Who Killed Cock Robin?

The newspapers, of course. CJR has a brilliantly concise writeup on the SSA trustees' report, and the shriekingly irrelevent and misleading fashion in which the story has been reported in the big foot papers. It feeds the hysteria, which enables the bushistas to lever in programs that will - in the near future - be recognised as Really Bad Ideas.

On the lighter side, check out Kung Fu Monkey's nostalgia for the way Republicans used to be. I used to be a Republican, just like he remembers except that I never smoked a pipe, but that was decades ago. Nowadays, the sober guys who keep the machine running have no choice but to sign on with the Democrats. Speaking of which, check out Garrison Keillor's Homegrown Democrat. We have a long history of being the right side, and we should be proud of it.