News Nuggets 1215

DAYLEE PICTURE: The face of a Mandrill.  From the Daily Mail of the UK.

Obama’s Cultural Transformation Of America (Andrew Sullivan) fro The Dish 
"The 2012 election was a watershed for cultural change – and I suspect the sudden jump in support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization reflects a bandwagon effect in the wake of Obama’s overwhelming cultural victory. Obama has presided over the moment when white America came to accept that it no longer has the demographic clout to ignore non-white America..."

Poverty Plagues Obama’s America, Press Based in Booming Cities Shrugs (Stuart Stevens) from the Daily Beast
"A small, thriving minority now dominates the national conversation, even as more and more Americans struggle to get by, writes Stuart Stevens."

GOP Health Experts Agree: Don't Count on 'Obamacare' to Fail (Jill Lawrence) from the National Journal
"Is the Obama administration totally bungling implementation of its signature universal health care law? Is the law destined to collapse of its own weight? Or is that wishful conservative thinking? The
administration gets some surprising backup from top health officials from two Republican administrations."

The Jobs Crisis at Our Best Law Schools Is Much, Much Worse Than You Think (Jordan Weissmann) from the Atlantic
"The barren job market for law school grads has become a familiar reality by now. But here's something that tends to get lost in the story: The problem isn't just about no-name law schools churning out JD's nobody wants to hire. Even graduates at some of the country's top programs are struggling.  At this point, it seems, there are only a small handful of schools that could reasonably be called safe bets."

Thesis Defense (Katie Roiphe) from Slate
"No, it’s not a waste of time to get a literature Ph.D. It teaches you to commit to your ideas."

Obama’s Social Security Gambit (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast 
"Liberals are furious at the president over his Social Security proposal. Michael Tomasky says they have nothing to worry about—because Republicans won’t deal."

For Obama, Gun Control is More than Just a Feel-Good Gesture (Walter Shapiro) from Yahoo News
"Obama is gambling that investing time and effort in the cause is more than just a feel-good gesture. For if the NRA cannot be beaten on this limited front—even after the horrors at Sandy Hook Elementary School—then we will never limit gun violence."

The Wrong Fight (David Weigel) from Slate
"Why super-loud Republicans threatening a filibuster over the gun bill makes Democrats smile."

Americans Hate Congress Because Congress Doesn’t Care About Americans (Brad Brannon) from US News and World Report
"Is it any wonder that Americans dislike Congress so much? It shouldn't be a surprise because our representatives in Washington ignore public opinion. Gun control is the perfect example. ..."

Republicans: Stop Us Before We Gaffe Again! (Bill Barrow) from the New Republic
"The distinction between policy flaws and communication problems is at the crux of the GOP’s soul-searching as the Republican National Committee convenes this week in Los Angeles for the first time since the report’s release. And it’s a discussion that won’t end anytime soon as conservatives, moderates and pragmatists struggle for control of the GOP megaphone."

Mitch McConnell versus Mother Jones (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"The suggestion by the McConnell campaign that Mother Jones engaged in “Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters” is intriguing; it constitutes a suggestion that Mother Jones broke the law."

Bobby Jindal: Stupid, Party of One (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine 
"Republicans remembered they still had this Jindal guy sitting around. Jindal reinflated his reputation with speeches urging Republicans not to be the “stupid party,” advice that struck some of them as potentially a good idea. But now the second Jindal bubble has popped."

TECHNOLOGY NUGGET!!
Through the Google Glass: Revealed, the Secrets of How Search Giant's Eyewear Really Works from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Google has refused to reveal the internals of its system, or show exactly how it will work.  German designer Martin Missfeldt created a graphic explaining the system."

NYC PHOTO NUGGET!!
The Gritty 1970s Photographs that Capture New York When it was a City in Decline from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"The 1970s are considered a low point for New York City.  More than 820,00 people fled the crime and an unreliable transit system over the course of the decade, moving from the city to the suburbs. The city went nearly bankrupt as Wall Street sputtered under the economic stagnation of the era."