News Nuggets 1307

DAYLEE PICTURE: Damselflies in the Po Valley of northern Italy.  From the Daily Mail of the UK.

UP-FRONT HISTORICAL QUOTE!!
From a speech by President John F. Kennedy:
There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land --- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest single threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

If you don't recall ever hearing him saying these eloquent words, there is a reason.  He never gave this speech.  It was the one that was in his pocket when he was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  HERE's a link to the entire text.

Now -- back to our regular nuggets!!

UP-FRONT SHUTDOWN NUGGET!!
Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead: A kind of Politics We Have Not Seen for More than 150 Years (James Fallows) from the Atlantic 
"This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too."

The GOP Flunks Hostage Taking 101 (Marc A. Thiessen) from the Washington Post
"Democrats are in such a panic over the prospect of a government shutdown that President Obama spent four hours on the golf course Saturday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told his colleagues to take the weekend off, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi left town to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary. Why show up for work? The Democrats are following Napoleon’s old adage: Never interfere when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself."
Thiessen is on-target with the first part of this column -- but then goes completely off the rails with his promotion of a debt-ceiling crash-and-burn that will "force Obama to make concessions."

John Boehner Doesn’t Have to Let the Tea Party Paralyze Whole Government (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"How many House Republicans would privately be okay with John Boehner allowing a clean CR to get a vote, even if they didn’t have to vote Yes on it? In an interview with me today, Rep. Dent says he estimates over half of House Republicans could privately live with such a vote, even if it means the clean CR would end up passing with a lot of Democrats."

Shutdown Stalemate Shows Larger GOP Dilemma: How to be a Governing Party (Dan Balz) from the Washington Post
"Amid all the maneuvering and hand-wringing ahead of a possible government shutdown at midnight Monday, one thing remains clear: House Republicans are continuing to grapple unsuccessfully with what it means to be a governing party. ... In the majority, they have often found themselves stymied by the need to produce compromises while satisfying that part of their base that sees compromise as selling out principles."

Are Republicans So Frantic to Stop Obamacare Because They Fear It Will Work? (Kurt Eichenwald) from Vanity Fair
"I have given up trying to understand the vehement opposition of so many who cannot offer up truthful reasons for their objections, and instead fuel the hatred and fears of the uninformed with the most illogical, mendacious, and fundamentally bizarre arguments that have ever been marshaled. By comparison, Joe McCarthy’s McCarthyistic McCarthyism was an exercise in reason."

Rebels Without a Clue (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"... a U.S. government default, which will happen unless Congress raises the debt ceiling soon, might cause financial catastrophe. Unfortunately, many Republicans either don’t understand this or don’t care. Let’s talk first about the economics."

The Right Gets Its ’60s (Bill Keller) from the New York Times
"Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis. ... The Tea Party is their manifesto-brandishing Students for a Democratic Society. Threatening to blow up America’s credit rating is their version of civil disobedience. And Obamacare is their Vietnam."

Republicans’ Shutdown Fight Exposes Simmering Civil War (Heidi Przybyla & Julie Hirschfeld Davis) from Bloomberg
"The Republican war with President Barack Obama over funding the
government and the new health-care law will play out in the coming days and months. The conflict now exposed within the party may shape its future for years."

The Speaker’s Slog: Battling Opponents on Both Sides of the Aisle, Boehner Struggles to Avert a Shutdown (Robert Costa & Jonathan Strong) from National Review 
"While Boehner and other leaders will be defending the GOP's position in front of the cameras, there may be a subtle effort to use the episode -- and what many expect to be its disastrous political results -- as a means of discrediting the hardliners who give the speaker headaches. Conservatives, meanwhile, will try to show that the tactic is helping focus public attention on Obamacare.""

The Frauds on the Hill Target Obama (Roger Simon) from Politico
"Slyness and game-playing rule the day. Having lost the vote on Obamacare, the extremists and those who fear them will vote to cut off the funding of government unless Obamacare is suspended. And then they will try to force the United States to default on its debt. Not because they wish to do the will of the people, but because they wish to thwart the will of the people."

Countdown to Shutdown: Think 1996 was bad for the GOP? This time will be much, much worse (Noam Scheiber) from the New Republic
"“[W]hat I've come to realize is that in divided government you don't always get what you want,” bleated Sean Duffy, one of the freshman Tea Partiers involved in the original rebellion. The reasons for the lopsided outcome help explain why this week’s anticipated shutdown is likely to be punishing for the GOP."

The Disarray, Dysfunction, and Legislative Blundering of the Congressional GOP (Reihan Salam) from National Review
"Peter Suderman ... observes that Republicans have nothing like a workable legislative strategy, because a determined group of GOP lawmakers refuses to acknowledge that a legislative minority can only do so much.  ... To state the obvious, Republicans are facing a collective action problem. Successive rounds of budget brinkmanship are redounding to the benefit of a small number of Republican lawmakers, who are building their profile and fundraising on the strength of their theatrics."

Will John Boehner Risk His Job to Avoid a Government Shutdown? (Rick Klein) from ABC News
"Most of his colleagues realized, at least privately, that he was doing what was right for the greater good of the party. He didn't act too quickly, or before his GOP colleagues were largely ready for him to act." "To that point, it's worth paying attention to efforts that have begun among rank-and-file Republicans to walk the party back from this brink.""

Texas Senator Cornyn Re-election Campaign Warns Of Blue Texas Dystopia from Talking Points Memo
"Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) reelection campaign is airing a new ad warning of the consequences of Democrats taking control of Texas. The one-minute ad envisioned what would happen if Democrats took control of the state legislature and other offices and passed a host of Democratic-favored policies like a new state income tax and new environmental regulations. A voiceover in the ad said Texans would leave the state and the economy would suffer."
One has to ask: What does Cornyn know that others don't?  Why raise this issue now?  Even the most optimistic projections (from the Dems' point of view) say we are at least 10-15 years away from the Dems really contesting Texas.  On the other hand, Cornyn is clearly describing a future that IS COMING to Texas.

My Shocking Train Ride Through the Heart of China’s “Airpocalypse” (James West) from Mother Jones Magazine
"The scene could be a panel from a graphic novel. For hours, not a single bird stirred around the hundreds of empty skyscrapers that hang lifeless over farms; they will house the newly urbanized from China's rural areas. Every bit of the shadowy landscape in China's northeast has been pressed into the service of an all-pervasive industry: power generation. ... It's clear to me now: Where one coal power plant stops, another begins. A thick brown air blows and for a moment the trees look like nature's very own protestors, shaking their fists at the sky..."

ANCIENT ROME NUGGET!!
Nude Paintings, Obscene Sculptures and Gods having Sex with Animals: Pompeii's Treasure Trove of Erotic Artefacts which Prudish Scholars Kept Locked Up from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Erotic paintings and sculptures were part of everyday life in Pompeii.  But when the artefacts were rediscovered they were kept out of sight.  Items were placed in 'Gabinetto Segreto' and hidden until 2000."