ID Reloaded

Getting back into it, with some quick hits:
On Arizona's illegal immigration bill, this is just about right.
On a related note, when dealing with the police, know your rights and how to defend them.
Sowell on the limits of power, examining the ultimate case. Whatever problems I have with him on foreign policy (largely because he doesn't apply his domestic/economic thinking consistently there), he almost always spot on with this kind of stuff.
Shorter Paul Krugman: When Democrats are in favor of something, it's because they're good people. When Democrats are against something, it's because they're good people. When Republicans are for something, it's because they're bad people. When Republicans are against something, it's because they're bad people. Glad we got that straight.

TNC

Two from Ta-Nehisi.
First, he relays some great stuff on Ali-Frazier. Frazier really doesn't across well at all. Not that Ali does, but better than Frazier. Entertaining stuff.
Second, he writes about Sotomayor, Lindsey Graham, and PC. I really don't get what he's saying here. The possibilities I can think of are: 1) There is no double standard. 2) Double standards are good. 3) Some double standards are bad, but the one that says if a white man makes a statement concerning race and/or gender that a non-white male disagrees with, he's needs to kicked out of public life, but that the opposite is not true, is a good double standard. 4) It's not a good double standard, but there are bigger fish to fry.
That last one is the one that makes the most sense to me, but I don't think that's his meaning. I readily accept that, as a historically privileged group, what's acceptable for me to say is somewhat different than what's acceptable for someone else. Also, if Sotomayor had been speaking off the cuff, or made her wise latina statement when she was 25, or she was some minor nobody, I'd give it a big whatever. However, she was reading a prepared speech, less than 10 years ago, and she's going to be on the Supreme Court. So, yes it matters. I'm willing to listen to her defend it, explain exactly what she meant, and likely I'll be mollified. There are plausible benign explanations for what she said. However, we'll see.
TNC calls Graham "smug, self-satisfied, unreflective, whiny and narcissistic". And that "if you've never had to grapple with who you are in relation to other people, if you've never had to worry much about courting people who aren't like you, if you've never struggled with being politically correct, it's exactly the sort of thing you'd say." Graham may well be all of those things (they are practically his job requirements). However, I see no evidence for those things in his statement. While I agree with PC part of the diagnosis (a PC person wouldn't make that statement), I don't with the rest. I have "had to grapple with who [I] am in relation to other people". I have "had to worry much about courting people who aren't like" me. Surely not as much as TNC, but I have. And, I agree with the offending language Graham used. So try again, TNC.
I enjoy the man's writing, he often helps me think of issues in somewhat different ways, to expand my thinking, and is entertaining most of the time. However, this was a big whiff on his part.

Many Deadbeat Dads to This Crisis

Barry Ritholtz opines on the financial crisis, basically declaring that if you don't think that the problem was entirely lax lending standards, you don't know what you're talking about. And if you mention the political goals imposed on Fannie and Freddie, the CRA, etc, you are an idiot or dishonest. I agree with him that lax standards were a huge part of the problem. But what he seems insistent on not seeing is that many of the causes of the mess are interrelated. For instance, Congress required that 12% of Frannie's mortgages go to low-income borrowers in 1996. And upped that to 20% in 2000. And 22% in 2005. And 28% in 2008. The only way they could keep pace with that ridiculous requirement was to reduce lending standards, more and more. This doesn't excuse the investment banks and others who investing in securities based on these loans, securities they didn't really understand. And it doesn't mean that it's all the fault of teh poor blacks and hispanics, far from it. It should be a warning to stop monkeying around in markets. The consequences will nearly always boomerang two (or more) fold back on you when you try to advance political goals in this way.

You may be cool....

but you'll never be 4 popped-collars cool. (Others here)

Flattering Himself

I agree with Krugman that the charts he puts up in this post are interesting and informative. And they do somewhat (but not totally) allay my concerns that inflation is picking up. My guess now is that inflation rises, but not by as much as I previously thought, and comes back down. However, Krugman tells us that he was right all along that deflation should be our concern. I believe I've read all of his columns and posts over the last year, probably even over the last two. He definitely has been an inflation skeptic, but he has never said that deflation should be our concern. Not in public anyway, maybe he made an offhand comment to someone after class or something. If anyone can point out where he has written this, or has audio of it, please point it out and I'll retract this, but until then, Krugman is a lying liar who lies. Also, to be an accurate dick, these charts do not indicate deflation at all, simply less inflation.

Don't say anything

John Cusack interviews Naomi Klein (via Cato-at-Liberty), and I nearly barf. Why does anyone take this woman seriously? Among many other dishonesties/misunderstandings, she actually blames the coup in Chile on Milton Friedman. Really? He was involved in the advising of Pinochet years after the fact, but using that to blame him for Pinochet would be like if Obama becomes President and so we blame him for the Iraq invasion and occupation.

A Card Short

Orson Scott Card, writing in the Moron Times, I mean the Mormon Times, lays out an argument against gay marriage. I actually agree with it. Certainly not the conclusion nor all of the sub-arguments, but there are smart things in there. Unfortunately, he has no recognition of the actually implications of what he does get right, but hopefully I can help a little.

He says that “marriage is older than government”. Absolutely right. And because of this, like he says, government can’t redefine what marriage is. One man and one woman is just such a redefinition. Contrary to what he claims, marriage does not universally mean “the permanent or semipermanent bond between a man and a woman, establishing responsibilities between the couple and any children that ensue”. How do I know that? Because some people disagree. Hence, there is no universal definition.

He argues that we must destroy governments that act in insane and destructive ways. And that “authority extends only as far as people choose to obey”. Again, absolutely correct. If Card wants to leave the authority of the US government, I fully support his right to do so. I don’t support his right to impose a government on me that won’t let my gay friends marry each other if they so choose.

A point he never explicitly makes, but that is clear throughout, is that he doesn’t think that gay people can love each other. They can be friends and affectionate and attracted to each other, but not in love. In a word, bullshit. He clearly has had very little in the way of interaction with gay people, and filters what he has had through his Moron faith. Sorry again, his Mormon faith. OSC, stop believing in transparent fairy tales, and start living in the real world.

I am not a fan of Steve Landsburg, but this column about the stimulus package is right on. Don Boudreaux (chair of GMU's economics department) agrees. Paul Krugman's reaction to it is to write what is, to use the technical philosophical term, a fuck you post. I'll grant (grudgingly) that there is the possibility that Landsburg could be wrong. His position, though, is not a "crime" and evidence that he "obviously just doesn't get it". People who think that Keynes was wrong aren't morons or charlatans. They may be wrong, but it is very much up to debate. This wasn't an academic paper, it was a column promoting certain ideas. He has to be honest is so doing, but has free range to consider whatever ideas he sees fit and that fit into the space available. Honestly, I expect a little better from someone who is on the list for winning the Nobel Prize, teaches at Princeton, writes a regular column for the NY Times, and is writing on the NY Times site. But maybe I'm being unrealistic.

Yikes

Tom Cruise goes off about what Scientology means to him. I trust that no commentary is needed.

Outcome bias perhaps?

Channeling Taleb, The Knackered Hack decides that a company took a risk and it turned out badly, therefore management was stupid.
Speaking of Taleb, my opinion of him is split. He does have some interesting things to say. He is also an idiot (see here). Also, anyone who can put as the first things one sees on his homepage are a picture of himself and a quote about "teasing people who take themselves...too seriously", while telling us that he was afraid of airplanes and such because his ideas are so important for the world that he had to get his book finished before anything happened to him (and so on, see Mahalaobis for more), either needs to look in the mirror, or needs to stop staring at it.

Must see TV

I hate his style, but Keith is dead on (via Catallarchy, via Balko). Spread the word.

Ding ding ding!

We have a winner, for dumbest answer to a question ever (I believe that it also doubles as the most pretentious answer ever). Dubner asks what the correct response is to seeing a beggar on the street near a street vendor. Taleb's answer is to wonder whether the beggar reminds him of his great uncle, whether he sees the vendor or the beggar first, and so on. What a frickin' moron. It reminds of an old SNL skit with Woody Harrelson and Victoria Jackson, Who's Dumber, where (this is from memory, so forgive minor details) she's asked how long it would take a train to go 500 miles if it travels at 100 mph. Her answer is to question if a train can really go that fast, and to include the need for a stop in the middle, so it would take 8 hours.

And I Wish I Had a Pony

Or maybe something a little more manly. Anyway, reminding me why I've never liked him (even so, I wish he had won in 2000), Al Gore: I wish that we could have had in the 1990s the deafening scientific consensus that has emerged in more recent years.

Thank you

Mankiw:

Note that points 1 and 2 are about political philosophy rather than economics. Economists can have opinions about these matters, but our opinions are not much better or worse by virtue of our training than those of anyone else.

This is something that often bugs me. People who are experts in one area often act or are treated as if they are experts in other areas. That doesn't that they have nothing to offer in those other areas, but they and we need to keep in mind the limits of their (possible) superiority.

Annoyance

Sometimes I think people write things just to make me upset. To wit, this piece on "The Traveler's Dilemna". 2 is not the logical choice! It's a logical choice, in that I see the logic of it, but it is not the logical choice. I love it when people try to assail logic who have no understanding of logic (heavy sarcasm).

Shorter Scott Adams

Some stupid people labor under a delusion of grandeur. If you agree with me on a particular issue where I am basically just playing word games, then, like me, you do not labor any delusions of grandeur and are smart.

Name dropping that will impress no one

I met Tim Westergren today. He's the main founder of Pandora, the very cool outgrowth of the Music Genome Project. Good dude, good product, probably a good company (too early to say for certain, but I'm not alone in being optimistic about it). Check it out.
This bit of honest pretention brought to you by this excellent short film, Truth in Advertising (NSFW).

Whatever could the reason be?

I bet Orson Scott Card wonders why people don't listen to him when he drops lines like "people like me are ridiculed for seeing the big picture". Uh, fuck off.