Finally, A Taliban Crackdown from the Daily Beast
"What’s driving Pakistan’s sudden surge in arrests of top Taliban leaders? Bruce Riedel on why this may be a sign of meaningful progress in the war on terror."
A Guide to Recent Militant Arrests and Deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Confused about the recent slew of arrests and/or deaths of al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Here's a roundup of who, what, where, and when."
For Iraqi Voters, a Dizzying Democracy (Editorial) from New York Times
"As that grandfather in Abu Nuwas Park explained to me, this messy process reflects the decline of sectarianism, a necessary and hopeful step in Iraq’s political maturation."
Obama Gets His Mojo Back (Peter Beinart) from the Daily Beast
"His whole career has been based on the idea of transcending partisanship. But lately, by confronting Republicans rather than courting them, Obama has Democrats fired up."
Obama Defies Pessimists as Rising Economy Converges With Stocks from the Bloomberg News Service
"The political consensus may be that President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy has been weak. The judgment of money in all its forms has been overwhelmingly positive, and that may be the more lasting appraisal."
When 'Reconciliation' Equals Leadership (Richard Cohen) from the Washington Post
"The polls do suggest that President Obama's plan -- and it is now his plan -- is out of favor with the public. This is what now passes for a compelling argument against the bill. It is, instead, almost entirely beside the point. In our poll-driven culture it might seem strange for a president to attempt something that's somewhat unpopular but merely right."
Pelosi Says House Has the Votes for Healthcare if Vote were Held Today from The Hill
"Pelosi says House has votes for healthcare if vote were held today"
Health Care Close After Dem, White House Meet from the Huffington Post
"House Democratic leaders on Thursday worked to rally their rank-and-file members around last-minute agreements on insurance taxes and prescription drug coverage that could move President Barack Obama's overhaul of the nation's health care system a step closer to reality. Although some issues remained unresolved – including a divisive battle over restricting taxpayer funding of abortion – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said: "We have enough to move forward.""
Birthers, Health Care Hecklers and the Rise of Right-Wing Rage (Rick Perlstein) from the Washington Post
Perlstein -- our pundit-of-the-day for this interesting historical comment!
"The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests."
You Have Everything to Fear, Included Fear Itself (Editorial) from the Seattle Times
"We've seen this movie many times. So there is little that is surprising about the Republican National Committee fundraising document recently reported by Politico, the one that offers strategies to get donors to part with their money. Donors can, it says, be persuaded to give by appealing to their egos, by offering them tchotchkes, or by promising them access. And some, the small donors, the five- and 10-dollar Janes and Joes, can be persuaded if you play to their fears. The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it down as a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel."
Win Dixie: The South is Ripe for Democratic Gains This November from the New Republic
Good headline. I'm skeptical. For Democrats, most deep south states behave like New Jersey usually does for Republicans -- tempts them into spending millions only to lose in November.
"It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we're in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances."
Tea Parties Stir Evangelicals' Fears from Politico
I WONDERED when the lights were going to start to turn on in the heads of the religious right. I have noticed for some time that, despite daily stories that enrage evangelicals, the right-wing political class is paying NO attention to them.
"While health care legislation has brought social and economic conservatives together to fight government funding of abortion, some social conservative leaders have begun to express concern that tea party leaders don’t care about their issues, while others object to the personal vitriol against President Barack Obama, whose personal conduct many conservative Christians applaud"
Why Don't Honest Journalists Take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? (Howard Raines) from the Washington Post
"Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform.""
RACE RELATIONS NUGGET!!
The New Jim Crow from the Nation
A fascinating and provocative look at disenfranchisement and drug policy! An oversimplified analysis in my view but worth reading nonetheless.
"Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s--the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war--nearly 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city. In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time--a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of color are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for."
BOOK NUGGET!!
A Body on the Gears: On Mario Savio from the Nation
Mario Savio -- one of my favorite lefties from the sixties. He spear-headed the free speech movement at Berkeley.
"Savio was a revolutionary and civil libertarian, logician and poet, scientific observer and self-aware partisan--and in his heyday a virtuosic extemporizer who seemed not so much to perform all these identities as to incarnate them. He was, in short, an icon of possibility for his generation of student activists; and so it's a great historical riddle, tinged with pathos, why he was, in Berkeley in 1964, the lightning rod of his time and, almost immediately afterward, a man who couldn't conduct the energy he'd summoned."
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