News Nuggets 1104

DAYEE PICTURE: A thunderstorm over Garnet Lake in California.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT ELECTION NIGHT NUGGET!!
The World is Watching from the editors of Roads and Kingdoms
"According to a recent Gallup International poll of 26,000 people in 32 countries, 62 percent believe the US president has a major effect on their lives. Not coincidentally, 42 percent of those surveyed thought they should be able to vote in the American election. With Election Day upon us, we’ve reached out to 25 correspondents in 23 countries around the world and asked them to take the pulse of the global electorate, to visit bars and restaurants, street corners and coffeeshops, embassy election parties and friends’ living rooms to see what the rest of the world thinks about the prospects of the American presidency."
What a COOL thing to do!!

Obama Shows His Upper Hand on 'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations (Jonathan Cohn) from the New Republic
"President Obama sent Republicans a message on Friday: I won. Get over it. "

Next Trillion-Dollar Stimulus? It'll Be Immigration Reform (Jordan Weissmann) from National Journal
"Thanks to the electoral drubbing Republicans took from Latino voters on Tuesday, it's looking increasingly likely Congress might actually tackle comprehensive immigration reform some time this year. ... That's delightful news for any number of reasons. ... But almost as importantly, it might just give the U.S. economy a trillion-dollar shot in the arm"

FBI, CIA Face Questions About Petraeus Affair from the Associated Press via the Seattle Times
He was having an affair with Paula Broadwell AND ...
"... the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails sent by Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, to another woman."

On another scandal front:
BBC Scandal Blows Up as Director George Entwistle Resigns (Peter Jukes) from the Daily Beast
"The director-general of the BBC resigned amid a flurry of allegations around sex-abuse reporting. Peter Jukes on the growing fiasco—and how it could affect The New York Times."

Now, to some more election analysis.  
Today, more than any day in my memory, the sheer volume of interesting stories and analysis was extraordinary!!  What you see below represents what I was able to cull by going through just HALF of the normal sources I review on any given day.   Kick back and enjoy!! 

The Morning After for Obama, Start Now (Michael Tomasky) from the Newsweek 
"By tradition, he has until the next midterm elections, about 720 days away, to pass or at least launch the major initiatives that will define both his second four years and his legacy. What should they be?"

A Victory Over Suppression (Elizabeth Drew) from the New York Review of Books
"Despite their considerable efforts the Republicans were not able to buy or steal the election after all. Their defeat was of almost Biblical nature. The people, Democratic supporters of the president, whose votes they had plotted, schemed, and maneuvered—unto nearly the very last minute—to deny rose up and said they wouldn’t have it. ... Yet the fact that the Republicans’ voter suppression effort didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it didn’t cause a lot of damage ..."

Boehner Tells House G.O.P. to Fall in Line from the New York Times 
"On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party’s electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose."
I'll believe that when I see it.  Were Rush Limbau or Fox News execs on the call?

The Losing Habit (Niall Ferguson) from Newsweek 
"To break the losing habit, Republicans must resist the temptation to make excuses. We should dismiss the following thoughts from our minds: it was Hurricane Sandy’s fault; it was Chris Christie’s fault; the mainstream media gave Obama a pass on Benghazi; a Mormon can never be president; a private-equity guy can never be president; the Tea Party went too far; the Dems’ ground game was better in Ohio. Forget all that. These are just ways of denying the deeper causes of Mitt Romney’s defeat. "

How the GOP Got Stuck in the Past (David Frum) from Newsweek
"The finger-pointing misses a bigger truth: Republicans have become estranged from modern America. Why fixating on the old glory days is bogging down the party’s future."
Frum has an e-book analysis of why Romney lost.  I'm checking it out and recommending that you do the same.

Fantasyland: Denial Has Poisoned the GOP and Threatens the Rest of the Country Too (Frank Rich) from New York Magazine
"The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might."

Why Romney Never Saw It Coming (John Dickerson) from Slate
"He was the numbers guy. But in the end his numbers were all wrong."

Four More Years: Right-Wingers’ Nightmare Comes True (Mark Potok) from Salon
"From Trump's meltdown on Twitter to riots on the campus of Ole Miss, conservatives are coming apart at the seams."

Second-Guessing Mitt Romney: 7 Things He Should Have Done Differently from The Week
"Romney must now undergo the cruel ritual that befalls every losing presidential candidate — pundits lecturing you about where you went astray"

Angry White Men (Kevin Baker) from Harpers Magazine
"The simultaneous assertion that, waiting somewhere, like the lost king under the mountain, lies a white, old-timey America, just waiting for its moment to march. Sadly, this toxic mix of rage and delusion, and its concomitant sense of oppression, have become the defining political features of much of white America today, and particularly white men."
Note: If you have not checked out Harpers Magazine's website recently (I know I hadn't), they have substantially improved their main offerings (which are largely behind a subscription wall) and their blogs (which are open and which this item is an example), you may want to add it to your own personal political blogroll.

GOP Challenge: How to Transcend Aging White Base (Beth Reinhard) from National Journal
"Romney’s loss touched off a round of hand-wringing within the Republican Party—particularly about its demographics. But there is no consensus on the way forward."

Christian Conservatives Failed to Sway Voters on Issues from the New York Times
"Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them."

GOP Faces Steep Climb With Young Voters (Naureen Khan) from National Journal
"They turned out in surprising numbers and most stuck with Obama despite the economy."

Election Reinforces Divide Between Millennials, Baby Boomers (Ronald Brownstein) from National Journal
"Tuesday’s results make clear that two generations of Americans—one minority-heavy and the other largely white—have conflicting ideas about government’s role."

Gender Gap in 2012 Vote Is Largest in Gallup's History from Gallup 
"Obama wins women's vote; Romney has eight-point edge among men."

A Reformed Republican Party (George Will) from the Washington Post 
"With much work — the most painful sort: thinking — to be done, conservatives should squander no energy on recriminations. Romney ran a gallant campaign. Imitation is the sincerest form of politics, and Republicans should emulate Democrats’ tactics for locating and energizing their voters."

What Romney Lost (Garry Wills) from the New York Review of Books
A short, hilarious (and sad) must-read!!
"Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly?"

War Opens Inside GOP Over Immigration (Cameron Joseph) from The Hill 
"A war has opened within the GOP over whether to embrace immigration reform in the wake of President Obama’s thumping of Mitt Romney among Hispanic voters."

Rage Machine Vs. Turnout Machine (Rich Yeselson) from Washington Monthly 
"The historian Steven Fraser has called the modern Right’s proprietary and gendered authority over both the workplace and the family unit, “family capitalism.” Family capitalism is a shared value system of both the billionaires and the base."

The Right's Jennifer Rubin Problem: A Case Study in Info Disadvantage (Conor Friedersdorf) from the Atlantic
"Conservatives lobbied hard to install one of their own at the Washington Post. But it didn't work out as they imagined it would."

The GOP Polling Debacle from Politico
"...down to the final days of the national campaign, few anticipated the severe setbacks that Republicans experienced on Nov. 6.  The reason: Across the party’s campaigns, committees and super PACs, internal polling gave an overly optimistic read on the electorate."

Is the Conservative Media Killing Conservatives? (Paul Waldman) from Salon 
"When Republicans perform a full autopsy on the 2012 elections, they'll realize they only deluded themselves."

What Defeat Does to a Party (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"Panicked conservatives are changing their tune on immigration, but the damage to their base may be permanent."

Obama Pollster: GOP is Trapped in the 1980s, ‘Out of Gas’ (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"Romney cast Obama as a failure, based on the notion that the recovery was not proceeding as fast as other recoveries have. But this may not have resonated with voters because they understood that Obama had inherited an extraordinary situation — exactly the idea Romney tried so hard to get voters to forget."

ELECTION POST-MORTEM NUGGET-OF-THE-DAY!!
Campaign Sources: The Romney Campaign was a Consultant Con Job (Ben Howe) from RedState.com
"So what caused the breakdown and why didn’t it get fixed in time? Well according to sources who worked closely with the program, the blame is at the feet of consultants."
Boy, the knives were REALLY out in this piece!!

Karl Rove Under Fire from Politico
"Karl Rove is feeling the heat. The face of the historic $1 billion plan to unseat President Barack Obama and turn the Senate Republican, Rove now finds himself the leading scapegoat for its failure. And he’s scrambling to protect his status as a top GOP money man by convincing disappointed donors to his Crossroads groups that he did the best he could with their $300 million."

PRE-ELECTION ANALYSIS NUGGET!!
The Electoral Battle Between Corporationism and Empiricism (Jack Hitt) from Harpers Magazine
Nate Silver wasn't the only analyst to hit a home run for his pre-election projections!
"Obama’s data-driven approach may decide today’s race—and determine the future of the G.O.P."

HOLLYWOOD FILM NUGGET!!
Hollywood and Vietnam from Film Comment
"A look back at how filmmakers handled the Vietnam War, and how they worked with the military—or ignored their recommendations—to get them made:"

CLASSIC GAME NUGGET!!
Monopoly Is Theft (Christopher Ketcham) from Harpers Magazine
"The antimonopolist history of the world’s most popular board game."