House of Eratosthenes

Something pretty interesting happened Friday when Neal Boortz made a reference to the November, 2009 “study by J.P. Morgan” that found only seven percent of President Barack Obama’s cabinet has experience in the private sector. You may recall this thing went viral. And, as is usually the case when things go viral, there is much misinformation making its way in, from both the right and the left.

Well, the study itself doesn’t interest me too much. Obama’s cabinet doesn’t know what it’s doing; you don’t need a study telling you that. The evidence is all around us. And common sense should tell you that if there are some smarts in that cabinet, they aren’t going to be of very much use are they? How on earth could they be? Imagine yourself as a high ranking official in the Obama administration. A decision comes along, and what do you do? Answer: You don’t. If you say “peanut butter and jelly” and the Little Emperor says “roast beef on rye” you look like a complete dork. You’ll be backpedaling like crazy, claiming that your remarks were taken out of context — and that’s among your friends, before word even gets out. So no, this isn’t a relevant statistic. For all practical purposes, the experience of this cabinet must be zero percent.

Their Special Guy at the top is just too big and important. With or without Secretary Chu’s coveted Nobel prize, the “Me Too” people don’t count. They are indicators of Chairman Zero’s priorities, nothing more than that.

But I do wish to inspect the debunking. Oh goodness gracious, do read that from top to bottom. It is a fascinating portal into how dedicated liberals “debunk” things.

First of all: The study is bogus, and if you weren’t a simpering moron you’d immediately see the study is bogus, because the math doesn’t work.

Vice President, plus 15 executive department heads, plus six others: 22 people.

If only 10% had private sector experience, that would be 2.2 of them. Each of the 22 people comprises about 4.5% of the cabinet. Two of them with private experience would be 9% of the cabinet. Three with private experience would reveal the chart to be in error. Would it be possible to create a cabinet of 22 people and have only two of them with private experience?

The bullshit detectors in the bloggers’ minds should have been clanging like crazy when they saw that chart. [emphasis in original]

Secondly: J.P. Morgan is a bank. What is a bank doing conducting a study into the resumes of cabinet members?

Well, the article about the study is here.

Michael Cembalest is chief investment officer for JPMorgan Private Bank. The views expressed herein are Cembalest’s and may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of JPMorgan Private Bank or any of its affiliates.

There is a serious effort here to gather data according to a consistent methodology, and extrapolate meaningful statistics from them. Careless, casual statements like “the chart is a hoax” are, quite plain and simply, wrong.

A hoax is a deliberate attempt to deceive or trick people into believing or accepting something which the hoaxer (the person or group creating the hoax) knows is false.

It is true that the study has been recalled by those who linked it in haste, with perhaps the most representative and thoughtful example provided by Eugene Volokh. The chart could be regarded as misleading, not so much because of bad data or malicious intentions behind it, but because of a strong potential among the readers to misinterpret it.

The rules applied are consistent, but subjective. The headline chosen for Cembalest’s column is “Obama’s Business Blind Spot” and the data support the point Cembalest set out to make: Here we have these real-world problems with our nation’s unemployment situation, and Obama’s tackling them with a bunch of damn professors, P.R. people and lawyers. Their hands are soft. And it is a superlative situation. Cembalest chose a methodology by which each administration could be measured, and was able to produce a data series showing something remarkable about this current one, and indicative of how the administration would view the problem. Therefore, indicative of how it would choose to solve it.

How a bank might be interested in such a thing, should be obvious.

But let’s go on to the debunking blogger’s most pivotal and often-mentioned point, for this is my favorite, and it is probably the most important one in “debunking” the study:

I figure, Rahm Emanuel was a spectacular success at investing. He made roughly $4 million a year, his clients presumably much more. Most people work a lifetime for less than $2 million — so can we credit Emanuel with 8 lifetimes of experience? Why not?

If these bozos don’t want to deal with the facts, they can offer their methodologies, I figure. And if they don’t, it’s probably because their methodologies are unfair and indefensible, so must be hidden.

In any case, a rational person looking for “private sector experience” wouldn’t discount a lawyer’s representation of an historically on-the-border of corrupt company like Chiquita Brands.
:
Geithner was president of one of the largest and most important branches of the Federal Reserve Banking System, in New York. Working with the highest ranking and best recognized foreign economic consulting firm isn’t toothpaste. His time with Kissinger and Associates was golden, not deserving in any way of the denigration you lend to it. It’s like going from college to a team that includes at their peak, Michael Jordon, LeBron James, and Bill Russell — and getting at least significant playing time.

I didn’t redefine anything I had. I merely looked at the bios of the people Cembalest claimed didn’t have private sector experience.
:
Chu, who…won a Nobel for his private sector experience, is acknowledged as a genius in the field his department covers, and has more than a decade managing some of the most demanding groups imaginable, including the physics department at Stanford and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, one of the best-respected masses of 4,000 bright people ever created.
:
Attempts to denigrate the experience of this, one of the best qualified cabinets, tell us more about the size of the critics, than about the qualifications of people like Steven Chu or Hilda Solis. Or, maybe I should say more accurately, the lack of size of the critics.

His argument mostly hinges on this: Lawyers are hard workers because practicing law is really, really tough. And don’t dare contradict him or else he’ll demand your experience practicing law, and discount whatever that experience is rest assured, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. In the comments section you see him coming back to this point again and again and again. Lawyers are golden. Every lawyer in Obama’s cabinet represents lots and lots of “private sector” experience, even if he didn’t work in the private sector. Maybe we should count that guy multiple times. I see it this way, therefore it is Truth.

Well, my own experience practicing law is as short as it can get. But as a voting citizen, when I go through his painstaking summaries of the experience of each cabinet member, nose-by-nose, my confidence in the Obama administration is not bolstered or even recovered. It is diminished. This idea that practicing law should count as private experience — maybe it should count even more than the other stuff! — think of it what you will, but the “debunking” relies almost completely on this.

And that’s the observation I’d like to make here about liberals “debunking” things. Based on the meandering of the presented argument, and their analysis of it, they see things a certain way. And that way of seeing things is local, not global. There is no guarantee of consistency across time with it. For example, if the Republicans put up a couple of experienced lawyers against Obama in 2012, I don’t know that this liberal blogger will go on thinking law experience is all-that-and-a-bag-o-chips. I expect he’d do a hairpin turn, something to the effect of “Yeah, but Obama has grown into the job of President! President beats Lawyer any day!” Or something to that effect.

But even if that doesn’t come to pass, here the weakness in the debunker’s argument becomes a philosophical one. You m-u-s-t see things the debunker’s way. You m-u-s-t agree that practicing law counts as private sector experience…and it must count exactly the way the debunker says it counts. Agree to that, or else you’re just a big ol’ dummy.

That they think this is a solid argument, let alone a debunking, exposes the fact that they really don’t know truth or falsehood when they see it. And it worries me mightily when these are the people who say we need to “sit down with our enemies and talk out our differences with them.” Look how they do the talking. It’s all point…counterpoint…value system…value system…THE VALUE SYSTEMS FACE OFF AND ONE DEVOURS THE OTHER NOW WE MUST MARCH IN COMPLETE LOCKSTEP ON THE VALUE SYSTEM. And then when we get past that, it’s on to the next point. As opposed to point…counterpoint…value system…value system…now since those value systems are not going to change, let’s try to find some real common ground. The latter is the thinking method of reasonable, rational people. The former is the thinking method of tyrants. And small children.

I recognize that when we’re trying to figure out how lawyering counts as private business experience, some number has to be produced and that number has to win, so that it can be applied consistently across the administrations across the generations. But a rational person would have pointed this out and exposed the real weakness with this study — that it is inherently subjective, although it might be reasonably viewed by a casual observer as something different.

Liberals never seem to want to service the casual observer, to give him the benefit of the wisdom he would pick up himself if he were not a casual observer. They always seem to want to write a headline that offers a different twist to the casual observer, and keep him casual. And so they end up writing garbage. The study is a “hoax”…which the casual observer would infer to mean, it didn’t happen, or there’s nuthin’-to-it. That is not the case.

Their world is one in which everyone must value everything and see everything in a uniform way, and those who value things or see things any differently have to be somehow neutralized. I do not want people who think this way, to represent me as they “sit down and talk with” that I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket guy in Iran, or the Gargoyle in North Korea. Because let’s face it, when the “discussion” gets to that one-value-system-gobbles-up-the-other thumb-wrestling contest — I don’t know they’re gonna win.

This makes them the vastly inferior choice for managing both foreign policy and domestic issues. It is their way of seeing the world and all the things within it. It is immature. Nobel prize or not, it is a worldview inadequate for making real decisions.

Thing I Know #330. A man who doesn’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion, is not to be trusted in delivering either one of those.

The chart was bullshit from the start. No bank like J. P. Morgan would bother doing such a “study.” Based on the information I had at the time, it was a pretty obvious hoax.

Now, you argue that because Cembalest did not intend to mislead, it’s not a hoax? If we grant you that, then grant the rest of us the knowledge that, as you note, the “study” is bogus, and the American Enterprise Institute and everyone else who has cited the chart as authoritative, did indeed intend to mislead.

Either that or they are so stupid their citizenship should be revoked in favor of the first 100 illegal migrants we can pick up.

I detailed why your bullshit indicators should have gone off. You think I’m too pedantic about it? I’m tired of hoaxes like this that get play from idiot yahoos who should know better. My methodology was based on a simple, honest and straightforward process: What shows up on the resumes of the cabinet members.

Your methodology appears to be based on a cockamamied claim that lawyers aren’t for-profit operators in private practice, and that business experience doesn’t count if its not done in the pursuit of crushing people, if its done by Democrats.

But forget the lawyers: Obama’s cabinet among the non-lawyers falsify the AEI claims. Steven Chu, Rahm Emanuel — we’re already past the 7% claim (2 of 22 is 1/11th, or 9%).

If you wish to make a wild-ass guess, label it so. But your dancing around to somehow disqualify lawyers in the private sector as private sector is unbecoming, silly and stupid. Abe Lincoln was a great capitalist in his representation of the railroads, and people applying for patents, and any lawyer must understand the business world well to succeed in it. Lawyers have clients, at a minimum. The are service providers in free enterprise.

It’s the free enterprise system you denigrate, really. I tire of that as well.

If anyone had a legitimate gripe about Obama’s cabinet, they could make a legitimate claim. But to claim that they lack private sector experience is a falsehood. And we need to remember that it was all that private sector experience that helped us get into the Great Depression, when Treasury Secretary Mellon got Hoover’s ear to persuade him to do nothing, “because recovery is just around the corner.”

All competent cabinets tend to be heavy on academics and lawyers. Those are two areas where our nation is strong on meritocracy. Cream rises, and we should not be surprised that the top advisors to the leader of the world’s greatest free enterprise engines are people who have competed hard and won at many different areas, including the toughest intellectual, academic, scientific and legal arenas.

It’s also true that business-experienced people have gotten us into deep doo-doo, most of the time our nation has gotten into deep doo-doo. Robert McNamara’s extreme and universally-acknowledged business acumen created a wave that washed us into a full-fledged if undeclared war in Vietnam — but he couldn’t summon the testicular fortitude to admit publicly that the war was unwinnable, and that withdrawal was the way to go. George Bush’s acumen at trading away Sammy Sosa probably should have been a warning — he led us into two wars that each eclipsed the record of longest war in American history — and maybe Bush made them unwinnable, too.

If conservatives would quit their standard MSU* methodologies, liberals would stop making pendantic, but accurate, rebuttals.

Knowing the difference between fact and opinion, if you do, doesn’t give you the right to claim facts are not facts.

* “Making [excremental stuff] up.”
- edarrell | 07/25/2010 @ 16:13
Mr. Darrell. Happy to see you make it over. Nice looking blog you got there.

If conservatives would quit their standard MSU* methodologies, liberals would stop making pendantic, but accurate, rebuttals.

This is what we refer around these parts to the Fourth Milestone on the Way to Complete Insanity, which is the tribe-thinking. Nobody from your tribe can ever have a bad idea, nobody from the other side can ever have a good one. That’s insane.

Everyone to the right of you, on the political spectrum, is not necessarily stupid, evil, crazy, sadistic or malicious.

Everything you’ve ever failed at, including law, is not necessarily hard.

And everything hard, that people manage to get done, is not necessarily deserving of respect. If something does deserve respect, then that is an opinionated matter…you cannot give people orders to respect it, unless you employ them, and not even then. And if they choose not respect what you think demands respect, they might still be principled, intelligent, decent people.

Everything worthy of respect is not necessarily “private sector.”

But you never did address my main point, which was not a defense of Mr. Cembalest’s little project. The Obama cabinet cannot add wisdom to the Obama figurehead, until such time as a) the executive would do something a certain way; b) the cabinet recommends an alternative course based on something someone in there knows, that He does not; c) He wisely defers to their prudent counsel, and d) this more considered course of action delivers superior results.

I do not know of any occasion on which those four events have come into the required alignment. I don’t think you do either. I doubt it is possible. For a year and a half now, this seems to be all Barry’s show. And if that is the case, then we are arguing in a vacuum. Make them all demigods. Make them complete idiots. The outcome isn’t changed either way.

As far as the study, Cembalest studied something, he gathered data, he came up with a formula (you dislike) to consistently apply to all of what he found, and made his chart based on this. There’s nothing fraudulent about this. Disagreeable, perhaps, to you. But if you can’t see the difference between the one thing and the other, then — not wanting to match your level of impertinence with my own, trust me that is not my intent here, but — you’re as good a poster boy for TIK #330 as any.

Is it true what they say about you liberals? Anytime you decide you disagree with something, you’ve found a new litmus test for supposedly stupid people, therefore it’s impossible to have a civilized discussion with any of you? Don’t take this the wrong way, but that appears to be the case here.
- mkfreeberg | 07/25/2010 @ 19:54
As far as the study, Cembalest studied something, he gathered data, he came up with a formula (you dislike) to consistently apply to all of what he found, and made his chart based on this.

It doesn’t have anything to do with those to the right of this Reagan administration appointee. It has to do instead with those who make works of fiction and claim them to be fact. Those who Make Sh– Up should be called on it — as I have called this bogus chart.

No, Cembalest didn’t make a serious study. He took a SWAG, rather on a lark, and wrote it down as a piece of humorous conversation starter. When he called me to make it clear he was retracting the whole thing, he made it clear that his chart was not based on any methodology that anyone else could replicate.

You’re defending a chart that has been retracted by its creator as not accurate. It’s a work of near-fiction as it turns out — as close to MSU methodology as one can get and not have one’s “products” carted off to the sewage disposal plant.

And you think liberals are silly? This isn’t political. It’s a question of whether we’re grounded in reality.

Tribe thinking? Hey, it’s your tribe who retracted the chart — Cembalest is no liberal, no Obama supporter. Your tribe is telling you it’s a crazy idea.

Where do I err? You’ve cited no error I made. Care to try? Don’t move goalposts. Don’t claim that lawyers who work in the private sector are not private sector. I counted no public public sector work, even by lawyers, as private sector.

Which cabinet member did I err on? Come on, put up some facts. Which of the 22 did I claim had private sector experience, who does not?

Everyone to the right of you, on the political spectrum, is not necessarily stupid, evil, crazy, sadistic or malicious.

Stupid, evil, crazy, sadistic or malicious is as stupid, evil, crazy, sadistic or malicious does. It’s dishonest to claim false things are true. That is either stupid, evil, crazy, sadistic or malicious, or a combination of those, depending on one’s intelligence level and intent.

Pushing a false claim is not innocent, good or true.
- edarrell | 07/25/2010 @ 20:52
But you never did address my main point, which was not a defense of Mr. Cembalest’s little project. The Obama cabinet cannot add wisdom to the Obama figurehead, until such time as a) the executive would do something a certain way; b) the cabinet recommends an alternative course based on something someone in there knows, that He does not; c) He wisely defers to their prudent counsel, and d) this more considered course of action delivers superior results.

I do not know of any occasion on which those four events have come into the required alignment. I don’t think you do either. I doubt it is possible. For a year and a half now, this seems to be all Barry’s show. And if that is the case, then we are arguing in a vacuum. Make them all demigods. Make them complete idiots. The outcome isn’t changed either way.

You’re not paying attention. Your not knowing doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I suspect that, if you had bothered to pay serious attention, you’d have discovered such a case. It seems to me you weren’t paying attention during the discussion of what to do in Afghanistan at all. From the Defense Department alone he got advice to stand pat, double troop numbers, and pull out completely.

You’ve never worked in a large organization, on a team, nor in any policy position, I take it?
- edarrell | 07/25/2010 @ 20:57
You take it wrong. I’m flattered you find my points so irrefutable that you’re grasping at straws trying to unearth irrelevancies to try to discredit me. Relax, it isn’t necessary, this is just a blog being written up by an ordinary guy. But I do possess the background of which you have inquired. Someone disagrees with you about something and possesses relevant experience, knowledge and sanity. Hey don’t feel bad, we all run into some new concepts to which we must become accustomed.

Anyway, I read your mini-biographies of all the cabinet members…not every word of every one, but most of it. I believe what leaves me unimpressed is what left Mr. Cembalest unimpressed, and it’s something either beyond your comprehension or you don’t wish to acknowledge it: Most of these people didn’t actually make anything that represents real wealth. Those that “made” some kind of money, for the most part made it the way James Taggart made it. Redirecting it. There’s no real wealth behind what got “made.” So in this sense, Dick Cheney, just as an example would have ’em all beat. This is, I think, why you’re so frustrated with the entire world not rolling over and saying “Yes Ed, lawyers are wonderful, they’re godlike beings.”

But, once again, I do not think anything is molded & shaped by Obama’s bizarre and…let’s cut to the chase, shall we…non-diverse packing of His cabinet with all these lawyers. He’s far too important, by which I mean arrogant, for His decisions to be impacted by mere hangers-on. In my view, they are just an indicator. They reveal His priorities & lack thereof.

And, more likely than not, their appointments reveal those to whom He owed some kind of a favor.

And your use of the word “hoax” was false, regardless of the feelings you had — anger, resentment, fatigue, weariness — that you might’ve felt justified it.
- mkfreeberg | 07/25/2010 @ 21:17
You’re really stretching to find some reason to defend baseless claims.

All these lawyers? I’m impressed at your dancing so hard to avoid confronting the facts. 13 of the 22 cabinet members are not lawyers. Whose cabinet had a higher percentage of non-lawyers since, say, Coolidge?

Is there any claim you’ve made that is supported by the facts? I can’t find one so far.

If you can’t tell your biased opinion from the facts . . .

(You may invent an end to that sentence. But be aware, it’s about your claims here.)
- edarrell | 07/26/2010 @ 07:58
Is there any claim you’ve made that is supported by the facts? I can’t find one so far.

Yes, I claimed you were in error when you used the term “hoax.” And I am correct.

It occurs to me that you and I are very much alike, Prof. J– I mean, Mr. Darrell. You have a blog, I have a blog. Your blog is fascinated with, and named after, a canard that was started (unintentionally) by H.L. Mencken; mine is fascinated with, and named after, an ancient library administrator who figured out the size of the Earth. So you’re sort of a “Bizarro Eratosthenes” from an anti-matter universe: Instead of encouraging people to look at things, you’re encouraging them to look away. I’m a software engineer, and from your comments it appears you are a (failed?) lawyer.

It’s the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine. Cop illegally enters my apartment and catches me building a bomb, or torturing my kidnapped toddler, or writing a confession in my diary about having murdered somebody — and the law has to pretend it never happened. Yes, I know the doctrine is refined across time and it’s a good deal more complex than this, but the fundamental principle remains: We are to allow our lawyers to decide for us what “truth” is, and they are to instruct us to disregard big chunks of real truth. In this case, you’ve managed to successfully bully many people to pretend the study never happened even though it did.

What you’ve really caught the researcher doing, is an indulgence in the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. “No Scotsman puts milk in his porridge” “Well, my Uncle Angus puts milk in his porridge.” “No True Scotsman puts milk in his porridge.” This is what the researcher did: Obama has no private-sector people in His cabinet. Ah, but there are all these lawyers. Okay, we’ll count a lawyer as one-third of a person working in the private sector. I view this as the strongest part of your argument: Cembalest did not present his point with integrity.

You caught him at this because such an effort was outside of his scope. His primary point is actually not only still intact, but it’s one with which I think you would readily agree: Obama’s cabinet is a radical departure from the traditional presidential cabinet. And this is where you are at your weakest, when you dictate to strangers, as if you hold some kind of authority over them, that they are to practice “poisoned-tree” and look away from something that purports to prove something you actually think is right. In fact, however you choose to measure it, it’s rather difficult to deny. Obama is relying, in a radical and unprecedented way, on the Ivory Tower set. The people who don’t actually produce.

You just disagree with most other people because you think that’s a good thing.

So rather than follow the main path, which would lead into a troublesome thicket in which you are painfully in the minority, more and more disenfranchised with each passing day, as reality shows Obama’s priorities to be in error — you just declare the whole thing to be off-limits, “MSU,” and anybody who dares to look at it you start calling them names, anti-Eratosthenes style.

Kind of reminds me of the whole “Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet” thing. It’s supposed to be a false urban legend, which means anyone who believes it must be stupid. But the interview did take place, Gore said he was instrumental in creating the Internet, and even at the time people with common sense realized there was something being revealed about Gore’s personality that was creepy, and not just a little bit.

But anyway. The study exists, it seems to have rested on a real analysis of the biographies of selected administration officials…in fact, technically, you’re the one who jumped to conclusions about it without doing your homework since it took you by surprise that Cembalest wasn’t inspecting the same set of people you were. You’ve demonstrated over and over again that when you repeat the exercise you come up with a different number; that “debunks” Cembalest if I presume you’re doing everything perfectly, and I don’t wish to be unkind to you but I’m not willing to extend that to you. It may be the kind of fealty lawyers demand, and maybe they receive it in most other places. It isn’t happening here.

What factual errors did Cembalest make? Please skip the stuff about you think such-and-such a profession, or individual, commands a level of respect Cembalest didn’t give them. Where did he call out a specific person as missing a specific background, and factually botch it?
- mkfreeberg | 07/26/2010 @ 09:25
Kind of reminds me of the whole “Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet” thing. It’s supposed to be a false urban legend, which means anyone who believes it must be stupid. But the interview did take place, Gore said he was instrumental in creating the Internet, and even at the time people with common sense realized there was something being revealed about Gore’s personality that was creepy, and not just a little bit.

Is there no falsehood you will not defend?

Got a citation for any of that? Of course you don’t .

The facts are that ARPANET was scheduled for termination by the Reagan administration. Alone in Congress, Al Gore said that was a dumb idea to kill it — linking computers for communication had great value in defense contracting, in academia, and had stupendous potential for commercial exploitation that would more than pay for the dollars the feds put into the project. Gore made the case, mostly alone, in both the House and Senate, and he won the point. Congress refused to kill the project. Today, we call that project “the internet,” or “world wide web.” Gore made only a factual claim, that he had played a principal role in saving ARPANET. Republican hoaxsters, whom you appear to worship, turned it into a claim of “invention.”

Gore’s case is really very instructive. He’s a bit of a wonk on science and technology issues. In Congress, in both the House and Senate, he led the way on a number of science and technology issues. Organ transplants are rather common today because Al Gore tore down the federal legal barriers, including in the production of immunosuppressive drugs and the creation of interstate organ transplant registries, for example. He was the chief sponsor of the bill that tries to cleanup leftover toxic messes, like those DDT manufacturing sites abandoned across the nation — the Superfund bill.

Gore’s made a relative killing in business as a bit of seer, an advisor to Google and sitting on the board of Apple. Anyone up on the computer and software industries should at least be aware of the history of the business . . . You insist Gore did something wrong, but you have to suck in a wholesale hoax to do it. “Not a hoax if you’re too stupid to know better” doesn’t count in this case. We know — because you told us — you’re not so impaired in your discerning fact from phantasm.

You could get the facts, but you’re smug enough in your ignorance wallow to think you’ve already got all the facts. Who was it said, “You can’t reason a man out of a position to which he did not get by reason?” It applies here.

Obama’s cabinet is the most diverse, and one of the highest qualified in history. So far they’ve avoided most of the errors of hubris that plagued the Kennedy cabinet — but we’re only two years in, a quarter of the way through two terms. The hubris thing is something you may have missed, your not being much of a lover of history and its lessons. In any case, your criticisms of them tell us more about your feelings of inadequacy than any inadequacies they may possess collectively or individually.

There is no “study” to which you refer. You can’t find it to cite it for us; there is no methodology to replicate. Mr. Cembalest, whose study you treat as a sacrament, disavowed it. “7% of the cabinet with private sector experience?” That would be one person, probably, if Cembalest didn’t count everybody (he said he didn’t count the Postmaster General, but of course that Postmaster General hasn’t been a part of any president’s cabinet for at least 35 years . . . a journalist or anyone else striving for accuracy might worry about any methodology that worries about the Postmaster General, counting or not counting). And yet you say, “The study exists.” Yes, and Mickey Mouse is close to graduation as a sorcerer.

You falsely claim there is a methodology — can you replicate it for us? Please do. Then we’ll show you where you erred on your won, instead of just where you repeat errors already renounced by those who committed them.

Cembalest erred in SWAGging a silly claim, that no set of facts would support without waterboarding the data, the dictionary, and whatever database program you happen to be using. Cembalest erred in not listening to his Hemingway-brand excrement detector. Cembalest corrected his error, and retracted the chart.

Now, there’s an example in ethics you would do well to follow.

You ought to get one of those Hemingway things.. I’m sure it would help make things smell better here.

Better to just stick with the facts.
- edarrell | 07/26/2010 @ 15:09
I said…

What factual errors did Cembalest make? Please skip the stuff about you think such-and-such a profession, or individual, commands a level of respect Cembalest didn’t give them. Where did he call out a specific person as missing a specific background, and factually botch it?

You sidestepped it. Cembalest gathered something…you say he made stuff up. My contention has been that your objection to the study is simply that it weights things in a way you personally do not like. So it’s obvious the onus needs to be on you, to find a factual error in Cembalest’s study. If you cannot, then the situation is exactly the way I have summarized it.

And you can’t. Game, set, match.
- mkfreeberg | 07/26/2010 @ 15:54
You’d be surprised at the judges decision. Game, set, match indeed. You’ve never explained why you defend the complete lack of any study. Cembalest withdrew the chart you defend. You refuse to point to any claim I’ve made, and referenced, that you disagree with, or that is in error — other than your tortured claim that I mislabeled Boortz’s malfeasance and misfeasance as hoax.

What did Cembalest “gather?” I’ve asked you at least a couple of times to tell us where the information comes from, and I pointed out that the 7% figure cannot result from any calculation honestly done.

The situation is as you summarized it, except that you’re not following your own advice. Your opinion is not fact, no matter how deft you are at dancing around the truth.

Obama’s cabinet remains well-qualified, with at least adequate private sector experience, more than you allow under any method, and with fewer lawyers than you can count.
- edarrell | 07/27/2010 @ 06:13
You’ve never explained why you defend the complete lack of any study. Cembalest withdrew the chart you defend…What did Cembalest “gather?” I’ve asked you at least a couple of times to tell us where the information comes from, and I pointed out that the 7% figure cannot result from any calculation honestly done.

Yeah you keep saying Cembalest “withdrew” the chart, and you keep saying the 7% figure is what cannot be supported. But as anybody who takes the time to follow the link knows fully well, the entire article is up there, it is augmented by three updates that are rather mundane, nothing at all to the effect of “this smart blogger named Ed Darrell pointed out we’re full of it so we took this down, or we advise taking this with a large grain of salt.” The chart seems to have been revised, with the Obama administration’s score standing at something just north of 20%. Which is still a sharp departure from previous administrations, so his main point stands. If you wish to dazzle me with your brilliance as you debunk his study, I suggest you start from that point and work forward.

Your own link that is just supposed to completely bowl me over with the wonderfulness of the Obama cabinet, and drop me to my knees in lasting obeisance, says 1) they are racially diverse and 2) a surprisingly generous number among them know how to play basketball.

Bizarro-world, Anti-Eratosthenes indeed. You seem to be accustomed to talking down to people who don’t bother to read things.

We both agree that the Obama administration is radically different from previous ones, right? In that it is made up of — might not necessarily draw from the experience of, but is made up of — academics and legal-beagles. Right? Our point of disagreement is someplace beyond that?
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2010 @ 09:08

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Tempest in a Teapot About Obama’s CabinetSunday, July 25th, 2010

The Tempest in a Teapot About Obama’s Cabinet
Sunday, July 25th, 2010