I know, I can't quit Thomas Friedman.  But when a below average writer achieves fame and fortune while so many greater talents deal in obscurity, it's annoying.  Particularly when the below average writer makes arguments like "Average Is Over," where he accuses American politicians and citizens of not being up to the task of global competition.
 

What a four years it's been.  Back in 2008, after two terms of George W. Bush, I felt overtaken by an impulse to want to upend the entire system and to undo the wrongs of the Aught decade.  Hillary Clinton seemed to me to be the pugilist needed to egt the job done but when it became clear that she would not be selected, I learned to start liking Obama.  Clinton apparently came to the same conclusion and she has been one of the most effective members of her administration.

By refusing to be specific, Mitt Romney has made his tax and budget plans difficult to analyze and, of course, difficult to criticize.  This might be by design though, of course, folks are trying to figure out what the Romney budget would mean for America.  The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and The Brookings Institution, says that for Romney to cut the corporate tax rate and to cut taxes on high earners, he will have to eliminate deductions that favor the middle class, in effect, raising ta

In the Times today, Bill Keller has a longish column about how selfish the Baby Boomers are for wanting their Social Security and their Medicare and even their Medicaid.  I'm not sure why he lumps Medicaid into it, as if poor people have a choice, but he does.  Keller's argument isn't novel.  He links to a Paul Begela Esquire article that made the esthetic anti-boomer case at the turn of the century.  Th

Interesting action in the Senate today.  The Republican plan to extend the Bush-era tax rates for everyone failed and the Democratic plan to extend them for all household income up to $250,000 a year succeeded*.  Now the House is expected not to vote on, or to vote down the Democratic proposal and will likely pass the Republican one.  The bill will then go to the Senate, where Reid and company will replace it with the Democratic plan that the Senate passed and send it back to the House.

In the Times today, a professor of philosophy and a professor of government team up to tackle the "Moral Hazards of Drones," and they evoke Plato's tale of Gyges to make the case.

To me, one of the most amusing parts of the Mitt Romney/Bain story is that it took between early 1999 and late 2002 to transfer ownership of the company from Romney to his 26 managing directors.

Now, after 2000, when funding dried up because of the tech crash and recession (made worse in 2001 by the terrorist attacks), this might be understandable.  But in 1999, deals were getting done.

Like most of you (I'm guessing), I was delighted and appalled by the stories detailing the privilege and self regard of Mitt Romney's backers this morning.  Though I can kind of understand driving around the Hampton's yelling, "We're VIP!" at the help, given the amount of money these people had to give to Mittens.  They'd darned well better be VIP, right?  It's what they're paying for.  They want to be VIP in the eyes of the next president.

Hey, guess what?  I just read The Declaration of Independence for the first time in a very long time.  It's short!  It's part of a little pocket guide, combined with the Constitution, published by the CATO Institute, given to me a few years ago and I figured, what the heck, it's that time of year.

The Supreme Court will rule on Monday about whether or not the federal government can require people to buy health insurance from private insurance companies.  My own view is that, under the commerce clause, it can.  But, I see the point of conservatives here.  The mandate is probably the single biggest subsidy of a private, for profit, industry in history.

It's speculative, but some non-partisan tax specialists have looked over Paul Ryan's budget and have come to the very reasonable conclusion that the only way you can cut taxes on rich people while maintaining budget neutrality is to raise taxes on the middle class (probably the amorphous "upper middle class," that everybody thinks they're part of.

Actually, I don't mean brilliant politics here.  It may be.  But I really mean brilliant ethics.  There is no doubt in my mind that people who came to the United States as children, who were raised here and work here and who consider this their culture, not should be allowed to stay.

Funny day in Op-Ed land.  David Brooks veers hard right to try to explain why Republicans have veered hard right.  His line is, "This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing."

Spare me, David Brooks.

His column today is about columns.  Well, it starts off about monument designs and why they stink now.  Seriously, who really sees the relative decline of monument esthetics as emblematic of what's wrong with America today?  The music used to be better, too, David.  Maybe that's the problem?  Or maybe you're just wrong?

I admit that, years ago, I was entranced by what Jeremy Rifkin called "The European Dream," which was not just a monetary union but, in his mind, a political union that could, unlike the United States, expand almost without limit to include an ever widening periphery, someday stretching as far south as northern Africa.

A colleague of mine, a very smart man but not in sync with me politically, told me a few weeks ago that he believes that I will come to my senses before the election and pull the lever for Mitt Romney.  I will make this decision, he assures me, based solely on Obama's mishandling of the economy and I will realize that the various issues that I have with the Republican party, Tea Party crazies and the religious right, do not apply to Romney.

Yesterday, as I was riding in a taxicab through one of New York's Indian/Pakistani neighborhoods, next to its dreadful airports that are inferior to everything in China, the cab driver said something amazing to me.  "Every dog has his day," he said.  I thought about this.  I realize that it had something to do with dog racing.  And maybe even Thomas Friedman who, has a writer, generally makes a pretty good Greyhound.  Though, seriously, you should see the busses in Calcutta.  They don't just have Wi-Fi, they run on Wi-Fi, floating effortlessly above the pavement.

This morning, Joe Nocera writes an interesting column about the Facebook IPO which I think is ultimately wrong. Nocera's take is that, aside from people angry that the investment banks lowered their revenue forecasts without telling all clients (and simultaneously raising both the price of the IPO and the number of shares sold) that investors don't really have a lot to complain about.

Remember back when Rand Paul got into trouble for saying that he wouldn't have supported the landmark civil rights legislation that outlawed such perverse practices as segregated drinking fountains and "whites only" lunch counters? 

This morning, as I was walking to the gym, I passed a small apartment building, nestled amongst the townhouses of West 10th street.  From somewhere on the upper floors of the building I heard a woman shouting and finally screaming.  First it was "Leave me alone!"  Then it was "Get off of me!  Get off of me!"  This was punctuated by screams, but they sounding like shrieks of anger rather than terror or pain, though it takes a lot of assumptions to get to that judgment.