Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Matthew Yglesias gives his view of the level of technology in A Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire.

I say that immortality via ice-zombiehood is an impressive technology that would really lower Medicare cost growth…

I think the highly-intelligent Greg Sargent is right in his assessment of what the Obama campaign thinks. I don't know whether this is in fact what the marginal voter thinks.

Greg Sargent:

The Obama campaign’s theory of the presidential race: [Y]ou’d think that it’s imperative that Obama rebut Mitt Romney’s charge that he’s failed to turn the economy around, that Obama has had his four years, that he hasn’t shown he has the answer to people’s problems, and that Romney does have the answer to them. How can Obama do that without doubling down on the claim that things really are getting better for people?

The Obama campaign is out with a new ad in seven swing states featuring Bill Clinton that sheds some light on this…. What we’re seeing here, I believe, is the beginning of the Obama campaign’s pivot to a more concerted effort to draw a contrast between what an Obama second term would look like and what a Romney presidency would look like…. Clinton carefully says Obama has “a plan” and that we “need to keep going with his plan.” This stops just short of saying the recovery is underway, but it hints that we’re moving foward and promises recovery in the future, just as happened under Clinton. In other words, the ad rebuts one key part of Romney’s argument (Obama doesn’t have the answer; I do) by reframing this as a choice between the Clinton and Bush approach. But it doesn’t directly take on the other part of Romney’s argument (you have already shown your approach has failed).

This is rooted, I believe, in a reading of the electorate by the Obama campaign that has gone underappreciated. The Obama camp makes a distinction between whether voters think Obama has failed, and whether they are merely disappointed that he hasn’t lived up to expectations, but find that understandable given the situation he inherited…. The Obama camp believes that the latter description is a more accurate reading of the electorate’s verdict…. Given the tattered shape of the GOP brand, voter willingness to blame Bush more than Obama for the current state of things, and Romney’s negatives, the Obama camp believes this framing will play in their favor.

http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=100

SW-L:

[W]hy are the US, and also the UK, undertaking austerity? The main argument is that government debt is too high. The Keynesian response is that this is the wrong time to be worrying about government debt. In a recession which is due to an increase in private sector saving, the government needs to run matching deficits to prevent output falling. For the world as a whole, if government deficits come down, private sector surpluses must fall to match. Normally monetary policy would encourage the private sector to save less by lowering real interest rates. However in many countries the monetary authorities have already lowered nominal rates (almost) as far as they can…. Advocates of austerity argued that reducing government debt would encourage private spending by boosting confidence. This was always an argument of hope over both theory and evidence, as the last two years has shown….

Virginia Burrus:

Augustine’s discussion at the very beginning of his famous work City of God of the rape of Lucretia, a traditional Roman tale that he revisits in the context of real or anticipated wartime rapes of women of the Christian community. 

Lucretia was a Roman woman renowned for her extreme virtue, known to have killed herself after she was raped in an effort to restore her honor by making it clear that she in no way colluded with her rapist. That itself is sufficiently telling testimony to the burden that rape places on its victims! But Augustine—in one of his lowest moments—makes it worse. For what he does is essentially to blame the victim nonetheless, much as Akin seems to do. He suggests (while acknowledging that only Lucretia herself could have known this) that Lucretia must have been “so enticed by her own desire that she consented to the act” (City of God 1:19). And in this she is, in Augustine’s eyes, condemned.

Augustine was defending himself in the face of critics who asked how it was that Christian women could suffer rape if God was looking after them. We should question his mode of defense! In so doing, we should also question Akin’s assumption that the victim is to be blamed—a stance that has arguably been taken even without the extenuating wartime circumstances that shaped Augustine’s response (never mind its utter absurdity with regard to biological facts known by most women in this country).

Surely Lucretia did not “consent to the act” of her own rape, which led to her suicide. And surely no woman who is raped consents in any way to the conception of a child. To suggest that she has the power to resist or prevent this is not only biologically absurd but also morally wrong…

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Calvo vs Mankiw/Reis, and IT vs PLPT/NGDPLPT:

We really do not know very much about the Short Run Aggregate Supply Curve/Short Run Phillips Curve. And yet it's really important. If something like the Mankiw/Reis model is roughly right, even if it's right for the wrong reasons, Inflation Targeting is bad policy, and something like Price Level Path Targeting or NGDP Level Path targeting would be much better policy. Quite apart from any other reasons for preferring some sort of level path target.

Fear of a Black President - Ta-Nehisi Coates:

The irony of President Barack Obama is best captured in his comments on the death of Trayvon Martin, and the ensuing fray. Obama has pitched his presidency as a monument to moderation. He peppers his speeches with nods to ideas originally held by conservatives. He routinely cites Ronald Reagan. He effusively praises the enduring wisdom of the American people, and believes that the height of insight lies in the town square. Despite his sloganeering for change and progress, Obama is a conservative revolutionary, and nowhere is his conservative character revealed more than in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity—race.

attackerman: Because usually when I rob a house the last thing I plan for is LL Cool J popping up out of nowhere to … http://t.co/Pj0GId43

BoingBoing: Ayn Rand: How everyone’s favorite spouse-swapping, godless novelist and dorm doyenne became the Tea… http://t.co/W2WPRufH

BoingBoing: An oldie but still-relevant-y: The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator. http://t.co/zn46tuZd

RT @AntDeRosa: @TheStalwart and we’re linking to @FelixSalmon’s personal blog from http://t.co/gUbyVbAy

RT @GagnonMacro: @delong Note “members” means those who currently vote and it is prefaced by “many”. The bar is very low for QE3. | http://bit.ly/PZccOk

RT @TimDuy: @GagnonMacro A low bar relative to the data at that time….how has the data changed since then? | http://bit.ly/PZccxR

RT @TheStalwart: Reuters blogs just passed the 8 day mark for being down. I can’t imagine I would survive being out of the game that long. I’d die. | http://bit.ly/PZccxG

RT @mattyglesias: Akin “trusts some people more than others. Women who report rape are among the people he doesn’t quite trust.” http://t.co/f8ruJhbX

Niall Ferguson’s Mistake Makes the Case for Metadata http://t.co/iK0jGhP4

mattyglesias: GOP platform headed the right way on mortgage interest tax deduction: http://t.co/Lbh7zPAb

Closing in on record-low arctic sea ice extent http://t.co/1rArrU4N

pdacosta: Are you a Wall Street consultant? Romney adviser Hubbard: “I don’t believe I have to discuss that with you.” http://t.co/WP7b2QpS

pdacosta: Glenn Hubbard says Bernanke has done a great job as Fed Chairman: @CNBC http://t.co/K4YxpO7X

Hooted Hoisted from Comments, Hoisted...

Hoisted from Comments: T on Niall Ferguson's WWI Book:

His WWI book was awful. It's entire premise is anachronistic, and it shows the same predilection for snide ad hominem attacks as the rest of his writing.

I beg to differ. I thought that Ferguson"s World War One book was pretty good.It suffered to a small degree from AJP Taylor disease, but a very mild case only--you learn a lot from TPOW, while you learn nothing from "Origins of WWII".

My main criticism is that it does not make its central thesis clear. The central thesis is that British intervention in World War I was an absolute trainwreck clusterf%#+ because Britain was strong enough to prevent an early German victory yet not strong enough to impose an early Allied one, and an early German victory would have led to a Europe much like the one we have now while avoiding all the 1919-89 unpleasantness.

I think that Ferguson's central thesis is probably wrong. The Europe we have now is one that is dominated by a large German-speaking Palatinate. The Europe in Ferguson's scenario would have been one dominated by a large German-speaking Prussia. There is a huge difference.

And I think Fergusons harsh judgments of British policymaking in 1914 are wrong as well: the British played the game of nation according to the rules of the time, had very good reason to assume that Germany was weaker and Russia stronger than turned out to be the case, this had reasonable confidence in a rapid victory, and the German High Seas Fleet was a true existential threat.

But it is very clear to me that TPOW is a useful and valuable contribution discourse about political military economic affairs in a way that Ferguson's current ravings are not.

Isn't the corn supposed to be taller than this? Isn't the corn supposed to be green and not brown?

John Cochrane writes:

Inflation Should Be Feared: We are not having inflation because foreigners are still buying prodigious amounts of our unbacked government debts, out of fear that their governments are worse. If that stops, watch out. The inflation some are hoping for will then come with a vengeance…

Let's look at how much U.S. government debt foreigners have been buying since the start of the financial crisis. Total net purchases of U.S. assets are about 3.5% of potential GDP a year--about $500 billion/year.

Of that, it looks as though on net about 2/3 are purchases of U.S. government debt and government-guaranteed debt. Call it $350 billion/year. Current foreign holdings of U.S. government and government-guaranteed debt look to be about $6 trillion. $350 billion/$6 trillion means that foreigners are adding to their holdings of U.S. government and government guaranteed debt at a pace of about 5.8%/year. With world nominal GDP outside the United States growing at about 6%/year, that means that foreigners are… buying about as much U.S. Treasury, Agency, and other goverenment-guaranteed debt as they should in order to keep their portfolio shares constant.

It does not look as if it is the case that the US government is running out of its foreign-based debt capacity.

Could foreigners all of a sudden decided that there governments are not worse than the US government, decide to dump US government bonds and buy their own country bonds, send the dollar down, and have that falling dollar set off a upwards surge of import prices that then set off an inflationary spiral here at home? Yes. Is this a high probability scenario? I confess that I do not see how: imports are a relatively small fraction of total US spending, foreign governments are at least as feckless as our own and are subject to political risks that we are not, and nobody--literally nobody, not even the people Cochrane talks to directly--is willing to bet any money on Cochrane's favored scenario.

So from whence comes his confidence that an upward outburst of inflation is the big risk that must be guarded again? For he is confident, in spite of not just a lack of evidence but strongly disconfirming evidence in asset prices:

It’s not happening yet; interest rates are low now, but so were mortgage-backed security rates and Greek government debt rates just a few years ago. And it need not happen, if we put our fiscal house in order first. But if it happens, it will happen with little warning, the Fed will again be powerless to stop it, and it will bring stagnation rather than prosperity.

My view, as I have said before, is that Cochrane started 2008 several mutually inconsistent wrong views of how the economy worked, and has not yet performed the proper Bayesian updating of marking his beliefs to market.

There but for the grace of God go all of us:

Email… is a horror story…. [I]t’s so easy to get into the habit of letting your inbox be your to-do list, and then what you have is a world-writeable to-do list with no editable hierarchy… [and] every attempt to winnow or organize it becomes a traumatic encounter with all your worst recent omissions. It’s a bad relationship to develop with your work. David Allen’s Getting Things Done describes the problem brilliantly. Unfortunately, as with many other reforming visionaries (Marx, Jesus, Bill James), GTD’s prescriptions are less obviously doable than the diagnosis is acute.

So here I am… unhappily conscious of how much of my working life has lately consisted of running in a circle while dragging one wing…. I’ve seen other[s]… get into this kind of slough-of-despond. I’ve even seen them emerge from it; I’m just a little unclear about how…. I’ve contributed to the problem with conscious choices of my own…. I certainly could have been more disciplined. As a rule, we dig ourselves into holes with a teaspoon, not a steam shovel…

Case Blue:

The Nazis' Sixth Army, commanded by Friedrich Paulus, begins to cross the bend of the Don River.

Timothy Burke writes:

A Scholar, An Expert, An Intellectual | Easily Distracted: I’m perfectly content with one possible version of Ferguson’s claims in Empire: that the British Empire left behind political or social institutions that had unintended or complex positive value… liberalism… was a sort of “collateral effect” of imperialism. I’m less happy with the idea that these outcomes were the laudable purpose or intention of imperialism, or all the shifty “gotta break eggs to make the omelette of modernity” stuff going on in that book… but I think those are arguments which can still legitimately take place within the sphere of scholarly and intellectual work. What I was annoyed by… was… Ferguson didn’t engage a huge corpus of both specific and general work by other scholars that sees British imperialism very differently… a typical rhetorical move by a certain kind of contrarian: that all other scholarship is politically motivated, and hence need not really be discussed….

I was rather surprised when Ferguson himself showed up in the comments. The gist of his reply was, “Look at everything I’ve published and done in the last ten years: do I really seem lazy to you, especially compared to all of you small minnows hereabouts?” and “It was a book connected to a TV series, it’s not the right place for a lot of nitty-gritty historiographical debate”. To the former, I said ok, but that wasn’t the kind of lazy that I meant. To the latter I said ok, but you can still be attitudinally generous towards a very big historiography created by the dedicated labor of your peers even if you reserve the right to interpret things differently. And that is where it stood.

Ferguson is one of the kinds of scholars and intellectuals that I wanted to work very hard to create room for in my own discursive universe. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t letting my own politics override my ability to listen to very different interpretative frameworks, very different sensibilities…. You have to be curious about everything or you might as well be curious about nothing….

Equally, when we’re asked to render expert opinion, it has to be based on something other than our gut reaction, though expertise is sometimes legitimately derived from very quick processing and inference based on long experience. But it is for this reason that I’m not sure I have space for Ferguson any more as a peer, a professional, someone who is living up to the minimal norms and responsibility of any of these three roles…. [S]cholarship requires some measure of self-aware and reflective movement between what you know and what you believe, and the relationship between your own movements and those of your professional peers…. Being an intellectual takes some form of thoughtfulness, some respect for evidence and truth, something that goes beyond hollow, sleazy rhetoric that plays dumb every time it gets caught out truncating quotes or doctoring charts….

I think back on all the folks like Ferguson that I worked hard to include inside my circle of “we”…. I still have to work hard to keep that circle big and permeable, but I don’t have to regard Ferguson as a professional by the standards of any of my worlds, as a person entitled to say that he’s inside any of those sets. He’s left for other climes, and they’re welcome to him.

Mark Kleiman: Reality strikes back:

The two main political stories of the last forty-eight hours have been (1) Todd Akin making up biomedical findings and (2) Niall Ferguson making up CBO conclusions. Both seem surprised to be under seige, and I can sympathize: ever since the reign of the Great Communicator (read: Pathological Liar) Ronald Reagan, the right has simply been able to assume that it can get away with whatever b.s. it wants to put out there. The fact that both Akin and Ferguson catching flak is a triumph for the broader reality-based community.

The main difference is that the professional politician is apologizing for his b.s., while the professional academic is just piling his b.s. deeper.

Of course, Ferguson couldn’t get away with deceptively truncating quotations in his scholarly publications. Apparently he  thinks that he can get away with it in his pseudo-journalistic “public intellectual” hat. I think he’s mostly right. But he shouldn’t be.

Of course we don’t want professors losing tenure for making political statements unpopular with their peers, or with academic administrators or funders. But equally of course, people who trade on their university titles as pseudo-journalists or consultants or expert witnesses ought to be held to the same standards – not of rigor, but of honesty – in their parallel work as they are in the stuff that gets them tenure.

“Veritas” isn’t a bad slogan for a university. I wonder if the Harvard History Department thinks it means anything.

Niall Ferguson:

Well, that’s not really a part of the argument I made in the piece. The point I made in the piece was that the stimulus had a very short-term effect, which is very clear if you look, for example, at the Federal employment numbers there’s a huge spike in early 2010 and then it falls back down.

Mark Thoma Invictus says: "Niall, babe, I got one word for you: 'Census'."

I get that tenure is valuable, and that if it means anything it has to include the freedom to be really stupid. And I get that people like me who loved his Rothschild book and liked his WWII book are to blame for the problem.

But am I wrong in wishing to see an open letter tomorrow signed by 500 Harvard faculty members up to and including President Faust saying that the Appril 2010 spike in public employment was not the result of the Recovery Act bUt of the census? And that they are sorry?

Economist’s View: ‘The Right Seems Unable to Rise above Rabble-Rousing’ http://t.co/teJCujfQ | http://bit.ly/O45NQl

RT @foxjust: Someday all journalistic activity will be devoted to fact-checking Niall Ferguson, rechecking his fact-checkers, and so on | http://bit.ly/Qotzm8

RT @jbarro: The right, much more than the left, has gotten out of touch with reality. Of course that means GOP pols will make false, outlandish claims. | http://bit.ly/O45MMq

Niall Ferguson Does Not Understand That the Federal Government Hires a Huge Number of Temporary Workers to Conduct t… http://t.co/GoEeuZHY | http://bit.ly/NG7ReA

RT @DylanByers: Niall Ferguson ducks, nitpicks, vilifies http://t.co/BALOR9SE via @POLITICO | http://bit.ly/OWsac0

Paul Krugman: Kinds Of Wrong http://t.co/uH444TEa | http://bit.ly/RdN1Hj

RT @daveweigel: RT @feliciasonmez: Ryan is hitting Obama for defense sequester that he voted for in last August’s debt-ceiling deal | http://bit.ly/NF7rFp

RT @peterkohan: @owillis Shorter Brown: “Please - women actually vote AGAINST Republicans in MA over this s***. You’re killing me, here.” | http://bit.ly/RdMZyW

RT @MattZeitlin: Hot brit-on-brit economics action!!! http://t.co/uI5274ih | http://bit.ly/RdN1qN

RT @daveweigel: RT @aaltman82: Super brave of Akin’s Republican colleagues to pile on with outraged press releases now that their opinion is moot. | http://bit.ly/NF7roW

RT @owillis: shorter romney: i can’t have our true position on this issue up front, im running for president for pete’s sake! | http://bit.ly/RdMZir

RT @evanmc_s: FLASHBACK: Akin not endorsing Romney in July: “just going to wait and see, issue by issue, for what he does” http://t.co/tksi6Ngi | http://bit.ly/RdLFwf

RT @brianbeutler: RE Romney’s energy plan, he’s actually like the right’s cartoon version of Pelosi. “You have to elect me to find out what’s in it.” | http://bit.ly/NF5g4D

Daily Kos: The 2012 election: Sex and Medicare http://bit.ly/RdLErV

Battle of the Tenaru:

The Marines ashore on Guadalcanal initially concentrated on forming a defense perimeter around the airfield, moving the landed supplies within the perimeter, and finishing the airfield. Vandegrift placed his 11,000 troops on Guadalcanal in a loose perimeter around the Lunga Point area. In four days of intense effort, the supplies were moved from the landing beach into dispersed dumps within the perimeter. Work began on the airfield immediately, mainly using captured Japanese equipment. On August 12, the airfield was named Henderson Field after Major Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator who had been killed at the Battle of Midway. Captured Japanese stock increased the total supply of food to 14 days worth. To conserve the limited food supplies, the Allied troops were limited to two meals per day.

Kinds Of Wrong:

It seems to me that when readers declare that some piece of economics commentary is “wrong”, they often confuse three different notions of wrongness, which are neither intellectually nor morally equivalent.

First, there’s the ordinary business of expressing a view about the economy that the reader disagrees with – e.g., “Krugman is wrong, because the government can’t create jobs”; or, if you prefer, “Casey Mulligan is wrong, because we’re suffering from demand problems, not supply problems.” Obviously it’s OK to say things like this, and sometimes the criticism is correct…. [There's] wrong about being wrong in this sense: people will disagree, and that’s legitimate.

Second, and much less legitimate, is the kind of wrongness that involves making assertions that are logically or empirically indefensible. I’d put the Cochrane/Fama claims that government spending can’t increase demand as a matter of accounting in this category; this is a basic conceptual error, which goes beyond mere difference of opinion. And economists who are wrong in this sense should pay a professional price. That said, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the news media to be very effective at policing this kind of wrongness. If professors with impressive-sounding credentials spout nonsense, it’s asking too much of a newspaper or magazine serving the broader public to make the judgment that they actually have no idea what they’re talking about.

Matters are quite different when it comes to the third kind of wrongness: making or insinuating false claims about readily checkable facts. The case in point, of course, is Ferguson’s attempt to mislead readers into believing that the CBO had concluded that Obamacare increases the deficit. This was unethical on his part – but Newsweek is also at fault, because this is the sort of thing it could and should have refused to publish.

Kaili Joy Gray sends us to Andrea Mitchell:

We should point out that we have been trying to get the Romney campaign to join this debate today, and they have said that they don't have an appropriate spokesperson, but we will keep trying.

And comments:

What?!?!? Mitt Romney's campaign can't find an appropriate spokesperson to talk about lady things?

David Cutler: Hey Republicans! Stop Misusing My Medicare Study!: Hey Republicans! Stop Misusing My Medicare Study!

Supporters for the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare have a new talking point. They say a new study by “three liberal Harvard economists” proves that the plan’s competition will reduce health care costs without harming beneficiaries. But the study doesn’t say that.

And I should know. I’m one of the economists who wrote it.

Vanessa Heggie:

The legal position that pregnancy disproved a claim of rape appears to have been instituted in the UK sometime in the 13th century. One of the earliest British legal texts, Fleta, has a clause in the first book of the second volume stating that:

If, however, the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, [the claim of rape] abates, for without a woman's consent she could not conceive.

This was a long-lived legal argument. Samuel Farr's Elements of Medical Jurisprudence contained the same idea as late as 1814:

For without an excitation of lust, or the enjoyment of pleasure in the venereal act, no conception can probably take place. So that if an absolute rape were to be perpetrated, it is not likely she would become pregnant.

This "absolute rape" is not quite the same as Akin's "legitimate rape". Akin seems to be suggesting that the body suppresses conception or causes a miscarriage, while the earlier idea of Farr relates specifically to the importance of orgasm. Through the medieval and early modern period it was widely thought, by lay people as well as doctors, that women could only conceive if they had an orgasm.

The biological basis for this idea is what the historian Thomas Laqueur has termed the "one sex system". The one sex system suggests that women's reproductive organs are fundamentally based on men's reproductive organs, so the vagina is represented as an inverted penis, the ovaries are testes and so on. Women had "cooler" constitutions, and therefore lacked the heat or force to drive the gonads out of the body, to convert ovaries to testes.

Thinking of the sexual organs as mirrors of each other obviously led to questions about the existence of a female "seed" or ejaculate. There was a disagreement about the roles of male and female seed – did they mingle to create the offspring, or did they contribute different things? Whatever the female seed contributed to conception, it was thought necessary, and so in theory a female orgasm was as important as a male orgasm.

Not everyone agreed with this interpretation. Helkiah Crooke, in his 17th century anatomy book Microcosmographia suggested that women's sexual organs were not simply inverted versions of men's, and said that a woman's orgasm was not always needed, although conception was much more likely, and a pregnancy much more secure, if she had one.

Generally, though, the idea that a women had to orgasm in order to conceive (although not necessarily at exactly the same time as her male partner) was widespread in popular thought and medical literature in the medieval and early modern period…

Proofing DeLong and Summers, "Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy":

Note that that required current-dollar 0.55 benefit-cost ratio includes as benefits:

• direct utility provided to current citizens,
• the present value of future GDP boosts from government capital,
• current aggregate-demand externalities, and
• the present value of future GDP boosts from reduced hysteresis effects on potential output.

At these interest rates, we surely are in the world of Abba Lerner's "functional finance"...

Rebecca Traister:

A Broadsheet reader forwarded the following excerpt from Friday’s edition of “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” but I’ve been unsure of how to post it without actually vomiting. I think it’s time to just bite the bullet…. [S]tate Sen. Bill Napoli (R) was asked if he could conceive of a scenario in which the exception [allowing for abortion] might be invoked….

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

But he has annoyed Dylan Byers. You don't want Dylan Byers angry:

Ferguson: "I don't think you can claim this undermines my academic reputation."... Dude, you EDITED THE CBO REPORT to CHANGE ITS MEANING.

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) August 21, 2012

Indeed. Dylan Byers:

Niall Ferguson's selective edit of the CBO report on Obama's Affordable Care Act: Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions…. Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO again:

CBO’s cost estimate for the legislation noted that it will put into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. The combination of those policies, prior law regarding payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare, and other information has led CBO to project that the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusted for overall inflation) will drop from about 4 percent per year, which it has averaged for the past two decades, to about 2 percent per year on average for the next two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

But Ferguson cut the CBO excerpt off mid-sentence and changed the meaning entirely. Here is how that last sentence in the excerpt actually reads:

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

So contrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care.

So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning.

With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

I just unpacked my copy of David Abraham's The Collapse of the Weimar Republic. Right now David Abraham's citations of his sources in that book looks a lot better than Niall Ferguson's citations of Congressional Budget Office documents.

Just saying…

What a silly little fraud he is. RT @thestalwart: Niall Ferguson says liberal blogosphere does "nit picking" and calls it fact-checking.

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) August 21, 2012

And what a sad little organization the Daily Beast Newsweek is for publishing Ferguson…

Gene Callahan and David Frum go on record…

Anybody else?

Todd Akin has more defenders than this…

Greg Sargent:

The Morning Plum: No, Romney and Ryan don’t really want a `great debate’: Ever since Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, it’s been widely claimed that this ensures a “great debate” pitting two starkly different ideological visions…. [But] the GOP ticket doesn’t want a great debate at all. Their entire strategy is designed to obscure the true ideological differences between both sides…. Romney has refused to detail his positions on issue after issue…. If they did want a contest between two grand visions, they wouldn’t be shying away from discussing the true nature and implications of their own vision. Yet they are doing just that.

This explains why the Romney campaign has been campaigning so heavily on two falsehoods about Obama’s policies: That he gutted welfare reform’s work requirement and raided Medicare to pay for Obamacare. The former claim is a distraction; the latter is about muddying the two sides’ actual differences…. The muddying is necessary because the actual Ryan vision for Medicare’s future is deeply unpopular. Same on taxes: Romney won’t detail how he’d pay for his deep tax cuts — which would disproportionately benefit the rich — because paying for them with middle class tax hikes would be politically unacceptable….

This… explains what Ezra Klein has called the “policy gap” between the campaigns, in which only one side is proposing actual policies…. The GOP candidates vaguely promise… without saying with what — because admitting they’d replace them with nothing would be politically unthinkable.

Romney wants to repeal the unpopular Obamacare, and promises he’d do something for some people with preexisting conditions — because replacing it with nothing would be even more unpopular. Romney says he’d get rid of Wall Street reform, and vows to replace it with unspecified “common sense” regulations — because replacing reform with nothing is also a political nonstarter. Romney says he’d cut whole agencies to make government more efficient and cost-effective, but won’t say which ones; and Ryan won’t explain in meaningful detail how he’d achieve the draconian spending cuts necessary to make his numbers work — because when the talk turns to specifics, suddenly cutting government is politically very difficult indeed, and gutting social programs would be very unpopular. Romney and Ryan won’t say how they’d pay for their tax cuts — because they must be paid for by hiking the middle class’s tax burden or exploding the deficit, neither of which is politically palatable….

Two more must-reads relating to the above. Steve Benen has been doing a nice job arguing that Romney’s historic levels of mendacity pose a serious test for the political system, and here’s another good post on this today. Meanwhile, Dana Milbank has some good campaign trail reporting illustrating the Romney campaign’s studious lack of specificity. This quote from Romney is priceless: “I want to make sure that we get Obamacare out of the way and replace it with something which will help encourage job growth in this country.” As Milbank rejoins: “Replace it with ... something?”

You know, modern American Republicans' self-image is of a rugged individualist, upwardly-mobile, eager to take risks and strike out for new frontiers, a pioneer willing to move thousands of miles and become a stranger in a strange land in search of opportunity--and somebody who does not care about and is not obedient to picky bureaucratic rules and regulations.

In short, their self-image is that he is an illegal immigrant from Oaxaca.

But modern American Republicans really do not like illegal immigrants from Oaxaca. Especially Paul Ryan does not like them:

Sara Inés Calderón: Paul Ryan Compares Latinos To Animals, Decries "Anchor Babies": Yesterday, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan held several town halls, one of which stirred up the topic of immigration and so-called “anchor babies.”… Ryan… noted that “anchor babies cost money,” which is like saying U.S. citizen children cost money — how is it worse when they’re Latino kids?…

Ryan began to talk about border security, saying that “catch and release” doesn’t work. “Are you talking about people or fish?” a woman in bold framed glasses blurted out…

This has implications for the smart but sadly deluded Adam Ozimek, who continues to carry water for a Republican Party that simply does not exist in modern America:

Larry Summers is Wrong About Unshrinkable Government: I don’t regard government being a growing share of the economy as inevitable, or as only avoidable with drastic and painful cuts in spending. He ignores the obvious but often ignored example of more immigration, and in particular, more high skilled immigration. You might argue that this is too unpopular to be discussed, but part of the unpopularity is that economists too often decide that this solution isn’t worth mentioning. If we instead reminded people of this fix as consitently as it merited, it would be a lot harder to ignore….

[M]ost of the decline in the ratio of workers to retirees happens when by 2030, when the ratio falls from 4.84 to 2.96. The working age population over this period increases around 10%, from 195 million to 214 million. The number of retirees, in contrast, increases by 80%. Workers increase by 19 million while retirees increase by 32 million. So for a start we could increase the expected number of immigrants by 23 million, or 1.15 million more per year, and increase the number of workers by the same amount as the number of retirees.

If we wanted to maintain the ratio of 4.8 workers to retirees, we would need… an extra 3.5% of workers starting in 2010, or 6.7 million a year on average. To put that in context we currently have around a million new citizens a year…. [W]e could drastically reduce the number needed if we focused on allowing high-skilled immigrants in…. [C]onservatives more than anyone should support more high-skilled immigrants, since this is our best chance at preventing Larry Summers’ predicted unshrinkable government from coming true.

If Adam wants his dream of an America open to high-skilled immigrants to have a chance of coming true--and that would be a very good thing for the world, as it turns out to be much easier to move people to where there are good institutions than to move good institutions to where there are people--then he needs to join us on this side of the aisle working to end the modern Republican Party as we know it and return to an America that welcomes immigrants as our brothers and sisters rather than, as the modern Republican Party does, both fears them and--since it is no longer politically viable to expressly call for discrimination against African-Americans (save for closing the polling stations in their neighborhoods early)--seeks to discriminate against them.

Then we could focus on what kind of safety net is needed to make higher rates of immigration win-win for current Americans and the world as a whole.

Come across the aisle, Adam! Join those of us ex-professional bipartisans who have given up on the modern Republican Party!

Buce is puzzled:

Underbelly: In Which I Remind My Readers that I'm a Vulgarian: I'm equally baffled at why Rep.Kevin Yoder (R-Not in Kansas Any More)  felt he had apologize for going skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee--or more precisely, why the fussbudget in chief, Eric Cantor, felt he had to scold Yoder for it.  Seems to me that the correct response for a grown man against an imputation that he took a moonlight plunge in the altogether ought to be "Yeah? So?"  Or in the words of the immortal Joe Biden, I do not see it as a big effing deal.

Underbelly's Wichita bureau does offer one possible clarification: maybe the problem with Yoder and the water is that he didn't walk on it.

Seems to me there might be two potential problems here:

• Letting other men see your [censored] means that you are [censored].
• Being naked anywhere in Israel is disrespectful to Jesus.

Dishonesty Is The Seventh Killer App - Ta-Nehisi Coates http://t.co/WUb1T0cq | http://bit.ly/PONgZL

James Wolcott: Niall Ferguson Coughs Up an Editorial Furball http://t.co/or7MtOqC | http://bit.ly/OIsYLV

“I will never be as mendacious, deceitful, intellectually dishonest and a disgrace as is Niall Ferguson.” http://t.co/kR6Vwwri | http://bit.ly/Qj8J7R

Mark Thoma Sends Us to Ezra Klein on the Embarrassingly Bad Niall Ferguson http://t.co/2wMBrRVR | http://bit.ly/NcMaHB

At the Origins of the Internet… http://t.co/rxxwHope | http://bit.ly/Qj8IRn

Greg Sargent: How bad is the Ryan-Akin anti-abortion bill? http://t.co/yIPBHtHQ | http://bit.ly/NcMar4

RT @ThePlumLineGS: Dem Rep. Louise Slaughter: Ryan-Akin bill could allow rapists to sue their victims to stop abortions: http://t.co/bicZC9KN | http://bit.ly/Qj68uK

RT @dylanmatt: @MattZeitlin I believe the opening line was, “There are times when the world makes this job easy. Like, unbelievably easy.” | http://bit.ly/NBH1sl

RT @dylanmatt: The fundamentals for The Daily Show tonight are strong. Like, “the VP just shot a dude in the face” strong. | http://bit.ly/Qj65Pq

RT @amaeryllis: Well, GOP, if you were “adult” enough to get yourself in this situation then you’ll just have to deal with the consequences as best you can. | http://bit.ly/NBH1c1

RT @pamspaulding: RT @clarknt67: Looks like @ToddAkin blew the lid off a underground belief system that rape can’t cause pregnancy. http://t.co/mhLvzsop | http://bit.ly/Qj68dZ

RT @amaeryllis: GOP, you can’t abandon Todd Akin! He is a gift from God, you should be thankful for this gift and embrace how he enriches your party. | http://bit.ly/Qj67XE

RT @GStuedler: ”The female body also has ways of shutting down your whole election” http://t.co/bZo5hOJS #p2 | http://bit.ly/NBH1bT

RT @anamariecox: RT @fivethirtyeight The type of person with poor enough judgment to say what Akin did has poor enough judgment to stay in the race. | http://bit.ly/Qj65yN

In transit to Auschwitz:

My dear, sweet, unique, fervently loved Child, my good Frederle,

I am very sorry that I have to burden you with a heartache in today’s letter.  Today I and Hugo are being shipped off.  Don’t take it too hard, perhaps it is for the better.  Papa will remain here and so at least all of you will have a refuge in him.  Most children are alone.  Those who do not come along this time, will follow soon.    These excitements are nerve wrecking and so it is better now, if it has to be.  I sent your suit to Papa, write to him that he should send it soon as one can’t postpone anything.  I answered your two nice letters this week.  The letters also for Lorle are probably in the box.  Papa will send them to you.  If you need money write to Papa, I sent him 500 Fr. or to Margot.  You can also write to Lorle.  Uncle Albert won’t abandon you either, write to him if you have a request.  Besides you will soon be with Lorle.  Her directrice assured me of this, so I know you are in good hands.

My dear and good child, take to heart everything we always told you, be well behaved and honest and do good deeds and hate whatever is base, look for good company and avoid the bad.  Let us hope that we will be reunited in good health and then my most tenderly loved youngest we want to compensate you, who have had to suffer so early in life by being deprived of your loving parental home.  With my whole hearted love I kiss you a thousand times and send you many, many regards and bless you beseechingly.

Your MAMA

This has sprawled out. It's time to sharpen this back down:

Dylan Byers:

Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions.

CBO

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO....

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

Byers:

[C]ontrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care. So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning. With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

Ezra Klein: The worst case against the Obama administration: Well, this is unusual.

On Sunday, Paul Krugman noticed Niall Ferguson writing something apparently false about the Affordable Care Act. Today, Ferguson responded to Krugman’s critique by saying, in effect, that he wasn’t wrong so much as he was very carefully trying to mislead his readers.

The sentence in question is straightforward enough. Ferguson wrote:

The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

The intended meaning is pretty clear. Ferguson is saying Obama “pledged” that the Affordable Care Act would reduce the deficit, “but” the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Tax Committee now say otherwise. The problem, as Krugman pointed out, is that the CBO and the JCT do not now say otherwise. Ferguson is simply wrong….

Ferguson says he wasn’t confused. Rather, he phrased his original comments very carefully in order to deceive his readers. You see, Ferguson specified that he was only talking about the “insurance-coverage provisions”…. [T]he first sentence and the second sentence had nothing to do with each other. Of course, most people… just got tricked. In the pages of Newsweek. Bummer for them.

Suck: Daily:

This has sprawled out. It's time to sharpen this back down:

Dylan Byers:

Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions.

CBO

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO....

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

Byers:

[C]ontrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care. So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning. With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

Matthew O'Brien:

A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Argument Against Obama: Celebrity historian Niall Ferguson doesn't like President Obama, and doesn't think you should either.

That's perfectly fine. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to disapprove of the president. Here's the big one: 8.3 percent. That's the current unemployment rate, fully three years on from the official end of the Great Recession. But rather than make this straightforward case against the current administration, Ferguson delves into a fantasy world of incorrect and tendentious facts. He simply gets things wrong, again and again and again. (A point my colleague James Fallows makes as well in a must-read).

Here's a tour of some of the more factually-challenged sections of Ferguson's piece.

REPORT: Tina Brown fooled by Onion article about Obama, runs it as Newsweek cover story #gaffe #mediafail

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) August 20, 2012

Matthew Yglesias has the terrifying graph of the day:

We hope the estimates of capacity on which this series is built are wrong. We hope the estimates of capacity on which this series is built are wrong. We hope the estimates of capacity on which this series is built are wrong.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Outsourced to Dylan Byers:

Niall Ferguson's selective edit of the CBO report on Obama's Affordable Care Act: Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions….

Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO again:

CBO’s cost estimate for the legislation noted that it will put into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. The combination of those policies, prior law regarding payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare, and other information has led CBO to project that the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusted for overall inflation) will drop from about 4 percent per year, which it has averaged for the past two decades, to about 2 percent per year on average for the next two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

Byers:

But Ferguson cut the CBO excerpt off mid-sentence and changed the meaning entirely. Here is how that last sentence in the excerpt actually reads:

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

So contrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care.

So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning.

With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

Kaili Joy Gray:

Todd Akin clarifies: he's on the same page as Paul Ryan on 'forcible rape': As [Akin] explained on Mike Huckabee's radio show:

I was talking about forcible rape. I used the wrong word.

Ohhhh. Well, obviously talking about "legitimate rape" is totally out of line. But talking about "forcible rape"? That just makes everything better, doesn't it? It also puts him in line with… Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan also co-sponsored HR 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" bill in which Republicans tried to redefine rape so that it only applied to "forcible" rape….

[N]ow Akin has explained that he holds the same position as Romney's running mate: that there is a distinction between "forcible rape" and not-really-rape. So, Mitt, are you still offended? Do you still disagree? Still hold an "entirely different view"?

Peter Orszag:

Private-Market Tooth Fairy Can’t Cut Medicare Cost: The vast bulk of health-care costs arise from an extremely small share of patients, whose insurance will inevitably bear a substantial share of their expenses. That’s why competition in health care doesn’t work as well as in other sectors, and it’s also why the key to keeping costs to a minimum is to encourage providers to offer better, less costly care in complex cases. Unfortunately, proponents of moving Medicare to a private “consumer-driven” system, including Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, seem to instead believe in a health-care competition tooth fairy -- that if we just increase the patient’s share of costs and bolster competition among insurance companies, the expense will come down….

This has sprawled out. It's time to sharpen this back down:

Dylan Byers:

Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions.

CBO

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO....

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

Byers:

[C]ontrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care. So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning. With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

James Fallows: As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize:

Yes, I know, you could imagine many sentences that would follow that headline. But here is what I have in mind right now:  A tenured professor of history at my undergraduate alma mater has written a cover story for Daily Beast/Newsweek that is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade. It's by the irrepressible Niall Ferguson… its case rests on logic of this sort:

Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak.

Hmmm, what might possibly be the flaw in this comparison? Apart from the fact that Obama did not take office until January 2009 and that private sector jobs have recovered better in his first three-plus years than they did under George W. Bush….

I do wonder how a criticism of a president, based on a benchmark a year before he took office, and about 16 months before his main "stimulus" effort began taking effect, would be assessed in Harvard's history or economics departments.

This has sprawled out. It's time to sharpen this back down:

Dylan Byers:

Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions.

CBO

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

Ferguson:

Here’s the CBO....

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved…

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

Byers:

[C]ontrary to what Ferguson leads readers to believe, the CBO report does not state that the reduction is "unclear." What is "unclear" is whether the reduction will come through greater efficiencies in healthcare delivery or reduced access to care. So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning. With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

Niall Ferguson writes:

Paul Krugman Is Wrong: In my piece I say:

The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period...

I very deliberately said “the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA,” not “the ACA.” There is a big difference.

The "But" at the start of the second sentence in the quote tells readers two things: (i) that Obama has violated his pledge--that he promised that the ACA would not increase the deficit, but that it did--and (ii) that the rest of the second sentence will explain how Obama violated his pledge.

The rest of the second sentence Ferguson saying that Obama violated his pledge by "close to $1.2 trillion" by adding "insurance coverage provisions".

A reader who trusted Ferguson--and I hope no such readers will exist by the end of today--would tell you that Ferguson's quote says:

• Obama pledged that the ACA would not increase the deficit.
• Obama broke his pledge.
• The ACA increased the deficit by $1.2 trillion.

Now comes Ferguson to tell us that his "But" at the start of the second sentence in the quote is completely, totally, and deliberately false.

Now comes Ferguson to tell us that he knows damned well that his "But" is a lie to misleads his readers--that it is a false claim that Obama broke his pledge and that the rest of the second sentence will tell us how Obama broke his pledge.

Now comes Ferguson to tell us that he knows that Obama kept his pledge to pay for health care reform.

Now comes Ferguson to say that he put the $1.2 trillion number in the second sentence in the quote to keep his readers from recognizing that the actual net budgetary effect of the ACA is to reduce the deficit by $134 billion and not increase it by $1.2 trillion.

And his only excuse--now, it's not an excuse for the lie, it's a "I can lie cleverly" boast--is: "I very deliberately said 'the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA', not 'the ACA'".

Fire his ass from Newsweek, and the Daily Beast.

Convene a committee at Harvard to impose proper sanctions on this degree of intellectual dishonesty. Not that I claim to know what the proper sanctions are, you understand. But we should be inquiring into what they are.

There is a limit, somewhere. And Ferguson has gone beyond it.

Jamelle Bouie at Greg Sargent's place:

Why Romney keeps lying about Obama and welfare: It’s been three weeks since Mitt Romney first took fire for asserting that the Obama administration “gutted” work requirements in welfare…. The following week, they released another ad using a similar message…. [A] key Republican architect of welfare reform said that “there’s no plausible scenario under which [the change] really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform.” If anything, Obama has strengthened the requirements…. It’s almost certain that Team Romney has heard these complaints, and just don’t care about them. Not only has Romney made this a key part of his stump speech — promising to “return work to welfare”— but this morning, he released yet another ad making the same claims….

Ryan on Medicare: "It’s not just a program with numbers and words. It’s personal security that has been there for my family when we need it"

— Matt Viser (@mviser) August 20, 2012

Let me point out that Niall Ferguson cannot even correctly repeat the Republican talking point that was faxed to him. It's "nearly half the population doesn't pay federal income taxes", not "nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return". We run our principal make-work-pay program--the Earned Income Tax Credit--through the IRS and through form 1040. If you receive anything from the EITC, you are represented on a taxable return.

I knew Ferguson was out of his depth on monetary policy. I hadn't known he was out of his depth on so many other issues as well.

Outsourced to Scott Lemieux:

Hacktacular! - Lawyers, Guns & Money: There are indeed a substantial number of erroneous arguments in Niall Ferguson’s profoundly embarrassing op-ed, but I thought I’d focus on this one:

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.

There are people willing to assert that the only taxes people pay are federal income taxes. There are people who have some business being paid to write essays. And there’s certainly no overlap between these two categories.

I could proceed to talk about his ridiculous claims that the ACA did nothing to address Medicare costs (oddly, the candidate Ferguson favors seems unaware of this), or his foolish assertions about Paul Ryan, but really, after that addressing his argument further would be superfluous. It’s a Renew America column with a marginally larger vocabulary.

Incidentally, Ferguson shows up in Annie Lowrey’s piece about conservative “intellectuals” who are bowled over by Paul Ryan. It seems odd that a transparent fraud like Ryan could get the reputation as some sort of wonk, but when you see what passes for an intellectual in Republican circles it starts to make sense.

The Jed Report:

Daily Kos: If it was the staff's fault, then why did Paul Ryan sign the letters?: After initially denying he had requested stimulus funds, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has acknowledged that his office had sought the money for his Wisconsin congressional district and took responsibility for it.

"After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” Ryan said in a statement late Thursday. “This is why I didn't recall the letters earlier.”

But if the staff is really to blame, then why is Ryan's personal signature on each letter? This isn't the work of an auto pen. Unless Ryan's staff is forging his signature, he's being a real jerk by blaming them.

Char Weise:

Whence Todd Akin? | Creative Destruction: You might ask in reference to Missouri Congressman and candidate for the U.S. Senate Todd Akin's recent remarks on rape and pregnancy, "where do the Republicans come up with these people?" Akin has gotten into hot water for this response to a question about his opposition to abortion even in the case of rape:

First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare... If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down...

The idea that the stress a woman undergoes when being "forcibly" raped (as opposed to some kind of "statutory" rape) is a commonly-held belief or talking point in some circles, according to  Garance Franke-Ruta in the Atlantic.

But of course it is wrong and bizarre and is recognized as such by voters outside of the right-wing fringe in Missouri.