Blake’s Blog

I am good at Putting Things into Boxes. I’m not the most organized person in the world, or even the second-most. But I do like categories. Sometimes my categories don’t make sense, at least to others. They make lots of sense to me, though. I like to relate This to That, and That to This. Sometimes I put Things in Boxes, and I leave the Box out in the open. I do in general keep it closed. You see it there, but its Contents remain a mystery. However, if I know you pretty well and feel like I can trust you… bonus points if I feel like you understand me… I’ll open the Box and give you a little glimpse of what I’ve put together. You might think I’m silly for holding on to This, or lumping That and the Other together, but that’s OK. Nobody is perfect. Sometimes I put Things in Boxes, and I hide the Box away. I stuff it to the brim, close it up, and put it under the Bed. Sometimes I even forget about it for a while. But eventually, for one reason or another, I’ll remember it and open it up.

Boxes are great most of the time, but sometimes they aren’t so great. Sometimes the Thing I want to put in a certain Box just doesn’t fit. Maybe it’s too big for the Box or maybe it’s an odd shape and the Box I’m trying to use just isn’t the right Box. It happens. The problem is that, a lot of the times, I force it into the Box anyway. This might sound impossible or difficult, but, like I said, I’m good at Putting Things into Boxes. So now I’ve got a Box that contains unrelated items, and that just won’t do. Either the Box is gonna break ,or I’m gonna open that Box looking for One Thing but instead find Another. I’m stubborn to boot, though, and I’ll defend my decision to put that Thing in that Box, even though I never should have. Some might call this denial, but I usually reject such accusations. This problem is really no big deal anyway. The real trouble arises when it comes to the Hidden Boxes. As good as I am at Putting Things into Boxes, I am equally bad at putting Things back in their place. This may seem contradictory to some, but it’s not. Trust me. So now I’ve got this unHidden Box, sitting, open, in plain sight. This probably seems like a bad thing to you. You would be right. After all, isn’t the whole point of hiding a Box to keep it out of sight, out of mind? Eventually, though, I’ll close that Box and put it back under the Bed. Like the first problem, this really isn’t that huge of a deal. Its impact is temporary and superficial. So I clutter things up a bit from time to time… who doesn’t? The real doozy is when I open up one of those Hidden Boxes and attempt to relate those old Things to some new Thing. This rarely works. You see, I know a whole lot about those old Things, and I’m still getting used to this new Thing. So now I have this amalgam of Things (some old, some new), and the combination lacks any real sense of order or logic. I mentioned that I’m stubborn, so it should come as no surprise that I will spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that the old and the new are indeed the same. Humans seek comfort in what we already know, and I am human after all. We all know how difficult it is to compare apples and oranges. Well, this is even more foolhardy than that. You better believe I’ll try though. Why?

I’m good at Putting Things into Boxes.

NYT: How the U.S. surplus became a deficit – The New York Times- msnbc.com

‘He’s not fixing it’
Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”

“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”

Wasn’t this idea proposed by someone else? And then subsequently ridiculed by Barry Obama? Someone remind me, please.

Despite Campaign Rhetoric, Obama Pivots on Taxing Health-Care Benefits – washingtonpost.com

President Obama, in a pivot from some of his harshest campaign rhetoric, told Democratic senators yesterday that he is willing to consider taxing employer-sponsored health benefits to help pay for a broad expansion of coverage.

Barack Obama immediately condemned the murder of George Tiller (late-term abortionist) by an extremist Christian zealot, but has yet to even acknowledge (!) the murder of William Long (US Army Recruiter) by an extremist Muslim zealot. Thank you, Mr. Commander-in-Chief.

Statement regarding the murder of George Tiller:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning.  However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

Statement regarding the murder of William Long (as of 06/03/09 9:01 AM):

…

You tell ‘em, Sarah.
Michelle Malkin has more.

Tony Fratto: The White House “Jobs-Saved” Deception – CNBC Guest Blog – CNBC.com

There is only one necessary data point to make the “jobs-saved” claim: an accurate measure of expected employment levels in the future. That baseline data is critical to measure what the employment level would be in the absence of the stimulus. Unfortunately for the White House, they cannot possibly know that measurement within any degree of confidence — and they know it.

To understand just how unknowable this data point is, it’s not necessary to be an economist, a mathematician or a statistician.

You only need to know this: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – thousands of the most professional and rigorous counters and analyzers of labor data in the history of mankind – makes TWO revisions of employment data for their ESTIMATE of the PREVIOUS month! And even then the reports are mere estimates – an annual benchmark survey is required to reset the nation’s payroll baseline.

That is, the best employment statisticians the world has ever known, people whose lives are dedicated to employment data, conducting labor surveys and research, constantly refining their complex models, have a difficult time telling you how many jobs were created in the PAST!

In fact, monthly BLS revisions of past job creation estimates are routinely off by tens of thousands of jobs, and on occasion by more than a hundred thousand jobs. The annual benchmark surveys always reset employment levels by hundreds of thousands of jobs.

And we’re supposed to believe that the Council of Economic advisors have acquired the clairvoyant ability to estimate payrolls in the future? Please.

Will the GM bailout be Obama’s tipping point? | Washington Examiner

Observers across the political spectrum have marveled at Barack Obama’s ability to maintain a high job approval rating even as the public grows skeptical about some of his key policy initiatives. There’s a feeling, among Republicans at least, that sooner or later he’s going to reach a tipping point between his personal popularity and the unpopularity of his proposals, and that his job approval rating will suffer. That moment will come when Obama has to actually stand behind specific proposals — when he has to put his name on a health care plan that will lead to the rationing of medical treatment, or an energy plan that will lead to significantly higher electrical bills.

Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers – NYTimes.com

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

The Public Editor – The Tip That Didn’t Pan Out – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

ON March 17, a Republican lawyer, quoting a confidential source for a Times reporter, testified to Congress that the newspaper killed a story last fall because it would have been “a game-changer” in the presidential election.

The charge, amplified by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News in April and reverberating around the conservative blogosphere, is about the most damning allegation that can be made against a news organization. If true, it would mean that Times editors, whose job is to report the facts without fear or favor, were so lacking in integrity that they withheld an important story in order to influence the election.

Automakers, Obama announce mileage, pollution plan

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama wants drivers to go farther on a gallon of gas and cause less damage to the environment — and be willing to pick up the tab.