TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!
1. Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran? (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post"This U.S. policy — signaling that Israel is acting on its own — might open a breach like the one in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned an Israeli-European attack on the Suez Canal. Complicating matters is the 2012 presidential campaign, which has Republicans
candidates clamoring for stronger U.S. support of Israel."
2. Obama’s Faster, Smarter Afghan Exit from Afghanistan (Leslie H. Gelb) from the Daily Beast
"Kudos for Obama and his team! They’ve announced a quick end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan—a surprise decision of strategic skill and political courage."
3. The World has Changed, Mr. Romney (Fareed Zakaria) from the Washington Post
"I’d like to call attention to a line you have used repeatedly: “This is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century.” I leave it to the president to describe what he believes, but as the author of the book “The Post-American World,” let me make sure you know what exactly you are attacking. “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else,” I note at the very outset. I am optimistic about America, convinced that it can prosper in this new world and remain the most powerful country on the planet. But I argue that the age of American unipolarity — which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union — has ended."
4. Out of Afghanistan: Incredible Stories of the Boys who Walked to Europe from the Guardian [of the UK]
"The country is so dangerous it's no wonder so many leave, travelling alone across the Middle East in search of a new life."
5. Russian Protests – Echoes of US Civil Rights Movement (Leon Aron) from the Christian Science Monitor
"To see the December protests in Russia as primarily a political wave is to miss a more fundamental leaven at work in Russian society: a moral awakening akin to the American civil rights movement. An early test is Saturday, when a massive protest in Moscow is planned."
6. Davos and Disconnected Elites (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"As the “best and brightest” from the developing world plug into the global grid, they inevitably unplug from their local political, business and cultural networks. It’s a subtler version of what used to be called the “brain drain.” The entrepreneurs keep their businesses at home, where they are making their money, but they and their children join the global elite in a web of Four Seasons hotels and Ivy League tuition bills."
7. How Conservatives Lost their Moral Compass (Neal Gabler) from Politico
"There is a reason we have never previously had a hatemonger like Rush Limbaugh enjoy popularity for as long as he has. The reason was shame. ... Surely when a group can publicly cheer a man’s death for not having health insurance, the sense of shame is gone. It faded not only because liberals had subverted it by casting it as a conservative scheme to corset society, but because conservatives managed to delegitimize it."
8. Romney and Gingrich Set the GOP on a Path Toward Self-Destruction (John Batchelor) from the Daily Beast
"A GOP professional laments the “slime and dirt and muck attached not only to the two candidates but also to the party itself.”"
9. The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich (Gail Sheehy) from Vanity Fair [from 1995 but posted last week]
"From the cauldron of his childhood—the father who abandoned him, the manic-depressive mother who loved him too much, the stepfather whose anger shaped the family—Newt Gingrich emerged with a heroic need that became his mission. Some samples: "I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.” ... In the spring of 1977, she was in Washington to attend a census-bureau workshop when Gingrich took her out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. He met her back at her modest hotel room. “We had oral sex,” she says. “He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, T never slept with her.’” Indeed, before Gingrich left that evening, she says, he threatened her: “Tf you ever tell anybody about this, I’ll say you’re lying.’”"
10. Voter Frustration Makes for Tumultuous GOP Primary (Ann Gerhart) from the Washington Post
"For now, they are angry and anxious and uncertain, sick of a bunch of elites in Washington who can’t fix their lives and suspicious of all promises, and their 2.6 million votes reflect the deep cracks in a party of people who can’t seem to get along. This has been the most turbulent Republican presidential race in a generation."
Now -- back to our regular nuggets for Sunday, February 5, 2012
UP-FRONT POLITICAL JUNKIES NUGGET!!
The 2016 Election, Already Upon Us (David Leonhardt) from the New York Times
"DISTANT as it may now seem, with the Republican race dominating the news and President Obama sitting in the White House, the Democrats are not all that far from the tumult of another nominating contest themselves."
Russia: Sort of, but Not Really (Thomas Friedman) from the New York Times
"The sheer brazenness of such protests and the anger at Prime Minister Putin among the urban middle classes here for treating them like idiots by just announcing that he and President Dmitri Mevedev were going to switch jobs were unthinkable a year ago. The fact that the youths who put up the banner were apparently not jailed also bespeaks how much Putin understands that he is on very thin ice and can’t afford to create any “martyrs” that would enrage the antigovernment protesters, who gathered again in Moscow on Saturday. But what will Putin do next?"
The GOP’s ‘Europe’ is a Land of Make-Believe (Martin Klingst) from the Washington Post
"... when Romney, Gingrich and Santorum warn about “socialist Europe,” they sound as though they are talking about the Soviet empire, which vanished long ago. ... My problem as a European living in the United States is that it is not Joe the Plumber who is bashing Europe but three longtime politicians who want to be president — people who should know better. "
What Is a Conservative? (various pundits) from Time Magazine
"Mitt Romney’s advance toward the Republican presidential nomination has provoked a lively conversation about what it means to be a conservative in America today. TIME asked a number of right-leaning thinkers to answer one of three questions to help define both their ideology and their challenges for the future"
Planned Parenthood Gets Image Boost on Komen Win from Politico
WAS this a win? Lots of chatter in the blogosphere that Komen still has not actually agreed to RESTORE PP's funding.
"... when Komen announced last week it planned to pull grants for breast cancer screenings, they got an unexpected response: the Internet exploded with thousands of angry supporters and others who gave the group $3 million."
Ari Fleischer Secretly Involved In Komen Strategy On Planned Parenthood from Think Progress
"Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood."
NOW it all makes perfect sense! There was a familiar feel to this whole Komen scandal, especially in the basic way that it disturbed the fabric of the political universe. Now it's clear -- the familiarity came from the sheer scale of the ham-handed incompetence of the people involved -- and, lo and behold, what do we find at the center? A former Bush official.
Why Dems Think They Have A ‘Sword Of Damocles’ In Tax Fight from Talking Points Memo
"The defense cuts — along with an additional $600 billion in reductions to domestic spending — were part of the “sequestration” that was meant to encourage the Deficit Super Committee to strike a deal on cutting by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. It failed. And Republicans, after initially signing off on the cuts, now say they’re unacceptable. Not so fast, say Dems."
Cancer Charity's Effort to Privately Defund Planned Parenthood Backfires from The Hill
"The push to privately defund Planned Parenthood didn’t just fail last week — it backfired into a potentially serious setback for the group’s most ardent critics."
Judge: Obama Eligible to be Georgia Candidate from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"In a 10-page order, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed one challenge that contended Obama has a computer-generated Hawaiian birth certificate, a fraudulent Social Security number and invalid U.S. identification papers. He also turned back another that claimed the president is ineligible to be a candidate because his father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of Obama's birth."
The GOP Presidential Race So Far from the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times
"With three primaries and a caucus behind us, we've learned more about the candidates as campaigners than as potential presidents, and not enough about their differences on the issues."
Coulter, Romneycare, And The GOP Crackup (Timothy Noah) from the New Republic
"I thought it would be fun to offer some sort of prize--say, a bronze replica of the 1939 Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact--to the first Fox News personality to endorse Romney's absurd claim that Romneycare (good) was entirely different from Obamacare (bad). I never dreamed that Ann Coulter would beat me to the punch."
Newt Gingrich Plots His Comeback (Lloyd Grove) from the Daily Beast
"He's been buried by an avalanche of attack ads, and outspent 5-1. That's when Speaker Gingrich is at his most dangerous. In the bunker with 2012's comeback kid."
BRITISH TV-BOOK NUGGET!!
Remains of the Days: Three Books Explore the Reality Behind the World of ‘Downton Abbey’ from the New York Times
"The merchant class, which is to say the publishing industry, is mining the popularity of “Downton Abbey” with the release and re-release of two books that inspired the show, and the inevitable companion volume to the TV series (inevitably titled “The World of Downton Abbey”)."
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