Aram Zucker-Scharff

Watch Each of the Last Four U.S. Presidents Announce That We’re Bombing Iraq:

Did last night’s primetime presidential speech announcing expanding authorization for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria feel kind of familiar? Like you’ve

Here comes the new boss. Same as the old boss.

“Ever wonder why the economic experts never seem to change, keep coming back, despite racking up such shattering failures as the housing bubble and the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Ever wonder why a guy like Larry Summers gets to be chief economist at the World Bank, then gets to deregulate Wall Street, then gets to bail Wall Street out, then almost gets to become chairman of the Fed, and then gets to make sage pronouncements on the subject of—yes— inequality? It’s for the same bad reasons: Because D.C. worships expertise and because Summers, along with a handful of other geniuses, are leading figures in a professional discipline dominated by what a well-informed observer once called a “politburo for correct economic thinking.””

– All these effing geniuses: Ezra Klein, expert-driven journalism, and the phony Washington consensus.

Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time:

Oliver Burkeman: Every time a public figure behaves with less-than-stellar competence, we’re incredulous. We probably shouldn’t be

Fun fact: no one knows WTF they’re doing.