WHEN THE SONG THEY OUGHT TO REMOVE...: (via The Mother Judd):

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord (NORIMITSU ONISHI, 2/07/10, NY Times)

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

MR> BEGALA MAKES HOW MUCH FROM POLITICAL CANDIDATES AND HE DIDN'T KNOW THIS?:

Tucker was right, the bastard (Paul Begala, 02/09/10, The DC)

[T]hroughout 2008, when tens of millions of Americans were chanting, “Change!” Tucker saw the collision coming.

He would invariably point out that when most Americans—especially independents—use the word, “change,” what they really mean is incremental improvement. “Shorter lines at the DMV,” he’d say, “or a FEMA that shows up within six months of a hurricane.” He cautioned that the Obama administration risked pushing too much fundamental change too quickly, which would alienate the independent voters who really just wanted things to get a bit better.

At the same time, he warned, there were some people for whom “change” meant radical restructuring: throw open the Bastille, cancel all the debts, declare a Jubilee. These people, Tucker warned, required a pace of change exponentially faster than the steady incrementalism of the independents. Case in point: Tucker and I debated at a gathering of thousands of young people the day before the Obama inaugural. I opened with a joke about the new president walking across the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. No one laughed. In fact, several of them whipped out their cellphones to text each other with the news that The One would be walking on water, as usual. Health care? If we but touch the hem of His garment, they figured, we shall be healed.

It would be, Tucker predicted, impossible to reconcile those two visions of change.

EVERY DANG DAY:

Minnesota Billboard Asks: Missing George W. Bush Yet? (Karen Travers, February 09, 2010, ABC News)

If you are driving down I-35 near Wyoming, MN, look up and consider the question being posed from the side of the highway.

A billboard with a large grinning picture of former President George W. Bush asks: “Miss Me Yet?”

REPUBLICANS AND BLUE DOGS COULD MAKE THEMSELVES USEFUL...:

Blue Dogs push to go further than Obama spending freeze (Walter Alarkon, 02/08/10, The Hill)

Blue Dog Democrats want Congress to go further than President Barack Obama’s proposal to freeze spending in next year’s budget.

The group of House centrists will soon introduce a bill capping discretionary spending at specific levels. The move would challenge their leadership and the president, who are balancing concerns with the nearly $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 with those who say government spending on job creation is the way out of the recession.

RUNNING SCARED:

Ben Nelson will back GOP filibuster (MANU RAJU | 2/8/10, Politico)

The move is likely to infuriate labor groups who have fought hard for Craig Becker's nomination to serve on the five-member NLRB - and will likely give Republicans enough support to sustain a filibuster Tuesday.

“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the administration,” Nelson said in a statement. “This is of great concern, considering that the board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand."

IN CASE YOU WONDERED WHY BOTH BRITISH PARTIES HATE TONY BLAIR:

After 1929 a generation leapt leftward. Not today. Socialism has been buried: Europe has witnessed a tectonic shift to the right since the war. No wonder the Tories might feel short of breathing space (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, 2/08/10, The Guardian)

Looking back over the last 50 or 60 years, what have been the most ­important changes, and the most surprising? The fact that Europe has been at peace, outside the ­Balkans, since 1945 would have been a surprise and relief to those ­living in the shadow of the two great wars. On the other hand, enlightened ­people would have been shocked by the ­recrudescence of religion as a ­public force, from ­militant Islam to American evangelicalism.

But for Europeans, the most ­remarkable development of all has surely been the decline and fall of socialism. This has been disguised, or confused. It has been truly said that the story of the past generation is that the right has won politically and the left has won culturally. That great truth has been variously illustrated by the German election in September, the New Left Review, and the latest social ­attitudes survey in the UK.

Halfway through the past century socialism in one form or another seemed irresistible. Stalin was in the Kremlin and Attlee in Downing Street, with flourishing socialist parties throughout western Europe. Since then there has been a tectonic shift to the right, and those who deny this are whistling in the dark. We are sometimes told that Britain remains a fundamentally social ­democratic country. Maybe it's literal-minded to ask, but in that case, how come Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were prime ministers for 21 of the last 31 years? If either of those is a social ­democrat, I'm a Maoist.

Following the implosion of Soviet Communism, the Italian left barely exists any more, the French Socialists are in disarray, and the Social ­Democrats were the big losers in the German ­election, having fallen in 15 years from 40% to 23% of the vote. [...]

We have had 13 years of a so-called Labour government which accepted the whole Thatcherite economic settlement, has seen an increase in social and ­economic inequality; worshipped wealth and fawned on high finance at home and abroad; passed a vast array of repressive laws; betrayed all its ­promises on the single currency – and in the end did more damage to the ­European Union than Thatcher did; allowed Rupert ­Murdoch to dictate its foreign policy; and took Britain – with flagrant dishonesty – into a needless, illegal and murderous war in order to support the most reactionary American president of modern times. After all that, you can understand why the Tories might feel short of breathing space.

FORTUNATELY...:

Getting It Backwards: Obama misunderstands his constitutional role. (John Yoo, February 15, 2010, Weekly Standard)

The latest Democratic president is repeating the mistake of the first. When Thomas Jefferson entered office 210 years ago, Chief Justice John Marshall warned that Jefferson would “embody himself in the House of Representatives.” This would “increase his personal power,” Marshall predicted, but it would lead to the “weakening of the office of the President.” The chief justice meant that his political rival (and distant cousin) would gain power by joining forces with his party’s legislative majorities. But the combination would realize the Framers’ fear that Congress would come to dominate the executive branch.

Marshall’s observation explains much about Obama’s first year. By associating himself so closely with congressional Democrats, Obama became responsible for their every misstep. Their reckless overspending and earmarks became his. Their corrupt deal to buy Senator Ben Nelson’s support for nationalized health care became his sordid bargain. Their command-and-control approach to global warming, which will set nationwide limits on energy use and industrial production, became his socialist program.

Putting the president’s fortune in Congress’s hands not only makes for poor politics, it runs counter to the Framers’ plans for the office. They saw Congress, not the presidency, as the main threat to the people’s liberties. In a democracy, James Madison wrote in The Federalist, “the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates” because it has access to the “pockets of the people.” He warned that “it is against the enterprising ambition” of Congress “that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.”

The Framers expected the presidency to counterbalance the “impetuous vortex” of Congress. A vigorous executive, Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, would protect against those “irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice” and provide security against “enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy” which would emanate from the “humours of the legislature.” The great threat to the Constitution, Hamilton wrote, was the “propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights and absorb the powers of other departments” such as the executive branch, the courts, and the states. The president’s veto would not only protect the executive’s constitutional rights from Congress, he wrote, it would also furnish “an additional security against the enaction of improper laws” and allow the president “to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good.”

The initiative to regulate the domestic economy and society—limited as it originally was to have been—rested with Congress. The president was to restrain the legislature when it favored party or special interests over the public good. This was no easy job. To give it institutional backbone, the Framers clothed the presidency with independent election, consistent pay, and control over the execution of the laws. Still, Hamilton could only hope that when the legislature gave in to demagogues or temporary passions, the president would “be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision.” Obama has inverted the presidency in domestic affairs by transforming it from a check into a facilitator of Congress.

FINISHING THE CLINTON/BUSH PRESIDENCY (via Glenn Dryfoos):

How to get the country to solvency on entitlements (George F. Will, February 7, 2010, Washington Post)

[Paul] Ryan's map connects three destinations: economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.

To make the economy -- on which all else hinges -- hum, Ryan 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.

HE STEALS FROM THE RICH AND GIVES TO THE PO':

Big, Not Easy: How Sean Payton's daring play-calling won the New Orleans Saints their first Super Bowl. (Josh Levin, Feb. 8, 2010, Slate)

[N]ew Orleans' second half comeback wasn't solely the product of momentum or an audacious onside kick. The Saints won for the reason they usually win: Drew Brees' scary accuracy. After the 2008 season, a show called Sport Science asked Brees to throw a football at an archery target 10 times; he hit the bull's-eye on all 10 throws.

ISN'T DIVING A SUMMER OLYMPIC EVENT?:

Obama's rating plunges underwater for first time in new poll as just 44% give him their approval (Michael Mcauliff, 2/08/10, NY Daily News)

President Obama's job approval rating has taken another dive, putting him underwater for the first time in the latest Marist poll.

Just 44% of the country approve of the work Obama is doing, while 47% don't like what they see. [...]

Forty-seven percent of voters say Obama has not lived up to their expectations, with just 42% saying he has.

A narrow plurality - 38% - think Obama's change has been bad, and 37% think it's been good.

TARGET RICH ENVIRONMENT:

John Murtha dies, special election looms (Chris Cillizza, 2/08/10, Washington Post)

According to state law, the governor has ten days once the vacancy is officially declared to decide on the date for the special election, which can come no sooner than 60 days following that proclamation.

That likely means the special election will be held on May 18, which is the date already set for federal primaries around the state. (Special elections costs the state huge sums of money and it's likely that Gov. Ed Rendell will choose to go with an already established election day to save some cash.)

Murtha's passing comes at a tenuous time for House Democrats as they seek to convince some of their older members to re-up for another term in the face of what looks to be a difficult national political environment for the party. [...]

Without Murtha in the 12th district, however, the special election will be seriously contested. Murtha's district is the only one in the country won by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 and by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, according to Republican sources, and that trend line coupled with the volatile national environment for Democrats ensures Republicans will heavily target the contest.

WHICH RAISES AN OBVIOUS QUESTION...:

Sarah Palin's Storm at the Tea Party: Why haven't responsible Republicans spoken out against her? (Fred Kaplan, Feb. 8, 2010, Slate)

If there is a terrorist attack on the United States in the next few years, we could deal with it more confidently, and respond more effectively, if the president were able to rally a spirit of national unity. George W. Bush was given a chance to do this after Sept. 11 and, despite some initial fumbling, rose well to the occasion, at least for a few months.

But if the Republican Party's most popular aspirant declares that the sitting president doesn't know we're at war, isn't even a commander-in-chief (and crowds roar at this charge with approval), then Obama would have a much harder time repairing a wounded nation.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday the Obama administration had dropped "war on terror" from its lexicon, rhetoric former President George W. Bush used to justify many of his actions.

"The [Obama] administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself. Obviously," Clinton told reporters...

WELL, IT IS CHANGE...:

Poll: Special interests more influential under Obama (Stephen Dinan, 2/08/10, Washington Times)

The poll, paid for by groups looking to curb the Supreme Court's recent campaign finance ruling, found that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say special interests have increased their influence since the president took office, and they say Mr. Obama has not done enough to fight back.

"People think special interests are dominant," said Stan Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster who worked with Republican pollster Mark McKinnon.

PRINT THE STEREOTYPE:

Amid drug war, Mexico less deadly than decade ago (ALEXANDRA OLSON, 2/08/10, Associated Press)

Mexico City's homicide rate today is about on par with Los Angeles and is less than a third of that for Washington, D.C. [...]

"What we hear is, 'Oh the drug war! The dead people on the streets, and the policeman losing his head,'" said Tobias Schluter, 34, a civil engineer from Berlin having a beer at a cafe behind Mexico City's 16th-century cathedral. "But we don't see it. We haven't heard a gunshot or anything."

Mexico's homicide rate has fallen steadily from a high in 1997 of 17 per 100,000 people to 14 per 100,000 in 2009, a year marked by an unprecedented spate of drug slayings concentrated in a few states and cities, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said. The national rate hit a low of 10 per 100,000 people in 2007, according to government figures compiled by the independent Citizens' Institute for Crime Studies.

By comparison, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have homicide rates of between 40 and 60 per 100,000 people, according to recent government statistics. Colombia was close behind with a rate of 33 in 2008. Brazil's was 24 in 2006, the last year when national figures were available.

Mexico City's rate was about 9 per 100,000 in 2008, while Washington, D.C. was more than 30 that year.

IF THIS WERE TRUE, I'D BE DAVID DUNN:

Drinking beer could help prevent weak bones : A new study claims that certain types of beer are a rich source of dietary silicon, and can help prevent osteoporosis (Press Association, 8 February 2010, The Guardian)

The experts said beer was a major source of dietary silicon – roughly half of the silicon in beer can be readily absorbed by the body.

Charles Bamforth, lead author of the study, said: "Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon.

"Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element.

"While most of the silicon remains in the husk during brewing, significant quantities of silicon nonetheless are extracted into wort and much of this survives into beer."

Dr Claire Bowring, from the National Osteoporosis Society, said: "These findings mirror results from previous studies which concluded that moderate alcohol consumption could be beneficial to bones."

SO WHY DO THEY ALL LOVE THE METRIC SYSTEM?:

Is the world really poorer without Bo?:The death of tribal languages is sometimes a good thing, revealing the itchy dynamism of human society. (Tim Black, 2/08/10, Spiked)

he death of a language is also a frequently occurring fact of human history, and by no means an undesirable one. As human societies have developed and expanded, as interaction between once isolated peoples has increased, so particular cultures and particular languages have given way to increasingly universal languages. This isn’t just a polite way of talking of bloody conquest either. As one commentator put it: ‘Often people choose to move to the city for work and therefore speak traditional languages less and less. It therefore becomes natural not to teach them to their children.’ In fact, while there might currently be just under 7,000 languages spoken globally, 80 per cent of the world’s population speak just 83 of them.

Yet despite what looks like a progressive development – an overcoming of Babylonian partiality, a movement towards a common language – many in the West today tend to think differently. In the words of Stephen Corry, the director of the tribal peoples’ campaign group Survival International, ‘With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory. Boa’s loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands.’

Views like Corry’s are far from unusual today. BBC News accompanied its report of Boa Snr’s death with a feature entitled ‘The tragedy of dying languages’. Asserting that with language death, we are losing a ‘significant portion of humanity’s intellectual wealth’, the BBC reporter challenges Western complacency: ‘What hubris allows us, cocooned comfortably in our cyber-world, to think that we have nothing to learn from people who a generation ago were hunter-gatherers?’

In fact, over the past couple of decades, the angst-ridden focus on ‘the tragedy of dying languages’ has become an international concern.

Comments

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NOTHING COSTS MORE...:

Free London Evening Standard readership surges (New Statesman, 08 February 2010)

The London Evening Standard's readership has increased from 556,000 in April to 1.37m in September, according to the National Readership Survey (NRS).

The NRS figures showed that 76.7 per cent of ABC1 readers read the Standard, with increasing readership among the young. In the 15-44 year olds segment, the readership has grown from 56.7 to 62 per cent.

The readership reportedly increased after the paper declared that it was going free on 12 October and boosted its distribution to 600,000 copies.

The paper reportedly increased its advertising rates while promising certain targets, as it went free. The paper has exceeded the targets, according to the Standard's managing director Andrew Mullins.

MAYBE THEY OVERESTIMATE THEMSELVES BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THE rEALISTS?:

Why China is stoking war of words with US: Beijing’s belligerence is a diversionary tactic. There’s nothing like nationalist outrage to sweeten unpopular economic reform (Bill Emmott, 2/08/10, Times of London)

For the past two decades the country’s official policy has been to keep its head down in international affairs, in line with a dictum of Deng Xiaoping, its great leader of the 1980s: “keep a low profile and hide your claws”, he said, while focusing on building up your strength. That was a good description of Chinese policy in the 1990s and for much of this decade. But it now looks out of date.

One tempting explanation is Chinese confidence. China has been the big winner from the global economic crisis, runs this argument. Not only did it survive the crisis without suffering social unrest, it has seen its growth rebound strongly — indeed, back into double digits during the most recent quarter. Its huge fiscal stimulus package and expansion of lending by state-owned banks has been much lauded. It was popular in Davos last week to claim that China is in the vanguard of a revival of state-led capitalism, with the Beijing model being increasingly admired by other emerging economies.

This interpretation is tempting for any American or European who feels weak and self-critical about their region’s power and prospects. It is certainly true that China is increasingly viewed with awe by others, even if many countries (notably India) also fear or resent it. It is also true that many Chinese feel that their country is on a roll.

But there is another explanation. If you look more closely, China’s economy starts to look much less strong. The huge increase in money supply and bank lending that revived its GDP growth is bound to lead to inflation — and is already doing so. If its apparent strength is to be sustained, China needs to find a new model, a new source of growth, now that reliance on exports to the US and Europe looks like a thing of the past. For even a state-run banking system cannot continue to boost lending by 35 per cent a year indefinitely without causing problems.

That is why a popular debate in the markets concerns whether China is experiencing an asset bubble and whether there is a risk of its growth collapsing in the same way as Japan’s did in 1990.

rEASON VS REALITY:

Why are liberals so condescending? (Gerard Alexander, February 7, 2010, Washington Post)

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. [...]

This attitude comes in the form of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science" argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

THE ONLY SAFE-HAVEN:

Treasury Bulls Expect Yield to Peak at 4% (MARK GONGLOFF, 2/08/10, WSJ)

At the start of the year, the consensus was that long-term U.S. Treasury debt would be the dud investment of 2010. Just weeks later, some investors are beginning to reconsider.

With Greece in turmoil and threatening to spread its woes throughout Europe, Treasurys are again benefiting from their safe-haven status. Treasury debt prices surged this past week, pushing their interest rates, or yields, lower.

MORE OF A TANDEM MOVER:

New Delhi looks to play facilitator in Indian Ocean region (Rajat Pandit, 2/08/10, TNN)

With Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters generating sonic booms over the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago on Sunday, even as the 3,500-km Agni-III missile created fireworks off the Orissa coast, India sent a strong strategic message across Bay of Bengal that it is ready to play the role of a security facilitator in the larger Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

India might not want to be seen as a regional supercop in the IOR, nor as the prime mover of a naval military bloc in the Asia-Pacific region . But yes, it has legitimate security concerns in the IOR, which falls in its strategic backyard, especially with China making strategic maritime moves in the region.

PAKISTAN IS A COG TO THE EXTENT...:

India-Pakistan thaw key to Afghan peace (Siddharth Srivastava , 2/09/10, Asia Times)

Washington's focus has shifted to the western frontiers of Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are thought to have their biggest base, and the US is keen for simmering India-Pakistan relations to cool.

This would enable a redeployment of the massive Pakistani troop presence on its eastern borders with India to the Afghan front, possibly paving the way for a reduced American military presence in Afghanistan. However, it is unclear if the proposed India-Pakistan talks have come at the prodding of Washington.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said in a recent interview that the peace process should be resumed and not be held hostage to fallout from the Mumbai attack. Islamabad has indicated that is it amenable to using Indian evidence against the plotters of the attack, and has accepted that the small boats used were launched from Karachi.

There are larger geopolitical factors in play, particularly America's involvement in Afghanistan.

India's offer of talks can be seen in the context of global powers endorsing in London last month a US-backed Afghan plan to seek reconciliation with the Taliban. Pakistan is expected to play a big role in this, especially in persuading the fundamentalist group to come to the negotiating table.

Pakistan will continue to remain a crucial cog in America's "war on terror'' and be a continued recipient of increased military aid. For now, Islamabad has also managed to keep out the influence of India in brokering any deal with the Taliban.

Delhi wants to have a say in Afghanistan, a role that Pakistan has kept for itself until now, with the backing of some Muslim majority nations.

WELL, HE IS FINALLY FORCING BIPARTISANSHIP...:

Democratic Climate Revolt: A bipartisan effort to stop the EPA's anticarbon crusade. (WSJ, 2/07/10)

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is busy writing new rules that would let her drive a tax-and-regulation bulldozer through the U.S. economy under laws never meant to apply to greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson is expected to issue new anticarbon regulations for cars and trucks next month before moving on to power plants and other industries.

This is all too much for Missouri's Ike Skelton and Minnesota's Collin Peterson, the Chairmen of the House Armed Services and Agriculture Committees, respectively. Along with Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson, they are pushing a two-page bill that would amend the Clean Air Act to restore Congress's original intent and strip CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the statutory language.

This is bipartisanship we can believe in. Such legislation would vaporize the EPA's "endangerment finding" for carbon and thus require the Administration to use democratic debate and persuasion if it really wants to reshape the energy markets and impose huge new costs on American consumers. What a thought.

PORK CHOPPED:

PIIGS no longer flying (Kurt Brouwer, 2/05/10, Fundmastery Blog)

Earlier, I wrote about the national debt troubles of Greece and Portugal (see, National debt crisis in Greece & Portugal). In doing some reading on this issue, I came across this story, which struck me as an example of political correctness gone a bit mad. Caution: this is a ‘not so serious’ post. Here’s the background: Greece and Portugal have been grouped in an acronym, PIIGS, which stands for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece & Spain. Though I don’t think I’ve used PIIGS in any post, it has been fairly common. This and other acronyms stem largely from the fact that bond traders communicate in shorthand so things get reduced to acronyms — BRICs, MAVINS and so on.

Apparently, one dismal soul at Barclay’s Capital took offense to the use of PIIGS to refer to those Mediterranean countries and banned the use internally.

Bloomberg wrote a piece on this with the awesome headline, ‘At Barclay’s Capital, PiiGS No Longer Fly.’ Unfortunately, another dismal soul at Bloomberg must have taken offense and updated the online headline in the piece it to this [emphasis added]:

Swine Acronym Ordered Out of Barclay’s Reports (Bloomberg, Feb. 5, 2010, Alexis Xydias, Rita Nazareth and Lynn Thomasson)

FORCING THE CONTRADICTIONS (via Jim Yates):

Corporation Says It Will Run for Congress (CATHERINE RAMPELL, 2/02/10, NY Times: Economix)

Following the Supreme Court decision implicitly granting corporations the right to free speech (by determining that political spending is a kind of speech), a corporation has decided to take what it believes to be “democracy’s next step”: It is running for Congress.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST:

NY Gov. Paterson meets with lawmakers over future (MICHAEL GORMLEY, 2/07/10, Associated Press)

Gov. David Paterson met privately with key Democratic leaders about his re-election plans as questions swirl around the state capitol about a variety of unproven accusations involving the Democratic governor's personal conduct. [...]

A Democrat close to the situation, though, said the meetings included discussions about whether Paterson would resign or announce he will not run. The Democrat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One recent New York Post article about the accusations drew a denial by Paterson's spokeswoman and a strong rebuke by the superintendent of state police.

WHAT'S THE ONLY THING BETTER THAN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?:

The size of nations (Andrew Leigh, 8 February 2010, Online Opinion)

n The Size of Nations, Alberto Alesina (Harvard) and Enrico Spolaore (Tufts) present a theory of country size that is as simple as it is powerful. In determining how big countries should be (and therefore how many countries there are in the world), they argue that there are two opposing forces. For economic reasons, nations should be big. For political reasons, countries should be small.

Economics favours large nations because it means more of us share the costs of running the central bank, paying for embassies, and maintaining an air force. And because commerce is easier within borders than across them, businesses are more likely to prosper in a big nation than a small one.

But politics drives towards smaller nations because large nations are hard to control. Smaller nations are more homogenous on several dimensions. Incomes tend to be more equally distributed, there is less ethnic and racial tension, and people are more likely to share a common language and religion. It’s a lot easier to find common ground when you’re the President of Costa Rica than if you happen to be President of the United States.

Sure, you say, but why are countries these days breaking up quicker than a Hollywood marriage?

The answer is that the two great forces of the post-war era - globalisation and democratisation - both favour smaller nations. Globalisation does it by making secession more attractive. In 1950, when average tariffs were around 40 per cent, regions paid a large price for going it alone. Now that the average tariff is around 5 per cent, breaking up is easier to do.

Democratisation raises the pressure to split off because it gives voice to regional interests.

THERE'S NOTHING LESS RADICAL THESE DAYS THAN THE THIRD WAY:

Rep. Ryan proposes radical solution to budget problem (Ezra Klein, 2/07/10, Washington Post)

[Rep. Paul D.] Ryan's budget is a radical document that takes current policy and rolls a live grenade underneath it. Social Security? Ryan's adds private accounts. Medicaid? Ryan privatizes it. Medicare? Same thing. Health care? Ryan repeals the subsidy for employer-provided insurance, replacing it with a tax credit.

The boyish Ryan is a conservative darling and the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, but there's nothing conservative about this document. It does not respect, much less preserve, the status quo. But then, that's a point in Ryan's favor. The status quo does not deserve our respect. It is unsustainable. Left unchecked, it will bankrupt our country. On that, Ryan's radicalism is welcome, and all too rare. The size of his proposal is shocking, but it is proportionate to the size of our problem: According to the Congressional Budget Office, which examined a simplified version of his proposal, it would wipe out our projected long-term deficits.

Facing up to how he does this is a worthwhile exercise in understanding our budget problem. It's not the privatization that does it. His proposal to add optional private accounts to Social Security actually increases the program's cost, which is a good reminder that Social Security plays little role in our long-term deficits. Similarly, his proposal to privatize Medicare increases costs. As the CBO points out, Medicare negotiates lower prices than private providers and is run more efficiently. "Beneficiaries would therefore face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare," the wonks conclude.

Ryan saves his money after he privatizes the programs. Under his proposal, seniors stop getting Medicare, which is both government-run and pays for any procedures that can be shown to help improve their condition. Instead, the seniors get a voucher to buy private insurance, and that voucher grows more slowly than medical costs. That means the coverage that voucher buys is going to grow more slowly than medical costs. Seniors will be in the same position the rest of us are in: Either you can afford the coverage and care you need through savings or subsidies or both, or . . . you can't.

That, at least, is what the CBO is scoring. Ryan's hopes are different. "You compartmentalize the programs," he tells me. "Don't do that." In his telling, his proposal unleashes market forces by pulling people out of Medicare, out of Medicaid and out of the employer-based market. He envisions insurance exchanges and better information on quality and cost. Combine that many consumers with that much money and that much transparency, and it'll have to reform itself into something we can afford. "This sector isn't immune from free-market principles," he says.

HAS SHE BROKEN THE NEWS TO HER BOSS?:

US foreign policy has not made breakthroughs (Daniel Dombey, February 7 2010, Financial Times)

Barack Obama’s foreign policy of engagement has yet to make any breakthroughs and the US president’s second year in office is set to be tested by an intransigent Iran and North Korea, top administration officials have acknowledged. [...]

“I am fairly realistic about foreign policy, and countries don’t just give up what they view as their interests in order to make nice with you,” [Hillary Clinton] told CNN.

FAITH BEING THE GIVEAWAY:

Public loses faith in climate change science after leaked emails scandal: Surveys show increase in number of people who believe claims are exaggerated (Jo Adetunji, 2/07/10, guardian.co.uk)

A BBC poll, which surveyed 1,000 people, revealed that 25% of adults did not believe in global warming – a rise of 8% since a similar poll in November – and the percentage of those who thought climate change was a reality fell to 75%. Of those who believed, one in three felt climate change had been exaggerated. Only 26% of people thought climate change was "established as largely manmade".

Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said the results were "very disappointing". "The fact that there has been a very significant drop in the number of people that believe that we humans are changing the Earth's climate is serious," he told the BBC.