Aug. 30, 12:36 a.m.: Some reading from the news

Some suggested articles to enlighten.

By: Hank Kalet
   Been away from the computer for a week, taking it easy this last week of summer. Spent some time at the beach, lost a little at the track, while spending some time with family.
   That said, I figured I’d take a moment to offer some quick hits on some useful reading:
   1. E.J. Dionne’s piece on Labor Day in today’s Washington Post is first rate. He make the rather simple but eloquent and timely point that the last 25 years have not been kind to workers and that it’s time to find a way to roll back the attack made by capital.
   "I am all for a nation of owners and investors," he writes. "But most people need jobs. For 25 years, we have been hearing that labor depends upon capital. It’s time to resurrect the other, buried truth: that capital depends upon labor. Our prosperity really does require keeping the "Labor" in Labor Day."
   I doubt I could have said it much better.
   2. Paul Krugman offers his take on the brewing disaster that is Iraq, in a trenchant column in today’s New York Times. The gist is this: We have too few troops in Iraq, but too many in Iraq and overseas in general, meaning we are stretched to our limit. That will require a greater budgetary commitment at a time when we don’t have the cash to pay for much of anything. So the disaster brews and the president, like Nero, fiddles and speaks in the cadences and slang of a macho movie hero. It would be so sad if lives — American, British and Iraqi — weren’t being lost everyday.
   3. Bob Herbert in The New York Times gets at the lie that is the Bush education policy.