Friday opinions, and whatever they are worth, at least it's the end of the week. In any case, welcome to the "make your own reality" edition.
Newsday:
The day after one of the most dramatic exits in CNN history - the most? - the reasons for said exit remain elusive. "I have no idea what Lou's gonna do," said one high-level industry source. And apparently, this person's not alone.
Who knows? And who cares? He'll be back bashing immigrants, but at least for a little while he's blessedly quiet.
Paul Krugman:
Here in America, the philosophy behind jobs policy can be summarized as "if you grow it, they will come." That is, we don’t really have a jobs policy: we have a G.D.P. policy. The theory is that by stimulating overall spending we can make G.D.P. grow faster, and this will induce companies to stop firing and resume hiring.
The alternative would be policies that address the job issue more directly.
David Brooks: John Thune is the future of the Republican Party because Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and Jean Schmidt and Tom Tancredo simply don't exist when I don't want them to. I love being a pundit.
Roger Cohen:
As Jane Mayer notes in a groundbreaking recent piece in The New Yorker, "The intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed."
According to a just-completed study by the New America Foundation, quoted in Mayer’s piece, Obama has authorized as many drone strikes in Pakistan in nine and a half months as George W. Bush did in his last three years in office — at least 41 C.I.A. missile strikes, or about one a week, that may have killed more than 500 people.
Charles Krauthammer: That guy at Fort Hood? He's a Muslim terrorist!!!! Don't you people understand??!!?!?!!! I don't have to wait for stinking facts or a wussy inviestigation. I know!!~
Washington Post:
In the book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," [Sarah] Palin contends that the McCain campaign stuck her with a $50,000 bill for the cost of her own vetting, botched the announcement of her teenage daughter's pregnancy, outfitted Palin with all those infamous costly ensembles, and shielded her from reporters. Even so, Palin goes on to belittle two famous interlocutors, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, according to the Associated Press, which found and purchased a copy of the book before its sale date.
Richard Kim and Betsy Reed:
It's tempting to cheer Sarah Barracuda on as she cannibalizes what remains of the Republican Party. The Going Rogue book tour, the 2010 targeting of moderates like Florida's Charlie Crist, a 2012 bid for the presidency--bring it on! While the percentage of Republican voters who say they would seriously consider voting for Palin for president stands at 65 percent, among all voters the figure is mired at 33 percent. As former McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt--one of the key architects of the Palin veep pick--put it recently, "Were she to be the nominee [for president in 2012], we could have a catastrophic election result." Three more years of Palin poison infusing Republican politics will likely spell supermajorities for Democrats and a second term for Obama.
But what of the poison's other effects? Her nonsensical statements may inadvertently provide comic relief, but it's no laughing matter when serious debate is distorted by the wild misinformation she feeds to her increasingly paranoid base.