NISSAN LEAF DELAYS: Report: Leaf dealer demos pushed back to April. I put down 99 bucks to reserve one and all I’ve gotten is lame spam. Color me disappointed.

CHANGE: Here’s Niall Ferguson’s Complete And Definitive Guide To The Coming Sovereign Debt Crisis.

IN THE MAIL: Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.

VIDEO: Quantitative Easing Explained.

IF YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY ON SIRIUS/XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest PJM Political is now online.

SHELLACKED AT HOME, SHELLACKED ABROAD: San Francisco Chronicle: Obama can’t get G-20 nations to follow his lead. “U.S. leadership, once taken for granted, has all but vanished, and no one’s in charge.”

ECONOMISTS WEIGH IN: Can the economy be saved?

I just want to remind people of what Robert Samuelson said about the stimulus way back when it was passed:

Judged by his own standards, President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program is deeply disappointing. For weeks, Obama has described the economy in grim terms. “This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill recession,” he said at his Feb. 9 news conference. It’s “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” Given these dire warnings, you’d expect the stimulus package to focus almost exclusively on reviving the economy. It doesn’t, and for that, Obama bears much of the blame. . . . His politics compromise the program’s economics.

Yes, they did. And he knew it, and didn’t care.

UPDATE: More on how the stimulus was targeted.

HE’S BAAACK! Toby Harnden: The Decider returns to haunt Mr Nuance as George W. Bush eclipses Barack Obama. “Who would have thought that the man hailed as a great American orator and whose stage at the 2008 Democratic convention was a faux Greek temple would be shown up in terms of the theatricality and articulation of the presidency by the man derided as a tongue-tied bumbler and global village idiot?”

THE ECONOMIST: Global Imbalances: Pot And Kettle.

AXELROD: “Robotic and anesthetized.”

UPDATE: Some write to suggest that “robotic and anesthetized” seems to be the new style in the White House. Hmm. Zoloft? Or have the aliens taken over?

ANOTHER ONE-DAY SALE on cheap, external hard drives. Back up, people.

UPDATE: Via reader Richard Marpet, here’s a 2 TB hard drive for 99 bucks. Wow.

CHANGE: Rangel In Hot Water Over Tapping His PAC For Cash. “Congressman Charles Rangel, whose ethics trial starts tomorrow, appears to have improperly used political-action committee money to pay for his defense. Rangel tapped his National Leadership PAC for $293,000 to pay his main legal-defense team this year. He took another $100,000 from the PAC in 2009 to pay lawyer Lanny Davis. Two legal experts told The Post such spending is against House rules.” Luckily for him, the ethics trial is taking place while Dems have a lame-duck majority. Unless, you know, this revelation causes things to be put off for further investigation.

WESLEYAN FACULTY ENDORSE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: “Well, this is awkward. In the wake of an affirmative-action bake sale hosted by the campus conservative club, the Wesleyan University admissions office swore up and down that the school doesn’t have an affirmative-action policy — but now, a large number of the Wesleyan faculty have written in to Wesleyan’s campus paper, the Wesleyan Argus, to defend the practice of affirmative action.”

CHANGE: The old scientific powers are starting to lose their grip. “America’s share of world publications, at 28% in 2007, is slipping. In 2002 it was 31%. The EU’s collective share also fell, from 40% to 37%, whereas China’s has more than doubled to 10% and Brazil’s grew by 60%, from 1.7% of the world’s output to 2.7%.”

SO IS THIS HOPE, OR CHANGE? Surprise, California! Budget Deficit 25 Percent Worse Than a Month Ago.

PRECARIOUS ALBION: “Britain today still has a productive demographic that sees value in things like restoring fiscal responsibility to government, commemorating Britain’s national identity and history, and maintaining public order. But that demographic is increasingly under siege.”

OH GOODY: Lugar sounds alarm on lax security of deadly bio agents seen on Africa tour.

TOM MAGUIRE: Peggy Noonan – Wrong, Wrong, And Wrong.

PETER WEHNER: Who’s serious about the debt?

It is simply not tenable for public officials to portray themselves as courageous voices for fiscal sanity while simultaneously fencing off cuts and reforms for entitlements. This doesn’t argue for recklessness or doing everything all at once. And it certainly doesn’t mean promoting austerity at the expense of pro-growth economic policies. But it does mean one should not declare entitlement programs off-limits. We have to deal with them; there’s no way around it. So there’s no point in making things more difficult or making commitments that are contrary to the national interest. Those who do open themselves to the charge that they are fundamentally unserious on this matter.

For the most part, they’ll be as serious as they’re forced to be.

And entitlement programs shouldn’t be off-limits, they should be at the top of the list. On the other hand, don’t underestimate the importance of earmarks. They’re the gateway drug of corruption and overspending.

BUYING GOLD? Caveat Emptor. “Wait: George Soros getting investment advice from . . . Glenn Beck? Come up with your own crazy conspiracy theory to explain that one.”