Tag: stupidity

If you stabilize the debt in some reasonable way, we’re going to have growth. The unemployment rate should come down.

Bob Woodward, very serious person, opines on the economic situation during a Meet the Press appearance.

While I certainly don’t anticipate David Gregory will ever produce a substantive followup, one could at least assume anyone in the employ of a major media conglomerate could muster the five whys. You wouldn’t even have to break out all five to demonstrate that Woodward is comically wrong and furthermore has not one fucking idea about what he’s saying.

We’ll have to leave it there…

Steve Jobs: Truly Gone

To me, this is the first real sign that the shine could come off, and quickly:

The report also noted that [Apple Retail VP John] Browett said Apple’s retail outlets need to “learn to ‘run leaner’ in all areas, even if the customer experience is compromised.”

During fiscal 2011, Apple’s retail stores generated $14.1 billion in revenue and $3.1 billion in profits. The chain has operated at around a 22 percent profit margin over the past five years

Were Steve Jobs alive and running the company, this guy would be gone before he got back from lunch. These sorts of paper gains that put the long game in hock to better favor a slight quarterly bump, all just ahead of what would appear to be the biggest, most important launch in the company’s history? Utter lunacy. You should be adding employees, my friend. The money involved is completely and utterly beside the point at your margins (and, no: forget Apple’s margins for the moment, I mean just the margins of the Store). Would the cuts even cover your own salary? Will they help you at your new job? I certainly hope so.

But here’s some unsolicited advice: the Apple Store isn’t a store like Best Buy. It’s equal measure retail operation and, critically, brand identity. The experience of it needs to be every bit as delightful as the latest iDingus. If it’s not, you’ve damaged the brand. And once that’s gone, it ain’t coming back at any price. I feel certain Apple would operate the store at break-even or as a slight loss leader; it’s more valuable as an icon and an experience than it is as a raw profit center churning out new doodads for the masses. Apparently Browett didn’t get the memo. Time will tell…but I’d say the Store is now officially the leading indicator for the company. As it goes, so goes Apple. When it starts seeming like Best Buy in there, sell short.

The first solution [for the Great Depression] that occurred to statesmen was to propose tightening of belts, acceptance of hardship, resort to patience. Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
[…]
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty. Yep.
Source: tinyrevolution.com

[The Republicans are being advised to spend] 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.

David Brooks, outdoing even his own unusually high standard for making exceedingly stupid statements. One of these is simply not like the other. “Death panels” have been fully, categorically, absolutely, and completely made up from whole cloth. Lies. The biggest lie of 2009, in fact.
The Ryan plan, on the other hand, demonstrably ends Medicare. It transforms the program over the course of ten years from a government-run, single payer system into a voucher-based private insurance steeplechase for Granny and Gramps. If they can’t make the difference between the voucher payment and the cost of coverage, then they can go die in the streets.
Yes, David, a program called Medicare will still exist, and I know it’s terribly hard for you to square that circle inside that mind of yours, but it’s clear to a four year old that that Medicare, the one described in the preceding paragraph, will be nothing like the Medicare we have today.
Furthermore, that David Brooks feels confident pitching this sort of brazen false equivalency from his airy perch at the nation’s finest newspaper is a big indication of just how punishingly stupid our discourse is. Is there an editor in the house? George Will routinely spouting horseshit at the Washington Post is one thing; you’d think the Times still has a standard or two.

It’s just sort of sitting there. Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.

Ron Utt, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation working hard every day and putting the “think” in think-tank on selling the gold in Fort Knox.
I’m quite sure gold would stay at peak prices from the first ounce to the 147 millionth ounce. There is absolutely nothing that can go wrong with this brilliant plan. We should begin immediately at solving all Our National Problems.
Heritage is made up of serious people with courageous ideas.

The Birther Disgrace | FrumForum

Yet even now, the racialist aspect of the anti-Obama movement has not subsided. Trump has moved from the birth certificate to questioning the president’s academic qualifications for the Harvard Law School. Trump himself was a troubled student (at one point he attended a military school) who nonetheless gained admission to Wharton. His father’s wealth and business success cannot have hurt with that application. Yet he feels himself qualified to pronounce on who is and who is not smart enough to attend Harvard Law. Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude. (And to anticipate a new line of attack – yes, Harvard Law School exams were blind-graded.) He was elected editor of the law review. And his classmates, left and right, universally admired his abilities.

Yep. I’d even leave aside Trump’s (or, for that matter, Obama’s) high school or undergraduate experience. One of them probably got a poor mark in first grade deportment too; that second semester is a killer in Mrs. Jones’ class. But I could truly care less whether either got a “gentleman’s C” in Introduction to Psychology or what-have-you. What happened overall? Where did they go with their respective opportunities, whether it was earned or given?

Obama took his chance and has, by and large, tried to use it for something bigger and better than simple personal achievement and made a tidy living along the way (people tend to forget he’s an entirely self-made millionaire, after all. Worked into a modicum of national prominence, took his chance and gave a killer speech at the DNC, and has basically milked that ever since. In the best sense of the term “milk,” of course.).
Trump, on the other hand, is something of a societal parasite. Bankrupt at least three times and generally in the swoop in and use somebody else’s money to capitalize on a given situation that may or may not turn a profit…ultimately producing nothing but worse architectural outcomes for cities like New York. Working only from this weirdly myopic perspective that Trump seems to be inviting, I think I take Obama without hesitation, thank you very much.

(via militantagnostic)

The Birther Disgrace | FrumForum

If it’s Jobs Friday, It’s John Boehner

Boehner, January 7th, 2011: Any signs of job growth are encouraging, but 9.4 percent unemployment and a $14 trillion debt are by no means adequate to get our economy growing. Hard work lies ahead to reduce uncertainty, start creating jobs again, and restore confidence in our economy. It isn’t new faces Americans are looking for – it’s new policies that will cut spending and grow our economy. These are the priorities of the new House majority. We have already implemented reforms to make it easier to cut spending, and cut our own budget to demonstrate our commitment to making real cuts and tough choices. Today, we will take the first steps towards repealing the job-killing health care law, so we can replace it with reforms that will lower costs and protect jobs. Our economy will ultimately recover, but it will do so because of hard work and entrepreneurship, not more wasteful Washington spending.

Boehner, February 4th, 2011: The president’s spending binge is hurting job creation, eroding confidence, draining funds away from private investment, and spreading uncertainty among job creators

Boehner, March 4th, 2011: The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1. Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.

Lemkin: So, to review, jobs numbers were up in January because of generalized excitement around forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, down in February because of “Obama’s spending binge” that somehow managed to overshadow those still forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, and then up in March because of non-tax hikes that didn’t take place in the future. Makes perfect sense to me.

Rest Assured, Austan: It’s Just a Game

Michele Bachman (R, MN): at this point I am not in favor of raising the debt ceiling
Mike Kelly (freshman R, PA): [Raising the debt ceiling would be] absolutely irresponsible.
Lindsey Graham (R, SC): [Failing to raise the debt ceiling] would be very bad for the position of the United States in the world at large, [but I’ll gladly hold it hostage] until a plan is in place [for the nation’s long-term debt that satisfies whatever GOP hobbyhorses are in play on the day in question.]
Austan Goolsbee: This is not a game. The debt ceiling is not something to toy with. […] If we get to the point where you’ve damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity…. There would be no reason for us to default, other than that would be some kind of game. […] We shouldn’t even be discussing [default]. People will get the wrong idea. The United States is not in danger of default…. We do not have problems such as that. This would be lumping us in with a series of countries through history that I don’t think we would want to be lumped in with.
Lemkin: Which of these do you suppose will hold the media and popular opinion in its sway? This is probably the purest expression of GOP nihilism there is. They will destroy the country’s economic footing, irrevocably, and turn us into a land of gentle skin and pelt traders clustered down by the river if they have their way. At least that model eliminates any potential for minor to moderate increases in Social Security taxes on the wealthiest 2% of all future skin and pelt traders clustered down by the river; plus trade at those stands will likely be entirely conducted through valuable metal transfer. And that’s another big big win for their side. And winning the day is what it’s all about.