There's just no nice way to say this.  Greece's creditors are murdering Greece's citizens.  When Greece went to the Troika (the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission) for a loan to keep itself solvent in 2011, the country had to agree to stop covering hospital treatments for unemployed, uninsured citizens.  These people, sick and with no hope of finding work, are now required by the terms of the loan agree

I really think that we should forbid the government from passing temporary laws, especially tax cuts with sunset provisions.  By enacting tax cuts that would eventually expire, George W. Bush was able to win the long-term "budget scoring" game, while also setting a trap for whoever occupied the White House after him.

Mitt Romney keeps swinging and missing on the Libya issue, but it doesn't seem like anyone in the media is telling the Republican nominee to move on.  The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi is still being treated by the mainstream as some sort of Obama administration failure.

Yet, the complaints seem very picayune in the context of Libya's recent history.

Romney's first complaint, issued nearly as the attack was underway, was that the Obama administration had signaled weakness by "apologizing" for an anti-Muslim Youtube video.

I think that most of us Americans who work for others worry about keeping our jobs.  Today, the board of directors of Citigroup has reached an agreement for Vikram Pandit to leave the board and step down as chief executive.  Pandit was the successor CEO to Charles Prince, who followed the legendary Sanford Weill.

"President Obama likes to be alone," is the lede of Maureen Dowd's column today.  What follows is a completely plausible sounding, totally BS 800 words that I just can't help but excise and comment on, bit by bit.

Mitt Romney, Mormon Meets The Eye

Mitt Romney, Centrist in Disguise!

This is hardly a deep observation and it's certainly not very complicated, but a good chunk of Mitt Romney's argument for his candidacy is that he will undo and then redo the major legislation of the Obama administration.

I didn't know that there were journalists out there who haven't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where our hero, high on extract from the human adrenal gland, is confronted with the mocking visage of Richard Nixon on the television urging "Sacrifice.  Sacfrifce.  Sacrifice."  But, Frank Bruni seems to have missed it.  When, he wants to know, will our leaders come clean with the American people and demand of them the sacrifices necessary for us to move forward?

In his speech at the United Nations, President Obama did not apologize for the B movie that may or may not have sparked riots throughout the Middle East.  And, of course, the President owes no apologies.  We're a classically liberal democratic republic.  That means that we allow our citizens to be stupid, to be rude and even to be hateful.

Yesterday, the Federal Open Markets Committee decided, under the guidance of chairman Ben Bernanke, to engage in a new round of quantitative easing (open market purchases of mortgage backed securities at a rate of $40 billion per month for as long as necessary) and also promised to keep interest rates at extraordinarily low levels through 2015.  I'd remind people, by the way, that the Fed could hike rates 200 basis points and still claim to be at historically very low levels (we'd be just over 2 percent).

The Internet is great, in part, because it reminds you that some of the old arguing rules from high school are useful in real life.  If I call you Hitler for disagreeing with me, I am wrong.  Because you are really Pol Pot.

Last night, I was underwhelmed by Obama's speech but in the light of morning I think I was perhaps expecting a little too much, given the context of an extremely effective and well put together convention.  He is the president, not a cheerleader and he's trying to defend his program while showing how it will play out if he's given more time.

Tonight, the most recent two-term Democratic president will address the party’s convention to make the case for Barack Obama’s re-election.  If everything works out, Obama will face a second term that will resemble Bill Clinton’s, where the President faced a powerful opposition party determined to undermine him.

Every so often, somebody tells the story of Henry Ford, friend of the working man.  You see, he paid his workers a higher wage, helping to transform a population of Detroit immigrants into part of a mass affluent American middle class that supported America's economic growth for the better part of the 20th century.

Since David Brooks made a funny, the universe has been out of balance.  Ross Douthat, Brooks' mini-me conservative in The New York Times op-ed land, has righted the balance with a perfectly ridiculous column about Ann Romney's convention speech.

Niall Ferguson wrote a Newsweek cover story called "Hit the Road, Barack" and now seems surprised that people are picking over the carcass.  This is, of course, ridiculous.  Newsweek editor Tina Brown very often chooses stories specifically to inspire reaction.  There's nothing wrong with that, from where I stand.  It's okay to be provocative on purpose.  Though this one seems as half baked as when Forbes, my alma mater, published Dinesh D'Souza's musings on Barack Obama's Kenyan socialism.

Frank Bruni wrote a pretty good column today about a new, anti-teacher's union movie coming out, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal called "Won't Back Down," about a mother who stands up to the entrenched interests who run her failing local school district.  Bruni also writes about the growing rift between Democrats and teachers unions and the growing public upset at unionized teachers.  Bruni doesn't wind up anti-union, but his sympathies are definitely strained.

One thing I missed in the "Mitt Romney never pays less than 13% in taxes" story is his explanation that if you add in his charitable donations, he's paid north of 20% a year.  I have no problem with the federal government's decision to encourage charitable giving by offering people tax deductions.  But Romney's argument here is ridiculous and, taken to the extreme, dangerous.

Taxes and charitable donations are not the same.

I'm sure we all have a lot to snark.  I mean, "to say."  Figured I'd make a place for it.

I'll start.

What a wuss!

Most people will never get to be governor of any state and even fewer will get a term as governor of Massachusetts.  Were I to ever accomplish something of that magnitude, I would not let a bunch of freaks in tricorner hats force me to apologize for the best things I did during that time.  Not even in pursuit of a bigger goal.  A human has to draw the line somewhere.

I just read David Denby's lukewarm review of Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer (subscription required) in which Denby calls the movie a failure but praises Lee as being one of the few filmmakers out there who would ask the kind of question about faith that he posed in the movie.  I haven't seen the movie and don't know that I will.  I don't watch every Spike Lee Joint the way I watch every movie made by Woody Allen.  But I do pay attention to him and some of his earlier films, especiall