Some Fairly-Recent Must- and Should-Reads...

Doug J. Balloon: "'The coarsening of discourse' is a standard conservative pundit lament, but nothing illustrates the unfortunate reality better than the writings of conservative pundits themselves. Read a typical George Will column. It's probably wrong but the most aesthetically disturbing thing you're likely to encounter is a Mark Twain quote taken badly out of context. Read a typical Bobo, Bret, or Douthat column and you'll find discussions of how many sex partners a teen should have, defenses of pedophilia, and sex robots..."

I can't help it. Every time I see a 60 plus male from the South or the Midwest, I cannot help but think: "There goes an easily grifted moron!" The strong that has to be rolled uphill to keep Trumpland from falling further behind the rest of the country is very large and heavy: Paul Krugman: What���s the Matter With Trumpland?: "Regional convergence in per-capita incomes has stopped dead. And the relative economic decline of lagging regions has been accompanied by growing social problems...

David Glasner: Neo- and Other Liberalisms: "The point of neoliberalism 1.0��was to moderate classical laissez-faire liberal orthodoxy...

The usual dodge here is to make "the money" a trader deploys proportional to the gap between the current price and their estimate, and so dodge this question completely: Dan Davies: "The 'Manski Bounds'.... How surprisingly little information you can extract from prices.... All the price tells you is that half the money thinks the true value is more than that and half thinks it's less. It doesn't tell you how much more or how much less. I think this matters a lot when you're trying to analyse fast moving markets like TRY or BTPs. Most of the people selling are selling because their guess about true value has moved a long way, not because the price has moved and they switched from the bid to the offer..."

Not quite true. It is what the Left New Dealers' consensus was. They had lost power in the U.S. But enough of them made it across the Atlantic to do a lot of good: Daniel Davies: "If you like the German social, political and economic model, it's worth remembering that what it really represents is the consensus of American opinion on how to build a stable non-Communist polity if you were starting from scratch, circa 1945..."

Wall of Shame:

Morgan Gstalter: McConnell: Midterms could be 'a Category 3, 4 or 5' storm for GOP: "'We know the wind is going to be in our face. We don���t know whether it���s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5'...

Matthew Yglesias: "The highbrow intellectual leaders of the modern conservative movement explicitly conceptualized it as a white nationalist undertaking. Trump is true to this legacy and his intra-movement critics are the innovators...

Eight years of Governor Sam Brownback has seen Kansas lose 8% of its jobs relative to the national average. Now Kansas is Ground Zero for Trump's trade war. Joshua Green: Chinese Sorghum Tariffs Will Hit Hard in Trump-friendly Kansas: "Trump���s Trade War Hits Another Red State: What���s the matter with Kansas? It���ll be hardest hit by new Chinese tariffs...

Will Wilkinson: The DACA and immigration debates are about whether Latinos are ���real Americans���: "Challenging the idea that Latino Americans can be truly American undercuts the very idea of America...

Just when you think the mainstream media could not sink any lower into misogyny and stupidity, it's the Atlantic Monthly!: Scott Lemieux: Are you provoked yet?: "Both James Bennet and Fred Hiatt have been asked to hold David Bradley���s beer...

Ezra Klein: @ezraklein on Twitter: "I don���t know what the [New York] Times should���ve done with Thrush. But I watched the efforts to plant oppo and smear @lkmcgann in the aftermath of her reporting. Anyone who thinks coming forward with these experiences is easy, even now, is wrong. I am beyond proud to be her colleague..."

Yes, this is as bad a violation of academic standards as it looks: Henry Farrell: The public choice of public choice: "Now this... 'financial ties to the Charles Koch Foundation... [but] George Mason University has cited its academic independence.

The Brexiters never had a plan for what they would do if they won the referendum. And they still do not have a plan. I do not see a road other than "transitional" arrangements that keep things as they are without the UK having any voice in Brussels���"transitional" arrangements that will keep getting indefinitely extended: Robert Hutton: Stuck In the Middle: These Are Theresa May's Four Brexit Options: "Her inner Brexit Cabinet has rejected her proposed customs relationship with the European Union...

Gabrielle Coppola: Trump���s TPP Pullout May Have Cost Missouri Its Harley Factory: "Harley-Davidson Inc.���s chief executive officer said he may have kept a plant open in Missouri if the U.S. had stayed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that President Donald Trump withdrew from last year...

WTF happened to Brendan Nyhan? The braineater has eaten his brain: Josh Marshall: "There are several problems with this logic.: The first is that you are applying jury trial standards to what are political questions. You are also applying statutory standards where they do not exist. As a factual matter the obstruction question is not in doubt...

Some Fairly-Recent Links:

Petra Moser: Further extending long-lived US copyrights will do no good. : No benefits from extensions. And if extensions ever get applied to science, there'd be huge welfare loss, especially for people at less affluent institutions...

Paul Krugman: We've basically crossed the line into treason now -- and a whole party is acquiescing: Benjamin Wittes: "I have a whole lot to say about how the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the President of the United States teamed up to out an intelligence source who aided our country in a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation against a hostile foreign power..."

Jen Kirby: Laurel/Yanny: the science behind the audio trick, explained: "It comes down to how our brains pick up on, and interpret, different frequencies..."

Yes, there are first-class New York-style bagels in Greater San Francisco: Bagel Baron: "2701 Eighth St Berkeley, CA 94710..."

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Flowers of Vashnoi goes live

Sangria

Captain Mardens

British governance appears at least as bad today as American governance even though they are not helmed by an unstable and corrupt kleptocrat: Simon Wren-Lewis: Delusions of National Power: "Inevitable that the UK would stay in the Customs Union (CU) and the Single Market (SM)...

Claremont Canyon Conservancy: Map/Trails

Eduard Bernstein: (1895): Cromwell and Communism