Matthew Yglesias » Endgame

Jul 16th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

Endgame

Hopefully no embarrassing typos in today’s edition:

— The truth about rich people’s taxes.

— Rupert Murdoch seems to be writing the headlines at the WSJ these days.

— SweetFM goes open source.

— The fate of health reform rests on Harry Reid’s shoulders.

— The invertebrate rights movement picks up steam.

— More school, less babies.

Song of the day is a new tune from The Most Serene Republic, The Old Forever New Things”

Comments
51

51 Responses to “Endgame”

pdp Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
More school, FEWER babies.

No, it’s not an embarrassing typo, and 90% of the country gets this wrong, but I’m a pedant.
Song of the Day Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Who’s the stupid Birfer boy
As racist as can be
24! 24! A-H-E-A-D
Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there
Pushing a conspiracy
24! 24! A-H-E-A-D
chapped quidditch Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
the day invertebrates get rights is a dark day for us all indeed.
bdbd Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
this is nice
Sir Richard Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Yeah for krissake the Hahvad grad does not know diff between fewer and less…real pain 9th grade obtuseness.
Don Williams Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Matthew left out the important stuff.

“Fight for swine flu vaccine could get ugly

LONDON – An ugly scramble is brewing over the swine flu vaccine — and when it becomes available, Britain, the United States and other nations could find that the contracts they signed with pharmaceutical companies are easily broken.

Experts warn that during a global epidemic, which the world is in now, governments may be under tremendous pressure to protect their own citizens first before allowing companies to ship doses of vaccine out of the country.

That does not bode well for many nations, including the United States, which makes only 20 percent of the regular flu vaccines it uses, or Britain, where all of its flu vaccines are produced abroad….

Questions also remain about when a swine flu vaccine will even be available, as WHO reported this week that a fully licensed vaccine might not be ready until the end of the year. ”
Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090716/ap_on_re_eu/eu_med_vaccine_fight_3
Don Williams Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
After $2 TRILLION of stimulus money was pumped into the US economy — and another $8 TRILLION of government guarantees/loans were provided — the stock market started rising a few months ago. However, the stock market flattened out in June — suggesting a heart that’s starting to fillabrate and which needs another injection of adrenaline.

Wonder if the S&P 500 has factored in swine flu’s effects yet.
Don Williams Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Is it me or is that Obam..er, Geithner Plan starting to have the sniffles?
Davis X. Machina Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
After $2 TRILLION of stimulus money was pumped into the US economy

I’d love to see that figure broken down.
TRIATHLON Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
THE COLD WAR PHASE TWO

(Lull Phase)

Now, the Media Messiah Imperial President of the Empire is going around announcing that the COLD WAR ENDED IN PEACE, which is something that would be expected from a Clueless Politician. The fact is as Dwight David Eisenhower stated, “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days’ governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.” And, that was what in a moderate manner happened the Cold War went into a Lull Phase, everyone was simple tired of the tension and needed a break after the Vietnam Phase of the Cold War.

(Re-Heat Phase)

And now once again the Cold War is heating up, with different areas of tension, mixed with old ones on different levels;

(1) Czechoslovakia and Poland Empire missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

(2) Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela, seeking out side of the Western Hemisphere assistance to ensure their territorial integrity and sovereignty from the Empire with the hope of establishing two new Global Spheres of Influence within Central and South America, working with Canada and others around the globe in Peace and Prosperity, free from the (The Hierarchical Structure) of the North American Yankee.

(3) The Islamic Crescent: (Af-Pak), Iraq, Iran, seeking to have Religious Freedom, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and control of their own resources and markets without foreign troops on their soil.

(4) The Peoples Republic of Red China, The Peoples Republic of North Korea, Vietnam the Far East the resources of the South China Sea, are the Sphere of Influence of the Peoples Republic of Red China, and the countries that are aligned within in that sphere are not to be molested by the Empire for want of their resources or markets.

(5) (NATO) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization VS (CRRF) The Collective Rapid Response Forces; Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia will create it for a big war, for a serious threat to our territorial integrity and sovereignty,” over the Caspian Sea Basin.

(Deaf Ears)

In his January 17, 1961 farewell message to the nation, Dwight Eisenhower said: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” As Stephen Spender (in The Making of a Poem) wrote, “That human experience so neglected in modern art the art of ruling, the art of being a prince and being responsible for the use of power.”

The warning fell on deaf ears, or times were good and no one was paying attention, and as Rev. Wright aptly stated the chickens are coming home to roost. TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK! Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin (BiBi) Netanyahu, is counting the minutes, BOMB, BOMB, IRAN!!

AND THAT WOULD BE THE BEGINNING OF THE REAL (ENDGAME)

TRIATHLON
24AheadDotCom Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
- Since the person who keeps degrading MattY’s blog keeps mentioning Weigel and “birthers”, you really have to wonder. Has Weigel snapped and should his friends get him some help? Could it be a disturbed Weigel fan? Or, is it someone who’s just trying to make both MattY and Weigel look bad? In any case, libertarians who are associated in some way with Reason Magazine – commenters or perhaps contributors – keep coming to his site and leaving childish comments designed to degrade his site (see #2 above). Those cowardly libertarians aren’t smart enough to debate me, so they engage in cowardly smears. I guess we can called that (classical) liberal fascism.

- For something NSFW that MattY’s readers will be sure to enjoy, go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock and then scroll down to the ‘Other’ section.

- Back to the serious stuff, here are some (recent) lies and misleading statements from ThinkProgress.
tomemos Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Here’s a question for the less/fewer pedants: if that’s actually an important distinction, how does English make do without an equivalent distinction for “more”? Somehow we say “more money” and “more cats” without any confusion at all.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
After $2 TRILLION of stimulus money was pumped into the US economy…

Excuse me?

You don’t know what you’re talking about, or you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
- Since the person who keeps degrading MattY’s blog keeps mentioning Weigel and “birthers”,

That would be you, Wack-job.

Your Minuteman buddies murder any little girls lately?
Song of the Day Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
- I have a corrections thread on my website, and anyone who finds fault with the song’s lyrics can leave a comment there. It’s been up there for 73 years and so far no requests have come in.

- The URL will be provided in exchange for a convenience charge of $120, payable in cash, and an original long-form birth certificate certified in blood by President Ronald Reagan, Pope Innocent XI and Dave Weigel.

- Only a cowardly smearing coward who’s a coward would object to these conditions.
24AheadDotCom Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Of course, another explanation is that the person trying to make both MattY and Weigel look bad is “joe from Lowell”, although it used big words once and that’s not JFL’s M.O.

P.S. I don’t have any “Minuteman buddies”. Try to avoid lying for once.
A Pedant Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Matt, would it kill you to correct some of the embarrassing typos from time to time?

Maybe make a note indicating a mistake, and then make a correction, say? So you don’t look like a nincompoop for months on end with posts like the one where you put Stuttgart in Denmark?

It’s not the typos and mistakes that bother me-it’s the fact that you leave them there.
Kropotkin Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Hopefully no embarrassing typos in today’s edition:

Well, you know it would have taken ten seconds to change that. Not that she’s actually reading the blog, but it’s a rather minor and insulting mistake that you could have easily change but you chose not to. I love your blog but that’s pretty unprofessional.

The rules of the internet are fast and loose but remember you’re being paid to do this. Not only do the typos degrade your authority as a writer, it’s also a courtesy to your readers that you’re taking this seriously enough to care about the details.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
P.S. I don’t have any “Minuteman buddies”. Try to avoid lying for once.

Here you are calling for people to be charged with treason for interfering with the Minutemen.
Njorl Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Do we also have to take precautions against the suffering of the dust mites that live on our skin. They are just about equivalent in neurodevelopment as lobsters. Allowing the dust mites to suffer is just size bias against the microscopic. Which soap gives them the least pain?
joe from Lowell Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
See, “buddies” is a metaphor.

Nobody thinks you have actual friends.
bdbd Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
a pedant, remember that we don’t see the embarrassing typos that Matt does bother to correct!
joe from Lowell Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Still says “wide Latina” down thread.
qwerty Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
D is next to S on my keyboard. It’s easily understandable how ‘wide’ got in there instead of ‘wise’.

Still, the fact that Matt never ever ever corrects, or even gives the slightest indication of being aware of, this kind of thing really makes one wonder why that is.

Yo LoneWackOff, are you still thinking of suing any of Matt’s commenters? Please please please keep us UpToDate on that.
Don Williams Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Re Joe at 13: “You don’t know what you’re talking about, or you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”
————-
Really. The “Facts” are that US federal debt limit was $9.5 Trillion around this time last year and it is now $12.1 Trillion. Any of you know how to count?

And if that $2.6 Trillion did not go to stimulate the economy and keep Wall Street from dragging us over a cliff, then what was it for?

To fix Social Security? Provide a decent education to poor children? Provide universal healthcare?
Hector Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Re: (2) Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela, seeking out side of the Western Hemisphere assistance to ensure their territorial integrity and sovereignty from the Empire with the hope of establishing two new Global Spheres of Influence within Central and South America, working with Canada and others around the globe in Peace and Prosperity, free from the (The Hierarchical Structure) of the North American Yankee.

Canada? Canada? Nonsense. Canada and the USA are as close to each other as Mark Sanford and that Argentine girl. The only country that is willing and able to step up as patron of the Socialist nations of Latin America is….Yes, you got it, Russia. This star shall rise in the East.
Hector Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Re: Still, the fact that Matt never ever ever corrects, or even gives the slightest indication of being aware of, this kind of thing really makes one wonder why that is.

Because grammar is so out-of-date, don’t you know. The Georgetown cocktail crowd knows that only patriarchal retrograde Christer idiots care about proper spelling.
24AheadDotCom Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
“joe from Lowell”: thanks for clarifying that. However, at the link, I wasn’t just referring to treason for someone who’d “interfere” with them. Here’s the beginning:

if the Bush administration has indeed been giving the Mexican government information on law-abiding U.S. groups operating inside the U.S. that doesn’t relate to specific Mexican nationals, they have committed treason in the general if not the Constitutional sense.

I wrote that over three years ago, and I still stand by it. The problem is that many “liberals” would have no problem with helping a corrupt foreign government as Bush might have done; in fact, many of those might think Bush should get a medal.
fostert Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
“Canada and the USA are as close to each other as Mark Sanford and that Argentine girl.”

Not really, Australia is more supportive of us than Canada. Canada will get off the bus before it goes over the cliff. Australia won’t. Australia went to Iraq, Canada didn’t. So Canada is more like Jenny Sanford, whereas Australia is like that woman from Argentina.
Chris D Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Not really, Australia is more supportive of us than Canada. Canada will get off the bus before it goes over the cliff. Australia won’t. Australia went to Iraq, Canada didn’t. So Canada is more like Jenny Sanford, whereas Australia is like that woman from Argentina.

To be fair, that wasn’t so much Australia as John Howard. It was evidently part of the contest he had going with Dubya over which one could become more universally despised.
STFU, LW Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 12:32 am
LoneWackoff, last seen masturbating to Wikipedia, thinks that America will be destroyed by all those brown people rutting like crazy. He can deny it, but it’s on the record.

He also thinks that the age of the earth is a subject for philosophers. Maybe he’s waiting for the planet to provide its birth certificate.

What a fucking douche.
soullite Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Don Williams:

Maybe the American people would be more willing to hear you out if Obama didn’t give most of the treasury’s money to bankers?

Seriously, why the fuck should anyone trust the scumbag Democrats? Their entire purpose in government seems to be to create the Dictatorship States of Goldman Sachs. I fail to see how that’s any better (it’s probably a shitload worse) than anything Bush and Cheney did through Haliburton. At least Haliburton didn’t appear to own the entire fucking government.
tomemos Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Ooh, soullite is now saying that Obama is “probably worse” than Bush! And it’s only July of the first year! I think the timeline will look something like this:

July ‘09: probably worse than Bush
September ‘09: worse than Bush
December ‘09: worse than Nixon
March ‘10: worse than Nixon, Bush, Hoover, and Warren G. Harding rolled up together
August ‘10: probably worse than Pol Pot
January ‘11: probably worse than Hitler
April ‘11: worse than Hitler
June ‘11: probably Satan
July ‘11: probably worse than Satan
August ‘11: way worse than Satan
October ‘11: almost as bad as Bill and Hillary Clinton
hmmm Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 3:51 am
treason in the general if not the Constitutional sense

The fuck does that mean?

(answer: nothing}
Max424 Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:03 am
@7 Don Williams: “After $2 TRILLION of stimulus money was pumped into the US economy”

Some people seem to have taken umbrage with Don’s $2 trillion figure, but if you define stimulus as money the US Government pumps into the economy in a time of crisis Don has come up WAY short.

The actual “stimulus package” was roughly $700 billion. $800 billion of stimulus was gifted unto Wall Street and called bailouts. That’s $1.5 trillion right there.

The Fed, through their handy dandy discount window, has lent out, for free, $2.2 trillion to nobody knows who except Fed chairman Ben Bernanke.

That is $3.7 trillion in stimulus where I come from. Perhaps the reason it doesn’t seem like we are getting a really excellent bang for our 3.7 trillion worth of bucks is because we aren’t. Nobody has really benefited yet, except of course, Goldman-Sachs.

Goldman-Sachs had done extremely well. A bank recently on the verge of collapse, friendly if unknown amounts of stimulus injections have enabled them to rebound nicely and announce record profits for this quarter of nearly $3.5 billion. They have also disclosed they will soon be able to distribute $11 billion in bonuses to their formerly downtrodden employees.

As Matt Taibbi point out:

“what all of this means is that Goldman’s profit announcement is a giant “fuck you” to the rest of the country.”

I would go one further. Goldman-Sachs is taking a jubilant, high-arching piss on the United States of America and its people, and elements of the US Government are cheering them on.
DTM Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 7:24 am
For those who are puzzled, the large “stimulus” calculations some people throw around usually do things like account for the amount of certain loans or guarantees as stimulus spending. Of course we may well take a net loss on these loan/guarantee programs, and you could consider those losses a form of stimulus spending. But accounting for the entire amount of those programs as stimulus spending is implicitly assuming a 100% loss ratio, which is not particularly plausible.
AllenS Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Here’s Joe Biden (Idiot, Del.), addressing an AARP townhall meeting:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

We’re in the best of hands.
Keith M Ellis Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 7:50 am
The less/fewer distinction is not entirely, but mostly, the product of the late 19th century English prescriptivist movement.

More to the point, I think, is that it is not a useful distinction—which is in my opinion the line in the sand which divides reasonable prescriptivism from unreasonable prescriptivism.

For example, I support the jealousy/envy distinction because it’s a useful distinction. The less/fewer distinction is merely an agreement rule intended to regularize usage with regard to mass nouns, itself an ambiguous concept. The only things we lose by discarding this largely artificial distinction is a bit of the facade of regularity and rationality of English—which is an anachronistic conceit and not empirical fact—and yet another opportunity to discern and apply class markers (which is the real aim of such contrived rules).

Relative to Yglesias’s notable laziness bordering on incompetence as a professional writer—his egregious inadequate proofing of ubiquitous errors and misspellings—his failure to conform to one of the contrived prescriptivist rules of 19th century grammarians is trivial and inoffensive. Those criticizing him are merely indulging their notions of superiority and are not offering the sort of criticism Yglesias actually deserves.
Anthony Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Australia is more supportive of us than Canada. Canada will get off the bus before it goes over the cliff. Australia won’t. Australia went to Iraq, Canada didn’t.

Fortunately for us in Canada, the Liberals were in government during the run-up to the Iraq war. The leader of the opposition, Stephen Harper, was vociferously calling for Canadian participation in Iraq.

Harper is now the prime minister, albeit of a minority government, so he doesn’t have free rein to do whatever he wants and would probably be forced to jump of the bus, even though he’d prefer not to.
live Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am
The ‘less’/'fewer’ thing comes up in passing in Infinite Jest, if I recall correctly.
DTM Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 9:28 am
If what Biden was saying is that the federal government needs to spend more on health care in order for the entire nation not to be bankrupted by rising health care costs, that is actually a perfectly defensible claim.
Jeffrey Davis Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am
How much money evaporated in 2007-2008 due to over-leveraging?
Jeffrey Davis Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 9:45 am
“Less babies” means “smaller babies”.
DTM Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Of course we could translate “less” in the prepositional rather than modifier sense, which would make it equivalent to something like:

More school, not including babies.

And I, for one, would agree that we do not need more babies going to college.
Don Williams Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Re DTM at 36: “Of course we may well take a net loss on these loan/guarantee programs, and you could consider those losses a form of stimulus spending. But accounting for the entire amount of those programs as stimulus spending is implicitly assuming a 100% loss ratio, which is not particularly plausible.”
————–
How much of a loss percentage wise do you have to have when you have $9.7 TRILLION of the taxpayers’ money at risk?

From Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok&refer=home

” Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?” ”

———
Ah, but maybe DTM has done an audit on all these expenditures and that explains his bland confidence? Supported by this roaring recovery we’re experiencing?

I myself hear an evil little fucker out there named Bin Laden whispering “Not yet. Wait for it..wait for it..”
Don Williams Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 10:40 am
PS For the person who wanted a detailed breakdown of the stimulus expenditures, sorry. The Federal Reserve has REFUSED to tell Congress where the money went.

You guys might look into WHO runs the Fed –who appoints the Directors of the Fed’s Board.

Here is one spreadsheet of the federal spending on a program basis –done back in December. To this , add $800 Billion more for the additional stimulus approved by Obama in February:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/calculating-the-total-bailout-costs/

Note by the way that the Congresses which approved the above were controlled by the Democrats. The same Democrats who now are dragging their feet on approving minimal healthcare coverage for the American people.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Don Williams,

Really. The “Facts” are that US federal debt limit was $9.5 Trillion around this time last year and it is now $12.1 Trillion.

You little weasel, you wrote “2.6 trillion in stimulus has gone into the American economy,” and now you’re pretending that “stimulus” means “the entirety of federal spending,” including interest payments on debt, overseas military operations, and domestic programs and departments is all part of “the stimulus.”

Do you have absolutely no scruples when it comes to honesty? Do you think the people reading this are too stupid to understand the disreputable stunt you just pulled because I’d cornered you?

Shame on you.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
As of June 8, $44 billion of stimulus money had been spent. It’s probably up a little over $100 billion since then.

$2.7 trillion. Dishonest hack.
DTM Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Ah, but maybe DTM has done an audit on all these expenditures and that explains his bland confidence?

I haven’t tried to put an exact number on our expected losses. I’m just pointing out that certain people, either through ignorance or because they simply don’t care about accuracy, are implicitly assuming 100% loss rates, which isn’t particularly plausible.
joe from Lowell Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The same people who assume a 0% repayment rate of TARP funds.

I wonder what they’ll say when the money starts coming back? I predict it will be “that’s just a one-time payment,” as if the expenditures themselves weren’t one-time payments.
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July 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
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Matt Yglesias

Endgame

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