Greg Ip and Deborah Solomon write in the Wall Street Journal: "In announcing a big drop in its estimate of this year's federal budget deficit, the Bush administration was quick to credit itself. . . .

"But this explanation falls short. . . .

"What has changed isn't the size of the economy, but how the economic pie is divided. The share of national income going to corporations and the wealthiest individuals, already large, has expanded, while the share going to typical wage earners has shrunk. Because corporations and the wealthy generally pay income tax at higher rates than does the typical wage earner, that shift benefits the federal Treasury."

And Edmund L. Andrews writes in the New York Times that "the real news is not that tax revenues are particularly high; they are not. The big change is that tax revenues have become more of a crapshoot -- more volatile, more unpredictable and more buffeted by swings in the stock market than they were 10 years ago.

"Why? Because tax revenues are increasingly dependent on the fortunes of the very rich."

Update 4:55 PM ET: You had to figure Minipax would get in on the goodthink action:

In the midst of last Friday's onslaught, in which Israeli bombers killed dozens of Lebanese civilians, the Pentagon announced the export of $210m of aviation fuel to help Israel "keep peace and security in the region."

Newthinkers doubleplus bellyfeel Ingsoc!

The book falls prey to the Administration's premise that terrorism/jihadism are the greatest threat to America. That is not the case. A more balanced assessment of high level threats is provided by the High Level Threat Panel (including LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft) of the United Nations, which lists the following (note that terrorism is 9th): poverty, infectuous disease, environmental degradation, inter-state war, civil war, genocide, other atrocities (e.g. trade in women and children, kidnapping for body parts or slavery), proliferation, terrorism, and transnational organized crime.

have often wished that TIME might adjust its editorial mind-set to be the de facto Public Intelligence Agency for the planet.

I would be quite thrilled if TIME committed to doing books on each of these threats, and creating an interactive Public Intelligence Website that tied the books together and to the actual budgets of the United States and other nations, in that way showing how our USA national budget is badly mis-directed, and perhaps inspiring other nations once we get our priorities right ourselves.

IDEA for Amazon: connect with the Institute of Scientific Information, and start showing us new books that cite existing books. I would love to be able to "fast forward" from this book to the "best in class" books that cite this book so that I could buy the best most recent book (I buy and read in threes on most topics). Amazon has become a major intellectual force, and is my starting point for every issue (Google is for fast looks, Amazon is for deep looks; I hope that one day they merge with Wikipedia).

The author excels at criticism of our mis-placed faith in technology and "precision munitions" while ignoring what Army War College strategist Steve Metz calls "precision psychology." In this vein the author points out that the fastest way to calm the Earth and increase productivity while reducing poverty is to focus on human capital and the education of the poor. Michael O'Hanlon has pointed out that the single greatest return on investment comes from a dollar spent on the education of women. This is where Google.org might usefully apply it extraordinary capabilities. Free online education in all languages, and donated Internet access centers and study computers in every village across Africa.