News Nuggets 167

A Tigertail Butterfly in Mexico -- from Reuters

The Cairo Speech from the Editorial Board of the New York Times

This article SO CAPTURES my own view of Obama -- in so many areas.

"When President Bush spoke in the months and years after Sept. 11, 2001, we often — chillingly — felt as if we didn’t recognize the United States. His vision was of a country racked with fear and bent on vengeance, one that imposed invidious choices on the world and on itself. When we listened to President Obama speak in Cairo on Thursday, we recognized the United States."

Obama's Speech in Cairo: A Bold Vision from the Editorial Board of the Guardian [of London]

"Given the mine-strewn nature of the terrain on which he was venturing, Mr Obama displayed a mastery of touch. And he achieved his aims without side-stepping key issues or keeping to the safety of rhetorical high ground."

Obama Sets Terms for Debates to Come from the Editorial Board of the Australian

"BARACK Obama is the orator of our age. The US President's speech in Cairo on Thursday echoed Lincoln by making a moral case for political change. It also resembled the work of Woodrow Wilson, in its optimistic assumption that the world can be re-made by men and women of good will. ... The tempered tone, the reasoned rhetoric, the appeal to peace were so powerfully expressed that it will be all but impossible for Middle Eastern leaders not to accept his invitation to join the search for a permanent peace."

Bibi, Wake Up (Editorial) from YNet News [of Israel in English]

"Obama’s speech in Cairo presents Netanyahu with unequivocal dilemma."l

Obama Changes the Middle East (Gary Kamiya) from Salon

"It was the most important speech of Barack Obama's young presidency. And he delivered big-time."

Barack Obama Tries to Rebuild a Fractured Relationship (Julian Borger) from the Guardian [of London]

"Obama's speech was a beautifully honed tool chipping away at a solid wall of Islamic cynicism and disillusion."

Obama Takes Aim at Osama from Politico

"White House officials say that the tide may be turning on the world’s most wanted man. “For the first time, they’re beginning to lose the propaganda war,” said a top aide traveling with Obama during his six-day mission to Europe and the Middle East. "

Barack Obama: Humble Realist? (Editorial) from the Nation

"One thing the speech clearly did mark was a dramatic shift in tone, and not merely because Obama didn't mention the word "terrorism" and projected respect and humility rather than the sneering arrogance (laced with ignorance and condescension) that prevailed under George W. Bush."

Just Like Bush: Same Rhetoric, Why More Effective? (Editorial) from the New Republic

"Obama is not Bush. He speaks without a foreign invasion on his resume, and with a reputation for honesty and decency."

Rewriting the Rules in Dealing with the Muslim World (Terence Samuel) from the American Prospect

"After each of these [major speeches], there was a sense Obama had taken us somewhere we hadn't been before -- that he had explained the unexplainable and that he had given voice to some essential truth. Yesterday was no different. The general sense is that Obama has rewritten the rules of engaging with the Muslim world."

Obama's Speech: Significant, Eloquent - and Perhaps Just the Beginning (William Pfaff) from Truthdig.org

"President Barack Obama’s eloquent Cairo speech was distinguished by the quality of his previous major speeches, that of speaking as an adult to adults. He promised to say what he thought, and did so on all of the topics he addressed. He was not a comfortable guest for the Egyptian government, although a courteous and honest one."

Fellow Conservatives, Admit It: Obama Gave a Great Speech (David Horowitz) from Salon

"It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."  And that was really the core of Obama's speech. It was a defense of America's founding and America's mission. We are a tolerant nation and a peaceful nation, Obama told 1.5 billion Muslims, and we will accept and embrace you if you reject the violent and hateful among you and walk a peaceful and tolerant path."

Jim Jones' Team: Managing the Foreign Policy Process in the Obama Administration (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post

"Despite all the talk about big egos in the Obama group, Gates says that at the top level it is "not a team of rivals, but a team.""

Intel Firestorm: Republicans Reveal Briefing Info from the Hill

"Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects."

This kind of shit drives me CRAZY!  If the Dems had done this under Bush, they either would have been arrested (and excoriated in the conservative media) or, at the very least, booted from attending future closed sessions.  Bet the house -- nothing will happen to the Republicans for this extraordinary breech, one done for purely partisan purposes.

SATIRE NUGGET!

The First Couple Just Might Make America Cool Again, for the First Time (Mark Morford) from the San Francisco Chronicle

"This has got to stop, Mr. President.  I mean, what the hell? Just what do you think you're doing to our famously low, blithely unsophisticated American cultural standard? What are you trying to do to our values and our tastes and our happy, tacky, mass-produced numbskull Wal-Mart aesthetic? "

NATURE NUGGET!

Panthers(!) from the New Yorker

"The Palisades panther(s) first appeared on the morning of March 6th, in Snedens Landing, a hamlet on the Hudson, just over the New Jersey line."