Last week, I discussed how ideology blinds conservative thinking to the full range of possible economic solutions to problems. In particular, I was talking about Milton Friedman and how his insistence on avoiding Keynesian solutions caused him to come up with some very clever economic tools—even if we have since found that those tools have limited usefulness and must be an addition to Keynesian tools, not their replacement. Yesterday, William K Black published a great article over at OpEd News, Rajan Calls Krugman “Paranoid” for Criticizing Reinhart and Rogoff’s Research. It is a rundown of recent economic history of the disintegration of the austerity economics coming out of the IMF. But more to the point: it discusses this issue of ideological blindness in economics.

The two major players in this story are Raghuram Rajan and Ken Rogoff. These are both guys who are first and foremost political ideologues. Then they are economists. And that means that their economic skills (unquestionably great) are used as weapons in persuit of their ideological goals. Again: this is not how science works! Although both men pretend to be regular economists, their actual job titles should be Conservative Apologist. Both men are laser focused on keeping inflation down at all costs. As I’ve discussed before, higher inflation would have been a good think over the past many years. It would only have been a bad thing for the rich who are sitting on piles of cash. So Rajan, who has been appointed the next Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, can be depended upon not to do what is best for the broad interests of the people, but rather just what is in the interests of the rich.

Black points out conservative economists have managed to miss major problems in the real economy by defining the issues away in their models:

In other words: “There can be no corruption because it doesn’t exist in my model. And because there can be no corruption, we don’t need any regulation!” And it just so happens that the people who make these models start with an ideology that says that regulation is bad. Funny that!

This also goes along with the whole theme of Black’s article. The conservatives have claimed that people like Krugman and Stiglitz are meanies who make personal attacks. But the truth is quite the opposite. The conservative attacks have been almost entirely personal. And there is a good reason for that: the conservative economic arguments have been weak from the start and are now basically nonexistent. That basically leaves, “You’re a potty head!” And, “All the real economists think just what I do!”

Black has coined a term for these people: theoclassical. As best as I can tell, these are economists who believe in classical economics as a matter of faith. It seems related to the Confidence Fairy. She was a creation of Paul Krugman to explain why conservatives thought that cutting spending would improve a weak economy. The Confidence Fairy is like the Great Pumpkin: if the government cuts social spending, she will magically appear to reward the good policy makers. It’s silly but this is in fact what conservatives claim. “Theoclassical economics” is a more serious notion: conservatives really do not have reasons for what they believe regarding the economy. It is all faith based: they start with the truth that they just know and try to come up with economic theories to justify the truth that cannot be questioned.

So maybe the Republican constituency isn’t so strange after all: it is faith based social conservatives on one side and faith base economic conservatives on the other. They are bound by their resistance to facts.

JoyfulA retweeted a really disturbing twitter conversation. It amazes me what many conservatives say online. I have to admit, they sound a whole lot different from the conservatives who I have actual conversations with. Online, the people come off as rigid and hateful. But I guess that makes sense. There is that simmering under the surface of my conversations. And I rarely confront conservatives on their opinions; I’m more interested in drawing them out and finding out why they think what they think. It is hard to conclude that at base, conservatives are just pissed off that other people are getting away with stuff.

The conversation started with a man writing, “Baby murder is 100% a liberal agenda. Margaret Sanger wanted blacks eliminated. Murder is not a choice.” Sanger was a birth control advocate who started organizations that later became Planned Parenthood. She was also a racist. She believed that light skinned people were superior to dark skinned people. There appears to now be a conservative meme that says that Sanger was really only interested killing black babies. This is patently false. For one thing, her focus was on birth control, not abortions. She was actually against abortions (because they were so unsafe) and wanted to use birth control as a way to stop them.

Many years ago, I predicted that if conservatives got abortion made illegal, they would move on to birth control. Well, they didn’t even wait that long. The anti-choice movement has embraced opposition to birth control in a big way. This is mostly in the form of opposition to “the pill,” which they seem to think causes an abortion. (It does not.) What all of this shows is that the anti-choice movement is fundamentally an anti-woman movement. The idea is to limit the choices that women have.

Yet another man added, “Her legacy is planned Parenthood, and she was a racist.” And finally a woman joined the chorus, “Democrats support the war on women, minorities, elderly. Wake up. You are being exploited.” I don’t really know what these people are talking about. The Christian Church was started by a homophobic man with extreme sexual hang-ups. I’ve always thought that was pretty amazing: because of Paul’s many personal problems, much of western civilization continues to have a screwed up relationship to sex. Regardless, none of these people would accept the argument that their religion is invalid because Paul was at best a man of his times. Margaret Sanger was right about birth control and that is all that is relevant.

The one good thing that came out of this is that Anthony B (who has been fighting the good fight against these idiots) tweeted the following cartoon that rather well sums up the modern Republican Party:

On this day back in 1578, the Italian Baroque painter Francesco Albani was born. He specialized in a kind of idyllic religious work that is not widely appreciated but which I rather like. Baroque composer Nicola Porpora was born in 1686. Here is a little bit from his opera Semiramide Riconosciuta that has a nice Bach feel to it:

Writer and proto-feminist Gene Stratton-Porter was born in 1863. Another early feminist Mae West was born in 1893. I didn’t realize it, but she lived to be 87 year old.

FBI agent Mark Felt was born in 1913. He is best known as “Deep Throat,” the Watergate scandal leaker. It is interesting that Wikipedia refers to him as a “whistleblower.” And it should! But that is not the description that it gives to Edward Snowden. Today there is all kinds of discussion as to whether Snoden really qualifies as a whistleblower. There is lots of mud slung at him with the implicit and sometimes explicit claim that if Snowden’s purpose was not morally snow white, then he’s a villain. But Felt was nothing close to snow white. In 2010, Bob Woodward said this of Felt’s motivations:

The truth is that I have little doubt that Snowden will be seen as a hero in ten or twenty years. At the time, those in power always think such people are traitors. What’s different now is that the press itself has become so obsequious towards power that they are the ones calling for whistleblowers’ heads. I’ve been amazed that over the past few months, there has been fairly limited official attacks on Snowden. There hasn’t been the need. They can just depend on people like Bob Schieffer:

And poet and destroyer of unstable women, Ted Hughes was born in 1930.

Actor Maureen O’Hara is 93 today. Actor Robert De Niro is 70. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes is 64. Writer Jonathan Franzen is 54. And actor Sean Penn is 53.

The day, however, belongs to the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat who was born on this day in 1601 (or 1607). By profession, he was a lawyer. But his passion was mathematics and made a number of important contributions to the field, especially in number theory. And it is for one conjecture in that field that he is best known for: Fermat’s Last Theorem. He said that there are no three natural numbers a, b, and c that will make the following equation true for an integer n greater than 2:

If n is 2, then this equation can be true; for example: 3² + 4² = 5². But when n is 3 or higher, it did not appear to ever be true. This was widely believed. But Fermat wrote in the margin of a book (a habit of his), “It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” But for the 28 years of his life, he never mentioned the problem again. For centuries mathematicians searched for the solution, which was only found 358 years later.

Did Fermat really have a “marvelous” proof that everyone else missed? Alas, no. It is generally thought that he was either mistaken or had a more limited proof in mind. Remember, the proof was only in his mind, so he could have thought he had a proof, but there was actually a mistake in it. Or maybe he had a proof for n=3 that he thought would generalize. It is certainly possible that he later realized that he hadn’t solved the problem. After all, how likely would you be to go back to an old book and update something you had written in the margin of a page? “Update: oops! I was wrong.” What’s more, countless times over the years, other mathematicians thought they had solved the problem, only to be proven incorrect.

Here is a brief video with the man who finally solved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1995, Andrew Wiles. He actually starts crying while talking about it. It’s an amazing thing. It doesn’t however talk about the math, which involves a number of developments and would just confuse all of us anyway. It took him 6 years of concentrated work, despite the fact that he was already a specialist in the subfield of mathematics. The proof itself is over 100 pages long.

Happy birthday Pierre de Fermat!

“The repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the financial crisis.” This is a common claim made by conservatives in defense of doing absolutely nothing to fix our financial industry. And like much conservative wisdom, it is true enough to be dangerous. Glass-Steagall was the depression era law that stipulated two kinds of banks: commercial and investment. And never the twain shall meet. This had to do with FDIC, which insures deposits. The idea was that if the government was going to guarantee deposits, the banks were going to be careful with those deposits. Similarly, it was assumed that those investing with commercial banks were sophisticated investors who understood the risks. But in 1999, Glass-Steagall was repealed.

What makes this important is not that this repeal itself caused the financial crisis, because it most certainly did not. But the repeal allowed banks to get bigger. And since the crisis, those banks have only gotten bigger still. So the repeal of Glass-Steagall did exactly what those who first passed the law would have predicted. So we went from banks that were too big to fail to banks that are even bigger than too big to fail.

In a sane world, after 2008, all of these banking behemoths would have been broken up into little bite size chunks. But that brilliant man who many think “deserves” to be the next Federal Reserve chairman thought that was a bad idea. And we all know what buds Summers and the president are, so Summers ruled the day and the financial crisis led to us having an even more risky industry than we started with! Brilliant. Put that man in charge of the Fed!

Now, however, a bipartisan group of senators (bipartisan in the sense of Elizabeth Warren with two Democrats and McCain) have proposed reinstating Glass-Steagall. The banking industry, predictably, is against it. “It will make us less competitive!” The shocking thing is that such complaints are not openly mocked. No other industry would be allowed to make such claims. Dean Baker puts it well:

But because bankers are so powerful and as Baker puts it “own Washington” their competitiveness is our problem, just like it is our problem when they fail.

The best thing about reimplementing Glass-Steagall is that it would effectively do what our president was too weak kneed (and beholden) to do: break up the big banks. There is no doubt that this would not be enough, but it would be a start. And the fact that people are even talking about is a very good sign.

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institute. And he had some advice for his fellow Republicans this morning, On Republican Priorities, Obama May Have a Point. That title makes Chen sound far more reasonable than he is. He starts by claiming that Obama has “lost almost all credibility” defending Obamacare. But he says that Obama may have a point when he says that the Republicans have not offered up what they are planning to replace it with. (Note to Mr. Chen: nothing.) He says that Republicans should debunk this claim, adding, “Now it’s time to coherently articulate a vision for what should replace the fundamentally flawed health-care law.”

Let’s stop right there. This is a conservative line that drives me nuts. It’s true: Obamacare is fundamentally flawed. And why is it fundamentally flawed? Because conservative fucktards like Lanhee Chen claimed that they were all for this “free market” approach to healthcare reform. But of course, the moment that the Democrats compromised and gave them their totally fucked up insurance company giveaway, the Republicans jumped back as though a cobra had just been dropped at their feet. Their great answer to healthcare reform was now, “Socialism!” Give me a fucking break!

But Chen is just getting started. He tells us, “Republicans aren’t lacking for ideas about what to replace Obamacare with.” According to him, conservative think tanks are overflowing with great proposals. Before getting to them, let’s just be clear. If the Democrats repealed Obamacare and tried to pass any of these “plans,” the Republicans would again turn on a dime and complain that the new plans were straight from the anus of Satan.

First he says there are real divides among the Republicans about how to provide healthcare to the tens of millions who don’t currently have it. But really there aren’t. He says that some conservatives “reject the very notion that expanding access to health insurance is a priority.” This is all tactical because none of them want to do anything. There are those who come right out and say that they don’t want to do anything. Then there are those who say they really do want to do something, but somehow whatever proposal is offered just isn’t quite right. Bottom line: they are against reforming the healthcare system because the people they care about are already served and they don’t care about the others.

He also notes that a big sticking point is cost. Oh yes, cost is always a big issue for Republicans. At least it is when they aren’t in the White House. And it is when the money might go to poor people. But when it will go to corporations or farmers or just rich individuals, the spigot is always on.

When he gets to all the great ideas that conservatives have regarding healthcare reform, he mentions only two important ones. The first one is an oldie that would make the current system worse: allow people to buy insurance across state lines! What this would do is allow young, healthy people in (say) California, which has laws requiring a certain level of coverage from insurance companies, to buy insurance from Mississippi, which has no such laws. This would make the insurance risk pool much more expensive in California. So this would lower health insurance costs on exactly the people who don’t need help while it increased costs on the people who do. It’s the perfect conservative policy. Brilliant!

The second one is also an oldie: tort reform! Prevent people who have been harmed from suing. Republicans love this because they always want to screw the poor and benefit the rich. Estimates are that lawsuits increase the cost of healthcare by—Wait for it!—upwards of 1%. That’s right! The second big policy idea of the Republicans would at most decrease costs by 1%. But what it would do is make the rich even richer. Again: the perfect conservative policy!

You may have noticed that the Republicans always find a way to propose the same ideas that they like for other reasons for every problem that comes around. Healthcare unaffordable? Tort reform! City smog getting you down? Tort reform! Can’t afford college. Reform the fucking tort system!

Chen also mentions “changing the existing tax treatment of health care.” That should be done but it is not going to make a big difference. He also thinks there should be more transparency in medical billing. Again: okay, but hardly an earth shattering idea. The thing to note about all of this is that even under the best of circumstances, all of these ideas combined would not even begin to accomplish what Obamacare already has. So Obama’s original criticism that Chen claims could be easily counted has gone unanswered by him or any other conservative I’ve ever heard from. (Note: all of Chen’s “great ideas” are the same garbage we always hear from conservatives.)

Lanhee Chen is involved in the great conservative cause: providing reasonable sounding excuses for why the Republican Party is totally useless. As with the Republican establishment, Republican intellectuals are primarily interested in providing political cover. I can see why someone like Josh Barro is so hated in the Republican Party. He actually has policy ideas. People like Lanhee Chen offer nothing but apologia for the cause. The modern conservative movement is rotten to its very core.

On this day back in 1557, the Italian Baroque painter Agostino Carracci was born. He was also a printmaker. I’m not that fond of his work, but he is rather good. One of the earliest astronomers to make observations of “deep sky objects” (e.g. galaxies) Pierre Mechain was born in 1744. The Russian opera composer Yevstigney Fomin was born in 1761. Here is the Finale from The Coachmen at the Relay Station:

Psychology pioneer, Wilhelm Wundt was born in 1832. Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin was born in 1876. Economist E. F. Schumacher was born in 1911.

Writer Charles Bukowski was born in 1920. I am torn on him. On the one hand, he really isn’t a bad writer. I get tired of some of his obsessions and his beat hipster attitude, but he was an interesting guy who worked his craft. On the other hand, every idiot who can’t appreciate any decent literature loves Bukowski. And among men, there is more than a hint of misogyny in their “appreciation” of his work. Regardless, I will be very happy to never read another line of his for the rest of my life.

And the hand behind Scooter, Beaker, and Statler, Richard Hunt was born in 1951. Here he is as Beaker singing “Feelings”:

Australian director who has made a number of good American films (e.g. Crimes of the Heart), Bruce Beresford is 73 today. Actor Lesley Ann Warren is 67. Jackass, but extremely talented director James Cameron is 59. My generation’s Marlene Dietrich, Madonna is 55. Actor Angela Bassett is too. Timothy Hutton is 53. And Steve Carell is 51.

The day, however, belongs to the great composer and pianist Bill Evans who was born on this day in 1929. I don’t have much to say about his life. Whenever people do talk about his life they focus far too much on the drugs. I think it was all and always about the music. And the music speaks for itself. Here he is with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell (who both provide amazing solos) doing the Miles Davis tune “Nardis”:

Happy birthday Bill Evans!

Paul Krugman is continuing his discussion of the legacy of Milton Friedman with a discussion of why conservative economists—many of them great at the science itself—are resistant or even impervious to contrary information. This round started with yet another terse and impenetrable Brad DeLong article that Krugman helpfully translated into English.[1] The observation has two parts. First, in the 1960s, Friedman predicted the stagflation of the 1970s. As a result of this, “liberal”[2] (mostly Keynesian) economists took note of this and changed how they looked at the economy. Second, in the 1990s, Krugman predicted the liquidity trap of the late naughts. As a result of this, conservative economists have largely refused to rethink how they look at the economy. Instead they just come up with excuses as to why the data don’t show what the the data very clearly do show.

Krugman proposes two reasons why there is this asymmetry. First, as I have argued, it is that the conservative economists are in love with their computer models. I know about this. When I was in the academy, I wrote very big computer models of the environment. It is very easy to think that the model is more real than the system that it models. I have even heard scientists complain that some phenomenon cannot be happening purely because their model does not allow it. It is sad, but very understandable. And given that the efficient market models are very complex, they can easily become and end in themselves. Krugman suggests that the economists who use this kind of theory find it comfortable and hard to give up.

His second reason is more to the point however: politics. He notes that while there is nothing particularly liberal about Keynesianism, monetarism is most definitely conservative. Krugman is being much more blunt than people normally are in polite company. But I want to take it further (no one would ever mistake me for polite company). The conservative economists are not really doing what I consider science. Science starts with data and leads to theory. I don’t see that from Friedman and other conservative economists. To me they are looking only for theories that will further their ideological prejudices.

Look at what happened in the 1970s which led to, as Krugman puts it, “Friedman’s promotion to demigod status.” After that, the conservative “fresh water” community did not celebrate that Keynes’ theory had been expanded. Not at all! They celebrated that Keynes had been destroyed. Can you imagine if Einstein had gone around scoffing at Galileo? Of course you can’t because Einstein was a scientist who was building on the work of Galileo. I can’t say for sure that Friedman did or did not look that way at Keynes. But it certainly seems that Robert Lucas did. And so did most of the louder voices in the movement.

Over the past few years, I’ve heard lots of garbage from these kinds of thinkers. One of the most annoying is the idea that government stimulus spending can’t help the economy because of Ricardian Equivalence. This is a very old theory that if the government borrows money to stimulate the economy, the tax payers will just cut their spending, because they know that they’ll have to be taxed to pay for the government spending. There are a couple of problems with it. First, even if it is true, who says that the money spent this year will need to be paid back right away? Couldn’t that money be paid off over ten years and thus the stimulus would work? Second, really?! Do people really behave this way? I just don’t see it.

The point is that there really should be no question that stimulus works. The data are overwhelming. But conservative economists reach very far to come up with theories to justify what they want to believe. I’m not claiming that they aren’t smart, because clearly they are. But ideology blinds them to the point where they can only find certain kinds of results. In the case of Friedman, this probably helped him to look at the economy in a different way. But right now, it is blinding them. It reminds me of Obamacare. It came from the Heritage Foundation. Clearly the people who came up with it were smart. They had to be! They ruled out at the start the most obvious healthcare solutions that were all working well throughout the developed world.

So conservative economics can be useful but in the long run all of its proponents will turn out to be minor figures. History will see them for the ideological apologists that they were (and are). The question for us today is how long we are going to allow our politicians (conservative and liberal alike) to use their apologetics to avoid doing the right thing.

[1] The problem is not that DeLong uses jargon, although sometimes he does. It is just that he assumes that everyone knows what he knows and he doesn’t work at clarifying what he’s getting at. Some have leveled the same criticism at me.

[2] The reason I put “liberal” in quotes is that what is today considered “liberal economics” is really not ideological; it is just science.

So what are you wearing? Nothing?! You dirty girl! Wait! Is this online? Well, I guess it doesn’t matter given that everything I say or write is taken down—just in case it is ever necessary to use to convict me of a parking violation. I don’t want to get too conspiratorial, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the government had special computers to figure out what I’m thinking. And given this, the NSA can stop listening now because it, unlike my readers, already knows what I’m going to say.

Recently, I’ve been confronted with a lot of people telling me that they don’t care about government surveillance programs because, “I don’t have anything to hide.” This seems like a strange response to me. First, you all may not have anything to hide, but I do. I am working on of a high tech project that we are concerned will become known before we go public. And it is especially the kind of computer hackers who the NSA employs that we don’t want finding out about our work. Second, even if you don’t think you have anything to hide, you are wrong. You don’t want your social security number known. You don’t want your medical records know. You don’t want recordings of you on the toilet released on the internet. And finally, even if you personally have nothing to hide, there are lots of people who make your life better who do have things to hide. The most obvious example is the way that government agencies have gone after peace activists. Robust debate and dissent are critical to having a democracy.

Yesterday, Bart Gellman broke a big story over at the Washington Post, NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds. When I read that headline, I laughed out loud. Of course! And this is just what the NSA finds using their own screwed up idea of privacy.

Consider that in the first quarter of 2012, the NSA violated FISA 195 times. This is big news because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides us with very few protections. To give you some idea of this, the FISA court is more or less a rubber stamp for law enforcement: anything they want, they get. You doubt me? As I wrote in February:

Almost the first thing that Edward Snowden said publicly was that from his terminal at work, he could spy on anyone. Many people in the media and politics claimed that this was untrue, but it, like everything else he’s said, has turned out to be true. This most recent revelation ought to concern all those people who think that the government would never misuse the data they collect. Information is power. And currently, the NSA is collecting all the information they can just because they can. Such information does not sit idle for long. And there is an entropy problem: it tends to get mixed and ends up in places you would never predict.

Think about Edward Snowden. The people who claim that he is a villain and that we have nothing to worry about regarding the NSA are being inconsistent. It is not remotely possible that he was the only person who had access to that data that has or will use it in a way that we don’t approve of. And Obama’s idea of limiting the number of people who have access to the data will not fix the problem.

But this kind of misbehavior by people at the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the dozens of other “law enforcement” organizations isn’t even at issue in this most recent revelation. This one is just about the fact that the NSA having data about us means that they will misuse it. There is no need to even discuss the many nefarious aspects of the agency. The existence of the data implies its misuse. If we are going to address this problem, we must do it on the front side—on the collection side. After the data are collected, the battle is lost.

Now what was that you were wearing, you dirty girl?

I’m no fan of Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei. They are are ultimate “inside the beltway” and “conventional wisdom” guys and I usually want to throttle them. But the fact that they are so plugged into Washington means that they can be believed when they report about what “people” are saying in Washington. So I was interested to see that last night they published an article about the concerns of mainstream Republicans, Eve of Destruction. It starts with a bold proclamation, “It is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be.” I’ll bet that’s true.

Right now, I’m very concerned about what the crazy faction in the Republican Party is going to do. The amount of damage they could do to the country is enormous. But they would also be doing great damage to their own party. Even five years ago, I would have thought that a bad thing. But increasingly, I think the only way forward is for the Republican Party to go away and the Democratic Party to split in half. So a government default would be very bad but it would have a silver lining. That’s not true for establishment Republicans; it is all downside for them.

But let me put it a little differently. In terms of policy, the establishment Republicans are just as vile as the Crazy Caucus. They are different in that they understand how politics works and that losing elections means losing power. A big part of the House Republican caucus is made up of inexperienced politicians. Over 100 Republicans in the House were first elected in 2010 or 2012. And a great many of them came to Washington thinking that our constitutional republic was about to be extinguished by the Kenyan socialist interloper in the White House. They are not people who take the long view because they think the crisis is right now.

For the record, I think there is something to what the crazy caucus is doing, even if they are unaware of it. Even though Republicans have lost plenty of elections from 1976 on, government policy has gotten more and more conservative. So in as much as the Republicans can lose elections and still get the Democrats to follow them, the Republicans win. The difference here is that the Republicans look awfully close to losing a voice in the debate. If they start winning only 30% of the seats in the House, they just won’t matter. (Or the party will finally make major changes for the better.)

So what are these morose Republican establishment types talking about? “Several influential Republicans told us the party is actually in a worse place than it was Nov. 7, the day after the disastrous election.” They make three points: (1) the party is hurting itself even more with groups that have been a problem for them; (2) those Republicans who tried to do something (e.g. Rubio on immigration) were beaten down; and (3) the Crazy Caucus wants to shut the government down this fall. Yep, that about sums it up.

But the fears of the Republican establishment are kind of silly from my perspective. The article says, “These Republicans came into the year exceptionally hopeful the party would finally wise up and put immigration and irresponsible rhetoric and governing behind them.” It is clear what the problem is here. Consider Rubio on immigration: he wasn’t willing to give much on the issue even at his best. That and an end to “irresponsible rhetoric” is what was going to save the party? The linchpins of the Republican Party are lower taxes on the wealthy and abortion restrictions on the poor. There are related issue here (e.g. cutting spending on the poor), but those two are what the party really cares about. I understand that they can’t moderate on the abortion issue: most of their popular support is on that issue. But they could come up with a more (I’m going to say it!) populist policy on taxes. I’m not saying they should start calling for huge tax increasing, but being against taxes under all circumstances is just stupid and irresponsible. But these establishment Republicans won’t even do that.

The problem with the Republican Party is that the extremists and the establishment don’t disagree about anything except tactics. The establishment members of the party are right to be worried. But if they really want to be pointing a finger at who is destroying their party, they will need to use a mirror.

On this day back in 1771, the Scottish novelist Walter Scott was born. He is still quite worth reading, although people tend to forgetting him in favor of all the stars like Dickens, Eliot, and Austen. His work is nothing like theirs. Perhaps the most famous opium addict in history, Thomas De Quincey was born in 1785. Still, he lived to be 74, which is a lot longer than most English writers of that time, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad choice. Children’s author and socialist reformer E. Nesbit was born in 1858. Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo was born in 1872. British Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (A damned confusing name!) was born in 1875. His work is good, but rather typical late Romantic period stuff. He died tragically young; I think he would have gone onto write his best work. But here is his Romance in G for Violin and Orchestra that is still very good:

One of the greatest of the early 20th century composers, Marion Bauer was born in 1882. It is hard to accept her under-appreciation as anything but sexism. For example, I think she is a distinctly more interesting composer than Aaron Copland. Some of her work is very difficult. But the following Piano Concerto “American Youth” is just gorgeous:

The great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber was born in 1885. She is probably best known for writing the novel Show Boat, which was turned into a hit musical that included the song “Old Man River.” French composer Jacques Ibert was born in 1890. He’s worth while, but I’m afraid you will find him difficult. Look him up if you want. One of the great minds in the development of quantum mechanics Louis de Broglie was born in 1892. He theorized that electrons (and perhaps all matter) had wave like behavior. This lead directly to Erwin Schrodinger’s work. I probably would have given the day to him, but I’m kind of overdosed on physicists.

TV chef Julia Child was born in 1902. And that same year, one of my favorite actors Wendy Hiller was born. She is so wonderful in Pygmalion. It has two major advantages over My Fair Lady: (1) no songs; (2) no Audrey Hepburn. Graphics designer Paul Rand was born in 1914. I bring him up only to note that he has a proper name. “Rand Paul” is just stupid. Greek composer and musician Giorgos Mouzakis was born in 1922. I bring him up only so I can present this song that absolutely will brighten your day:

The great playwright Robert Bolt was born in 1924. And the great Oscar Peterson was born in 1925. Here is just a little bit of him:

The great Rose Marie from The Dick Van Dyke Show is 90 today. Actor Tony Robinson is 67. Also 67 is the brilliant songwriter Jimmy Webb. He wrote any number of hit songs, but I want to mention one in particular: “MacArthur Park.” Look, I know: every time some radio station decides to put out a list of the worst songs of all time, “MacArthur Park” comes in at or near the top. There’s nothing to that. It is a great song. There are two reasons why people claim to hate it. First, it was such a big hit that people have heard it too much and so discount it. Second, it is sincere. And we today no longer admit to enjoying art that doesn’t signal that we’re all in on the joke and none of us takes art or anything else seriously. Well, fuck that! He also wrote “Up, Up and Away” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman.” Here he is with Linda Ronstadt doing his song “All I Know” which also makes no excuses for itself and is heartbreakingly beautiful:

And Ben Affleck is 41.

The day, however, belongs to Leon Theremin, who was born on this day in 1896. He was an inventor who is best known for the totally electronic musical instrument the theremin. The science fiction and horror films of the 1950s would not have been the same without the theremin. And Howard Shore’s theremin laced score for Ed Wood is one of the greatest film scores ever. Here is the great man himself playing his own instrument:

Happy birthday Leon Theremin!

In my last article, I pasted a 39 word sentence from an article in the Financial Times, “[He] said the greatest concern of the business lobby was the low level of investment in the German economy, with the share of investment in GDP falling from 20 per cent in 1999 to just 17 per cent in 2012.” It is not uncommon when doing such a copy and paste job for the site to tack the link to the article on the end of the quote. For example, Rolling Stone adds, “Read more: [url].”

This sort of thing annoys me because it requires more work: I have to delete the extra stuff they tacked on. But even more than that, I’m offended. To me it implies that I do not do my job properly and that I’m just going to quote the article without providing a link or even worse that I’m gong to plagiarize. But I understand the desire for this. Even in my minor capacity on the internet, I’ve been plagiarized wholesale. So I can relate and I accept the practice grudgingly.

But the Financial Times goes to a whole new level. To begin with, they don’t add their garbage to the end of the quote—they add it to the beginning. And what they add is really offensive:

I didn’t paste the whole article, obviously; I pasted only 39 words! And the program knows that because it didn’t attach this message when I pasted just two words (a guy’s name).

What this, and I dare say all of those much less repugnant messages, shows is that these companies really don’t understand the internet. They are still trying to hold onto their content in a way that makes no sense. Let’s be clear: no serious internet writer will fail to link to the content that they are discussing and quoting. To some extent, this is done out of respect for the other content creator, but mostly it is for the reader. And readers do care and writers who don’t link will be at an extreme disadvantage in the marketplace for eyeballs. So neither the Financial Times nor Rolling Stone needs to worry about some idiot who isn’t linking to them. No one’s going to see it anyway.

Meanwhile, there is a downside to this behavior for people who want to control content. It makes me far less likely to use these papers as sources. In the case of Rolling Stone, I’ll admit: it is because they annoy me. But in the case of the Washington Post and its new expensive subscription model, I do it for my readers. (Actually, in addition to the warnings, the Financial Times is also by subscription.) I understand that writers have to get paid in the internet age. This just isn’t the way.

Afterword

These warming messages also make doing a search on a phrase much harder. It is often necessary to past the text in a document, copy what you want out of it, and then paste that into a search engine.