News Nuggets 804

The Owyhee River in Idaho.  From National Geographic.

Iran Blast an Accident, or an Assassination? (Mark Phillips) from CBS News
"When the top of the Iranian Mullah hierarchy comes out for a funeral, you know somebody important died. So when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei made a highly visible appearance at the funeral of Hassan Moqaddam and sixteen other revolutionary guards, it was clear something big had happened."
WHO CALLED IT!?  I knew when the initial story broke about the blast in Iran over the weekend that something was up.

Before We Bomb Iran, Let’s Have a Serious Conversation (John Johns) from the New York Times
"It is common for candidates in presidential primaries to use bellicose language to prove their toughness. ... But toughness and wisdom are not the same thing. The difference between the two was on display in the discussion of Iran that opened Saturday night’s Republican foreign policy debate, as it has been throughout the Republican campaign. "

Contain and Constrain (Roger Cohen) from the New York Times
"An Iranian society that today is a combustible mix of depression, division and dysfunction — overseen by a Brezhnevian supreme leader at loggerheads with his erratic president — would unite in fury. This, in the cautionary words of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, could have “unintended consequences.”"

National Security Insiders: Don't Launch Iran Strike (Sara Sorcher) from National Journal
"“The likelihood that bombing would be successful is very small,” one Insider said. “The damage—especially politically—from such a strike would be catastrophic.”"

Russians are Leaving the Country in Droves from the Los Angeles Times
"Some chafe at life under Vladimir Putin's rule, but for many others, economic limitations are the prime motivator. Experts say the numbers have reached demographically dangerous levels."
All this talk of Russia being one of the emerging BRICS economies has masked the real truth: Russia is declining as an economic great power.  The others (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) are all growing economies.  Not so in Russia.

Why I Quit the Mainstream Media (Natasha Lennard) from Salon
"Journalism must break the chains of objectivity and report truth -- and the Occupy movement led me to do just that."

Getting Kicked Out Of Zuccotti Park Is Probably Good For Occupy Wall Street (Matthew Yglesias) from Think Progress
"OWS was either going to end with the cops clearing the park, or else it was going to end with the protestors losing interest. It would be totally human and understandable for the protestors to end up fading away as the weather gets colder, but that would be demoralizing to everyone who’s come to look at the various Occupations as a key signal of popular discontent with rampant inequality."
I completely agree with Yglesias here.  OWS organizers had shown little progress in formulating "what's next".  Now they will have to -- and they can do it now with some fire in their bellies.  More detail on how the ousting from the Park went this morning is HERE.

Forget the Deflated Tents. Occupy Wall Street Has Already Accomplished an Important Objective (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"The protests have helped inspire the most serious and sustained national conversation about inequality we’ve seen in a long time, and refocused our politics on economic fairness and elite lack of accountability, in ways that are already reshaping assumptions about the upcoming elections and could perhaps even contain the seeds of longer-term change."

Which Side Are They On? (Peter Moskos) from Slate
"How cops really feel about the Occupy Wall Street protests."

Barack Obama's Supreme Court Health Care Gamble (Glenn Thrush) from Politico
"President Barack Obama is so confident of the constitutionality of his health care law — and so happy to cast Mitt Romney as his human shield against the law’s critics — that he didn’t try to stop the Supreme Court from putting its review of the law on a fast track that will result in a ruling in the middle of the 2012 campaign."

What's Behind Obama's Uptick in Job Approval -- and Will It Stick? (Sean Trende) from Real Clear Politics
"After plumbing new depths in August, President Obama's standing has improved steadily. He has now improved from a net minus-10.2 percent approval rating in late August to minus-4.7 percent. That shift is important, as it moves his general election chances from "almost sure-fire loser" territory to "in the hunt" territory."

It's Recall Time for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (Andy Kroll) from Mother Jones Magazine
"Tomorrow, a grassroots effort to recall the controversial governor kicks off. Can it succeed?"

Gabby Giffords ABC Interview (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"I watched it online this morning, and it really is a remarkable story. One measure of how remarkable is that it stands on its own without all of the tricks TV often uses to milk a story for drama and emotion."
A remarkable story of Giffords' recovery so far.  A rare piece of good long TV journalism from ABC.

Republicans Aren’t Closing the Deal with Voters (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
"Voters are paying attention to what the GOP field is saying — not just the applause-line attacks on Obama but what the candidates propose to do about the economy. The more they talk, the more discouraged the electorate seems to become. This should be the Republicans’ election to lose. They seem well on their way."

Similar view from the other side of the political spectrum:
Republicans Lose Way Misreading Bush History (Ramesh Ponnuru) from the Bloomberg News Service
"For decades, conservatives have been trying to pull the Republican Party rightward and root out first liberals and then moderates. But that impulse grew stronger in the aftermath of the political defeats in the late years of George W. Bush’s administration, because conservatives believed that ideological impurity, especially on spending, had caused those losses. [...] But there’s little evidence that big government was the reason, or even an important reason, for Republican defeats at the end of the Bush years."

Gingrich Takes the Lead from Public Policy Polling
"Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP's national polling.  He's at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain and 18% for Mitt Romney.  The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans."

Michael Tomasky on Newt Gingrich's Momentary Explosion of GOP Support from the Daily Beast
"First it was Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, and now Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls. Michael Tomasky on the GOP’s endless quest for a candidate more right-wing than Mitt."

The Herman Cain Mercy Rule is Now in Effect (Daniel W. Drezner) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"There's a mercy rule in Little League, and I'm applying it here -- unless and until Herman Cain surges back in the polls again, or manages to muster something approaching cogency in his foreign policy statements, there's no point in blogging about him anymore.  I can only pick on an ignoramus so many times before it feels sadistic."

Why Herman Cain Is Unfit to Lead (Crenshaw & MacKinnon) from the New York Times
"The fact that what several women have said might register in a presidential campaign — as if women’s sexual mistreatment at work might really matter — could be a potential game changer, even though the prevailing dynamics of sex, race and power that made sexual harassment so difficult to denounce in the first place are amply on display."