"Green Aisles" - Real Estate
I remain a sucker for jangly guitars.
- I saw writer Colson Whitehead Saturday at the local bookstore giving a reading on his new zombie-themed novel. I'm not big on the zombie genre, but if you ever get the chance to see Whitehead, jump at it. He's an incredibly funny and charming guy. Good looking too, the bastard.
- Tom Brokaw was there a couple of days before that. Not only did I not go, but I deliberately stayed out of my neighborhood (having a drink with the esteemed Mr. Edroso) until I knew the crowd would be gone. Jesus, I hate that guy. Pierce explains why so I don't have to.
- And, as kathy helpfully points out, our friends at the Edge of the American West tell you what to read and not to read in the Sunday Times. Naturally Douthat is in the don't read column -- as is Maureen Dowd. Sadly I read the post after I read the Times yesterday, thus sparing my poor eyes nothing. Why does Dowd have a column at all? Jesus, she is a waste of space.
- Huge vote on Tuesday in Ohio to try and overturn John Kasich's horrific anti-collective bargaining law. I would hope that this sort of arrogance on the part of Republicans might help the cause. (Thanks oddjob.)
- Madness as a form of public policy: Ari Berman has a piece in the Nation noting that although 1.6 million jobs have been created over the last year, this has been undermined by contraction in the public sector work force -- where over 250,000 jobs have been shed in this year alone. We face, more than anything else, a jobs crisis in this economy. Good public policy would focus on three things now: 1) boosting job growth via direct federal support of local and state governments and infrastructure programs; 2) mortgage relief in which principle reduction would be a cornerstone; and 3) regulation aimed at preventing a repeat performance by Wall Street and the banks. (Even with this approach, emerging from this kind of deleveraging is going to be painful.) Austerity and deregulation -- the Republican platform in a nutshell -- is the absolutely wrong approach.
What's on your minds?
