DEMOCRACY ARSENAL....On the advice of a friend, I just hopped over to a new blog called Democracy Arsenal, where a bunch of liberals under the aegis of a couple of liberal think tanks are talking about national security issues. It looks good. Maybe a bit too lecture-y in places, but that will probably smooth out over time.

Speaking of lecture-y, though, Heather Hurlburt has a "ten-step program to get Democrats back on the map" that's worth a look. For example:

Step 6. Every progressive takes a personal vow to learn something about our military, how it works, what its ethos is, and how it affects our society at all levels — as well as what it does well and less well in the wider world.

That's good advice. Like it or not — and I'm sure lots of you will let me know in comments that you don't — rank and file lefties are frequently too ignorant of national security issues to even join the conversation in a constructive way. Too often they end up looking as dumb as George Will does when he endorses ignorant and dimwitted tax plans.

If I have a beef with Heather, though, it's that her list is basically just another call for liberals to figure out what they stand for. What we need, instead, is some actual recommendations about what liberals should stand for.

But that's just nitpicking. That stuff will all come out in the wash. In the meantime, the five contributors to Democracy Arsenal seem to be pointed in the right direction and are doing their thing in readable, bloggy style. It's worth everyone's time to follow along for a while to see where they go. It's worthwhile stuff.

BURGER 911....This is so embarrassing. Via Jeanne, a woman calls the sheriff's department to complain that Carl's Jr. has screwed up her Western Bacon Cheeseburger:

Ma'am, we're not going to enforce how to make hamburgers. That's not a criminal issue.

....You're supposed to be here to protect me!

What are we protecting you from? A wrong cheeseburger?

Why embarrassing? The cheeseburger lunatic is a fellow resident of Orange County. And here I thought Dana Rohrabacher was the worst of my worries.

Transcript here, although you really need to listen to the audio to get the, um, flavor of the conversation.

NATIONAL SALES TAX....REVISION 432....Spring is in the air and George Will is in love — with Georgia Rep. John Linder and his plan for a national sales tax:

His bill would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and the many billions of tax forms it sends out and receives. He would erase the federal income tax system — personal and corporate income taxes, the regressive payroll tax and self-employment tax, capital gains, gift and estate taxes, the alternative minimum tax, and the earned-income tax credit — and replace all that with a 23 percent national sales tax on personal consumption. That would not only sensitize consumers to the cost of government with every purchase, it would destroy K Street.

What's not to like about this? Let me count the ways:

• 23%? Think again. Bill Gale, who actually knows what he's talking about, says it would require a tax rate of about 60%. If you make reasonable assumptions about the level of tax avoidance and evasion, it's more like 100%. Ouch.

• The tax would apply to home purchases. Here in The OC, for example, the average price of a new home is around $500,000. Linder's tax would mark that up by $300,000 or more. Can you spell "housing crash"?

• Cars would be taxed too, of course. That SUV you've been lusting after? Better tack on $20,000 to the asking price.

• The elderly would be royally screwed. All their lives their incomes have been taxed away, but at least what's left over is tax free because they've already paid taxes on it. Under Linder's plan, though, they suddenly have to start paying huge taxes again — on rent, medicine, vacations, and cat food. It's the mother of all double taxations. I figure that should be good for about 30 million postcards from AARP members.

• Is complex taxation a thing of the past? Of course not. You still have to perform all the usual complicated income calculations to pay state taxes, and multinational corporations all have global taxes to pay. Don't fire your accountant yet.

• No taxes on dividends, capital gains, gifts, estates, or corporations? Sweet! Most corporate CEOs would end up with effective tax rates on their incomes of about, oh, 10% or so. You and I would end up with effective tax rates of 30-50%. Hey, the money has to come from somewhere, right?
  

A national sales tax is an idee fixe among a certain type of conservative lunatic, sort of like the gold standard and the Trilateral Commission. George Will might be dumb enough to fall for it, but the rest of us shouldn't. It's just a plain stupid idea.

But you know what? I wish Republicans would quit gabbing about it and actually implement it. They'd then be out of power for about a century or so, which might give the rest of us a chance to do some good. So go ahead Rep. Linder: make my day.

HUH?....A zeptogram?

MAKING A LIST, CHECKING IT TWICE....Michael Bérubé isn't so sure that full employment is a proper liberal goal:

Here’s where I’ve got to part ways, yet again, with some of my brothers and sisters on my left. “Full employment” sounds nice — it’s sort of goofy and utopian, like imagining that access to health care is a human right or something — but it’s dangerously naive. Certain people should definitely be unemployed. In fact, I have a nice long list of names on my hard drive, all alphabetized and ready to go.

What a coincidence: I've got a list just like that too. What are the odds?

VICTIMHOOD, LOVELY VICTIMHOOD....Conservative City Journal editor Heather Mac Donald writing in the conservative National Review:

Diversity grievances follow the usual logic: Victim-group X is not proportionally represented in some field; therefore the field's gatekeepers are discriminating against X's members. The argument presumes that there are large numbers of qualified Xs out there who, absent discrimination, would be proportionally represented in the challenged field.

Conservative political science professor Stanley Rothman rehashing six-year-old data in the online journal Forum suggesting that college professors are a pretty liberal lot:

Rothman sees the findings as evidence of "possible discrimination" against conservatives in hiring and promotion. Even after factoring in levels of achievement, as measured by published work and organization memberships, "the most likely conclusion" is that "being conservative counts against you," he said.

Sounds like they've got that whole victimhood thing down pat, doesn't it?

THE ROADSHOW CONTINUES....We're at the midpoint of the George Bush Social Security Revival Tour:

During a talk show-style "conversation" at a nearby community college, Bush appealed to opponents of his approach to enter into constructive negotiations on legislation to close Social Security's long-term funding gap.

"If you've got an idea, I expect you to be at the table," he said. "We want to listen to good ideas."

Although Bush did not name names, the invitation appeared to be aimed in part at AARP, the 35-million-member seniors organization that is conducting an aggressive campaign to oppose Bush's personal account proposal.

There are only two ways to significantly improve Social Security's finances: benefit cuts and tax increases. Bush is too gutless to propose either one, so he's desperately trying to sucker someone — anyone — into proposing them first. Nobody with half a brain should oblige him.

Until Bush has the political courage to step up to the plate and send a serious proposal of his own to Congress, he shouldn't expect anyone else to do it either. In the meantime, he deserves nothing but scorn. His sustained display of political cowardice is setting a standard for generations to come.

GLOBAL DIMMING....This isn't new, but it's new to me and maybe to you too. Did you know that in the three days following 9/11 the average temperature range across the United States (the difference between the daytime high and the nighttime low) rose one degree Centigrade? That's the biggest, fastest climate change ever observed.

The reason, it turns out, is that American airspace was shut down, and no airplanes means no contrails. Since contrails absorb sunlight, getting rid of them allows more sunlight to reach the ground and causes a rise in surface temperature. When planes started flying again temperatures went back down.

As this BBC report says, this is a dramatic example of an effect called Global Dimming, something that scientists have recently concluded is far larger than they previously thought: since 1950, increased amounts of soot and ash have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the earth by an astonishing 10-30% in various parts of the world.

So shouldn't this cause global surface temperatures to decline considerably? Normally yes, but we've avoided this problem because during the same period greenhouse gases have been trapping ever more heat than before. These two effects cancel each other out, but greenhouse gases have been winning the race: overall surface temperatures have risen about .6 degrees Centigrade in the past century.

But here's the bad news: this means that the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming is probably stronger than we've previously thought. The only reason global temperature increases have been fairly modest so far is because of the cooling effect of global dimming.

So what happens if particle pollution is brought under control — via cleaner burning coal technologies, for example? It means that suddenly greenhouse gases will have no competition, and instead of temperatures rising only moderately, they'll start skyrocketing.

In other words, our current models, which assume that climate has only a moderate sensitivity to greenhouse gases, might have been fooled by the countervailing effect of particle pollution. Once particle pollution levels flatten out or decline, we may find that climate is far more responsive to greenhouses gases than we thought.

Cleaner burning cars, anyone?

LIVING IN SIN....Via Peevish, it turns out that North Carolina (along with half a dozen other states!) has a law against unmarried couples living together. It's almost never enforced, of course, but a local sheriff apparently thinks it's a great idea anyway:

[Debora] Hobbs had been living with her boyfriend for about three years when she was hired as a Pender County 911 dispatcher in February 2004. The couple decided they didn't want to marry; Hobbs quit last May rather than be fired.

Sheriff Carson Smith said last year that Hobbs' employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. He said he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together, but that he doesn't send out deputies to enforce the law.

Lovely. The North Carolina ACLU is on the case.

LEVERS OF POWER....Bill Bradley writes today about the makeup of the "pyramid" of Republican success:

Big individual donors and large foundations — the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance — form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid — the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove...convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate....And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

Basically, Bradley argues that Democrats don't have a pyramid like this, so every four years their presidential candidates have to start from scratch to build and sell a liberal vision to American voters: "Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus — they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too." Without a prepackaged vision, personal charisma becomes all important, and candidates without it are doomed.

Says Ann Althouse: "Very well put — by a man with a fancy educational background who once ran for President and wiped out early, because of a woeful lack of charisma." Well, yes. And perhaps that makes Bradley a little oversensitive about the role of charisma in presidential contests.

But I'd like to make another point. Roughly speaking, here's what conservatives have done over the past few decades.

First, they created all those famous think tanks to spread their ideas: Heritage, Cato, AEI, etc. Second, they researched language and invented a new way of talking about conservative ideas and promoting wedge politics. Third, they figured out that the judiciary was a big deal and started overtly campaigning to install conservative judges on the federal bench. Fourth, when the Fairness Doctrine was tossed out in 1987, they glommed onto the underutilized AM spectrum and filled it up with the syndicated talk radio shows we all know and love today. Later, Fox News joined them. Fifth, they began the K Street Project, designed to coerce lobbying firms into hiring only fellow Republicans if they wanted any chance of getting their agendas passed.

The Democratic response to all this has been simple: build foundations of our own, fashion a competing liberal way of framing issues, fight back on judges, create liberal talk shows, and remind lobbyists that Republicans won't be in power forever. Which is all fine. But in a way, I think it misses the point.

What conservatives really did was to exploit new levers of power in ways that no one had thought of before. Their answers turned out to be foundations, language, judges, talk radio, and lobbyists, but there's nothing sacred about those particular levers. So while creating our own foundations and talk shows is important, what's more important is that we should be constantly searching for new and underappreciated levers of power and figuring out creative ways to exploit them. Howard Dean's campaign did this in a minor way with its use of internet MeetUps, a new way of organizing grassroots support that took everyone by surprise.

Merely mimicking conservative strategies is a strategy for staying in second place forever. Closer, perhaps, but still in second place. What we need in addition is to stay relentlessly on the lookout for new ways of mobilizing public opinion that no one has thought of before. Suggestions, anyone?

THE LMDWSPBB BRIGADE....Mark Kleiman:

I see Nat Hentoff and Jesse Jackson have joined the feed-Terri forces, which already included Ralph Nader, Randall Terry, Rush Limbaugh, Bo Gritz, Sean Hannity, and James Dobson. Now if we can just get Alexander Cockburn and Al Sharpton to join in, we'll have a left-right coalition embodying the very cream of the nation's loudmouth dimwitted self-promoting busybodies.

Don't forget Tom DeLay, Mark! He's a charter member.

A WEE ASSIGNMENT FROM THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION....From the description of an upcoming Heritage Foundation event to be held April 19:

A growing number of scientists around the world no longer believe that natural selection or chemistry, alone, can explain the origins of life. Instead, they think that the microscopic world of the cell provides evidence of purpose and design in nature — a theory based upon compelling biochemical evidence. Join us as Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a key design theorist and philosopher of science, explains this powerful and controversial concept on the mysteries of life.

To get ready for this event, please prepare suitably relevant definitions for the following words and phrases:

• "Growing number"
  

• "Scientists"
  

• "Believe"
  

• "Theory"
  

• "Compelling"
  

• "Biochemical"
  

• "Evidence"
  

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

SHIELD LAWS AND OTHER VEXING CONCERNS....They say there are no stupid questions. How then do you account for the question, "Are bloggers journalists?"

LA Times columnist David Shaw wrestled with this quandary on Sunday with predictable results, and Jack Shafer and Matt Welch both gave him the dressing down he deserves. Not so much because Shaw asked a dumb question, but because his answer is mostly a series of variants on the proposition that traditional reporters are simply more deserving human beings than hoi polloi bloggers. This is journalism?

On the other hand, for the legions of bloggers who feel that of course they deserve the same shield law protections as professional reporters, I'm not sure this holds much water either. Shield laws are already tricky things, balancing a legitimate societal desire for aggressive newsgathering with an equally legitimate societal desire to ferret out wrongdoing in courts of law. The problem is that if bloggers get the same protection as mainstream reporters, that means that practically anyone can shield themselves from testifying in court on a wide variety of topics simply by operating a blog. The scope for abuse will become so broad that shield laws could eventually be tossed out altogether.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. The demise of shield laws would benefit none of us.

Tedious as the question may be, however, the question of bloggers' legal status is rapidly reaching critical mass. Chris Nolan rounds up all the various ways in which this and related issues are coming to a head these days and suggests that the common thread in all of them is, "Who's in Charge?"

In each and everyone of these cases, the answer is pretty much the same: The reader. The consumer. The voter. The music-lover. The computer nerd. But not the guys who have been in charge for most of the past century: The marketing genius, the producer, the editors, the station owner and the publisher, the consultant, the pen-wielding columnist who hasn't made a phone call in 10 years. They're not in charge anymore. And they don't like it.

Actually, I suspect that the old guard has a few more tricks up its collective sleeve than Chris gives them credit for. The top websites in the world are all corporate behemoths, after all, and Yahoo alone probably gets more hits than the entire blogosphere. I have a feeling that soulless corporate marketing departments are going to adjust to the 21st century just fine.

Still, adjust they must, and Chris and others are correct to point out that traditional gatekeepers are feeling the heat. The winners will be those who figure out how to swim with the tide and still make money. The losers will be those who demand that the tide turn back and then gurgle in amazement as the tide declines to cooperate.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT....I have Schubert's Impromptus playing in my car right now, and it's reminded me yet again of what lovely pieces of classical piano music these are. If you like classical piano but for some reason don't already own them, you should run right out and buy a copy immediately.

Just thought I'd mention it.

SEX AND GENDER....Last week I invited several guest bloggers to post about the issue of women in the opinion biz (or, rather, the lack of women in the opinion biz). One of the reasons I did it is that I've long been fascinated by the fact that although issues of gender and sex are at the core of so many contemporary hot button social issues, this simple observation rarely bubbles up to the surface. The dominance of op-ed pages, blogs, and opinion magazines by men is almost certainly one of the reasons.

Now, it's true that not all hot button social issues are gender related. School prayer and guns aren't, for example, except in a fairly abstract way. But take a look at the other social issues that raise blood pressure the most and the sex/gender basis underlying them is striking:

• Sex education
  

• Abortion
  

• Sex/porn on TV
  

• Contraception
  

• Gay rights
  

• Welfare (overwhelmingly a problem of single mothers)
  

This is not just a random, unconnected list. For the most part, social conservatives have made their peace with racial equality — in theory if not always in fact — but are still adamant about enforcing traditional sex and gender roles. This is the glue that binds all these issues together. The latest example came a couple of days ago from the Washington Post in an article about the growing "Pharmacists Rights" movement:

An increasing number of clashes are occurring in drugstores across the country. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.

Needless to say, there don't seem to be any pharmacists out there who object to filling prescriptions for Viagra. Last year, Michigan even considered a bill called the "Conscientious Objector Policy Act," which would have allowed pharmacists and doctors to refuse to perform treatment they considered unethical. Notably, the act specifically prohibited doctors from withholding treatment on the basis of race, but not on the basis of sexual orientation. It was practically an invitation to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

This is why gender equality per se should get more attention from the liberal community: because it's the underlying core of so many emotional, election-deciding issues. I know, I know: this kind of talk is just so 70s. And it's true that the tone of feminist rhetoric — especially academic feminism — probably puts off a lot of liberal men, including me from time to time. But it's hard to make headway on all these disparate issues without understanding the core sensibility that drives so many of them. We shouldn't allow pique to get in the way of that.

MORE JARGON WATCH....Speaking of jargon, Victor Fuchs and Ezekiel Emanuel had an interesting op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News yesterday. It's about healthcare:

We propose...a comprehensive reform: universal health care vouchers — a 10-point proposal that is congruent with basic American values and should secure broad, bipartisan support.

• All Americans under 65 will receive a voucher that guarantees them basic health care services such as doctor visits, hospitalization, pharmacy benefits, some mental and dental health services and catastrophic coverage, from a qualified health plan or health insurance company....

I'll spare you their other nine points. What I really want to point out is their use of language, particularly:

...universal health care vouchers...

Isn't that interesting? Their plan is a fairly ordinary single-payer proposal, but instead of calling it merely "universal health care," they steal conservative language and and call it "universal health care vouchers." Sounds just like those school vouchers the wingers are always going on about, doesn't it?

That's a clever use of language. By no means will it help their plan to secure "broad, bipartisan support," but it's the kind of thing that can help swing public opinion if it gets repeated often enough. I like it.

TERRORISM, NOT MORAL VALUES....Via Philip Klinkner at PolySigh, here's an interesting chart. Based on NES data over the last 12 elections, it shows which issue was rated "most important" by voters and how the two major party candidates compared to each other. In 2004, for example, the most important issue by far was terrorism, cited by 42% of voters. What's more, of that 42%, 29% voted for Bush and 13% for Kerry, a delta of 17% in favor of Bush. By contrast, that old bugaboo "morals" produced only a tiny advantage for Bush.

Here's the full chart:

As Klinkner points out, Bush's advantage on terrorism was by far the largest from any candidate since NES started collecting data in 1960. You can now put me down in the "totally convinced" column that terrorism was the key issue that won the election for Bush, not moral values.

And note one other interesting thing: in 10 out of 12 elections, the candidate that won was the one who had the advantage on the issue cited as most important by the most people — and that candidate always won if the issue was cited by more than 20% of voters. The lesson seems to be: figure out the most important issue and hammer it home. The rest is fluff.

Now, what's going to be the most important issue in 2008? Time to start thinking about that.

JARGON WATCH....The Carpetbagger has the latest from our wily Republican word-meisters. Apparently they're having trouble figuring out what to call the power play that would eliminate filibusters of judicial candidates. It goes like this:

• First take: "Nuclear option." Didn't poll well.

• Second take: "Constitutional option." Nobody saluted when they ran it up the flagpole.

• Third take: "Byrd option." Huh?

• Fourth take: None yet. Still waiting for laughter to stop from third take.
  

I guess they could always call it the "temper tantrum" option. At least that has the virtue of accuracy.

KOFI AND KOJO....Say what? After all the frenzied speculation that Paul Volcker's investigation of the UN oil-for-food scandal was going to nail Kofi Annan's hide to the wall over his son's misdoings, all we get is this?

The report obtained Tuesday said "there is no evidence" the selection of Cotecna [Kojo Annan's company] for an inspection contract "was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the secretary-general in the bidding or selection process."

Investigators also said "the evidence is not reasonably sufficient" that Annan knew about Cotecna's bid in 1998.

That's got to be a disappointment for the Kofi haters.

Bottom line: there are still questions about Kojo's behavior, and the investigation is continuing. So far, however, all the report says is that Kojo hid his relationship with Cotecna from his father, something he confessed to long ago. Pretty weak beer.

FLORIDA IN PLAY?....Is the combination of Social Security and Terri Schiavo — two issues that have given conservatives more grief than they expected — so toxic that even Florida might be turning away from the Republican party? In the LA Times today, Peter Wallsten suggests that might be the case:

"It may be that we tried to load the wagon with too many watermelons," said Tom Slade, Florida's former Republican Party chairman. "There's not a ... lot of good news on our side of the aisle at this minute."

....Strategists in both parties expect Schiavo and Social Security to be potent and unpredictable issues. Those issues could also be important in several potentially competitive congressional races in districts now held by Republicans E. Clay Shaw Jr., Ginny Brown-Waite and Katherine Harris.

Music to my ears. Here's hoping both these issues remain "potent and unpredictable" for another 18 months.

ONWARD....Check out this remarkable post at Whiskey Bar. Yes, it's only one person, but it's about the shortest and pithiest comment you're likely to find on the "culture of life."

DON RUMSFELD AND TRANSFORMATION....Donald Rumsfeld's vision of military "transformation" is not a left-right issue. Rather, it's a technocratic issue: what's the most effective way for America to wage war? Rumsfeld believes the answer is a lighter, faster, higher-tech military that can be dispatched more quickly to the world's trouble spots — and do more good when they get there — than our existing military.

I don't have a problem with that. Or rather, I should say that I don't know enough about the technology of war to have an opinion one way or the other. What I do have a problem with isn't the specific program that Rumsfeld is promoting — "Future Combat Systems," or FCS — but with the fact that it was developed years ago and neither 9/11 nor Iraq seems to have influenced Rumsfeld's thinking about it one whit. As Fred Kaplan puts it:

If your guide to this future is the first 30 days of the war in Iraq, then the vision of transformation that underlies FCS might seem appropriate. However, if your guide is the subsequent two years of combat, then the vision seems out of whack.

It hardly seems conceivable that a military vision developed in the 90s would survive 9/11 virtually unscathed, and it seems downright lunatic that it would go on to survive our experience in postwar Iraq. FCS was designed to fight relatively conventional wars against massed troops, and while we still need that capability, there are now at least two capabilities that are rather more urgent: (a) asymmetrical warfare against stateless terrorists and (b) robust peacekeeping forces to take over after the FCS-equipped Army has routed whatever enemy it's put up against.

As it happens, the Army is distinctly unenthusiastic about becoming a peacekeeping force. But whatever else you can say about Don Rumsfeld, one of his undoubted virtues is that he possesses the kind of bullheadedness it takes to force change on a recalcitrant military bureaucracy. It's too bad he insists on using it in service of a vision that's been essentially obsolete for more than three years now.

UPDATE: Brad Plumer argues persuasively that Rumsfeld doesn't even possess the virtue of effective bullheadedness. I stand corrected. I guess he just sucks in every possible way.

TORT REFORM BLUES....Did you know that George Bush once sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car? Me neither.

For more on this, plus other examples of Republican politicians who seem to think that torts need reforming unless they're the ones doing the suing, read this excellent and extensive post from Dwight Meredith. It stars all your favorites.

BUSH AND SCHIVAO....UPDATE....Yesterday I wondered aloud about the provenance of George Stephanopoulos's comment on This Week that Republicans were busily leaking the idea that Bush had been reluctant to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. Just to close the circle on that, Stephanopoulos emailed today to tell me he had two sources for this. I don't have links, but here they are:

Newsweek (p. 28): "Accompanying [Bush] on the plane ride were several Florida lawmakers, including Weldon and Martinez, who pressed Bush on the Schiavo case. Though Bush 'told us that he supported our efforts,' said Weldon, 'he said that he didn't want to get directly involved.'

Time (p.28): "Top Republican staffers on Capitol Hill told TIME that it took some lobbying by congressional Republican leaders, who Bush needs for his controversial Social Security reform and budget cuts, for the President to return on short notice in such a visible role."

I don't have any special comment on this, but since I raised the question yesterday I figured I should provide the answer now that I have it. All in all, it sounds like Bush's standard "compassionate conservatism" schtick: keep the base happy with dramatic action, but then make sure that everyone else understands it was a tough call. I'm reminded of his ever-so-public deliberations over funding of stem cell research back in 2001. Same sort of issue, same sort of reaction.

PRIVATE ACCOUNTS: MORE RISK THAN REWARD?....The Social Security trustees project that the economy will grow at a plodding rate of 2% a year over the long term. Nevertheless, President Bush projects that stock returns in private accounts will average a stellar 6.5% a year over the long term. Can both these things really be true?

Bloomberg surveyed 58 economists recently, and and 39 said no. And there's also this:

A Bloomberg analysis shows a strong correlation between investment returns and economic growth over the last 50 years. Gains and declines in the S&P 500 index preceded corresponding gains in gross domestic product and losses by about a year. The correlation coefficient was 0.92, with 1 being a perfect correlation.

If that's really true, it's pretty stunning. It stands to reason that stock market gains are correlated to economic growth, but nothing in the real world gets a correlation coefficient that high. If it's true, it means that economic growth explains 85% of the variance in stock prices. That doesn't leave much room for anything else, and it sure as hell means that lower economic growth in the future is almost certain to generate lower stock price growth as well. That's bad news for anyone who thinks that investing in private accounts will produce a miraculous windfall.

Still, it makes you wonder: what do the folks at S&P themselves think of all this? Via Josh, they seem to be pretty skeptical:

Personal Social Security accounts could bring more risk than reward to investors, and would shift more responsibility for saving for retirement to individuals, Standard & Poor's said Monday. "The key question is whether an individual account holder can build enough money in savings to retire comfortably while withstanding any inevitable investment risk," said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P. Given the risks in the market, not all aggressive savers will retire with ease, S&P said.

I have a feeling that George Bush is slowly losing the backing of the business and investment community for his private account plan. Reality is closing in.

DECONSTRUCTING WOLFOWITZ....As regular readers know, every few months I like to find an excuse to post a reminder of Paul Wolfowitz's testimony before Congress on February 28, 2003, three weeks before the Iraq war started. Here's a summary of the New York Times account:

Mr. Wolfowitz...opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.

....He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo....He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force....And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it....Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high.

....Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

This is, I think, the prime reason to oppose Wolfowitz's nomination to head the World Bank. Lots of people favored the Iraq war, after all, but how many of them displayed such convincing evidence of their appallingly poor judgment on such a wide range of topics in such a public venue? Do we really want a guy like that running anything, let alone the World Bank?

And yet....here I have to confess one of my dark secrets: I'm not a Paul Wolfowitz hater. I'm not a fan, mind you, but then again, I'm not a fan of anyone George Bush is likely to nominate to head the World Bank. At the same time, Wolfowitz has always struck me as a bit different from the rest of the neocon/hawk fraternity. Guys like Kristol and Cheney and Rumsfeld, for example, talk a lot about democracy but mostly use it as a thinly disguised excuse for installing friendly pro-American leaders in countries that just happen to have lots of oil. Wolfowitz, conversely, really seems to believe this stuff.

Along these lines, then, ever since Bush nominated Wolfowitz to head the World Bank I've been curious about his tenure as ambassador to Indonesia, since it seems to be his most relevant experience. Today, Laura Rozen points to a nice piece in the Washington Post:

At the height of President Suharto's autocratic rule, then-U.S. Ambassador Paul D. Wolfowitz publicly offered advice in 1989 that could have landed domestic critics in prison, pointedly telling the dictator that his record of rapid economic growth was not enough.

"If greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well," Wolfowitz said in May 1989 farewell remarks at Jakarta's American Cultural Center as he prepared to leave Indonesia after three years as ambassador.

....Abdurrahman Wahid, who became president in 1999, was so taken by Wolfowitz's 1989 speech that he asked to be introduced. Wahid, a leader of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization and staunch proponent of political pluralism, said in an interview Friday that they became friends and he remains proud of that relationship today despite differences over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

....Wolfowitz was a highly visible emissary. He taught himself to speak and read the Indonesian language. He was not only a fixture on the Jakarta social circuit but also tramped through its villages and hiked its volcanoes. He won third prize in a cooking contest sponsored by the country's leading women's magazine, Femina, appearing in its glossy pages in an apron and explaining his secret for Madame Mao's chicken.

Laura herself doesn't say what she thinks of the Post story, but it's worth reading the whole thing, which also includes plenty of criticism of Wolfowitz for not promoting human rights during his ambassadorship and for being too close to Suharto. But while Wolfowitz deserves that criticism, I think we often discount how hard it is for partisans to go off the reservation even in minor ways. The fact that Wolfowitz was willing to criticize Suharto at all, or that he's willing to tell a pro-Israel audience that they should be more mindful of Palestinian suffering, says something about what he really believes.

Of course, there's still that appalling judgment (see Wolfowitz, Paul, Congressional Testimony of, op cit). And the atmospherics are horrible too. By nominating Wolfowitz, George Bush has said "fuck you" to the rest of the world about as clearly as he possibly could without actually saying the words themselves.

But still, I wonder: could Wolfowitz actually end up being good at the job? Maybe. My guess is that he'll either be a complete disaster or else an inspired surprise — sort of the way Earl Warren turned out to be a surprise to the president who nominated him. The only problem is, I can't figure out which is more likely.

UPDATE: Jason Vest provides a bleaker look at Wolfowitz's tenure in Indonesia in the Village Voice.

HOUSEKEEPING....Quick housekeeping note. If you try to bring up the Washington Monthly site and get this message:

Couldn't connect to MySQL server on localhost: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (11)

Don't worry: it's nothing wrong on your end. This problem has cropped up a couple of times a day for the past month or two, and usually lasts anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. It's something on our end, but I don't really know exactly what it is or what to do about it. Someday we'll probably figure it out, but in the meantime, if you get this message just wait a few minutes or an hour and try again.

FINDING BOBBY FISCHER....Anyone who remembers the bizarrely spellbinding drama of the 1972 world championship chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik can hardly help but be mesmerized by the latest installment in the appalling soap opera that Fischer's life has become since then. In the Guardian today, Stephen Moss writes about his attempt to interview Fischer following his recent escape from Japan to Iceland:

As [Fischer] is leaving Copenhagen, he is cornered in a car park by the agitated man from Channel 1 and gives some characteristically robust quotes — to summarise, death to the Jews, death to Japan, death to America, death to George Bush. (Probably death to Tony Blair, too — Fischer refused to fly via London because he feared he would be grabbed by the police there.) Anyway, Fischer has let off steam, the Channel 1 man's job is saved, we have a news story.

And where was I, ace sleuth, while the car-park encounter took place? Drinking a beer and composing a short piece about failing to find Bobby Fischer.

If you read to the end, he also has some good advice for anyone hoping to get Fischer to autograph a copy of My 60 Memorable Games....

GOSSIP....There are many scary things about modern journalism, but surely this one belongs on the list:

The real-time pace of Internet gossip has made it difficult for newspaper gossip columnists to stay ahead of the curve. [Gossip columnist Richard] Leiby said that many people in the Post newsroom monitored Wonkette.com, a Washington blog, all day long. "She often has the lead on me because she's in real time," he said.

"Many" people in the Post newsroom monitor Wonkette "all day long"? Sheesh. Wonkette isn't even a very good gossip writer, let alone someone worth monitoring continuously. Is that really the best the Post newsroom can do?

BUSH AND SCHIAVO....From Sunday Morning Talk:

As Dubya starts to see his numbers slide, This Week reported that the Bush administration are starting to distance themselves from Republicans on Capitol Hill, leaking that Bush didn't even want to return to Washington to sign the Schiavo bill last Sunday.

Did anyone see the show? How well sourced was this leak?

If it's true, it's about as galactically craven and poll driven a rowback as I've ever heard. Did one of Bush's minions really say something this cowardly and gutless?

UPDATE: More here.

UPDATE 2: The Washington Post has yet more:

He flew halfway across the country in a vain effort to save her life, but in the week since, President Bush has retreated back to his ranch and remained largely out of sight as the nation wrestled with the great moral issues surrounding the fate of Terri Schiavo.

....The juxtaposition of racing through the night in Air Force One to sign legislation intended to force doctors to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube and choosing not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for her life afterward demonstrates how uncomfortable the matter has become for the White House.

I hope this matter becomes more than just "uncomfortable" for them.

UPDATE 3: Stephanopoulos's source for the leaks is here.

EASTER GREETINGS....A couple of random ruminations on Easter. First up is Julie Saltman:

If, like me, you're not religious (or at least not Christian), Easter has to be the biggest waste of a holiday. Like, what's the point of having a holiday that falls every year on a Sunday, which — hullo? — is already a holiday! OK, true, I dig the chocolate-eating part. I'll give you that. There was a clear need for a chocolate-oriented holiday in the calendar.

Hear hear! Chocolate Butter Eggs from See's Candies have always been the traditional Easter chocolate around here — although I'm pretty sure they've mysteriously shrunken over the years, like so many other chocolate treats of our childhood. Since this has happened at the same time that I myself have grown larger, it seems especially unfair.

Next up is Matt Yglesias:

I didn't know any practicing Christians when I was growing up, which perhaps accounts for the fact that I'm not sure what one is supposed to say on Easter Sunday.

Now that's a sheltered childhood. Happy Easter, Matt!

UPDATE: More chocolate Easter humor here.

BLOGGING COMMUNITIES....Professor B ruminates on blogging and life:

Even the things we don't experience ourselves, we can get some idea of what they're like by reading other people write honestly about them, and part of that honesty is the rage, the frustration, the complaint. These things matter not because they're abstractly unfair but because they affect real people, who have real feelings about them. There's an enormous amount of good writing out there about important stuff, popular though it is to dismiss it.

....I've been thinking about this in terms of this blog. First, there's the hit spike from the Drum and Volokh posts — I'm well over 2,000 hits/day now. There's a temptation to write more about politics, both in response to that, and in response to the whole "women don't blog politics the way men do" thing, but the fact is that the A-list type of political blogging bores the crap out of me, and frankly, feels false to me for precisely the reasons outlined above.

This, of course, is one of the wonderful things about blogging. In a large sense, it does matter who the A-list bloggers, A-list op-ed writers, and A-list talk show guests are, because they control both the tone and content of a lot of public discourse. But the whole point of blogging (well, one of the points, anyway) is that it allows far more people to participate in public discourse, and to participate with a very different and more personal tone than op-ed writing or academic journal writing. You don't have to appeal to a hundred thousand people. A few hundred or a few thousand will do.

For example, standard issue political blogging doesn't feel false to me, but that's because I like that kind of thing. On the other hand, I've long felt that occasionally mixing in personal blogging with purely news-driven blogging is useful because it provides my readers with a better perspective of who I am and whether or not they should care what I have to say. It's also fun. This why you get catblogging here, as well as random pet peeve blogging, TV blogging, and linguistic blogging. These posts almost always provoke a few comments from people who want to know why I'm wasting their time with this stuff when GEORGE BUSH IS BUSY TURNING AMERICA INTO A FASCIST STATE! — but that's the whole point. If this kind of thing makes you think I'm not a serious person, then this probably isn't a blog you should bother reading.

On the other hand, we all draw different limits around our lives — and that includes limits around the amount of rage and frustration we're willing to expose. Like Prof B, I suffer from chronic depression, though, also like Prof B, it's obviously not debilitating. It just sucks. And while I'm not sure what choices she's made in her non-anonymous life, I chose long ago to mention this very seldom and to very few people. (If you're not sure why, go ahead and let your boss know that you're a chronic depressive and see what happens. For many people, their careers would be over.) I know from experience that my moods change, and while my mood is never what you'd call ebullient, the depressive cycles always eventually give way to something that's at least neutral. While I'm in a down cycle, though, I'm very conscious that I'm in the grip of bad brain chemistry, and my way of coping is to keep myself under very tight control. Don't react. Minimize human contact. Under no circumstances lose control of my temper.

Is this the right choice? I don't know. But it's the one I've made. And it does affect my blogging. For the most part, I keep an even tone because that's just what comes naturally to me, but other times it's a struggle. During those times, I occasionally break down (here's an example), but most of the time I don't. In fact, if I know I'm in a down cycle, I usually take care to watch my tone even more than usual.

(And in case you're wondering, I'm feeling fine right now, thanks very much. Although a bit of chocolate would sure hit the spot at the moment.)

So: did you want to hear this? Or were you bored because you come here for political red meat and wish I'd cut the crap and get back to Terri Schiavo? To me, the question seems pointless. It only takes a few seconds to skip a post you're not interested in, and there are thousands of other blogs out there to sample from as well. If this post bores you, wait for the next one. And if standard issue news blogging in general bores you, Prof B's advice is good: take the time to track down one of the countless communities of other likeminded people whose approach you probably will like. They're there for the taking.

FROM THE MAILBAG....Bloggers get weird email all the time. Sometimes, though, you get one weird enough to share just for the pure weirdness of it all:

JOHN REFUESE TO VOTE TO IMPEACH BILL CLINTON AND COMMUNIST FOR JOHN KERRY ,COM JOHN JOIN COMMIST JANE FONDA IN PROTTEST THE WARR AND JOHN VOTED TO CUT EVERY LAW ENFORCEMENT C,I,A, AND DEFENSE THANK YOU,

Followed up a few hours later by this:

I AM WRITING YOU TWICE I FEEL YOU ARE DEAD WRONG ABOUT VOTING FOR KERRY IF JOHN GET IN POWER HE WILL APPOINT SEN, CLINTON IN THE SUPREME COURT AS THE TO JUDGE THEN YOUR FREEDOMS WILL STOP WITH HER SHE IS COMMIST THAT LARRY NACHOLS ,COM AND JOHN CONSISTENTY FAIL TO SUPPORT U,S, MILIARY THUS GUTTING U,S ABILITY TO DEFEND U,S, AND CANADA AND THAT WHY I BUSH IS DOING GOOD JOB,

So what's the call? Practical joke? Weird lunatic? Foreigner with poor grasp of English? Time traveler who doesn't realize the election was held four months ago?

So many choices....

PRINT vs. TALK....This is sort of funny. Every week the LA Times runs a column called "Outside the Tent," where they invite their critics to, um, criticize them. I've been wondering how long it would take until they finally got one they refused to run, and today's the day.

Today's column was supposed to be by John Ziegler, a local talk show host I had never heard of until David Foster Wallace profiled him in the Atlantic earlier this month. (Yes, I learned about a talk radio host in my own city from an article by a midwestern writer in a magazine based in Boston. Go figure.) Why was it turned down? Sunday Opinion editor Bob Sipchen thought its accuracy was debatable:

But those weren't my reasons for rejecting the column. I spurned it because it reads more like a self-infatuated valentine to KFI than the sort of pointed, specific criticism of The Times that we demand in Outside the Tent.

....Just for the fun of it, we're giving readers a chance to decide for themselves: Did I spare you from several hundred words of pointless blather or deprive you of the opportunity to read a trenchant critique of a Southern California newspaper? Ziegler's submission follows below. Decide for yourself and vote.

Click here to read the whole thing and then vote.

My opinion? Ziegler's column was surprisingly turgid and poorly written, but they should have run it anyway. Sure, his point was that talk radio gets to the truth better than the Times, but what else did they expect from one of the self-promoting lunatic hordes at KFI? If you commission a column from a swamp, don't act surprised when you get swamp water in return.

POSTSCRIPT: The funniest line in the piece comes in an editor's note at the end that contains the following lament from one of Ziegler's guests: "I went there thinking it's a reputable station because Rush Limbaugh's on it. When I got there I found a station of clowns." The multiple levels of self-delusion on display there are remarkable.

DR. WHO....The consensus in the previous comment thread is that American copies of British shows suck. But how about British shows themselves? Robin McKie writes about the latest revival of Dr. Who in the Guardian:

It's not the contemporary values that make the show. It is its clever imitation of US hits such as Buffy and Angel: a mixture of smart, ironic humour and creepy horror. 'That won't last,' says the Doctor, peering at a couple posing for the pages of Heat . 'He's gay and she's an alien.' And Rose has some equally sassy gags. Told that an Evil Intelligence is going to bring all the world's plastic to life, she gasps: 'What, even breast implants?'

Lotsa yucks there. Apparently the Brits have learned well from their erstwhile colonists.

THE OFFICE....So did anyone catch NBC's version of The Office on Thursday? I've never seen the original British version, but tuned in because someone had suggested it was similar in tone to the cult (and Kevin Drum) favorite Office Space. Needless to say, it wasn't.

Long story short, the American version didn't do much for me. Unlike Office Space, in which we get parodies of recognizable types, The Office seemed to offer up parodies of parodies, or perhaps parodies of Martians. The characters barely even seemed to be recognizably human, let alone engaging mockeries of people we all feel like we've met at some point in real life.

But that's just me. My question is for people who have seen both series: is it worth renting the British version? Is it different enough and better enough that there's a chance I'll like it even though I didn't like the American remake?

GUEST BLOGGERS....Many thanks to Katha Pollitt, Garance Franke-Ruta, and Amy Sullivan, who guest posted this week about women in the opinion writing biz. I hope a good time was had by all.

Thirsty for more? You can normally find Katha writing at the Nation, Garance at the American Prospect, and Amy right here at the Washington Monthly.