Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Phil Robertson's America:

I've yet to take in an episode of Duck Dynasty. I hear it's a fine show... a humorous and good-natured family of proud Americans. I try to be good natured, and I have been told that I can appreciate a good joke. I am also a proud American. With so much in common, it seems natural that I take some interest....

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field .... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word! ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

That is Robertson responding to a reporter's question about life in Louisiana, before the civil-rights movement. I am sure Robertson did see plenty of black people who were singing and happy. And I am also sure that very few black people approached Robertson to complain about "doggone white people." 

The hawk-eyed Cardiff Garcia writes:

Piketty previews Piketty: A hat tip to reader @zapatique for sending us to Thomas Picketty’s recent lecture, which previews the forthcoming English-language edition of his new book (click here to open pdf)...

and so reminds me that the English-language translation (by Arthur Goldhammer) of Tomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is coming out in March. And he gave a talk on it in Helsinki.

And the esteemed and eminent Kevin Drum writes:

New French Book Will Become Important When It's In English: Tyler Cowen says today that "The forthcoming Thomas Piketty book will be very important." That "will be" is sort of interesting. You see, the name of the book is Le capital au xxie siècle, and it was published three months ago. But no one is talking about it. Presumably, it will become very important—and very talked about—only next March, when Capital in the 21st Century hits the shelves.

I don't have any grand point to make. It's just interesting that fluent French is now so rarely spoken among American academics that an important French book can't even get the time of day until its English translation comes out. It makes sense that widespread conversation would have to wait, since you can't very well have that until lots of people have read the book, but you'd think there would be at least a few reviews out there along with a bit of discussion. But if there has been, I've missed it.

Well, you would need somebody who is:

1. interested in communicating with a mass audience among les Anglo-Saxons;
2. tooled-up to evaluate and discuss a work of macroeconomic history;
3. tooled-up and evaluate a work in the ongoing inequality debate; and
4. who at least reads something written in Französisch Sprache...

Why is everybody all of a sudden looking at me?

Pacific Wrecks - December 22, 1943:

CENTRAL PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS (Seventh Air Force): 11 A-24s from Makin dive-bomb cargo ships in Mille Lagoon; escort is provided by 32 P-39's and USN F6F's; the P-39's strafe the ship and AA and gasoline dumps on the and the vessel is left burning.

Matt Taibi: GrifTopia: from chapter 7:

My contribution to this was to launch a debate over whether or not it was appropriate for a reputable mainstream media organization to publicly call Lloyd Blankfein a motherf---er. This was really what most of the "vampire squid" uproar boiled down to. The substance of most of the freak-outs by mainstream financial reporters and the bank itself over the Rolling Stone piece was oddly nonspecific. Goldman spokesman Lucas van Praag called the piece "vaguely entertaining" and "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories." Van Praag even made an attempt at humor, saying, "Notable ones missing are Goldman Sachs as the third shooter [in John F. Kennedy's assassination] and faking the first lunar landing."

But at no time did the bank ever deny any of the information in the piece. Their only real factual quibble was with the assertion that they were a major player in the mortgage market-the bank somewhat gleefully noted that its "former competitors," like the since-vaporized Bear Stearns, were much bigger players.

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Joe Gagnon Responds to Michael Woodford, Ben Bernanke, and Others on the Risks and Power of Quantitative Easing: Friday Focus (December 20, 2013)
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Evidence That the English-Language Physical Book Is Almost Here
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Graph of the Week: No Longer Growing Together since 1975
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Robert Solow Reviews Alan Greenspan’s ‘The Map and the Territory’
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Yet Another Note on Understanding the Terrain of the Macroeconomics Debate
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Data Mash-up — Manufacturing and Economic Mobility
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | May I Suggest…

Sasha Issenberg (2006): Boo-Boos in Paradise:

A few years ago, journalist david brooks wrote a celebrated article for the Atlantic Monthly, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,” in which he examined the country's cultural split in the aftermath of the 2000 election, contrasting the red states that went for Bush and the blue ones for Gore. To see the vast nation whose condition he diagnosed, Brooks compared two counties: Maryland's Montgomery (Blue), where he himself lives, and Pennsylvania's Franklin (a Red county in a Blue state). “I went to Franklin County because I wanted to get a sense of how deep the divide really is,” Brooks wrote of his leisurely northward drive to see the other America across “the Meatloaf Line; from here on there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters.” Franklin County was a place where “no blue New York Times delivery bags dot driveways on Sunday mornings … [where] people don't complain that Woody Allen isn't as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny,” he wrote. “In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing.”

One of the 50 non-Soviet citizens awarded Hero of the Soviet Union...

Hero of the Soviet Union: Josef Buršík--for heroism during the liberation of Kiev, awarded on December 21, 1943.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he gave the award back...

Outsourced to Pro-Growth Liberal: John Cochrane on the 1982 Fiscal Restraint ???:

Stephen Williamson starts musing over this:

So, suppose I am Paul Volcker, and I'm faced with a situation at point A where the inflation rate is high and the nominal interest rate is high.... I can reduce inflation in the short run by increasing the nominal interest rate, thus moving to B. But that won't work to reduce inflation in the long run, so after increasing the nominal interest rate, I have to begin reducing it.

At this point one might be best advised to stop reading.... But silly me had to read Cochrane’s take on this which included:

To be sure, I left the grand Volcker stabilization out of the picture here, where a sharp spike in interest rates preceded the sudden end of inflation. And to be sure, there is a standard story to explain negative causation with positive correlation. But there are other stories too--the US embarked on a joint fiscal-monetary stabilization in 1982, then under the shadow of an implicit inflation target gradually lowered inflation and interest rates.

Did Cochrane and I live on different planets some 30 plus years ago? My recollection was that Reagan’s fiscal policy was quite stimulative, working contrary to Voclker’s tight monetary policy. Which is why real interest rates during the 1980’s shot up dramatically, and stayed high even as inflation and nominal interest rates fell. Yes--there are “other stories too”. Stories that don’t fit the reality...

Talk about people with no control over and no understanding of what their models are telling them...

Prairie Weather: Poor Mitch:

Surely one element of Obama(snarl)care that's really upsetting Republicans is what health insurance could do to Mitch McConnell's political health. The problem for the minority leader is that "on the campaign trail, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was still blasting the new health-care law as unsalvageable," according to the Washington Post:

Obamacare is doing very well in McConnell's home state of Kentucky.  The Post has been following Courtney Lively, one of the officials signing up new applicants.

Time: World Battlefronts: The Year, Dec. 20, 1943:

Said Britain's Winston Churchill: "The [European] war is going so well we must not underrate the tenacity of the enemy. . . . But I hope in 1944 we shall bring him to bay."

Said South Africa's Jan Christiaan Smuts: "A long road and heavy fighting ... lie ahead [in Europe]. But we are nearer the end than the beginning, and the next year should see it ended."

Said Japan's Hideki Tojo: "The [Pacific] war cannot be won easily. . . . [But] 1944 will be our year to win."

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Noise Trading, Bubbles, and Excess Stock Market Volatility: Noah Smith and Robert Shiller and Andrei Shleifer and Jeremy Greenwood vs. John Cochrane and Gene Fama and Company: Progressive vs. Degenerative Research Programs in Finance: The Honest Broker
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Macroeconomic Forecasting and Macroeconomic Methodology: Thursday Focus
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | The Federal Reserve Puzzles Ryan Avent

By the end of the May 2009 NYRB/PEN symposium on "The Crisis and How to Deal with It",, Niall Ferguson was interrupting Bill Bradley to say that he was "not to blame for AIG" and condemning Paul Krugman's calls for expansionary fiscal policy when monetary policy was tapped out at the zero lower bound as "the Soviet model".

None of that made it into the version of the symposium published in the New York Review of Books.

Here's the end of the symposium, with what the NYRB dropped between what was said and what it printed in bold:

Alex Pareene: Hack List No. 4: David Brooks: The Columnist:

It seems a pleasant life to be a Columnist. He writes a few hundred words once, or at most twice a week. He’s paid more to read those words out loud to people at elite colleges and conferences. Naturally, people frequently want to know where a Columnist comes from and how they come to have columns.>The Columnist begins as a Young Conservative Intellectual. It is important for the Young Conservative Intellectual to be a converted radical, so he will have a story of his foolish young radicalism and of his conversion, which he will credit to William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman. He finds meaning in seriousness as a concept. He admires Edmund Burke. The Columnist will be a public intellectual, not a mere pundit. He will be wry, but never funny. Lightly ironic, but never sarcastic. If he mocks, it will always be gently.

Eric Loomis: Tools of the Day:

First we have Larry Summers, for calling for university presidents to not fund faculty who want to attend the American Studies Association meeting. If the ASA had instead pushed to send toxic waste to Africa, Summers would be lauding the organization. It’s hard to see a stronger argument in favor of the ASA boycott than irritating Summers...

What's more idiotic?

Indeed:

1. It is indeed harder to see a stronger valid argument for the ASA boycott of Israeli academics than irritating Larry Summers: that tells you a great deal about the strength of the arguments for the ASA boycott, doesn't it?

2. If it is legitimate for the ASA to boycott Israeli academics because you do not like (extremely tenuous) links between Israeli academia and the Likud's settlement policy, is it not much more legitimate to boycott the ASA because you do not like its policies Sauce for the goose. Sauce for the gander.

3. "We can boycott you, but you can't boycott us!" is, as Dean Wormer says, "no way to go through life, son..."

Andrew Sullivan: Fournier Digs In:

Like many other veterans of the Village... Ron Fournier... never liked... Obama.... [The] repudiation of so much that came before... rankles.... And so Fournier’s dogged and constant attempts to drag this presidency to the low levels of its predecessor.... The latest is a classic, down to its melodramatic title: “This Is The End Of The Presidency”... so preposterous and lazy an argument it beggars belief.

Spare a thought for the poor people of the Hoover Institution, for they have to interact with him every day!

Thomas Sowell on Christmas Day, 2012: At least half of our society's troubles come from know-it-alls…. Some people seem to think that, if life is not fair, then the answer is to turn more of the nation's resources over to politicians…. The annual outbursts of intolerance toward any display of traditional Christmas scenes, or even daring to call a Christmas tree by its name, show that today's liberals are by no means liberal… the totalitarian mindset shows through…. The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew….

If someone wrote a novel about a man who was raised from childhood to resent the successful and despise the basic values of America--and who then went on to become President of the United States--that novel would be considered too unbelievable, even for a work of fiction. Yet that is what has happened in real life…. After watching a documentary about the tragic story of Jonestown, I was struck by the utterly unthinking way that so many people put themselves completely at the mercy of a glib and warped man, who led them to degradation and destruction. And I could not help thinking of the parallel with the way we put a glib and warped man in the White House.

Protip for Thomas Sowell: the next time you write a Christmas message, why don't you study and copy John the Apostle?

Do you think it might help keep you from coming off as a psychotic troll?

John 1:1-17:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John bare witness of him, and cried, saying: "This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me."

And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ...

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/11/jeer-heer-has-a-ludwig-von-mises-quote.html

An example of classical liberalism's elective affinity with authoritarian politics?

Ludwig:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error...

So now I have to add Ludwig Von Mises, Liberalism to the pile...

Daniel Kuehn: Facts & other stubborn things: The Washington Post should really get a regular person to read headlines before they put them up:

Andrew Kaczynski: Rick Santorum Drops Strange, Death-Filled Description Of Nationalized Health Care:

“It’s actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care, so they can’t vote against you. That’s how it works.”

Speaking at a Young Americans for Freedom event Friday at the Reagan Ranch, Rick Santorum said this:

If we have a system where the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country, we’re done. Because then, you are dependent on the government for your life and your health…. When Thatcher ran for prime minister she said — remember this, this is the Iron Lady — she said, ‘The British national health care system is safe in my hands.’ She wasn’t going to take on health care, because she knew once you have people getting free health care from the government, you can’t take it away from them. And the reason is because most people don’t get sick, and so free health care is just that, free health care, until you get sick. Then, if you get sick and you don’t get health care, you die and you don’t vote. It’s actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can’t vote against you. That’s how it works.

Dan Drezner: Why I don't need to take Charles Lane seriously any more:

Earlier in the week the Washington Post's Chuck Lane wrote an op-ed arguing in favor of Jeff Flake's amendment to cut National Science Foundation funding for political science.  In fact, Lane raised the ante, arguing that NSF should stop funding all of the social sciences, full stop....

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE): Confirming Obama's Judges Is Like Protecting Slavery:

They can appoint the entire judiciary of the United States in the District Courts and in the Circuit Courts with absolutely no involvement whatsoever from the minority. None. That’s what their rule change did. Let me take that rule change and think out loud about where we put ourselves as a country. I wonder who was the first United States Senator in our history who came to the floor and said, “My fellow Senators, I have thought about this, I have contemplated it, maybe I have even prayed about it. And I believe the day has arrived to end slavery in the United States. And I will be attaching an amendment to every bill to end that horrific practice." I’ll bet they were a very lonely United States Senator at that point in time. But I’m also guessing that that Senator and tenacious other Senators along the way exercised their rights as a minority and as an individual United States Senator to continue to force that issue. What a courageous, remarkable thing to do...

Mark Remy: The WSJ's "Get Over It" Column, Translated | Runner's World:

So a couple of days back, a gentleman by the name of Chad Stafko--which apparently is his actual name, which I find awesome -- wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal titled "OK, You're a Runner. Get Over It."... Lucky for you, I studied Bizarre Angry Rant in college. I'm a little rusty, but with the help of my dog-eared Bizarre Angry Rant/English dictionary I think I can walk you through this.

Here is a rough translation of Mr. Stafko's essay. I think you'll agree, after reading this, that Mr. Stafko deserves our sympathy, not our scorn...

Günter Koschorrek: Blood Red Snow:

The ground beneath us shakes with the impacts and explosions. All around us we hear painful cries from the wounded calling out for the medics. We run forward through the thundering hell, with only one thought in mind — to somehow find some kind of cover there in front of us. Even though we make it through the artillery crossfire, death waits for us a thousand times over. The Russian machine-gunners hammer away at us with all barrels and the enemy anti-tank weapons and divisional artillery fire at our every movement.

Noah Smith has a nice post this morning:

Noah Smith: Risk premia or behavioral craziness?:

John Cochrane is quite critical of Robert Shiller.... He... thinks that Shiller is trying to make finance less quantitative and more literary (I somehow doubt this, given that Shiller is first and foremost an econometrician, and not that literary of a guy).

But the most interesting criticism is about Shiller's interpretation of his own work. Shiller showed... stock prices mean-revert. He interprets this as meaning that the market is inefficient and irrational... "behavioral craziness". But others--such as Gene Fama--interpret long-run predictability as being due to predictable, slow swings in risk premia.

Who is right? As Cochrane astutely notes, we can't tell who is right just by looking at the markets themselves. We have to have some other kind of corroborating evidence. If it's behavioral craziness, then we should be able to observe evidence of the craziness elsewhere in the world. If it's predictably varying risk premia, then we should be able to measure risk premia using some independent data source...

Chuck "We Were No Match for the Wits of Stephen Glass" Lane:

@mikesbadtweets no, I mean that @delong is an enforcer of ideological orthodoxy

— Charles Lane (@ChuckLane1) December 13, 2013

I would be curious if anybody can point to things he has written in the past, say, five years that have taught them anything--other than "it taught me what sad shape the Washington Post editorial page is in". Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Are We Getting the Better Public Sphere That We Need for a Fruitful Intellectual Dialogue About Equitable Growth Issues?: Paul Krugman Is a Happy Camper and Says Yes, But David Brooks Sys No…
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Assessing Bernanke: It Seems to Me That Neil Irwin Is Wrong Here…
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century/Inequality and Capitalism in the Long Run: The Honest Broker
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Assessing Ben Bernanke’s Tenure…
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Larry Summers Says “Stagnation Might Prove to Be the New Normal”; But I Say: “Only If We Make It So”: Wednesday Focus (December 18, 2013)
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Thomas Piketty: Inequality and Capitalism in the Long Run
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | (Late) Tuesday Focus: Responses to Ezra Klein’s Worries About Over Focus on Inequality, and Ezra Klein’s Response…
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Let Me 110% Endorse Antonio Fatas’s Mini-Macroeconomic Manifesto…

In an institutional setup of tax collection via voluntary compliance, how does it make any sense at all to say that "the Feds don't want you to know" provisions of the tax code? The senators and representatives who constructed and maintain the large incentives for rich individuals to give appreciated property to charity and so devote such wealth to a common purpose rather than consuming it certainly want people to know about it, and act on it.

And every IRS publication I have ever seen that covers the charitable deduction sets it down in black and white.

So who does the von Mises institute thinks will buy its line that "the Feds don't want you to know this"?

Grifters gotta grift...

The hawk-eyed Cardiff Garcia writes:

Piketty previews Piketty: A hat tip to reader @zapatique for sending us to Thomas Picketty’s recent lecture, which previews the forthcoming English-language edition of his new book (click here to open pdf)...

and so reminds me that the English-language translation (by Arthur Goldhammer) of Tomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is coming out in March. And he gave a talk on it in Helsinki.

And the esteemed and eminent Kevin Drum writes:

New French Book Will Become Important When It's In English: Tyler Cowen says today that "The forthcoming Thomas Piketty book will be very important." That "will be" is sort of interesting. You see, the name of the book is Le capital au xxie siècle, and it was published three months ago. But no one is talking about it. Presumably, it will become very important—and very talked about—only next March, when Capital in the 21st Century hits the shelves.

I don't have any grand point to make. It's just interesting that fluent French is now so rarely spoken among American academics that an important French book can't even get the time of day until its English translation comes out. It makes sense that widespread conversation would have to wait, since you can't very well have that until lots of people have read the book, but you'd think there would be at least a few reviews out there along with a bit of discussion. But if there has been, I've missed it.

Well, you would need somebody who is:

1. interested in communicating with a mass audience among les Anglo-Saxons;
2. tooled-up to evaluate and discuss a work of macroeconomic history;
3. tooled-up and evaluate a work in the ongoing inequality debate; and
4. who at least reads something written in Französisch Sprache...

Why is everybody all of a sudden looking at me?

Hearst Gymnasium 230: So there I was, hanging out in Hearst Gymnasium 230 waiting for my final exam to begin at 12:30. And people began showing up--my students, and some others. "Is this the room for the exam for the Soc 160 exam?" the others would say.

"Well," I said, "I don't think so. This is the room for the Econ 115 exam."

I went to the computer and consulted the final exam schedule: "Soc 160: 4 Leconte 5:30-8:30 Thursday December 17" the registrar said.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Their faces turned ashen.

Elena Skrjabina: After Leningrad: A Diary of Survival During World War II:

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | A good government shout-out to ProPublica seems in order this morning

Brad DeLong: Bequests: An Historical Perspective:

So I've finally put to bed a sketch of how the relative economic importance of bequests has changed over the past five centuries. The more I think about it, the more I think that the central points--the stunning decline in the relative importance of inherited wealth with the coming of modern economic growth, and the way in which America initially defined itself as hostile to inheritance for equality of opportunity's sake--are very important. Thus I find myself frustrated: I think I have important things to say, but I don't think I've said them as well as they deserve.

Abstract:

Practically every major aspect of our system of inheritance today is less than two hundred and fifty years old. Two hundred and fifty years ago, inheritance proceeded through primogeniture--as if those leaving bequests cared not for the well-being of their descendants but only for the wealth and power of the lineage head. Before the industrial revolution, inheritance played an overwhelming and crucial role in wealth accumulation and wealth distribution that it does not play today.

Migration to the New World was accompanied by a rapid shift in the perception of the purpose of inheritance as the old patterns failed to flourish in a land-rich, rapidly-growing frontier-settler economy. By the start of the twentieth century inherited wealth was regarded with suspicion in America, with even some of the richest calling for estate taxes to keep the rich from diverting the public trust of their fortunes into the pockets of their descendants. Thus the coming of social democracy to America brought with it high statutory rates of tax on large estates, which nevertheless did not raise a great deal of revenue.

Now we may be seeing another turn of the wheel, for if history teaches anything it is that even those elements of inheritance that we think of as most deeply embedded in fundamental human desires and economic laws are remarkably mutable over the centuries.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Estates/DeLongEstatesMunnell.pdf

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Guest post by WCEG Executive Director Heather Boushey: What if there is no trade off?
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Robert Waldmann: Hoynes, Schanzenbach, and Almond with Convincing Evidence That Food Stamps–SNAP–Really Do Work: Monday Focus

Chelsea Kopta: A year after mall shooting, Oregon hasn’t enacted any gun reform laws:

AOne year after a gunman walked into Clackamas Town Center mall and opened fire with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, killing two people and seriously injuring a third before turning the weapon on himself, Oregon has not enacted any new laws regulating firearms.

The gunman, Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, opened fire in the food court with a stolen AR-15 semiautomatic rifle - clad in tactical clothing and a hockey mask - killing Cynthia Yuille, 54, and Steve Forsyth, 45, and seriously injuring 15-year-old Kristina Shevchenko. Twenty-two minutes later, he turned the gun on himself. His motive is not known.

MY DAY by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 17, 1943:

WAt present in our country, as in every other country in the world, we are assailed by many fears. The evidence of these fears lies in the acceptance of methods which closely resemble some of the methods of the Fascist countries. This tendency we must watch and prevent wherever we can.

People—quite obscure people—are questioned today about their political beliefs, their affiliations and their friends, and letters often are watched, all because we are afraid that in our midst we may be harboring those inimical to our democratic way of life. It is essential, in some cases, that precautions be taken, but we ought to call attention to such conditions now because they are a sign of fear. As soon as possible we should rid ourselves of fear and of the practices which fear has brought about.

In the past no one was afraid to state what he believed or was anyone called to account for the unpopular organizations to which he belonged—or for his friends, or his comings and goings. They were his personal affairs and only if he broke our laws did he become a concern of our law enforcement officers.

In wartime the growth of fear is inevitable. But we should recognize it and see to it that we return to the practices guaranteed to us in our Bill of Rights, as soon as the dangers brought about by war are past.

The Sokal Hoax occurred when physicist Alan Sokal conducted a rather mean-spirited cognitive-science experiment on the editors of Social Text: would this journal of post-modern cultural studies publish an article that made no sense at all--that was complete word-salad, and where it was not word salad was wrong? So he submitted ""Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". And they did indeed publish it.

Now comes Nick Rowe to shakedown Stephen Williamson for making the absurd and wrong argument that quantitative easing is contractionary based on a model Williamson has built that Williamson does not understand. Agreed.

Then he tries to smack down the rest of the economics weblogosphere for failing to agree immediately on just why Williamson was wrong and absurd. Here I disagree: to make any sense of Williamson, you had to add a great deal of coherence mix to his paper to get it to jell. And because you can add coherence mix in a great many different ways, and how his argument was absurd depends on which way it jells, everyone I at least have read has contributed something useful.

And I think "Economics's Sokal Hoax" is much too strong.

Truly, truly, truly, I have a very hard time hanging out in the middle of the country without starting to weep uncontrollably...

Greg Sargent: Obamacare class warfare in Kentucky:

Republicans are rolling out an attack on Obamacare that sounds a lot like the Romney 2012 “free stuff”  argument... to characterize beneficiaries... particularly... Medicaid expansion as “shiftless freeloaders” enjoying “free health care,” all ”on the backs of hardworking Americans.”...

The handling of Obamacare by McConnell’s Dem opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, is worth considering in this context. It reflects the fact that red state Dems are approaching the health law in a more nuanced way than conventional wisdom suggests. Grimes is criticizing parts of the law, and is not embracing it--far from it. But she isn’t running from its general goals, either. Something more subtle is going on.... Here are a couple recent Grimes statements about Obamacare....

Instead of finger-pointing, instead of blaming, instead of attacking the presidential branch, let’s actually — or the executive branch — let’s actually attack the problem that exists here in the commonwealth and find a way for 640,000 [to get health insurance...]

There are 640,000 Kentuckians who previously did not have access to insurance... we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The 640,000 Grimes refers to are the total number of Kentucky residents who are eligible for the Medicaid expansion or are uninsured and must buy insurance, many of them eligible for subsidies.... The class warfare attacks on Obamacare will continue... stoking class warfare and resentment are central to other attacks on the law, too.... Here’s what I expect to see. Grimes will avoid talking about Obamacare where possible, and instead will focus on the minimum wage, pocketbook issues affecting women (equal pay), and McConnell’s decades in Washington. Where necessary, she will call for “fixes” to Obamacare problems....

Kentucky may prove to be an interesting testing ground for a Democratic balancing act... enrollment has been a success, and many beneficiaries are poor and rural.... Dem governor Steve Beshear is one of the most aggressive advocates for the law.... You can see the potential for a more direct argument later about the consequences of repeal. Thus far, nearly 72,000 Kentuckians have enrolled, over 56,000 through the Medicaid expansion, and tens of thousands are eligible for subsidies. Over the months you can picture enrollment piling up to a critical mass that would make it easier for Grimes to argue that repeal would kick all of these people off of insurance, and harder for McConnell to stick to his “free stuff” frame.

Black Thursday for Bomber Command:

"I am not pressing you to fight the weather as well as the Germans, never forget that." So wrote Winston Churchill to Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, after the terrible events of 16 December 1943. In the murky dusk almost five hundred heavy bombers, almost entirely Lancasters, set out for Berlin from their bases in eastern England, from north Yorkshire to southern Cambridgeshire. They lifted off at around 4 pm to bomb the target four hours later and were expected to return at midnight. 328 aircrew lost their lives that night... victims of the weather, not the Germans.... Crews as they struggled to find their home bases in low cloud and fog... stories from the local people who remember hearing a low-flying aircraft and all too often the frightful explosion as it struck unexpected high ground or even trees. Some rescue attempts were successful, but for most aircrew it was death in a blazing wreck...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | No, the Human-Driven Processes Warming the Globe Have Not Paused. Why Do You Ask?
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | A Note on the Importance of Administrative Follow-Through and Implementation
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Firearms and Suicide Risk…

Anil Dash: What Medium Is:

First, some disclaimers: I’m writing this as I sit a few feet away from Medium’s NYC team. (I even asked them for tech support while writing this!) Ev Williams, founder of Medium, is an old friend of mine, whom I became a fan of as I was the first public user of Blogger, which he cofounded. And Ev explained the idea of Medium to me before he’d even decided on the name. So, in addition to offering the falsely-humble way of bragging that such disclosures always provide, it should be pretty clear that I’m far from objective about Medium. I like it, because I like blogging, and I want it to succeed. This piece originally appeared on Medium.

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Brad DeLong (2000 Vintage) Smackdown Watch: History of Macroeconomics Weblogging
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Being Smart Isn’t Always Enough to Make it in America
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | The Washington Center for Equitable Growth Needs a New Chair, Paul…
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Graph of the Week: Extraordinary Government Austerity During the Obama Administration
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Arnold Kling Wins the Equitable Growth Internet This Month!
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | The Keynesian Revolution, the Monetarist Counterrevolution, the New Classical Purge, the Neo-Keynesian Restoration: Saturday Focus (December 14, 2013)

>Louis Mountbatten: Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia:

I left at 0800 with General Briggs in his open desert car. We drove to the foot of the Mayu Range and there transferred into jeeps to drive across the Ngakyedauk Pass. A road has been constructed across this Pass in three weeks; a truly miraculous feat. We have only recently captured this territory from the ]apanese, and there is no other lateral road in our hands that crosses the Mayu Range since the Japanese hold the Buthidaung—Maungdaw Road.

Major Paul Triquet, V.C.:

For determined leadership and example.

The capture of the key road junction on the main Ortona-Orsogna lateral was entirely dependent on securing the hamlet of Casa Berardi. Both this and a gully in front of it had been turned by the Germans into formidable strong points defended by infantry and tanks.

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | Is the American Left Wrongheaded? And Is the WCEG Part of the Problem?: Ezra Klein vs. Ashok Rao and Brad DeLong and UPDATE Steve Randy Waldmann: Friday Focus (December 13, 2013)
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | The Soweto Gospel Choir at the Parkview Woolworth’s, Johannesberg
• Washington Center for Equitable Growth | What Are the Conservative-Republican Ideas for Health Care Reform, Anyway?

George Evans on the Disequilibrium Foundations of Equilibrium Economics:

George Evans: The Dynamic Properties of New Keynesian Models with Learning - YouTube

• Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• Paul Pierson: Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis
• Brad Stone: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
• Walter Jon Williams: Implied Spaces
• Tyler Cowen: Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
• Matt Taibbi: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
• Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
• John Dos Passos: Mr. Wilson's War; From the Assassination of McKinley to the Defeat of the League of Nations
• David Lodge: A Man of Parts: A Novel
• Angus Deaton: The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
• Charles Duhigg: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do

Behind the wave of "our red-state governors and legislatures are grinding the faces of our working poor in the dirt and bankrupting them by depriving them of their Medicaid" stories we are currently watching being written will be a wave of "our hospitals are falling apart and our doctors are falling behind blue-state ones because of our red-state governors and legislatures."

We will see whether that coming wave of stories will have any more effect than this one:

FDR: Day by Day:

8:00am Course and position noted. USS Iowa

2:00pm Set all ship's clocks back one half hour. USS Iowa

5:10pm US Destroyer USS Halsey Powell (DD686), USS Wadleigh (DD689), and USS Marshall (DD676), joined the task group. The USS Hall, Halligan, and McComb then departed company with us to proceed on duty assigned. USS Iowa

Set all ship's clocks back to conform with Zone Plus Three time. FDR spent the most of this afternoon on deck (on the superstructure deck just outside his cabin). USS Iowa

7:50pm Task group changed course to 304 degrees (true). USS Iowa