Today is the first day of autumn, the most soulful and yet the most sensual season. And it's Krugman day. And on top of that, this Saturday is the Emily Dickinson reading marathon in Amherst and I'm on the reading team. Wow, too much excitement.It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics — although it is: the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the G.O.P. as the party of obscene bonuses.
Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.
It’s time for the president to realize that sometimes populism, especially populism that makes bankers angry, is exactly what the economy needs.
Today marks the twelfth anniversary of the death of my dear Earl Rich. 
The question, then, is how bad does it have to get before the Obama administration and Congress make job creation a priority.
The US government will have to do two things to fix the coming world-wide economic crisis - create a jobs program, as it did during the Great Depression, and put a cap on the interest rates charged by credit card companies.You can really see the Krugman influence in that post.
If you wish to drink deep at a banquet and to enjoy your dinner, eat as much raw cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half a dozen leaves; it will make you feel as if you had not dined, and you can drink as much as you please.
Mr. Oliver Acton?" I said, extending my hand. He shook it and reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small leaf of paper on which he wrote in pencil: "Do you believe me?"
"I have not made up my mind." I said, truthfully. "It does strain credulity."
He beckoned me follow him down the lane on the west side of the grounds.
I did not see the Cornings very often - they had moved into a small estate down the road in 1811 and we never had much cause to socialize - the Cornings were homebodies and I did all my socializing at the neighborhood pub and the Literary Society."
I think the reason that people don’t talk more about "Monk," despite its popularity, is that watching it is an intensely personal, even interactive, experience. Adrian Monk is a kind of private investigator of our own flaws and sadnesses, and no doubt many viewers identify with the myriad intrapsychic obstacles that make it hard for him to get through the day. They don’t need to talk to their friends about "Monk," because simply watching the show serves the same function—as sharp as its dialogue is, "Monk" is often touching beyond words.
Sodini clearly felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to hold on to that belief and filled him with false hopes. Not normally a problem, I supposed. But Sodini wasn't just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world - and with women - for denying him all the 22-year-old ass he felt he deserved. He was a nut. And he couldn't understand why, if he was doing everything right, he wasn't finding the success that was Steele guaranteed him. He was employed, dressed nicely, in good shape - he even bought a matching sofa set. ("Couch and chair - they match, the woman will really be impressed.") But none of it worked - and his failure couldn't have been his own fault, since he was doing everything right, doing it all by the book. Unfortunately the book was Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. Someone needed to get Sodini a book that explained that settling down requires settling for and that young women are usually interested in young men and that we can't always have what we want and that there were probably women out there who would date him - maybe women closer to his own age - but only if he got his shit together and stopped obsessing about college-age women.
I am, of course, not suggesting that R. Don Steele's book made Sodini go shoot up that aerobics class. But it's clear that Steele was not the guru Sodini needed.
One particularly chilling detail from Sodini's online diary was his seething resentment for a neighbor. He had seen an attractive young woman leaving his neighbor's house and was absolutely furious that his neighbor was sleeping with the kind of hot young girl that Sodini himself wanted but could never get. The girl was his neighbor's daughter.
Well as I reported yesterday, I scored a cheap copy of The Great Gatsby. I had a nice time reading the first two chapters on my commute - I almost missed my stop coming home, I was so absorbed in the narrator's first meeting with Gatsby.
She dressed in white and had a little white roadster
white = pure & class marker
*Doctor. T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleberg are blue and gigantic
Dr. Eckleberg looks out over valley of ashes (God symbol)
There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much younger - with a cricket bat in his hand
proves Gatsby's story!
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!"
THOMAS PARKE D’INVILLIERS
