Always click the link -- Kevin Drum

I have very great respect for Kevin Drum. Therefore I am shocked by what happened when I followed his advice.

The links are in this post here

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area.

[skip]


I'm only linking to this because it's a pretty good guess that this is similar to the kind of data mining that the NSA is doing as part of its warrantless wiretapping program. (See here and here.)

Now I just assumed that the links would take me to evidence in support of the claim. Instead the first link takes me to this

David Ignatius provides a plausible guess about how the NSA is using the database of calling records they've collected over the past few years:

etc etc etc

The evidence for Drum's guess is the fact that Ignatius guessed something (in my view Ignatius made two different guesses neither of which is similar to the case in Texas) and that he Drum found it plausible.

Evidently due to the passage of time, plausible has matured into a "pretty good guess." Now I work with data sometimes. I would not consider a plausible idea unsupported by any evidence to be a "pretty good guess." I'd say that it takes at least some data to decide about the quality of a guess as opposed to its attractiveness. Oddly this utter total contempt for data appears in a post about data analysis.

The key point is, as Drum advises, always click the links. A claim and a link usually means the link presents evidence for the claim and not that the link presents a weaker form of the claim.

I am honestly shocked at what I read after clicking that link.


OK now I click the second link and read

DATA MINING UPDATE....Yesterday I noted that the NSA's domestic spying program was "a system for identifying criminals by statistical analysis," and suggested that Americans need to decide if they think it's appropriate to launch police surveillance on people simply because they fit a statistical profile. Today, Noah Shachtman points to a USA Today article that says that's exactly what's happening:

The template, officials say, was created from a secret database of phone call records collected by the spy agency. It has been used since 9/11 to identify calling patterns that indicate possible terrorist activity. Among the patterns examined: flurries of calls to U.S. numbers placed immediately after the domestic caller received a call from Pakistan or Afghanistan.

At least there is some evidence. There are two huge problems. First the word "among". There is no claim that the NSA wasn't doing other completely different things too. In fact, I think we can be confident that this was the most defensible of many things they did and therefore the one they discussed. Note the link is presented in support of the claim that this is "similar to the kind of data mining that the NSA is doing as part of its warrantless wiretapping program." That asserts that they are doing one and only one kind of data mining (depends on what the meaning of "the" is). You can't make a "the" claim with "among" evidence. That's a simple gross logical error.

The analogy with the Texas case is ... utter nonsense. In texas the information on the call was that it was near the time and place of a bank robbery. In the NSA case it is that the calls followed a call from Afghanistan or Pakistan. Nothing about the time of that call and, you know, those are two whole countries not one or a few cell phone towers.

I guess it is better to link to evidence which proves that your claim is false than to link to your old guess presenting it as evidence for your new guess. Still shocking though.

The post after the second link contains a link to the post from one day before. The day later post says the guess in the day older post was exactly right. This is odd. The older post posits that the statistical analysis is works "semi reliably". The newer post contains no 0 (zero) nada evidence on the reliability of the NSA algorithms. Drum just assumes that conclusions based on statistical analysis must be semi reliable. Since the second post, anonymous FBI agents have complained that the suggestions they got from the NSA were completely totally unreliable.

Look Drum if you think conclusions by people who process a huge amount of data must be "semi reliable" then what the hell happened to financial markets last year ? Tons of data and bad assumptions can imply completely unreliable conclusions.

New York Times Headline Person I

I generally criticize the slant of www.washingtonpost.com headlines, but this New York Times headline is uhm very Ballanced

Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

The article by John Broder clearly explains that the debate is between climate scientists on one side vs politicians and media personalities on the other.

Every single scientist quoted in the article notes that, to the extent that the recent blizzard on the mid Atlantic US provides evidence on global warming it supports standard models of human caused warming. As far as I can tell from the article, all such models imply increased precipitation on the area.

The article contains a brief reference to global warming skeptics which clearly refers to the very very few actual climate scientists who are skeptics. However, Broder doesn't have a quote from an actual climate scientist who doesn't think that, to the very limited extent it provides any evidence, the blizzard weakens the skeptics case.

Among scientists there is a difference of emphasis between those who note that the blizzard supports the standard models and those who note that a few days weather provides almost no evidence on climate change. In effect all scientists quoted agree that the blizzard provides evidence in support of standard models but, being only a few days weather on one region, only a little.

This view is supported by citations of predictions of higher precipitation made before the blizzard. There really couldn't be a stronger case that the blizzard is not evidence in favor of global warming skepticism.

A reasonable headline would be "All interviewed scientists agree that Inhofe is full of it" or "standard global warming models predicted increased snow" or something.

Instead the disagreement must be presented as a debate in which headline skimmers are not informed that one side in the debate consists of people with no expertise making claims inconsistent with all published evidence.

I do mean inconsistent as in known to be false (unless the blizzard is a collective halucination or something). The evidence in question is the published predictions of standard climate models. The empirical support for the models is strengthened by the blizzard. To claim otherwise is to make a plainly certainly absolutely 100% false claim about the published predictions of models. It is, of course, possible that humans are not causing global warming, nothing is ever proven beyond all doubt in science. However, it is not possible that Sen Inhofe's claims are accurate, because he made a false claim about the relationship between models and currently available data.

Today's www.washingtonpost.com headlines and abstracts form a work of art

The pundits are united in declaring the Tea Party convention a huge success.

Opinions

Behind the radicalism
Dionne: Why the Tea Party movement is on the rise, and why the GOP can't give it what it wants.
Ignatius: Europe needs Tea Party

Broder: We have to take Sarah Palin seriously
Milbank: Heavy shoveling from party machines
Will: Republican hopes rise in California
Marcus: Can a gay judge ban gay marriage?

They are experts who can explain the public to official Washington (odd I thought their job was to explain things to the public).

There is only one problem. The public doesn't understand itself the same way the pundits do. There is also a poll

Both parties viewed negatively
POST-ABC NEWS POLL | Americans are unhappy with government, but few know much about the "tea party;" Palin's political standing takes hit.

Ooops. Turns out you can't understand what the US public thinks from watching TV.

Results from the poll

Although Palin is a tea party favorite, her potential as a presidential hopeful takes a severe hit in the survey. Fifty-five percent of Americans have unfavorable views of her, while the percentage holding favorable views has dipped to 37, a new low in Post-ABC polling.

There is a growing sense that the former Alaska governor is not qualified to serve as president, with more than seven in 10 Americans now saying she is unqualified, up from 60 percent in a November survey. Even among Republicans, a majority now say Palin lacks the qualifications necessary for the White House.

Oh my.

And the Tea Party movement ?

The new poll shows Republicans divided about the tea party movement, which threatens to cause a rift in the lead-up to November's midterm elections. Two-thirds of those calling themselves "strong Republicans" view the movement favorably, compared with 33 percent among "not very strong Republicans."

Overall opinion is about evenly split, with 35 percent of all Americans holding favorable views of the movement and 40 percent unfavorable ones.

But the main point, stressed in the abstract, is that "nearly two-thirds of those polled say they know just some, very little or nothing about what the tea party movement stands for." Here US adults are showing sophistication not ignorance, since it is clear that the tea party movement doesn't know what it stands for either.

The headline person managed to make the pundits look like naive fools. I assume this is because they insulted him or her and that the actual columns, which I haven't read, are not utter idiocy.

update: I wish I'd written that. Josh Marshall shows why TPM gets so many more hits than this blog

Ya Think?
More than 70% say Palin is not qualified or equipped to serve as president. A steep decline from on last fall.

But a quarter of the population and David Broder ain't nuthin'.


--Josh Marshall

Dean Baker is confused about something.

He wrote

Most of the alternatives to patent-supported drug research would involve direct commitments of public funding. The obvious place to begin is by creating a system of publicly funded clinical trials.

It is silly to talk about a "place to begin" public funding of drug research. There is already public funding of drug research via the NIH (this includes a specific program of pharmaceutical (small molecule) development although most NIH funded research is either fairly pure or development of biologicals (in practice monoclonal antibodies and peptide hormones).

The NIH also finances clinical trials including the huge phase III clinical trials. It is true that a large part of what pharmaceutical companies do is run clinical trials, but it is also true that there are huge publicly funded clinical trials.


Results of some clinical trials are available on the clinical trial registry. OK so there are only 1374 studies with results reported on the registry out of 52723 closed studies so he has a point there.

Finally, the stimulus already included a large amount of extra money for the NIH. I mean it's been done.

What's Wrong with Michael Kinsley ?

In circa 1981 I said that he is often so eager to point out the contradictions, hypocrisy and idiocy of someone that he neglects to mention his own opinion.

More generally, he seems bored with merely pointing out that Republicans are demostrably wrong and that there policy proposals are based on false factual premises.

So, for the sake of saying something original, he takes their premises as valid.

So, for example, he decided that liberals really do have less respect for people who disagree with them then conservatives. Click the link. His post is brief and, as always, witty and fun to read.


His evidence is that Jacob Weisberg notes that majorities US adults have contradictory policy proposals. Note that this means that on half of the issues noted by Weisberg the majority agrees with him. He is noting an inescapable fact. Now I will agree that liberals are much more likely than conservatives to accept reality, but that was not the topic under discussion.

Kinsley's point is that it is not condescending to tell people they have contradicted themselves and it is condescending to flatter people when you happen to like their conclusions.

However, as always, Kinsley concedes much too much. Recall the Tea party convention where Tom Tancredo said Obama would not have been elected if voters were required to pass a "civics literacy test." That's condescending. I don't notice any criticism from Krauthammer.

I think the key issue is that conservatives deceive themselves about the wishes of the American people. For decades a large majority has favored higher taxes on the rich and corporations (this was true in 2000 too).
http://www.pollingreport.com/budget.htm
and search for "fair share"

In fact, there is reliably a majority in favor of any proposal to raise taxes on the rich.

In the health care debate the House income surtax is popular and the Senate excise tax is unpopular. Also huge majorities support the public option.

Does Krauthammer think that such views show the bedrock common sense of Americans ? I think not. I think he completely denies the massive evidence. I would guess that he doesn't know about it (Gallup is after all a very obscure organization).

Now Krauthammer is not alone. Obama just said that he thought most Americans don't resent Lloyd Blankfein's $9,000,000,000 bonus. I think he should get out more. My guess is that the overwhelming majority of Americans resent it. I'd guess a majority would say so (although "to resent" is stigmatized) and a huge majority would say it is unfairly high.

update: game of telephone here. In the paragraph above commenting on my recollection of Paul Krugman's interpretation of those of Obama's words recalled by Simon Johnson. In fact, Obama mildly criticized the bonus and suggested that an employee deciding how much to pay himself is not his understanding of capitalism. On the other hand, if Obama is too subtle for Simon Johnson, Obama has a problem.

The true condescension is that of elite people who claim they know what the American people want without having to ask us. They can only think they know what we want better than we do. Now that's condescension.

These facts are totally ignored by Kinsley in his eagerness to be intellectually arrogant (and really is anyone more eager to argue that he is smarter than everyone else -- I'm a close second but he wins).

Pass the Damn Senate Bill ?

I think it is clear that 2 possible outcomes remain for health care reform -- either the House passes a modifying bill as an amendment to the budget, the Senate passes that bill via the reconciliation process and the House passes both bills or there will be no bill and the Democrats will be totally hammered in November and the issue will be dead for roughly another 15 years.

It is clear that the House won't just pass the Senate bill and then try to change it via reconciliation. I think this was clearly Pelosi's favored approach and she definitely doesn't have the votes. So this is pure speculation.

I think the aims of progressives would be better served if the House just passed the Senate bill. I also think that the House progressive caucus refuses to consider this partly because of pride, but enough amateur psychology.

How can that be ? First many Senators have to reform the Senate bill or lose their jobs. The special deal for Nebraska is political poison. Second one of those senators is Harry Reid. I think that the otherwise almost certain outcome of moving on to other stuff as soon as a bill any bill is signed is unlikely for these two reasons.

Second, in order to get a sidecar bill, the House has to beg the Senate to do funny things -- to find a way to change a law before it is a law, that is, to find a way that an amendment to a bill is considered under rules different from the bill. This can be done of course (I'm sure the technical problems are cover for the fact that Reid doesn't have 50 votes lined up yet). But the Senate will exact a price. No one seriously imagines that the Senate will give up as much in the sidecar bill as they gave up in informal pre- Brown negotiations. The Senate sure will not add medicare buy in or a major shift from excise to income taxation.

However, on both of these issues, the public is strongly with the House.

I think if the House is so flexible so meek and mild as to just pass the Senate bill and then sends up a budget bill with a shift to income taxation and medicare buy in, that it will be very hard for the Senate to risist both.

Yes people will say the House is cheating, because, although all said that the Senate bill was to be modified they didn't mean it. People will say that the House just doesn't accept the fact that 60 votes are required in the Senate even though the Senate rules don't say so (never mind the constitution).

I think the House could pass such a bill. Blue dogs are blue dogs, but many are rightfully scared and will be reluctant to vote against overwhelming public opinion.

Now obviously my little daydream is just that. However, I think it is because of a failure of imagination and nerve on the part of the House progressive caucus.

Washington Post Headline Person part II for Today !

The headline Poll: Bipartisanship popular, compromise tricky

ignores the non-obvious result of the poll -- 63% of US adults want congress to keep trying to pass comprehensive health-care reform. The alternative is to advise congress to "give up" so the question is clearly biased. Still 63% is a big number, way more than support for existing bills.

This suggests that people in the USA refuse to understand how limited currently avaialable options are. I think (and I think all experts agree) that either a bill similar to the Senate bill passes now* or the issue is dropped for a while (say another 15 years like last time). Support for more work on a bill but neither of the current bills is, I think, partly based on an unwillingness to make irreversible choices (even when polled) and partly based on ignorance of the power of the filibuster (see post below).

The evidence of support for bipartisanship is from another question where 54% of US adults say Obama is doing at least enough to compromise with Republicans. How could US adults convince the Post that they are not hungering for more bipartisanship ?

Also when reporting the poll Jon Cohen says that 60 is about equal to 40

"Americans spread the blame when it comes to the lack of cooperation in Washington, and, in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most want the two sides to keep working to pass comprehensive health-care reform.

Nearly six in 10 in the new poll say the Republicans aren't doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little to get GOP support.

I don't see any reason to round to one digit. The actual numbers are that 58% say Republicans are doing to little to compromise with Obama and 44% say Obama is doing to little to compromise with Republicans. I think a correct description of the results is "Most US adults think Republicans are doing to little to compromise with Obama. US adults are divided on whether Obama is doing to little to compromise with Republicans.

The fact in the poll is that the fraction who say Obama is doing too little 44% is very close to the fraction who say Obama is doing the the right amount 45%. Both are significantly below the fraction who think Republicans are doing too little 58%.

Another way of putting it would be "marjorities of US adults say Republicans are doing too little to compromise with Obama and that Obama is doing at least enough to compromise with Republicans"

This is because, as noted above, 58%>50%, 9% say Obama is doing too much and 54%> 50%.

Why does the Cohen feel the need to take a poll which shows a very clear difference in perceptions of Republicans and Obama and pretend it doesn't ?



*for now -- that is everyone who knows how Washington works agrees that if nothing like the Senate bill passes now, the issue is dead for a while. Some, including me, think the House can then add replace the excise tax with a tax on individual income over $500,000 and family income over $1,000,000 plus a public option plus medicare buy in as part of the 2011 budget and that Reid can then use the budget recociliation process all only after the House passes the damn bill (see next post).

WaPo Headline Person Part N

Craig Becker, nominated for NLRB, rejected by Senate
Updated 7:01 p.m. ET
The nomination of Craig Becker, whom President Obama chose to serve on the National Labor Relations Board, died Tuesday after it failed a cloture vote in the Senate.

Senators voted 52 to 33 for end debate on Becker's nomination, but that was not enough to move to a vote.

Confirmation is blocked by a filibuster and the Washington Post says it is rejected. The Senate voted no 33 to 52.

Notice that only 26% of Americans know that 60 Senators are needed to defeat a filibuster. I'm sure a larger fraction of Washington Post readers know that. Indeed if you read the story, you will notice that a confirmation was "defeated" in spite of 52 yes votes.

What justification is there for leaving the word Filibuster out of the headline ?

Which is a more important fact, that Becker's nomination, like all nominations which must be approved by Congress, was considered by the Senate, or that unlike almost all nominations in US history, it was filibustered ?

The headline was written for people who understand that 60 votes are now needed for anything in the Senate (26% of the population) but have to be reminded that, if congress must confirm a nominee, it's up to the Senate as clearly written in the constitution ?

US voters just do not know enough to do our jobs. The press is not helping.
Was it necessary to say that

Wish I'd written that

"The problem is the offender never knows which “last chance” is actually the last “last chance.” "

Firepup Follies

Firedoglake has emerged as a reasonably important force on the left wing of the Democratic party. Sure it's not dailykos, but it is much more reliably lefty.

Jane Hamsher et al are active activists and really believe in a democratic organization of Firedoglake. They have a reader poll to elect Firedogs (to fight the bluedogs). These would be congressmen whose re-election campaigns are actively supported by Firedoglakes.

Being transparent as well as democratic, they have the front runnders after the first day of voting up up. I see

Vote for 2010 FDL Fire Dogs

It’s going to be a tough election year in 2010. Which members of Congress should we help?

Early Front-runners in Voting

Eric J. Massa (NY-29)
Michael E. Capuano (MA-08)
Lloyd Doggett (TX-25)
Raul Grijalva (AZ-07)
Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)

I know the beta Firedog Michael Capuano. He is my representative in Congress. Every two years I get a general election ballot which gives me a choice between Michael Capuano or I can write a name in.

IIRC the Republicans haven't run a candidate in MA-08 since Michael Capuano has been in office (nor did they ever run one against his predecessor although way back in the msits of time some Republican ran against Tip O'Neil.

This year will not be a tough year for Michael Capuano. There is no point in donating to his campaign. He doesn't have to campaign. He represent Ma-08.

I think the vote shows the Firepup approach to politics. It has nothing to do with actually influincing policy outcomes. It is a matter of expressing personal preferences.

Hamsher explains the idea *again*

It’s 3pm and as promised, here are the first day vote tallies to determine which members of Congress become FDL Fire Dogs, and receive community fundraising and GOTV support in 2010.

See its not "which congressperson do you like best ?" nor "with which congressman's public statements do you agree with most ?"

It is where should we direct our scarce resourses.

I'd say rule number one is that Firedoglake should try to defeat Republican candidates and not waste resources on elections where there is no Republican candidate.

Note I am criticizing Firepups, that is, Firedoglake readers who do something more than just read. I thought the election of Firedogs was a good idea (which shows what I know). I am in no position to criticize the actual Firedogs such as Alpha Firedog Hamsher on this one.

But come on firepups political strategy and self expression are not the same thing.

Burying the Lede

Scott Wilson and Anne E. Kornblut have an article about how "The Obama administration is aggressively pushing back against Republican criticism of its handling of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab."

The Republican argument is that the Obama administration would have obtained more intelligence from Abdulmutallab if they had ignored the constitution. They key fact is that Abdulmutallab is currently cooperating. Republicans in congress and the press, who have no information not available to the public, have asserted otherwise, because they feel free to make claims of fact totally unsuported by evidence. I would call those statements "lies."


Wilson and Kornblut wait till paragraph 11 to note that "Senior administration officials said Abdulmutallab is cooperating again. U.S. investigators brought over members of his family from Nigeria on Jan. 17 to encourage him to talk."

The point is that in ballanced coverage of a political controversy, the facts, with a known liberal slant, must be downplayed.

Hound or Hedgehog

Reflecting on the hack gap TM (all rights reseved by Matt Yglesias) I want to escape into fantasy. What if there were a partisan Democratic 24/7 channel ? What should we call this fantasy channel (in blog posts) ? First I thought hound news as Foxes and hounds are traditional enemies. Then I thought hedgehog news as a reference to Isaiah Berlin.

Should I fantasize about Hound news or Hedgehog news ?

Conflict of Interest ?

No.

It turns out that one of the people arrested when they were apparently attempting to tap Senator Landrieu's phone is the son of the acting US attorney for Lousiana's Western District.

A fourth person arrested, Robert Flanagan, 24, of New Orleans, the son of the Shreveport-based acting U.S. attorney for Louisiana's Western District, also has been silent.

The son is now charged with a federal crime. The alleged crime was committed in Louisiana's Eastern district, so father is not in charge of investigating and possibly prosecuting son. That's something.

Now fathers and sons can disagree, but it is odd that the son of a Lousiana US attorney is a ciminal enemy of the one Louisiana senator of the Presidents party (that is the person who typically chooses Louisiana US attorneys).

The key, of course, is the word "acting." I'm sure that Mr Flanagan Sr was appointed by Bush and hasn't been replaced because it is impossible to get nominees through the Senate.

Here we have a Senate so disfunctional that it can't protect itself from criminal families.

I think the key feature is that Republicans ignore all norms and traditions, while Obama is determined to raising the level of fair play in Washington and invents new norms which restrict his ability to fight back.

I'm sure the Republic is not doomed. I am confident that something will save it. I just have no idea what that might be.

Ballance at the Washington Post meets
www.washingtonpost.com

THE TAKE | There's reason for both parties to feel good about debate between Obama, House GOP.
Dan Balz


President Obama goes to GOP's house

This goes well beyond "Opinions on shape of Earth differ, both sides have a point." it is theoretically possible for both sides to have a point about the shape of the earth, but partisan politics in the USA is a zero sum game -- if Democrats win Republicans loose. Is Balz arguing that both Democrats and Republicans gained at the expense of the Connecticut for Lieberman party ?

There is no need for the headline to address the question of who won and who lost. Given the choice to score the Q&A it is simply unacceptable to adopt the rule that the score must be a tie no matter what happened.

This is pure Ballance.

The Lazy Caucus

In contrast to the (alleged) crazy semi caucus (see below)

McJoan is making sense.

The post explains her arguments that we should be pressing senators as well as representatives. There are important things which 51 senators can and should do before the house passes the senate bill. Senate Democrats allegedly refuse to bother with health care any more.

A Crazy Caucus

Josh Marshall has an excellent article on the health care psychodrama. All his sources are anonymous (of course) but he makes a convincing case that roughly half of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives plan to make policy decisinos based on injured pride.

The alleged utter insanity is illustrated by the following undocumented claims

"Others said that more than half of rank-and-file members would rather sacrifice some of the elements of the bill they like by seeking another Senate Republican's support to pass a compromise bill, rather than swallow the Senate bill as is."

So the current Senate bill is too conservative and they want to get a new bill from the new Senate ! That is insane.

It is not possible that any rank and file members think they will get a better bill with one Republican's support. Note the alleged plan is to get cloture on the new bill. This only makes sense as an expression of injured pride -- they won't just say yes to the Senate, not because of the public interest, but because they want to prove that they have dicks as big as senators.

p.s. I was trying to avoid using that word and managed up until the last line.

I remember back in 1975 reading the grafitto "Don't blame me. I'm from Massachusetts."

I do Not want to have to write "Blame me, I'm from Massachusetts" so vote.

I am registered in Massachusetts, but I will blame the Italian postal service which still hasn't delivered my ballot. They have 8 hours to get it to me and then post mark the return envelope (then 10 days to get it to Massachusetts). It's driving me nuts.

update: Blame Me. I'm from Massachusetts

Clash Of The Titans

Krugman vs Glennzilla. I don't know whether to make popcorn or cry. They are debating the case of Jonathan Gruber who is a top health economist and comments publicly on health policy and also had a contract to do micro-simulations for HHS.
They are also two of my favorite bloggers and two of the people whose intellect and integrity I respect most.

Oddly there doesn't seem to be anything odd about their clash. Each is very opinionated, of course. The debate is one aspect of the split of the US leftmore 60% which was briefly united by Bush (has anyone done more for the world left in the past 3 decades ?). Now there is a split between those, like Krugman, who say let Nelson and Lieberman have their way if that's what it takes to get the huge advnantages of the Senate health care bill and those who say it is better to block this bill in hope of a better one (it is not clear if that means this month, this year or this decade).

The specific case is ambiguous. Gruber's contract is not like Armstrong William's contract as noted by Krugman. It is also not exactly like an NSF grant. It is a very good thing that Gruber has shared his expertise with HHS in the form of simulations which would make your eyes glaze over, and with the public in the form of commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of cost control measures in various bills and draft bills. I should say that back when I was a 4th year graduate student and he was a 3rd year graduate student Prof. Gruber helped me find data I needed for my dissertation. Oh and I gave $50 to the fund to pay Marcy Wheeler to blog (in this case denouncing the HHS contract). Oh and you know I mention that when I complain to Firedogs.

I think there are a number of reasons for the fierce disagreement.
1) Attitudes towards the Obama administration
2) Lawyers vs economists
3) Friends of Firedoglake vs friends of Jonathan Gruber
4) Attitudes towards compromise.

1) Greenwald mainly discusses civil liberties, defendants rights and habeus corpus. Krugman discusses economic policy. Krugman thinks the Obama administration has been too centrist and much too determined to try to compromise with Republicans. Greenwald thinks they are guilty of grossly violating human rights. In the field of dealing with detainees, the Obama administration has actively done things which Antonin Scalia never dreamed of. I personally share Krugman and Greenwald's views on both sets of issues and feel very differently about the two sets of issues. Different focus based on different expertise seems to have lead to a different general sense of whether to trust the Obama administration a little or not.

2) Krugman and Gruber are economists. They are used to obtaining NSF grants without feeling compromised. Wheeler and Greenwald are lawyers. They are used to dealing with cases in which the amount of money which can legitimately change hands is zero. I think that Krugman is confident that HHS paid Gruber because they felt they needed to know what he could tell them and not to influence his writing for the public. I'm sure he has the sense that Gruber's work is worky work unlike Krugman's own (or mine such as it is). Krugman sure wouldn't do it for the money, so he doesn't see the money as a bribe.

3) this is obvious. I think that Krugman stands up for fellow not rightwing loony economists. Greenwald has certainly made strange arguments in defence of Firedoglake's position on health care reform (see a post below).

4) Neither is a fan of compromise, but Greenwald is very focused on issues in which no compromise is possible. He explicitly states that the struggle against money in politics is fought on a slippery slope.

Here on issue is that Krugman's focus is on, among other things, policy less favorable to the very rich at the expense of everyone else and the public is ovwerwhelmingly on his side, while Greenwald wants the 4th through 8th amendments to be obeyed and a majority of the US public don't. So Krugman may have more of a general sense that an inch which was given can be taken back soon.

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

www.washingtonpost.com Headline guy part N

I have criticized him, her or them a lot, so I should say that I agree with Matt Yglesias that this is the best headline evar.

McClatchey Fail

So I was just telling my sister how much better McClatchey is than the NY Times or the Washington Post and Hannah Allam totally ruins it writing "no one seems to remember if any Icelandic forces ever made it to Iraq. "

Andy Cobb and Josh Funk remember