What's dumber than a mollusk?

Now, anyone who doesn't flat out admire "Captain Capitalism" Aaron Clarey has to be won over by this post. Here, a guy who has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of how to do statistics, calling people "mollusks" for - wait for it - not doing statistics well! That, friends, is cojones. It is truly impressive. Let's go through the post a bit, shall we? This is a bit outside of the usual remit of this blog but fortunately there's some offensive speech, not just the usual brainless patter.

Now, a lot of people - even, say, buisness oriented folk - have found a lot of bad news in the Census report on poverty. But here he's picking on a left-leaning group's comments on it.

He begins by making fun of a graph showing how many more people are living in poverty in America over the past few years.: there has been almost a 20% increase -- not beanbag. He then says they had to "mainpuilate the scale on the Y-axis." Uh, no. In fact, real stats packages real economists use - and for that matter even the crappy Excel graphs Aaron uses - will do this by default. The natural Y-axis ranges basically over the same range as your data, no? More on axes later. A graph is designed to help you present your data, kiddies, and that's all - "the right way" to set it up is so what you want seen can be seen.

He says, well, of course there's more people who're poor, there's more people, isn't the rate the relevant number? And here, Deputy Bullshit Spotters, is the point to listen to your inner voice that says, "Is this moronic toad really trying to suggest the population of the United States went up by something like 20% between 2000 and 2005?" Because it didn't -- it went up, by the Census Bureau's estimates, about 5%. That means, a plot of the rates is going to look, well, pretty much like the plot of the absolute numbers, with pretty much the same trends - NOT flat. How does he make it look flat? He screws with the Y-scale. Excellent.

And here's something for all you stats wannabes out there. You want to compare to pieces of data graphically? Make sure you show them with the same scaling, whatever scaling you use. Anyone who doesn't, is hiding something, or perhaps stupid, or both.

Now, Pathetic Ignorant Little Man (PILM) Aaron goes on to worry about "context" - you see, it's not fair to look just at a short time scale. Of course, PILM himself often makes judgements about trends from even shorter time spans - like, for example, here. But never mind. So he shows a plot of the poverty rates beginning with 1959. Basically it shows a gentle falloff from the '50s to 1970 -- from which one might infer that things like the New Deal and Great Society worked OK. Aaron thinks that's the relevant context. Um, why, oh Deputy Bullshit Spotters, is it relevant to compare poverty rates now, to a time when the US was segregated, and half the anti-poverty measures in action now, weren't in place? This is the challenge of all data analysis: define the meaningful "context." But for a group like CAP looking at immediate policy effects and solutions it's hard to defend Aaron's concept of "context."

"Thus, official economists would come to the professional conclusion," (says the PILM, who is not an economist, contra just about every economist involved in policy anywhere in the political spectrum) "that 'People should shut the hell up and stop their whining. Poverty is not a problem in America.'"

But, hey, there's never been a problem, right? After all, Aaron Clarey is the one who said that

"I'm sick and tired of your greedy scum bucket parasites known as 'the poor' who think you have it so rough"

so, how can there ever have been a problem, eh? I mean, screw these people!

And that's in a way as offensive as anything Aaron has ever written, and goes back to the point below about guys sitting in their rooms playing Super Mario who have no idea how actual Americans think. My personal guess on that thinking being, that while we recognize that how you help poor people may be a complicated issue, there is a real and terrible poverty problem in America if just a few hundred thousand people - let alone 40 million - are in need, and we desperately want to help, and anyone who denies that vision is a moral cretin, more fit to be called a "retard" or "mollusk," simply for lacking that understanding, than anyone at CAP. And I don't think it's just "liberal" or "conservative" Americans who'd agree with that.

Moving on - he again takes a shot at assessing the administration's policy effects just by looking at the past 4-5 years instead of longer (uh...OK, you don't need me to point out the problem). But then he says, hey, incomes fell for a while because we're coming out of a recession. Which is funny, because Aaron has heaped scorn upon the idea that we're coming out of a recession! And because, OK, we're coming out of a recession, incomes are recovering - but poverty numbers AREN'T, which seems to be CAP's point, no? Note that on the graph the Census Bureau doesn't identify the "recession" the same way Aaron (now) does. It's interesting to note, by the way, that while median incomes are stangant or declining, mean (per capita) incomes are going up, so Aaron's graphs are actually not addressing the "somebody's getting screwed" question.

Lastly he hits on the idea that illegal immigrants might be causing the jump - and, well, I think you know how to handle that question, it's going to look a lot like how you clever folk handled the population question. You know, "Is the PILM really saying....?" That way.

And check out the apparatchiks in the comments. It is tragic that after all the good work on decent people like Philip Mangano and others showing how new ideas and approaches can help the poor and the homeless, there are still fools who will spit out invented statistics about the percentage of homeless that are mentally ill or the like. These are not, of course, "fact-oriented" people.

Ahhh, culture.....

There's not really anything I could add to satirize this weird equivalence of governmental structure, with "culture." In fact, it's about what you'd expect from a guy who seems to consistently think "standard of living" means "GDP per capita" -- after all, nothing measures quality of life like the mean amount of money in a place! But I mean, sure, everybody knows that "culture" means the same thing as "governance," right? I mean, when someone asks you about, say, "Japanese culture," the first thing you think of is their Parliament, no? All praise the political system that produced Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn! Great culture, must've been great politics!

What can I say: that's what makes a PILM, a PILM. These are people beyond even Mencken's concept of a booboisie - ignorant, yes, but proud of it. This is "economic analysis" -- what do people want? what makes them happy? - from a source displays little ability to identify a Joe Henderson riff or a Schoenberg theme. These are folk who don't know Paul Auster from Paul Anka, William Gaddis from William Tell, Alvin Ailey from Alvin and the Chipmunks, Andrew Wyeth from Andy Griffith, Horace Silver from Mr. Ed, Washington Irving from Dr. J. (get it? Of course you do. Know where it's from? I know, I love y'all.) These are people so frickin' knowledgeable that they have probably never even felt the need to leave US shores, dammit. So, boy oh boy, that's some quality commentary.

Charity begins at home!

"Captain Capitalism" Aaron Clarey is shocked, shocked by a picture of putative Islamists carrying a sign praising Hitler and says, "The parallels between Hirohito's crazed Japan and radical islam carry me to the same solution Truman derived."

Brilliant, insightful analysis as ever. But sadly, the world isn't at Aaron's speed. Those damn pinko Commies would never let us give those Muslims what they deserve; if we nuked 'em there'd be a huge ugly international incident. Big diplomatic mess. That candy-ass Kofi would get involved.

Hey, wait! Maybe there's something we could do closer to home! That makes sense, by Aaron's always-impeccable logic, no?

A little Euripedes

Every man, is, after all, like the company he is wont to keep. Let's look at the company a little, shall we? I mean, who exactly is buying this stuff anyway? Who's reading Aaron Clarey, getting the message? Check out those second, third and fourth comments.

Now, Frequent Clarey Commenter Mahan is just so impressive. I mean, that projected child mortality rate - 75,000 per 100,000 - is just amazing. So much better than, say, the Cambodians could do at the killing fields. It really shows how inefficient those Commies are, no? And tells you right up front that Mahan is just so damn accurate and careful with those statistics, he is at least as good an historian as Aaron is an economist! Alfred Thayer is no doubt rolling over in his grave. Oh, and hey -- what exactly is up with these nutjobs who give themselves fake military ranks, anyway? And who knew that "the fauna" were such a threat! Run, bwana, the lions are coming!

But, wow, that's a bold stance - y'all are fools to try to help starving children. It's nice to see "Liar_Liar" - a friend of this blog, after all, who's shown up here to threaten your humble blogger, and call him names! - chiming in rapidly to agree. "[T]he african kids will hack you with a machette [sic] after they finish off their best friend." Wow. A sensitive, humane soul. Deep, man.

Ya gotta wonder -- just how much time do you have to spend alone playing "Mario Brothers" and reading comic books, to be so far removed from, y'know, the human species?

But you gotta leave to to the reader to decide if these are guys who spend their weekends alone in their underpants in dark rooms, in front of a box of Oreos, glaring at computer screens, hitting "refresh" every couple of minutes, waiting for responses.

I guess the apparatchiks are just agreeing, after all, with the guy who said, anyone who thinks they'd like to visit Africa is just brainwashed, and who called Africa a "shithole."

Maybe Euripedes is the wrong Greek, y'know? I mean, I'm not that clever. Maybe it's somebody else who said you could recognize folk when they speak....

A quickie

Hey -- one of our correspondents here at the Watch dragged us over to look at Aaron's latest (PDF). And is going to bug us until we post. So, yeah, three points:

• What the hell is wrong with the word "Alleged?" Does Aaron Clarey know something nobody else does?
• The other bit singled out for special notice is, "We ... urge law enforcement authorities and elected officials to caution against stereotyping entire religious or ethnic groups...." Because of course "Captian Capitlaism" Aaron Clarey knows you've gotta be able to stereotype entire religious or ethnic groups.
  
• "We're Sorry"? That's right, Aaron. If a nominal member of your religious/ethnic group does something wrong, you'd better apologize immediately. Because the whole ethnic group has done something wrong! Everybody knows that! Man, I'm still pissed that the blacks around here haven't all apologized to me personally over that OJ thing!

Now, get off my back, correspondent, I'm busy.

UPDATE: Hee, hee! As is PILM Aaron's tradition when we cotton on to his racist speech here, he has now changed the link repeatedly. But you have the PDF....

Missing links?

Wow, here at the Watch we start linking to the Google cache of "Captain Capitalism" Aaron Clarey's more repulsive speech, and suddenly somebody goes and tells Google to delete those cache pages, just like Aaron originally pulled the posts!

Well, now, we here are looking out for you. Since Aaron has insisted those aren't offensive speech, I'm sure he'd want you to be able to see them (and many others!) And I'd be happy to do you that favor. Besides, I'd want you to be able to see those pages so I'm not doing anything unfair! After all, when this site was all parody it referred to those posts as "interesting" or "daring," not, say, "racist," and I'd really rather not continue misrepresenting Aaron. And you should be able to judge for yourselves, no? So in case you're having a hard time finding the stuff (and of course, you can always contact me) that's gone missing, you can go ahead and find

• That post on Mexican women discussed down below, here.
• That post on Katrina refugees, here. (Oh, and check out his gratuitous reference to them as the "losers of Louisiana" here!).
  

And of course there's lots more in the ol' hard drive. People keep asking me to put up that post - you know, the crime one - but I'm saving it for a particularly wonderful occasion, and I'm really kind of behind the 8 ball with work right now. So we'll see.

Back to the tape

Re-examining the Google cache on that post about Latino Americans was, I think informative and fun, wasn't it? Let's try another post.

Just after the government issued Katrina refugees $2000 debit cards to cover
emergency expenses, Aaron posted this, his only statement on the subject.

All I said about it in the satiric part of the blog was, it was Aaron's "message to the Hurricane Katrina refugees." And in retrospect, that's not fair to you, the reader. After all, people are mostly pretty good to one another and prize compassion, and many of us have seen people who are struggling to get by dig into their pockets to help out, say, Indian Ocean tsunami victims. So I bet A lot of you looked at that and thought, how nice, a message for the Katrina victims. And once again, I regret misleading you.

So please check out that cache link so you can personally enjoy things like, "Let it be officially known that I can’t really muster up a care about the people of New Orleans....And now these idiots are costing me $2,000 per debit card." After all, people unfamiliar with Aaron Clarey's oeuvre probably wouldn't have expected something like that.

Although maybe they'd have known better if they'd read about how he's "getting mighty sick and tired of your greedy scum bucket parasites known as "the poor" who think you have it so rough when in reality, you don't pay a freaking dime for any government service if you're in the bottom 60% of income earners." (If you're wondering if you're a parasite, by the way, median household income in America is about $45 grand).

So, don't forget to check all this stuff out in the cache if you need to!