...America a long way down the road to banana-republic status

via nytimes.com | OP-ED COLUMNIST | The President Surrenders | By PAUL KRUGMAN

"A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. (...)" continue...

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Betty Ford 1918-2011

Betty Ford dies at 93; former first lady | The wife of President Gerald R. Ford drew on her own experience with addiction in founding famed rehabilitation clinic.
via latimes.com

BETTY FORD 1918-2011 | Betty Ford, Former First Lady, Dies at 93
via nytimes.com

Betty Ford dies at 93: Former first lady founded iconic clinic
via washingtonpost.com

Betty Ford ist tot | Die Frau ohne Tabus | Von Marc Pitzke, New York
via spiegel.de

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Mysteries of a Nazi Photo Album

Mysteries of a Nazi Photo Album. By David W. Dunlap

via lens.blogs.nytimes.com

Lens has shared this story with Der Spiegel, the leading German newsweekly, and Spiegel Online, its Web edition. We hope readers of Spiegel’s EinesTages site (Once Upon a Time) can help solve a 70-year-old mystery: who created this photo album of the Eastern Front?

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Elizabeth Taylor, Dies at 79

Ms. Taylor was often seen as a caricature of herself, “full of no-nonsense shamelessness,” as Margo Jefferson wrote in The New York Times in 1998, adding, “Whether it’s about how she ages or what she wears, she has, bless her heart, made the principles of good and bad taste equally meaningless.”

Elizabeth Taylor, Lifelong Screen Star, Dies at 79 · By MEL GUSSOW
Published: March 23, 2011

via nytimes.com