Scooby Gate

Politifact is one of those websites that keeps everyone on their toes with honesty. Recently, Governor Chris Christie was caught in a lie. He told a 4-year-old boy that he shared the same enthusiasm for Scooby-Doo, Where Are You. He said it was also his favorite show when he was 4 years old. With much research and a lot of digging on the internet, Governor Chris Christie was exposed. The popular cartoon series did not start airing until Governor Christie was 7 years old. Well, although Politifact gave him a pass for not being able to recall everything that happened when he was 4 years old, I consider it to be political pandering to the powerful  4-year-old community. If and when he runs for president in 2016, I'm sure he will be reaching out to that segment of our population for donations, volunteers, and supporters. Mark my words and thank you Stephen for bringing this to the attention of the Colbert Nation. Never mind that Stephen is also confused about favorite cartoon shows and how old he was when Inspector Gadget was on.

If you just checked out that last link, you probably saw that Inspector Gadget was able to fly without any sort of airplane, at least for short distances. However if you are trying to fly today, in an airplane, you may be having some trouble. Well, times are difficult and therefore the smartest thing to do is to cut spending all over the place. And there's proof except for the fact that it's wrong.

Go read "Growth in a Time of Debt" and then come back here. I'll wait. Okay, that was fascinating. However, as much as many people like to quote it as if it is Biblical truth, it's just not quite what it's claimed to be. There are coding errors on the spreadsheet they used that could invalidate their conclusions. Note: Their paper wasn't peer reviewed. (These are not the conclusions you're looking for.) You don't have to take Stephen's word for it. Take the word of this guy - graduate student Thomas Herndon. Stephen even had Thomas Herndon on The Colbert Report to show how the conclusions of Professor Carmen Reinhart and economist Ken Rogoff are wrong.

It's worth watching this segment just to hear Stephen come up with creative aliases for Reinhart and Rogoff. Plus, Stephen wrote a bunch of Scientific Papers that were so easy because he realized it didn't have to be all scientific or mathy. Thomas Herndon was able to explain to Stephen how austerity measures are being counter-productive.

Eric Schmidt was the real guest last night, the one in the interview chair over by the table. He (along with Jaren Cohen) has a new book out, The New Digital Age - Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business." They talked about driverless cars and the future. We all know the internet is a bunch of tubes and yet we can't explain exactly what it is. We are going to see a ton of new internet users in the future and no one can predict what that will mean. That must be why he wrote the book, to let us know what the future will be like. The thing that really excited me is that our digital identity will live forever!