I remain a bit stumped how the middle class has not neared general revolt as the Republicans give away the country to the wealthy and the corporations. Yet more perplexing is how totally the supposed conservatives have lost all fiscal restraint. Latest lovely example: the government has suspended payments to and is borrowing money from the federal employee retirement fund to cover the interest payments on America's debt. But they promise to pay the fund back. When they balance the budget? No silly, when they raise the legal debt ceiling. What better time to sell Federal land at any price? A quick google news scan shows how wildly popular this idea is Flaming liberals everywhere from Montana to South Dakota are up in arms. They better pray Cheney doesn't find them.

Wow. Here's a mind-blowingly elegant idea from Garrison Keillor that the US amend the Constitution to amend the constitution to require the President to have at least 2 years full-time military service. This would have sundry benefits, points out Keillor, including:

• a military that looks more like America
• presidents who aren't chicken hawks
• a world power that knows something about the world

While we have some obvious problems with the ineligibility of some groups for military service, the solution would seem to be to enable their eligibility, not to abandon this amendment idea. Dare to dream, Mr. Keillor...

John Mauldin, author of Bulls-Eye Investing, Just One Thing, and weekly essays, recently pointed readers to the just-published Ahead of the Curve by Joe Ellis. Ellis argues that recession can be seen better and earlier by consumer spending and real wages declines. His web site kindly offers us charts of the indicators Ellis prefers which I think will prove very educational in the near future. As the accelerating debate about the near-term fate of the US economy gets louder, we now have data to read instead of idiot pundits to hear. I find especially pleasing that Ellis uses multi-month trailing averages to smooth the inevitable noise in economic indicators. I don't know why we don't hear more calls for this approach for most economic indicators.