I think Jon Henke misses a little something amidst his total confusion over Democratic distaste for Bush's attempts to turn Social Security into a welfare program. Democrats don't want everything to be a welfare program. In fact, we don't want anything save welfare to be a welfare program. We like safety nets. That's why we don't just want Medicaid, we want guaranteed health insurance for everyone. That's why we don't want Social Security for the poor, we want it for the population. There's no great appeal in separating the poor from the rich through government programs -- it both demeans the poor and implicitly argues that government's only use is to care for those unable to do it themselves.

This Times article on the economy's lower-than-expected growth raises the specter of stagflation. Since the S word has been popping up in a variety of places lately, I think it might be worth a quick definition, as I sure as hell didn't know what it meant a year ago.

Stagflation occurs when the economy has high inflation combined with economic stagnation, unemployment, or recession. So the basic force at work is that prices, through inflation, are rising, but buying power isn't, either because folks don't have jobs, we're in a recession, or the economy's standing still.

I was playing video games, so I just got the James Joyner recap. What'd you guys think?