How is This Possible

Didn't Hume claim that miracles were no longer possible?

Seeming Rather Than Being

One of the ways in which people who know little to nothing about a specific topic seek to act like they know something is to insist on the universality of some aspect of the topic under consideration.  So, for example, if someone argues that the Russian Revolution succeeded because the army abandoned the state, let's say, the know nothing can argue that the American Revolution succeeded without the British army going over to the
revolutionary side.  The proper response to this is: that's a non sequitur, we're not talking about the American Revolution, which was quite a different kettle of fish.  Oh yeah, the know nothing might respond, then how's a come we call them revolutions?  Well, you might seek to explain, we call them the same thing but we understand the causes of the revolutions as well as the causes of success or failure are the results of the concrete reality of this or that historical moment and aren't attributable to some abstract law or other universally true something or another. Well, the know nothing might continue, how about scientific law? That's universally true, aina?  Yes, your might continue, but the act of discerning historical causes has little to nothing to do with science and rather more to do with making coherent arguments based on plausible readings of the available evidence while avoiding claims to universal truths.  Consider the problems with Hemple's Covering Laws

We might even go further and point out that all manner of events, financial panics, wars' beginnings and conclusions, etc, are historical events and it is best to understand them based not on some universal truth but rather on the facts of the matter and their interpretation. We might also make the point that insisting that an explanation of a discrete moment of history explain all similar or similarly classified moments is more of an attempt at seeming like you know something.

What has this do with Matt Yglesias?  I have already tried to show that his arguments often result from misreading specific texts or on his general and unfounded hostility toward sensible government intervention in the markets to avoid consumer fraud or protect labor.  Today, because I feel like it, I want to point out his reliance on universal truth when stuck.  Recently, Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber fame criticized Yglesias' interpretation of the recent Irish economic collapse by recourse to evidence and argued that

[t]he simplified political economy story goes as follows. Ireland had low nominal and even lower effective corporate tax rates. It also had low personal taxes, both because of the belief that this would foster entrepreneurship etc, and because the government used to periodically sweeten bargains between business and labor by promising tax cuts (which of course favored the rich more than the poor), inter alia buying off unions who might otherwise have started getting feisty about organizing the unorganized bits of the new Irish economy.

The result was that even with booming economic growth, the government faced a fiscal hole. This hole was filled by taxes on property transactions which, as the property market got ever more bubbly, became an ever more important source of government revenue. This provided the government with an extremely strong incentive not to deflate the bubble, reinforcing the already considerable incentives towards inaction resulting from cronyism between politicians and property tycoons, ideological notions about not interfering with ‘free’ markets etc.

Whether this is true or not, I don't know but it's a clear and coherent argument about a specific moment.  Yglesais responds

As a causal story, I still don’t really buy this. We had property booms in the United Kingdom, in Spain, in the United States, in Iceland, etc. all under different tax trajectories. And I can’t think of any examples of a government anywhere deliberately acting to deflate asset prices. The fact that the Irish government didn’t do so isn’t really a fact in need of explanation.

See what he did there?  Unable to discuss the Irish case in detail, he insists that any explanation of this or that historical moment has to explain all similar or similarly classified moments. More importantly, it is a rhetorical slight of hand designed to win an argument, if only because some of your readers might think you've scored, rather than trying to understand an argument about an event. However, as is the case in seeking to find a common cause for "success" in the American and Russian revolutions this demand for a universal causal narrative is a non sequitur. This desire, to "win" as opposed to understand or -- even better -- learn something lies at the heart of Yglesiasism and all of the juice box mafiosi.  So when you read him or McArdle remember they aren't as interested in knowing things as they are in seeming to know more than the rest of us.

I Realize

That it is adolescent in the extreme to make fun of people's names; in this case, however, it is not so much fun as evidence of some higher level of truth about Republican governance. In other words, a headline from NRO:
"Jerry Lewis Endorses Flake for Appropriations"

That's Our Georgie Boy!

What is a "Decision Point," anyhow?

UPDATE:
On George's new book:

And so the Wagner Question poses itself yet again. Every Saturday when the Brazilian sea monster murders his X-Factor song, 14 million people ask themselves how and why he is there. Reading these ghost-written titbits, you ask yourself the same. How in the name of all the saints did George W Bush, wastrel drunkard son of an East Coast patrician family, find his way to Pennsylvania Avenue by playing the genial good ol' boy from the South, and why in heaven's name did he want it anyway? And answers come there none.

and

The reduction of Bush's two terms to a satirical sequel to one of those US prep school movies in which the smirking, idiot boy breaks the honour code but is rescued by his Brahmin dad had come to seem shamefully hackneyed. But the one cliché worth trotting out here is that clichés are clichés because they are true. Somehow this half-witted frat boy journeyed, via some jovially preposterous sequence of events involving failed oil deals and baseball team franchises, from japes with Alpha Sigma Phi to possession of the nuclear codes.

It Didn't Work Like That, Part Two

I mentioned that I found Eric Posner's discussion of the Roman Republic's Constitution flawed, largely based on its level of abstraction.  I mentioned Syme's critique, which Posner instances in note 7.  Posner, it is true, does allude to patron/clientage as key aspect of Roman society, although, tellingly, he offers no sustained discussion of its social, political, or economic dimensions and, consequently, fails to offer any response to Syme or to the many historians who agree, which he really isn't allowed do.  And as by the way, I don't think that abstract supposition about what ought, might, or should happen under some idealized set of abstractions counts as rebutting a concrete fact-based, i.e., Syme's, argument counts as responding.

I would like to make an additional point.  Posner, on page 24, argues that

[t]he Roman system may have worked well enough for a period of time, but its chief flaw became apparent in the last century. Because no civilian politician could amass much power through office, and perhaps because none had strong incentives to discharge their official duties competently, none could stand up to the military leaders who earned glory at battle and could offer loot to soldiers and civilians who supported them. Military posts was not term-limited; and so successful generals could earn a popular following over a long period of time. These military leaders included Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, and they were the dominant figures during the last century of the Republic’s existence.

On page 31, he argues that

[t]he senate also kept the magistrates weak because it feared that powerful magistrates would redistribute wealth to the people; but in the process it also failed to give magistrates the power to keep order and prosecute wars in an efficient manner. All of this gave rise to a demand for powerful figures who would serve the interests of the masses and engage in efficient governance. A number of individuals saw the opportunity to obtain power by appealing to the masses and adopting redistributive programs. These included Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus from roughly 132-121 B.C.

Here's the problem, the Gracchii Brothers sought to reform the Rome's agrarian system and, with Giaus, its treatment of the Knights in a way that would forestall the weakness Posner (correctly) identifies. They and their supporters were murdered by the Optimates because the Optimates social, political, and economic success rested on the corrupt practices that led to increased landlessness among the soldiers and the equally corrupt distribution of the public lands. Gracchii died precisely because their reforms threatened the Senatorial classes continued domination of Rome's political system and their ability to increase their control of its economic life. Oddly, or perhaps expectedly, Posner accepts that reforms designed to fix the fundamental flaw, by granting soldiers some form of pay and veterans lands sufficient on which to live, were -- in fact -- illegitimate appeals "to the masses."  Read fairly, in particular the unprecidented violence that accompanied the Gracchian reforms, the criticism ought to be of those in the Senatorial class who were narrow-mindedly wedded to their short-term interests.

Why is does this matter?  Well, it matters because Posner, like lots of lawyers these days, is trying to use history as a means of advancing his policy or interpretive preferences when the facts of the matter lead to different conclusions, in this case reform is better than dictators, military strongmen, and princeps.

Shark!

Why did Russ Feingold lose to an inarticulate dolt with no ability to articulate his policy preferences? Sharks, that's why.

Voters have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country’s well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not. In the summer of 1916, for example, a dramatic weeklong series of shark attacks along New Jersey beaches left four people dead. Tourists fled, leaving some resorts with 75 percent vacancy rates in the midst of their high season. Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action; but what action would be effective in such circumstances? Voters probably didn’t know, but neither did they care. When President Woodrow Wilson—a former governor of New Jersey with strong local ties—ran for reelection a few months later, he was punished at the polls, losing as much as 10 percent of his expected vote in towns where shark attacks had occurred.

New Jersey voters’ reaction to shark attacks was dramatic, but hardly anomalous.

This time, of course, the sharks' bite was 30 years of failed neo-Liberal, Reganite, Thatcherite, and Libertarian policies.  Which is to say, stuff over which Feingold had less control that Wilson did sharks.

The idiotic sharks attack therefore I won't vote for the incumbent dynamic explains why this dust up between Glenn Greenwald and Larry ODonnell is so embarrassing for  O'Donnell; he, after all, blamed policies when its was sharks.

Here In Wisconsin

So in the wake of Walker's victory Doyle suspends the billion dollar free money and many jobs creating high speed rail.  Why, many ask, would he do such a think?  Read yesterdays WSJ op-ed piece decrying the decision because, after all, the WSJ editorial board didn't think that Walker was serious when he said he would cancel the whole thing. Doyle has now asked Walker to put up or shut up and more power to him.  For far too long Dems have been pulling Republicans' chestnuts out of the fire when their beloved don't tax and spend policies drive the country into a ditch.  Now, Walker has to make an actual decision: reject money that will improve Wisconsin's draw for companies and individuals by improving infrastructure over the long haul and create god know how many jobs over the short term.  Is he, in other words, going to govern or posture in the vague hope the Michelle Bachman  and Sarah Palin will shower him with their magical starbursts.

Olberman and Objectivity

Josh Marshal writes, in part, that disagreeing with Olberman's suspension

doesn't mean I don't see the point of rules barring people in the news business from giving money to politicians. I do. I think they usually make sense.

I think that this position fundamentally misunderstands being as opposed to seeming when it comes to partisan commitments and objective reporting.  As a commentator, as Marshal notes, Olberman is overtly partisan on a network that, it seems, wants to represent itself as the center-left's intellectual home.  Consequently, Olberman's lack of objectivity ought not be a problem.  Fine and dandy.  Is is, however, the case that someone who contributes to a politician, cause, or party loses their "objectivity."  I don't see how this can be the case, unless you want to argue that all political engagement flows from some sort of irrational force and argue that putting your money where your mouth is is a sign of the irrational overtaking the rational. Consider one of America's top scientists and a key figure in reestablishing the rule of reason in the doing of public science: Francis Collins. He is a born again Christians who, apparently, realized the truth of the Trinity after seeing a frozen waterfall.  Despite this clearly irrational moment and his consequent spiritual rebirth, Collins remains a dedicated scientist and has done an excellent job of defending the NIH from the Republicans hatred of science and reason. My point here is that there is no reason to make rules designed to ensure that newsies seem objective when their daily activities can be scrutinized for being objective, particularly when the rules involve curtailing civic engagement.

I'm Not Much for Joining, But:

I'd join this

1. The Coffee Party has had the privilege to meet people from many different creeds and races, and despises fear-mongering towards any one group.
2. The Coffee Party also hates xenophobia towards immigrants. We don’t plan to vote for any candidate who first exploited an immigrant for nine years and now wants to deport her.
3. And ixnay on Yet Another Xenophobia aimed at particular trading partners, falsely blamed for our economic woes. The Coffee Party likes free trade — how else are we going to get our Coffee?
4. While we’re at it, we don’t want Homophobia or Misogyny either.   
5. The Coffee Party wishes the tax debate would also discuss whether we are getting our money’s worth. We have a tax-bloated government here at Coffee Party HQ, so why did they cut the one government activity we actually find useful – subways!?#!
6. Suppose you had to make an agonizing decision whether to endanger the mother of your child by going through with a pregnancy. Pick one: (1) you and the mother should decide yourselves, (2) some Old Fart on a Bench or Legislature should decide for you.  The Coffee Party does not consider this a difficult pick.
7. The Coffee Party wonders why all candidates from all parties have forgotten to mention that we are still waging war for reasons no longer clear, not to mention still violating civil liberties of both citizens and foreigners?
8. Speaking of wars, how about ending the War on Drugs, which is so destructive  to our inner cities and to the source countries? (link to Nick Kristof){Wait a minute, we could even tax pot and restore subway service! (see 5) }
9. Oh yes, Development. Frankly, the candidates are doing so badly on our issues 1 through 8, the Coffee Party is not expecting much from them on Global Development. At this point, we would just ask them not to destroy industries in poor countries with some arbitrary trade policy decision.
10.   Our country is based on the ideals that ALL “are by nature equally free and independent,” and have “inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, immigrants and natives, Christians and Muslims, Jews and Gentiles, citizens and foreigners, rich and poor. The Coffee Party wants our country back.

Election Fallout

Did you see Obama's press conference?  Did you think that the press corps wanted him to rent his garments and rub ash in his hair? Me too. Did you think that Gingrich's suggestion that Obama take a short nap until the victors came to town was silly? Me too.  Did you find all the lies about the cost of the trip to India and points east idiotic?  Me too.  Do you think that retaining Pelosi as Minority Leader the right choice?  Me too.  Is the proper response here to double down and continue doing what is right and what works instead of triangulating and such?  Me too.  Do you think that Obama will continue to govern from the slightly left-of-center?  Me too.  Do you think that the Republicans and Conservative will continue to push an anti-American agenda wholly, as opposed to slightly, owned by corporations and the idiotically rich?  Me too.

I Never Watch Keith Olberman's Talk Show

And I think his sport commenting stick is tedious.  However, unlike the Sanchez and Williams firings, Olberman's indefinite suspension is absurd on its face.

It Didn't Work Like That.

Over to the Volokh Conspiracy some lawyer or another waxes all poetical about some other lawyer's discussion of the Roman Republic's constitution and the Roman Republic's political economy.  The problem is Posner seems to think that what historians know about the Roman Republic's constitution norms bears any relationship to the actually existing Roman Republic's political practices.  Syme pointed out lo these many years ago that this wasn't the case.  Even worse, it seems that Posner wants to use the discussion of series of idealized abstractions as a means of promoting his preferred, it seems to me, economic order. And there, quite frankly, you have it.  Two lawyers claiming to have competence over several different disciplines trying hard to make everyone think that everything ought to be about fewer regulations and more rich folks.  Posner et alia can't rely on historians for their history because if they did all the various historical fictions on which they base their claims would collapse.  Sort of like Originalism, which is only coherent if you turn the founding fathers into the founding Scalia.

I Refuse

I refuse to  believe that more than ten Americans are dumb enough to trust a single solitary thing Glenn Beck says

Who is Speaking Here?

So one or another of the NRO's various flying monkeys quotes the NYTimes:

Fannie and Freddie have increased their repurchase demands on lenders over the past year, but banks are sure to resist large repurchases, setting up more clashes and disruption… Freddie Mac and the Fed should push their claims hard.

And concludes that

What the Times doesn’t seem understand is that every mortgage a bank buys back is more toxic debt on their balance sheets, which means more capital tied up, unable to be lent. And that is really bad for the economy. Banks are already holding on to some $1.5 trillion more reserve cash than in normal times. Getting those dollars into the economy would be the single best way to end the recession (something the Fed has failed to do with its misguided short-term thinking).

From the NYTimes Editorial

Fannie and Freddie have increased their repurchase demands on lenders over the past year, but banks are sure to resist large repurchases, setting up more clashes and disruption.

Bank of America has said it does not believe it is at fault for the loans’ poor performance. Freddie Mac and the Fed should push their claims hard.

The Obama administration needs to ensure that the taxpayers’ interests come first. Until now, the White House has focused far more energy on shoring up the banks — a stance that may have made sense in the thick of the financial crisis but is increasingly suspect now.

In the NRO critique

Banks should buy back any mortgages required according to the normal system and established contractual terms.

So, if the NYT argues that Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed ought vigorously pursue the normal system and force banks to buy back any mortgages required its wrong but should, per the NRO critique, the pursuit of the normal system require banks to buy back any mortgages why that would be okay.

See the problem?

And also, I have no idea if the NRO flying monkey is correct on the economic impact of forced repurchase of badly, if not illegally, done loans and neither, to be frank, does the flying monkey. However, the point of the NYT editorial isn't economic merits but rather moral culpability and political expediency, ayna?

This Makes No Sense

A post from the NRO in its entirety 

By Kathryn Jean Lopez      

Barney Frank has been in Congress so long, he can’t even bother posting a bio to his website. His reelection site’s “about” reads:

Barney Frank has been in Congress since 1981. He is the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Previously he was a Massachusetts State Representative and an assistant to the Mayor of Boston. He has also taught at several Boston area universities. More information can be obtained from “Politics in America” published by Congressional Quarterly and “The Almanac of American Politics” published by National Journal.

Nice little portrait of entitlement.

What's the entitlement? Asking people to look somewhere else for a more detailed biography.  I am sure the K-Lo would have been all starry eyed had Barney Frank published a full biography and she would never in any way have used that as evidence of his massive self-regard. Nope. Plus, who on god's green earth takes the time to read a congressman's web page and finds the biography the onliest thing to criticize?

New Rule

If you use the language of business to discuss education reform, i.e., students as customers, value added, etc, you are banned for ever from discussing education reform because you fail to understand that it is not a commodity to be bought or bartered but rather a thing created between students, teachers, parents, and the rest of society.  So sentences like this

At private schools, however, it simply reflects the fact that as currently structured American institutions of higher education have no real incentive to expend energy on improving value. Sometimes colleges do find ways to reduce the cost of providing education, but even when they do so they don’t return the savings to customers in the form of lower prices, they just find new things to spend the money on.

Get you tossed out of the serious about education club.  Plus and also, isn't the question concerning "new things" that it ought to be better libraries, more professors, improved dorms and etc?  Instead of more deans, higher presidential salaries, and more administrators generally.  In short, isn't this criticism lacking in specificity and, consequently, rather empty and meaningless?

The High Cost of Spam.

So these are the dummies taken in by the "huge penis" ads.

An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.

. . .

Among the people who responded in July to Amazing's spam, which bore the subject line, "Make your penis HUGE," was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.

A Brief Note on the Perils of Phone Plans

From the comments section of this Crooked Timber thread, after some horror stories about the large telephone bills resulting from excessive texting comes this warning:

Like many other consumer companies (e.g., credit card issuers, health clubs), a good piece of the phone companies’ revenue comes from dinging consumers who misestimate their future usage. This can leave you with a whopping bill, which in turn leads to yelling at the teenage daughter, which leads to an outraged sense of injustice on her part, because she isn’t texting more heavily than her friends, etc. Downward spiral, no communication between father and daughter, unhealthy compensatory relationships with other males, teen pregnancy, heroin addiction . . . all because you didn’t get the right cell phone plan.

The Last 30 Years Don't Count

Stephen Spuriel over to the NRO's Corner asserts

Keynesians, you had your turn at bat. You whiffed. It’s time to try something else.

Yeah, two years of successfully staving off the worst results of 30 years of Neoliberal nihilism while working to overcome the entrenched pro-rich folks distortions is proof that the neo-Keynesian policies gradually enacted haven't worked.

Now Wait a Minute.

So, this morning Jonah Goldberg wrote that while he didn't expect the US to kill Assange the fact that it wasn't going to kill Assange was evidence of the false view many have of the hydra-headed and all-too-lethal CIA.  Or as one of Goldberg's interlocutors put it

Oh, wait, I get it. Goldberg isn’t actually, seriously, soberly advocating the extrajudicial assassination of a journalist for publishing material in contravention of a direct order from the state. He’s just having fun with the discontinuity between “left-wing accounts of the intelligence community,” which tend to portray spooks as hyper-efficient bloodthirsty killers, and the curious fact of Assange’s continued purchase on life. See! Liberals are stupid, because they think spies are bad, but look—Assange isn’t “a greasy stain on the autobahn already,” so liberals are wrong, spies aren’t bad, therefore liberals are stupid. Q.E.D.

And concludes:

Anyway, this game of Jonah’s is fun, so back to our opening question: Why hasn’t he been punched, hard, in the face yet today? After all, he upsets liberals, and we all know that liberals are violent thugs, right? “The left” routinely justifies the “glorification of violence” and “gangsterism” of “black riot ideology” and wants to kill all white people as badly as Hitler wanted to kill all Jews. Liberals engage in a “symphony of violence” and, as Goldberg astutely points out in his book, are fascists. So how come some angry liberal hasn’t decked him yet today, fascistically? Just asking. We don’t think, by the way, that anyone should physically assault Goldberg. That would be illegal.

Goldberg responds by, as is his wont, getting the whole argument wrong

Sigh. . . .  if he thinks I need to be punched in the face, I invite him to give it a whirl himself. If memory serves, it could lead to a fun few minutes for me. Oh, and he might bother actually characterizing my book correctly. 

The Gawker guy is clearly kidding and kiddingly kids Goldberg in the same vein.  Goldberg is, it seems, upset that he serious point, whatever it might have been, wasn't taken seriously.

Later that same day, someone else takes Goldberg seriously and he complains that he may have been too "glib," which was the Gawker guy's point, but he wasn't serious.

The column, then, must have been too serious to be accused of being glib while being to glib to be accused of being serious, which is to say it ought not to have been written.

Jonah Goldberg Hates America

America is as much a state of mind as it is a state.  For the longest time, America, as a state of mind, meant things like rule of law, fair play, politeness, and related whatnotery.  Recently, Jonah Goldberg decided that to be authentically American meant not just rejecting all those fundamentally American state of mind dealios but developing a new mindset that more closely reflects the false allegations about Lucrezia Borgia.  To wit:

So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?
It’s a serious question.

He concludes that Assange's death is, unfortunately, unlikely because

it’s the law. Ultimately, I don’t expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him. Alas, as of now, the plan seems to be to do nothing at all.

 What, I wonder, does he expect America to do? And, I ask, why does Jonah Goldberg hate America?

Violence

I was going to post something on rhetorical violence versus calls to be violent, which is to say something on McArdle's most recent silliness, but instead would suggest for those of you, who want honest debate between and among Conservatives, Liberals, and Progressives to go read this discussion of McArdle's two by four to the head promotion versus her depiction of it. 

Journalism

E.D. Kain over by Balloon Juice wonders why Conservatives are such lousy journalist given that

[j]ournalism is merely the act of gathering and disseminating news and information – and good journalism is simply this effort minus any bias or attempts at propaganda. I don’t think that at its core it is either liberal or conservative in any modern, American sense of those words, or any other ideology for that matter. So then, what do I mean by better conservative journalism?

His conclusion is that NPR minus obviously Liberal programs, even though he is unclear what Liberal means, like Democracy Now is Conservative journalism.  Given that every Conservative in the country, give or take, thinks that NPR in its totality represents Liberalism, Socialism, Progressivism,  and Dhimitude, the question he asks answers itself.  The fact gathering and fact-based analysis is antithetical to the Conservative agenda in that the facts argue for a different set of policies unless the goal is to re-create late  19th and early 20th century America in which the super rich ran the show and the rest of us ate dirt.  Because, after all, that's what 30 or so years of Conservative, Neoliberal, Thatcherite, and Reaganite policies have produced and here we are listening to all Republican/Conservative candidates demanding more of the same while some Democratic candidates nod their heads in agreement.

Money and Politics

Recently there has been a bunch of discussion of money and elections sparked, in part, by David Brooks' recent dishonest discussion of non-party adds in the current election cycle. The discussion is now on the effectiveness of money in an election rather than the effect of outside expenditure.  Ed of Ginandtacos agrees and summarizes the academic and other literature thusly:

That said, I have been increasingly interested (in the context of my day job) in the question of what all of this money buys in elections. And the more I reflect upon and study the issue, the more convinced I become that the money would be just as productively used by throwing it on a raging bonfire.

The difficulty with this position is that while spending tons of money in an election on advertising that, for example, rejects the overwhelming evidence of AGW might not get the desired Tea Party Patriot elected, it does legitimize rejecting the overwhelming evidence for AGW part of the national "conversation."  And this, I would argue, is the point.  Even if your candidate isn't elected the terms of the debate shift from X is a problem and which policies best address the X problem to "Is X really a problem?  and, ideally, to the conclusion that all those who support solutions to the non-problem X are really anti-American. At least in this election cycle. Corporations and others throwing bazillions into the bonfire of vanities, as it were, aren't just trying to win the cycle they are trying to and succeeding in framing the debate.

Two Things

Recently Jonah Goldberg made a series of errors relative to an NYTimes online round table about Conservative hatred toward Woodrow Wilson.  He acknowledged one error in an update to the initial post: the historians weren't defending WW but rather trying to explain Conservative hatred of WW.  This was on October 11.  In an online piece dated October 25, Goldberg wrote, concerning Liberal defenses of WW that

[m]ost of the defensive operations are really more of a counter-attack (I addressed the last wave).

In other words, he still gets the point of the round table wrong.  He is, in short, not only reliably wrong but he is the exception that proves the rule of the self-correcting blogosphere.