Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

The group that set the agenda for the assembly, called the Council of 500, was itself radically democratic. It consisted of representatives of neighborhoods and villages throughout Attica, chosen for one-year terms not through elections but by lot. Hence its members tended not to be elites or charismatic individuals but normal, random Athenians. It was as if Nancy Pelosi’s job were done by a large focus group. Ober argues that the democratic nature of the council served not just to transmit the broader public’s preferences, but to aggregate its on-the-ground knowledge.

Victim blamers are often also telling a story about how they personally will never be raped, or in this case, arrested unfairly for doing something totally legal. To blame Gates for being stupid is to say, "I would never get arrested for breaking into my house, because I have the sort of self-preservation instincts that this man is clearly missing." People enjoy the illusion of having more mastery of the world than they do, because it makes them feel safe, but it also contributes to an atmosphere where victim-blaming can flourish, particularly in situations that are loaded with racial or gender politics.

Zachery Kouwe has a great article today about Capco, a highly-secretive Vermont-based insurer which looks as though it’s massively insolvent.... Capco was in much the same business as AIG Financial Products: selling insurance against the end of the world. Such businesses tend to be extremely profitable most of the time, and then blow up spectacularly. The question is who on earth would ever buy such insurance, given that the chances of ever getting paid out are slim indeed. The answer? The same people who own the insurer!

If I were on the Kaplan board of directors, and found that the people running the failing Washington Post had greenlighted "Mouthpiece Theater" I would demand that they be fired, or that the Post itself be liquidated. On today's episode, Dana Milbank suggests Hillary Clinton should drink Mad Bitch beer: http://bit.ly/40Hfhf If you can't stand to watch the whole thing, fast forward to about 2 min 35 seconds.

As you can see, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the number of correct responses is much higher on the citizenship question than the religion question. On the other hand, the proportion of incorrect answers is also much higher on the citizenship question among Republicans, which suggests that the encouragement of the birth certificate myth by conservative pundits and Republican politicians has begun to activate the GOP base on this issue. I'm not sure if Michael Steele is going to be able to make this "unnecessary distraction" go away any time soon.

If there’s an argument about health care reform that you think more people need to hear, then make the argument don’t argue about how other people should be making the argument. It’s difficult, of course, to critique the impulse to “go meta” without falling prey to accusations of going double meta. But I don’t think people should start criticizing... until they’ve actually exhausted the ways in which they can... make a... contribution. Have you told people about the eightfold path of consumer protection included in all the draft bills? Contacted your congressman and senators? Urged your friends and family to do so? Written letters to the editor of your local paper complaining about bad editorials? Have you discussed the proposals with coworkers, heard what concerns they might have, and cleared up any misapprehensions? Disinformation is hard to beat back, and everyone in life knows somebody who’s misinformed.... And there are always more calls to be made and more letters to write.

Look, I don’t expect Mark Krikorian to champion the moral worth of non-human animals—hell, getting him to evince some concern for non-Caucasians would be a miracle—but this is unusually silly