Friday, February 24, 2006

A few comments on current events and recent reading

With no particular insights or inspiration for some rant, here are a few comments on current events and recent reading:

---the bombing of the Askariya Shrine and subsequent events in Iraq is a disaster. It is beyond comment.

---the port facility operations issue is amazing because it is hard to fathom how the cosmetically sensitive Bush administration could have misread this so badly. Much has been written, but two columns in today's NY Times(2/24), one by Thomas Friedman and one by Paul Krugman, outline the debate. Both columnists are no big fans of the Bush Administration, but Friedman details the issue with his somewhat less political, more global perspective while Krugman continues with his well documented negative views on virtually everything related to Bush. Friedman says "the president is wrong on politics but right on ports"(he has absolutely no sympathy for Bush's political problem here), while Krugman's view is that "the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation". Even Krugman says, however, "Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination(which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be ok".

---On a totally different note, John Updike's short story, "My Father's Tears", in this week's New Yorker(2/27) was a highlight of my reading in recent days.

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