O'Reilly, the pollmeister...

I really don't often pay much heed to Mr. O'Reilly, but in looking at some recent polling data, I took note that he seems much more interested in polls than he did a mere six to ten months ago. Here's Bill's talking points memo from March 16th, entitled "Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy fires up."

Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Scott Rasmussen — perhaps the most accurate pollster in America — reported that President Obama's job approval rating has now slipped below that of President Bush back in March 2001.

Perhaps the most accurate pollster, well maybe, but maybe not? (Nice attempt to build credibility, Bill). Also note, that O'Reilly doesn't mention the actual approval rating, because you would think he would then have to admit that a 62% approval rating during an economic recession isn't half bad. Or, one would think. But yesterday's talking points memo proves me wrong. Bill fires out that Obama's approval rating has slipped to 58%. He then postulates with such wisdom as to why Obama is suffering such declining ratings. What could it be? Left-wing, Eurocratic socialism fears, of course...

Writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, the former prime minister of Denmark says:

"In Europe, we have been protected from the worst effects of the [economic] crisis thanks to welfare states built up over the past 60 years to cushion citizens from the threats posed by the free market. We can all count on state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support and other universal, tax-funded services. The simplistic dictum of more markets and less government championed by Reagan, Thatcher and their ideological heirs has failed on a momentous scale. I am hopeful that the G20 will make progress. We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice."

Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better.

Well, Bill, I have to agree that Marx likely couldn't have said it better. However, I'm not sure Marx would make any of those statements, sans perhaps a tangential reference to justice. The equating of a modern democratic welfare state to something Marx would endorse is quite assinine, as the last I checked Denmark still has a pretty thriving private enterprise, with a quite happy populace.

Under any circumstance, you know O'Reilly is working with some weak sauce when he tries to lambast the President for having a plus minus of 26 in approval ratings... Given the number of Glen Beck's, Lou Dobbs, and O'Reilly's out there preaching and fear-mongering against global governance, I'm quite pleasantly suprised in the ability of the American populace, at large, to realize many of our current problems will require global solutions and/or cooperation.

Now, I'm not a profesional pollster, but I believe when a President's polling data looks like this:


and the public's view of the economy looks like this:



Somebody must believe that we are heading in the right direction... Oh wait, here are some polls showing that's the case. I know that polls are everything, but by jesus, I get tired of someone using polling data as a weapon, when in fact, the polls are fundamentally juxtaposed against their ideological predispositions.

A political tweet...

Give the site tweetcongress.org a look see when you have some time. You know, if it can be said in a less than 140 characters, without puncuation or capitalization, with little thought before shooting off with some rhetorical bullshit -- politicians are bound to get in the game.

Get a laugh...

and you'll get the number. That's an old partially chauvinistic adage I heard from a quite chauvinistic (and depending on your viewpoint, mildly successful or completely reprehensible) self-professed professional bachelor. I haven't seen the full details of this study, but from what appears on CNN, it may be more true than I ever believed. Of course, it's important to remember that some women's sense of humor isn't exactly on a parallel plane with the everyday guy's view of funny. So, as a general rule fellas, stay away from the "dead baby" and/or "poop" jokes... For one, they won't impress the ladies, and secondly, they really aren't funny to anyone with much of a brain. Most of the laughs generated are at you and the fact that someone would say something so stupid.

If ladies like guys who can make them laugh, is the converse true? Well...

Do men also think funny women are more intelligent and honest? Time constraints prevented McCarty from exploring this question, but he said research suggests that men don't care much about women's sense of humor.

"A man wants a woman who laughs at his jokes and...

Well, the study doesn't complete the thought I had, but I think any man being truthful with themselves can figure that one out.

London calling...

The G-20 is set to meet this week in London. Amid all the protests, world leaders will be, in theory, working towards a plan to address the global recession. One of the primary areas of concern should be the decline in global demand, ergo a rise in protectionism and decline in trade.

Trade is contracting again, at a rate unmatched in the post-war period. This week the World Trade Organisation (WTO) predicted that the volume of global merchandise trade would shrink by 9% this year. This will be the first fall in trade flows since 1982.

Not only is this the first drop in trade since 1982, it is percentage wise, the biggest drop since WWII. So, what's a politico or bureaucrat to do? Stimulus, I dare say. Leonhardt points out that of all the economic lessons we've learned, and often had to unlearn or relearn, one that seems to hold water is:

Does stimulus work? Fortunately, this is one economic question that’s been answered pretty clearly in the last century.

Yes, stimulus works.

When governments have taken aggressive steps to soften an economic decline, they have succeeded. The Germans did it in the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt did so more haltingly, and had more halting results. Even the limp Japanese recovery plan of the 1990s makes the case. Although dithering over a bank rescue kept Japan in a slump, government spending on roads and bridges made things better than they otherwise would have been.

The primary impediments to additional stimuli likely has less to do with the costs or benefits, but with politics and nationalism. The politics portion of the argument against a bigger, more coordinated worldwide stimulus can be noted by looking at the Republicans in Congress being dead set against the stimulus. Finding little pieces of pork here and there, they parade around the media circus as if they were saving all America's future babies from sure fire death by debt. So, is this stance predicated on a truly ideological purity against bigger government spending, or more likely is it a political game? I'm going with the latter, because if it were a truly a conviction of such deep GOP significance, I would expect to see more GOP governor's joining in with Mr. Sanford in turning down cash. (I duly note that there are rumblings that some other GOP guvs will follow suit, at least in part.)

The second, and perhaps more problematic, antagonistic force is that of economic nationalism, or protectionism. From the earlier linked Economist article:

Some countries (notably Western European ones) have been reluctant to work the budgetary pump for fear that their extra demand will leak abroad to the benefit of foreigners. To stop the seepage, some governments have inserted discriminatory conditions into their fiscal programmes, the prime example being the “Buy American” procurement rules.

It seems highly irrational (which, may be more real in economics that we like to admit) for a nation to not pursue what is in its best interest, based upon a fear that action may have positive effects on other nations. I thought this was the basis for the entire argument for globalization. The G20 leaders need to realize that even if some "leakage" occurs, the preponderance of the benefits will remain in the country that activates the stimulus. With this confluence of short-sighted partisanship and chauvinistic politics from the so called friends of globalization, I'm not sure free trade needs the anti-capitalists protesters to bring it down. Just let the people running it keep making decisions defunct of logical coherence.