The Commentariat -- September 11

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims perform the early morning Eid al-Fitr prayer in the Saudi holy city of Mecca on Friday, Sept. 10, as Muslilms around the world start celebrating the the three-day holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. AFP-Getty image. CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

Having never met a 'Judeo-Christian,' I am always suspicious when that category of beliefs is invoked. -- Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters in the National Catholic Observer eloquently explains the many reasons that there is no valid comparison between the Cordoba Center & the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz (which Pope John Paul II, a Pole, ordered to be moved). Via Hertzberg....

... Rick Hertzberg of The New Yorker: if Cordoba House must be moved, the best place to move it would be to Ground Zero. Hear him out.

Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in the New York Review of Books on "... the origins of the 2008 crisis; ... the ongoing policy debates about the response to the crisis and its aftermath." (This article will have -- but doesn't yet -- a Part 2.) ...

We believe that the relative absence of proposals to deal with mass unemployment is a case of 'self-induced paralysis' — a phrase that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used a decade ago, when he was a researcher criticizing policymakers from the outside. There is room for action, both monetary and fiscal. But politicians, government officials, and economists alike have suffered a failure of nerve — a failure for which millions of workers will pay a heavy price. -- Paul Krugman & Robin Wells ...

... Dana Milbank on the right's attacks on 20th-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. First of all, Milbank points out, many of the right's programs are Keynesian. "Or perhaps, more ominously, these Republicans know exactly what they are saying when they reject Keynesian intervention: that the government should do nothing to help the millions out of work or to rebuild confidence in the economy."

With so much of Keynesian theory universally embraced, Republican denunciation of him has a flat-earth feel to it. Will they next demand the abolition of NASA because it's "Galileo on steroids?" Shut down the National Institutes of Health for being a "Hippocratic mistake?" ... Demand a halt to public schools teaching from the "failed Darwinian playbook?" (Oh, wait. They did that last part already.) -- Dana Milbank

Brad Grow of the Washington Post: "A crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has failed to root out several executives with criminal records whose firms continue to do business with the agency in violation of federal law, according to government documents, court records and interviews.... Documents and interviews reveal that more than 34,000 home loans have been issued over the past two years by a dozen FHA-approved lenders that have employed people who were convicted of felonies, banned from the securities industry or previously worked for firms barred by the agency."

According to the AP's "Fact Check," "President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he's hemming and hawing on that." ...

... BUT Michael Crowley of Time says the "fact-checkers" are ignoring some nuance, & the President has not been inconsistent.