News Nuggets 1332

DAYLEE PICTURE:  Myrtle Falls at Mount Ranier in 

Washington state.  From the Smithsonian.

UP-FRONT OBAMACARE NUGGET!!
New Obama Admin Rule: Mental Illness, Addictions Must Be Covered Same As Physical Disease from Talking Points Memo
"It's final: Health insurance companies must cover mental illness and substance abuse just as they cover physical diseases. The Obama administration issued new regulations Friday that spell out how a 5-year-old mental health parity law will be administered."
Now -- it's interesting.  Maybe I missed something but neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post, CBS, ABC etc., had this as a major story.  AND YET, this is far and away the biggest news of the week (if not longer) on Obamacare.  Long after the program's website issues are resolved, tens of millions of people will be impacted by this decision!!  

Right Wing's Surge in Europe Has the Establishment Rattled from the New York Times
"All over Europe, established political forces are losing ground to grass-roots insurgents fired by resentment against a governing class many see as out of touch."

Former '60 Minutes' Producer: Discredited Benghazi Story Was Done To Appeal To Conservatives from Talking Points Memo
""My concern is that the story was done very pointedly to appeal to a more conservative audience's beliefs about what happened at Benghazi," Mary Mapes told Media Matters. "They appear to have done that story to appeal specifically to a politically conservative audience that is obsessed with Benghazi and believes that Benghazi was much more than a tragedy.""
It is for reasons such as this that I stopped looking to network news for news.  The reporting isn't just terrible, producers and editors are so concerned about ratings and being accused of "liberal bias," they do their own version of "unskewing" the news.

Obama’s Crucial Six Months (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Dish
"... the odds of the core of this law surviving – particularly the principle of universal coverage and the end of denials of insurance for pre-existing conditions – are solid. It may well need further reform, but it has created a framework for both Republican reform (if they can get out of their ideological mania) and even, perhaps, a single-payer system, if the Democrats want to move left. It’s messy, its future could go in several directions, but it’s now entrenched."

Why I (Still) Support Obamacare (Thomas L. Friedman) from the New York Times
"In a world where middle-class work is in transition, we need a strong health care safety net."

In Shift, GOP Wants ObamaCare Fix from The Hill
"The GOP wants to rebuild its political capital and public credibility by solving ObamaCare’s implementation problems. This pivot comes after Republicans took major hits in polls following the government shutdown."
This is actually quite encouraging!  If they can get GOP governors to get with the program and for lawmakers to actually generate legislative fixes where they are required, this could be significant.  We'll see.

The GOP Still Hasn't Figured Out How to Get On With the Tea Party (Charlie Cook) form the National Journal
"Tuesday's election results ensure that the battle over the faction's role in Republican politics will rage on. ...  the fact that Cuccinelli could win the independent vote by 9 percentage points yet lose the election by 3 points is a reminder that the gap between self-identified Democrats and self-identified Republicans is getting so wide that, in many races, winning the independent vote isn't enough for a Republican candidate to bridge the gap."

The Grand Old Tea Party: Why Today's Wacko Birds are Just Like Yesterday's Wingnuts (Rick Perlstein) from the Nation
"At first the Republican establishment, thrilled to have the Democrats on the run, puts its wariness about the fire-breathers aside. Within a few years, though, the new guys throw out all the old rules of consensus and compromise, and the establishment shows signs of buyer’s remorse. One of the new conservatives, a bulky, take-no-prisoners senator who sees socialist quislings everywhere, takes control of the agenda and threatens to drive the GOP into the ground.  But this is not 2008 or 2013. It’s the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the senator is not Ted Cruz but Joseph McCarthy."

GOP Super PACs Gear up to Fight Tea Party from Politico
"“The prime targets for this sort of a strategy are incumbents that expect a primary election challenge,” said Charlie Spies, the co-founder of Restore Our Future, which spent more than $140 million to support Mitt Romney."

After Mental Illness, an Up and Down Life (Lee Gutkind) from the New York Times
"Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about two troubled children. What happened to them?"

The Sex Toys in the Attic (Joyce Wadler) from the New York Times
"For the sake of your executors, throw them out. Now."

DEMOGRAPHY-HISTORY NUGGET!!
Which of the 11 American Nations Do You Live In? The Map that Shows how the U.S. was Divided into Separate Cultures as Settlers Spread West from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
Journalist Colin Woodard says the United States is actually made up of 11 culturally distinct nation-states.  Each state evolved according to the colonial force that established it.  Rather than merge, these 11 nations are becoming even more discrete, with like-minded communities reinforcing prevailing political, religious and cultural attitudes."