Out of gas

I was listening to NPR the other day as usual the topic was the struggle for economic recovery and in particular Obama's recent budget proposal. In this segment they were focusing on criticisms of the proposal and I figured I might learn something about the complicated economic forces at play. But one after another all we got from the Republican skeptics were empty metaphors and (literally) shit jokes. I could only remember a couple:

Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) provided this technical breakdown of the Obama budget proposal on a morning news show:

It is as if you were flying an airplane and the gas light came on and it said 'you have 15 minutes of gas left' and the pilot said 'we're not going to worry about that, we're going to fly for another two hours.' Well, the plane crashes and our country will crash and we'll pass on to our kids a country that's not affordable,"

Meanwhile Governor Haley Barbour (R-Mississippi) delivered the weekly Republican address last Saturday and had this to say:

While families are cutting back, President Obama has proposed a massive government spending spree. It reminds me of how one of our old senators used to joke about the federal budget. He said it was like a newborn baby: insatiable appetite at one end and total irresponsibility at the other.

Ok I do think that last one is pretty catchy, but do either of these comments really qualify as economic analysis? It's also fun to think about variations on the themes, e.g. what if you were driving a car and the light says you have 15 minutes of gas but you still drive on? You run out of gas and have to walk to the nearest garage and then all the way back with a gallon of gas - still pretty annoying!

Still here

Hello readers,
It's been a while but now I'm back! I could sense the frustration out there among all of you with your Google Readers set to notify you of my next posting.

A lot has happened in the >6 months since I last wrote anything on this. I guess the biggest deal in terms of global paradigm shifts is that the USA finally did something right. It was a good time to be in Berlin during those days following the election, they really love Obama here and I could feel like I was a part of all that (I voted absentee).


I also got some new glasses.

I went back home for the holidays, stopped off on the east coast for a few days and then LA for a couple weeks. While back in the states I experienced some of the expected (reverse) culture shock. I couldn't find an address in New York since I forgot about that even and odd on the opposite sides of the road thing. When I overheard English being spoken on public transportation (they have that in NY) my first instinct was always that these were some American tourists and I wonder what they're doing here?

I took a bus down from NYC to DC and on the way down overheard a conversation that particularly brought me home though. I'm not saying that Americans are necessarily any less educated than the Europeans but they do say some funny things. Sitting next to me was a couple (A and B) and they were talking about the weather, since it was kind of cold:

A: So how do they measure the wind chill factor anyway?
(this is a good question actually, I also wanted to know)
B: Yeah good question. But I mean, how do they even measure *temperature*?
(um, I think I know this one)
A: I don't know. Well, I know how they measure *Fahrenheit* temperature, but not sure how they measure Celsius.
(eh?)
B: Whatever, no one uses Celsius. It's only for dorky scientists like you.