News Nuggets 175

The newest edition for our "What the #@$% is THAT?!" file.  This is from an art exhibition in Venice.  From Reuters

As Night Falls, Tehran Still Ablaze from the Global Post

"A level of rioting unseen since the 1979 revolution continued into the night; rioting also reported in southern cities of Zahedan and Shiraz."

Thanks to Obama, US No Longer a Convincing 'Great Satan' from Die Zeit [of Germany in English]

"Last week during his epochal speech in Cairo, he set a new tone for American policy in the Middle East. ... Many Muslims were genuinely enthralled. That was also to do with Obama's attitude. The usual history lesson delivered from the pedestal of Western infallibility was cancelled."

Mullahs ‘Rigged Poll’ in Fear of Barack Obama Effect from the Times [of London]

A fascinating take on what happened in Iran just before the election.

"Tehran drew a different lesson from Hezbollah’s defeat, according to Lawrence Korb, of the Center for American Progress, who was a foreign policy adviser to Obama during his election campaign. “The mullahs were afraid that if they went 2-0 down, the United States and Europe would have taken a tougher line with them on the nuclear issue,” he said."

Feeding the Beast: The Implications of Ahmadinejad's Win from Newsweek

"So what does this beastly development mean for the region and American policy?"

Obama's Return to 'Old Europe' (Jim Hoagland) from the Washington Post

"The transformation of U.S.-French relations -- begun in George W. Bush's last months and accelerated under Obama -- now underpins a larger challenge in the U.S.-European strategic partnership. The redefinition of what it means to be a U.S. ally two decades after the end of the Cold War figures prominently on Obama's task list."

Cuba Waits for Obama as Ailing Fidel Castro Fades From Scene from the US News and World Report

A very interesting long-form nugget written in March.

""We're waiting to see if Obama can make some changes. We expect a lot. We have to believe in something." These days, such expectations hang heavily over this worn, seaside capital."

Obama on Healthcare Reform: Mr. Flexible from the Christian Science Monitor

"His idea of a public insurance plan to compete with private ones is meeting resistance. Will the alternative of health insurance 'cooperatives' suffice?"

Southern Baptist Church's Obama Dilemma from the Washington Post

"An African-American pastor has put his fellow Southern Baptists in the awkward position of having to decide whether to congratulate President Obama, a mainline Christian and liberal Democrat with whom they disagree on just about every major social and political issue."

Republicans Rethinking the Reagan Mystique from the New York Times

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!

"Some Republicans have begun reassessing whether Mr. Reagan today affords the best example as they seek a path back to power. The economic crisis, which Mr. Obama last fall declared a “final verdict” on the anti-government philosophy that George W. Bush and Mr. Reagan shared, has made Reaganism less politically marketable than at any time in a generation."

'Right-Wing' Rhetoric on Hold After Museum Shooting from the Washington Independent

"The conservative criticism of DHS, which had been waning, became much quieter. ... Coming only ten days after the murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller and only nine days after the murder of Pvt. William Long, a military recruiter in Arkansas, the Holocaust Museum shooting has propped open a door on the complicated politics of extremism."

Sarah Palin Mystifies and Annoys Republican Establishment from the US News and World Report

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is mystifying and annoying members of the Republican establishment by sending what they consider to be mixed messages about courting conservative groups."

The Obama Haters' Silent Enablers (Frank Rich) from the New York Times

"WHEN a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network’s surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, “amped up” Americans who are “taking the extra step and getting the gun out,” maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most."

POLICY/ECONOMICS NUGGET!!

Too Poor To Make the News (Barbara Ehrenreich) from the New York Times

"The outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility — the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times. This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own. From their point of view “the economy,” as a shared condition, is a fiction."

ECONOMICS NUGGET!!

The Capitalist Manifesto (Fareed Zakaria) from Newsweek

There is a lot of interesting assessments in this long-form article concerning where the global economy is -- too many to capture in a single snippet.

"Every expert has a critique of specific policies, but over time we might see that faced with the decision to underreact or overreact, most governments chose the latter. That choice might produce new problems in due course—a topic for another essay—but it appears to have averted a systemic breakdown."