News Nuggets 1076

DAYLEE PICTURE: A baby Golden Bushtail Possum at the Wild Life Sydney Zoo in Australia.From Zooborns.

The World We’re Actually Living In (Thomas Friedman) from the New York Times
"Rather than really thinking afresh about the world, Romney has chosen instead to go with the same old G.O.P. bacon and eggs — that the Democrats are toothless wimps who won’t stand up to our foes or for our values ... Let’s look at the world we’re actually living in. It is a world that has become much more interdependent so that our friends failing (like Greece) can now harm us as much as our enemies threatening, and our rivals (like China) collapsing can hurt us as much as their rising."

Shift by Cuomo Clouds Future of Fracking from the New York Times
"Developments in Albany have created a sense that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is consigning gas drilling to oblivion."

George Zimmerman’s DNA Problem (Jonathan Capehart) from the Washington Post
"George Zimmerman is in a bloody mess. The killer of Trayvon Martin claims that he was in a life-and-death struggle with the unarmed teenager. But DNA tests are not exactly bearing that out."

California Bans Gay "Conversion" Therapy for Minors from Reuters
"Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill banning a controversial therapy that aims to reverse homosexuality in minors, his office announced on Sunday, making California the first state to ban a practice many say is psychologically damaging."
Prediction: this law will go all the way to the US supreme court.

Riverside County GOP Registration Surge Raises Questions of Fraud from the Los Angeles Times
"At least 133 residents of a state Senate district there have filed formal complaints with the state, saying they were added to GOP rolls without their knowledge."

North Carolina GOP Joins Florida In Firing RNC’s Romney-Tied Voter Registration Firm Accused Of Fraud from the National Memo
"The North Carolina Republican Party has fired the shady voter registration firm owned by Mitt Romney’s paid political consultant and longtime GOP operative, Nathan Sproul. The firing came as Democrats in the state were on the brink of denouncing the Republicans’ tie to the operative’s firm. The state GOP joins the Republican Party of Florida, which also fired Sproul’s company (who accounted for the party’s largest 2012 expenditure, some $1.3 million over the last two months) after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were turned over to the FL State Attorney in Palm Beach County on Monday for investigation. "

Rand Poll Tries Something Different, Gets Same Results: Obama Leading from the Los Angeles Times
"Rand's 2012 Presidential Election Poll involves a single panel of voters who are asked the same three questions over and over. ... The results have been more or less in line with those of other major polls"

Race is Tight, But Not in Key States, Poll Shows from the Washington Post
"On the eve of the first presidential debate, President Obama leads or is at parity with Mitt Romney on virtually every major issue and attribute in what remains a competitive general election, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. ... 52 percent of likely voters across swing states side with Obama and 41 percent with Romney in the new national poll, paralleling Obama’s advantages in recent Washington Post polls in Florida, Ohio and Virginia."

Why Romney is Losing (Brent Budowsky) from The Hill
"In the reverse-Rorschach, the candidate says things that convince widely disparate voters that he is really insulting and demeaning them, which is what happened with the Romney video. It was not a gaffe, because Romney believes the words he said. It was a catastrophic blunder, because voters learned in stark and widely repellent terms what Romney (and many Republicans) actually believe."

The Real Referendum (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"If the polls are any indication, the result of that referendum will be a clear reassertion of support for the safety net, and a clear rejection of politicians who want to return us to the Gilded Age. But here’s the question: Will that election result be honored?"

Can Romney Win Ohio? (Kathryn Jean Lopez) from National Review
Conservative operatives talking shop here on the prospects of a Romney victory in November.
"In terms of the broader election, I don’t want to be the one who contradicts Karl Rove’s view that Romney can win without Ohio, but he can’t. It isn’t just that historically no Republican has won the presidency without Ohio’s electoral votes that “proves” that point. It also is the fact that Ohio is a bell-weather state, so if a candidate cannot win Ohio — especially a candidate operating under a very-low-margin-of-error strategy — the likelihood that that candidate wins enough of the other five to nine toss-up states is not high."

Obama Within Reach of Electoral Votes for 2nd Term; Romney Could Still Win but Path Narrower from the Washington Post
"To overtake Obama, Romney would need to quickly gain the upper hand in nearly all of the nine states where he and Obama are competing the hardest."

If Obama Wins, What Changes for His Second Term? (Eleanor Clift) from the Daily Beast
"If the president prevails on Nov. 6, he’s said he hopes to break Washington’s stalemate. A look at the odds of an altered GOP, bipartisanship—and Erskine Bowles at Treasury."

David Brooks, Riling Up the Right (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast 
"Brooks may be getting more heat than usual these days after turning on Mitt Romney. He wrote a blistering column after the candidate’s “47 percent” fundraising video surfaced, and here’s the explanation: Brooks found out about it at 5 p.m., his deadline was at 7, and he was “so pissed off” that he just banged out the piece. And he hasn’t let up since." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/30/david-brooks-riling-up-the-right.html

The Right’s Pop-Culture Problem (Andrew O'Hehir) from Salon
"From Clint to "Won't Back Down" to "October Baby": A recent history of embarrassing right-wing culture moments."

MO-SEN: The Devastatingly Bad Candidacy of Todd Akin — and How it Could Cost Republicans the Senate from the Washington Post
"... to simply say that Akin is bad in some ways sells him short — or long — when it comes to the broader impact that his candidacy is having on his party’s hopes of re-taking the Senate majority in November."