Roberts/Obamacare: I called it from the get-go

June 2013: Shock Claim: Glenn Beck Has Hacked Emails Used To Blackmail Chief Justice John Roberts

RWCG, July 2012:

The most generous interpretation of Justice Roberts’s opinion, and switch, in the Obamacare case is that he was somehow blackmailed into upholding the law. [...] I for one have too much respect for the majesty and sanctity of our august Judiciary Branch, and its Chief Justice, not to presume that he was blackmailed.

DAMN I”M AM A GOOD BLOGGER!!11 Do you ever just wake up and marvel at what a awesome blogger you’ve found in me, Gentle readers?

Anyway I still say, to anyone who doesn’t think Roberts’s decision was the product of blackmail, shame on you. Such disrespect for the office and the man.

To John Roberts, I’m proud to say I’ve had your back this whole time: I knew you had to have been blackmailed to have written that pile of crap. You’re welcome.

Links & comment

The U.S. Health Care System Doesn’t Need Price Controls. It Needs Price Signals.  Well yeah, but that would require it to be an actual market, not a ‘system’.

The. Best. Beatles. Cover. Ever.

Obamacare’s Moving Goalposts

Analyst:  “It’s not a recovery. It’s just bad.”  Hold on. Let’s remember the definition of ‘recovery’: the state of the economy when (a) the Presidency is held by a Democrat, and (b) the economy cannot plausibly be described as good. So technically, this is a both/and situation, not either/or.

I’m looking forward to putting on a London Whale-style trade in my 401k via the coming CDX-linked ETFs.

Quadratic Vote Buying, Square Root Voting, and Corporate Governance sounds interesting, but what’s so special about the exponent ’2′? Why not have votes = (#shares) to the power of 1.9 or 2.1? Or how about the golden-ratio phi? I detect plenty of opportunity for academic research on this important perfect-vote-exponent subject.

How Gov’t Student Loans Ruined College Education

“Whether or not you’re a terrorist shouldn’t come down to how good of a hip-hop artist you are.”

Psychology Exam Question. Funny.

This Bryan Caplan post appears to have stumbled upon the Fundamental Error Of Lefty Economics (although in that example I guess he is implicitly accusing righties of making it).

ABC’s Alan Kohler on casino banking: banks create risk and gamble on it. Couldn’t agree more. Clearly banks should stop making loans because loans are risky and that’s gambling.

Kid Rock, Risk Manager.

All possible economic theories have been confirmed by recent events.

I guess I’m just curious how scientists tested the “vibratory thresholds in the anterior vagina” in a bunch of lady bicyclists, not to mention that “[t]he two areas affected most were the anterior vagina and the left labia”.

Do high haircuts intensify crash risk? is a post-title that I totally misinterpreted at first. ‘Yes, of course, because if the driver in front of you has a high haircut that reduces your visibility.’ Anyway the actual post is about asset haircuts, about which, it seems silly to talk about whether ‘high’ haircuts do this or that without adjusting for risk. Why would a haircut be ‘high’ in the first place? Presumably for a reason, right?

Why Does Anyone Think the Fed Will Taper? I certainly don’t. Even if I’d want them to!

2012 in FILM and FILM ART

Updating my beloved series of posts on FILMS for those 2012 releases (>250 IMDB votes) that I’ve since caught up with. In rough descending order of FILM QUALITY (as determined by me).

Yes, running out of blog post ideas & scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Moonrise Kingdom

Avengers

Skyfall

Chronicle

21 Jump Street

Ted

John Carter

Dredd

The Hunger Games

Argo

Get the Gringo

Looper

Savages

Rise of the Guardians

Dark Knight Rises

Sleepwalk With Me

John Dies at the End

Act of Valor

Ice Age: Continental Drift

Premium Rush

Safe House

Prometheus

Mirror Mirror

V/H/S

The Lorax

Lockout

ParaNorman

Iron Sky

The Dictator

So the Crimson goes to…Moonrise Kingdom, I guess. As a handy key to the rest (I suggest printing this out onto a credit-card-sized card and laminating it for your wallet):

Everything above roughly (surprisingly!) Dredd level was Very Good, the Looper to Argo range was Good, With Reservations, Safe House to Savages is the Not Bad/Ok Movie range, Lockout to Prometheus is Not Terrible And Could Have Been Better, But…Problems territory, ParaNorman is a category all itself (Seems Good But Somehow Offensive And In Bad Taste),  and the last two basically Sucked.

Still not seen and may affect results: Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, and of course, Twilight: The Breaking Dawn Saga Part 2 or whatever it’s called. Looking forward to next year when I’ll start seeing 2013 releases. I hear they made yet another Iron Man movie. I bet Robert Downey Jr. is funny and charismatic in it! Till then,

Are there any honorable lefties who have distanced themselves from and denounced Martin Bashir’s idiotic commentary on IRS/Obama/race?

And without any mealy-mouthed ‘but’ mixed in there, as in ‘Of course I don’t support what Bashir said, but [words to the effect that what he said makes a valid point]‘.

Just wondering. Haven’t seen any.

National pimp, seconded

The point being made in this Yglesias post appears to be the same basic point I made here.

2 weeks of links

Because I am a bad blogger.

The real IRS argument

To talk now of a “smoking gun” is like witnessing the Battle of Waterloo and saying: “Hah! A smoking gun! Over there!” True, but daft.

Why pre-tax inequality matters.  Basically because other people getting big pre-tax numbers make people feel bad. To the left, such feelings are a good reason for government action.

More Interest-Rate Graphs.  Cool remedial interest-rates-for-dummies post.

Reservists in lieu of a standing, trained army? Really?

Mean Liberals.  My only dispute is with the word ‘liberal’. The American left is anything but.

“Margot at the Wedding”.  Maybe I’m misreading but seems like he didn’t like it. I loved it!

The ”I-Word” Isn’t a Curse.  As I’ve said many times, we need more impeachments not fewer. Ideally, all Presidents would be pre-emptively impeached upon swearing-in.

I Wonk, Therefore I Am: The Limits Of Republican-Bashing. For the Smart People file.

“Austerity”

The Obamacare Shell Game (Part 1)

Freddie, Fannie Profits

I expect these profits to continue, because the business model right now is excellent. The government is saying to mortgage originators:

1. Do not originate any loans that do not comply with our rules.

2. We cannot tell you what the rules are yet, because they are not final (it’s only been, what, 3 years since Dodd-Frank passed?)

3. But Freddie and Fannie have an exemption, so anything they will take you can originate and we won’t bother you.

People also need to keep in mind that ‘profits’ in year M>N are not so impressive when you took a buttload of writedowns (losses) in year N. (I can easily produce ‘profits’ for your business if you transfer all of its assets, whatever they are, over to me at a mark of 0 and take that loss yourself.)

Another Obamacare Implementation Success Story—Hospitals Finally Getting Serious About Handwashing.  Unsurprisingly Matthew Yglesias buys the (I’ll tell you right now, BS) idea that hospitals haven’t been handwashing and that “Obamacare” has fixed that.

Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome Economist?

Who Has the Squeeze Box?  Compelling case for TSLA short squeeze.

Joblessness causes mortality, not obesity

I’ve previously suggested that the government pay people to play online games like World of Warcraft…

What a coincidence, I’ve previously suggested that (if you consider the big-picture of what welfare & unemployment is), in some sense, we already do.

Don’t worry, the only bad impact from higher debt is higher taxes. Feel better?

The declining importance of non-human capital

Common sense from lefties on the Cheap Labor bill

Seriously, if you ever catch me using the word ‘derp’ in earnest and thinking I am making a real tangible point of some sort, just kill me. Of course it would be my new favorite economist Noah Smith who invents a dumb-ass, facile defense of how it’s being (embarrassingly) used. Literally, I am vicariously embarrassed for the people like him who keep using this 15-year-old term on Twitter thinking it makes them hip.

Stimulating Harlem Treat

Oh come on, I can’t be the only person who wonders where these kids are now. Can I?