I suppose it is to be expected that the Great Recession should be accompanied by a sweeping national pessimism in which our purported leaders and commentators express historic despair, while the people and corporations mope about, convinced that the sun will not come up tomorrow.
The recently leaked diplomatic cables reveal both Arab and Israeli horror at a nuclear Iran. Last year, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, evidently told the American ambassador that the world had 18 months or less to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, warning "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage." Bahrain's King Hamad sent a cable saying, "That program must be stopped," and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed said, "Ahmadinejad is Hitler."
In Greece earlier this month, Al Gore made a startling admission: "First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake." Unfortunately, Americans have Gore to thank for ethanol subsidies. In 1994, then-Vice President Gore ended a 50-50 tie in the Senate by voting in favor of an ethanol tax credit that added almost $5 billion to the federal deficit last year. And that number doesn't factor the many ways in which corn-based ethanol mandates drive up the price of food and livestock feed.
We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same."
As the European economy grapples with yet another bailout of a bankrupt sovereign state, a storyline is emerging that seeks to frame this latest instance of government interventionism along deliberately disingenuous lines.
I am the opposite of a foodie. My favorite green vegetable is the pea -- fresh or frozen. My second favorite is celery. I like iceberg lettuce. At restaurants, I have been known to look longingly at the children's menu.
Most Americans dislike class-warfare talk aimed at rich people. It does not follow that they don't want the wealthiest among us to pay more taxes. Polls show they do. That puts Democrats in the mainstream on such matters. But Democrats still need a sophisticated way to discuss this, one that does not rely on simple-minded formulations pitting a "greedy rich" against an "oppressed poor."
A revolt is apparently growing at the grassroots level -- being fanned by politicians and right-wing talking heads -- against the new procedures being used by the TSA to ensure that people with bombs and weapons don't get on airplanes with you and me and our loved ones. If you ask me, it's ridiculous. The revolt, I mean.
The administration's Afghanistan War policy seems to be settling into a dismal combination of confusion and cynicism. Before the November elections the administration was adamant that the troops would start coming home by July 2011. This, it is presumed, was to keep the president's liberals calm.
NEW YORK CITY -- Friday night in the big city, I'm bopping along Fifth Avenue with my brother, and the place is one huge construction site. But this evening's industriousness differs from the usual after-hours midtown work. Guys aren't pouring new cement, climbing out of sewer manholes or replacing air-conditioning systems. They're not unloading truckloads of girders or elevator parts.
The latest controversy over Transportation Security Administration body scans and enhanced body pat-downs leaves no doubt: America truly is a nation of whiners.
Is there any chance we can come to grips with our short-term and long-term fiscal problems -- the huge current federal budget deficit and the huge looming increases in entitlement spending?
It isn't the earmarks, stupid. Bullying Republican Senate leaders into a "voluntary" ban on earmarks may represent a political triumph for the tea party movement, but as a measure to reduce the federal deficit it is a meaningless substitute for real action.
And so another class of high school graduates left home this fall, or said goodbye to their friends who left.
Has the recent Republican sweep of the House doomed President Obama's clean-energy agenda? Possibly. Has it doomed America's? Hardly.
"If only we had sold our stocks a few weeks ago." "If only I'd had the brakes checked before she drove up to the mountains."
While it lacks the panache of Patrick Henry’s impassioned “give me liberty” cry (which the Virginian borrowed from Cato, incidentally), the reality is that Republicans looking for a modus operandi in Washington next year could do a lot worse than “give us gridlock.”
Many liberals went bananas over the new plan to reduce deficits. The ideas put forth by the chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission ignore their priorities, they lament.
George W. Bush is sitting on a hotel sofa in front of a south-facing window on a sunny November morning. His presidential memoir, "Decision Points," is No. 1 on amazon.com and is expected to be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. "I've got a very comfortable life," he says.
The draft deficit-reduction proposal released last week by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and retired GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming -- the co-chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt -- has the feel of what two wonks might draw up on cocktail napkins in a bar. It's a bit too easy for two unelected guys to hash out a plan that tells other people what they have to give up -- just to be fair.
