Fridays seem always to be slow.
- In yesterday’s column, Paul Krugman equates the “apostles of austerity” to priests of an ancient cult who demand human sacrifices to appease some unseen god. It is, as usual for his columns, well worth reading. The strange thing about Krugman is that time after time he is shown to be right, while “serious” economic “advisers” are shown to be wrong. And what does he get for his troubles? Those in power continue to listen to those who have been wrong in the past, while they dismiss him as being some lunatic liberal. The same can be said for Joseph Stiglitz. I’m afraid we’ve been down the rabbit-hole so long, few realize there is any other reality.
- Unlike many in the US, I have always considered Billy Graham an evil purloiner. But he was mostly pretty smart about it. His son—Franklin Graham—answers an offensive and leading question from John King even more offensively. He spreads lies and attacks with innuendo. Of course, one has to wonder what exactly would be the problem if the President were a Muslim. After all, we just had a President who thought God wanted him to be elected. (God works in mysterious ways: through the Supreme Court!)
- A program to publicize teabagger-endorsed businesses has been suspended because the businesses found the association lost them customers. This is not surprising. It has been a couple of months since the teabagger negatives topped their positives.
- All right! All right! There’s salmonella everywhere! Big deal. Just make sure that you cook foods thoroughly, and for things like Caesar salad, you can coddle the egg or use pasteurized eggs. I can’t speak for baking—I don’t do that.
- Secretary of State Clinton (I like saying that) announced that Israel and Palestine will resume negotiations at the beginning of September with no starting terms. It all sounds hopeful, of course, it is impossible to be hopeful at this point.
- There is wide coverage of the fact that 60% of Americans oppose the Afghanistan war. I’m not sure why this is big news; people have been against it for at least a year. Maybe it is that journalists are finally opposed to it?
Of course Paul Krugman did get a Nobel prize in Economics, so someone out there thinks his work has merit….
@lynnc – Of course! Stiglitz too. But "serious" has a special meaning in modern economic discourse. It means someone with bad, but painful ideas. It’s like saying that we have to allow the housing market to bottom out or depressions to do their work. They sound Very Serious because they involve allowing a lot of people to suffer. As Krugman wrote in his most recent book, there is no reason we must still be in a depression. All the pain pushed by the austerians (especially in Europe) causes unnecessary pain without actually helping the economy.