Giuliani, Bush Shamefully Cashed In on the Horror
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 12th, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Giuliani, Bush Shamefully Cashed In on the Horror
Paul Krugman, NYT
s it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?Actually, I don't think it's me, and it's not really that odd.What happened after 9/11 "” and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not "” was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror.
An Impeccable Disaster in Europe
Paul Krugman, New York Times
On Thursday Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank or E.C.B. — Europe’s equivalent to Ben Bernanke — lost his sang-froid. In response to a question about whether the E.C.B. is becoming a “bad bank” thanks to its purchases of troubled nations’ debt, Mr. Trichet, his voice rising, insisted that his institution has performed “impeccably, impeccably!” as a guardian of price stability. Paul Krugman Indeed it has. And that’s why the euro is now at…
A Refresher Course in Job Creation 101
Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
WASHINGTON — We need a refresher course in Job Creation 101 to judge how much, if at all, President Obama's proposed $447 billion program of spending increases and tax cuts might revive America's sputtering job machine.Recall that the private sector is the main employment engine. Businesses create jobs when two conditions are met. First, extra demand for their products justifies more workers. Second, the extra demand can be satisfied profitably. There are qualifications to these generalizations (startups, for instance), but these are the basics.As for government, it's less a…
If Obama Is a One-Term President
Julian Zelizer, New York Times
“I’D rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” President Obama confessed to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer last year. Other than the “really good” part, Republicans would be happy to see this wish fulfilled.With waning approval ratings and a stagnant economy, the possibility that Mr. Obama will not be re-elected has entered the political bloodstream.
How We Mourned, Why We Fought
Philip Klay, New York Daily News
The day Osama Bin Laden died, I learned one of my former Marines was permanently blind. He was recovering from an IED strike and I'd called to check in. Months back they'd said his vision loss was temporary. As it turned out, he'd regained peripheral vision, but no more. The Corps had trained him as a journalist. Now he couldn't read.Three hours later I learned Bin Laden was dead: news that should have felt like closure, but didn't. One of my Marines was blind, and though I wanted to tie in Osama's death and 9/11 to make sense of it, I couldn't.
