A plain blog about politics

Happy Birthday to Stephen Breyer , 75. Yeah, 75. Some good stuff: 1. Sometimes, a good obliteration is exactly what you're in the m...

Happy Birthday to Phoebe Cates , 50. Hey, Fast Times and Clueless fans -- and if you aren't, what's wrong with you? -- if you haven...

Proof today that people just don't understand the basic Keynesian ideas about deficits. At Roll Call, Nathan Gonzales claims that Obama-...

Happy Birthday to Philip Bailey , 62. Fortunately, there's good stuff: 1. With the caveat that I haven't read it, I suspect this...

To return to an oldie but goody: it's still striking to me that no one has jumped up to fill what appears to be a market opening for hac...

Well, some days, you don't have much of a choice, do you? The catch has to go to economists Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Poll...

I'll go with a Catch to a wonderful post by Dylan Matthews that goes through all the reasons why government budget deficits are thought ...

Happy Birthday to Dick Allen , 71. 19th all time in OPS+. Classic fringe HOFer; could be the answer to "which player makes for the best...

Happy Birthday -- why not -- to Marc Blucas , 41. And a bit of the good stuff: 1. E.J. Graff: " Rape is not inevitable ." 2....

To Brad DeLong, for debunking some bad budget history : Why 1970--when nothing happens to derange either the pattern of deficits as a sha...

Happy Birthday to Barry Andrews , 55. For some reason, I've never much listened to Shriekback. I really should, at some point. I like Wh...

Two in a row on the same subject? Yup. Today's is to Mike Konczal for ripping apart another part of Team Romney's defense of Romney...

An easy choice: Brad DeLong gets the coveted CotD for a thorough fisking of the economists defending Mitt Romney's economic plan . Excep...

Mark Thoma defends economists by bashing Congress : For fiscal policy the answer is clear and simple. Congress is broken , and it no long...

Happy Birthday to Aaron McGruder, 38. And some good stuff: 1. Brad DeLong on core vs. headline inflation . Just in case anyone doesn...

Happy Birthday to Christina Hendricks, 37. Our Mrs. Reynolds, indeed. On to the good stuff: 1. Electionate has a nice " ignore the ...

The answer, of course, is that Congress is unpopular. However, just because everyone hates Congress, that doesn't mean that Congress is ...

Happy Birthday to John Lewis, Member of Congress and American hero, 72. Straight to the good stuff: 1. David Mayhew on the most importan...

I don't think I've given a CotD to Paul Krugman before, but he very much earns it today by taking down Ezra Klein, of all people. Kl...

I did one of these back in August, and I sort of liked it, so here's a follow-up. You'll note that one question here is a repeat, si...