Comments by Doug Pascover

Programming note

I feel you, too, RR. You're a good guy. You don't have to defend this freak show, but I wouldn't enjoy it if I felt I needed to defend this freak show.

American genes, European culture?

I'm actually not sure where M.S. falls on this spectrum. Maybe on the Sander side. But I guess my point would be, if you don't mean Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or many Democrats then who are you referring to as "progressives?"

American genes, European culture?

RR (I can't tell from the phone if this is coming as a reply) but I don't doubt Thatcher said that and it might have been true of Labor in 1979. But in 2012 United States, the near-consensus that GDP growth is the key economic goal goes clear from just left of your buddy Santorum to almost Bernie Sanders with most Democrats, including the President and most Republicans, including Newt Gingrich. What you have in common with Thatcher, Douthat, McArdle and our own W.W. is that you're fantasizing Fabians and then talking with the dream.

Your arguments are right, I just don't think you're arguing with anyone.

American genes, European culture?

RR, your post is 100% true according to conservative fantasy. There are a lot of dynamism progressives and more than a few conservatives who have used inequality as a means to an end.

As an ideological agnostic (or at least a partisan one) I think there's nothing wrong with Tyler Cowen speculating along these lines, but it is worth applying some analytical hoofawra to the question of whether we are forsaking a lot of productivity which I'd take as the better question relative to income mobility. I'm pretty convinced that class assignment is sclerotic and that an equality agenda is also sclerotic. The question is whether Europe is being more socialist or we're becoming more feudal. Whether or not income mobility is worth doing something about at the policy level depends on the answer to that question.

Newt presses those good ol' buttons

You're not an idiot. Nate Silver is vastly more into polling. To be honest, if you were dumber it wouldn't grate so much on me when you follow Newt into madness instead of tugging him towards the light. That said, I don't guess I'd be the first in line to tow Gingrich.

U8cetera, I suppose but I kind of think at some point in politics it's worth being prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Newt presses those good ol' buttons

Why excuse anything? Newt added a dozen or two points in the SC GOP race by a combination of racial implication and yelling at the press. Note it and move on. 24% of SC GOP primary voters might be cads and bad for America. Is that really what you want to talk about?

Newt presses those good ol' buttons

Sure, M.S., but you're the referee not the fan. I'm just saying I think we're about as far along in the "Yeah he is" "No, he ain't" conversation as we're going to get. Whatever can be revealed is now good and obvious to everyone.

Newt presses those good ol' buttons

I think there's a problem with the primacy of place that that comment received. I've generally found it Newtlike disingenuity and horseleavings all the objections to the "liberal" media calling Newt Gingrich' unabashedly racial nonsense "racial." But should we really be spending all our time on this instead of the tax plan we never hear about and the space mirror plan we never hear about or the entitlement reform we never hear about or the small-government geoengineering plans he mentions and never describes.

I'd rather see the press press him on what these big ideas he keeps talking about might be than follow him down the rabbit hole of vaguely outlined resentments. I think this is the fourth DiA post pointing out that there's a hidden racial agenda in telling black people jobs are better than food stamps. I think most of us caught that the first time and the rest will deny it to their hopefully proximate graves.

The slog begins

Well I hope the elites get soon so they can explain it to me. The folks who keep leaving these comments have my common-as-dirt American head spinning at how simple things can be so hard to admit.

But if you will accept gentle assistance from a simple working American, we're all in this together, after all; I'm guessing the comment is being reported as racial because it began with "Black Americans..."

Looking at Lisbon

Great explanation, thanks, Cherny. So under current rules the importance of calling a default a default is to do with the ECB being able to buy sovereign debt?

Newtmentum

Incidentally, I believe Orangeburg is the hometown of the governor, although the family attended Gurdwara over the border in Augusta. (Speaking of dog whistles.)

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