News Nuggets 773

A microscopic photo-image of a blade of grass.  From National Geographic.

Those Keystone Iranians (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"The puzzle is why the Iranians would undertake such a risky operation, and with such embarrassingly poor tradecraft. ... Here’s the answer offered by senior U.S. officials: The Iranians are stressed, at home and abroad, in ways that are leading them to engage in riskier behavior."

Was Khamenei Reckless – Or Set Up? (Meir Javedanfar) from The Diplomat
"Claims Iran was plotting to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador on US soil are extraordinary. Would Iran’s leadership really have OK’d such a plot?"
The author suggests that Iran might have been "set up" by the Saudis.  I have to confess that my thoughts went in this direction when I first heard about the plot.

Hey America, Iran still isn't threat No. 1 (Madison Schramm) from the Christian Science Monitor
"Even after the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on US soil, Iran is not the threat to the US that most Americans – and political leaders – think it is. The mythical Iranian Goliath is still largely a fallacy."

Europe’s Real Problem: a Lack of Growth (Fareed Zakaria) from the Washington Post
"Europe is facing its most severe challenge since 1945. If the Greek crisis morphs into an Italian crisis, the entire structure of post-World War II Europe could unravel. Finally, European leaders seem to recognize that their strategy of kicking the can down the road has not worked. The result will not be a dramatic solution — that is not how Europe works — but, more likely, a series of steps that together will be more comprehensive than anything done before. Still, they will not address Europe’s core problem: a lack of growth."

Tending a Small Patch of Capitalism in North Korea from the New York Times
"Those are some of the seeds of foreign enterprise in this remote northern port town that North Korean officials are seeking to nurture. Grappling with an economy that has stagnated from decades of communist central planning, North Korean leaders are slowly opening their isolated nation to foreign investment."

White-collar Workers Join Occupy Protests from United Press International
"White-collar workers, labor unions and spiritual leaders increasingly support the U.S. Occupy movement originally populated by twentysomethings, protesters say."

Wall Street Sees ‘No Exit’ From Woes from Bloomberg News Service
"An anemic global economy, the European sovereign debt crisis, U.S. unemployment stuck above 9 percent and swooning stock markets have sapped the euphoria that swept Wall Street in 2009 as it rebounded to record profits after the credit crisis."

How to Stop the Drop in Home Values (Martin Feldstein) from the New York Times
"The only real solution to plummeting home values is to permanently reduce the mortgage debt hanging over America."

Seven in 10 See Wall Street Negatively from ABC News via Yahoo News
"Seven in 10 Americans have an unfavorable impression of the financial institutions on Wall Street, a point of resonance with the protesters camped out in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere. But while that sentiment is broadly shared, its intensity rests heavily on political partisanship."

Pennsylvania's State Capital Seeks Bankruptcy Protection from CNBC
"In the face of a continuing political battle over whether the city should restructure its debts, Harrisburg's leaders finally capitulated and said the Chapter 9 filing is the only way out of the situation."

Domestic Violence Law Repealed in Topeka, Ks., to Save Money from McClatchy News Service
"The Topeka City Council on Tuesday voted to repeal the city’s law against misdemeanor domestic battery, the latest in a budget battle that has freed about 30 abuse suspects from charges. One of the offenders was even arrested and released twice since the brouhaha broke out Sept. 8."

Obama Raises More Than $70 Million In Third Quarter For 2012 Campaign, Democratic Party from the Associated Press via the Huffington Post
"President Barack Obama's campaign raised more than $70 million combined for his re-election and the Democratic party during the summer, an amount that gives him a clear advantage over his Republican rivals but is less than his initial fundraising effort. ... Campaign officials had said they would raise less because of canceled fundraisers during the summer's debt ceiling negotiations and a typical summertime lull in raising cash."

President Obama's Campaign Sets Sights on Mitt Romney from Politico
"Obama and his Chicago campaign brain trust seem to have come to their conclusion about Romney at the exact moment many Republicans realized he might really go all the way: At the end of Tuesday night’s GOP debate in New Hampshire, when Rick Perry and the rest of the field seemed to disappear into the enervating fog of inevitability that now surrounds the former Massachusetts governor."

The GOP Ties Itself Up in Knots (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"The solution to large-scale abuses of the financial system, a breakdown of the private sector, extreme economic inequality and the failure of companies and individuals to invest and create jobs is — well, to give even more money and power to very wealthy people, to disable government and to trust those who got us into the mess to get us out of it. That’s a brief summary of the news from the Republican Party this week."

Republicans' Overexposure Problem (Matt Latimer) from the Daily Beast
"With endless debates showing GOP candidates offering little substance, a bored-out-of their-minds electorate might look at President Obama and realize he’s not much worse, says Matt Latimer."

Does Anyone Have a Grip on the G.O.P.? (Matt Bai) from the New York Times Sunday Magazine
"As I made the rounds of Republican Washington in recent weeks and reflected on all this newfound optimism, though, I found myself recalling what Ken Mehlman, who managed George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, liked to say back then: “Hope is not a strategy.” It’s not clear which of those two things — hope or strategy — the Republican establishment is really embracing."

No Disrespect But… (David Frum) from the Frum Forum
"Who produces the first big analysis: Why the Tea Party could not produce a credible presidential candidate?"

A different take on a related topic:
America, It's a Whole 'Nother Country: Perry's Campaign So Far (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"... stepping back from all the particulars, it seems to me that a key reason for Perry's burn up on reentry into the atmosphere after his rapid ascent in August is that his key political handlers -- and presumably Perry himself -- simply didn't grasp that the dynamics of national politics are just very different from those of Texas. ... Most political operatives get that. But somehow Perry's didn't."
I think Marshall has hit on the nail that is putting Perry in his coffin.

And another take:
Rick Perry is Quickly Becoming an Afterthought (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"The lack of preparation, to say nothing of Perry’s limited agility, was staggering. The sole topic for the debate was the economy, and Perry was surely aware of how high the stakes were for his candidacy. And yet all he could say was that he’d soon have a plan?"

And another:
Tea Party is Losing the GOP Presidential Primary (Philip Klein) from the Washington Examiner
"The Tea Party movement was fueled by opposition to the Wall Street bailouts, President Obama's health care reform legislation and out-of-control spending in Washington. Yet the current favorite to win the Republican nomination has rejected the Tea Party line on all of these issues."