News Nuggets 780

A road through the middle of the Atlas mountains in Morocco.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT POLITICAL BOOK REVIEW NUGGET!!
Pat Buchanan Declares Defeat (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"In his new book, Pat Buchanan says the nation is hopelessly split -- and his team has lost the fight. ... Buchanan sometimes tries to argue that his lament in this book is about culture and values, but make no mistake: It’s thoroughly about race. ... “Suicide of a Superpower” confirms something I’ve felt for a while: It’s Buchanan and his Tea Party friends who’ve given up on the idea of America. ... He doesn’t care to contest his ideas in a multiracial democracy; it seems as though he’d rather see his party and his country die than go brown; turn gray, but never gay."
A VERY interesting and revealing review of Pat Buchanan's latest book!  Read  the whole review!

Libya: Fall of Sirte: Gaddafi Captured? from the Guardian [of the UK]
"The Libyan immigration minister, Ali Errishi, has just told al-Jazeera that he has spoken to fighters who have told him Gaddafi has been captured, along with his spokesman Moussa Ibrahim. But still we await independent confirmation."
Libyan NTC and related sources are notoriously inaccurate.  We shall see.  Libyan TV has repeated the story.

More 'Stuxnet' Cyberattacks Feared from United Press International
"European researchers had provided him with examples of a malware dubbed "Duqu," which contains sections that are nearly identical to Stuxnet and appears to have been written by the same authors. ... The attackers, he said, "are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility.""

The New Interventionism (Fred Kaplan) from Slate
"How Obama is changing the way the United States wages war. The future face of American warfare is very likely on display now in Africa. ... What this suggests is a return to the “advise and assist” missions of the Cold War, with international terrorists (or, on occasion, particularly hideous thugs) replacing international Communism as the predominant threat."

Why China’s Leaders Fear Looking in the 1911 Mirror (David Pilling) from the Financial Times [of the UK]
"Having come to power by virtue of two revolutions, the republican one of 1911 and the Communist one of 1949, the party now wants to consign the idea of overthrowing governments to the dustbin of history."

A Long, Steep Drop for Americans' Standard of Living from the Christian Science Monitor
"Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago."
An interesting portrait that pulls together a lot of different data sets.

Older Americans' Challenge: No Time to Recover from Recession from ABC's Today Show
"Americans 55 and older have less time to catch up on retirement savings and recover from housing market losses before they stop working, the Government Accountability Office report found. In addition, although older workers haven’t been as hard-hit by unemployment, government data show that when they do lose a job, they have a much tougher time finding a new one."

Global Jobs Crisis Takes Biggest Toll On Struggling Youth (Lila Shapiro) from the Huffington Post
"The burden is heaviest for the young in Europe, the U.S., and other advanced economies, where the youth unemployment rate saw the biggest overall jump between 2008-2010. Adding to the concern: While other regions of the world saw youth unemployment rates peak in 2009, these countries were among the few, globally, that continued to see the unemployment rate creep up. This course does not appear to be changing, at least not any time soon."

Obama Still Flush with Cash from Financial Sector Despite Frosty Relations from the Washington Post
"Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data."

Officials Must 'Pay Heed' to Global Occupy Movement (Editorial) from the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun [of Japan in English] 
"With the disparity between rich and poor apparently intractable and with young people feeling less and less hope for the future, serious action was necessary. ... It is clear that the theme shared around the planet is the need to revise the obvious disparity of how wealth is distributed."

New Poll Shows Large Majority Agree with Occupy Wall Street from Daily Kos
"Overall, this comes out to a high level of support for Occupy Wall Street, with 59 percent of Americans agreeing with the protests and 31 percent disagreeing. This is the latest in a long line of polls showing shown either a plurality or a majority of Americans viewing the movement favorably..."

Yup: Blue Collar Whites Do Support Occupy Wall Street (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"In two new national polls, the cross tabs show that majorities of blue collar whites do, in fact, back the protests."

Why Liberals Need Occupy Wall Street, and Vice-Versa (David Greenberg) from the New Republic
"The main and perhaps obvious point is that the protesters are doing something very right and very important. They have gotten the nation to focus on the costs and injustice of inequality, on the need for financial regulation, on the problem of job creation, and on other urgent concerns that ... Washington has largely avoided addressing."

NPR Host is Occupy DC Spokeswoman from the Daily Caller
"National Public Radio host Lisa Simeone appears to be breaking the taxpayer-subsidized network’s ethics rules by acting as a spokeswoman for Occupy D.C. group “October 2011,” which is currently “occupying” Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C."
Lisa's program "Soundprint" is not broadcast in Pittsburgh -- but she routinely shows up as a guest-host on All Things Considered and Morning Edition and special events.  Given that the source on this is the Caller [a right-wing site] the spin here is probably misleading.  Personally I have no problem with this.  Being a public employee doesn't mean you sacrifice your right to free speech.

The Essence of Obama-era Conservatism (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are both haunted by the ghosts of pre-Obama conservatism."

Obama Wraps It Up (VIDEO) from Politico
"President Obama's last scheduled stop on the three-day bus tour took him to a fire station in Chesterfield, Virginia."
The film clip of Obama's 20-minute talk reminds me completely why I voted for him in '08!  A very compelling, straight talk.  He wrapped it up with this statement: "A fair shot FOR everybody.  A fair share FROM everybody!"  THAT is a winning message for 2012!!

GERMAN HISTORY BOOK NUGGET!!
The Leadership Secrets of Bismarck: A Review of Bismarck: A Life from Foreign Affairs
"China is hardly the first great power to make authoritarian development look attractive. As Jonathan Steinberg’s new biography of Bismarck shows, Wilhelmine Germany did it with ease. But can even successful nondemocratic political systems thrive and evolve peacefully over the long run? The answer depends on whether authoritarian elites can tolerate sharing power."