Archive for July, 2010
The Thune-Beutler Epic #Mathfail Saga (Contd.)
I find that, even after 11 updates, I’m still not ready to let go of the Brian Beutler #mathfail story. There’s one element that I didn’t really address so far. Originally, John Thune said that if you keep cutting the deficit by 10% each year, in 10 years the deficit would be eliminated. In the [...]
Jesus Christ Almighty!
Brian Beutler in TPMDC, mocking Sen. John Thune for illiteracy: Sen. John Thune (R-SD) — the fifth highest ranking Republican in the Senate — has a new plan for lowering deficits, and as you might expect from GOP leadership, it involves zero tax hikes. It does however, involve math and, if his appearance on Fox [...]
The Average Return On Stocks: Financial Illiteracy In The WSJ
Here we go again: more financial illiteracy from the financial press. This time it’s The Wall Street Journal. Brett Arends decided to put together one of those lists: “Ten Stock-Market Myths That Just Won’t Die“. If I were ever to do such a list, at the top of the list would be the myth that [...]
Are You Experienced?
The first line of the Jimi Hendrix song goes “If you can just get your mind together”. It looks like Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress couldn’t, when she wrote: Franken has had experience with the filibuster dating back to before he was even seated as a U.S. senator. As Republicans attempted to drag out the recount [...]
The First T-and-A Speaker Of The House?
Although I don’t expect it to happen — that is to say, I assign to it a probability of significantly less than 0.5 — if Republicans win control of the House in November, and John Boehner becomes Speaker, I believe he will be the first T-and-A speaker in the history of the House of Representatives. [...]
Making The RNC’s Financial Mess Add Up
On Wednesday, ABC News reported that a nice little brawl had broken out at the RNC over “more than $7 million in debt” that was not reported to the FEC in its April and May filings: A GOP civil war has broken out between RNC Chairman Michael Steele and RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen. The dust-up [...]
The Cost Of Conscientious Objections
It’s not only elections that have consequences. Shortsighted self-centered stupidity has consequences too: Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold not only refused to support the financial-reform bill that President Obama signed into law yesterday; he also refused to support an up-or-down vote on the legislation, joining the Republican filibuster. At the time, I had some harsh words [...]
Gratuitous Vilification By ThinkProgress
Even for ThinkProgress — which is intermittently capable of fairly mind-numbing stupidity — this is pretty bizarre: At the same time in March, Boehner himself appeared to be encouraging the anger behind the violence: “Violence and threats are unacceptable. That is not the American way… I know there’s anger, but let’s take that anger and [...]
Trying To Reach, Over and Over Again
Somewhere in between calling Shirley Sherrod while she was on her way to work, and telling her to pull over to the side of the road, right now, and resign, and deciding that they owed her an apology, the Agriculture Department seems to have managed to lose her phone number. This is Robert Gibbs at [...]
Will Breitbart Walk Away With Just Superficial Scratches?
The one thing that is abundantly clear about the whole Shirley Sherrod fiasco — other than the fact that it was beyond absurd for her to be fired for her speech to the NAACP — is that Andrew Breitbart is guilty of race-baiting in the third degree. He deliberately edited the video of Sherrod’s speech, [...]