You know what we're going to remember 50 years from now? Roy Halladay, playoff no-hitter. Does it "matter"? Well, a whole lot of people put a whole lot of emotional energy (not to mention their hard-earned dollars) into baseball...just saying.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that once again my nomination for what mattered this week would be what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's always risky to think that something is at a critical stage, but I do think that the various events going on there (military actions, negotiations, political upheaval, you name it) are pretty important. What else? I think it's possible that the Nobel Prize may matter some for China. And I've read that the stuff about the bees is really important, although I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to know whether that's true or not, and I suppose it's not politics, at least not directly. I'm a lot less convinced that the switch in National Security Adviser, or anything new in the electoral landscape, or even the health care court decision, were big deals.
So that's what I thought mattered. What do you think?
Saturday, October 9, 2010
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Events in Afghanistan and Pakistan matter.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Jones' departure probably won't matter. I think the revelations about foreclosure fraud is going to matter, big time. Bad unemployment numbers too, both politically and quality-of-lifewise. I think that Obama's installation of solar panels in the WH is going to matter, as a bully pulpit item and a way to make Republican heads explode.
And I'm waiting for the tipping point where the influx of big money and foreign money through the US Chamber of Commerce is going to matter. I know that some journos are working on this story as a bigtime thing. We'll see.
And what kind of impact is this guy marching around in a Nazi uniform going to have? Karl Rove going to defend that on Fox, or not?
I hate mature perspective...
ReplyDeleteI think the on-going investigations into mortgage and foreclosure frauds is a story that mattered. The on-going instability in the housing market is going to effect the economic recovery and might actually make the recovery more difficult and the economic pain prolonged.
ReplyDeleteThe taxpayers are going to love hearing that we may have to bail out financial institutions again, this time because they couldn't be bothered to do their paperwork properly. ('The dog ate your mortgage', as one wag put it.) This could be the big issue of 2012.
ReplyDeleteI am going to go with Pakistan again. I don't think we as a country register how important this country is and how poorly we've handled our relationship with them. The fact that it is just generally lumped in as Af/Pak says a lot -- you are only important to us as far as fighting the war with the Taliban and al Qaeda goes -- otherwise, we can pretty much ignore the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, a precariously perched government in control of a nuclear weapon, etc., etc., etc. The little I've heard about it goes something like "gasp, I can't believe they would bomb NATO convoys!" Instead of "gasp, no wonder they bomb NATO convoys!"
ReplyDeleteThe mortgage issue will also have long lasting consequences just like the mortgage issue of the 1930s has had long lasting consequences but I am not sure I would rank the reveal of an on-going but basically known phenomenon as an "event" of this week -- they've been saying for 2 years that renegotiating mortgages wasn't happening because no one knew who the owners of the mortgages really were... it should have been a red flag: if a bank can't claim ownership for the purposes of renegotiating terms how can it claim ownership the purposes of foreclosure?
The WH not pushing for a moratorium could be an important event. Where are they on this??? Easy populist points, good policy, no-brainer.