Wednesday, Jonathan Chait over at The Atlantic published an article about the problems of Josh Barro of all people. Regular readers will know that I am of two minds about Barro. On the one hand, he is a smart and insightful guy—one of the best conservative observers around. On the other hand, every time I see his face, I want to punch it. But that's a totally irrational reaction; he just seems like someone who badly needs to be punched. When it comes to policy, I am always interested in what he has to say.

So what problem does The Atlantic think that Barro has? It appears that the Republican Party is unhappy that Barro is attacking it, rather than nibbling around the edges like Ross Douthat. Chait speculates why this is without coming up with anything concrete. Then this morning, Ezra Klein offered, Josh Barro didn't Leave Conservatism. Conservatism Left Josh Barro.

This is not strictly speaking true. Chait even shows this by having Barro go over his own (with Reihan Salam) glowing assessment of Paul Ryan's 2010 budget. It isn't that Barro's outlook has changed in a major way. Rather, he sees now that before he was assuming the best and pushing problems to the side. In other words, he was engaged in apologetics. And that's what I find with all the more reasonable conservative pundits and wonks. And that still includes Josh Barro on a number of issues.

Consider how the Republican Party has changed on healthcare reform. In the past, it was for what has become Obamacare. Why did it change? Well, it actually didn't. Its embrace of the individual mandate was always just a cover against more liberal plans like single-payer and Hillarycare. Once those threats were off the table, there was no need to continue embracing any plan at all. So they stopped embracing any plan. In fact, you may have noticed how the GOP originally called for "repeal and replacement of Obamacare." But they must have figured out that the new plan was no plan because it quickly became simply "repeal Obamacare."

I don't think the Republican Party has really changed. What seems to have happened is that Josh Barro got to see the reality of all the lies that Republicans tell themselves (we really do care about the poor; we want to grow the middle class; we support an culture of life). His change in attitude is very similar to my own change in terms of libertarianism. I still think he's fooling himself with the thought that he just looks at the data. But there is no doubt that he's a whole lot closer to that ideal than he was only two years ago.

Afterword

I believe the reason I have such a visceral dislike of Barro is his attitude that somehow he is just coming to objective conclusions based upon the data. I used to be very much like that. It is a very big delusion of libertarians especially. But as Barro now sees when looking at his 2010 Ryan Budget article, it is much less clear. He wanted to believe what Ryan was selling. There was nothing objective in his conclusions, even if every part of the analysis was objective. Over time, I'm sure my impulse to slug Barro will decrease with his smug certainty that he has possession of the Truth.

Jordan Ellenberg over at Slate reported on Yitang Zhang and the big goings on in the field of prime number theory. There are two stories. One is that Zhang managed to prove some thousands of year old questions. The other is that he is in his 50s.

As I hope you know, a prime number is any natural number that is divisible only by itself and the number one. So 7 is prime, but 9 is not because it is divisible by 3. The first few prime numbers are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 23, 29. Why are prime numbers interesting? Well, there are many reasons that mathematicians study them. The most fundamental reason, which you may remember from school, is that all natural numbers can be represented by a product of prime numbers. For example, 24 equals 2×2×2×3. But mostly, I think that prime numbers are interesting because they are strange and difficult.

The big news is that Zhang proved that the set of consecutive odd numbers that are prime is unbound. I know what you're thinking, "Wow! I have no idea what you just said!" Don't worry, it is very simple. An example of this is 5 and 7: they are consecutive odd numbers and they are prime. On the other hand, 7 and 11 are consecutive prime numbers but they are not consecutive odd numbers; 9 is in the middle.

As you can see in the list of the first 9 prime numbers above, the further you go up, the larger the gap between prime numbers. In general. But its pretty random. The question is whether as the numbers get big whether these consecutive prime numbers stop occurring. They don't. They get less common, but they never end. Apparently, mathematicians have long assumed that to be true. That amazed me because I always assumed it was not, but then I'm not a mathematician and I've never been that interested in number theory.

So the result isn't amazing. What Yitang Zhang did is prove that this was so. He also proved some other things, but I had enough difficulty getting my head around this one. And of course, Zhang's age makes for an interesting story in a world that (wrongly it turns out) thinks that only young people are great mathematicians.

The whole subject of prime numbers has always bugged me. From my earliest days I can remember being offended by the fact that the number 2 is prime. I don't know how common this is, but I have always personalized numbers. One small part of that is a quasi-racist belief that even numbers are just better than odd numbers. The odd numbers are contrary; they offend me. The prime numbers are even worse! So how can a nice little even number be grouped with those thugs the primes? And it's all because 2 is a Very Small Number. In fact, the number 2 is remarkable: it is divisible by every number equal to or less than itself.

Zhang's brilliance was to treat prime numbers as random. That may seem obvious, but it's not. The fact is that prime numbers are not random. But apparently, treating them like random numbers provides great insights. I don't pretend to understand it. But I feel good that not everyone making important discoveries is younger than I am.

Afterword

Here are two rather large consecutive prime numbers: 104,681 and 104,683.

On this day in 1883, swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks was born. Actor, dancer, and musician Scatman Crothers was born in 1910. The great meteorologist and Chaos Theory pioneer Edward Norton Lorenz was born in 1917. And singer Rosemary Clooney was born in 1928.

Actress Joan Collins is 80 today. Chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov is 62. Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom is 55. And Jewel is 39.

By a nose, the day belongs to botanist Carl Linnaeus who was born on this day in 1707. Linnaeus is the founder of the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature—the formal system for naming species. What I've always found so amazing is that the vast majority of species we categorized based upon attributes turned out to be dead right when we looked at genetics. As someone who is caught inside his own head and not very clear on the outside world, I find it amazing that others can see reality so clearly. It is hard to overstate his impact on biology.

Happy birthday Carl Linnaeus!

During the Great Depression, Roosevelt was very angry that the Supreme Court kept blocking his reforms. A slim majority on the Court was very conservative. (Sound familiar?) What could the president do? Well, he could pack the court. The number of people on the Supreme court is not stated in the Constitution. So Roosevelt threatened to add the number of seats on the court and fill them with pro-New Deal justices. Ultimately, this wasn't done for a few reasons—most notably the retirement of a conservative judge that gave the liberals a small majority. But the point is, "court packing" does not refer to the normal procedure of presidents filling open seats.

Now you know more than Senator Chuck Grassley. In the debate over whether to allow Sri Srinivasan sit on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Grassley complained six times about Obama's supposed efforts at "court packing." He apparently thought that trying to fill vacancies was "court packing." We see this problem again and again. Start with a Senator of relatively limited mental acumen. Let them age past the 70-year cognitive decline. And watch the stupid fly!

Dylan Matthews helpfully put together the following compilation of Grassley's embarrassment:


Now, I don't want to hear any complaints that most people don't know what "court packing" was either. This is true. I've asked a number of people and there is widespread confusion on the matter. Just the same, none of these people go around complaining that Obama is engaged in "court packing." They don't even do it in private. And they certainly don't have staffs that vet their talking points.

Of course, Grassley's comments don't exist in a vacuum. He probably got them from a Wall Street Journal editorial over the weekend, Packing the D.C. Circuit. The editors too are confused on the matter, thinking that liberals' desire to fill the vacant seats as court packing. I am constantly amazed that modern conservatism has such a weak intellectual basis. Gone are the days of William F. Buckley. Now, the few good thinkers on the right are largely ignored. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page has long been nothing but a bastion of right wing freaks and conspiracy theorists.

I understand that Rush Limbaugh bases his talk show on the ravings of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But Chuck Grassley? With his large taxpayer provided staff? This is just sad.

Afterword

The Bell Curve author Charles A. Murray is actually making the argument that African Americans are poor because they are stupid. People get confused about this fact, thinking that he's just some bigot. No. All the eugenic inspired ridiculousness is done in the name of an attack on Affirmative Action. But United States Senators (and plenty of other rich and "successful" people) are constantly showing that they are pretty dim. Where's the outrage over that?

Last week, God tweeted out the following:


Thus far, it has almost 10,000 retweets. Clearly, this is an example of retweet trolling. God knows how arrogant most atheists are. I am not, however. My mother used to say, "Don't tempt the gods." I think it's good advice, even if I don't happen to believe in any gods. Anyway, my ideas about the nature of reality are that even if this isn't a universe in which you die and go to the heaven of the God of Abraham, such a universe must exist at some point somewhere. Or not. Regardless, I'm hedging my bets.

This morning, God tweeted another very smart thing (he's God after all):


That explains everything! Millions live without healthcare so that Dick Cheney can get a new heart (regular or artificial) whenever he needs one. Thanks God!

Steven Dennis over at Roll Call goes after Rand Paul's use of old talking points. Paul is going around saying, "We are now borrowing $40,000 a second. We are borrowing $4 billion a day." Oh. My. God! Did he say "$4 billion a day"?! That's a Very Large Number! And as normal with these kinds of pronouncements, there is no context at all.

Dennis reported that these numbers are no longer valid. With the huge decrease in the deficit, we are now borrowing half as much. But Rand Paul has not changed his talking points. I don't know what Dennis is expecting. So the government is borrowing only $2 billion a day? The amount does not matter. It could be $2 million a day. What Paul is really saying is, "We are borrowing mumble mumble a day! Are you not outraged!"

Also note that Paul tweeted, "We borrow from China just to run the ordinary functions of government." That's technically true. But it is deceptive. The Chinese portion of government borrowing is 8%. The point is that Rand Paul has no interest in the budget or government borrowing. He just wants to scare everyone. "Look: big number!" It doesn't matter whether the number is right or not. He's deceiving people whatever the numbers are.

A similar thing happened last year. Rand Paul was on a talk show with Paul Krugman. Paul said that government spending was up; Krugman corrected him. Afterwords, Paul found out the truth: while Federal spending was up, total government spending was down. He then proceeded to dismiss this because apparently, only federal government spending counts. Rand Paul never lets the facts get in the way of his talking points.

Like most conservative zealots, Rand Paul is in a constant state of outrage about the government. Since he is ideologically committed to the idea that the government is by definition bad, he never looks at what the government does to figure out if any given part of it is good or bad. He just knows that it is all bad. And thus we get the comments like, "Do you know how much the government is borrowing?!" It's all context free. Rand Paul adds nothing to the policy debate, even when he's right about a particular policy.

This is a remarkable video. It is beautiful. And it is proof that God is not good!


H/T: Brad Plumer

Yesterday, Ed Kilgore wrote, Please Listen Up, Political Reporters: What Ted Cruz Means When He Says He Mistrusts Both Parties. In it, he took on Ted Cruz and his habit of claiming that he doesn't trust either political party. As Kilgore noted, "Does it mean, as political reporters often blandly repeat, that 'Tea Party' pols like Cruz are hardy independents who care about principle rather than about the GOP, and represent a constituency that is up in the air?" He provided two answers: "No" and "Hell no!"

This is an issue that I've been hammering on for a while. The only difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party is only made up of the stronger Republicans. So it makes no sense to even have a different name for the Tea Party; they are just the base of the Republican Party. What's interesting is that the Democratic Party has a progressive base too but no one labels it as a separate party. And that's strange when you consider that the this base is far more likely to abandon its party than the Tea Party is.

As you all know, I am constantly disappointed in the Democratic Party. Yet when someone asks me, I tell them I am a Democrat. I think it is disingenuous to say otherwise. This comes from my many conversations with conservatives who claim to be "independent." (This doesn't tend to happen with liberals; the independents who tend toward the Democrats really are in the muddled middle.) You aren't an independent if you agree with everything the Republicans say but think they aren't quite pure enough. And that is exactly what Ted Cruz is all about.

What the Tea Party movement was about from the beginning was the Republican base upset that it lost big in 2008. It was the outgrowth of the widely held opinion that the 2008 crisis and the presidency of George W. Bush were caused by not being conservative enough. There was also all that racial insecurity. "I'm losing control of my country!" I won't go as far as Bobcat Goldthwait who says they are just racists, "Obama's a... a... a Socialist! What's a Socialist? I don't know, but they like fried chicken." But there is a lot of that. The whole birther movement is not because Obama is black but because he is "other."

Whenever talking about the modern Republican Party, all roads lead back to Life of Brian. The only ones the People's Front of Judea hate more than the Romans are the Judean People's Front. So it is madness to suggest that the Tea Party is somehow independent of the parties. That makes it sound as if its members disagree equally with the two parties. But the fact is that they always (By definition!) disagree with the Democratic Party. And they always agree with the Republican Party. Except, of course, they shout louder. But what they shout is same thing.

The great French landscape painter Hubert Robert was born on this day 1733. Inventor of the electromagnet and electric motor William Sturgeon was born 1783. Composer Richard Wagner were born in 1813. Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859.

The great Laurence Olivier was born in 1907. Most Americans probably remember him as the evil Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man. Or for older people (or just lovers of old films), Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. And I most remember him in Sleuth. (Never, never, never watch the remake of Sleuth.) But Olivier is probably most important for his work in first bringing Shakespeare to the screen in a compelling way. I'm not that fond of his films, actually. I think Welles (who was widely criticized relative to Olivier at the time) is better and more cinematic. But there is no doubt that the man can act. Here he is doing that scene from Hamlet:


Phil Tucker was born in 1927. He was the director of a delightfully silly, but ultimately terrible film, Robot Monster. That's the film where the villain is a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. It's easy to laugh at, but Tucker got it produced and the film made a lot of money. Here is the trailer:


And Harvey Milk was born in 1930. He was one of the most important gay rights advocates ever. In San Francisco he is a legend. And he would likely be alive today if it weren't for the unstable Dan White.

Bernie Taupin is 63 today.

The day, however, belongs to the great American impressionist Mary Cassatt who was bore in 1844. I don't have a lot to say about her. Look:


Happy birthday Mary Cassatt!

Update (23 May 2013 12:52 am)

I just watched Robot Monster again. I take back "terrible." It is actually an amazing little film. It has pretty much all of the problems of low budget films of that time, but it has a few positives. The acting isn't bad. And it is truly bizarre in a delightful way. It is also filled with lots of unintentional gems like the whole marriage ceremony. I always love how movies of that time were filled with scientists who were very serious about their Christianity. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

Over at Washington Monthly, Ryan Cooper wrote a nice, easygoing response to Michael Kinsley. As you may know, last week, Kinsley wrote, Paul Krugman's Misguided Moral Crusade Against Austerity. In it, he tried to argue that the pro- and anti-austerity forces weren't that much in disagreement. There were two problems with this. First, he made the major mistake of putting economics in a moral context. He made the critical error of writing, "I don't think suffering is good, but I do believe that we have to pay a price for past sins, and the longer we put it off, the higher the price will be." Kinsley was particularly attacked for that by various great minds. I also attacked him.

The second problem with Kinsley's article is perhaps even worse, although it hasn't gotten as much attention. It is just not the case that the pro- and anti-austerity forces are largely in agreement. I discussed this last year regarding a debate of sorts between anti-austerian Paul Krugman and pro-austerian Niall Ferguson on Fareed Zakaria GPS. I wrote:


And this is what Kinsley wrote. It is what austerity apologists always say: the anti-austerians are right that we need stimulus now but the pro-austerians are also right that we need austerity later. That's what the anti-austerians say!

Cooper rightly notes that what Kinsley is really worried about is debt causing inflation. If you feel a little marginal about this stuff, I suggest reading the article. It is short and, I thought, very clear. What I want to focus on is this supposed connection between debt and inflation that the austerians are so concerned about. Check out this graph that shows bond rates since 2000:


Look at the extremes: 2000 and 2013. In 2000, our debt was low and getting lower. Yet the treasuries—the amount the federal government had to pay to borrow money—was high: almost 7%. In 2013, our debt is high and getting higher (although at a slowing rate). Yet the treasuries are low: about 1.5%. This is not an argument for federal debt causing high inflation. Of course, what's really going on is that in 2000, the economy was doing great. The private sector was investing and thus there wasn't a lot of spare cash around for borrowing. Now, the economy is doing poorly. The private sector isn't investing that much. Instead, they are sitting on piles of cash looking for any safe way to use it. The safest way is in US treasury bonds.

We know, however, that most of the people who push economic austerity are not doing it out of concern for inflation. That is all a ruse. Instead, austerity and the fear of inflation is used to justify harming liberal policies. Of course, that's not what's going on with Kinsley. He's just been fooled and frightened by those who want to destroy programs that Kinsley himself believes in. It's sad.

Afterword

Cooper's article is actually about a brand new Kinsley article where he defends himself against Krugman and his "attack dogs." I thought a lot more of Kinsley before I read it. He doesn't seem to understand that the reason everyone imputes bad motives to the austerians is that neither economic theory nor economic facts support their position. I hope that Cooper's article will help in that regard. But I doubt it. In the new article, Kinsley spews a lot of nonsense that I would think he would be smarter than. I'm afraid he's lost all perspective.

Update (22 May 2013 9:18 pm)

One more thing. Kinsley seems to think that his austerity obsession is okay, because he thinks that the way to balance the budget is to raise taxes. That's sweet. But it's also naive. Austerity is overwhelmingly a conservative movement. That means that if austerity wins the policy debate, we are going to get something like the Ryan Budget, not the Progressive Budget.

None of that really matters, however. The point is the austerity position is wrong. If Kinsley got his wish and we balanced the budget with tax increases, it would still hurt the economy. And that's what all this about: what is best for the economy. And the austerians are provably wrong.