US Intel Official: North Korea is Bluffing from Newsweek
"Despite all the recent huffing and puffing from Pyongyang, U.S. officials say they’ve seen little physical evidence that North Korea might actually be preparing to go to war."
Hell in the Islamic Republic (Roger Cohen) from the New York Times
"An important book, “Death to the Dictator!”, written under the pseudonym of Afsaneh Moqadam. The book, published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, plunged me back into Tehran in the harrowing days after June 12, 2009. It recounts a fairly typical story: A young man named Mohsen Abbaspour (not his real name), who moves from apolitical apathy to action in the weeks before the vote, is outraged by the outcome and joins massive street protests, before being grabbed by goons and “disappeared” into an unspeakable labyrinth of violence. The intensity of the account put me in mind of Bernard Fall’s “Hell in a Very Small Place.”"
China Won't Rule the Skies (Editorial) from The Diplomat
China won't rule the skies anytime soon, says Loren Thompson. It's a long way from having its own version of the F-22 fighter to challenge the US."
MVP of Obama's Security Team: Hillary 'The Hammer' Clinton (Editorial) from the Christian Science Monitor
"One of my friends is a classic Republican: He’s a businessman from a Southern “red state,” and a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam who earned a Silver Star for heroism at Hué. To put it mildly, he’s never been a fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet he recently called to acknowledge a conversion like Paul’s on the road to Damascus. He now kind of likes her."
This is a very interesting assessment of Clinton's tenure at State.
Gulf Oil Spill Blame Game (Joe Klein) from Time Magazine
"The more predictable Republican response to an event so inconvenient to the party's ideology was to blame Barack Obama. Sarah Palin accused Obama of being in bed with Big Oil — an accusation that, like oil itself, was rich and crude, given her own and her party's close ties to the petroleum industry."
Drilling for Certainty (David Brooks) from the New York Times
"The real issue has to do with risk assessment. It has to do with the bloody crossroads where complex technical systems meet human psychology."
Oil Spill Alters Views on Environmental Protection from Gallup
"Between March and today, with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill intervening, Americans' preferences for prioritizing between environmental protection and energy production have shifted from a somewhat pro-energy stance to an even stronger pro-environment stance."
Why Conservatives Should Oppose Arizona's Immigration Law (former Sen. Connie Mack) from the Washington Post
"This law clearly challenges citizens' freedoms, and it does so by putting some Americans at risk of losing their freedoms while others stand little or no chance of being affected."
BP Oil Leak Spills Into Florida Senate Race from The Hill
"Florida Gov. Charlie Crist wants to call state lawmakers into a special session in order to pass a constitutional amendment permanently banning drilling off Florida’s coast — a position supported by two of his Senate rivals but not Republican candidate Marco Rubio."
This could help Crist put some distance between himself and Rubio. I don't see Rubio gaining anything by opposing this ban.
Obama: Day of "Partnership" Passed from Politico
"Noting that sometimes conservative activists portray him with a Hitler mustache, Obama seemed to put to rest any notion that there could be broad-based bipartisan cooperation — something he promised to try to bring to Washington during his 2008 campaign"
Rand Paul's Latest Enemies? Other Libertarians (Andrew Romano) from Newsweek
"You'd think, amid all the hubbub, that Paul could count on the support at least one set of allies: his fellow libertarians. But even they are turning against the Kentuckian. What did he do wrong now?"
The New Fundamentalists (Bill Schneider) from the National Journal
"The tea party movement is not just a reaction to the sins of Obama. It's also a reaction to the failures of George W. Bush and his "Big Government" Republicanism. When "moderation" fails, fundamentalism rushes in."
Kill the 17th Amendment (Marc Ambinder) from the Atlantic
"Here is something I don't think Republican strategists in Washington...many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. "
More tea party nutiness. If true, this leaves open the real possibility that the results from the November election might actually do a lot more harm to the GOP than most pundits are predicting now. Even now, most post-primary senate race polls all are seeing upward movement for the Democrats.
A Real Senate Race iN Kentucky from Daily Kos
"Paul's favorabilities are down among Independents -- from 62-16 to 58-20, and among Democrats -- from 37-45 to 29-57."
POLITICAL BOOK NUGGET!!
"Book review of Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009) from Monthly Review
"Kim Phillips-Fein has provided us with a very fine account of how we got where we are—in a stranglehold of big business conservatism that has by no means been broken by the liberal electoral victory of 2008. She has not only absorbed a considerable amount of secondary literature, but has also combed through the archives, combining her impressive research and insights with a well-paced narrative populated with a variety of interesting personalities..."
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