It Refutes Itself

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Slivinski says it is difficult to pin down the Iowa corn farmers' harvest of dollars because the subsidies come from exemptions from excise taxes and tariffs (54 cents per imported gallon) that stifle competition from cheap ethanol imports. It is, however, reasonable to add $2 billion to Iowa's gain from Washington's rigging of the system, so the average Iowan's gain is at least $1,963.65. Suppose Iowa did not have crucial presidential nominating caucuses. Or suppose it had them but its crucial crop were, say, broccoli rather than corn. Would the federal government still be, well, rigging the system to create a phony "market" to satisfy a specious "demand" for mandatory and subsidized ethanol? No, but it probably would be mandating broccoli at every meal. Many politicians pander, as Edwards does with gusto, to Americans' current penchant for self-pity. Hence the incessant talk about "the forgotten middle class." Because such talk is incessant, it of course refutes itself.

Innumeracy Update: Recalculating Behind The "Boo Frickin' Hoo"

Glenn and Charles link to this sob story about how burials are down at the (huge) Najaf cemetery so now we're supposed to feel sorry for the soon to be unemployed staff there! One the surface, Glenn's certainly right about what outrageous MSM spin-reverse-meistering this is.

But it's even worse than he suggests when you get out your spreadsheet and chart wizard.

Whenever I read an article where numbers are thrown around ranging from "soared" to 150 per day to 6500 per month -- hmm, it's kind of hard to quickly compare furlongs per fortnight to miles per hour, no? -- as casual evidence for the storyline, I get suspicious. Of a cover up, innumeracy or -- all too often lately -- both.

So let's take the key numeric assertions listed in article in varying units and out of order sequence and normalize and sequence them (see chart -- numbers from article highlighted in table above, my conversions in white cells).

Isn't THAT interesting!

No wonder they quoted the numbers in varying units -- when normalized they show a downtrend culminating in a most recent month's daily burial rate lower than that quoted for the (non war) 1990s under Saddam! Best to leave that storyline left untold by the MSM, no?

Obfuscating the unfavorable-to-MSM storyline? Innumeracy? Both?

Yes.

Pass The Pliers And Vote For Hillarycare

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com As with the transplant surgeons, shortages occur because government caps compensation and removes the incentive to specialize at all -- and with dentists, who can opt out of the NHS system unlike their physician colleagues, the private market becomes exclusive to only those who can afford both the tax burden of NHS and the fees for dental work. What happens then? The rich get dental work. The poor buy pliers and Super Glue. Actually, I could be wrong. The poor might borrow the pliers. Six percent of the survey sample treated themselves out of frustration, including one man who extracted 14 of his own teeth. Twenty percent of the sample could not afford dental services. An additional 35% blamed their lack of dental care on a lack of NHS options close enough to them. That means a majority of Britons have no practical access to dental care, thanks to their government-run health care system.

Just repeat after me: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton...

Maybe not such a good idea after all?

Which reminds me of the joke I heard Paul Harvey tell recently (maybe slightly paraphrased but close): "Vladimir Putin will retain power in Russia by becoming Prime Minister. That's what you have to do when your wife doesn't want to run for President."

Misunderestimation (Part 23965)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com The Democrats misunderstood the message of 2006. Voters wanted an end to spending and corruption, not an amplification of either or both. Republicans lost in Congress because they acted like Democrats, spending like drunken sailors. Now they want to attack Bush by spending even more wildly than the Republicans and expect him to retreat, but Bush has finally found a hill on which he can fight successfully. The S-CHIP debate showed that, and the budget-busting proposals from the Democrats will return the GOP to the side of fiscal responsibility in 2008. Of course, that assumes that the Democrats actually generate the spending bills at all before the next recess. So far, they seem very reluctant to reveal their spending plans. Perhaps they learned something after all...

OxyMorons 101: NYeT Ethics

clipped from www.poorandstupid.com DEBORAH SOLOMON: THE NEW JAYSON BLAIR   Deborah Solomon's weekly short interviews in the New York Times Magazine are the most irritating possible example of the snotty, smarmy, smug and holier-than-thou attitude that pervades the entire enterprise that is the Times. Now "public editor" Clark Hoyt has exposed her for the fraud she is. ...The Times Magazine published an angry letter from NBC’s Tim Russert, who said that the portrayal of his interview with her was “misleading, callous and hurtful.” Russert, the author of two books about his father, told me that the interview had been presented as an opportunity to talk about his mom on Mother’s Day. Instead, the interview, headlined, “All About My Father,” featured a seemingly insensitive Russert dodging Solomon’s questions about his mother. “I talked at great length about my mother,” he said, but none of it appeared in the published interview.

YAECS (Yet Another Economic Coverage Shocka) -- NYeT!

clipped from www.bizzyblog.com The U.S. budget deficit fell to the lowest level in five years last week, but three of America’s leading newspapers — the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times — couldn’t find the space to mention the dramatic drop. Does anyone seriously believe that the news would have been almost completely ignored if the deficit had instead gone up? Because the “newspapers of record” won’t cover it, yours truly will. Rather than provide 2,000 words, I’ll provide two pictures, which are worth 1,000 each (:–>):

Today's Death Cult Demands Update

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com The “moderate” terrorist government of Mahmoud Abbas, darlings of the US State Department, are demanding that Muslims have total control of the Temple Mount as part of any “peace settlement.” At this rate, the only thing keeping this “peace conference” alive is the State Department. After decades of murder and suicide bombings, eliminationist rhetoric, and the construction of an appalling death cult society, Palestinians should be in no position to demand anything—but still the demanding goes on.

Welcome To Totalitarian "Social Work"

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com George Will takes a look at the requirements for today's students of social work -- and discovers a political commissariat worthy of the Soviet Union. Universities have required pledges of loyalty to liberal political thought as a requisite for success in their social-work programs, failing students who object to being told what to think (via CapQ reader Sandeep Dath): In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice "from local to global levels." A widely used textbook -- "Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skill" -- declares that promoting "social and economic justice" is especially imperative as a response to "the conservative trends of the past three decades. academics apparently understand that they have a losing argument, and so have stopped allowing debate It's interesting to see how totalitarianism develops, and from which sources.

You're an infidel if you don't agree...