Give it a chance. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:24 PM | Comments (129)
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Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller had written a piece suggesting that Perry was approaching this issue in a too-tentative manner.

Well, Perry now publishes an Op-Ed calling for Holder to step down. The reason he waited for the Op-Ed to make this demand, I understand, was that he didn't want to seem flippant about it, and just mention it in a stump speech as a bit of red-meat rah-rah. He wanted to make sure that if he was calling for the resignation of a cabinet officer, he had laid out the case for that in a serious manner.

The op-ed was published in the Washington Times yesterday.

Ever since the Department of JusticeÂ’s gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious became public, the Obama administrationÂ’s response has been slow and infuriating. Of particular concern is Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.Â’s lack of candor concerning what he knew and when he knew it.

This is not a typical case of bureaucratic bungling. A 40-year-old Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, and possibly a U.S. immigration agent, are dead because of a horribly ill-conceived Justice Department operation that went tragically wrong.

Looks like the "bureaucratic bungling" line has been rejiggered into "This is not a typical case of bureaucratic bungling," a subtle change in wording designed to not preculde something more than "bungling."

Perry turns to the evidence that Holder was lying when he claimed, earlier, to have only heard of Fast and Furious a few weeks before, an answer seemingly concocted to forestall questions about it -- after all, if he doesn't know anything about it, what can you ask him?

I'm skipping that recap, as it's widely available, and there's a Fair Use thing.

Mr. HolderÂ’s proclaimed ignorance leaves Americans to draw one of two conclusions: Either he is guilty of extraordinary bureaucratic incompetence or he is guilty of a cover-up meant to shield him from the consequences of an operation that has left at least one federal agent dead and continues to imperil many more.

Either way, it is high time for Mr. Holder to step down. If he refuses to resign, Mr. Obama must fire him immediately.

...

America simply cannot tolerate an attorney general who arms the very criminals he is supposed to protect us from and then refuses to comfort the grieving parents of a slain Border Patrol agent. Nor can we tolerate a president who lacks the courage to take decisive action in restoring justice to the Department of Justice.

It is time for Mr. Holder to go.

Perry was in the Center Seat on Bret Bair's Special Report last night. As usual, he sounded prepared and fluent in an interview setting, even with several questioners. He also apologized again -- and castigated himself -- for that "you don't have a heart" line.

It does seem that Perry has a particular problem with debates, not a general problem with speaking.

Yeah, I know, the polls show him out of it. But I think that's partly due to preference falsification, as people don't support him because they guess that most other people don't support him.

All I know is that, despite Newt Gingrich's verbal agility, if he's our nominee, we cannot talk about the central role that the Democratic client-organizations Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae played in the destruction of our economy. We can't point out that it was not a lack of government intervention that caused the meltdown, but rather it was government intervention itself which created, and then overfilled, the bubble, with all sorts of ridiculous mortgages.

We also can't talk too much about Obama's individual mandate, as Gingrich was an early champion of it. (As Mitt Romney claimed in one debate -- "I got it from you.")

And if we nominate Romney, of course we cannot talk about ObamaCare at all.

I think these are central issues. If our nominee has to soft-pedal them due to the fact he's compromised on them as well, we're ceding an awful lot to Obama.

My belief is that while it's possible, albeit unlikely, that Perry will become better in debates, it is not possible for Gingrich to go back in time and refuse to consult with Freddie Mac (consult? okay), and it is not possible for Romney to go back in time and undo RomneyCare.

I gotta admit I'd really like a candidate whom the media cannot brand "dumb." I gotta admit that -- I'll be happy with Gingrich or Romney, if only for that reason.

Let's face it, Obama's not particularly smart and both Gingrich and Romney are. What a wonderful change of pace for the Republican to be demonstrably more intelligent than his Democratic opponent.

But still, as nice as that is (and it is pretty sweet, I admit), I think I'd rather have the issues.

I'd also like to have that tiny little apparently-inconsequential point that Perry's Texas has created half the country's jobs in the past two years.

I sort of think the election will be fought and won on that issue. And not so much on anything else.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (335)
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The amount of money "lost" was thought to be $600 million.

But the trustee for the now-bankrupt company says the actual figure might be $1.2 billion.

As you might be aware, the FBI is investigating the company, suspicious that Corzine used client money to cover his own/the firm's bets on European sovereign debt.

In other words -- if Corzine's bets had paid off, he would have pocked the profits, since he placed those bets on his own/his firm's account.

But, the suspicion is that he used client money for this purpose, "borrowing" client funds to place the bets.

Notice that, if this is the case, had Corzine won his bets, he pockets the money; but when he loses them, it's his clients -- who never authorized this gamble -- who actually wind up losing everything.

Venture socialism, in other words.

But after weeks of reconstructing MF GlobalÂ’s books, forensic accountants from Deloitte and Ernst & Young working for the trustee concluded that the account shortfall was much greater than originally estimated. Regulators have yet to verify the new numbers. While they are expected to raise their estimate above $600 million, it is unlikely to reach the trusteeÂ’s $1.2 billion figure.

...

These inquiries have increasingly homed in on the theory that much of the customer money had left the firm, the people briefed on the matter said.

Regulators currently suspect that MF Global — at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey — improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.

Investigators are considering two possible situations. One is that MF Global used the money to meet trading partnersÂ’ demands for extra cash, which could come back. The other is that it was used to cover trading losses, which would mean that the money cannot be recovered.

As the trustees try to pay off creditors out of what's left of MF Global, about $3 billion remains "stuck;" it's not being released to people until the trustees make sure they have a firm accounting of how much money remains, and who has first rights to it. This is, of course, causing considerable anger among clients and creditors.

LauraW. points out that in that entire article, the name "Corzine" never appears. And it's a long article.

Thanks to RDBrewer for the tips and the Separated at Birth picture links.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (97)
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I kind of did not believe the 2.5% figure, nor the claims made off of it that the recession is clearly over, gee, we finally hit 2.5%! (2.5% is weak, anyway-- even 3.0% is weak for a recovery, but that's the minimum I would need to call this a recovery-range number.)

Almost every GDP estimate under Princess Obama has been revised downwards, sometimes by a lot.

But it wasn't 2.5%. That first number released is their first estimate, and I think they do at least two revisions to it.

The first revision puts it down at 2.0%. I'm thinking the next revision puts it even lower. Down into the One Point Shit range we've gotten used to.

The media won't mention these lower estimates, of course.

Bias to 3.0%: I forget where I saw this, but someone wrote that he believes the Bureau of Labor Statistic's methodology has a flaw that always pushes the GDP estimate into the 3.0% range, at least in their first estimate. They seem to have some belief that this is the natural state of things, and their first guesses tend to be goosed to be closer to 3.0% than the facts warrant.

Later revisions tend to show this initial bias towards 3.0% was a bit of delusional optimism.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (117)
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You know what you get when you mix science and politics? You get politics, period.

Hockey Stick Charlatan Michael Mann gets the worst of it from this batch of emails (but a lot more are coming).

<3373> Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.

<3115> Mann: By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

Waah, when is someone going to publish something that claims my discredited graph is true?! Waaah. That would help "the cause," and by "the cause," I mean myself.

<3940> Mann: They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

<0810> Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I donÂ’t know what she thinkÂ’s sheÂ’s doing, but its not helping the cause.

The cause?

Mann would probably claim he didn't mean "the cause" in a political way. I think he did, but what he'd claim is he meant "the cause of scientific truth."

The problem with that, from these emails, is that he seems antagonistic to someone critiquing his work, or global warming work, and dismissive of her simply because she is critiquing it.

But that process of constant challenge and critique is science, or it used to be anyways, at least outside the special groupthink of "global warming" science, where things are not proven by, what's the word, "proof" but rather consensus -- majority vote! -- so anyone who is doing actual science is therefore harmful to "the cause."

In science, if a fellow scientist has badly erred, you say so publicly, and you prove it. Even if he is your friend. Because the real "cause" of science demands that. Science is not a popularity contest.

In fake science -- which is what global warming is -- you instead privately, in secret emails, dismiss a major, and completely wrong, finding, but you let it continue limping along publicly, because the guy responsible for the indefensible error is a leading light in the cause and apparently we're supposed to keep serious objections to false "science" on the downlow.

Mitchell/MetO

Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems
to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no
Wilson:

I thought IÂ’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.

[...] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.

McIntyre had long objected to Mann's graph, because, using Mann's algorithms, 99% of data entered into it would produce a hockey-stick sudden increase at the end. The algorithm itself was ludicrously biased to produce this false result; the result was an artifact of the algorithm used to create it, not something existing in actual reality.

Someone actually finally bothered to check, and oh look, McIntyre was right.

Quick, let's keep that quiet. We'll talk about it in emails, but we certainly won't mention it in one of the journals we control.

Bradley:

I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should
never have been published. I donÂ’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

I know I already printed this one but it's a keeper. Point is, while he doesn't want to be "associated" with it, I don't see him taking the necessary scientific step of proving it to be false... publicly.

Because that would help the cause.

Since when is science done by secret consensus, rather than public demonstration of proofs and public critiques thereof?

Osborn:

Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the
middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the
MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data
‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it!

Esper:

Now, you Keith complain about the way we introduced our result, while saying it
is an important one. [...] the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to
missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by
dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together. So, why
donÂ’t you want to let the result into science?

Because they're not doing science, Silly-billy.

Cook:

I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be
defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the
science move ahead.

Cook:

One problem is that he [Mann] will be using the RegEM method, which provides no better diagnostics (e.g. betas) than his original method. So we will still not
know where his estimates are coming from.

If you don't know where they're coming from, that's a problem, isn't it? Aren't proofs supposed to be publicly available, resting upon publicly-available data?

If Mann is cooking this stuff like The Great Oz behind the curtain, and you're going along with this -- it's not science, and you are betraying science too.

All these people have a big problem with Mann's falsified and fake Hokey Stick graph. They want it to quietly go away, without a fuss. What they don't want to do is publicly announce that it is false, because that would hurt their dear friend Mann and hurt the cause as well.

In fact, that's what they did end up doing -- without ever stating the reasons why, they have in fact simply stopped referring to the Mann Hockey Stick.

Usually, in science, when a major falsehood like this is abandoned, there is a public repudiation of it, so that scientists coming later know they cannot rely on it any further.

But not here. Scientists working in this field, relying on the public record, would think the Mann graph is still part of "science."

They'd have to be included in the secret emails to find out it's not.

This is science?

No, this is message coordination of the kind that happens in no-press-or-public-allowed strategy sessions at the DNC.

This is not a hybrid of science and politics; this is just politics, period.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (139)
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It's of course an old tradition to use musical intros that have some punning connection to the guest. Sometimes these can be teasing (I think when Rick Perry appeared on some show they played "Once, twice, three times a lady"), but usually they're not actual insults. After all, the person is a guest.

But then, Republicans are The Other, aren't they? The typical rules don't apply to the Hate Figures among us.

Jimmy Fallon says, on Twitter, that the bandleader is "grounded," which I assume means "had a talking to, and will clear some of these intros with me from now on."

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (161)
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They seem to have a problem with the concept of feces, as a general matter.

Occupy Santa Cruz, for example, has a real problem with the poopie.

And in London:

The St PaulÂ’s Cathedral protest camp has become littered with human waste and graffiti, while alcohol and drug use are rife, according to legal documents filed by the City of London.

The Corporation, which is taking legal action to evict the protesters, highlighted the filthy conditions ahead of the court battle which is due to start this week.

Parts of the dossier come from registrar of St PaulÂ’s, Nicholas Cottam, who wrote to a corporation official outlining the disruptions faced by the cathedral.

Mr Cottam wrote: ‘Desecration: – graffiti have been scratched and painted on to the great west doors of the cathedral, the chapter house door and most notably a sacrilegious message painted on the restored pillars of the west portico.

‘Human defecation has occurred in the west portico entrance and inside the cathedral on several occasions.’

Occupy London has added a new twist, too: Freely roaming dogs.

I have nothing against dogs. But generally it's a sign of disorder when unattended dogs roam the streets.

Verum Serum excepts a good piece about the media's well-night absolute whitewashing of all this.

The non-coverage of the Occupy movement has been a watershed, at least in my mind. What has been so shocking about the liberal coverage of Occupy Wall Street is its total and complete submission to politics. With its disease, drugs, assaults and rapes (hundreds more than were reported at Altamont), the Occupy movement has become like a series of small Altamonts. When the Occupy crimes began to escalate, I thought: Surely the media will cover this. I visited the Occupy site in Washington a couple times and asked about the rapes. I was told by someone, a journalist in fact, “Well, you know, people get drunk, go into a tent to sleep and try and feel up somebody.” It was said with a shrug. Imagine the reaction if such a thing happened at a conservative conference. Actually, we have an example — the CPAC conference several years ago where there had been drug use and an attempted rape. It was the talk of the town, until it was revealed that the entire story had been made up by New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass.

And, via Hot Air, Occupy shows up to Occupy the Super Committee, at least 48 hours late -- they've declared failure and gone home already.

We can't even read a schedule, or match a schedule to a date on a calender. Quick, put us in charge. We have really good idears n stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (167)
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The horrifying chart-fu that doomed the Super Committee. This is the unpleasant math that the Democrats donÂ’t want to face: in order to sustain the welfare state at anything like the current levels indefinitely, tax rates would have to skyrocket for everyone, not just the rich...and the programs would bankrupt us anyway, just a bit later. (Just consider this thumb-sucker from Eugene Robinson of the WaPo that excoriates Republicans for their "stubbornness" -- Robinson refuses to even countenance cuts to the entitlement state, because apparently that's just crazy-talk, and hence Democrats are the very souls of reason for refusing to discuss it.)

The Euro and the Austrian business cycle.

XKCD on Money.

Dividend stocks are becoming popular again. People tend to forget that, back in the days before the 401(k) changed the investing landscape, dividend stocks were the whole point of investing in equities from an individual point of view. The 401(k) rule that turned millions of people into investors drove a demand for ever-higher share price rather than the slow and steady returns of dividend stocks, and consequently drove many businesses into a very short-term, quarter-to-quarter mindset.

In the Eurozone, the perfect storm looms.

Corzine is staying true to form, at least: the "missing client cash" in the MF Global meltdown has just about doubled to $1.2 billion. I'll be interested to hear Corzine and his defenders explain how this was all an honest mistake rather than outright fraud. (Corzine's defenders in the Democrat political-media complex seem to be saying that a little fraud is okay as long as you hold good progressive principles.)

UPDATE 1: The Internet undoubtedly can help many small businesses to grow in ways they couldn't otherwise, but it can also turn a bad business decision into a catastrophe. The word is amplification, and it applies to both good and bad ideas.

UPDATE 2: Jeb Hensarling publishes the coroner's report on the Super Committee.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:37 AM | Comments (297)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:59 AM | Comments (166)
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The Ugly Truth About Student Loans

Even savvy investors expect only 70% of student loans at best will ever get repaid:

Investors like Mr. Ades have a unique view on the future for AmericaÂ’s job-seekers. Their investments depend on accurately predicting young peopleÂ’s ability to repay their loans, which means they obsess about everything from employment rates by profession to the long-term earning potential of young graduates.

Historically, investors have assumed 25% to 30% of student loans bundled into their bonds will default. But today they are baking in between 30% and 40% default rates among the current crop of graduatesÂ…

So get ready for more calls for a student loan bailout.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:28 PM | Comments (692)
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