I leave for a couple of weeks and suddenly someone I've never heard of is doing GM,N! And Newt Gingrich is winning a primary election! And it's still raining! Looks like I got back just in time.

That Wall Street Journal article kind of encapsulated lots of the arguments that I have with cultural conservatives I know. Cultural conservatives generally see economic issues as symptomatic of cultural change and nebulously-defined social erosion.

Liberals such as myself, though, see it the other way around- economic issues drive a lot of social problems. That is, to the extent that things like declining marital rates are even problematic- I don't think they are at all. In other words, Murray thinks that if we fix social issues, the economy will get better, and liberals like me (and probably you, if you read the Mercury) think that fixing the economy will make social issues better.

Reading that essay, I kept thinking "well, you've just defined issues of inequality in such a way that don't need much in the way of economic reforms or regulation." In fact, Murray just hand-waves them away. I find that thinking horribly frightening- it says that no, we don't need to actually change any laws, reform any bad financial systems, or anything else like that. Instead, if we all clap our hands, believe in fairies, and invest ourselves in old social systems like marriage and family, things will magically get better.

I see at least 750 million trees on that map. If you give people the land security to invest the 30-50 years to tend and harvest them there will be a billion trees on that map.

If there is ever a freestyle bull event in the summer Olympics, the Spaniards are going to be tough to beat.

Obama is smart guy. I expect his question to Steve Jobs was rhetorical. But I'm glad Steve got to give at least one obvious and terse answer to a President before he died.