How many is too many?

By Caren Bohan, Reuters, January 3, 2010

A fight over the budget loomed on Sunday.....White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee accused Republicans of "playing chicken" with the nation's financial credibility....

"This is not a game. You know, the debt ceiling ... is not something to toy with," Goolsbee told the ABC News program "This Week." "If we hit the debt ceiling, that's ... essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic. I mean, that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008," he said.....

By Blake Ellis, CNN Money, January 3, 2011

Manufacturing activity expanded for a 17th month in a row in December, rising to the highest level in seven months, a purchasing managers' group said Monday.....

"We saw significant recovery for much of the U.S. manufacturing sector in 2010," said Norbert Ore, chairman of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee, in a statement. "The recovery centered on strength in autos, metals, food, machinery, computers and electronics, while those industries tied primarily to housing continue to struggle."

Strong global demand and a weaker dollar has also helped boost manufacturing activity, said Ore....

Also see

2011: A hiring boom, even at 9% unemployment
By Chris Isidore, CNN Money, January 3, 2011

...After three years of economic pain, a growing number of economists think 2011 will finally bring what everyone's been hoping for: More jobs and a self-sustaining recovery....

and Krugman's worries about all of this in his column today:

Deep Hole Economics
By Paul Krugman, New York Times op-ed, January 2-3, 2011

...Even though we may finally have stopped digging, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole....I've noticed many people overreacting to recent good economic news. What particularly concerns me is the risk of self-denying optimism....

35% support it; along party lines, apparently, but only six in ten Republicans think it's going well.  ;o)  Raw Story links to the pdf.

By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post Foreign Service, January 2, 2011

TEHRAN - Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values and counter the clout of the country's increasingly secularized middle class....

Guest Op-Ed for the January 3 edition of The New York Times

THE visit by President Hu Jintao of China to Washington this month will be the most important top-level United States-Chinese encounter since Deng Xiaoping’s historic trip more than 30 years ago. It should therefore yield more than the usual boilerplate professions of mutual esteem.....

I had written on TPM about gentrification in response to a David Brooks column claiming that NYC crime was under control and a Village Voice column about Stop and Frisk laws. The Black Agenda Report takes it farther.

By Ana Carbajosa, The Guardian, January 2, 2010

....This is the first time that a group of young Palestinian cyber-activists has agreed to meet a journalist since launching what it calls Gaza Youth's Manifesto for Change. It is an incendiary document....that has captivated thousands of people who have come across it online, and the young university students are visibly excited, but also scared. "Not only are our lives in danger; we are also putting our families at risk," says one of them....

Gaza Youth's Manifesto for Change is an extraordinary, impassioned cyber-scream in which young men and women from Gaza – where more than half the 1.5 million population is under 18 – make it clear that they've had enough. "Fuck Hamas..." begins the text. "Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!"....

By Rachel Donadio, New York Times, January 1, 2010

Francesca Esposito has a law degree and a master's and speaks five languages. She recently quit her unpaid job for Italy's social security administration.

...People like Ms. Esposito feel increasingly shut out of their own futures. Experts warn of volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets....

Even before the economic crisis hit, Southern Europe was not an easy place to forge a career. Low growth and a corrosive lack of meritocracy have long posed challenges to finding a job in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Today, with the added sting of austerity, more people are left fighting over fewer opportunities. It is a zero-sum game that inevitably pits younger workers struggling to enter the labor market against older ones already occupying precious slots...

By Lamis Adoni for Al-Jazeera, December 31, 2010

Mohamed Bou'aziz, the young Tunisian who set fire to himself on December 17, is emerging as a symbol of the wider plight of the millions of young Arabs who are struggling to improve their living conditions.

Like many across the Arab world, Bou'aziz, who is now being treated for severe burns, discovered that a university degree was insufficient to secure decent employment. He turned to selling fruit for a living, but when the security forces confiscated his vending cart he torched himself - igniting a series of protests across Tunisia.....

By neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks

New York Times Guest Op-Ed, December 31, 2010

"U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), strongly backed by Obama and Vilscak, has a bill that was written in secrecy by timber industry lawyers and timber industry lobbyists, a bill often referred to as the “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill,” that was unable to withstand scrutiny from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee due to the financial and environmental costs of its Congressionally-mandated logging quotas, but has now somehow magically appeared on pages 893 to 942 of the 1,942-page $1.3 trillion Senate Omnibus Spending Bill."

Arrrrrggggghhhh!  Screw you, Jon Testor, or: How Blue Can Dogs Be?