Cheap shots

Meat Mark Halperin! At the Hickory Park in Ames, Iowa, I believe, 2007. Via.

That's so Halperin.

Donkeys fly - @davidplouffe endorses @HillaryClinton https://t.co/PSGie8rAQu

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) October 24, 2015

Expressing amazement that Plouffe should endorse Hillary—no clue that his judgment, or anybody's, could be about policy and politics rather than raw teen emotions. ("But he was against her eight years ago!" Yeah, Obama was running.)

Confirmation bias has a conservative bias

Via.

Yuval Levin on the hot topic of confirmation bias at the National Review:

Without (it seems) a hint of irony, Paul Krugman argued on Monday that everyone is subject to confirmation bias except for people who agree with him. He was responding to this essay Ezra Klein wrote for his newly launched site, Vox.com, which took up the question of confirmation bias and the challenges it poses to democratic politics. Krugman acknowledged the research that Klein cites but then insisted that his own experience suggests it is actually mostly people he disagrees with who tend to ignore evidence and research that contradicts what they want to believe, while people who share his own views are more open-minded, skeptical, and evidence driven. I don’t know when I’ve seen a neater real-world example of an argument that disproves itself.

With the implication that I'm rubber, you're glue, and neener neener neener. Or as Jennifer Rubin calls it,

Welcome to the working class, Greg

Image via Steve Lovelace.

We were speculating about whether bold defender of the 1% Gregory Mankiw actually belongs to the 1%. Looks like the answer may be yes and no. Krugman, via Atrios:

Cengage Learning Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection more than five years after a buyout led by Apax Partners LLP left the textbook publisher with about $5.8 billion in debt.
…
Greg Mankiw, a Harvard University professor who advised Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is owed $1.6 million in royalties, according to the bankruptcy filing.

Defense of the 1%

Image of a conservative economist, from The Century Foundation.

Greg Mankiw, President W's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, tackles some philosophical issues in defense of the 1% (Via Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber). It's one of the most transparently stupid things I've read lately, and that's saying a lot.

Simple falsehood

the intergenerational transmission of income has many causes beyond unequal opportunity. In particular, parents and children share genes, a fact that would lead to intergenerational persistence in income even in a world of [jump]