus and I aren’t really any better acquainted than we were before. Nonetheless, Ramsey has made a convert out of a secular journalist with one of the pricey M.B.A.s he likes to poke fun at. I have never felt as serenely in control of my finances as I have during these months of knowing that every single dollar is where it is supposed to be: either in the bank, or on a well-chaperoned date with our envelope organizer. The process has been surprisingly painless but, even more surprisingly, pleasant.

So, except for mortgaging her 20s and 30s for a useless education, not following his advice to hand your life over to Jesus (and probably the tithing advice as well), and using credit cards, McArdle finds Ramsey's philosophy to be very useful. It might even eliminate some of her competition.

On the other hand, Americans aren’t going to fix our national financial problems until a lot more people decide to drop out of the “normal” competition to see who can borrow the most money in order to bid on a fixed number of homes in affluent school districts and places at selective colleges. You don’t need to be a Christian to look for a better way. Even an unbeliever knew enough to listen up when he saw the bright light on the road to Damascus.

Why did McArdle ignore Ramsey's advice on using credit cards? That's another story.


*h/t Nutella on Toast

Madam President

This is the significance of Sarah Palin: She is the Authority for the far right wingnuttia. Several things are necessary for success when dealing with authoritarians. They include a person to act as figurehead, who might or might not be the actual authority. A code of conduct is necessary, which will consist of characteristics that the authority wants the group to have. Those characteristics will provide an identity for the group's followers and a means of identifying other members of the group. To identify members one must identify non-members. The group must be superior to the non-group for everyone wants to feel good about themselves, and one way authoritarian leaders ensure obedience is by demonizing the Other, declaring them to be evil and dangerous. Rejecting the authority's code of conduct and beliefs means risking expulsion from the group, which would mean the follower would no longer have an identity, group, or moral superiority.

I think that if Palin seems to be a winner, most of the authoritarian right will back her, because associating themselves with winners to feel good about themselves is a major factor in their make-up. Almost everything else is secondary. But they don't pick the candidates, the authoritarian leaders do, and we need to determine their goals to determine their future actions. They have stolen as much as they can, so the next big push will probably be the elimination of their expenses. The goal of the tea-party right is to eliminate taxes and benefits, as described by Freedomworks, led by Dick Armey and funded by the Koch family. "Dedicated to Social Security reform, repeal of the Death Tax, tax cuts in general, and limiting the size and scope of government," their website says. The next president will be the candidate who promises to end taxes for the rich, and that might actually be Sarah Palin.

Starburst Central

The National Review has its own little Palin section now. This is going to be fun.

Wage Slaves

Shorter Megan McArdle: Shift all the tax-paying burden onto individuals.

You know, I think she's starting to convince me. I know I've said different in the past--that after corporations steal all the money they can get their hands on they'll eliminate all benefits for others and taxes for themselves, then force Americans to work for third world wages--but it's all starting to make sense.

The American government loves debt. It offers special tax breaks to interest payments-mortgage interest, if you're a person; all interest, if you're a firm. This has a number of pernicious effects. On the personal level, it's a gift to home sellers--as we've seen with the homeowner's tax credit, any special break you give to home buyers tends to end up in the pockets of home sellers, as the buyers bid up the price to their maximum affordable net monthly cost. On the corporate side, it privileges debt over equity financing. In both cases, it adds considerable risk, since the fixed debt payment schedule may not match up with the flow of income.

The corporations deserve all the money. If people have money then they will be to pay for things, and the prices of those things will rise. This will hurt the poor, who now can only afford cheap goods from low-paying corporations. Therefore all tax burden must be shifted to individuals, so corporations will not be over-taxed.

[T]o drag out my regular hobby-horse, it's an even better reason for getting rid of the corporate income tax entirely, along with the special tax rates for capital gains and dividends. Tax income once, when it's distributed to the owners, and then tax that income just like any other kind of income, regardless of source, so that Paris Hilton pays a higher rate on her corporate-derived income than your middle-class grandmother. Then let companies decide which mode of financing makes the most sense for their capital structure, rather than their tax bill.

And corporations must not pay taxes because Paris Hilton has too much money to spend.

I wonder if any of McArdle's descendents ancestors were indentured servants. She seems to be doing her damnest to return to that blissful state. If people should be able to sell their organs, why not their freedom? It's the Free Market thing to do. What's a little slavery amongst friends, when so many wealthy elite can benefit?

UPDATE: McArdle adds that while she has just said that one reason to eliminate corporate tax is because they'll just find a way to evade it, individuals will not be able to evade their own taxes. Because they won't.

Intermission

No Megan McArdle posts yet, so I will have to return later to see what the little scamp has been up to this weekend. Meeting the in-laws perhaps? It must be interesting to marry into a tea-bagging tribe. Would they spend the entire weekend telling you why they believe baby-sitting grandchildren for free is theft of services?

President Jane Six-Pack

It seems the only person not surprised by Sarah Palin's meteoric rise to fame is Sarah Palin.

Ms. Palin herself had a surprisingly nonchalant reaction to Mr. McCain’s initial phone call about the vice president’s slot, writing that she was not astonished, that it felt “like a natural progression.”

Ms. Palin suggests that she and her husband, Todd, are ideally qualified to represent the Joe Six-Packs of the world because they are Joe Six-Packs themselves. “We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition,” she writes in “Going Rogue.” “We know what it’s like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools. We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

Where did this enormous sense of entitlement come from? Her natural progression from city councilwoman to mayor to governor to vice presidential candidate only seems inevitable if you utterly ignore her actual experiences in those offices. It was enough to be crowned, Palin sees actually working the job to be utterly irrelevant. But while Sarah Palin sees her progression to the White House as inevitable, Jane Six-Pack feels she could do just as good a job as an educated, experienced person, because she is "normal." There are not many normal Americans who feel that they are entitled to high office, or qualified to run the country.

In a sense Palin is right. All she needs to do is read the material the lobbyists hand her and do what her campaign contributors tell her to do. They'll do all the thinking for her. Any other decisions will come from the gut, based on personal beliefs and emotional needs.

Layaway

In "Public Service Announcement," Megan McArdle advertises Doctor Who, for sale on Amazon. I'm more of a Star Trek/Stargate woman myself, but to each her own.

Wait a second. I seem to remember something from about a year ago---

Fred October 27, 2008 10:05 AM
Perhaps you should point out you make commission from that [Amazon] link, no?

Megan McArdle October 27, 2008 10:33 AM
I've been completely open about the fact that I use an associates account, Fred; that's where I get the money to buy the books I read. I've also never recommended anything I didn't genuinely love using it. If you'd rather support another blogger by clicking through their associates link, please do.

Completely open if you read her work every day and remember her admission in comments a year ago. But she's very big on journalism ethics, remember.

It's a little thing, but with the holidays coming up, McArdle again might link to many expensive items to buy on Amazon. With complete openness, of course.

Men and Money

Forget women. Nobody cares what happens to them anyway. (By "nobody" I mean anybody with power.) Let's talk about men.

The problem with feminism is that it concentrates on women. That is very foolish. Nobody--I say again--gives a crap about women. Feminists must concentrate on men, the only people who are real people, as opposed to pretend, not-quite-people people. You know, women.

How do men suffer under the present system? (They are the only ones that count, you know.) Quixote at Shakesville points out that if our ruling class can take away women's rights they can take away men's rights, but civil rights violations are a means, not an end. The Stupak amendment does something much more interesting than that--it found a way to deny a portion of health care coverage for half the population for moral reasons. Morality! What a scam! Just get a few bishops--who owe you big for ignoring the cover-up of the rape of children, another powerless group--to give you moral justification to deny health care! It's brilliant!

And even more brilliant is the aftermath. Woman, in turn, are protesting the coverage of drugs like Viagra, and soon insurance companies can deny payment for those incredibly popular pills too! Corporations can play the public like violins, pitting priests against women, women against men, adults against children, young adults against the old. It'll work like a charm. Half the world is just dying to deny rights to the other half, and corporations can save a fortune.

Texas Tea

We must have an uninterrupted flow of oil at a reasonable price to maintain our economy as it is. (Or rather, was.) Our society is based on oil--for manufacturing, transportation, agriculture and more. Therefore it is not only expected but necessary that we have enough control over oil-rich areas to get that oil. If we can't buy it we have to take it. We don't have a choice. Millions will suffer without it.

And hey, if it must happen, why not make some money off of it? Someone's going to, might as well be, oh, say, Peter Gilbraith as anyone else, right? It's for the good of the country and a person can do a lot of good with a hundred million dollars. Or a lot of models. You have to be open to helping anyone and blonds need help too.

It's not like we left Afghanistan and invaded Iraq for the oil, of course. Sure, we agreed to leave, more or less, right after we opened Iraq for foreign oil investment, but the two had nothing to do with each other. Just like our threats against Iran have nothing to do with oil. We're in the middle east because that's where the terrorists are. Sure, they're in Southeast Asia too, and Egypt and some places in South America and a few areas of the USA even, but one has priorities and Iraq just happened to come first.

From the blog of Antonia Juhasz

Kucinich on Supplemental: It's about Oil

Congressman Dennis Kucinich's Office
May 11th, 2007

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 10) - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
released the following statement after the passage of the U.S. Troop
Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability
Appropriations Act of 2007:
"There has been a broad deception about the content of the hydrocarbon
law, a deception which has taken in members of Congress and the media.
Misdescribed tactically as a revenue sharing plan, it is in fact a
radical plan to privatize Iraq's oil.

"The law before the Iraq Parliament contains 3 vague lines about
revenue sharing and 33 solid pages of a complex legal restructuring,
facilitating the privatization of Iraq's oil resources. The sharing
will not be 1/3 of 100%. The sharing is more likely to be 1/3 of 20%
at most, after private oil interests take their cut. The stage is
being set for theft on a historic scale.

"Iraq may have as much as 300 billion barrels of oil to be tapped. At
a market value of $70 a barrel, the value of its oil may approach $21
trillion.

"In the past twenty four hours the Vice President made an
extraordinary trip to Baghdad to urge the Iraqi Parliament to stay in
session to pass a "hydrocarbon law" which provides for "revenue
sharing." Today, President Bush explicitly mentioned that he could
come to an agreement if it included a benchmark for "sharing oil
reserves." This is the tone of the legislation which the House passed
tonight.

"The legislative debate between the Congressional Democrats and the
Republicans misses the point of the key issue regarding the invasion,
occupation and long term US presence in Iraq - - oil.

"The attempted theft of the oil assets of Iraq under the guise of a
plan to end the war will keep the war going long into the future.

"This is the time to be taking steps to end the U.S. occupation,
stabilize Iraq, and give Iraqis full control of their oil assets."

Choices

Shorter Megan McArdle: Being unable to choose to have an abortion is pro-choice.

Longer Megan McArdle [In response to someone who says women who don't want abortions now might change their minds later if they need one]:

Actually, no, at this point a majority of women in this country are old enough that it would either be impossible, or extraordinarily unlikely, for them to conceive. Some of the women of reproductive age are either infertile, or have had themselves sterilized. Others are lesbians, or long-term virgins. So in fact, at best you can argue that we've thrown a small minority of the population "under the bus".

And that's perfectly okay, because the number of people who need abortions is small and as we know from the health care debate, it's okay if a minority suffers as long as the majority is happy.

And as a response, this seems to trivialize the preferences of pro-life women in a way that I find pretty disturbing from feminists. In what other area of life is it okay to pat the little lady on the head and tell her that she doesn't really want what she says she wants, because she might regret it later? Feminists get righteously angry when pro-lifers attack abortion rights on the grounds that a significant minority of women later regret having one--or when doctors won't tie our tubes, or give us IUDs, or otherwise allow us to make permanent choices about sexuality. We don't regard virtually everyone's preferences for laws against murder, rape, burglary, embezzlement, etc as somehow inauthentic because some minority of us will violate those laws. And as it happens, the rate of abortion seems to be pretty strongly inversely correlated with having pro-life views, at least at the state-by-state level.

So having an abortion is murder. Okay. There is a life and the woman is ending that life. So McArdle must be anti-abortion, right? Anti-murder? Against the slaughter of innocent baby cells by their mothers? Throw the murderers in jail, mother and doctor both?

Obviously, since I'm pro-choice, I think you can argue against abortion control in many effective ways.

What??? McArdle is pro-murder? I am shocked, shocked and appalled!

But this is not one of them--at least not if you hew to the feminist notion that women are entitled to their own choices and preferences as individuals, not lumped in with some vast undifferentiated mass of women who all want the same thing.

So if you think abortion should be legal and women should be able to choose to have an abortion, you are denying women choice. The choice to not have an abortion. Which they always had anyway. Of course that makes no sense at all. The anti-choice women are being denied the legal rights to prevent others from having an abortion. They are being forbidden from making the choice for someone else. Women (and men) only get to make that choice for themselves, they do not get to make that choice for other people.

Obviously, since I'm pro-choice, I think you can argue against abortion control in many effective ways. But this is not one of them--at least not if you hew to the feminist notion that women are entitled to their own choices and preferences as individuals, not lumped in with some vast undifferentiated mass of women who all want the same thing.

By giving each woman the right to make her own choice, we are denying women (and men) the right to make the choice for others. McArdle thinks this is wrong.

She's a libertarian, you know. At least she seems to think so.

Do you know what's another choice that anti-choice people want to be able to make? Birth control. Sometimes that's murder too, and even when it isn't it's still a right that some want to take away from women for religious reasons. Some birth control works after the egg is fertilized. The egg is as much a baby as a eight-and-a-half-month-old fetus--given time, they will both become people. Some pills prevents the egg from implanting in the womb, and the teeny weeny itsy bitsy baby is flushed down the toilet. It's obviously murder, and as we are handing out human rights like Halloween candy, some people will say that all women should be denied the right to take birth control. It'll only affect a few women anyway--those who are fertile, having sex and don't want to have a child right then. Just because McArdle might want or not want a child until later doesn't mean she should be permitted to have sex and use birth control. It's murder, you know, and a lot of people are being deprived of their right to taken away others' rights right now as we speak.

Since McArdle believes that minority rights should be ignored when someone wants to take them away, I, a baptised Catholic, have decided that Megan McArdle can no longer take birth control. I expect her to hand over her pills to me right now and inform me of all her sexual choices when they arise so I can make them for her. Let's see, we'll need to discuss her living in sin arrangement first. And a complete run-down of her personal life choices if we're to make her sexual reproductive choices for her.

Or we can make our own choices based on our own needs and let everyone else do the same. If abortion should not be permitted, outlaw it and throw the violators in jail. (That includes the middle and upper class too, of course.) Otherwise the religious panty-sniffers and hankie-waving middle-class libertarians can just butt out of other people's business and work on their own moral failings, starting with living in sin with tea-baggers, a far worse crime than the use of birth control.

Edited for tastefulness

Blogger Aggregate

Just in case you thought Megan McArdle would do her job and attempt to read the health care bill, McArdle explains why reading the source material would be futile:

Bruce Bartlett argues that reading the health care bill is a waste of time. Not only is it all written in legalese, but also, many of the provisions simply alter sections of other bills, so unless you have some sort of hyperlinked database, much of the language is meaningless.

I'm sure a link to Bartlett or Julian Sanchez or some Reason tea-bagger will be a more than adequate alternative, since McArdle admits she would not be able to understand it anyway.

Subjugation

Women will always be second-class citizens as long as we tolerate religion. Religion sanctifies hatred and prejudice. It gives authoritarians permission to act as viciously towards half of the human race as they choose to act. We accept religion because we need it; we need it because it allays fears, gives hope and gives us an identity. It satisfies a tremendous amount of overwhelming needs. But it is not real and therefore it becomes whatever people in power want it to become. It is used to attack women and we can either accept the trade-off--our subjugation in return for satisfying our needs--or we can mold it to the form we wish it to take. Religion does not belong only to men. Religious women need to either give it up altogether or take it back.

I've Been A Naughty Boy

Shorter Ross Douthat; We want to be punished for our sins. We want the Scourge of Apocalypse to strike the Back of Public Opinion, over and over, while we beg the Mistress of Destiny to punish us harder and harder and harder, until we feel the ecstasy of Judgment's Blessed Release.

Over The Rainbow

Since Megan McArdle hasn't posted yet and I am very busy today, let's take a look at a post from Friday.

Worst. Talking Point. Ever.
If this is the best the Democrats can come up with, they are in deep, deep trouble:

Republicans argue that an unemployment rate higher than it has been in more than a quarter of a century is evidence that the Democratic agenda isn't putting Americans back to work. They say the situation will be made worse if Congress and President Obama enact a health care overhaul that will require $1 trillion in tax hikes and entitlement cuts to expand insurance coverage.

"Ten-point-two now makes it hard for the majority to sell their agenda," said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

"All I know is that Speaker Pelosi is trying to force her members to vote for a bill that the American people have soundly rejected," added House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Democrats counter that their agenda has kick-started a recovery on Wall Street, even if it hasn't trickled down to the job market yet, and that Republicans are putting what they've begun at risk.[McArdle's bolding, I think, although it's hard to tell, the naughty little sloppy blogger.]

Whoever said that achieved the spectacular feat of making Michael Steele look like a master political strategist.

My goodness, who could have said such a silly thing, that makes Michael Steele look smart in comparison? It's kind of hard to tell, since Miss Megan can't be bothered to post a link. I understand--when you post links people can check what you say and that very often leads to disaster in MeganLand, but we (and the rest of the world) can google. Let's take a look.

Ah, it's Politico. (There is a link in the comments, but unlike McArdle we like to check sources.) So McArdle is upset that Democrats want to start a recovery on Wall Street that will trickle down jobs? That is, when corporations recover they'll hire people and unemployment will decrease? What's the problem with that?

Megan McArdle (Replying to: Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions) November 6, 2009 10:23 PM
Someone said something very clos e to that: "the stock market is recovering, and if we falter on health care now, everything will go to hell". Focusing anyone on the stock market, not a good idea.

Wait a minute--where did this health care talking point come from? What did the article say? What came after the part of the Politico article that McArdle bolded?

“Ten-point-two now makes it hard for the majority to sell their agenda,” said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

“All I know is that Speaker Pelosi is trying to force her members to vote for a bill that the American people have soundly rejected,” added House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Democrats counter that their agenda has kick-started a recovery n Wall Street, even if it hasn’t trickled down to the job market yet, and that Republicans are putting what they’ve begun at risk.

Still, they’re anxious to show they are working on new solutions to help Americans who are out of work.

“With the unemployment rate at 10.2 percent, the highest since the early 1980s, Congress should consider a range of job-creation policies including a jobs tax credit bill I plan to introduce,” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said. “While a jobs tax credit wouldn’t fix all the challenges businesses face, it would be an effective tool in helping some firms hire more workers. Job creation must be a top priority for Congress and I will continue to look for ways to help get Americans back to work.”

For Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), who has a safe seat, the answer is to get more stimulus dollars flowing.

“We’ve got to push getting those stimulus dollars out that are clogged in the system,” she said.

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) said a new highway bill would help immediately with job creation.

Democrats will focus even more on job creation once Congress finishes the debate on health care, said Sen. Mark Begich, a freshman Democrat elected from deeply Republican Alaska in 2008.

If at this time next year the public doesn’t think Congress is doing enough on the economy and jobs, he said, Democrats will be in trouble.

"If we are working hard, showing we're trying to move the economy in the right direction, working on creating long-term jobs and rebuilding this economy, I think the American people will recognize that," Begich said. "If we are not doing anything or we're limiting what we're doing and the rate is maybe inching a little bit, that becomes problematic."

So Democrats are counting on a prosperous business climate to create jobs? Didn't we just go through eight years hearing that when corporations are healthy they create jobs and people will earn money and the land will flow with milk and honey and flat-screen tvs? How is this focusing on the stock market to the exclusion of jobs?

A few commenters point out that McArdle's lack of attribution is problematic.

Madmadmadmadman (Replying to: Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions) November 6, 2009 11:29 PM
Someone said something very close to that: "the stock market is recovering, and if we falter on health care now, everything will go to hell".
Someone? Why didn't you quote and deride them? And who is this person, how do they represent the Democratic Party, and what does that have to do with the fact that you misrepresented the information you were quoting? It doesn't really matter if your point is accurate. If you don't have a good quote, just comment on the idea in general without misrepresenting things or do a little digging and find a good source. Just trying to keep you honest.

Chuckle. Good luck with that, my friend.

McArdle's response:

Megan McArdle (Replying to: Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions) November 7, 2009 8:29 AM
Okay, it's one thing to say that you think they were paraphrased inaccurately, but you seem to be claiming that you think no Democrat said anything like this. The reporter did not, I am near-certain, make it up. *Someone* told them that the stock market recovery showed that what they were doing was working, even if hey, everyone's losing their jobs--and that eventually this would translate into broader recovery. This is an awful, awful response, in part because corporate profits are rising in several due to cost cutting--i.e. job cuts.

Considering how often McArdle makes stuff up, she shouldn't be so confident. The Democrats quoted below McArdle's excerpt talk specifically about job creation, which is, no doubt, why she cut off the quote where she did. Camp and Bohner seem to be talking about health care when they mention Democrats' agenda, but the actual Democrats discuss how to decrease unemployment. McArdle's analysis of the situation seems a little off, not to mention made up. Another commenter makes this point.

Madmadmadmadman (Replying to: Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions) November 7, 2009 11:24 AM
Okay, it's one thing to say that you think they were paraphrased inaccurately, but you seem to be claiming that you think no Democrat said anything like this. The reporter did not, I am near-certain, make it up. *Someone* told them that the stock market recovery showed that what they were doing was working, even if hey, everyone's losing their jobs--and that eventually this would translate into broader recovery.
I can't speak for the other posters, but I explicitly said that it doesn't matter if your point is accurate, there's no indication from the quoted article that this is a Democratic talking point. *Someone* could have been the gang of argumentative Democrats at his soup kitchen. And I have no idea who could have been paraphrased incorrectly, because I have no idea where the info came from and whether or not this person represents the Democratic party. And neither do you.

So the Democrats' Worst. Talking. Point. Ever is really McArdle's talking point, which she creates and stuffs into the mouth of her pet Democratic Strawman. Dorothy Gale of Kansas spent less time than McArdle propping up and re-stuffing scarecrows.

Shouldn't You Be Home Baking Cookies, Honey?

Kathryn Jean Lopez sez that it's the fault of the feminists that a Muslim American shot up Fort Hood.

'Has ... political correctness so infected our institutions that the U.S. military is now affected, too?' [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
I think an answer to that may be: We were warned. We were warned by Elaine Donnelly (and others, including Kate O'Beirne, who served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in the early Nineties), on the feminism issues. It is diversity over security in some of the decision-making in the military. It's become an ingrained cultural reality when it comes to women there (women to be deployed on subs soon, BTW). I think it might be fair to say these issues are not unrelated.

I think Lopez should quit her job and go home and have babies, if she can dredge up a man to provide God's Sacred Sperm. The sight of a woman pundit telling women they shouldn't be treated with equality is pretty damn odd. If she really felt so strongly about it she'd give up her job and let a man take her place. She won't give up equality when it benefits her, so why should anyone else? Put up or shut up, K-Lo. Either way we'd win.

Miss Originality

Megan McArdle has a new post up called "America and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Jobs Numbers." Something sounds vaguely familiar about that phrasing....

Elizabeth Warren and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Utterly Misleading Bankruptcy Study (6/4/09)

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas about the minimum wage (5/12/08)

This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad argument in favor of more healthcare spending. (10/16/09)

As for Marc Rich . . . okay, so a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. (12/8/08)

Starting with a disastrous land reform that placed land into the hands of political cronies, rather than those who knew anything about farming, or needed sustenance, he has turned a huge net food exporter into a net importer . . . when they can get the hard currency to import. Each successive foolhardy economic policy, designed to cover up some of the problems that have sprung up due to his last terrible, horrible, no good, very bad economic idea, has made things hideously worse. (6/3/07)

This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. (2/24/08)

Her answer is a litany of silliness, showcasing her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mortgage plan. (2/21/08)

What's with the Judith Viorst obsession? Or maybe she just considers herself a cruel victim of fate, who gets the shaft while everyone else cruises into lucrative bank jobs.

First In The Land, First In Our Hearts

From a society item in the Houston Chronicle, by Heather Staible:

Former first lady Laura Bush provided star power for the Communities in Schools 30th anniversary gala this past Thursday at the Hilton Post Oak, but a high school senior stole the show.

In Houston for only the second time since moving back to Texas, Bush graciously chatted with guests at a V. I. P. reception then received two standing ovations when she entered the ballroom.

Her aged in-laws live in Houston, you know.

During her keynote talk to the chatty crowd of 550, she shared the stage with 18-year-old Brittany Coleman, a Lamar High School student who described how CIS had changed her life and future.

The guests talked all through Bush's speech? It must have been a little less than engrossing.

"It's a Cinderella-type story, and your dreams really can come true," Coleman said. Bush slipped out before the steak dinner was served, but the line to chat with Coleman was four people deep.

From first lady to rotary club wife, in just a year. It's better than she deserves.