Eight Things Worth Reading, Mostly Economics, for April 24, 2010
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Ken Layne: US Launches Secret Robot Space Shuttle
KL: "US Launches Secret Robot Space Shuttle. A robotic space plane launched from Cape Canaveral at 7:52 p.m. tonight, and god knows what that even means. The X-37b is a small unmanned orbiter that can stay in space for up nine months at a time and glides down to a runway landing like some eerie 2010 version of, say, a 1970s space shuttle. Nobody will say what it’s doing or why it’s up there. This project isn’t run by NASA, but by the Pentagon. No wonder the NASA people are so ticked off these days. Drone craft kill the brown people our government doesn’t like and mysterious new pilot-free space planes zoom around the Earth, waiting for a signal. The Time of the Robots is here. The recruiting storefronts in the half-empty strip malls should be going the way of Bed Bath ‘n Beyond pretty soon now. Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415003/us-launches-secret-robot-space-shuttle#ixzz0lyBMrrwb"
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Rob Valletta and Katherine Kuang: Extended Unemployment and UI Benefits
RV&KK: "During the current labor market downturn, unemployment duration has reached levels well above its previous highs. Analysis of unemployment data suggests that extended unemployment insurance benefits have not been important factors in the increase in the duration of unemployment or in the elevated unemployment rate.'
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Greg Ip: No exit: Despite internal dissent, the Fed plans to maintain ultra-easy monetary policy
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Conor Friedersdorf Notices That National Review Is Populated by Despicable Hacks
CF: "On the part of The Corner where Kathryn Jean Lopez, Andrew McCarthy, and Jonah Goldberg stand, political discourse operates according to a stark, indefensible double-standard whereby conservative entertainers with large audiences must be handled with kid gloves, if criticism is permitted at all, whereas tough rhetoric aimed at anyone else is perfectly acceptable, and popular conservative entertainers themselves engage in the most outrageous rhetoric imaginable over a period of many years with nary a word of objection.... [T]hey can’t help but appreciate the brazen mendacity of Mark Levin... call[ing] Mr. Manzi “a global warming zealot.” Having seen a colleague attacked in a way that isn’t merely intemperate, but factually wrong in the most obvious and extreme way, do they correct the record, or chide Mr. Levin for spreading an outrageous lie that misleads his audience and disparages National Review’s most knowledgeable writer on the subject of global warming? They do not."
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Marc Ambinder: Have Conservatives Gone Mad?
Yes, they have. MA: "Conor Friedersdorf thinks the problem lies with the conservative movement's major spokespeople... "their very existence as popular entertainers hinges on an ability to persuade listeners that they are "'worth taking seriously as political and intellectual actors.'" That is why the constant failures of these men to live up to their billing is so offensive, destructive, and ruinous to conservatives. There are plenty of women, too.... I think this sensibility is pervasive throughout the smart media -- old and new.... I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant."
