Brad Plumer at Wonk Blog tells us, High-School Graduation Rates Are Rising—But No One Knows Why. He is reporting on a paper by Richard Murnane of Harvard who looked at graduation rates from 1970 to the present. In general, graduation rates declined until 2000 and since then, they’ve be going up—fast. But here’s the thing: no one knows why it went down before. And no one knows why it is going up now. But I have a couple of ideas.

Here is the critical graph:

They can’t explain this graph. But they have some ideas, of course. One is that it is lead. At this point, I’m not going to dismiss any speculation that the removal of lead has made us infinitely healthier, smarter, and less violent. But most of the lead was gone by the 1970s, and I would think we would have seen an effect earlier than 2000. Another idea is students are now being better prepared for tests, so they feel more confident that they can graduate. I don’t know about that: they weren’t testing kids for graduation back in 1980. Or maybe it is just that the moon is in the seventh house or some such.

I would love to dive into the raw data, because I have a few ideas of my own. Starting in 1980, there really is no trend: kids are graduating at the same rate that they always were. But then, in the mid-1990s, graduation levels drop. I remember that time: jobs were for the asking. So it is not surprising that a lot of marginal students would decide they were better off just getting a job. Then the economy goes into recession and thanks to the stewardship of George W. Bush, we pretty much stay that way until the economy implodes. Jobs are harder to find so why not stay in school. (This second part comes from the original paper.)

The data conform very well to this narrative. But the question remains: what happened in the period 1975 to 1980? This is a weird period with low unemployment then high then low then high. Given this volatility, it is hard to imagine students being able to make a rational employment/school decision based upon the economy. I tend to think that something else must have been going on. It was, after all, a fairly gloomy period. Just the same, “morning in America” didn’t cause a further decrease in graduation rates. But that may be because those inclined to despair were already despairing.

Regardless, it is kind of nice to see this improvement. Still, it is hard for me to believe that even now almost 20% of boys drop out of high school.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is cutting back production of the new iPhone due to lower than expected sales. Apple stock prices plummeted. And then all the Apple people went crazy. Impossible! Stock manipulation!

As Matt Yglesias notes: maybe! Who knows? And frankly, who cares? I’ve been very critical of Apple over the years. But this is not due to their products; it is due to their business practices. They are exhibit A in the case against software patents and look-and-feel lawsuits.

But there is another side of this. Apple products are good, but they aren’t really any better than any of their competitors. Certainly it is the case that Microsoft kept the PC in the dark ages for a good decade. But I’ve long been a huge critic of Bill Gates. The fact that PCs really sucked 20 years ago is no reason to claim that Apple has a better smart phone than Samsung. So yeah, I am a little more inclined to joined the chorus against Apple. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own Mac at home (I use it in the kitchen and it is a wonderful machine, even though it is a few years old.)

I should put my cards on the table, though. I just bought my first e-book reader: a bottom of the barrel Kindle. And I am learning to love it. For one thing, I always have my Shakespeare and various Don Quixote translations with me. And still only five ounces! Plus, it is a hell of lot more convenient to book mark than to use Book Darts, even though I do still love them. Bottom line: I’m a Luddite. And I’m happy that way.

But I’m not surprised that people are tending to go more Android than Apple. And if I were to start writing code again, I would do it for the Android. And if I had Apple stock, I would already have sold it. Regardless of what happened today.

In 2014: my first smart phone! Maybe.

You see, this is where America is really lagging:

Betsy McCaughey is one of the most evil people in America. She is a big part of why healthcare reform died under the Clinton administration. She is also a big part of why we didn’t get a public option in Obamacare. Can you say, “Death panels”? Yeah, that was her.

I remember seeing her on The Daily Show with the whole ACA in a binder. The entire interview was just double talk. Jon Stewart kept asking her where these “death panels” were and she would take him to one page. He would respond, “I don’t see any death panel there.” So she would say, “You have to go over to this other page.” And the cycle would continue.

Here she is trying to kill the public option on The Dylan Ratigan Show. She is destroyed:

What I find most interesting about Betsy McCaughey is her political associations. She was a Republican until 1997 (up through the time when she destroyed the Clinton healthcare plan). And then, after Dole lost big in 1996, she became a Democrat. She stayed a Democrat until—Can you see it coming?—2010! With the rise of the Tea Party, she became a Republican again! Is there any chance she’ll become a Democrat again? After all, Romney lost pretty bad. I do hope not; there is enough to be ashamed of in the Democratic Party.

Oh: who was she working with while destroying the Clinton healthcare bill? Philip Morris. Of course!

Afterword

I don’t care about tweeting his weenie, I miss Anthony Weiner.

H/T: Mark Ames

Colin Powell is getting all kinds of plaudits in the liberal world today. He was on NBC, being interviewed by David Gregory. And he is oh, so disappointed in his party.

If I had one thing to say to the general, it would be this: fuck you!

I’m sorry, but I am sick to death of this man and the many more like him. There are all kinds of people who claim to be Republicans but complain that the party is somehow not living up to its history. And generally, these people have been good soldiers for a movement that lost all credibility about 35 years ago. In his case, we might well never have gone into Iraq had Colin Powell been the honorable man that he pretends to be.

And this Sunday he was yet again claiming that his party is—Contain your shock!—misbehaving:

He’s completely right, of course. But what is the Republican Party if not a racist group? What party did he think he was a member of? Did he not notice the Willie Horton add that got Bush Sr elected? No. I don’t accept this. Sure, the Republican Party is crazier than ever. But they haven’t reached some new quantum level. John Sununu has been a major player in the Republican Party for a long time. This is nothing new. And I simply do not accept that Colin Powell is only noticing this now. But I will allow that he is finally embarrassed by it.

Look: I get it. I’m a Democrat and I am very unhappy with my party. But I know that my problems with the Democratic Party are mostly on the edges. My party isn’t just a major bait and switch con. But the Republican Party is. They get people to vote for them because they hate and fear gays and blacks and Muslims and just about anyone else you can name. And then they govern as an oligarchy. In 2004, the Republican supporters were surprised that they voted to “get the fags” but got a government intent to “get your Social Security.” I don’t understand how these people can continue to vote for the Republican Party, but that’s another issue.

Does Colin Powell really believe that we accept that he’s as naive as the ignorant idiots who keep the Republican Party in power? He is part of that power structure. He was Secretary of State because of the continuing use of the Southern Strategy by the Republican Party. He is one of them and he is wrong to think that I will be fooled into thinking that he is anything other than part of the problem.

So really, Colin? You just noticed you’re a member of a racist group? Really, Colin Powell?

Some people are very worried about the Debt Ceiling crisis. I am one of them. I’m finding it very hard to think of anything else. But there are a lot of people out there who are trying to comfort us all with rosy deconstructions of what’s going on in Washington. Greg Sargent’s Morning Plum had the cheeky title, The Debt Ceiling Is the GOP’s Problem. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. The implication here is that all this hope that Obama will stand strong on the Debt Ceiling is a bunch of happy horseshit. We’ve seen Obama draw lines in the sand only to later cross them in—What?—ever negotiation he’s ever been in. But hope does indeed spring eternal for all of us out here who are terrified that this is all going to end badly.

Think about a game of chicken for a moment. Two cars speed towards each other and we see which one swerves first. Or we watch a high speed head-on collision of the two cars. Consider the situation if the two drivers have played this game many times before with the same driver always swerving. But this time, that driver claims he absolutely is not going to swerve. There are three possibilities. The least likely possibility is that the other guy will swerve this time. Slightly more likely is that the same old guy will swerve. And the most likely possibility is that there is a high speed head-on collision with lots of collateral damage.

Obama is the guy that has always swerved.

So that’s where we’re at. But Sargent’s article does include some hopeful information. Politico reported this morning that half the House GOP membership is prepared to cause the government to default. On its face, this sounds bad: half the GOP is crazy. But I already know that. These numbers indicate that if Boehner doesn’t follow the “Hastert Rule,” which stops him from allowing a vote on anything that doesn’t have majority support of his caucus, there is no problem. The Democrats and a hand full of Republicans will vote to raise the Debt Ceiling. End of story. So “Good news, everyone!”

Along the same lines, Jonathan Cohn reports that the White House explicitly abandoned the platinum coin option to put more pressure on the Republicans. There is some sense to this. If the White House claimed that it was prepared to use this option, the media would have reported it as he’s crazy, she’s crazy. But all this talk of leverage doesn’t really make any sense. The Republican Party is crazy. Their position seems to be if they can’t get everything they want, what is the point of being in Congress. It is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jonathan Chait is similarly on the case, but he seems a little more concerned than the others. The truth is that we really don’t know what is going to happen. The time for this confrontation has come. But he pointed out a nice irony with the Republican position:

But as I’ve written before, even more than crazy, the Republicans are immature. Their behavior makes all the sense in the world if you put it in the context of a grammar school playground.

This morning, John Sides wrote a guest article over at Wonk Blog. It had a very cheerful sounding title, How Congressional Dysfunction Could Hurt House Republicans. I was looking for something to raise my spirits, because I’m pretty down about the Republicans in Washington. In fact, today I described them as terrorists, and I do not think this is the least bit hyperbolic.

Boy, did Dr. Sides disappoint! I think a better title for the article would have been, “How Congressional Dysfunction Will Not Hurt House Republicans.” But I can’t complain too much, because I already knew that. Especially after the new heights reaching in gerrymandering in 2010, there is little that will change. In fact, it would not surprise me if the Republicans gained seats in the House, after they greatly damaged the world economy by causing a United States government default.

So what’s up with that cheery title? Well, it turns out that some political science research shows that the electorate punishes whichever party is in control when the House is dysfunctional. Or more accurately: if House approval goes down, so does approval for the majority party’s incumbents. Sides quotes Rahm Emanuel regarding the details of governance, “Voters don’t give a [expletive] about that stuff.” And indeed they don’t. If the government defaults next month, I’m not sure if my sister Mary will have any idea it was a Republican decision.

I’ll tell you where I’m at. I just hope that for the next eight years we can avoid any catastrophes in Washington. And I hope that the Democratic Party will make a big push to control state legislatures in 2020. And if that can happen, maybe we can make some actual progress in the decade after that. Until them, I don’t think the Republicans have a God damned thing to worry about for destroying the United States. In fact, I expect them to be rewarded if just refrain from doing anything too damaging.

This is what you call “cognitive dissonance”: the ability to be hopeful and hopeless at the same exact time. Yeah psychology!

Afterword

This is the song I was listening to while I wrote this: