News Nuggets 960

DAYLEE PICTURE:  Goldfish in a plastic bag in California.  From Smithsonian Magazine.

TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!

1.  Bin Laden's Failure: How Islamists and the U.S. Ended His War With the West (Michael Hirsh) from the Atlantic
"In halting the global war on terror and engaging with Islamist political parties, Obama has helped create a world that the terrorist leader would hardly recognize."

2.  Afghanistan Speech a Good Night’s Work for Obama (Michael Gerson) from the Washington Post
"There is no serious prospect of negotiations with Taliban leaders if they believe that America can simply be outwaited. So Obama was informing the Taliban that this approach would be met by American drones and special operations forces. Obama was also putting the Pakistanis on notice that the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will not be precipitous, and that American interests in the region will be defended."

3.  Wasting Our Minds (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard. Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too."

4.  Krugman Wishes He Were Wrong Amid EU Austerity Backlash from Bloomberg News Service
"Europe’s shifting emphasis from enforcing austerity to seeking economic growth marks a hollow victory for Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. “I wish I’d been wrong for the sake of the world,” Krugman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Carol Massar. “You can see that there has been a definite shift in opinion.”"

5.  The War Against Youth (Stephen Marche) from Esquire Magazine
"The recession didn't gut the prospects of American young people. The Baby Boomers took care of that."

6.  Why Is the Conservative Brain More Fearful? The Alternate Reality Right-Wingers Inhabit Is Terrifying (Joshua Holland) from Alternet 
"Walk a mile in your ideological counterparts' shoes...if you dare."

7.  Becoming Obama (David Maranis) from Vanity Fair
When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white? Drawing on conversations with both Cook and the president, David Maraniss, in an adaptation from his new Obama biography, has the untold story of the couple’s time together."

8.  Seat of Power: A Review of ‘The Passage of Power,’ Robert Caro’s New L.B.J. Book (Bill CLinton) from the New York Times
"Even when we parted company over the Vietnam War, I never hated L.B.J. the way many young people of my generation came to. I couldn't. What he did to advance civil rights and equal opportunity was too important. I remain grateful to him. L.B.J. got to me, and after all these years, he still does. With this fascinating and meticulous account of how and why he did it, Robert Caro has once again done America a great service."

9.  Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry (Eliza Griswold) from the Sunday New York Times Magazine
"A new literary network revives an old Pashtun tradition."

10.  How Samuel L. Jackson Became His Own Genre (Pat Jordan) from the Sunday New York Times Magazine
"What it takes to be the highest-grossing actor of all time."

Now, for the regular news nuggets for Sunday, May 6th.

UP-FRONT MUST-SEE OBAMA CAMPAIGN NUGGET!!
President Obama "We Will Finish What We Started" Campaign Rally in Columbus, Ohio (VIDEO) from C-Span
Deeply moving kick-off for the '12 campaign by Obama!! He has lost NOTHING since the '08 campaign -- and the energy, and enthusiasm of the crowd in Columbus is remarkable!  The contrast with ANY Romney event could not be more stark.
"President Obama launches his official campaign for re-election today with stops in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia. The two states are expected to be swing states in the 2012 election."

The U.S. Cannot Confront China on Every Move it Disagrees With (Zachary Karabell) from the Daily Beast
Republicans criticizing Obama for not being tougher on China's human-rights abuses are delusional about where America stands in today's global power dynamic, says Zachary Karabell."

Five Myths About America’s Decline (Ian Bremmer) from the Washington Post 
"...the United States is still the world’s only superpower, and so it will remain for the foreseeable future. Its economy is more than twice the size of second-place China’s. Only America can project military power in every region of the globe: It has a military presence in more than
three-quarters of the world’s countries and spends more each year on defense than the next 17 nations combined."

An Economic Boom Ahead? (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"With so much talk these days of America’s decline, it may sound strange to ponder the prospects for an American economic boom a decade or so from now. But that’s the thrust of two new studies, which have me thinking like Dr. Pangloss, Voltaire’s caricature of optimism."

Nanotechnology Shockwaves (Diane Ackerman) from the New York Times 
"Recent marvels of the laboratory can alter daily life; some are wickedly dangerous."

Heartland Justice (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"WE tend to think of people who play pivotal roles in the advancement of social justice — and who pay steep prices for it — as passionate advocates with intense connections to their cause. We imagine them as crusaders. Marsha Ternus wasn’t. She just tried to be fair. The first woman ever to preside over the Iowa Supreme Court, she was asked three years ago to rule on a challenge to an Iowa statute banning same-sex marriage. "

Stop Pandering, Romney: The Religious Right May be Anti-gay, but GOP Voters Aren’t (David Lampo) form the Washington Post
"The resignation of Richard Grenell, the recently appointed and openly gay foreign policy spokesman for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, was as sudden as it was shocking. It was also yet another disturbing sign that the Romney campaign is still in pander mode when it comes to the anti-gay right."

Romney’s Useless Allies (Daniel Denvir) from Salon
"Once supposed to be crucial 2012 assets, swing-state governors like Tom Corbett are looking more like liabilities."
I'm actually skeptical of parts of this story line. If any of these states have contested results on election day, these GOP governors could make an enormous difference.

Mitt Romney’s Bigotry Needs No Spokesman (Michael Kinsley) from Bloomberg News Service
"Besides being offensive, however, this episode is remarkably inept. Grenell apparently was completely open about his sexuality. Why did Romney appoint him in the first place if he was going to hang the guy out to dry as soon as there was any criticism? (And there never was much.) If you’re going to be a bigot, at least be smart about it."

Republicans: Wired for Homophobia (Chris Mooney) from Salon
"New research sheds light on why conservatives are so eager to embrace anti-gay pseudoscience."

In Scott Walker Recall Race, Organized Labor’s Pick Falls Short (Matt Taylor) from the Daily Beast
"Labor helped trigger the recall, but their pick to replace Walker is falling flat, writes Matt Taylor."

Robert Caro Writes — and Writes and Writes — about LBJ in ‘The Passage of Power’ from the Washington Post
"Caro’s meticulous process delivers powerful results. A onetime newspaper reporter, he abandoned that deadline-oriented mind-set long ago. In a world of snap judgments and ephemeral facts, he makes exceptional use of the commodity that modern journalists have the least of: time."

Caro: Obama has 'Made Great Strides' (Alexandra Jaffe) from the National Journal
Robert Caro, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of an acclaimed multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, had compliments for President Obama on Sunday. "I feel Obama was faced with some real problems," he said on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. "We hardly remember, anymore, the extent of the financial crisis. I happen to think he's made great strides.""

AIRSHIP HISTORY NUGGET!!
The Dead Dream of the Dirigible (Megan Garber) from the Atlantic
"It's easy to forget now, but the airship was once the Flying Machine of the Future."