Media Can't Get Enough of Its New Pet Meme That Romney Flip Flopped On Whether Obama Made the Recession Worse
— Ace

Again, there is no, and was no, flip-flop.

There are two separate questions:

1. Did Obama make the recession worse than it otherwise would have been? Romney's answer, as well as every Republican's answer (pretty much) is "Yes."

2. Is the economy currently worse than it was in January 2009, when Obama took office? His answer is "I didn't say that." It would be hard to make this case, and few do.

To make this case, you have to disregard signs of meager improvement in GDP and unemployment, and rest your case -- quite plausibly -- that we now have a huge and exploding debt likely to sink us, whereas in 2009 we hadn't yet incurred such a huge debt. It's a question of "Would you rather be bleeding to death, but with medicine remaining in your medicine cabinet, or bleeding to death at a slightly slower pace but with all your medicine now wasted futilely?" This is a tough argument to make. Makeable, but gets into tedious argument. Which is why Romney (and most candidates) would prefer avoiding the question. Gets into the weeds.

The media is taking an answer to the second question as if it's related to the first one, being stupid and dishonest as usual, and conservatives aren't calling them on their stupidity and dishonesty because they tend not to like Romney.

But the same tactic will be used against candidates we do like. And stupid lies should always be called out in any event.

What they wish is to compel Romney to say "The economy has improved some since 2009," which will immediately become the media's and the Obama campaign's (but I repeat myself) favorite soundbite for 2012.

There is no flip-flop, though the liberal media is determined to pretend there is.

Example: The Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) liked to claim that Bush's policies made the recovery worse than it would have been, circa 2003-2006.

Right?

Now, in claiming that his policies had stunted the recovery, were they also claiming that the economy in 2006 (growing, with medium-low unemployment) was objectively worse than the economy in 2001, when he inherited a recession from Clinton?

No, they didn't, and they couldn't. 2001 was a recessionary year with shrinking GDP and high-ish unemployment. 2006 was a growth year with expanding GDP and low-ish unemployment.

Now if any Republican tried to twist a Democrats' words about Bush hurting the recovery into an erroneous claim that the economy was in worse shape in 2006 than in 2001, would the media have permitted this?

Of course not. The two ideas are unrelated and an answer to one is not an answer to another.

The media knows this or... well, I was going to say "the media knows this" or is stupid but I'm really liking "stupid" lately.

They're simply not good at their jobs.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (72)
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Casey Anthony Acquitted of First Degree Murder and Also Child Abuse; Only Convicted of Lying to Investigators
— Ace

Huh.

I understand she's convicted of two counts of lying to investigators, which could each carry a sentence of one year in prison. However, she's been in in jail for almost three years awaiting trial, so I think the judge must sentence her to time already served and set her free immediately.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (492)
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White House Believes Pakistan's Murder, Inc. -- the ISI -- Assassinated Journalist
— Ace

They've got their black little hearts set on The Prize, I think -- the formal takeover of a nuclear armed Muslim state by jihadis.

Obama administration officials believe that PakistanÂ’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the countryÂ’s military, according to American officials.

New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

...

“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official...

The Administration is deliberating how to break the news to Pakistan that it's murdering its own citizens. I'm pretty sure they know.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (133)
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Democrats: We Are Going to Cut, Slash, and Chop MediCare, But We Want Seniors Everywhere to Know We're Going to Keep the Name Intact
— Ace

That is the true headline here.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, said: “We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare. Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently.”

In return, Mr. Schumer said, Republicans should be willing to consider some additional revenue.

Negotiators said they were seriously considering cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals for uncollectible patient debt and the training of doctors; steps to eliminate Medicare “overpayments” to nursing homes; a reduction in the federal share of some Medicaid spending; and new restrictions on states’ ability to finance Medicaid by imposing taxes on hospitals and other health care providers.

Medicare and Medicaid insure more than 100 million people, account for 23 percent of all federal spending and are likely to be an important part of any budget deal. Military spending, which accounts for about 20 percent of federal expenditures, is likely to be included as well.

Obama and the Democrats already swiped $500 billion from Medicare, and their non-plan plans for reducing spending call for cutting a trillion plus more. And they repeat that here, looking to cut "waste" and such from Medicare, but to the tune of hundreds of billions.

They also wish to run on the plank of "saving Medicare."

But in what way? It seems to me they are eager to cut the program. They just want to keep the name, and tell seniors that by saving the name they saved the program.

Note that the Democrats intend to cut, cut, cut Medicare without any plausible plan for delivering the same levels of service for less money. They want to keep Medicare as the overspending government program it is, with no discipline imposed on pricing through consumer choice; they just want to spend less on it.

Well, if the system remains as it is -- as the Democrats insist it ought to -- but you're simply cutting trillions from it, obviously, then, the system will deliver less in actual benefits. If the dollar input is reduced, and there is no reform imposed that could deliver more value for fewer dollars, then dollar output in terms of services rendered must be reduced.

The Paul Ryan Plan calls for a fundamental reform of Medicare, to take it out of the realm of a perpetually growing, wasteful, inappropriately-incentivized government program and something that responds to, and exerts, market pressures to keep costs down. So at least there is the possibility with even fewer dollars being spent on the program, the same (or nearly the same) level of benefits will be delivered.

So note the Democrats and Paul Ryan do not disagree that Medicare must be, will be slashed.

The only debate is whether or not we're going to retain the same inefficient delivery vehicle and thereby guarantee that those cuts will result, as a mathematical certainty, in actual cuts in deliverables, or whether we're also going to undertake an effort in reform such that those fewer dollars result in the same level of service seniors have come to depend on.

Both parties are agreed to slash Medicare. But one party wants to keep the bureaucratic structure and strange incentive systems that have brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.

And they are insistent that if they slash as much as Republicans but retain the wasteful bureaucratic system that brought us to this pass, they should be credited as somehow being "pro-senior."

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (76)
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DA Set To Drop Charges Against DSK
— Ace

For those of you who predicted this, or at least urged caution and skepticism, take a bow.

The Post quotes a source said to be "at the center of the investigation:"

"Her credibility is so bad now, we know we cannot sustain a case with her," the source said, referring to the Guinean hotel maid...

"She is not to be believed in anything that comes out of her mouth -- which is a shame, because now we may never know what happened in that hotel room," said the source, who is at the center of the investigation and would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

"Did [Strauss-Kahn] use force? Was there actually a crime? I don't think we'll ever know."

There is still the question of how she came to have a ligament in her shoulder sprained. That suggests violence of some kind.

DSK's lawyers quickly spin a reply: He's not a rapist, he's a whore-monger and woman-beater:

Meanwhile, defense sources described a different scenario, in which DSK admittedly engaged with the maid in a consensual, sex-for-money exchange in his Sofitel suite, with no force involved -- and she turned against him only when he stiffed her.

It just does not appear any case can be founded successfully upon her word.

According to officials familiar with the situation, the maid never called her supervisor after the alleged incident but resumed cleaning a nearby room she had started earlier. She then returned to clean Mr. Strauss-Kahn's room, they said, and ran into her supervisor when she went to get fresh sheets.

Late last week, prosecutors received a partial transcript of a tape-recorded conversation she'd had with the man incarcerated in a federal immigration detention center, law-enforcement officials say. The man had been arrested while trying to sell marijuana to undercover officers, one of the officials familiar with the investigation said.

During the call, the man asked her if she was OK. The woman said she stood to make a lot of money from the attack because Mr. Strauss-Kahn was wealthy. Prosecutors need to further investigate the recorded call, which has not yet been fully transcribed, one law enforcement official said.

Authorities also are looking into transactions involving tens of thousands of dollars in deposits to an account in the woman's name made by men in different states, the official said.

And thank you! to the cobloggers, of course, DrewM and Dave in Texas and Maet and Andy and all the Legion of Idiots, and to dri, and fritzworth, and RDBrewer, and ArthurK.

Sometimes you just really, really need to get away from the computer and partisan grinding and the news and of course The One Who Is Prophesized To Destroy America.

Thanks for everyone who pitched in to keep the site from going dark.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (218)
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"John": The Man Who Lead The CIA's Hunt For Bin Laden
— DrewM

Interesting read.

From 2003, when he joined the counterterrorism center, through 2005, John was one of the driving forces behind the most successful string of counterterrorism captures in the fight against terrorism: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi.

But there was no greater prize than finding bin Laden.

Bin Laden had slipped away from U.S. forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, and the CIA believed he had taken shelter in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. In 2006, the agency mounted Operation Cannonball, an effort to establish bases in the tribal regions and find bin Laden. Even with all its money and resources, the CIA could not locate its prime target.

By then, the agency was on its third director since Sept. 11, 2001. John had outlasted many of his direct supervisors who retired or went on to other jobs. The CIA doesn't like to keep its people in one spot for too long. They become jaded. They start missing things.

John didn't want to leave. He'd always been persistent. In college, he walked on to a Division I basketball team and hustled his way into a rotation full of scholarship players.

The CIA offered to promote him and move him somewhere else. John wanted to keep the bin Laden file.

He examined and re-examined every aspect of bin Laden's life. How did he live while hiding in Sudan? With whom did he surround himself while living in Kandahar, Afghanistan? What would a bin Laden hideout look like today?

The CIA had a list of potential leads, associates and family members who might have access to bin Laden.

"Just keep working that list bit by bit," one senior intelligence official recalls John telling his team. "He's there somewhere. We'll get there."

John rose through the ranks of the counterterrorism center, but because of his nearly unrivaled experience, he always had influence beyond his title. One former boss confessed that he didn't know exactly what John's position was.

"I knew he was the guy in the room I always listened to," the official said.

One thing that's interested me over the course of this long war is the tension between the careerist nature of our national security institutions like the CIA and the military and the nee for these same institutions to be nimble and adaptive.

It's understandable to want to rotate people through different jobs to prevent burnout and bring fresh eyes to a problem but you also need continuity. On the other side is the simple fact that we haven't fully mobilized the country for the fight so a lot of people doing the work in this war are also trying to manage the normal challenges of managing a career. Thankfully, the CIA seems to have managed, at least in this case, to find a balance between the tensions of normal bureaucratic practices and the mission.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:44 AM | Comments (64)
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Some day, son, all this DOOM! will be yours.
— Monty

After a short hiatus, I am pleased to be back harshing your mellow and acting as your guide to the slow-motion collapse of Western Civilization. Onward!

In case you missed the news, my home state of Minnesota has shut down in a budgetary duel between DFL Governor Mark "Brave Sir Robin" Dayton and the GOP-dominated state House and Senate. This is interesting to outsiders mainly because it's likely to prefigure the national budget debate.

Greece is the vanguard of the western world in terms of sovereign debt: it is essentially in default right now, being kept alive only by emergency transfusions from the rest of Europe. But the transfusions will not save the patient, but only extend her suffering (and enervate the other EU nations in the process). It's important to remember that the ECB and the IMF don't care about the Greeks, especially; they are not "rescuing" the Greeks so much as they are "rescuing" the French and German banks who are holding a boat-load of shitty Greek paper.

The Greeks recently passed yet another "austerity" program that is unlikely to work, given that all the tax increases will likely be ignored by a Greek populace who treats tax evasion as a national pastime.

The sovereign-debt crisis is in large part due to decades of heedless welfare-state spending. Europe is in relatively worse shape than the US, mainly due to having had a two-decade jump on us in building their welfare state, but the collapse is coming, and the beneficiaries are not happy about it. The entitlement mindset, so prevalent both here and in Europe, will doom any "austerity" programs.

The Sorrow and the Pity of Another Liquidity Trap. Best bit:

Although I worked for three years in the Clinton Treasury Department, and am a card-carrying member of the economist guild, I predicted none of this. Like most of my peers, I was wrong. Yet the most interesting thing is that I could have -- should have -- been right.

I've always said that humility should be the dominant character trait of an economist, but it almost never is. Brad DeLong is one of the good guys, and this essay is a good insight into how economists and scientists can fall into a very seductive trap: the idea that a given theory or idea is so beautiful that it must be right. If reality conflicts with the theory, then reality must be brought into balance with the theory rather than the other way around.

The shipwreck metaphors just keep coming. It's an overused metaphor, really. I prefer the classic simplicity of DOOM!

It's a jobless and wageless "recovery". Personally, I think that focusing on jobs is dumb because businesses do not exist to provide employment to their workers; they exist to make a profit for their owners and investors. Employment is a side-effect of this goal, not the end goal itself. If you want to drive employment, make it as easy as possible for new businesses to start up and conduct their affairs. (And while you're at it, get rid of the stupid minimum-wage law.)

If the recession has done anything, it's made US business far more efficient...but that just means that businesses can now do the same amount of work with less people. The only way to provide employment for more people is to radically grow the economy, not to force existing businesses to hire more people.

UPDATE: If you're middle-aged and unemployed, you may never work again. I'm not sure this is completely accurate -- certain skill-sets will always be in high demand -- but the general case, sadly, is probably true.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:11 AM | Comments (128)
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Top Headline Comments 7-5-11
— Gabriel Malor

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (126)
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Overnight Open Thread - Independence Day Edition
— Maetenloch

Happy 4th All!

UPDATE [DiT] pic added below more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:13 PM | Comments (412)
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The Most Important Gun In US History That You Have Never Heard Of. [dri]
— Open Blogger

Can you name the most important firearm in US history? Did you say it was an 18th century .46 cal. 20 shot repeating air rifle? Yes air rifle?

In the fascinating video below, Phil Schreier (Senior Curator, National Firearms Museum) explains why the Girandoni air rifle is “one of the most historically significant guns in the collection.” He states, “This gun, it could be said, changed the entire history of the United States of America in the 19th century and perhaps the histories of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.” H/T lucianne

[YouTube moved below the fold because of loading issues.] more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:13 PM | Comments (71)
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