Newmark's Door

Jonah Goldberg gives a great diagnosis:

What Biden has in common with Bill [Clinton] is a particular kind of politician’s mix of insecurity and arrogance

I surely do sympathize. Ranking folks by their degree of victimization has got to be difficult. And once you do, the very next day the ranking may have to be different!

So very true:

We create entitlements on the assumption that they won’t be used as a weapon. But that assumption turns out to be unwarranted.

Amen to this.

And let me tell ya, every time one of these newly minted Democratic “stars” opens their mouth, the same thought goes through my mind: Thank God for Trump. Trump is my last line of defense. Trump is the only thing that stands between me and these hallucinogenic socialist nut jobs. Trump is what’s keeping chaos and left-wing insanity at bay.

"Improving the quality of life in cities matters to more than just the people who live in them."

Easy: macro is hard.

A recent working paper by Zidong An, Joao Tovar Jalles, and Prakash Loungani discovered that of 153 recessions in 63 countries from 1992 to 2014, only five were predicted by a consensus of private-sector economists in April of the preceding year. And the economists tended to underestimate the magnitude of the slump until the year was almost over.

Remember: "There’s only one reliable rule of thumb in macro".

The state treasurer(!) says this action would be "unlawful, unconstitutional and impractical". I'm no expert, but I think that's a really bad combination.

I saw the HBO documentary on Theranos. It brought to mind (George) Costanza's Theorem: "It's not a lie if you believe it," 

Related: "An HBO Documentary about the Theranos Fraud Raises Concerns"--it's right about the two "mistakes" but they're both very picky--and "Golden Age of the Grift".

An academic evaluation of the 48 contiguous states plus D.C. in which the state I reside is ranked as having the least psychopathy. (Link via Marginal Revolution.)

It's starting to look like the climate change folks will have to find another mascot.