Jun
6
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-06-06

  • Back in January, shortly before the inauguration, the incoming Obama economic team issued a (PDF) report "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" advocating passage of the legislation before Congress. Central to the argument was Figure 1, showing their prediction of the unemployment rate with and without the plan (click for original size):

    [Projections]

    There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical then (see Greg Mankiw in the January 10 NYT, David Harsanyi in the January 30 Denver Post, or this handy collection of links from the Cato Institute.)

    But "they won", the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan was passed and signed, and … now, about five months later, some bright person ("Geoff" at Innocent Bystanders) has overlaid the actual unemployment data points on the original graph. The result (click for big version):

    [vs. Actual]

    Fortunately, our watchdog press will make sure this huge gap between prediction and performance will gain wide public attention, January's skeptics will be hailed as being right all along, and the people that advocated, passed, and signed the massive "stimulus" in a panic will pay a heavy political price.

    Oh, wait…

  • The College of Liberal Arts at the University Near Here publishes a newsletter; the latest issue contains the story:
    For six months, Erin Thesing '10 worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Flint, Michigan. As part of a political science internship, Thesing documented this historic campaign.
    And yes, the remainder of the story is just as gushing and adulatory. It will make you wonder how the same publication might treat a "political science internship" volunteer for McCain, or any other Republican.

    And then it will make you emit a hearty laugh, because you can't imagine that scenario would ever be allowed within the sphere of reality at the College of Liberal Arts at the University Near Here. Even if a plucky conservative managed to do an analogous activity, we'd never read one thing about it, never mind reading paragraph after mushy paragraph about it.

    Warning to would-be writers: misty-eyed sycophancy can lead to Really Bad Prose.

    The distance from Durham, New Hampshire to Flint, Michigan, cannot be measured in miles.

    If you're like me, you immediately thought, "Oh, yeah? Sure it can."

  • If you were waiting for Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism to come out in paperback, your wait is over. Recommended.

    And the higher it goes on Amazon's best-seller list, the more it irks liberals. So, win-win.

  • Virginia Postrel has a post titled "The Lethal Dangers of Sand". Consider yourself warned.


Last Modified 2022-10-04 4:03 PM EDT