NY Times Select is FREE!

[Stephanie]

It's free! Yay!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/opinion/19dowd.html?ref=opinion

Op-Ed Columnist
Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 19, 2007
WASHINGTON


It’s a lost art, slinking away.

Now the fashion is slinking back.

Nobody wants to simply admit they made a mistake and disappear for awhile. Nobody even wants to use the weasel words: “Mistakes were made.” No, far better to pop right back up and get in the face of those who were savoring your absence.

We should think of a name for this appalling modern phenomenon. Kissingering, perhaps.

In Las Vegas, there’s the loathsome O.J., a proper candidate for shunning and stun-gunning, barging back into the picture.

And on Capitol Hill, Larry Craig shocked mortified Republicans by bounding into their weekly lunch. You’d think the conservative 62-year-old Idaho senator would have some shame, going from fervently opposing gay rights to provocatively tapping his toe in a Minneapolis airport toilet. (The toilet stall, now known as the Larry Craig bathroom, has become a hot local tourist attraction.)

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/David%20Brooks

Op-Ed Columnist
Hillary Clinton, From Revolution to Evolution

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 18, 2007

Health care reform isn’t only about covering the uninsured. It’s about reorganizing one-seventh of the U.S. economy. It’s the issue that will redefine the role of government in the 21st century. So when I spoke with Hillary Clinton yesterday, I asked what her newly unveiled plan revealed about her political philosophy.

The word she kept coming back to was “partnerships.” She described an array of different social entities — individuals, the federal government, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals — coming together and exercising shared responsibility for creating a better system.

It began to sound like a health care loya jirga — indicative of the political vision that has marked so much of her thinking over the years. When some politicians are asked to describe systems that really work, they think of the competitive marketplace. Others think of political combat — good defeating evil. But Clinton, at her most hopeful moments, is a communitarian. When she’s asked to describe a system that works, she describes diverse people coming together around a big table to reach a consensus.

That’s the sort of national community her plan is supposed to foster and that’s the sort of process she used to create it. Clinton is hard to interview because her answers are often just chunks of her stump speeches, but I thought I detected real warmth when she described the way she and her staff came up with the plan.

[Trajan]

1. Yeah ....

Read about this today : Their 'Pay for half the website' experiment is over, since they figured they lost more in ad money by losing 'hits' compared to what they made demanding payment ....

I'll always remember your awesome PNAC threads .... I still whoop them out for newbies from time to time ...... Thanks for that ....

[Stephanie]

7. We knew before anybody!

We knew all along...

[Eurobabe]

2. Goodie, now what day is Krugman-time?

:hi:

[TahitiNut]

3. Mondays and Fridays ...

Sad Alan’s Lament

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 17, 2007



When President Bush first took office, it seemed unlikely that he would succeed in getting his proposed tax cuts enacted. The questionable nature of his installation in the White House seemed to leave him in a weak political position, while the Senate was evenly balanced between the parties. It was hard to see how a huge, controversial tax cut, which delivered most of its benefits to a wealthy elite, could get through Congress.

Then Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before the Senate Budget Committee.

Until then Mr. Greenspan had presented himself as the voice of fiscal responsibility, warning the Clinton administration not to endanger its hard-won budget surpluses. But now Republicans held the White House, and the Greenspan who appeared before the Budget Committee was a very different man.

Suddenly, his greatest concern — the “emerging key fiscal policy need,” he told Congress — was to avert the threat that the federal government might actually pay off all its debt. To avoid this awful outcome, he advocated tax cuts. And the floodgates were opened.

As it turns out, Mr. Greenspan’s fears that the federal government would quickly pay off its debt were, shall we say, exaggerated. And Mr. Greenspan has just published a book in which he castigates the Bush administration for its fiscal irresponsibility.

Well, I’m sorry, but that criticism comes six years late and a trillion dollars short.

<more>

On top of his regular columns, however, he has a Blog! Good reading! :hi:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

[TomInTib]

4. Don't you have any better thing to do (like sleeping)?

Mucking up crap like that...

Effing Subversive.

[TahitiNut]

6. Sleeping is over-rated.

:silly:

Subversive is better than perversive, isn't it? :rofl:

[TomInTib]

5. delete... palsy

[Eurobabe]

8. Ich danke dir Tahiti Nuss

:rofl: :hi: