A year after 9/11, finding a New York that persevered

I went to New York nine years ago to report on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and found a city that was not only moving forward, but one that had never stopped.

New York City is an extraordinary place. Generations of Americans and millions of foreign immigrants have been thrilled by its kinetic energy, its opportunities for exploration and reinvention.

But, being one of the city's upstate cousins, we don't always appreciate its greatness. Sometimes, we even resent the place. But 10 years ago, you could not feel anything but grief for the casualties and admiration for the resilience of the survivors.

The terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers did not bring New York to its knees. Even as the towers burned, and fell, hundreds of New Yorkers were rushing toward Ground Zero, to help in any way they could.

That very day, New York began to recover and rebuild. By a year later, what was most remarkable about

the city was the way everyone was going about their business, hustling and honking, showing up and showing off.

New York, with its gaping wound, was still New York.

I walked and rode all over downtown Manhattan that day, from the subways to the Staten Island ferry to the top of the Empire State Building.

Everywhere, people were moving with a purpose, getting to work, whether on Wall Street or simply on the street, where they sold paintings or souvenirs or hot dogs.

No one was frozen in fear. No one cringed when planes went over. But no one was forgetting, either.

A man getting on the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan turned pale and walked away after telling me he had been on the ferry that morning a year before and had seen the first plane go screaming overhead.

A New York firefighter and his wife and son stood at the rail of the ferry as we glided into Manhattan, talking about the gap in the skyline where the towers had stood.

Tourists atop the Empire State Building, once again the city's tallest skyscraper, gazed through coin-operated binoculars and peered down the scores of floors to the street, from which sounds rose up, the moan of a siren, the clamor of a jackhammer.

A man talked about his son, who had worked in one of the towers and had escaped but who had changed, growing distant, separating from his wife, staying holed up in his house outside the city.

The scars were there, but, except for the hole at Ground Zero, where the cleanup was proceeding, they were hard to spot. Few people were injured in the attacks. They either died or they survived uninjured and the dead had been buried months before.

New Yorkers were, and are, left to deal in their own time with difficult memories and painful loss.

Meanwhile, thousands of new arrivals flood into the city each year, adding to the energy that pulses in the streets and cannot be cut off, not even by an event as traumatic as Sept. 11.

Obama's Approval Rating Drops to Lowest Ever, According to Gallup

The poll released Sunday says 39 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance, while 54 percent disapprove.

The slide comes as Obama launches a political counteroffensive this week, while he’s weighed down by wilting support among some of his most ardent backers, a stunted economy and a daily bashing from the slew of Republicans campaigning for his job.

"We've still got a long way to go to get to where we need to be. We didn't get into this mess overnight, and it's going to take time to get out of it," the president told the U.S. over the weekend, all but pleading for people to stick with him.

A deeply unsettled political landscape, with voters in a fiercely anti-incumbent mood, is framing the 2012 presidential race 15 months before Americans decide whether to give Obama a second term or hand power to the Republicans. Trying to ride out what seems to be an unrelenting storm of economic anxiety, people in the United States increasingly are voicing disgust with most all of the men and women, Obama included, they sent to Washington to govern them.

The Democratic president will try to ease voter worries and sustain his resurrected fighting spirit when he sets off Monday on a bus tour of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. The trip is timed to dilute the buzz emanating from the Midwest after Republicans gathered in Iowa over the weekend for a first test of the party's White House candidates. The state holds the nation's first nominating test in the long road toward choosing Obama's opponent.

The three-day tracking poll was conducted from Aug. 11-13. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, according to Gallup.

Top tier emerges as GOP nomination race enters a defining phase

Reporting from Des Moines and Waterloo, Iowa— 

The new top tier of Republican presidential contenders has emerged to reset the 2012 race and raise new questions about exactly where an angry GOP base will take the party in next year's election.

The contest is now a three-way, multilayered match, withRick Perry and Michele Bachmann rising to challenge each other and national front-runner Mitt Romney, after the Texas governor formally declared his candidacy and the Minnesota congresswoman won the year's biggest organizing test.

Bachmann and Perry capitalized on their new prominence by appearing together for the first time at a party dinner in Waterloo, Iowa, late Sunday. The event opened a new and potentially defining phase of the nomination race: their head-to-head battle for the social and religious conservatives who dominate early-state caucuses and primaries.

Those tests, it seems increasingly clear, will be decided by an electorate fed up with Washington's dysfunction and deeply worried that the U.S. is in decline economically and as a world power.

Party activists in Iowa, in a warning to the establishment of both major parties, forced Tim Pawlenty to abruptly quit the race Sunday, by dealing him a weak third-place finish in a straw poll Saturday that boosted Bachmann to the head of the field in the leadoff caucus state.

Pawlenty said on ABC's "This Week" that voters were "looking for something different" from what he was offering as "a rational, established" two-term Minnesota governor with a "strong record of results, based on experience governing." Other Republicans said his low-key, guy-next-door image was no match for Bachmann's crowd-pleasing fire.

Bachmann said Republican voters were sending "a strong message to Washington." They "want us to get our house in order, financially speaking" and "they want someone who is going to fight for them," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Candidates from the party's establishment wing who had been expected to challenge for the nomination have been faltering in the early going. Besides Pawlenty, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have failed to take off, though the latter two remain in the race.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is among Bachmann's closest friends in Congress, noted that establishment candidates fared poorly in the straw ballot, drawing only about 1 in 5 votes cast by nearly 17,000 Iowans.

That reflected, in part, a decision by Romney and Huntsman not to compete aggressively at the event. Still, Bachmann and others, including the second-place finisher, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, are tapping a strong undercurrent of outrage over business as usual in Washington. And those taking part in the straw poll almost certainly represent the social and evangelical Christian conservatives who will be a majority at the caucuses next winter.

"The debt ceiling vote is part of the long continuum of Republicans not standing up to do the hard things necessary" to turn the country around, said King, one of the most conservative House members, criticizing GOP members who, unlike himself and Bachmann, agreed to raise the debt limit this month. Bachmann supporters "know she will do the hard things."

In Waterloo, both Perry and Bachmann played to outsider sentiment by defending "tea party"activists.

"The tea party has been the best antidote to the out-of-control spending we have seen," Bachmann said. "The tea party has done something else for us too. They pointed out the unbelievable level of debt we have."

Perry, making his first stop in Iowa, faulted those who say the tea party is "angry."

"We're indignant at the arrogance and audacity this administration is showing about the values that are important to the people of America. We're indignant about a government that borrows trillions of dollars because they don't have the courage to say no," he told Republicans gathered for a party fundraiser.

Neither candidate addressed the other; Bachmann arrived after Perry spoke, and when she concluded her speech Perry quickly left the building without shaking her hand.

At a campaign stop earlier Sunday in Manchester, N.H., Perry said that he was "one of those citizens in this country that is very frustrated with a federal government that does not listen."

The governor also took a swipe at Romney, telling New Hampshire's largest TV station that Texas' record of job growth under his leadership "doesn't need any propping up," an allusion to Massachusetts' low rate of job creation while Romney was governor.

That jab was an early illustration of Perry's intention to challenge Romney and Bachmann at the same time. If he succeeds, he could be well-positioned to build a substantial edge once the primaries begin, albeit at the risk of coming under a dual assault.

Perry's entry poses a difficult challenge for Romney, who has been skirting Iowa, where he lost to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008 despite an expensive, all-out effort.

The Texas governor will fill the void left by Pawlenty for "a serious candidate who could actually become president," said Tim Albrecht, communications director for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican.

Perry will likely have the financial resources that Pawlenty lacked, which finally drove him from the race, as well as the potential to build support among both evangelical Christians and fiscal conservatives.

Bachmann, alternately, could get the jump on the field if she can hold off Perry and transfer her success in Iowa to other early-voting states, especially South Carolina and Florida.

GOP strategist Mike Murphy, a former Romney aide, said the Massachusetts governor faced "a tough call" in Iowa. Murphy said Romney might be able to eke out a caucus win if conservatives divide their votes among Bachmann, Perry and others. Or the populist anger spurred by economic distress could spread from activist events into the presidential primaries, with unpredictable results.

Americans wonder where the misery will end

(Reuters) - America is on the fritz.

From Times Square to St. Petersburg, Florida, and Portland, Oregon, people are trying to understand how the downgrading of America's AAA credit rating by Standard and Poor's agency caused a stock market crash and torpedoed their economic prospects so badly again.

Out of work, unable to sell their homes and with bills piling up, many wonder how they will make ends meet.

"My fridge is on the fritz, my washing machine is on the fritz, my oven is on the fritz, my roof is on the fritz," said Maria Thuy of Jenkintown a suburb of Philadelphia, who lost her job as a director of a non-profit a few weeks ago and wonders how she will stop her house falling down around her.

Like many, Thuy looked on in horror as the stock market crashed on Monday and she fears for her retirement savings.

Barbara Barak, 32, has a job selling cosmetics in an Orlando, Florida mall. But working largely on commission and with business "nonexistent," she may resign.

"People are afraid to spend money," she said.

Since her husband lost his steel industry job at the start of the 2008 recession and took a job with an ice cream maker, their annual income has fallen by $50,000. She could care less about the stock market because she has no savings.

Her financial plan? "Just survive."

On Monday, panicked selling resulted in the S&P 500's worst day since December 2008, down more than 6 percent with every stock in the benchmark index ending in negative territory.

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT

Concern that Washington can't control rising debts or create enough jobs to spur growth contributed to the crash as did the loss of America's pristine AAA credit rating. Rising fears about Europe's debt woes made matters worse.

The S&P 500 is down 17.9 percent from its late April peak.

Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of the U.S. economy and economists fear steep stock declines will have a psychological impact on households, causing them to cut spending, and force businesses to defer hiring and spending.

Miami store clerk Antonio del Valle said he blamed former President George W. Bush for the current woes. "If he hadn't wasted all that money on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we wouldn't be discussing the debt ceiling," he said.

A decade of war in Afghanistan and eight years in Iraq have hurt the national budget and the 2008 financial crisis, with its resulting bailouts to stop a global financial collapse, led to less aid flowing from Washington to U.S. states.

As a result, working Americans were squeezed as U.S. states and municipalities hiked charges on everything from water to property taxes. Meanwhile, with inflation low and unemployment high, employers cut jobs, kept pay raises to a minimum and passed on soaring health insurance costs to employees.

Sammy Rubin, a 64-year-old electrical contractor in Birmingham, Alabama, blames politicians. A self-described conservative, he said he was angry at recent political fighting over the debt ceiling.

"If I had the power, I would freeze every congressman's bank account ... and make them go get a job, to see what it's like out here. And I wouldn't care if the whole government shut down, except for the military," he said.

The debt debate in Congress has strengthened the case of those who think the two-party system is failing. According to a CNN poll last week, 77 percent of Americans say that elected officials in Washington have behaved "like spoiled children" in the tug-of-war over raising the debt ceiling.

Josh Greenwood, a 24-year-old, who moved from California to New York and is working as a bartender, urged President Barack Obama to end partisan fighting in Washington.

"Obama needs to use his power and influence to get everyone on the same page," he said.

Susan Knight-Allen, a 55 year-old medical social worker, was getting her hair cut at a salon in the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

"Maybe this time it is not going to correct," she said of the stock market. She and her partner put their money into cash two years ago and now she wonders if she can help, perhaps by getting some backyard work done.

"We have the money and somebody could probably really use that job," she said.

"HANGING ON"

Rachelle Markley, 48, worked at her nearby store Second Glance Books. The second-hand book store is cozy but, she says, "I am hanging on by the skin of my teeth."

As well as a weak economy, her business is suffering as sales shift to e-books. After an employee left in January, she left the job unfilled, leaving her overworked and alone.

Antoine Sykes, a 37-year-old security officer and doorman on Chicago's west side said he fears for his financial security and plans to save what he can, but doesn't trust the banks. "I'm leaving it under my bed or in my grandmother's closet."

Matthew Tavares, 43, and his wife Julia, 31, want to sell their home in the beach community of Marshfield, south of Boston. On the market for a year already, they worry they will have to drop the price more to sell it and will have to use their savings to cover their eventual losses.

The country's latest financial woes have also compounded the concerns of 51-year-old Harry Crown, a commercial painter in St. Petersburg, Florida. He says he lives paycheck to paycheck and expects to get laid off soon due to lack of work.

"It's scary," said Crown, nursing a pitcher of Miller beer at a bar. "You can't get ahead. You live to survive."

Another customer, 65-year-old Roger Dyke agreed. "The country's in a mess," he said. "I don't know any way of fixing it."