Peter Trachtenberg's Blog

• Missing from the Party

  August 31, 2008

  • Missing from the Party The impending catastrophic landfall of Hurricane Gustav has suddenly reminded us of Hurricane Katrina. More to the point, it's reminded the Republican and Democratic parties. This is striking, considering that those parties' presidential conventions frame the first hurricane's anniversary, though neither actually falls on it. Three years before the Democrats left Denver, ...
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• Serves You Right to Suffer

  July 30, 2008

  • The government is in the process of shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bloated, tottering colossi that between them guaranteed approximately half the nation's mortgages. As recently as two weeks ago it looked like this salvage operation might cost taxpayers as much as 5 trillion dollars. Try saying that figure to yourself: Five trillion. Or writing it, a five followed by 12 zeroes. Beside ...
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• Boo Hoo

  July 14, 2008

  • Sunday, July 13, 2008On the same day that the Dow plunged 2 percent and the Nasdaq 2.6 and gas shot close to $150 a barrel, Phil Gramm, one of John McCain's economic advisors, had a message for Americans: The recession that so many of us were worried about was only a "mental recession" and Americans had become"a nation of whiners." Gramm is a former Republican Senator and a ...
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• Correction

  July 7, 2008

  • In my previous post I suggested that the late Senator Jesse Helms is now in hell. That was incorrect, or may be. As my friend and teacher James McCourt once told me, there is no way of knowing who is in hell, or bound for it. This at least is true in Catholicism, which I think has the final word on hell. Going by another tradition, only the Buddha and a very small number of arhats or bodhisattvas ...
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• He hit my fist with his face

  July 6, 2008

  • I've been following coverage of the death of the late and mostly unlamented Jesse Helms. I can't say I rejoice in his death. He was a poisonous old reptile, but age and retirement had defanged him and I doubt he posed a danger to anybody any more. Let him go to his reward (pictured at right) as we will to ours. What's left to have an opinion about is the murmur of bystanders outside the funeral ...
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• But Seriously

  June 30, 2008

  • I've written about Don and Sally Goodrich in my book. On September 11, 2001, their son Peter was killed on United 75, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center . Their response to that loss was to create a foundation in his name that funds a variety of social welfare projects in Afghanistan: a girls' school in Logar province; a water distribution project in a village in Kunar; more schools ...
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• September on Jessore Road

  June 20, 2008

  • At last weekend's Asia Society symposium on the Beats in India, I listened to an odd and frustrating conversation between the poet John Giorno and the journalist and novelist Gita Mehta. What made it frustrating was the way the participants kept speaking past each other, volubly, cheerfully, relentlessly, like two far-gone and slightly deaf seniors in the TV room of the senior center. Mostly, ...
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• Somebody Does It Better

  June 15, 2008

  • Sunday, June 15, 2008Somebody Does It Better I don't think there's any question that the Sichuan earthquake is a worse catastrophe than Hurricane Katrina: as many as 70,000 dead in Sichuan vs. 3,000 in New Orleans and the Gulf. So why then has the response of the Chinese government been so much faster and more efficient than that of our own government in 2005? Case in point: the speed with which ...
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