My God, you are an idiot.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What do you mean by didn't work? It did good. It just didn't do enough.

Silly, Ty. The only way it could "work" is if it made everything (especially Hank's teeth) better!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Per Reuters, Al Jazeera is reporting that a NATO plane intercepted a SCUD missile fired in Libya. Is that possible? I would have thought not.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Per Reuters, Al Jazeera is reporting that a NATO plane intercepted a SCUD missile fired in Libya. Is that possible? I would have thought not.

Which part? Libya having SCUDs or a U.S. warplane being able to intercept one?

[Adder]

Scott Sumner with some thoughts on what can be done by the Fed, short of his preferred NGDP level targeting (further explanation of each at the link):

1. Reduce interest on reserves. This one should be a no-brainer.

2. Price level targeting, at the rate of the implied Fed target of 2%.

3. A 5% NGDP growth target.

The latter two, of course, meaning, "INFLATION!!!" And the first one I suppose is, "weakening the banks!!"

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Which part? Libya having SCUDs or a U.S. warplane being able to intercept one?

Any plane being able to intercept one. They are ballistic missiles.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Per Reuters, Al Jazeera is reporting that a NATO plane intercepted a SCUD missile fired in Libya. Is that possible? I would have thought not.

based upon the math and physics involved I don't see why a heat seeking air to air missile couldn't take out a SCUD.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Any plane being able to intercept one. They are ballistic missiles.

Hank has spoken.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

2. not as clearly sucessful as W's Iraq policy yet, but still it seems like it may end sucessfully for us.

2. W achieved in Iraq what Reagan could not. The Beast is starved.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

More like this, please:

[An] initiative being tested at Boston Logan International Airport ... involves a greater use of what the agency calls behavioral detection officers, who will engage some passengers, many randomly selected, in conversation to determine who might be acting oddly enough to warrant a more thorough look at the checkpoint. This is based in part on the Israeli system of passenger interrogation, though of course the Israelis screen far fewer passengers than the 1.8 million people a day the T.S.A. puts through its checkpoints.

NYT

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

based upon the math and physics involved I don't see why a heat seeking air to air missile couldn't take out a SCUD.

On the way up, perhaps, and maybe that's the key here. Surely they go up much slower than they come down. Maybe the NATO plane was close enough to the launcher to catch it going up. Once it comes down, there is no way that an air-to-air missile would be fast enough, and I doubt it could carry a sufficient guidance system.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

I have confounded myself. In a year that i thought Obama would have a walkover and his R opponents would all be easily perceived bigots and morons, We have Jon Huntsman. I have my issues with him being a Mo, but are his beliefs really more insane than JFK's Papism, Carter's new-age fuzziesm, or Bush's reborn lack of self-questionism? If i have to accept a choice among the self-admitted insane, I am coming to the conclusion that Huntsman is the best choice among the Ill-Suited but Enamored. But how can we make him this year's Clinton?

Start by having him not say he'd be okay being Bachmann's running mate.

I don't know much about Huntsman. My general impression is reasonably positive. But I see no reason to learn more as he has no chance in hell of being the R nominee.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Ezra Klein has been working on the same problem as Hank and me:

Yglesias responds:

I generally share Ezra Klein’s skepticism about the popular lines of left-wing criticism of Barack Obama, but I think he’s dead wrong to suggest that there’s almost nothing Obama could have done differently to produce a better outcome.

For example, back on ARRA, would it have been impossible to negotiate a deal that featured a smaller headline stimulus number but contained a payroll tax cut “trigger” mechanism if unemployment shot over 8 percent? Maybe it would have been, but it’s not obviously an objectionable idea from the point of view of the pivotal stakeholders and it just wasn’t tried. Similarly, timely nominations for Federal Reserve Board vacancies would have made a difference. The administration could have moved swiftly to nominate someone to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency who was committed to using the powers of that office to move the economy. I’m sure there’s more stuff out there. The first six months of a new administration are a confusing time, and President Obama was acting based on badly inaccurate macroeconomic estimates. It would be extraordinary if there hadn’t been a number of blunders, and personally I wouldn’t want to position myself as an “Obama defender” who somehow holds the incumbent blameless for the objectively bad situation facing the country.

What an awful lot of people seem to do, however, is look at alleged mistakes early in the administration, assume that they weren’t mistakes, reach the conclusion that this proves Obama’s nefarious intent, and then assume that absent nefarious intent Obama would be accomplishing tons of awesome new stuff right now. That involves a lot of logical leaps. The original sin here was not thinking seriously enough about the question “what will we wish we’d done if 30 months from now the BEA turns out to have been underestimating the recession?” It turns out to have been a serious one, but I don’t think it supports nearly the inferential weight that a lot of people seem inclined to put on it.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Without the air strikes, Benghazi was going to fall. With foreign boots on the ground, there wouldn't be a sense that Libyans had done this themselves, but we still get the goodwill of having helped. Not saying that everything is going to go well from here on it, or that it's been perfect, but in hindsight Obama is looking better than I thought he would.

I had a similar thought last night when I was watching live. If we are going to engage in this type of thing, this is exactly the way to do it.

The other thought I had, which surely will be unpopular here, is that none of this happens without Bush. The execution was terrible and his timing was way off, but I think this is the type of thing he envisioned happening.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Yglesias responds:

does your boss know how much junk reading time you do each day?