Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Being Freakonomical With The Truth

The issue that geoengineering would make the poorest 1 billion worse off is very serious. One of the stronger arguments against fighting global warming is that it would cost too much, and those costs would fall on the poorest people in the world the most. It’s better to try and make the poor richer through growth so they can then fight global warming rather than make them poorer to take a chance of fighting global warming. Karl Smith had a moving take on this. Geoengineering throws this out the window. The best evidence we have currently is a decline of monsoons for India (deadly to the point of famines) and a more dry Africa. Ironic, because in the short run global warming would have a more wet India (though the water may be too volatile to collect for drinking purposes). This changes the moral calculus for me drastically.

Time's Joe Klein is the latest of many high-profile media figures to criticize the White House for daring to consider Fox News a partisan news outlet. Like many of his colleagues, Klein doesn't question the accuracy of the White House's assessment -- no reasonable observer could defend Fox News' ridiculous brand of "journalism" -- but he nevertheless thinks it's a mistake for the president's team to criticize the cable network.

Digby catches some of the talking heads saying that we’re all dependent on the stock market for our retirement. Which leads to the question, what do you mean “we”, rich man? From here, sources of income among the second quartile of older Americans, that is, from the 50th to the 75th percentile.... Even in this group — which is above median, although not at the top — Social Security accounts for more than half of income. (It’s the great bulk of income among poorer retirees). Asset income is, by comparison, trivial...

Steve Benen gets exercised over a new appearance of a zombie lie in the health care debate — the totally false claim that Canadian health care won’t pay for hip replacements for the elderly. But the hip replacement scam is even worse than Steve realizes. Because who, you might ask, pays for hip replacements in America? The answer: Medicare pays 63.8% of the cost, Medicaid 6.8%. That’s right, the U.S. government pays for 70% of hip replacements in this country. Aren’t you glad we don’t have evil, Canadian-style government-run health insurance?

Even though the high-level theoretical content of the realpolitiker 70s version of neoconservatism and the Wilsonian 2000s version of neoconservatism seem very different, the operational content is extremely similar. You have support for higher defense budgets, a tendency toward threat-inflation and hysteria, a belief in an aggressive military posture and extensive saber-rattling, hostility to negotiations, and hostility to international law both in theory and in practice. This was initially presented to the world as a “realistic” alternative to lefty critiques of US support for anti-communist dictators and more recently appeared as an “idealistic” critique of lefty reluctance to launch wars, but the continuity between the views is enormous.

Jay Newton-Small really needs to find a different business to work in. That is all...

Ruth Marcus is a waste of good fishwrap...