When President Bush gave a major speech in North Carolina early last month touting the strength of the U.S. economy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wasn't buying it. "Platitudes and photo-ops by the president suggesting a strong economy simply do not make it so," she said.

Queen Elizabeth II doesn't exactly fit the American Gothic image, and it's difficult to picture her milking a cow, but it turns out that the queen of England qualifies as a farmer. In today's world, that means she receives farm subsidies from taxpayers, regardless of the fact that she has a net worth that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

It does more to help poor people financially than the Salvation Army; it is generally good for the environment; and, according to some studies, it increases overall employment almost everywhere it goes.

Yet, other than perhaps Halliburton, it is the single business most despised by the American left.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Mortgage rates are going up, and the only questions are how high and whether the pain will be localized or spread across the entire economy.

Leave it to Time magazine to offer up a scoop and then miss the most important part of the story. Donald Bartlett and James Steele, in the cover story of the newsweekly's Oct. 31 issue, deliver a scathing indictment of Corporate America for abandoning pension promises it made to former workers.

Some of the trends driving up health care costs-such as longer life spans and better technology-are beyond the control of individuals, and only a moral monster would want to stop them, anyway.

A growing economy isn't just good for bankers and factory workers. It keeps artists from starving, too.

That's the conclusion from an Oct. 24 report in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Each year the Chronicle calculates how much money the nation's 400 largest charities raise, and the news had not been very good lately.