Posted 5:13 PM by Robert

The Parrot

A friend e-mails this Thanksgiving story:

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.

Then suddenly there was total quiet.

Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer. The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior."

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Posted 9:50 AM by Robert

Trumped Again

Hillary Clinton and Senator Reed go to Iraq and Afghanistan for Thanksgiving!

The former first lady and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., have both been critical of the administration's handling of post-combat problems in the war on terrorism, particularly after major military operations ended in Iraq.

Surprise!

Posted 5:08 PM by Robert

Employment Survey Disparity Grows

The Man Without Qualities has in the past noted the curious divergence of the two main forms of employment measurement: payroll survey employment and household survey employment. Each is tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics - and recently they have increasingly and substantially diverged. The reasons for the divergence are not well understood.

The Senate Joint Economic Committee has issued some very interesting releases on the topic. The latest SJEC release includes the following, among other interesting things:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey continues to show greater job gains than the payroll survey. In October, for example, the household survey estimated that the number of employed people increased by 441,000; with that increase, employment now exceeds its level at the start of the recession. The disparity between the household and payroll surveys began as the economy emerged from the recession at the end of 2001; it has now grown to be the largest such disparity in the history of the two surveys. Growing self-employment, which is captured in the household survey but not the payroll, explains some of the disparity, but the bulk of the disparity remains as yet unexplained.

Posted 10:25 AM by Robert

They’re Not Fighting Over Religion, Are They?

Some interesting thoughts on the long term course of Ulster politics.

I pass these along, without endorsement or condemnation.

MORE

Posted 1:51 PM by Robert

A Form of Looting

"What we have here is a form of looting." So Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman quotes George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, as saying about the Bush administration's budget.

But it could more accurately be said of Herr Doktorprofessor's own column because he's busy looting the reputations and accumulated good will of Princeton University, the John Bates Clark Medal and even the New York Times itself. Kaiser Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman's new clothes all belong to somebody else. But that doesn't stop him from willfully wearing them out.

Writing erratically in the Boston Globe, Alex Beam argues:

A columnist has two solemn duties, to make provocative arguments and to get read. New York Times scribbler Krugman scores in the top percentile on both counts. He may be the best in the business right now -- he also has a day job, as a distinguished economics professor at Princeton -- and I think a visit from Mr. P., as in Pulitzer, is only a matter of time.

But what Mr. Beam fails to note is that for most columnists being a columnist is the day job. That means that their arguments have to stand on their own and not rely on the crutch of the columnist's academic credentials. For example, unlike so many Paul Krugman efforts, David Brooks' charming column today on all that Americans have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving does not leave the reader with this kind of Krugmaniacal dare:

Sure what I'm writing and you've just read is tendentious, unsupported, obviously incomplete and completely crackers. But I'm a professor at Princeton and a holder of a fancy economics prize. SO WHAT I SAY GOES!

Paul Krugman can - and often does - satisfy his two solemn duties, to make provocative arguments and to get read simply by making statements so bizarre, tendentious and unsupported that an aware reader simply cannot believe a Princeton professor and John Bates Clark Medal holder would do it - such as the howler Herr Doktorprofessor committed at the end of July when he asserted, one month into the third quarter for which the GDP growth rate is now known to have been 8.2%, that There is very little evidence in the data for a strong recovery ready to break out. Herr Doktorprofessor made his assertion while other economists - including Steve Antler - were quietly showing that the evidence existed in abundance.

Mr. Beam should give it a try. Let him write a column with some typically crackers Krugmaniacal viewpoint. Maybe something circulating around a bold assertion such as:

Notwithstanding the Bush Administration's fraudulently positive economic data now regularly released by the completely corrupted Treasury Department, there has been no true economic recovery in this country - and those evanescent positive developments that have been manipulated into existence by the Administration are all timed by the incompetent-but-omnipotent George Bush (or, rather, by the handlers of this empty sock puppet) to blow the country completely apart shortly after the November 2004 election.

That's certainly a provocative argument and Mr. Beam's column would probably get read if it got past his editors. But he would probably not be allowed to write any more columns for the Globe because the Globe and its readers would know right away that he's completely crackers. They would know that because Mr. Beam isn't trafficking in Princeton's reputation - or any other entity's reputation.

So if Mr. P. does think about visiting Herr Doktorprofessor, I hope Mr. P will keep in mind that other columnists who might be given that Pulitzer don't have the benefit of cashing checks drawn on the bank accounts of Princeton University, the John Bates Clark Medal and the New York Times itself to satisfy those two solemn duties, to make provocative arguments and to get read.

Posted 9:05 AM by Robert

The Real News

Much of the financial media is a-twitter with this story:

Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced in the U.S., was revised to an 8.2% annual rate for the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. That was a full percentage point higher than an earlier 7.2% estimate and even higher than the strong 8% growth economists had forecast for the latest reading, according to a survey by CNBC and Dow Jones.

Well, people have different ideas about what the real story in today's news is:

"Forget about GDP, the story is profits," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities. After-tax profits increased at a 10.6% annual rate in the third quarter, after falling 5% in the second quarter. Corporate profits with inventory valuation and depreciation -- the concept closest to company-reported profits -- rose 30% from a year earlier. Nonfinancial corporate profits surged an annualized 70%. That helped propel business spending to its strongest showing in three years.

Of course, to the Brad Delongs, Paul Krugmans and others of that fungible mass, a quarter of GDP growth is hardly a story at all. The real story is employment - and by that (with pining nostalgia) they mean payroll employment, not household employment.

For example, Brad Delong linked to this article, but his emphasis is not that the economy has finally been launched on a sustainable recovery that will help make this holiday season the best retailers have seen in years. No, no, no... Professor Delong cuts most of that out. His emphasis is on the article's report that the ... forecasting panel predicting the jobless rate will average 5.8 percent in 2004, down from 6 percent currently. The forecasting panel saw payroll employment rising by 1.1 percent, or about 1.3 million workers, not enough to replace the 2.3 million jobs that have been lost since Bush took office in January 2001. That the 2.3 million jobs were "lost" only in comparision to an employment bubble created at the end of the Clintonian era is not worth a mention by the Good Professor.

Consumer confidence and spending numbers are also in:

"Consumer confidence is now at its highest level since the fall of 2002," said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center. "The improvement in the present-situation index, especially in the jobs component, suggests that consumers believe a slow but sure labor market turnaround is underway." ... Consumer spending rose at a 6.4% annual rate, driven by federal government tax cuts and low interest rates. It was the strongest quarterly spending since 1997. The figure was initially estimated at 6.6%.

Previous softness of such things had caused the Good Professor to quiver: That's a big enough piece of bad news to cause me to take a full percentage point off my personal estimate of the fourth quarter GDP growth rate...

But as of 10:45 am, the time of this posting, the Good Professor had not a word of revision or comment. But Perhaps he's in some kind of shock. [And, on a lighter note, the substanceless rantings at Eschaton again pay no heed to the new economic numbers. Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman is busy with confabulatory word games concerning his political hate speech that amount to nothing more or less than an implication of bias in the New York Times coverage of him (including its patently obvious observation that the little mustache Herr Doktotprofessor's British publisher placed on Vice President Cheney with no objection from Herr Doktorprofessor was Hitleresque) and an infantile "mommy, the Republicans did it first" defense of his own excesses. The KCI Index was also revised strongly upwards. Poor kitty. Note: The [KCI] index is, in keeping with Krugman's methodology, measured in vague, fluid units that don't necessarily correspond with specific real-world methods of measurement. ]

The growth in profits is very important to employment expectations, and not just because employers are more willing to hire when profits turn up strongly. Strong profit growth tends to produce employment effects which are not squarely accounted for in many standard economic models, and that is especially true given the economy's current trend towards non-standard "employment" relationships (an obvious trend with a significance willfully ignored by bad economists such as Krugman and Delong, perhaps because of political bias and perhaps because they are intellectual dinosaurs). My guess is that near-term employment numbers will be much stronger than the published consensus - and that the economy is well on its way to an unemployment rate much lower than 5.8%.

UPDATE:

A weird Boston Globe column by Alex Beam makes the additional patently obvious observations that Paul Krugman is completely crackers, that Herr Doktorprofessor's personal web site (http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~pkrugman) is a nutty, score-settling tote board where he fires his rhetorical blunderbuss, and that Herr Doktorprofessor considers his critics to be nonentities, including Taranto (Who bravely clings to his "entity" status. We are with you, James!) at Opinion Journal (hazily identified by the Globe as the Wall Street Journal Online), Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, and others.

Yes, yes. That's all completely true as far as it goes. And the Globe's ownership by the Times is yet more indication that somebody at the Times is getting impatient with Herr Doktorprofessor's rantings - although, as Don Luskin correctly points out, the tenor of the Globe's criticism seems more along the lines of trying to get Herr Doktorprofessor to stop all the extracurricular activities that make it so obvious that he's completely crackers.

And here, at least, the Globe is right to that extent. Imagine if Maureen Dowd had such a personal website? She wisely keeps her rantings confined to the Times' Op-Ed pages, where her trainers/handlers/editors can intervene if the need arises.

But Paul Krugman has increasingly put the Times in a position too much like that of Roy Horn - who is at this very moment left to ponder whether his nearly-fatal injuries were the results of his exotic pet's deliberate attack or mere confusion. And so it is with the Times and its exotic pet.

FURTHER UPDATE: Mr. Beam at the Globe thinks that a visit from Mr. P., as in Pulitzer, is only a matter of time for Herr Doktorprofessor. Mickey Kaus agrees! Of course, that doesn't matter, because he's a non-entity. But Mr. P isn't likely to call unless the Times management lobbies hard for the visit. Is Mr. Beam making that point, too, for Herr Doktorprofessor's benefit?

ANOTHER UPDATE: By 10:30 pm, various things - including the recently released Two Towers DVD and an Economist excerpt suggesting that investors sense a chill beneath the warm glow of the numbers - had warranted posts from Good Professor Delong. But not the revised 8.2% GDP growth rate - the number that's currently giving off the warmest glow.

Delong's desire to call attention to the chill beneath the warm glow of the numbers while seeking to avoid discussion or admission of some of the most important numbers looks rather like Prince Charles' spokesman's attempt to quash reports of "the incident" without actually saying what the alleged "incident" was supposed to be. But it may be deduced from Brad Delong's vigorous attempt to not mention those numbers giving off that misleading glow that the supposed numbers involved the economy and that they were not, say, boating race results.

MORE

Posted 10:25 AM by Robert

Games

Today, Illinois law provides that George W. Bush's name will not be on that state's general election ballot next November. because the Republican convention in New York City occurs after the deadline to get on the Illinois ballot. An attempt to fix the situation was voted down in the Illinois Senate when Democrats added provisions to the bill that would have wiped out campaign fines that may be levied against state politicians.

In 2000 John McCain went before U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman, who ruled New York's ballot access laws were too restrictive and violated McCain’s constitutional right to run in the primaries. All parties agreed that not only McCain but also Alan Keyes were to be on the ballot in all 31 congressional districts in the state.

That decision had lots of political support.

Is it time for a trip to federal court in Illinois?

Posted 8:17 AM by Robert

The Astroturf Never Looks As Tasty On The Other Side Of The Fence

Baseball Crank says that Josh Marshall finds no problem with liberals grazing on their own flavor of political astroturf.

Posted 10:54 AM by Robert

The Times on That Mustache

The New York Times admits it:

Unlike the relatively staid cover of the American edition published by W. W. Norton, the British book jacket bears caricatures of President Bush as Frankenstein-like and Vice President Dick Cheney with a Hitler mustache. A dark scrawl on the vice president's forehead reads, "Got Oil?"

Does this mean the Man Without Qualities convinced the Times that the "Got Milk?" dodge was just that - and failed to mask the British publisher's rather obvious actual intent and objective meaning?

Herr Doktorprofessor himself is delightfully evasive:

Mr. Krugman, for his part, said he did not remember seeing the cover until prepublication copies were sent to reviewers. "I think it was intended to be ironic."

Herr Doktorprofessor's response seems crafted to meet an expected revelation that he was, in fact, sent a copy of the cover long before he received a "prepublication copy" - hardly itself a well-defined term. It is common for publication contracts of writers like Paul Krugman to include at least limited reasonable approval rights on book covers - together with a clause providing that failure to object in a set period (two weeks? three days?) after receiving approval copy constitutes deemed approval. If his contract is of this sort, then his failure to object was deemed approval of the cover.

And Herr Doktorprofessor's other comments suggest that he actually did have such rights and opportunity to object:

"It is a marketing thing, not a statement," he said. "I should have taken a look at that and said, `What are you doing marketing me as if I am Michael Moore? This is silly.' " Incivility is one thing, he said, but the book cover "may be undignified, which would be a reason to object."

But how could Herr Doktorprofessor have "taken a look at the book cover" and said anything if he didn't receive and review a copy of the book cover in advance? And how could he have said "What are you doing marketing me as if I am Michael Moore? This is silly," unless he has some right to disapprove it? He sure makes it sound as though he did receive an advance copy of the cover, didn't object to it and was therefore deemed to have approved it under his contract, but had a reason to object to the cover under his contract because the cover is "undignified."

Depicting the Vice President of the United States as Hitler is no laughing matter. But Herr Doktorprofessor's I do not remember seeing the cover defense is just hilarious baloney. The man's a natural - a comic genius!

UPDATE: Don Luskin has more.

FURTHER UPDATE: "Bobby," who runs the Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive is in a sad but frantic dither:

Also, contrary to what David Kirkpatrick (whose NYT story looks like a cut-and-paste job from an RNC press release) and Gollum Luskin say (I'm going to ween myself off of linking to his vile site), that picture of Cheney on the U.K. cover (below) is *NOT* comparing Cheney to Hitler. ... This is a picture of Cheney with an oil mustache, like in the "Got Milk" commercials (it says, "Got Oil?" on his forehead and the oil is dribbling out of his mouth) -- so the Cheney picture is political satire regarding Cheney's very very close ties to Halliburton and big oil. ... The oil mustache is far too wide and covers far too much of Cheney's upper lip to be a Hitler mustache, which would cover only the middle of the upper lip.

But Bobby should please calm down. The Times is fully aware of that "Got Oil?" - Got Milk?" dodge - it was fully vetted. The Times reporter has heard the argument and rejected it, maybe because the "Got Milk?" campaign never ran in Britain - as suggested here. The mustache is seen as being like Hitler's by most people - and it's pretty obvious that the British pubilsher intended that. That there is a "Got Milk?" allusion in the image is completely consistent with it also being a Hitleresque mustache.

Perhaps if Bobby asked nicely, Herr Doktorprofessor would tell Bobby whether Herr Doktorprofessor's book contract gives him approval rights on the cover and whether the British publisher actually sent Herr Doktorprofessor a preview of the cover for approval - regardless of whether Herr Doktorprofessor "remembers" seeing it.

Bobby also shouldn't worry about the Times taking its articles from the RNC by cut and paste. Paul Krugman is a Times columnist. The Times is not out to "get" its own columnist. The Times acknowledged the Hitler allusion because it's obviously correct, and to deny it would have made the Times look naive and tendentious past the point where even the Times is willing to go.

There is one factor I can think of that might suggest that the Times was a bit miffed with Herr Doktorprofessor here. Reports are that the Times had no veto right over the cover. If that is so, then the Gray Lady was trusting Herr Doktorprofessor not to embarrass her - and he let her down pretty badly. Perhaps the Times article reflects some sense of betrayal on the Gray Lady's part. After all, sometimes it's just not worth it to the Gray Lady to deny or ignore warts on those in her favor - such as her erratic columnists - especially when they fail to look out for her. Herr Doktorprofessor's betrayal of his employer's trust is something entirely within his control - so any retribution on the Times part (if there is any in this article) is nothing for Bobby to worry about.

But Bobby should be concerned about whether he's contracting some of Herr Doktorprofessor's trademark paranoia.