KLo suggests that Senator Kennedy is a socialist for telling Russert: And he ought to activate and call the Federal Trade Commission-which is basically a sleepy organization that has given an interim report in terms of price-fixing and gouging-he ought to get them off and have them working seven days a week, 24/7, to make […]

Donald Luskin performs a public service – sort of. He warns us that the Bush White House still wants to deform the current Social Security system: But reform isn’t dead. It can’t die. Reform is inevitable, because the Social Security system really is in crisis, in the sense that the accounting mirage of the Trust […]

Larry Johnson comments on the firing of whistleblower Mary McCarthy: I am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring that the truth about an abuse was told to the American people. There is something potentially honorable in that action; particularly when you consider that George […]

We have been hearing about record oil prices. We all know how the press tends to ignore the nominal to real distinction so I decided to check out the excellent graphs from WRTG Economics. Their graph of real oil prices from 1947 to 2004 express oil prices in term of 2004$. For a brief period […]

John Tamny observes that the capacity utilization rate has reached 81.3% and wonders why the FED is raising interest rates. Mark Thoma reads Tamny’s argument that we should only worry about world aggregate demand as compared to world supply and says: This is wrong. OK, that statement was actually in response to the tired old […]

King Gyanendra of Nepal is promising to restore power to the people, while KLo is under the illusion that George Bush has ousted another long standing tyrant: If I were Tony Snow, I’d totally give Bush credit for the freedom’s advance in Kathmandu. Maybe KLo should learn more about the history of Nepal: The declaration […]

I received the same email that Mark Thoma received as to the latest from Peggy Noonan. In my view, Mark is too kind to Ms. Noonan. For example – if I had the opportunity to write something for the adult readers of the Wall Street Journal (OK, I bet most of them skip the op-ed […]

Credit to Belgravia Dispatch for catching more Swiftboat smears from Glenn Reynolds: If things were so bad before, they should have resigned in protest instead of complaining publicly once they were safely in retirement and, in some cases, had books to promote. Ah, Glenn – some of the generals did resign in protest. General Zinni […]

We had a couple of data releases this week telling us something about inflation. Today’s release was the CPI data for March, which comes on the heels of yesterday’s PPI data release. Today’s news release showed surprisingly high inflation in non-energy consumer items. For some, this has raised alarm bells: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — U.S. core […]

Jonah Goldberg says GOTCHYA after he read Brit Hume: Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni … But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress “Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region,” adding, “Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions … […]