I was not going to mourn the end of Hostess, but then I remembered the ecstasy of touring the Wonder Bread Factory in Paterson, NJ, when I attended the Barnert Temple Nursery School in 1962-63. Life never smelled as good as that factory, and at the end they gave us each a freshly baked mini-loaf.

Can be found in a single blog post from The Economist magazine. Read this and you will understand the situation we are in, and what we are facing. Read it, and you will understand why we are facing ten-plus years of decisions about who will be made worse off, and in what way, due to the financial and fiscal frat party of the past 30 years. It wasn't just the public sector. It was businesses and individual households. It was beyond my understanding, and contrary to my values.

The popular thing to do, what most people wanted to do, was to satisfy the "I want for me now!" impulse. This was done by selling the future. The deal was cut in New York, and the fees were large. And now it is the future. The executive/financial class may promise three percent GDP growth if you keep their taxes low and their pay sky high, and the political/union class may promise seven percent returns on public employee pension funds to put off sacrificing the rest of us for the deals they did with themselves. Not true.

LEW FIDLER: Yesterday, I expressed my disappointment in my friend and former colleague Simcha Felder’s decision to caucus with Republicans and asked for an explanation. Through a spokesman, Simcha issued a statement which on its face lacks any substantive credibility.

Senator John McCain’s repeated attacks on President Obama over the years shows the senator for what he is, a bitter frustrated old man whose legacy as a self proclaimed “maverick” is a thin veneer over a partisan right wing fanatic.

Seddio lashes out at Felder.

Does anyone recall Vito Lopez ever saying on solitary syllable in criticism of the Amigos? Suspicions at the time were that he was actually advising them.  

When the election adrenalin wore off, I collapsed in exhaustion.

These are breath taking times as great civilizations rise again and hopes of world union and world peace begin to move in that direction.

In the wake of the Frankenstorm disaster, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for New York to be built smarter, given the likelihood of rising seas and more powerful storms. But that is not the way rebuilding generally occurs. What you have, rather, is a rush to get shattered lives back to normal as quickly as possible, which usually means putting back a somewhat cheaper and worse-built version of what was there before. Witness the reaction, to politicians from elsewhere, to the assertion in 2005 that that parts of New Orleans should be rebuilt elsewhere, instead of below sea level, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or, for those with less power and fewer resources, the consequence is often no rebuilding at all. As one sees in that city’s Lower 9th Ward.

Some combination of these two is what is likely to occur on the Rockaways and in Staten Island, more likely due to a series of non-decisions than to any decisions. Any suggestion of possible change in the current emotional post-disaster political climate is likely to provide an opportunity for a cheap political shot, and be about as popular as holding the New York City Marathon as planned. And by the time feelings have cooled, any available resources are likely to have been already committed. If people come back later with demands for more resources to rebuild a second time, this time differently, other needs elsewhere will almost certainly take priority. But what if it actually were possible to come with alternatives quickly? I spent 15 minutes thinking about it, just slightly less than those who might want to make (or even allow) changes would have, and here is what I came up with.

Everyone agrees immigration reform should be on President Obama’s second term agenda.  Such reform if done correctly could super charge the economy, strengthen the military and add new diverse ideas to the American mindset.

Not for nothing, but while the President's 69% share of the Jewish vote in the exit polling may look pretty overwhelming, this represent a whopping 9% drop from the 2008 exit polling which had him at 78% (later analysis had him at 74%, but it is best to compare apples to apples, and these apples have slightly less honey on them).

If the President had suffered a 9% drop among all white voters, it would have been a Romney landslide.