Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed (8/24-9/7) Brendan Nyhan Sep 7, 2011 at 6:29 PM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Perry has a winning message: “He’s lost >1M jobs while he’s been president. I’ve created 1M jobs since I’ve been the gov” http://j.mp/neSrkR
	A Campaign Challenge - Defining Obama - NYTimes.com While the president will not directly confront the Republican nominee until 2012, his advisers believe that the next three months are critical to reversing his downward trajectory.
	Sep 7, 2011 at 12:53 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @dandrezner: Today's edition of "Tom Friedman apparently pays no attention at all to the President of the United State of America" http://t.co/1SYASmW
	A plain blog about politics: Aarrrrgghhhhh!!!!!!! Tom Friedman approvingly quotes a Singaporean diplomat: There will be no painless solution. ‘Sacrifice’ will be needed, and the American people know this. But no American politician ...
	Sep 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Puts lot of stock in Obama holding shaky Dem-leaning states RT @jbouie: http://j.mp/no9T81 Obama at Majority Disapproval; Re-election Likely
	Obama at Majority Disapproval; Re-election Likely 51.5 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama's job performance. It's still his race to lose.
	Sep 7, 2011 at 11:06 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Good @gregamarx piece on need for horse race coverage during invisible primary http://j.mp/n2EbQY See also me/Sides http://j.mp/qxQeIf (PDF)
	In Defense of (the Right Kind of) Horse Race Journalism When primaries decide party priorities, voters should be brought in on the conversation Horse race journalism has a bad reputation among press critics. The NYU professor Jay Rosen, in a recent t...
	http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyha n/poli-sci-journalism.pdf
	Sep 6, 2011 at 7:57 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The problem of scientific corrections: @ivanoransky of Retraction Watch on @onthemedia http://j.mp/ouHP6m Example: http://j.mp/noyScZ
	On The Media - Retraction Watch There's often a really interesting story behind a retraction. That's what Ivan Oransky told us. He's a doctor and journalist and founder, along with Adam Marcus, of a blog called Retraction Watc...
	Chris Mooney | Why Questionable "Science" Gets Published, Pounced On in the Media, Retracted, Causes Resignations…Rinse and Repeat An editor resigns after a journal publishes a paper that seems to trash the scientific consensus on climate change-but is heavily criticized by top scientists. Where have we heard this kind of s...
	Sep 6, 2011 at 5:53 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @ezraklein: I continue to think motivated skepticism is the most important concept for understand today's policy debates: http://t.co/FMVp5Co
	Why did the GOP turn against stimulus? Ask a psychologist. - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post Want to know why President Obama is going to have such a hard time persuading Republicans to support his jobs proposals this week? Don't ask a pundit, or a politician, or a pollster. Ask a psych...
	Sep 6, 2011 at 1:43 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Recommended: @mattyglesias on how intraparty conflict legitimizes coverage of "facts" that would otherwise go unreported http://j.mp/os3VHC
	Intraparty Conflict I think Neil Sinhababu is right to think that the media’s disproportionate interest in obviously doomed presidential candidates like Jon Huntsman 2012 or Joe Lieberman 2004 has to do with the ge...
	Sep 6, 2011 at 1:18 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Under the headline "Math tips for the rest of us," USA Today quotes an expert botching marginal tax rates http://j.mp/r4QfnV
	USA Today Is Too Dumb for Words When It Comes to Taxes | Beat the Press Arghh!!!!!!!! Don't you have to know anything to write for a major newspaper these days? USA Today told readers that: "That raise actually might not be as good as it looks. The extra money is ni...
	Sep 6, 2011 at 1:03 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The costs of campaign finance reform: "In 2010... non-party outside spending eclipsed party spending" http://j.mp/qHLBHk
	Bessette Pitney Text: Campaign Finance Developments
	Sep 6, 2011 at 12:40 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan New from University of Chicago Press: my friend Isaac Reed's "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" (social theory) http://j.mp/pDn4pS
	Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences "This pithy, deeply intellectual account-strongly based in classic sources and contemporary debates-demands the attention of the widest range of scholars in the social and historical disciplines...
	Sep 6, 2011 at 11:23 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan .@jonathanchait on the left's magical thinking about the course of the Obama presidency http:/bit.ly/owt8QV (via @dankennedy_nu)
	Sep 4, 2011 at 5:34 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Quoted in the WSJ on a new website that lets people make deficit reduction plans http://j.mp/qGXT3X Cool idea, unlikely to resolve anything
	Crowdsourcing the Budget Can the Internet help balance the budget? Amid the conflict in Washington over how to reduce the deficit, two heavyweight computer scientists in the Bay Area have launched a website that aims to...
	Sep 1, 2011 at 3:20 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Per @mattyglesias http://j.mp/mU450Q it's worth reminding everyone that prime-time speeches rarely move numbers http://j.mp/jyZy9n
	What Do Progressives Want From Obama’s Jobs Plan? The fact that President Obama is requesting a joint session of congress to hear his jobs speech certainly reflects an effort to raise the political stakes around it, despite the considerable evi...
	Obama should beware Reagan myths - Brendan Nyhan With all of the coverage of President Obama's staffing changes, it's worth noting that he's also been reading and soliciting outside advice as he prepares for the second half of his term. In par...
	Aug 31, 2011 at 7:37 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Appropriately subtle RT @jbplainblog: @brendannyhan More on presidential speeches, what they can and cannot do: http://ow.ly/6i0r0
	Big presidential speeches just aren’t that important - The Plum Line - The Washington Post Barack Obama is going to summon a joint session of Congress on September 7 to hear his plans on the economy and jobs. Easy prediction: we'll now ten days of fuss about what he should say and the...
	Sep 1, 2011 at 2:42 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @SteveKornacki: This history lesson from Beschloss doesn't make sense -- Reagan '84 as a model for how to win when times are bad? http://t.co/dKmtEfX
	History lessons for Obama - Ben Smith Time’s Michael Scherer says Obama is hoping to learn a thing or two from past American presidents: Weeks before the debt-limit showdown came to a head, White House chief of staff Bill Daley held...
	Aug 31, 2011 at 7:26 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @BradEngle: @pollsandvotes check out this great blog post on key economic and opinion indicators for 2012: http://t.co/5NWlVAC
	Introducing the Purple Election Perspective | Purple Strategies Today we introduce the Purple Election Perspective. This monthly snapshot will provide a bipartisan look at key indicators for 2012. In our first edition, we focus on critical economic and opini...
	Aug 31, 2011 at 7:25 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interesting study: Estimates white Dem would have received ~3% more in '08 RT @SimonJackman: How Does Obama Match-Up? http://t.co/diEke3f
	http://p.ost.im/p/eLwfPm
	Aug 31, 2011 at 7:10 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Not nec.-world where Perry is nom mght be better for GOP (eg worse econ) MT @RameshPonnuru intrade: Perry stronger gen elec cand than Romney
	Aug 31, 2011 at 7:04 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Matt Miller is looking for billionaires to fund the implausible dream of a successful 3rd-party centrist pres. campaign http://j.mp/oNJ6tr
	How billionaires could save the country If you think, as I've argued repeatedly, that we need a "radically centrist" third-party presidential candidate to shake things up, and to force both political parties to confront the myriad iss...
	Aug 31, 2011 at 4:10 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Fascinating article on campaigns' increasing use of highly targeted online video ads from @benpolitico and @emilyrs http://j.mp/rmvinr
	Targeted Web ads: The next frontier - POLITICO.com Print View If you're a Republican primary voter living within 100 miles of Ames, Iowa, there's a pretty good chance that Michele Bachmann spent the summer talking to you out of your computer. But only if y...
	Aug 31, 2011 at 1:20 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Classic incumbent w/bad economy message: "election...may end up being a referendum on whose vision of America is better" http://j.mp/mTsHaE
	Aug 31, 2011 at 1:16 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan A sophisticated, non-magical-thinking critique MT @davidfrum: My answer to Alter's question, what did Obama do wrong? bit.ly/qYUftx
	Aug 30, 2011 at 1:44 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @smotus: Tom Friedman once again fantasizes about a third party that stands for exactly what Dems already stand for. http://t.co/yMbgrb3
	Enik Rising: Once more, Mr. Friedman Oh, why do I bother ? As for America, we’ve thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subpr...
	Aug 29, 2011 at 3:46 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More Gore-like coverage of Romney: "his hearty 'Ha! Ha!' sounds ... like someone speaking the sound of laughter" http://t.co/22fag2m
	On Trail, Casual Friday Versus Boardroom Cool - NYTimes.com Close-up impressions matter for voters who are evaluating presidential candidates. And while Rick Perry seems to relish interaction, Mitt Romney is still struggling to appear at ease.
	Aug 29, 2011 at 1:55 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Great move by @RWJF_HumanCap (funder of my postdoc) to support the excellent @IncidentalEcon http://j.mp/pFKFUG An academic blog pays off!
	TIE to be funded, in part, by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | The Incidental Economist I'm very pleased to announce that, beginning September 15th, The Incidental Economist will be supported, in part, by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This is good news for readers because it ...
	Aug 29, 2011 at 12:56 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Recent episode of @OnPointRadio on the persistence of 9/11 conspiracy theories http://j.mp/otTMRQ
	Aug 29, 2011 at 12:50 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @DLeonhardt: The WashPost account of zoo animals sensing the earthquake before humans was a myth -- acc. to the WashPost. http://t.co/Kq0seEi
	Five myths about earthquakes Earthquakes rattle our psyches as well as our structures. We Californians can crack jokes about jumpy East Coast types, but the truth is, our blood pressure also rises precipitously when the Ear...
	Aug 28, 2011 at 12:55 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan My article w/@Student on causal inf w/dynamic soc network data written up in Science: http://j.mp/rfSKxQ (gated). Paper: http://j.mp/mROOg9
	Science Magazine: Sign In AAAS members activate your FREE subscription to ALL Science content since 1880, as well as ScienceNOW, the SAGE KE Archive and AAASMember.org .
	http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyha n/unfriending.pdf
	Aug 26, 2011 at 8:47 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Sadly, likely to be ineffective as usual RT @nytimes: Vaccine Cleared Again as Autism Culprit http://t.co/hBGZr47
	Vaccine Cleared Again as Autism Culprit - NYTimes.com A report by the Institute of Medicine found that the chickenpox vaccine can cause illness many years later, but that there is no evidence that the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella caus...
	Aug 26, 2011 at 1:10 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @conor64: What if journalists stopped trying to be political insiders? http://t.co/IFNc3hk
	What If Journalists Stopped Trying to Be Political Insiders? Conor Friedersdorf - Conor Friedersdorf is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of...
	Aug 26, 2011 at 1:06 PM

Comments

[David in Cal]

Poor Chris Mooney is not a scientist, so he's not able to explain what's supposedly wrong with Spencer amd Braswell's paper in Remote Sensing (SB11). Instead he criticizes the paper by pointing to other papers that were wrong. Of course, that's no way to judge a scientific paper. Furthermore, his analogy doesn't even work. His supposedly comparable papers were retracted, but SB11 has not been retracted. There's been no move to get it retracted.

Wolfgang Wagner provided a long explanation of why he resigned as Remote Sensing Editor, but his explanation doesn't seem to justify his decision. First of all, Wagner isn't an expert in the field of climate, so his opinion of the paper's accuracy is irrelevant. Wagner acknowledges that the journal's review process worked properly, so he didn't do anything wrong. At this point, it's not clear whether or not SB11 had serious errors. There's lots of back and forth discussion going on.

If Wagner thought there were mistakes in SB11, he should have printed another paper refuting SB11 and also allowed Spencer and Braswell to comment on this refutation. That's how science is supposed to work.

You can find a lot of relevant links giving arguments on all sides at http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/the-spencer-braswell-dessler-papers/

[David in Cal]

Although I like Jane Clayson's report about the truthers, I question one point. She asks, "How have these ideas stuck around for so long in the face of all the facts? And what do they say about our country?" IMHO if she wants to know what truther beliefs say about our country, she ought to compare our country with other countries.

My impression is that truther beliefs are stronger in many other countries. E.g., the truther book L'Effroyable imposture sustained a number 1 bestseller position in France for six of seven weeks immediately after its launch, sold 164,100 copies in the first year, and a total of 300,000 up to date. It has since been translated into 28 languages (as of 2006), according to wikipedia.

Perhaps the greatest degree of truther belief is among Muslims. E.g., see http://m911t.blogspot.com/ and http://www.mujca.com/ and http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/13/associate-nyc-mosque-imam-calls-attacks-inside-job/ and http://911blogger.com/news/2010-10-04/huffington-post-muslims-believe-911-be-inside-job-how-could-so-many-muslims-be-so-wrong

Instead of asking what's wrong with America, maybe Jane Clayson should ask what's wrong with Muslims.

[David in Cal]

USA Today has made a stealth correction, so their article now correctly says,

"A hefty raise might not be as big as it looks. Extra money could bump you into the next tax bracket, which means you’ll pay a higher tax rate on earnings above a certain threshold. Relax: Your earnings below that threshold are still taxed at the previous, lower tax rate."

Also, a commenter pointed out that a few people could wind up poorer if they earn more because their marginal tax rate is over 100%. See http://mises.org/daily/3822

[David in Cal]

Enik Rising says Democrats have been pushing "an agenda of spending cuts, tax increases, and investment in infrastructure and education." Spending cuts???

Federal spending was around $3 trillion per year at the end of George Bush's second term. In just 3 years, Obama and the Dems in Congress have raised the federal spending level by a trillion dollars, to around $4 trillion per year. They passed an $830 billion "stimulus" (which didn't stimulate). They spent money on Cash for Clunkers, bailouts of banks and insurance companies, loans to clean energy, purchases of automobile companies, etc. etc. They passed health "reform" that will require much more federal spending in the future.

Today's news says Obama will call for another $300 billion of "stimulus". Some of it will be tax cuts, but most of the additional $300 billion will be more spending increases.

How Rising can identify the Dems as pushing spending cuts is beyond me.

[David in Cal]

Some time ago this site linked to an article by Chris Mooney observing that those with stronger scientific backgrounds are more likely to be global warming skeptics. Mooney sought some psychological explanation. Actually the reason for the difference is that skeptics' discussions are generally more scientific than warmists' discussions.

E.g., Mooney's "proof" that SB11 is a bad paper is to reference some other bad papers -- papers that have little or nothing to do with SB11. Another attack on SB11 writen by 3 scientists is essentially ad hominem. It claims that Spencer has "a history of making serious technical errors". The authors allege that SB11 has "serious flaws", but they don't identify a single supposed flaw.

OTOH this skeptical post supporting SB11 (or more precisely criticizing a paper that SB11 critcizes) addresses the appropriateness of alternative data sources, calculates the slope and r squared of various linear fits and looks at other scientific aspects.

[David in Cal]

Yes, Obama has used the word "sacrifice", but has he ever proposed and promoted real sacrifice? Megan McArdle at the Atlantic says "No":

As MuniLass said over Twitter,

Obama: "Here's the deal: I take credit for the new spending now; you take credit for making politically unpopular cuts later."

This is becoming a signature move for Obama. As far as I can recall, he has never taken the risk of proposing anything even potentially unpopular; even with something like health care, he let Congress take the lead. Eh voila--anything you like in the plan is a product of his wise leadership, while anything unfortunate is, y'know, the not-perfect stuff he had to sign in order to get Americans health care.
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But it's hard for Obama to call for altruism on the part of Congressional Republicans when he wasn't willing to take the manly risk of saying out loud what taxes he'll raise or spending he'll cut. The speech may have appeased his base. But I doubt it did much to advance either of what were clearly his twin goals here: enacting policy, and wooing independents.

[David in Cal]

Ezra Klein thinks Republicans' position re stimulus is inconcsistent, thus must be explained psychologically. Actually, their position is consistent with their beliefs. Klein overlooks the difference between increased spending and decreased taxes.

Although a given amount of additional government spending adds the same amount to the deficit as the same amount of tax cuts, conservatives see these as different. Conservatives see government spending as a drag on the economy -- leeches. That's why Rep Ryan, e.g., supported a tax cut as a stimulus, but opposed a spending increase.