News Nuggets 1009

DAYLEE PICTURE: A Japanese maple in Oregon.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT POLLING NUGGET!!
Bain Attack Takes Toll on Romney, But Dems Worry About Money Race (Rick Klein) from ABC News
"...over the last two months, even as national polls have shown little movement in the race, something different has been happening in the battleground states. It's as if there's a parallel campaign in the states that are likely to determine the presidency, one with its own rhythms and realities. In those states, President Obama has been pulling ahead."

UP-FRONT EDITORIAL NUGGET!!
The WSJ rips Romney a new one this morning!
Romney's Tax Confusion from the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal 
"If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class. He is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts's ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat."
Michael Tomasky analyses the significance of this blast HERE with Andrew Sullivan commenting HERE.

William Kristol goes further:
Dukakis, Kerry ... Romney? (William Kristol) from the Weekly Standard 
"Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign's monomaniacal belief that it's about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it's only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion..."

Low Capital Gains Tax Rate Rewards the Rich with No Discernible Benefit to the Larger Economy (Meteor Blades) from Daily Kos
"The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities has posted 10 charts and associated text on the impact of the capital gains tax. These provide an excellent guide for anyone encountering work colleagues or radio hosts who offer stomach-churning arguments in favor of lower capital gains rates."

The Money-Empathy Gap (Lisa Miller) from New York Magazine
"New research suggests that more money makes people act less human. Or at least less humane."

The Amazing Number of People Who Know Nothing About the Health-Care Ruling (Chris Cillizza) from the Washington Post
"Most people — especially those who are unaffiliated or independent voters — tend to be relatively low information voters. That is, they don’t have all the facts on an issue — and they don’t really care to find them out.  ... Democrats and the Obama campaign have been amazingly reluctant to speak up for the president’s biggest accomplishment and tell voters what’s in it."
I'm sorry -- but WTF is going on with Obama and the Dems and their messaging!?  I'm blogging today from a national fastfood place where CNN runs in the background -- and just in the time I've been sitting here I've already heard two ads blasting Obamacare as a tax increase, etc., etc.

And then there's this:
Too Quiet, Again, on Health Care from the Editorial Board of the New York Times
"Nearly two dozen Pennsylvania residents, interviewed recently by Abby Goodnough of The Times, said they were opposed to President Obama’s health care reform law. Though almost all of them would benefit from it, they expressed fears about a loss of control over their health care that is nowhere in the law."

Roberts Switched Views to Uphold Health Care Law (Jan Crawford) from CBS News
"Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy—believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law—led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold."

Nancy Pelosi’s Tireless Obamacare Push Vindicated by Supreme Court Ruling (Eleanor Clift) from the Daily Beast
"The wily House minority leader put everything on the line to pass the president’s health-care bill, remained confident it would survive legal challenge—and was proved right when the Supreme Court largely upheld it."

Chief Justice John Roberts, Destroyer of Conservative Worlds (Hunter) from Daily Kos
"What follows is a maudlin little exercise involving assertions that anyone to the left of Scalia and Thomas is liberal, that judicial activism is not related to upholding versus overturning laws but instead is a nebulous, spur-of-the-moment exercise in whatever Marc Thiessen says it is..."

Professors Without Borders from Prospect Magazine
How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education:  "'It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,' Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said."

Can the Democrats Catch Up in the Super-PAC Game? from the New York Times 
A long-read piece well worth checking out!
"Burton and his best friend, Sean Sweeney, are knockaround political operatives from working-class backgrounds who had never spent a day in the genteel stratum of fund-raising before they started their super PAC 16 months ago. Their chief qualification for the job, beyond the fact that no one else wanted it, was their shared appreciation for the devastating work that well-financed outside groups can do."

Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I'm Gay." (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
"Last week, Entertainment Weekly ran a story on an emerging trend: gay people in public life who come out in a much more restrained and matter-of-fact way than in the past. In many ways, it's a great
development: we're evolved enough not to be gob-smacked when we find out someone's gay. But it does matter nonetheless, it seems to me, that this is on the record."

Rachel Maddow's Quiet War from Rolling Stone Magazine
"On what drives the MSNBC star, and how she's attempted to move her show beyond partisan shouting:..."

Hillary’s Moment, Finally (Margaret Carlson) from Bloomberg News Service 
"Clinton has been coy before; in 2004, she began preparing for the campaign she denied would ever occur. Is she being coy again when she says she wants to kick back and smell the roses (and perhaps a grandchild, should one come along)? Many think so."

ANTIQUE MAP NUGGET!!
Rare Early America Map By Martin Waldseemueller Found In Germany (PHOTOS) from the Huffington Post
"Researchers in Germany have chanced upon a rare early 16th century map of America by the cartographer who named the continent. Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University said Tuesday that library staff had found a copy of the small map by Martin Waldseemueller wedged inside an unrelated 19th century book."

OLYMPICS NUGGET!!
The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start from the Smithsonian Magazine
"As London gets set to host the XXXth Olympiad, acclaimed sportswriter Frank Deford connects the modern Games to their unlikely origin—in rural England."