News Nuggets 1321

DAYLEE PICTURE: A Pink Cockatoo in China.  From National Geographic.

THREE UP-FRONT HEALTH CARE NUGGETS!!
1.  White House: Health Law's More than a Website from USA Today
"... while the website will ultimately be the easiest way to buy insurance, it isn't the only way. You can call 1-800-318-2596 to apply. You can download an application on HealthCare.gov and mail it in. Or you can check out LocalHelp.HealthCare.gov to find out where you can apply in person. We're confident you'll find the new way of buying health insurance much easier than the old way."

2.  Fixing Healthcare.gov from NPR's Diane Rehm Program
"Diane and her guests discuss what's at stake politically and prospects for getting the new health insurance exchanges fully operating by a mid-December deadline."

3.  Obama’s Speech Underplayed Obamacare’s Problems. But it Doesn’t Matter (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
"Either the Web site will be fixed in a reasonable time frame, and the law will work, or it won't be fixed and the law will begin to fail. The Affordable Care Act is no longer a political abstraction. It's the law, and it will be judged not on how well politicians message it, but how much it does to improve people's lives."

The Great Desperation (Roger Cohen) from the New York Times
"Silvio Berlusconi’s mad legacy goes well beyond Italy: It symbolizes the corruption of European culture."

The Shrinking: Why the Middle East is Less and Less Important for the United States (Aaron David Miller) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"... the Middle East is not nearly as important as it used to be. The traditional reasons for U.S. involvement are changing. Once upon a time, it was all about containing the Russians, our dangerous dependence on Arab oil, and a very vulnerable Israel. Then it was all about the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism, and the desire to nation-build in Afghanistan and Iraq. Much of that is now gone."

The End of OPEC from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Designed in part to bring Arab populations their due after decades of colonialism, the embargo opened the floodgates for an unprecedented transfer of wealth out of America and Europe to the Middle East.
Overnight, the largest segment of the global economy, the oil market, became politicized as never before in history. But four decades later, the shoe may finally be on the other foot.."

America's Not in Decline — It's on the Rise (Ely Rattner) from the Washington Post
"In the 1970s and late 1980s, expectations of waning power were followed by periods of geopolitical resurgence. There’s every reason to believe that cycle is recurring today. Despite gridlock in Washington, America is recovering from the financial crisis and combining enduring strengths with new sources of influence, including energy. Meanwhile, emerging powers are running into troubles of their own. Taken together, these developments are ushering in a new era of American strategic advantage."

Anatomy of a Shutdown from Politico
"House Speaker John Boehner just wanted to sneak out of the White House for a smoke. But President Barack Obama pulled him aside for a grilling. Obama wanted to know why they were in the second day of a government shutdown that the speaker had repeatedly and publicly pledged to avoid.  “John, what happened?” Obama asked, according to people briefed on the Oct. 2 conversation. “I got overrun, that’s what happened,” Boehner said."

Obama Needs to Do to Ted Cruz What Eisenhower Did to Joe McCarthy (Jules Whitcover) from the Baltimore Sun
"Today, Mr. Cruz' one-man assault on President Obama and more significantly on the leadership of his own party, both in the Senate and across the Capitol in the House, personifies a new McCarthyism on the Hill. It requires a similar intervention by the moderate voices among the congressional Republicans if the party is to restore its own reputation as a partner in responsible governance."
The problem with this analysis is that McCarthy and Ike were from the same party, a party that had been out of the White House for 20 years.  In addition, Ike entered the White House with a 70+ approval rating!  Obama has no such relationship with Cruz and the Tea Party crowd.  Indeed, I suspect Obama and his inner circle like Cruz to be the face of the GOP for now up until next year's elections.

Business Voices Frustration With GOP from the Wall Street Journal
"The budget stalemate that had the U.S. flirting with default has left business and the Republican Party, longtime political allies, at a crossroads. In interviews with representatives of companies large and small, executives predicted a change in how business would approach politics. They didn't foresee a new alignment with Democrats but forecast backing challengers to tea-party conservatives in GOP primaries, increasing political engagement with centrist Republicans and, for some, disengaging with politics altogether."

Is Corporate America Going to War Against the GOP? (Jacob Heilbrunn) from the National  Interest
"While the Democrats savor their victory over the GOP, Republicans themselves are going to war—against each other. A case in point is the growing disaffection of the business community with the Republican party.  It was no accident that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers both warned legislators against crashing through the debt ceiling. ... Now corporate America is talking about opposing Tea Party candidates with more moderate ones. This is a
fundamental rift over the true identity of the Republican party."

House Tea Partiers Not Anteing Up for 2014 from Politico
"Hard-line conservatives aren’t just sticking it to the national GOP by shutting down the government and bringing the nation to the brink of default — they’re also refusing to pony up to help their party defend the House in 2014. With a little more than a year until the midterm election, many leaders of the shutdown strategy have yet to donate to the National Republican Congressional Committee, records show. At least eight of the debate’s 20 or so most outspoken figures have not given any money to the NRCC, and others have forked over token amounts."

Shutdown Fuels Republican Primaries from Politico
"Nearly a dozen House Republican incumbents already have credible challengers, and conservative groups expect that number to grow in the coming months as races develop and deadlines approach to qualify for the ballot. The coming fiscal battles — there’s now a Jan. 15 deadline for funding the government and a Feb. 7 deadline to raise the debt ceiling — could add fuel to the primary fires."

GOP, Boehner Take Shutdown Hit in New CNN Poll (Paul Steinhauser) from CNN 
"Just over half the public says that it's bad for the country that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, according to a new national poll conducted after the end of the partial government shutdown. And the CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that more than six in 10 Americans say that Speaker of the House John Boehner should be replaced."

Democrats Have A Shot At Taking Back The House As Republican Popularity Continues To Drop: Poll from the Huffington Post
"A new survey of 25 GOP-held districts shows dwindling favorability for Republican members of the House in the wake of the recent government shutdown. The survey, conducted by liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling and funded by MoveOn.org, is the third in a series of polls that indicate Democrats have a shot at taking back the House of Representatives in the 2014 election cycle."

Yup, the House is in Play in 2014 (Markos Moulitsas) from Daily Kos 
"We are approaching "wave" territory. PPP's recent massive wave of battleground district polling certainly portends a Blue 2014. About the only good news for the GOP is that it's October 2013. Then again, with Ted Cruz calling the shots, things may only get worse for them."

Fiscal Crisis Sounds the Charge in G.O.P.’s ‘Civil War’ from the New York Times
"In dozens of interviews, elected officials, strategists and donors from both wings of the party were unusually blunt in drawing the intraparty battle lines, suggesting that the time for an open feud over the
Republican future had arrived. “It’s civil war in the G.O.P.,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative warrior who helped invent the political direct mail business. ...  conservative activists who helped drive the confrontation in Congress and helped fuel support for the 144 House Republicans who voted against ending it are now intensifying their effort to rid the party of the sort of timorous Republicans who they said doomed their effort from the start."

The Tea Party, Not Democrats or Republicans, Is the Problem (Jon Favreau) from the Daily Beast
"It’s de rigueur to decry ‘partisanship’ as Washington’s ‘real problem.’ Let’s get real—the most destructive force in American politics today is the Tea Party, says Jon Favreau."

Michael Steele on the ‘I Told You So’ Caucus Getting the Shutdown Right (Lloyd Grove) from the Daily Beast
"Among the loudest GOP voices predicting the blowup of Cruz control in the shutdown fight was Joe Scarborough—and the former RNC chairman. Steele tells Lloyd Grove why we’re due for a repeat in three months."

The GOP’s Alamo: Republicans are Wasting No Time in Rewriting the History of their Own Defeat (David Weigel) from Slate
"They view any attempt to blame them for the shutdown, and not the president, as media bias in concentrate. This shutdown proved them right, and they’ll carry that knowledge into the budget battle."

Hillary Clinton Vs. the GOP Boys’ Club: Fighting for the Female Vote (Lloyd Green) from the Daily Beast
If Republicans want to win in 2016, they need to start getting smart about appealing to female voters. By Lloyd Green."

Getting Schooled by Obama, the Marriage Counselor in Chief (Joshua DuBois) from the Daily Beast
"Joshua DuBois was President Obama’s director of faith-based initiative, and single. Learning that, the president went to work."

GOP HISTORY NUGGET!!
Birth of Conservative Delusion: Roger Ailes Takes his Revenge (Michael Goldfarb) from Salon
"... conservatives also saw Nixon as a martyr to “liberals” and their lap-dogs the press. He also flew the flag for executive-branch power. Conservatives believe in a strong a executive branch — when a Republican is president. The wound from one of their party — if not one of their own — having been driven from office is one that has never stopped festering for the Republicans. ... A four-decade-long war on the press’s legitimacy had begun. The idea that it was a biased liberal press that made the molehill of Watergate into a mountain of Constitutional crisis took root."