Today in breathtaking stupidity

Apparently, in both recent UK by-elections, won by the UKIP, voters were frequently reported (not by the author of the article I link to -but he mentions the fact) to have voted UKIP because the Tory incumbent had not done enough for them.

On the face of it, you might say, why not, even though this UK obsession of deciding a national election on purely local matters (over which an MP does not even have jurisdiction) is a little weird, and while one may question the choice of thus turning to UKIP, it could make sense (we are talking of former tory voters, don't set too high standards).

Now for an element of context: the by-elections were called because the incumbent tory had defected to UKIP.

So these people are supposed to have felt that the incumbent had not done what they wanted, which decided them to change their vote and thus voted for ... the incumbent. Right...
Either really, really stupid voters or highly cynical reporting banking on very low level of information and, well, profound stupidity.

Austrian groundgog decade

Via Paul Krugman, I see that Peter Schiff had this to say:
"The truth is that high levels of unemployment are historically correlated with higher inflation and low levels of unemployment with lower inflation. That is because an economy that more fully utilizes labor resources is more productive. More production brings down prices."

What??? Leave aside that pretty much everything in the Austrian worldview has been thoroughly refuted by evidence over the past 7 years -actually they will force you to leave it aside as they claim that Austrian economics is pure logic that is not refutable by evidence (handy, isn't it). Just look at the statement and... what???