George Will:

To make the economy -- on which all else hinges -- hum, [Rep. Paul] Ryan [(D-WI)] proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health-care tax credit (see below).
...

Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world's second-highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive -- and more able and eager to hire.

Medicare and Social Security would be preserved for those currently receiving benefits or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today). Both programs would be made permanently solvent.

Universal access to affordable health care would be guaranteed by refundable tax credits ($2,300 for individuals, $5,700 for families) for purchasing portable coverage in any state. As persons younger than 55 became Medicare-eligible, they would receive payments averaging $11,000 a year, indexed to inflation and pegged to income, with low-income people receiving more support.

Ryan's plan would fund medical savings accounts from which low-income people would pay minor out-of-pocket expenses. All Americans, regardless of income, would be allowed to establish MSAs -- tax-preferred accounts for paying such expenses.

Ryan's plan would allow workers younger than 55 the choice of investing more than one-third of their current Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts similar to the Thrift Savings Plan long available to, and immensely popular with, federal employees. This investment would be inheritable property, guaranteeing that individuals will never lose the ability to dispose of every dollar they put into these accounts.

Ryan would raise the retirement age. If, when Congress created Social Security in 1935, it had indexed the retirement age (then 65) to life expectancy, today the age would be in the mid-70s. The system was never intended to do what it is doing -- subsidizing retirements that extend from one-third to one-half of retirees' adult lives.

A friend sent along this gem from Lucinda Rosenfeld's Slate column "Friend or Foe," with the message: "Good to know there are people like this in the world. It makes everything worthwhile."

Have I Been Friend-Poached?

Dear Friend or Foe,

My friend "Sara" met my now-former best friend, "Diane," through me. After the two started hanging out, I was a little annoyed and jealous, but I let it go. But when I decided that Diane (who backed out of being my maid of honor at my wedding) wasn't someone I wanted to be close to, Sara complained that I was making her feel like she had to choose between us.

Enter "Bianca," an acquaintance who approached me and said she wanted a deeper friendship. I opened my heart and told her about my break with Diane, and she assured that she "had [my] back." I also introduced Bianca to Sara, and they started to bond, which I was fine with. Although by then I'd begun to notice a pattern: Sara wanted to get close to anyone I was close to.

One Saturday a few months later, Sara told me she was crafting with her fiance. I found out later on Facebook that Bianca had been there, too. I forgot about it until I got an e-mail that Bianca, Sara, and Diane were going canoeing. I had vocalized that I was too busy to do anything that weekend. Still, I was stunned and hurt not to have been invited. I confronted Bianca, who played dumb and said she found out about the trip two hours before. She must have then e-mailed Sara about my complaint. The next thing I knew, Sara had sent me an incredibly nasty e-mail, referring to me as "Queen Bee," telling me I needed to let go of my jealousy, and saying that life wasn't a popularity contest. She even had the nerve to ask me if I was "abandoned as a child." I felt hurt and betrayed by everyone, including Bianca, who -- it turned out -- had set up the craft-time with Diane and Sara. When I confronted Bianca about forwarding my e-mail to Sara, she lied and said she hadn't.

Even so, both Sara and Bianca think this is all about me and Diane. But it's not. It has to do with all three of them being sneaky and withholding information. Sara is trying really hard to be buds again. She offered to watch my dog when I travel. I haven't decided how or what I'm going to do. But I have noticed that Sara is starting to get close to other good friends of mine, too. Please tell me how to defuse this situation.

Sincerely,
Help, I've Been Poached

Poached, fried, or scrambled, what's the difference?

Glenn Reynolds notes the Headline of the Day: One-armed man hunted for stealing single cufflink.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
-- Karl Marx

Walter Russell Mead:

When the glacier story broke, IPCC apologists returned over and over again to a saving grace. The bogus glacier report appeared in the body of the IPCC document, but not in the much more carefully vetted Synthesis Report, in which the IPCC's senior leadership made its specific recommendations to world leaders. So it didn't matter that much, the apologists told us, and we can still trust the rigorously checked and reviewed Synthesis Report.

But that's where the African rain crisis prediction is found -- in the supposedly sacrosanct Synthesis Report.

So: the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction -- 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now -- and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true.

But there's more. Much, much more. Readers of the Times and the Telegraph are watching the IPCC's credibility disappear before their eyes. The former head of IPCC has publicly said the IPCC risks losing all credibility if it can't clean up its act. The head of the largest British funder of environmental research has joined the head of Greenpeace UK in criticizing the IPCC. (At Greenpeace, they want Pachauri to resign.) The Dutch government has demanded that the IPCC correct its erroneous assertion that half of the Netherlands is below sea level. Actually, it's only about a quarter. A prediction about the impact of sea level increases on people living in the Nile Delta was taken from an unpublished student dissertation. The report contained inaccurate data about generating energy from waves and about the cost of nuclear power (this information was apparently taken without being checked directly from a website supported by the nuclear power industry). The deeply environmentalist Guardian carries a story documenting the decline in both public and Conservative Party confidence in need to address global warming.

More significantly, there's an editorial in today's Guardian that criticizes shortcomings at the IPCC and calls for a wholesale change in the way climate scientists do their work and communicate with the public.

Read the whole piece.

February 8 ...

In 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. In 1693 a charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. In 1820 Union general William Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, OH. In 1828 science fiction writer Jules Verne was born in Nantes, France. In 1851 novelist and short story writer Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, MO. In 1861 the southern states that had seceded from the Union agreed to set up the Confederate States of America. In 1896 the Western Conference was formed by representatives of Midwestern universities. The group changed its name to the Big 10 Conference. In 1904 the Russo-Japanese War, a conflict over control of Manchuria and Korea, began as Japanese forces attacked Port Arthur. In 1910 William D. Boyce of Chicago, IL, incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. In 1915 D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking as well as controversial silent movie (many would say racist) epic about the Civil War, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles. In 1922 President Warren Harding had a radio installed in the White House. In 1926 the Walt Disney Studio was formed. In 1942 Congress advised Franklin D. Roosevelt that Americans of Japanese descent should be interned. In 1969 the last issue of the Saturday Evening Post was published; the magazine started in 1821. In 1973 Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., (D-NC). In 1974 the three-man crew of the Skylab space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space. In 1996 in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."

This is great...

February 7 ...

In 1478 English lawyer, writer, and politician Sir Thomas More was born in London. In 1804 manufacturer John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont. In 1812 novelist Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire, England; also on this day a massive earthquake struck the Midwest along the New Madrid fault line. The quake, the last in a series of four beginning the preceding December, was so strong it was felt all the way to the East coast and changed the course of Mississippi River in many places. In 1817 Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, MD. In 1867 writer Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in Pepin, WI. In 1883 jazz great James Hubert "Eubie" Blake was born in Baltimore, MD. In 1885 writer Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, MN. In 1904 a fire began in Baltimore that raged for about 30 hours and destroyed more than 1,500 buildings. In 1906 Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, was born in Beijing. In 1940 Walt Disney's Pinocchio premiered. In 1944 the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy. In 1945 General Douglas MacArthur returned to Manila, Philippines. In 1949 the New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio became the first baseball player to earn $100,000 a year. In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles became official. In 1964 more than 3,000 fans jammed New York's Kennedy Airport to greet The Beatles as they arrived for their first US visit (including an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show); also on this day, world heavyweight champion Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali. In 1973 the US Senate voted to set up a committee to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate complex. In 1974 Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles opened in movie theaters. In 1980 the first Sony Walkman went on sale. In 1984 space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered space walk. In 1999 Jordan's King Hussein died of cancer at age 63; he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abdullah.

The Hill's Michael O'Brien and Jordy Yager report:

Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) election has been shown to be "a joke," the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said Thursday.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) castigated Brown for having pushed to be sworn in ahead of schedule to permanently fill the Senate seat left vacant by the congressman's father's death in August.

"Brown's whole candidacy was shown to be a joke today when he was sworn in early in order to cast his first vote as an objection to Obama's appointment to the NLRB," [Craig Becker, a controversial nominee to join the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB]. Kennedy said Thursday.

The Economist argues: "Neither the president nor Congress shows any sign of knowing how to tackle the deficit."

[In the medium term] Mr Obama's budget reveals a road-map to fiscal catastrophe. At no point over the coming decade will the deficit be below 3.6% of GDP; and after 2018, it starts rising again. The cuts the president has proposed are comically insufficient: a budget freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which amounts to only about 17% of the entire $3.8 trillion budget; and a toothless deficit commission (a better version has already been killed by obstructive Republicans in Congress) whose recommendations will doubtless be ignored.

In the medium term there are only two ways to bring the deficit back to a sustainable level -- which means no more than 3% of GDP. Either taxes will have to rise, or a serious attempt must be made to rein in the entitlements --legally mandated programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- that constitute the great bulk of spending. Mr Obama is proposing only a bit of the first, and none of the second. Taxes on the rich (those earning $250,000 a year or more) will go up from next January, as the Bush tax cuts expire; but Mr Obama had promised middle America that it will pay "not one single dime" more in tax, and so he is extending George Bush's budget-busting tax cuts for the remaining 98% of Americans.

Any serious attempt to tackle entitlements now looks doomed. Health care offered a chance to do so (broader coverage could come with tougher cost controls). But a weak administration and a greedy Congress conspired to produce a baggy monster of a bill which, from a fiscal point of view, might have made things worse. No one dares touch defence, in a troubled world. The Social Security pension scheme is deemed sacrosanct by nervy politicians. It is a deeply depressing picture -- and Mr Obama did nothing this week to lighten it.

February 6 ...

In 1564 playwright Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury, England. In 1756 Aaron Burr was born in Newark, NJ. In 1693 a charter was granted to the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, VA. In 1778 France and America signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris -- the first American treaty. In 1788 Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1895 baseball great Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore, MD. In 1899 the Treaty of Paris was ratified by one vote in the US Senate, ending the Spanish-American War. In 1911 40th president of the US Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, IL. In 1929 Germany accepted the Kellogg-Briand pact, which outlawed war. In 1935 the board game Monopoly first went on sale. In 1939 the Spanish government fled to France. In 1943 General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander-in-chief of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in North Africa; also on this day Frank Sinatra made his debut as vocalist on radio's Your Hit Parade. In 1952 Elizabeth II of England becomes Queen upon the death of her father King George VI. In 1958 George Harrison joined a Liverpool group called The Quarrymen. In 1959 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit. In 1976 jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi died of a heart attack at age 47. In 1981 Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison teamed up once again to record a musical tribute to John Lennon. In 1990 West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl proposed unifying the currencies of East and West Germany. In 1995 the US House approved the line-item veto by a vote of 294-134.

Gerard Alexander: (emphasis added)

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.
...

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

The Chicago Tribune's John Kass:

What's with the mad rush to judgment against Illinois' hottest political celebrities, the Pawnbroker and his ex-girlfriend, the Hooker?

Leading Democrats and some in the media are in a frenzy, demanding the head of the Pawnbroker, Scott Lee Cohen, the Democratic nominee for the office of lieutenant governor.

And now because he once had a hooker girlfriend -- he still insists she was a "massage therapist" -- and because of a domestic battery charge that was dropped, the inquisitors want the Pawnbroker off the ticket.

But I say, "Whoa, Nellie!"

Here's video of an interview of Scott Lee Cohen on the local PBS program, Chicago Tonight:

The Detroit News' Nolan Finley:

There's always been a disconnect between what Barack Obama says and what he does, but for the last few weeks, the president's rhetoric has been wholly detached from reality.

Many pundits predicted that after the Massachusetts massacre Obama would swing toward the middle, adopt a conciliatory approach and adjust his policies and priorities to reflect the mood of the nation.

Instead, the president jutted his chin a notch higher in the air and launched into campaign-style attack mode. His statements range from outrageous to audacious and risk throwing Washington into total gridlock. It's a risky strategy that ought to worry Democrats who this fall will face an electorate weary of political bickering.
...

The president has to accept responsibility for stubbornly pressing an ideological agenda that was out of sync with the public's priorities and then not effectively advocating for his own proposals.

For a solid year, Democrats held a rare super-majority in Congress. Had Obama been a better politician and a more forceful leader, he could have passed his entire wish list. He squandered his advantage, and now he wants to place the blame elsewhere.
...

Campaign rhetoric is fine for campaigns, but not so good for governing. Obama needs to face the fact that he's made some pretty serious mistakes in his first year that can't be covered up with campaign sound bites.

February 5 ....

In 1881 Phoenix was incorporated. In 1914 writer William Burroughs was born in St Louis, MO. In 1917 Mexico's constitution was adopted. In 1922 Reader's Digest magazine was first published. In 1934 Baseball Hall of Famer and real all-time home run champ Hank Aaron was born in Mobile, AL. In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to "pack" the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices. In 1952 the first "Don't Walk" sign was installed in New York City. In 1967 the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour premiered on CBS. In 1971 the Apollo 14 Lunar Module Antares, the third US manned Moon expedition, landed on the Moon with Alan B. Shepard, Jr., commander; Stuart A. Roosa, command module pilot; and Edgar D. Mitchell, lunar module pilot. Shepard and Mitchell walked on the Moon for four hours. In 1990 Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the Communist Party give up its monopoly on power in the Soviet Union. Two days later, the party's Central Committee agreed. In 2001 four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. (The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.) In 2003 US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence to the UN concerning Iraq's material breach of UN Resolution 1441.

Time magazine's Joe Klein explains America's political situation:

... therein lies the crisis of democracy that our country faces: a moderate-liberal President, willing to make judicious compromises, confronted by a Republican Party paralyzed by cynicism and hypocrisy, undergirded by inchoate ideological fervor.
...

The sophistication of Obama's politics has finally caught up to the opposition: he will offer them compromise and lacerate them when they refuse to play. I suspect he'll be successful at this. But absent a responsible opposition party, we'll still be left with a crippled democracy, lacking all ability to address our most serious problems. That is not a recipe for continued success in a competitive world.