THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer’s name, city, and state.
*1*
Hugh Hewitt is right: The tangent being pursued by the Los Angeles Times is also a damning indictment of the journalism profession (“Yes” on Recall, “No” on the L.A. Times). Imagine! Crusading newspaper writers fighting desperately to preserve the status quo and keep incumbents in office!
–Anthony E. Waller
*2*
Ahnold may or may not be a sexual predator, I guess that depends on what your definition of sexual assault is “is.” (Bill Whalen, Dirty Tricks) If Arnold grabbed your wife’s breast or shoved her up against a wall, grabbing her buttocks with one hand while his other arm was around her neck, would you consider that playful behavior or some sort of punishable action? Maybe it wouldn’t technically be a criminal offense, but would you have so little regard for your spouse’s feelings that you would then be willing to write an article in support of him, especially were he to apologize and then call her a liar in the course of two consecutive sentences?
Jeez, is this kind of person the hope of the Republican party?
–George Tindall
*3*
Hugh Hewitt’s prescience is astounding. After reading his article on election night, I casually logged onto the New York Times website and found the following headline about Arnold’s landslide victory in California: “Davis Ousted and Schwarzenegger Is Selected, Exit Polls Show.” Note the use of the verb “selected” rather than “elected.” Let the Democrats’ game, trite and tired as it is, begin. . . .again!
–Dominique Fanizza
*4*
Regardin Hugh Hewitt’s article on rebuffing the Los Angeles Times, I called on Election Day to cancel my subscription. The volume of calls was so “overwhelming” that the wait to speak with someone to cancel my subscription was 20 minutes. I waited. It was worth it.
–Aaron H. Frank
*5*
I worked at the Los Angeles Times for 27 years–and I’m one of the “over 1,000” subscribers who canceled their subscriptions. They are reprehensible and there is no excuse. I worked as an Art Director for years there and did personal work for Otis Chandler and the entire program for 1984 Olympics. Many times I felt that I had to hide my political views since the climate there was not nice to Republican ideas–and, I was in the money-making end of the business (I am amazed that Ramirez is tolerated).
–Lois Jesek
*6*
I’m an economist who’s been in the forecasting business for the last 15 years, so I think I might be able to provide some perspective on Irwin M. Stelzer’s The Unknowables.
First of all, duh. Statistics are imperfect. They are never completely, totally accurate. That said, what is the alternative? Make up the numbers as we go along? No, the best we can do is understand the imperfections and deal with them.
Second, the press and the economics profession tends to act as if there is accuracy out there: I can only groan when I see people discussing what difference a growth rate of 6.08 percent versus 6.18 percent might imply. Hello? If the press or the economists were honest, they’d say that growth was around 6 percent, period. But it really does look better to say it’s going to be 6.08 percent.
Third, and this is where I take my colleagues to task, the economics profession has a serious jones for mathematics. I’ve had enormously complex models with cointegration to the nth. I now use simple, causal models that give me the right answers and take into account industrial interdependencies, but these would never pass muster at a university, since they aren’t mathematical enough.
You know what? My clients not only don’t care, they want my forecasts and not those from mathematically pure models. They want to know why the textiles industry in Germany is going to decline by 12 percent this year (simple: overvalued Euro means that the export markets will decline and domestic markets will be flooded once again with cheaper imports). They want answers to their questions that an average businessman understands, not an answer that requires 5 semesters of advanced mathematics to understand.
When we hire new economists, it takes about six weeks to decompress them and get them back into reality. We have to pound out of them the idea that if an equation provides a fantastic fit, first it needs to be checked to see what went wrong, since it usually means that there is a major specification problem. And there usually is: people actually believe, blindly, that statistically significant but severely misspecified equations are better than statistically weaker but properly specified equations.
GIGO is the phrase everyone knows but few understand. If economists were to do more thinking and less intellectual masturbation while playing with the newest and coolest mathematical constructs, the economics profession would be better off.
–John F. Opie
*7*
When will conservatives realize that a subscription to the Los Angeles Times or New York Times is really a campaign contribution to the Democratic party?
–John Nerz
*8*
By declaring that Donovan McNabb is “overrated” because of a media bias toward black quarterbacks, Rush Limbaugh is alleging that the media have applied a standard based solely on race, not performance, toward McNabb. (Ed Walsh, Rush Hour 2)
If such an accusation came from Jesse Jackson or Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rush Limbaugh would justly use his radio program to demand proof of the racism alleged. Instead, he hid behind a bogus First Amendment claim (no one has challenged his legal right to voice his views). Then he insisted that the amount of controversy his comments had aroused proved him right.
By declining to offer a single news story, a single reporter, or a single instance of racially motivated praise for Donovan McNabb, Rush Limbaugh has thrown the rhetorical equivalent of a stink bomb into the room and then slunk away.
–Lee Brewer Jones
*9*
David Skinner’s Rush Hour inspires the following thinking:
If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,
Then a libertarian is a conservative or a liberal
Who is or was, at least once, under investigation.
Thank you, Rush for popularizing serious consideration of legalization and decriminalization of pain relievers, etc.
–Bill Fox
*10*
It’s not just good enough to cancel our subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times. We need a California journalistic resource like the Times. So I am in favor of a regime change: Have Rupert Murdoch launch a hostile bid for the Times and clean house. Send the agenda driven editors and reporters packing!
–Tim Titus
