Remember that time when the Bush administration silenced an actuary and lied $100 billion off the cost of Medicare reform so Congress would pass it? That was fun, even quaint. But this is a brave new second term world, baby! And $100 billion bucks ain't shit to these guys, so now they're saying they lowballed by $670 billion. Yowza! That's second term economics for ya! Bam! But second term dynamics shouldn't be forgotten, either. Because right now the Bushies are doggedly trying to ram Social Security privatization through, and having little luck with it. As you followers of Josh Marshall know, the most effective, and common, Republican beg-off has been "y'know, yeah, good idea, but a bit later when the deficit looks smaller". Looks like a bit later just got a lot later, and the Conscience Caucus has found itself a rallying cry. What's that Rahm Emanuel? You want to close this one out? Do it, buddy: "If you're looking for a crisis, I would suggest you look at a crisis that was self-...

The semi-finals are ending this week. I'm up for "Best Writing" and if you feel like throwing me a vote , I won't hold it against you.

This was written about a month ago, after I was commissioned to write an article on California's dying Democrats only to find the meme had no truth but the LA Times had no scruples. I wrote this as an op-ed for the Times but they, unsurprisingly, passed. A few days ago, a friend mentioned the same fear to me, so I figured there are a few people who'd still gain from reading this. So enjoy: Any election with the emotional intensity of 2004’s is bound to send the losers into a soul-searching tailspin, desperate to find a political Dr. Phil willing and able to diagnose their electoral afflictions. They reject the idea that a close loss can be a close loss rather than a resounding message, as it argues against a single, easy-to-repair cause and paints a cloudy, uncertain future full of deadlocked contests and unknown outcomes. That’s no fun. Americans like bright colors and bold strokes, if we’re going to lose, we’ll lose big (no matter what the numbers say). And so it’s happened that...

Brad Plumer did a nice job of smacking down an errant peer yesterday: On Sunday, the Washington Post got Laura Thomas, a twenty-something writer, to ponder the future of Social Security. The verdict? "People my age are as likely to believe in Social Security as they are in Santa Claus." Fair enough, but fortunately for retirees across the country, the program exists wholly independent of what someone in their mid-twenties does or doesn't believe. Read the rest.

Brooks's latest column is so, ugh, Brooksian . Billed as a short history of Deanism, it tries and fails to connect Howard Dean to the breakdown of fraternal orders. Or something. I'm really not sure, but I do know that PZ Myers did an excellent job gutting it: Ooh, there [Brooks] goes, treating some nice words as if they were smutty slanders. "Secular" is a virtue: we live in a secular state, which means it carries out its functions without requiring specific religious beliefs of its citizens. It does not mean that we hunt down and persecute Christians, much as the religious right would like you to think it is so. "Embodying the educated class" is also a lovely advantage to me. He makes it sound like some narrow, weird group of people with freakish habits, but I think he's just trying to play that divisive red-blue state game. Guess what? Alabama is full of educated people! So is Idaho! And Florida! Even Texas, although I understand they have to hide in armed enclaves. Those people we...

In context of a post on post-war Japan, Steve Clemons writes: Bush needs to be careful of trumpeting too much about our experience democratizing Japan -- as we were frequently on the side of the anti-democrats. To some degree, Japan democratized despite our promotion of a profound model of structural corruption there -- and the Japanese public and civil society institutions deserve credit. But Bush, as of late, has been warping this history. Read that first line again -- "Bush needs to be careful of...". I've used it myself, Bush better watch for this or that, because he's flagrantly rewriting history/ignoring evidence/contradicting reality. I was wrong. Bush needn't be careful at all. Who in our press is going to stand up and correct the historical record? Is it you, Nedra Pickler? You, Ron Fournier? You, Dana Milbank? You, Judith Miller? Of course not. As Digby is fond of saying, we've entered a full-fledged Foucaultian state of competing discourses, and Steve's -- ours -- takes...