Noted for February 15, 2013
Alyssa Rosenberg: Game of Thrones: "I understand why it would have been prohibitive to really get rid of Peter Dinklage’s nose to match up the damage Tyrion suffers during the Battle of the Blackwater in the books, but I do regret the preservation of his general handsomeness"
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Harold Pollack on The Social Trends Driving American Gangs and Gun Violence
Josh Marshall: Think There May be a Problem With That: "For a promotional video that was eventually never shown, [Dick Armey's] Tea Party group FreedomWorks got two female interns to impersonate then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a Giant Panda having sex."
Steve Benen: Yes, Republican Paul Ryan Is a Clown. Why Do You Ask?: "House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), talking to CBS News yesterday, on automatic sequestration cuts: '"Don't forget it's the president who first proposed the sequester," Ryan continued. "It's the president who designed the sequester as it is now designed."' House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), talking to Fox News in August 2011, on automatic sequestration cuts: 'What conservatives like me have been fighting for, for years are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money. And if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can't turn that off without a supermajority vote. We got that in law. That is here.' These can't both be true. Either, as Paul Ryan said at the time, Republicans got the sequester in law, or this is all President Obama's idea."
Mark Thoma: Economist's View: Holtz-Eakin Tries to Scare You. Don't Let Him: "[Holtz-Eakin] has learned nothing from the failure of the confidence fairy to appear. Waiting to fix the debt -- a problem driven mainly by health care cost escalation that won't become severe for many years -- is not risky, but his advice certainly is…. The headline today for Europe -- where countries have followed the advice of the Holtz-Eakin types, is (remember his claim above about austerity and growth?): 'Eurozone economy falls short of forecasts'…. The 'pundit orthodoxy' he disses is from Paul Krugman. Kind of funny, given how wrong Holtz-Eakin has been relative to Krugman"
David Dayen: Your New Landlord Works on Wall Street: "Hedge funds are snatching up rental homes at an alarming rate"
Carola Binder: The Unwarranted "Unwarranted Pessimistic Signal"
Spencer Ackerman: Defense Nerds Strike Back: A Symposium on the Battle of Hoth
Mark Thoma: Economist's View: 'How a Nation Got Snookered by a Phony Narrative': "The title of this column by Caroline Baum implies that the entire nation was "snookered" about uncertainty holding back the economy, but some of us tried to warn that the uncertainty argument was bogus. In any case, good to see people coming to this realization"
Aaron Carroll: Testimony on the Medicaid Expansion
Ryan Avent: Fiscal policy: How scary is the sequester?: "AMERICA managed, more or less, to avoid tumbling over (running into?) the fiscal cliff, but there is still an awful lot of fiscal tightening programmed for 2013…. Stipulate first that this is no way to handle fiscal policy. America's strategy has been to try and fail to reach budget deals, then to threaten itself with clunky automatic cuts if it can't reach a deal, and then to allow most of those automatic cuts to occur in lieu of a deal. Very little of the stuff everyone agrees ought to happen to the American budget—tax reform, more public investment, efforts to rein in health-cost growth, and so on—is actually materialising. Instead the path of least political resistence is the order of the day. Further, there is very little reason to think that short-run deficit cutting is a good idea."
Brad DeLong (2006) on Martin Peretz, Frank Foer, and Spencer Ackerman:vNever Fire Your Best Polemicist If Your Dork Quotient Is More than 30%
On February 14, 2013:
- HOISTED FROM COMMENTS: TOM REDBURN ON ELON MUSK OF TESLA MOTORS VS. THE NEW YORK TIMES http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/hoisted-from-comments-tom-redburn-on-elon-musk-of-tesla-motors-vs-the-new-york-times.html
- WHEN DID MARTIN PERETZ BECOME THIS CRAZY? http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/when-did-martin-peretz-become-this-crazy.html
- ELON MUSK OF TESLA MOTORS VS. THE NEW YORK TIMES http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/elon-musk-of-tesla-motors-vs-the-new-york-times.html
- THE REPUBLICAN CLOWN SHOW CONTINUES: NO, THESE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT RUN OUR ECONOMY WEBLOGGING http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/the-republican-clown-show-continues-no-these-people-should-not-run-our-economy-weblogging.html
- THE LONG-RUN COST OF THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN: GLOOMY NEWS ABOUT ECONOMIC GROWTH http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/the-long-run-cost-of-the-economic-downturn-gloomiy-news-about-economic-growth.html
- LIVEBLOGGING WORLD WAR II: FEBRUARY 14, 1943 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/liveblogging-world-war-ii-february-14-1943.html
- THURSDAY FROM THE ARCHIVES: A DOZEN KEEPERS FROM APRIL 2005 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/friday-from-the-archives-a-dozen-keepers-from-april-2005.html
- A SOMEWHAT STRANGE PIECE FROM NICK EBERSTADT: MOTES AND BEAMS! WEBLOGGING http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/a-very-strange-piece-from-nick-eberstadt-motes-and-beams-weblogging.html
- NOTED FOR FEBRUARY 14, 2013 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/noted-for-february-14-2013.html
