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Saturday, May 29, 2010

News Nuggets 362

The psychedelic frogfish. From the National Geographic News


UP-FRONT WHALE NUGGET!!

Australia Launches Legal Action Over Japan Whaling from Reuters via Scientific American

"Australia's government on Friday announced plans for legal action against Japan to stop Southern Ocean scientific whaling, but said it did not expect retaliation from its second-biggest trading partner."

WOW! Great news!!


Realpolitik Returns from the Editorial Board of the Economist [of London]

"Whereas the Bush document started by stressing America’s “unprecedented and unequalled” strength and influence, Mr Obama’s acknowledges the limits to America’s power. “No one nation—no matter how powerful—can meet global challenges alone,” it says."


Barack Obama Sets Out Security Strategy Based on Diplomacy Instead of War (Ewen MccAskill) from the Guardian [of the UK]

"Report described as clean break from Bush years addresses fresh challenges including rise of India and China."


Obama Showed He Grasps Depths of Global Challenge (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post

"There's another set of questions to be asked: Did Obama signal today that he grasps the magnitude of leadership that will be required to solve the deeper, underlying problem? Did he seize on the spill to push for a fundamental shift in our thinking, and will he continue to do so? The answer to those questions has to be Yes."


Bill Clinton Has Evolved Into Obama's Mr. Fix-It (Editorial) from the Washington Post

"Clinton has become the "Michael Clayton" of the Obama White House, a roving, always on-call fixer who lends his political skills to help Obama and the Democrats in tough situations."


GOP Makes Nonsense Argument About 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (Gabriel Winant) from Salon

"While rolling back the measure does have broad popular support, it's hardly the stuff of a political game-changer -- or really of much political significance at all, outside the activist core that supports it and the activist core that opposes it. In other words -- shockingly! -- conservatives are talking a bunch of bullshit."


The GOP Looks Left and to the West (Jacob Weisberg) from Newsweek

"One way to understand the divisions in the Republican Party is as a clash of regional philosophies. Northeastern conservatism is moderate, accepts the modern welfare state, and dislikes mixing religion with politics. Western conservatism is hawkish, hates government, and embraces individual freedom. Southern conservatism is populist, draws on evangelical Christianity, and often plays upon racial resentments. The big drama of the GOP over the past several decades has been the Eastern view giving way to the Southern one."


Tea Party Could Cost GOP Nine Senate Races This Fall (Steve Kornacki) from Salon

"Uprisings by the GOP base could produce weak Republican candidates in some of this year's biggest races."

This is precisely what I was suggesting yesterday!


Some more on the subject is here:

Move Right and Lose: Evidence from the 2000-2008 US Senate Elections (Alan Abramowitz) from the Democratic Strategist

"It has become almost an article of faith in Republican circles that the best way for the GOP to regain the ground it has lost in the last two elections is to nominate candidates who take consistently conservative positions on the issues facing the country. ... But while the move right and win theory is extremely popular among Republican activists, it directly challenges the widely accepted view of American voting behavior among election scholars."


The Palin Brand (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times

"Between surreal appearances from Wasilla as the caged pundit of Fox News and quick, splashy landings in the lower 48 states, Palin has shown she still has the attention span of a hummingbird on a nectar jag. She does not do basic homework. Never has. The result is a string of endorsements for people whose lives are living contradictions of their stated philosophies."


PA-Sen: Joe Sestak Leapfrogs Over Pat Toomey from Daily Kos

"That's quite the primary victory bounce, +8 points. Where did the numbers shift?"

Woo woo!!


Connecticut Contest Gets Easier for Richard Blumenthal (Richard Adams) from the Guardian [of the UK]

"The chances of Richard Blumenthal winning in Connecticut increase after Republican Vietnam veteran rival withdraws."


The Tea Party vs. Common Sense (Clarence Page) from the Chicago Tribune

"How quickly the bloom falls off the rose. What did Brown do that was so wrong? He voted for bills backed by President Barack Obama to stimulate jobs and overhaul financial regulation. For conservative hard-liners, voting for anything backed by Obama would be enough."


Controversial Tea Party Pick Remakes Race to Face Reid (Steve Friess) from Politics Daily

"In Nevada, where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is up for re-election, there's a peculiar twist: The national Tea Party Express' endorsement of former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle in the GOP contest has moved her from also-ran to front-runner in six short weeks. But it's also ticked off in-state tea partiers who resent having outsiders meddling with their election and fear Angle can't beat Reid. "


Has the Tea Party Done Anything for the GOP? (Marc Ambinder) from the Atlantic

"The Tea Party movement has helped to make the touch of the party in Washington toxic, even when the party has recruited otherwise excellent ideological and uncorrectable candidates whose only sin is that they were identified as viable by the party and encouraged to run. Even the hint of GOP backing has sent the GOP into paroxysms in places like Washington State. "


TRICERATOPS NUGGET!!

New Dinosaur Had Record-Sized Horns from Discovery News

"A newly discovered five-ton dinosaur has the largest horns ever found on a dinosaur, with a set that were 4-feet-long each, according to paleontologists who unearthed the hefty herbivore in Mexico. The name of the new species, Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna, translates in part to "great horned horny face."


LITERARY CLASSIC NUGGET!!

Who Was Charles Dickens? (Robert Gottlieb) from the New York Review of Books

"There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there’s no such thing as a boring biography of them—you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. I’ve never encountered a life of the Brontës, of Dr. Johnson, of Byron that didn’t grip me. Another such character is Charles Dickens."


BOOK NUGGET!!

The Gadfly: A Review of Nomad (Nicholas Kristof) from the New York Times

"If there were a “Ms. Globalization” title, it might well go to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali woman who wrote the best-­selling memoir “Infidel.” She has managed to outrage more people — in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her — in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today."

Boy -- it sounds great!!


HUMOR NUGGET!!

Recent Winners of the Edward Bulwer-Lytton Prize from Writer's Digest via NPR's Car Talk

"As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the sound chamber he would never hear the end of it."

Tom and Ray were going over some of these this morning -- they were hilarious!


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