Rumsfeld on Face the Nation You may well already have seen this, but if not, this video clip from this past Sunday is amusing. (Courtesy of the Center for American Progress. If that link doesn’t work try this one.) Kash

New CPI Data The danger of deflation seems to be receding. The BLS’s newest CPI data (for February) indicates an increase in the core rate (excluding food and energy) of 0.2%, similar to last month’s increase. The 12 month change in the chained core CPI is 0.8%, up slightly from last month, and the 12 […]

CalWashingtonMonthly Many of you probably know that Kevin Drum’s excellent blog, CalPundit, is being incorporated into the Washington Monthly. The transition occured this morning, and if you visit www.washingtonmonthly.com, you’ll see that it looks a lot more like CalPundit acquired The Washington Monthly than the reverse. Congrats. AB

Revising History Again The GOP website gives the credit for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to President Bush: Last year, President Bush proposed and Congress approved a single, unified Department of Homeland Security to improve protection against today’s threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the […]

Illinois Senate Update I’ve posted about this race, which doesn’t seem to get talked about much despite being a likely pick-up for Democrats, a few times (here and here.) Illinois held its primary last night and the results are in: Barack Obama for the Democrats and Jack Ryan for the Republicans. Obama won with 52%, […]

Note to John Lott Next time the data fail to support your theory, I recommend that instead of faking the data, lying about a computer failure, and using false identitities to attack critics and self-promote, you simply follow Lucas Kovar’s lead (do follow the link and read the paper to the end; it’s hilarious.) AB

The Latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey The survey was conducted in February, so some of the number may already be dated as a result of the attacks in Spain. What have we learned? In every surveyed country except the US, more people believe that the Iraq War hurt the war against terrorism than believe it […]

Bush: It’s not my fault In the latest ad, Bush is going after Kerry for voting against the $87b for Iraq last year: The commercial shows clips of soldiers and a military plane taking off. Those images are mixed in with pictures of the U.S. Capitol, the legislative chamber and a shot of Kerry. “Few […]

Interest Rates Unchanged As expected, the Fed left the federal funds rate at 1%. Underpinning this is the belief that demand growth will lag behind productivity growth. From Reuters: RICHARD FRANULOVICH, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, WESTPAC BANKING CORP, NEW YORK: “Looks like the Fed is no longer offering an optimistic outlook on the labor market. Recall […]

The Cyclically Adjusted Budget Deficit The CBO has released its estimates of the “cyclically adjusted” budget balance for the US. What does that mean? The CBO explains: Calculations of cyclically adjusted budget measures attempt to remove the effects of the business cycle on revenues and outlays (that is, the cyclical part of the budget). For […]