News Nuggets 788

The remote village of Tongguan in Guizhou province in China.  From the Atlantic.

We Need Liberals Now! (Leslie Gelb) from the Daily Beast
"Whatever you may think of the left, it is liberals and moderates who are leading the way in debates about where we should go on national security policy. Agree or disagree, we have to pay attention."

What the Libya Intervention Achieved (Marc Lynch) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Libya will travel a long and winding road to full democracy. There will be difficult days ahead." But for all those concerns, the intervention in Libya should be recognized as a success and real accomplishment for the international community."

Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve (Simon Sebag Montefiore) from the New York Times
"...the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power. If a tyrant dies peacefully in bed in the full resplendence of his rule, his death is a theater of that power; if a tyrant is executed while crying for mercy in the dust, then that, too, is a reflection of the nature of a fallen regime and the reaction of an oppressed people."

Qaddafi's Son Is Making a Break for The Hague, Libya Says from the Atlantic
"Wanted by both the International Criminal Court and the Libyan government, Col. Muammar Qaddafi's only living son Saif al-Islam looks to be trying his hardest to surrender to the former before the latter catches him."

Libya’s Sexual Revolution (Ellen Knickmeyer) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"How the uprising turned young Libyan men from hopeless layabouts into marriageable heroes."

Do Graves of Dictators Really Become Shrines? (Uri Friedman) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"A tour of contentious burials from Qaddafi to Hitler."

Economic Growth in U.S., Though Still Modest, Speeds Up from the New York Times
"Economic growth in the United States picked up in the last quarter in the latest encouraging sign that the recovery, while painfully slow, had not stalled."

U.S. Grows at 2.5% Pace in Q3—Is the Recovery Back On Track? (Daniel Indiviglio) from the Atlantic
"The rise in GDP was the briskest in a year, but it won't be enough to create the jobs the nation needs."

Good News: Rise in GDP Growth Shows Long-Term Trends from the National Journal
"While 2.5 percent GDP growth hardly signals boom times, it seems to fly in the face of those major headwinds. But economists say it reflects a gradual climb out of recession rather than a rapid shift in the country’s fortune."

The Study that Shows Why Occupy Wall Street Struck a Nerve (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
"The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around."

Republicans Aim to Discredit OWS (Carter Eskew) from the Washington Post
"It is pretty clear why some Republicans would like to paint the OWSers with a demon’s broad brush. Most of the protestors I have read about are simply fed up with a status quo that doesn't trouble most Republicans. Their major complaint seems to be income inequality, and, at the risk of sounding overly partisan, Republican policy either exacerbates income transfer from the middle class and poor to the wealthy or ignores the problem altogether."

When Theocons Attack! Vatican Edition (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
"You knew the Church's effective endorsement of Occupy Wall Street would prompt a sudden outbreak of heterodoxy on the theocon right, didn't you? I mean any Catholic challenge to Randian orthodoxy in the GOP must be smacked down quickly, right? And, sure enough, the theocon blogosphere rises as one in dissent."

A College Degree Isn't What It Used To Be (GRAPH) (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
Sullivan gets a two-fer today!
"Michael Mandel reports that the "real wages for college graduates continue to plunge.""

A more personal and poignant view expressed here:
Boomer Parent’s Lament (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times
"What we talk about when we talk about tomorrow is the great fear that our kids will never find their way, now that opportunity is just another word for no. By we, I mean parents of a certain age. I fell into one of these conversations a few weeks ago with a mother of two grown children, both boys, both graduates from terrific universities, both shackled to college loans as heavy a ship’s anchor."

David Brooks’s Awful Advice to Obama (Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein) from the New Republic
"David Brooks has now offered some free campaign advice to President Obama: Drop the angry and divisive populist talk; link your reelection to the Congressional supercommittee to tackle the deficit; lower the ideological temperature. Political independents now recoil from big government, Brooks argues, so Obama should be blurring, not highlighting, the differences between the two parties over the role of government. Obama should say thanks, but no thanks for the advice."
I COMPLETELY agree.  I think for the first time as president, Obama is slightly ahead of the shifting center of public opinion.  Disgust with Congress, with Wall Street, and the no-action-on-jobs agenda of the GOP is rising -- and Obama's populist message is SPOT-ON.

White House Turns the Screws on Congress Over 9 percent Approval from The Hill
"A number of White House officials, sensing momentum on their side, blasted Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail, mocking recent measures and Congress's 9 percent approval rating."

Sad-Sack Congress-critters Hate Themselves Almost As Much As Everyone Else Hates Them (Jason Linkins) from the Huffington Post
"I've been taking the pulse of the public for a long time, and I can state pretty definitively that the reason why "91 percent of the country believes that the Congress is detached from reality" is because that's precisely the way Congress behaves."

Right Fight: Activists vs. House GOP from Politico
House Republicans have a grade for conservative interest groups that apply a litmus test to their every action: F. The outside groups have become more aggressive and punitive in recent years, and the criteria they use to rate Republicans’ purity are constantly shifting, sometimes within hours or days on the same topic. That’s inspired a fiery backlash from folks who suddenly find themselves branded apostates by organizations they once saw as allies."

HIGHER ED NUGGET!!
Live and Learn (Louis Menard) from the New Yorker
"Why we have college."

THIRD REICH NUGGET [of a sort]!!
Poland Reopens Long-dormant Investigation into Auschwitz and Other Concentration Camp Crimes from the Washington Post
"One aim of the new probe is to track down any living Nazi perpetrators, according to an announcement Thursday by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes."

VERTICAL FORESTS NUGGET!!
Towers of trees: Vertical Forests in the Sky are the Height of Green Living from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Towering over the city skyline, these are the world's first forest in the sky apartments, complete with a living space that is also your garden. With trees equal to one hectare of forest spanning 27 floors, these 365 and 260-foot emerald, twin towers will be home to an astonishing 730 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 ground plants."