Daylee News Nuggets

News Nuggets 898

2012-03-01T11:56:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A gaucho riding across the hills of southern Patagonia. From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT POLITICAL NUGGET!!
The Republican Crack-Up (Matt Miller) from the Washington Post
"Despite Romney’s wins Tuesday, the GOP is cracking up because the party’s most fervent supporters are misguided or clueless about what the country needs to do to solve its biggest problems, and none of the Republican candidates has the wit or courage to tell them. We are watching a party implode at the hands of its base."

'19% of Israelis Support Non-US-Backed Iran Strike' from the Jerusalem Post
"Poll finds vast majority of Israelis against unilateral military strike on Iran, Israeli Jews prefer Obama over all republican rivals."

From Strength to Strength (Rosner and Greenberg) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie have it all wrong. Americans believe in President Barack Obama’s foreign policy competence -- and picking a fight just makes the GOP candidates look lame."

Why Obama’s Re-Election Fortunes Are Suddenly Looking Up (Adam Sorenson) from Time Magazine
"...for this snapshot in time, a weakened Romney and a strengthened economy make for the best outlook Obama’s had in quite some time."

GOP Struggles To Contain Birth Control Fallout from Talking Points Memo
"Top Republicans are working overtime to mask palpable concern within their party over a Thursday Senate vote to roll back an Obama administration rule requiring most employers to provide workers with contraceptive coverage in their health benefits. Yet despite a growing sense that the GOP has veered into politically dangerous territory, a full-scale retreat would embarrass the party, and alienate a powerful segment of its conservative base."

GOP Primary Results: A Suicidal Cage Match (John Avlon) from the Daily Beast
"Romney and Santorum are coming out of Michigan bruised—and detached from reality in the eyes of most voters. John Avlon on why this primary fight is a loss for everyone."

GOP Still Desperate for White Knight Despite Romney’s Michigan, Arizona Wins (Michelle Cottle) from the Daily Beast
"Republicans are less than excited by Mitt’s latest wins and still dream of a candidate who can fire up the base and be mainstream enough to oust Obama. But the likely suspects—Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie—have their own baggage."

Odds of a Brokered Convention Are Increasing (Sean Trende ) from Real Clear Politics
"We're finally close enough to Super Tuesday to get a sense of how the overall delegate count might work out in the GOP primary. The end result: Assuming that none of the four candidates drops out of the race, it looks increasingly as if no one will be able to claim a majority of the
delegates."

Romney Pleads For Small Dollar Donors After Primary Wins (Zeke Miller) from BuzzFeed
"First direct appeal at non-fundraising event in recent memory. He's running out of rich people!"
Daily Kos comments on this subject HERE.

Five Lessons Learned from the Republican Presidential Race (Chris Cillizza) from the Washington Post
"Below are the five biggest lessons we’ve learned in the race to date. (And, yes, all lessons learned come in groups of five. It’s just how it works.) 1. Conservatives aren’t picking up what Mitt Romney is putting down. ..."

Extended GOP Race Forces Romney to Search for Funds from the Wall Street Journal
"Mitt Romney is facing a problem he didn't expect to confront at this point in Campaign 2012: Finding enough money to pay for an extended campaign for the Republican presidential nomination."

Cringing With Mitt (Gene Lyons) from the National Memo
"It’s beyond Romney’s powers to persuade most people of his sincerity about things he does believe, much less the many tenets of contemporary GOP faith he probably doesn’t share—assuming for the sake of argument that anybody, including himself, knows which is which."

The GOP’s Ugly Win (Mark McKinnon) from the Daily Beast
"Mitt Romney may have secured the presidential nomination, but his party’s dirty race has done irreparable damage to the Republicans."

Three Percent (Erick Erickson) from Redstate.com
"Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like."

Olympia Snowe, Bob Kerrey Shift Senate Landscape (Kyle Trygstad and David M. Drucker) from Roll Call
"When the history books are written, this week may go down as a seminal point in the 2012 battle for control of the Senate. Despite a multitude of vulnerable Democratic-held seats at the start of the cycle, it's increasingly possible that Republicans' inability to stem their own losses could allow Democrats to hold their narrow majority."

Olympia Snowe’s Huge Gift to Democrats (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"She’s let the Tea Party push her around, but she may have just ruined the GOP’s 2012 Senate hopes."

Olympia Snowe Quit Senate to Protest GOP Agenda (Eleanor Clift) from the Daily Beast
"The Maine moderate’s resignation comes amid a GOP move to push back against what they consider big government trampling on religious freedom, an effort she planned to vote against. But she had long grown ‘sick and tired’ of partisanship, colleagues said."

No Room for GOP Moderates from Roll Call
"With Sen. Olympia Snowe’s startling Tuesday announcement that she would retire, the GOP now must grapple with a key question: Did the centrist Republican lose interest in her Conference or did her Conference lose interest in centrist Republicans?"

Publisher and Author Andrew Breitbart Dead from ABC News
"Andrew Breitbart, the noted conservative Internet publisher and author, has died. He was 43. A statement posted on his website said that Breitbart died "unexpectedly from natural causes" this morning."
Ok ... so what happened? Even up to a couple of weeks ago the world had been hearing from this right-wing loudmouth. This sudden passing combined with the lack of detail on the nature of that passing strikes me as ... odd, perhaps even ... suspicious. What's up?

ANTHROPOLOGY NUGGET!!
New Evidence of End of Neanderthals from United Press International
"European Neanderthals were dying off and already on the verge of extinction even before the arrival of competing modern humans, Swedish researchers say. Scientists said a study of ancient DNA indicates most Neanderthals in Europe died off as early as 50,000 years ago, leaving only a small group that re-colonized central and western Europe and survived for another 10,000 years before modern humans arrived on the scene."

PRE-HISTORIC NUGGET!!
Giant Prehistoric Penguins Revealed from National Geographic
"Big but skinny birds lived on small New Zealand islands 25 million years ago."

News Nuggets 897

2012-02-29T09:25:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Giraffes at the Samburu National Park in Kenya. From National Geographic.

Sorry's Not Good Enough in Afghanistan. Here's Why (Greenwald & Crowe) from the Huffington Post
"...the Qurans burnings ignited a highly volatile mix of hostility created over years of constant offenses inherent in a long-term occupation and the specifics of U.S. military policies in Afghanistan. As anyone who's ever been in any kind of relationship will tell you, saying sorry when you do wrong is necessary, but when your partner knows the bad behaviors will continue, sorry doesn't cut it."

The GOP Sounds Un-Christian in Condemning Obama’s Quran-Burning Apology (Kristen Powers) from the Daily Beast
"The president’s apology over the Quran burning is notable because Obama did apologize, something you don’t often see him do, Kirsten Powers writes."

Why China Will Have an Economic Crisis (Michael Schulman) from Time Magazine
"The view in most of the world is that China is indestructible. Shrugging off the crises multiplying elsewhere, China seems to surge from strength to strength, its spectacular growth marching on no matter what headwinds may come. ... My answer to all of this is: think again."

The Ritz-Carlton of Failed States (Michael Wise) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Welcome to the Serena Hotels, outposts of multi-star luxury in countries with zero-star conditions."

Stratfor: Osama bin Laden 'Was in Routine Contact with Pakistan's Spy Agency' from the Daily Telegraph [of the UK]
"Osama bin Laden was in routine contact with several senior figures from Pakistan's military intelligence agency while in hiding in the country, according to a large cache of secret intelligence files."

Administration Will Weather Latest Afghan Storm (Kevin Baron) from National Journal
"It’s unlikely the current firestorm over the U.S. military’s accidental burning of Korans will have political legs in Washington, much less among disinterested U.S. voters -- at least enough to change the course of the war or hasten its end. The U.S. has larger strategic interests, long-term plans, and hundreds of billions invested which trump outraged Afghans, and even U.S. casualties."

How ‘Shadow Inventory’ Is Killing the Housing Market (Katherine Tarbox) from Time Magazine
"... two reports surfaced last week indicating that, for the nation as a whole, home prices dropped by 3.5% to 5% in 2011. And one factor hurting the prices of homes that are for sale is the enormous number of homes that aren’t for sale — but that should be."

Obama Attacks Romney at UAW from the Atlantic
"President Obama, launching his most direct campaign attack yet at a Republican foe, on Tuesday mocked Mitt Romney’s stance on the automobile industry, telling autoworkers that the former Massachusetts governor’s recent statements are an effort to “rewrite history” and “a load of you-know-what.”"
QUITE a barnburner!! Here's the whole speech. Check it out!!

How to Extract Gas Responsibly (Joe Nocera) from the New York Times
"Fracking isn’t going away. ... One thing I’ve always liked about the Environmental Defense Fund is its hardheaded approach. Founded by scientists, it believes in data, not hysteria. It promotes market
incentives to change behavior and isn’t afraid to work with industry. Utterly nonpartisan, it is oriented toward practical policy solutions. And that has been its approach to fracking."

The 10 Most-Liberal Senators: 2011 Vote Ratings from the National Journal
"National Journal's annual vote ratings for 2011 are out, and here are the top 10 liberal senators. "

Romney Wins Michigan and Arizona, but Political Tourette’s Is Costing Him (Paul Begala) from the Daily Beast
"Mitt Romney won Arizona, but his Michigan victory was humiliatingly close, and his gaffes have reached a pathological level, says Paul Begala. Plus, Howard Kurtz, Patricia Murphy, and more Daily Beast contributors weigh in on the results."

GOP Frets Over 2012 Knife Fight from Politico
"At the core of their concern is the atmosphere of daily vituperation among the top candidates. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are now engaged in a seemingly constant knife fight, interrupted by only the sparest of positive, policy-oriented debate. Worst of all, there is no clear end in sight for what has become, in the eyes of many Republicans, a joyless and prolonged nomination fight."

Santorum on Manufacturing: What an Idiot (Daniel W. Drezner) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Now, most commentators are focusing on the "snob" comment or the broader thrust of Santorum's jeremiad against higher education or whether this will play in Michigan. I want to focus on the idiocy contained in the first part of Santorum's comment."

The Out-of-Touch Republican Front-Runners (Harold Meyerson) from the Washington Post
"The longer the Republican presidential contest drags on, the more uncomfortable Mitt Romney seems around blue-collar Americans, and the more antagonistic Rick Santorum seems toward America’s professionals, current and aspiring, and their ideals. This does not portend Republican success in November. Romney’s victories in Arizona and Michigan on Tuesday do not alter this dynamic."

Santorum’s Failed Pandering to Blue-Collar Workers (Kathleen Parker) from the Washington Post
"Politicians say the darnedest things, especially when their lips are moving. Perhaps it is on account of such a long primary season, but the more they talk, the tastier their feet. While Mitt Romney is merely guilty of saying things that make him seem disconnected from the lives of most Americans, Rick Santorum makes ideological statements that make him appear to be disconnected from the present tense."

It’s a College, Not a Cloister (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"What good are ideas formed and fortified in a protective cocoon, without exposure to other ways of thinking? Or convictions that haven’t been tested by, and defended against, competing ones? Not much, I’d submit. And in this, as in so much else, I apparently part company with Rick Santorum.Rick Santorum misses the belief-testing point of education."

ME-SEN: Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe to Retire in Blow to GOP (Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"Snowe’s retirement represents a major setback for the GOP’s efforts to regain a majority in the Senate. As a moderate Republican, she may be the party’s only hope to hold a seat in the strongly blue state. Republicans did get some traction in the state in 2010, including electing Republican Paul LePage as governor. But in a more neutral political environment, and in a federal race, Democrats will be heavy favorites to steal this seat from Republicans — their best pickup opportunity in the country, for sure."
The Daily Beast has more HERE.

WI-GOV: Scott Walker Recall: Wisconsin Governor Narrowly Trails Likely Opponents In New Poll from the Huffington Post
"A new poll finds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) trailing two likely opponents in a recall election. However, their narrow leads suggest a long road ahead for Democrats hoping to unseat the embattled governor."

BIBLICAL HISTORY NUGGET!!
'Jesus Discovery:' Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity from the Huffington Post
"On the morning of Tuesday, June 29, 2010, outside the Old City of Jerusalem, we made an unprecedented archaeological discovery related to Jesus and early Christianity. This discovery adds significantly to our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers, and the birth of Christianity. In this book we reveal reliable archaeological evidence that is directly connected to Jesus' first followers, those who knew him personally and to Jesus himself."

News Nuggets 896

2012-02-28T15:02:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Girls herding goats in Djibouti. From NationalGeographic.

Iran May be "Struggling" with New Nuclear Machines (Fredrik Dahl) from Real Clear World
"Iran is still relying on decades-old technology to expand its nuclear program, a fact that suggests it might be having difficulties developing more modern machines that could speed up production of potential bomb material, experts say."

What Ails Europe? (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"Why has Europe become the sick man of the world economy? Everyone knows the answer. Unfortunately, most of what people know isn’t true — and false stories about European woes are warping our economic discourse. Read an opinion piece about Europe — or, all too often, a supposedly factual news report — and you’ll probably encounter one of two stories, which I think of as the Republican narrative and the German narrative. Neither story fits the facts."

Wikileaks Emails Indicate Stratfor Discovered Israel Already Destroyed Iran’s Nuclear Facilities from the Raw Story
"Growing concerns over Iran’s nuclear facilities may prove to be all for naught. Officials from the global intelligence company Stratfor allegedly discussed that Israel may have already destroyed the Iranian nuclear facility, according to one of the emails released by Wikileaks Monday. In one of the over five million emails leaked, the conversation centered on Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak praising the news of deadly munitions blasts at a base of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. “I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago,” one intelligence official wrote in an email dated November 14, 2011."

Court filing: Bevilacqua Ordered Shredding of Memo Identifying Suspected Abusers from the Philadelphia Inquirer
"Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua ordered aides to shred a 1994 memo that identified 35 Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests suspected of sexually abusing children, according to a new court filing."
As this scandal has continued to unfold, I find myself increasingly asking: do some of these religious authorities who have covered things up actually need to go to prison before the Church gives the matter the serious attention it desperately needs?

Elderly Drivers Take Toll On American Roads from NPR's All Things Considered
"Moretti recently completed an extensive research study on older drivers, the problems they face on the road, and innovative solutions to address these problems."

Partisans Ignoring Stimulus’s Success (Juan Williams) from The Hill
"Is there any evidence that the stimulus helped the economy? As Sarah Palin might say, “You betcha!” But in looking back on the news coverage and the angry rhetoric used by the GOP during the congressional debate of the stimulus, it is striking how little discussion there was of what the stimulus actually entailed."

Republicans are Losing the Class Warfare Fight (Marc A. Thiessen) from the Washington Post
"Without a robust recovery to trumpet, the president is betting his reelection on class warfare — focusing on “income inequality” and “fairness.” Class warfare is not a winning strategy, but it is the only card Obama has to play. That’s the good news for Republicans. The bad news is: Right now, the GOP is blowing it."

For Republicans, Social Issues are Losers (Julian Zelizer) from CNN
"This is a risky bet for the GOP and a positive development for the administration and congressional Democrats. While most successful Republican presidential candidates have paid lip service to social conservatism in the last three decades, the truth is it has never been an issue through which Republicans have been able to build successful coalitions that can win at the polls and get bills passed."

The Possum Republicans (David Brooks) from the New York Times
"In recent decades, one pattern has been constant within the Republican Party: Wingers fight to take over the party, mainstream Republicans bob and weave to keep their seats."
Sometimes possums are playing dead -- and sometimes they are roadkill. I think the moderate GOP is much more the latter than the former.

Obama hits Romney with Withering Mockery as He Makes Case for Reelection (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"In a speech to the United Auto Workers just now, Obama defended his decision to bail out the auto industry, lacing into Mitt Romney with withering derision. But this speech was about more than the auto-bailout. It was Obama’s case for reelection."
Benjy Sarlin of TPM and Andrew Sullivan comment on this speech.

Battleground Poll: GOP President’s Race Takes Toll, Obama Inches Up from Politico
"A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll reveals the prolonged nominating battle is taking a toll on the GOP candidates and finds the president’s standing significantly improved from late last year."

New Lows Among Conservatives Mark Romney’s Popularity Problem from ABC News
"Mitt Romney has fallen to a new low in personal favorability among strong conservatives in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, as his persistent problems in this core GOP group now threaten his fortunes in today’s crucial Michigan primary."

Polls Apart (Charlie Cook) from National Journal
"The volatility in polling suggests a few things, not least of which is that Romney’s electability edge has virtually evaporated."

The GOP’s Michigan Give-Away (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"Ideological rigidity and Obama hatred led Republicans to reject the auto bailout. Now they’re doubling down on their opposition—and surrendering Michigan in the general election."

In a similar vein:
What Mitt Romney Has Already Lost (Rick Klein) from ABC News
"Romney can solidify his claim on the Republican nomination with a victory in his native state. But what he can’t claim back is the ability to excite and perhaps simply unify the party behind his bid — critical shortcomings that are likely to haunt his bid for the presidency for as long as it lasts."

Michigan’s Primary Party Crashers: Democrats Crossing Over to Thwart Romney (Ben Jacobs) from the Daily Beast
"Democratic voters who resent Romney’s stance against the auto industry bailout and prefer to see Obama face Santorum could tip the balance against Mitt in the state, where he and the Pennsylvania ex-senator are now deadlocked."

Tea Partiers Against College—For Other People's Kids (David Frum) from the Daily Beast
"Conservatives may have fiercely resented Barack Obama's "bitter clingers" remarks from 2008, but Rick Santorum's presidential campaign increasingly seems to take it for granted that Obama was right. Ask yourself: For whose ears was Santorum's "snob" remark intended?"

Michigan Call: Santorum in a Squeaker (John Cassidy) from the New Yorker
"After Romney’s resurgence last week, most pollsters and forecasters are still predicting he will win. But I am going against the trend and predicting that Santorum will squeak out another surprise victory."

Santorum’s JFK Story Makes Me Want to Throw Up (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"Kennedy never said anything like "people of faith have no role in the public square," and the GOP zealot knows that."

Gingrich to Afghanistan: ‘Figure Out How to Live Your Own Miserable Life’ from the Wall Street Journal
"His prescription:”What you have to do is say, ‘You know, you’re going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life… Because you clearly don’t want to learn from me how to be unmiserable.’”"
AS IF they invited us in!! AND this guy is supposed to be one of the brighter bulbs in the room!! Daily Kos comments on the Newtster HERE.

We Don't Need No Education, We Don't Need No Thought Control (David Weigel) from Slate
"Obama hasn't told the lumpen proletariart to go to liberal arts schools and become indoctrinated in left-wing thought and a cappela. His universal college call, which took on form in 2009, was for some kind of higher education. Trade schools? Have at it. Politically, here, it hardly matters. As he does on many topics, Santorum skillfully cracks open a policy issue and finds the culture war walnut within."

Sen-NE: Bob Kerrey Changes his Mind, Will Run for Senate, Source Says from the Washington Post
"Former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) has changed his mind and plans to run for the open Senate seat in Nebraska, according to a senior Democratic aide. The aide said Kerrey has called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to inform him of his plans."

HUMAN CYBORG NUGGET [of a sort]!!
Redesigning People: How Medtech Could Expand Beyond the Injured (David Ewing Duncan) from the Atlantic
"Radical human modification is coming, like it or not, by the end of this century—if not earlier. How much are you willing to alter yourself?"

News Nuggets 895

2012-02-27T00:56:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A pair of foxes on Island Beach State Park in New Jersey. From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT POLITICAL NUGGET!!
2012 or Never (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
A VERY INTERESTING long-form analysis! Check it out! The picture of a Gingrich crowd that goes with this article is really disturbing. Heck, even the thirteen year old up front looks like a serial killer!
"Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia. ... perhaps the strain that has taken deepest root within mainstream Republican circles is the terror that the achievements of the Obama administration may be irreversible, and that the time remaining to stop permanent nightfall is dwindling away. ... The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency."

Up in the Air in Iran from the Economist [of London]
"The probability of an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme has been increasing. But the chances of it ending the country’s nuclear ambitions are low."

A Radioactive Situation in Iran (Eric S. Margolis) from the National Interest
"An Israeli attack on Iran would draw America into a war that is neither affordable nor in its interests."

Al Qaeda on the Ropes from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Al Qaeda was partially a victim of its own violent success. Political overreach and excessive violence undercut its claim to be a protector of Islam in the face of Western imperialism. Those failures have proved debilitating during the Arab Spring, where al Qaeda has been a sideshow to tech-savvy young people and more mainstream Islamist groups."

Qur’an Burning is a Political, Not a Theological, Issue (Haroon Siddiqui) from the Globe and Mail [of Toronto]
"Shocking, isn’t it, that after a decade in Afghanistan, foreigners still don’t have a clue about what is or is not acceptable to the locals and, more pragmatically, what might backfire on the mission? Cultural
illiteracy continues to hobble Americans."

Burma's Punk Scene Fights Repression Underground from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"Despite signs of greater openness, Burma's government continues to wield an iron fist. Among its targets is the punk scene, whose bands are forced to play and practice in secret to avoid harsh punishments. Here, punk isn't a lifestyle. It is an act of genuine rebellion."

Successful Chinese Emigrating to West in Droves from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"Despite their country's stunning economic growth, many successful Chinese entrepreneurs are emigrating to the West. For them, the Chinese government is too arbitrary and unpredictable, and they view their children's prospects as better in the West."

A Greek Exit from the EU: Nothing to Fear but the Lack of Fear Itself from the Economist [of London]
"The prospect of euro-zone departures doesn’t scare people as much as it should."

Who’s Behind the Leaked Letters Roiling the Vatican? (Barbie Latza Nadeau) from the Daily Beast
"Newly leaked letters to Pope Benedict XVI have laid bare sordid allegations of corruption and infighting within the Holy See. Is it a ploy to influence who the next pope will be?"

For Market, There’s No Such Thing as Bad News Now from CNBC
"The way things are going these days, the New York Stock Exchange could be aflame and the only reaction from investors would be to buy stock in companies that make fire extinguishers. Nothing, it seems, can stanch the three-month rally — not debt crises, Mideast violence, nor a global slowdown — as the market rides a 20 percent bull-market run that has taken hold since October. It’s not that there aren’t reasons to sell off — plenty of them in fact. It’s just that nobody seems to care."
This optimism is quite misplaced in my view -- but maybe those folks know all kinds of things I don't.

From Europe, Silence Is Golden (Jim Tankersley) from the National Journal
"Greece’s latest bailout won’t fix Europe—but it should help Obama in November."

'Hallwalkers': The Ghosts Of The State Department from NPR's All Things Considered
"The halls of the State Department are haunted, not by actual ghosts, but by people who might as well be ghosts: whistleblowers, people who angered someone powerful and people who for one reason or another, can't be fired. "People like me, that the State Department no longer wants, but for some reason can't or won't fire, are assigned to what we call 'hallwalking,'" says author Peter Van Buren."

The Demonizing of Barack Obama (Colbert King) from the Washington Post
"To read in a mainstream publication that Barack Obama should be killed takes the breath away. ... In this political environment, there is no invective too repugnant, too vicious to throw at this president of the United States. ... "

2008 v. 2012: Is the Presidential Landscape Changing? from Daily Kos
"The map, most assuredly, is changing. To understand the contours of the new electoral math, let's break up the 51 presidential contests into three groups: the Obama/Democratic "base states" (states won by Democrats in all three elections), the Republican "base states" (states won by Republicans in all three elections), and the "Obama coalition" states (states lost by either Kerry or Gore, but won by Obama in 2008)."
A very interesting and thoughtful first-look at the electoral map for Obama looking ahead to November.

Republican Governors Concerned About Long 2012 GOP Primary Race from the Associated Press via the Huffington Post
"Even Democratic governors of some typically toss-up – or "purple" – states, said they like Obama's chances."In a purple state people want to see results and they also want to see a level of collaboration and teamwork. I think he is going to win Colorado," the state's governor, John Hickenlooper, said. Meanwhile, virtually no Republican governors were willing to predict their party's nominee would prevail in November."

‘The Country Deserves Better’: Maine Gov Unloads On GOP Field from Talking Points Memo
"In remarks captured by the Portland Press Herald, Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage unloaded on the GOP 2012 field Saturday, decrying all the candidates as damaged goods after having battered each other. He said the country “deserves better” than the current crop and called for a brokered convention to pick a dark horse candidate to challenge President Obama."

Mitt Romney’s Latest Challenge: His ‘Home State’ of Michigan (Jonathan Lemire) from the New York Daily News
"Win or lose: Michigan's primary on Tuesday could destroy Romney's campaign."

US Election 2012: a Tired Mitt Romney Slumps Towards Michigan from the Daily Telegraph [of the UK]
"After nearly a decade of positioning himself for America’s highest office, it is perhaps unsurprising that Mitt Romney looks tired as he enters a crowd of voluble Tea Party supporters in his home state of Michigan, pausing to greet the room with his familiar wooden wave."

Michigan Tea Partiers Share Rick Santorum’s Fears Over Obama’s College Push from Talking Points Memo
Craziness!
"Clement’s husband, Stephen, said Santorum was right on the mark when he said that Obama wants to send kids to get college degrees so as to produce more liberals. “It starts down at the elementary school level with all this bullshit about diversity, pardon my French,” he said. “Diversity and sensitivity and all that crap. That’s the stuff that needs to be taught at home not by my teachers." ... They all agreed that college can help some people — but they also agreed that universities are basically socialism factories. “They try and disguise it with, you know, ‘equal opportunity’…” Stephen Clement began. “It’s communism,” Murrow said, cutting him off. “The professors are all teaching the kids…”"

Rick Santorum’s Home-School Hokum from Salon
"America's most famous home-schooler spent three years soaking Pennsylvania taxpayers for his kids' education."

Newt Gingrich Goes Bonkers (Again) (Jacob Heilbrunn) from the National Interest
"Gingrich's bluster encapsulates just about that has gone awry with Republican foreign policy."

News Nuggets 894

2012-02-26T00:30:00.002-05:00

DAYEE PICTURE: A grizzly bear mother and cub in Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. From the Daily Mail of the UK.

TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!

1. U.S. Does Not Believe Iran is Trying to Build Nuclear Bomb from the Los Angeles Times
"The latest U.S. intelligence report indicates Iran is pursuing research that could enable it to build a nuclear weapon, but that it has not sought to do so."

2. The Iran-Washington Conspiracy? (Leslie H. Gelb) from the Daily Beast
"Both Washington and Tehran are maneuvering to head off an Israeli attack against Iran, a process of intriguing diplomatic gamesmanship."

3. Al Qaeda Is Going Gently into the Night from the Atlantic
"Counter-terrorism experts said Al Qaeda wouldn't vanish in a sweeping final act but in a gradual, winnowing decline. A new report out of Southeast Asia gives a sketch of what that looks like. Reporting from Jakarta, the Associated Press writes that Al Qaeda's foothold in Southeast Asia appears to be gone."

4. Navy SEALs: Obama’s Secret Army (Daniel Klaidman) from Newsweek
"At a time when many Americans think their government is inept, the ‘Special Operators’ get the job done. Just ask the President, who is doubling down on the Navy SEALs."

5. The Way Greeks Live Now from the Sunday New York Times Magazine
"At some point, I asked Hadjigeorgiou how the crisis was affecting him personally. Life was getting difficult, he acknowledged. Then, prodded a bit more, he mentioned that he had not been paid by his newspaper, the major left-leaning daily, in four months. Nor had any of his colleagues at the paper. "

6. When Do Political Rules No Longer Apply? (Stuart Rothenberg) from Roll Call
"Traditionally, there are “rules” that apply in politics as well. But this year, things seem different. They don’t seem to apply, which is a problem for those of us who look at the past to understand the present and to project future outcomes."

7. Republican Race's Volatility is Historic (Alex Roarty) from the National Journal
"Calling the 2012 Republican presidential primary the most volatile for the GOP in generations isn't political hyperbole - it's empirical fact."

8. President Obama as an Alien (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. ... Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education. Please forgive this outburst. It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies."

9. Right Wingers Go Wild Against Women Around the Country (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"This isn’t politics. It’s not even theology... And it’s most certainly not morality. It’s quite the opposite of morality. It’s a consequence of a mindset that equates compromise with capitulation, that insists on purity, that attempts to abuse the tools of democracy to secure anti-democratic outcomes, and that is driven by rage against modernity. And it’s hardly an accident that all these forces come together to assume their foulest shape against women."

10. Real-world Issues, Fantasy-Land Solutions (Fred Hiatt) from the Washington Post
"Run to the extreme in the primary, move to the center in the fall: That’s expected. But moving from the cartoon world the Republican presidential candidates have constructed back into three dimensions might prove more difficult. In their debate Wednesday night, the remaining candidates seemed to be continuing their drift from reality — the reality of a center-right electorate they propose to woo and govern, and of the complexities of the problems they promise to solve."

Now, to our regular nuggets for Sunday, February 26.

OUR PUNDIT-OF-THE-DAY!!
Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost (Matt Taibbi) from Rolling Stone Magazine
"This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them. ... Santorum, instead of turning around and laying into Paul, immediately panicked and rubbed his arm as if to say, "See? I’m made of the right stuff," and said, "I’m real, Ron, I’m real." These candidates are behaving like Stalinist officials in the late thirties, each one afraid to be the first to stop applauding."

Hamas Ditches Assad, Backs Syrian Revolt from Reuters
"Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule. The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation"
Hamas "backs Syrian revolt"? That could be interesting. How so?

Why Republicans Welcome Birth Control Politics (Nancy Scola) from Salon
"More voters are worried about governmental control than women's health, they say."

Ghastly Outdated Party (Maureen Dowd) from the New York Times
"Do we need another “Lysistrata” until Republicans stop campaigning against sex?"

The Religion and Politics of Division (Lisa Miller) from the Washington Post
"Obama: "I’ve said this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally embraced Christianity as far as I know;. I do not believe she went to hell.” Most Americans are with Obama on this."

Fading Chances: Republicans Appear Incapable of Nominating Someone Who Can Win the Votes of Independents in November (Charlie Cook) from National Journal
"Simply put, the passion and energy of the Republican Party today may well fail to produce a nominee with a decent chance of winning in November. My assumption was that Romney would be the nominee and would make a good run. Now, I have begun to doubt both propositions. His odds of winning the nomination are growing longer. And even if he does, he has twisted and turned himself into a human pretzel. I’m not sure how electable he is. The alternatives, however, seem even less so."
Now -- this is something when Charlie Cook is saying this. Beltway insider conventional wisdom doesn't get more insider-like than Cook's.

Romney Aides Warn Backers of a Long Fight for Nomination (Jim Rutenberg) from the New York Times
"As Mitt Romney’s campaign intensifies fund-raising to meet rising costs, some Republicans are worried about the impact of a prolonged party contest on the November election."

Obama’s Dream: To Run Against Santorum (Kathleen Parker) from the Washington Post
"Let me be blunt: If Republicans nominate Rick Santorum to run for president, they will lose. The prospect of four more years of President Barack Obama holds some appeal for many Americans but probably not for most Republicans. It may give doubters among them some comfort, however, to know that Obama and Santorum share the same prayer: that Santorum be the Republican nominee."
It is rather interesting to see pundits on the right conclude that Obama and his team "set up" conservatives on the issue of contraception, to make them look bad and send the GOP on a culture war witch hunt that would be a total loser for them. As much as I admire Obama and the people around him, even I don't think Obama's mind is THAT three-dimensional. I DO think he is one of the best political counter-punchers ever -- and thus I think his strategy has been responsive rather than as part of some thought-out initiative on his part.

The Lost Party (John Heilemann) from New York Magazine
"The strangest primary season in memory reveals a GOP that’s tearing itself apart. ... “The fact that Romney is running with basically the same views as then but is seen as too moderate tells you that the base has moved rightward and doesn’t simply want a conservative candidate—it wants a very conservative one.” The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and m"

Rick Santorum’s New Punching Bag: the Press from Politico
"Rick Santorum has a new punching bag: the press. Facing increased scrutiny and more intense media coverage as his campaign has surged, the former Pennsylvania senator is intensifying his criticism of the media."

Wisconsin Recall Rival Slams Scott Walker from Politico
"In a preview of the Wisconsin recall election, top Democratic challenger Kathleen Falk has come out guns blazing against Gov. Scott Walker, saying he ruined the state, has no scruples in labeling any opponent as a union pawn, and is under a cloud from the ongoing “John Doe” criminal
investigation into some of his former aides."

News Nuggets 893

2012-02-25T02:38:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A chameleon on a door latch in Hyderabad in India. From National Geographic.

The Iran-Washington Conspiracy? (Leslie H. Gelb) from the Daily Beast
"Both Washington and Tehran are maneuvering to head off an Israeli attack against Iran, a process of intriguing diplomatic gamesmanship."

'It is Not in the American National Interest to Go to War Against Iran Anytime Soon' (Thomas E. Ricks) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"But the bottom line is, I don't know a single person in government, civilian or in uniform, who thinks it is in our national interest to go to war with Iran now."
Y'know, I could be completely wrong about this, but I am surprisingly certain that Obama and his team are in complete agreement with Ricks's comment here and will do whatever it takes to avoid a conflict with Iran.

What Would John Adams Do About Iran? It’s Time for No. 44 to Channel No. 2. (James Traub) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"The public, led by Adams's own Federalist Party, was demanding a declaration of war. Adams himself had stoked those public passions. But now, in the summer, he hesitated between belligerence and yet more diplomacy. The United States is now locked in conflict with Iran, another revolutionary, expansionist power. It is not yet summer 1798, but it's getting close."

Gulf War III Isn’t an Option (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
"We’ve heard this quickening drumbeat before. Last time, it led to the tragic invasion and occupation of Iraq. This time, if we let the drummers provoke us into war with Iran, the consequences will likely be far worse. Rat-ta-tat-tat. Weapons of mass destruction. Boom-shakka-boom. A madman in charge. Thump-thump-thump. Mushroom clouds. Tune out the anxiety-inducing percussion and think for a minute. Yes, there are good reasons to be concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. But it doesn’t follow that launching a military attack — or providing support for an attack by Israel — would necessarily be effective, let alone wise. The evidence suggests it would be neither."

In Break, Hamas Supports Syrian Opposition from the New York Times
"Marking the first public rift with its longtime patron, a leader of Hamas spoke out against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria."
You have to take this as a big blow to Assad. Hamas owes the Assad regime A LOT -- and yet they are jumping ship. I take it as a given that they know which way the wind is blowing.

Clear and Present Safety: The United States Is More Secure Than Washington Thinks (Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen) from the journal, Foreign Affairs
"U.S. officials and national security experts chronically exaggerate foreign threats, suggesting that the world is scarier and more dangerous than ever. But that is just not true. From the U.S. perspective, at least, the world today is remarkably secure, and Washington needs a foreign policy that reflects that reality. "

Symbolic Legislation to Nowhere: Why Statehouses Fail in Governance (Andrew Cohen) from the Atlantic
"With proposals such as mandated ultrasounds for abortion seekers and bans on Sharia law, state legislatures avoid actual governance in favor of dead-end ideas."

An Expert Witness for the GOP Gender Gap (Dana Milbank) from the Washington Post
"It is tempting to speculate that Issa’s head contains some regret that his hearing, which was supposed to be about an assault on religious freedom by President Obama, instead became a symbol of Republicans trying to take the pill away from women. This is not a good position for Republicans. ... judging from the reporters standing in the aisles to hear Fluke (the House Recording Studio’s refusal to broadcast the pseudo-hearing generated even more media attention), Republicans are losing the perception war."

Dems Salivate Over Coming GOP Birth Control Misstep from the Talking Points Memo
"The GOP’s ongoing push to allow employers to deny contraceptive — or any — health care coverage has Democrats in an amusing position: outraged that the Republican party has reignited the culture wars, and simultaneously salivating over what they believe is a deadly GOP political misstep."

The GOP’s Other Nomination Headache (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
" It’s not just the top of the ticket that could cause Republicans headaches this year. The headlines of the past few days have raised or reinforced questions about the viability of two of the top prospects for the No. 2 slot."

Republicans Starting to Rethink Romney (Ryan Lizza) from the New Yorker
"DeWine is still an outlier, but we are starting to see a trickle of Romney backers, and Republican operatives whose bosses have backed Romney, expressing misgivings. ... DuHaime’s remarks, as well as DeWine’s and Huntsman’s, suggest the lack of enthusiasm for Romney is getting more pronounced rather than less as the campaign goes on."
What is there to "rethink"? That train has already left the station.

Romney’s Economic Closet (Paul Krugman) form the New York Times
"According to Michael Kinsley, a gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth. That’s certainly what happened to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, when in a rare moment of candor — and, in his case, such moments are really, really rare — he gave away the game."

No Bailouts for Romney’s Intellectual Bankruptcy (Jonathan Alter) from the Bloomberg News Service
"By all accounts, Mitt Romney is a smart businessman with a sophisticated understanding of how economies work. So why is he so tied up in knots over basic questions of government spending in a recession and the limits of the free market? Because he’s running for president in a party that has lost its economic common sense, its political bearings and probably Michigan’s electoral votes."

Why Mitt Romney Might Be Even Weaker Than You Think from Talking Points Memo
"Mitt Romney’s got a problem. Purple Strategies released their “Purple Poll” on Thursday, data from twelve swing states the showed former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) in a better position to beat President Obama than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. "

The Increasingly Worthless GOP Nomination (Robert Shrum) from The Week
"Mitt Romney is pandering so desperately to the far-right fringe that he's become all but unelectable in November."

What follows are a series of stories on Romney's big economic speech earlier today in Detroit. What a FIASCO!!
With Detroit Debacle, Mitt Romney Steps on His Momentum—Again (Molly Ball) from the Atlantic
"The Republican candidate has a tendency to make cringe-inducing gaffes right when things are going well for his campaign."

Frontiers in Advance Work (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"What’s striking about this is that the Romney campaign frequently boasts about its success at process. ... Jed Lewison has a roundup of all the critical reaction to the Ford Field choice on Twitter from neutral reporters and even one conservative."
OMG! Even the temporary folding chairs section near the stage is half empty!! WHY did they choose this venue!? The tweets from reporters on the scene are HILARIOUS!! Another aspect of Sargent's commentary: the arrogance of Romney's oppo team really comes out in this piece.

Romney Speech Falls Flat in Detroit from The Hill
"Mitt Romney spoke to several empty seats Friday in Detroit, in a speech that offered Democrats more fodder for their attacks and failed to deliver the major economic address his campaign promised. Television cameras showed rows of empty chairs as Romney rehashed many of the policies and quips he'd used in previous speeches, made a few jokes that appeared to fall flat with the audience and said that his wife, Ann, drives "a couple of Cadillacs," which will likely give Democrats more ammunition for their depiction of him as rich and out of touch."

In response to the "Cadillacs" part of Romney's speech comes this item:
Mitt Romney Needs All Those Cars Because of All Those Mansions from Daily Kos
A humorous look at how many mansions and cars Romney owns -- with pictures of his various homes! They show five homes -- I'm not sure that's all of them. Seeing even this group is ... strangely compelling, and I could easily see a devastating SuperPAC-funded ad (or, at the least, a Jon Stewart sendup) coming from it.

Wisconsin, One Year Later (Molly Ball) from the Atlantic
"Twelve months ago, 100,000 protestors took over Madison. The political storm they stirred up is still raging as polarizing Governor Scott Walker faces a recall."

HOLLYWOOD NUGGET!!
How Hollywood Conquered the World (All Over Again) (Stephen Galloway) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"For all the talk of American decline, there’s one thing we still make better than anyone on the planet: movies."

News Nuggets 892

2012-02-24T00:25:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Cows in the town of Neyveli in India on the eve of the Diwali festival. From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT INTERNATIONAL NEWS!!
U.S. Does Not Believe Iran is Trying to Build Nuclear Bomb from the Los Angeles Times
"The latest U.S. intelligence report indicates Iran is pursuing research that could enable it to build a nuclear weapon, but that it has not sought to do so."
I've been following this story pretty closely -- and it is my sense that US intel on Iran's program is excellent, extraordinary really. As I have noted here at times, it is my sense that Obama and his intel people are almost as current on Iran's nuclear program developments as Iranian leaders are themselves. This news strikes me as the administration's effort to push back against the war mongering that seems to be increasing lately.

Syrian Leaders Listed by UN for Crimes Against Humanity from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Panel of UN experts says senior Syrian officials, including, it is claimed, President Assad, could face investigation."

Syria's 'Srebrenica': Situation Grows Increasingly Grim in Rebel Stronghold of Homs from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"Two foreign journalists died in a Syrian government shelling on Wednesday while reporting from the rebel stronghold of Homs. Hounded by snipers and hunger, activists are comparing the bombardment to genocide and begging the West for help."

U.S., Allies Set to "Challenge" Assad to End Siege from CBS News
"The Obama administration, under renewed pressure to help end the violence in Syria, is working with allies on a united, international "challenge" to the Assad regime, demanding that Syria stop the siege on the central city of Homs within days and allow immediate medical and humanitarian aid to flow directly to aid agencies trying to help the city's battered civilians."

Can the Taliban Avoid Fracturing Over the Qatar Peace Talks? (Yousafzai and Moreau) from the Daily Beast
"Afghan insurgent leaders struggle to keep their men aboard for negotiations with the U.S. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau on unrest in the ranks."

Can Montana's Supreme Court Decision be Used to Overturn Citizens United? from Americablog
"The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to overturn the Montana ruling, and decided instead to issue a stay pending review. That's where it gets interesting. The whole thing turns on three sentences added by Justices Ginsberg and Breyer to the SCOTUS ruling that placed a hold on the Montana ruling (pdf; my emphasis):"
A very interesting analysis of Ginsberg and Breyer's clever thinking on the case.

Big Turnaround in Support for Auto Bailout: Majority Now Says Rescue Plan was Good for Economy from Daily Kos
"According to Pew's latest survey (conducted February 8-12 and 16-20 with a margin of error of ±3%), 56 percent of the American public now believes the auto bailouts were mostly a good thing for the economy. Just 38 percent disagrees, a huge shift from October, 2009 when 54 percent thought the bailouts were mostly bad for the economy and 37 percent thought they were good."
There will be a similar shift eventually with Obamacare.

New York Court Affirms Towns' Powers To Ban Fracking (Lena Groeger) from the National Memo
"In a decision that could set a national precedent for how local governments can regulate gas drilling, a New York state court yesterday ruled for the first time that towns have the right to ban drilling despite a state regulation asserting they cannot."

Right-Wing Media Group Pledges To Strip Birth Control Out Of Health Plan After Providing It For Years from Think Progress
"Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, is providing a sneak preview to the kind of discrimination employees will experience if the amendment becomes law."

GOP Fears Rise Over 2012 Tone, Message from Politico
"In 2008, after Republicans were routed in the presidential and congressional elections, there was widespread consensus within elite GOP circles about the party’s structural problems: The Republican voter base was too old, too white, too male and too strident for the party to prosper long term in a country growing ever more diverse. Four years later, many of the same GOP leaders are watching with rising dismay as the 2012 presidential campaign has featured excursions into social issues like contraception and a sprint by the candidates to strike the toughest stance against illegal immigration, issues they say are far removed from the workaday concerns of the independent voters Republicans need to evict Barack Obama from the White House."
BOY. If folks in "elite GOP circles" thought this in 2008, what further demonstration do you need that these circles have almost no influence on the course of events?

Republican Race's Volatility is Historic (Alex Roarty) from the National Journal
"Calling the 2012 Republican presidential primary the most volatile for the GOP in generations isn't political hyperbole - it's empirical fact."

Poll: GOP Primary Bleeds Romney (Burns and Haberman) from Politico
"The folks at Purple Strategies have a poll out this morning that tests the mood of the electorate in a dozen general-election swing states, and validates concerns among Republicans that the drawn-out primary campaign is seriously compromising Mitt Romney's candidacy:"

The Arizona CNN Debate's Republican Unreality Show (Ana Marie Cox) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Ana Marie Cox: By fighting to out-conservative each other on social issues, this cranky crew just gifted Obama a win on jobs and the economy."

Santorum is a Social Conservative on Steroids, and that Troubles Some Voters from the McClatchy News Service
"...the same steely resolve that boosts him with the Republican Party's sizable social conservative bloc could also be a huge liability among moderate voters — and among independents that a GOP candidate would need to win the general election."

Santorum's Gamble Reveals Huge Blind Spot (J.P. Green) from the Democratic Strategist
"Republican myopia regarding Latino voters is turning out to be a huge blessing bestowed on Democrats, as some recent statistics indicate:"

Cox gets a two-fer today.
The Paradox of Rick Santorum's Conservative Beliefs (Ana Marie Cox) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Santorum's supporters denounce the government's religious interference, but it's their mantra that feels like oppression."

Republican Fratricide from the Economist [of London]
"The Republicans did not want their primary season to look like a
coronation. That, to say the least, is no longer a danger. It is now clear only that a large share of the party’s conservatives just do not like Mr Romney. This traps the party in a fratricidal exercise that could continue for months, if not all the way to the party convention in Tampa in August."

A cartoon from the Economist:

POST-WWII NUGGET!!
Bretton Woods Uncovered (a Scoop, of Sorts) (Jeremy Warner) from the Daily Telegraph
"Students of economic history are in for a treat. An official studying deep in the bowels of the US Treasury library has recently uncovered a prize of truly startling proportions – an 800 page plus transcript of the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944, the meeting of nations which established the foundations of today's international monetary system."

News Nuggets 891

2012-02-23T16:06:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Galapagos sharks swimming through slivers of light from

a research boat in the Mozambique Channel. From National Geographic.

Do-Over Season (Linda Greenhouse) from the New York Times
"Is there really a chance that the Supreme Court might reconsider Citizens United? A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought so, and I still think it’s an extreme long shot. But a provocative statement last Friday by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer makes this crazy idea worth pondering – which is undoubtedly what the two justices intended."
Greenhouse is one of the most knowledgeable SCOTUS watchers out there. Her perception of this topic is worth noting.

Another Court Finds Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional from the Politico
"Another federal judge has found unconstitutional a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law which forbids providing federal government benefits to same-sex spouses."

Did Crafty Dems Make Contraception a Campaign Issue? from the Salon
"First Rush Limbaugh, now the Washington Post women's blog, claim the GOP was set up by its enemies on birth control."

Contraception Coverage Fights Spread to States from Politico
"The contraception fight is expanding far beyond Washington, with several states eyeing ways of blocking the new Obama administration rule requiring most insurers cover contraception, or considering rolling back rules that the states themselves already had on the books. The combination of a hot-button social issue and the calendar for state implementation of the health care reform law’s fine print virtually guarantees the fight will continue for months."

If Latinos Really Do Decide 2012, GOP is in Serious Trouble from Daily Kos
"Neither Romney nor Santorum get those benefits of the doubt, and their rhetoric is far more overtly hostile and extreme than McCain's ever was. And ..., it means that Nevada will be out of reach for them, Colorado will be an uphill climb, Florida will be tougher nuts to crack, Arizona will be in play, and even states like Virginia and North Carolina—which should be reverting Red this year—will remain competitive because of explosive Latinos growth. And that's just talking about 2012. The GOP's long-term prospects will look even worse. Because no matter how much they wish it was still 1950, that America no longer exists."

Our PUNDIT-OF-THE-DAY!!
President Obama as an Alien (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” while the less
adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts. Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education. Please forgive this outburst. It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders."

Will GOP Perp Walk Lead to White House? (Roger Simon) from Politico
"I am sick to death of the media’s scare tactics. Which is why I nearly jumped out of my skin when CNN’s John King said during Wednesday night’s Republican debate, “One of these men could be president 11 months from now.” It was enough to give one chills."

Real-World Issues, Fantasy-Land Solutions (Fred Hiatt) from the Washington Post
"Run to the extreme in the primary, move to the center in the fall: That’s expected. But moving from the cartoon world the Republican presidential candidates have constructed back into three dimensions might prove more difficult. In their debate Wednesday night, the remaining candidates seemed to be continuing their drift from reality — the reality of a center-right electorate they propose to woo and govern, and of the complexities of the problems they promise to solve."

No 'Romney Rebound' in the Polls (at Least Not Yet) from Daily Kos
"... the general trends continue to hold: (1) if there is a Mitt Romney polling rebound yet, it really isn't showing up in any substantial way, and (2) the president may still suffer from middling job approval, but he still looks better than one would expect when paired with his even less popular Republican opposition. ... President Obama's numbers, however, look pretty good in this heavy midweek sampling of polls. Which makes one wonder if those softer numbers earlier in the week were just a blip on the radar. There is something to be said, however, for the fact that Obama's numbers in Wisconsin and Michigan now look better than they did against John McCain in 2008."

Live-Blogging the Mesa Debate (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
"Maybe I've lost my mind after all these debates, or maybe I secretly want him to win (because he would finally expose all the insanity that has been building in this party and needs venting). But I thought Santorum was on form tonight. My sense is that he will not lose his current momentum after tonight. I didn't feel Newt tonight. Romney doesn't wear well. Paul was great and funny and human. But there was a winner, it seems to me. He's in the White House."

And the Winner Is: Barack Obama (Jamelle Bouie) from the American Prospect
"Without question, the winner of Wednesday’s Republican debate was Barack Obama. ... by the end of the event, the candidates had revealed their hostility toward women and Latinos, and further ensured that they would stay on Obama’s side into the fall."

Nine Takeaways From the Arizona Debate (Carl M. Cannon) from Real Clear Politics
"If the much-hyped debate didn’t live up to its billing, and didn’t do anything to change the pecking order, it did leave impressions of each candidate that were not always flattering, and not always “on-message,” as political handlers might say. Here are nine examples:"

Republican Voters Lose in Arizona GOP Debate (Jonathan Bernstein) from the Washington Post
"Republican voters and conservatives are losers because there are certainly strong arguments — mainstream conservative arguments — against President Obama’s policies, whether it’s on national security or the budget or health care or any other issue. But they’re not hearing any of it; they’re hearing third-rate slogans, misleading rhetoric and outright mistruths that would fit right in among the cheaper booths at a conservative convention."

The Moral Scandal Of Rick Santorum And "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
"It seems to me that no politician who has aggressively defended these core violations of human dignity can be described as someone for whom human dignity is a "touchstone" of his worldview. The effrontery is not that of the media; the effrontery is from Santorum when he lectured John McCain..."

Santorum’s Martyr Complex (John Dickerson) from Slate
"His camp says he is being attacked because of his faith. Forgive me, but that’s downright sinful."

ANTHROPOLOGY NUGGET!!
The Real Caveman Diet from Slate
"Did people eat fruits and vegetables in prehistoric times?"

LIFE-SAVING KITTY NUGGET!!
Cat Saves Owner's Life Just Hours After Being Adopted from the Huffington Post
" Soon after going to bed, Amy Jung, who has had diabetes since childhood, started having a diabetic seizure in her sleep. That's when Pudding sprang into action."

News Nuggets 890

2012-02-22T07:52:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Puffins on the Machias Island in Maine. From National Geographic.

Strauss-Kahn Arrested by French Police Investigating Alleged Prostitution Ring from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Former IMF chief held for questioning over allegations he helped procure prostitutes for orgies in France and the US."
Ok -- where now is Bernard Henri Levy, world-class DSK apologist and American-justice bashing big mouth!? It seems that, at least in the hotel maid case, the NYPD had a better sense of who they were hauling off a plane at JFK than a large percentage of the French punditry. How do you say, "Book'em, Dano" in French?! The Wall Street Journal has more on the story HERE.

More Than Half Of Older High School Dropouts Not Employed Today from the Huffington Post
"More than half of the high school dropouts in America above age 25 are currently out of work, according to The Wall Street Journal. Americans who didn't finish high school seem to be bearing the brunt of the country's unemployment crisis..."

Democrats Say Virginia Ultrasound Measure ‘Akin To Rape’ from Talking Points Memo
"Virginia legislators are considering two bills that would create harsh restrictions on abortions. One of the measures, Democrats say, is “akin to rape.” But there are signs that some Republicans may be having second thoughts."

Do The Birth Control Lawsuits Have Legal Standing? Hardly from Talking Points Memo
"...barring a departure from precedent, the lawsuits aren’t set to go very far. “I don’t think they have much of a case under current precedent,” said Jessica Arons of the Center For American Progress. ... Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, was more blunt. “This lawsuit is inspired by politics and nothing more,” he told TPM. “Even under the previously announced rule there was little chance of success.”"

Brokering a GOP Disaster (Jonathan Bernstein) from Salon
"Republicans hoping for a deadlocked convention overlook the perils to the party."

Two Charts That Should Make Romney Gulp from Talking Points Memo
"It’s no secret that, as far as frontrunners go, Mitt Romney’s never exactly set the grassroots on fire. But his latest fundraising numbers drive home just how weak his small donor appeal is compared to his rivals — and especially President Obama."

January fundraising: Winners and Losers (Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"Obama’s campaign had $76 million cash on hand at the end of the month; the four GOP candidates had less than $13 million combined. Even better for Obama is the fact that Romney’s opponents closed the fundraising gap significantly, which will reduce Romney’s spending advantage going forward (see below for more on this)."

The GOP's Looming Election Disaster Is Just Like 1964 (Geoffrey Kabaservice) from the New Republic
"A specter is haunting the Republican establishment—the specter of Barry Goldwater. With recent polling data suggesting that Rick Santorum has surged ahead of Mitt Romney among Republican voters nationwide, the people whose livelihoods depend on Republican electoral victories are terrified by the growing possibility of a massive wipeout in November, much like the one that Republicans experienced in 1964, when Goldwater was their nominee."
"Massive wipeout." I like the sound of that. A very interesting column.

Mitt Romney's Burn Rate a Boon for Barack Obama from Politico
"Mitt Romney is burning through cash more than twice as fast as he’s raising it, new reports filed Monday show — a clear sign that a protracted GOP primary fight could leave the front-runner limping into a general election fight with President Barack Obama."
Daily Kos has some in-depth analysis of Romney's numbers HERE.

Rick Santorum Cries Nazi (Dana Milbank) from the Washington Post
"Rick Santorum sees Nazis everywhere: in the Middle East, in doctor’s offices and medical labs, in the Democratic Party, and now in the White House. The Republican presidential candidate told a group of supporters Sunday night that this year’s election was like the time between 1940 and 1941 when Americans didn’t act against Adolf Hitler because they thought he was “a nice guy” and not “near as bad as what we think.”"

Thanks, Rick Santorum! No, Really (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"Your backward views are alerting American voters about GOP extremism on issues of health and privacy."

Rick Santorum Defends Satan Comments from Politico
"“You know … I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another because you’re a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president,” Santorum said. Santorum said questioning whether he believed Satan was attacking America was “not relevant.”"
Not much of a defense.

Rick Santorum Questioned Obama's Faith In 2008, Said There's No Such Thing As A Liberal Christian from the Huffington Post
"When asked if he believed Obama is a "sincere liberal Christian," the former Pennsylvania senator said he didn't believe that sort of ideology exists, and that Obama's church, United Church of Christ in Chicago, had "abandoned Christendom" and used a non-literal interpretation of the Bible."

A welcome rejoinder to this comment comes from a long-silent source:
Religion And Politics Don't Mix, Major Religious Groups Tell Presidential Candidates from the Huffington Post
"After Rick Santorum ignited controversy over the weekend by saying President Barack Obama has a "phony" and "different theology" that's not "based on the Bible," and amid ongoing discomfort among some politicians and religious figures over Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, a coalition of major religious organizations is calling on presidential candidates to keep religion out of politics."

Rick’s Religious Fanaticism (Maureen Dowd) from the New York Times
"Longing for the Victorian age, Rick Santorum might lose the Victoria’s Secret vote."

It’s Not Conservative, It’s Reactionary (Jennifer Rubin) from the Washington Post
"Santorum on social issues is not a conservative but a reactionary, seeking to obliterate the national consensus on a range of issues beyond gay marriage and abortion. A reactionary is one who seeks to return to a previous state of affairs. It is not a conservative outlook, which in the Burkean sense looks to people as they are, prefers modest over the radical solutions and builds on the existing morals and habits of the society."
Um ... I hate to break it to you, Jennifer, but the ideological center of gravity for the GOP these days is REACTIONARY. They are not conservative any more. They look to the future with profound pessimism -- and what they offer America are cartoon versions of the past, usually something from the Eisenhower years but occasionally throwbacks from Teddy Roosevelt's time and even moldy oldies that are pre-Abraham Lincoln. As a practical matter, Republicans disdain the "future" largely (I suspect) because they see so little of their world view surviving in it.

A view that reflects a similar sentiment:
Where is the GOP's Positive Program? (David Frum) from the Daily Beast
"Does the GOP have a message for 2012 besides anti-Obamaism? ... A Republican program that emphasizes "repeal" and "undo" is not a positive program. It's not a future-oriented program either: it's a program to refight the battles of the past four years, hoping this time to win the fights that were lost last time."

In WI, March Release of Employment Situation Highly Anticipated, Consequences for Gov. Walker from the Appleton Post Crescent [of Wisconsin]
"The state Department of Workforce Development will release job numbers next month that could be the most anticipated statistics of Gov. Scott Walker's short tenure. If the January and February numbers show Wisconsin lost another 4,500 positions, the state will — on paper — have fewer jobs now than before Walker took office."

The Two Americas: A Review of Coming Apart by Charles Murray (Timothy Noah) from the New Republic
"We are, Murray posits, two nations: one a pampered and clueless but high-functioning meritocratic elite, and one a bruised and resentful and low-functioning working class. Murray can’t resist caricaturing the elite as largely a bunch of NPR-listening, New Yorker-reading, Galapagos-cruising liberal nitwits, but he concedes that most of the conservatives who inhabit America’s upper tier are similarly out of touch with proletarian culture."
I've been curious to see how the New Republic might review this controversial book.

OLD HOLLYWOOD NUGGET!!
The Artisits: Notes on the Lost Art of Silent Film Acting (David Denby) from the New Yorker
"From the beginning, the silent cinema was an art devoted to physical risk and to primitive passions, to rage, lust, ambition, and obsession (silence made emotions more extreme in many ways), and it produced obsession in its huge audience."

OBAMA SINGING NUGGET!!
Obama Sings 'Sweet Home Chicago' During Blues Concert At White House (VIDEO) from the Huffington Post
"The president just couldn't say no: Mick Jagger held out a mic almost by way of command, and soon Barack Obama was belting out the blues with the best of them."
WOW!! Obama shows that he REALLY CAN sing!! I'd listen to his album any day!

US-CANADA HISTORY NUGGET!!
The War of 1812: Stupid but Important (Diamond and Aronovitch) from the Globe and Mail [of Toronto]
"The War of 1812 saw the last foreign invasion on Canadian soil. Ironically, its commemoration has become a battleground in Canada. The arrival of the war’s bicentennial has ushered in a national debate on its significance in both Canada and the United States, the level of government support it deserves and, of course, that 200-year-old chestnut: Who, if anyone, won?"

US LABOR HISTORY NUGGET!!
The Great Worker Revolt of 1877 from Salon
"In the 1876 election deal, Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose mediation plan delivered the disputed electoral votes to Hayes got a federal bailout of the Texas and Pacific railroad in which he owned a large stake. While it is not clear if this deal led to the’ sending of federal troops to the strike-torn areas, the possibility of a quid pro quo arrangement is reasonable."

News Nuggets 889

2012-02-21T08:33:00.002-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: From a couple of weeks ago -- sub-arctic temperatures create a snow sculpture in the Pennines in the UK. From the Daily Mail of the UK.

Al Qaeda Is Going Gently into the Night from the Atlantic
"Counter-terrorism experts said Al Qaeda wouldn't vanish in a sweeping final act but in a gradual, winnowing decline. A new report out of Southeast Asia gives a sketch of what that looks like. Reporting from Jakarta, the Associated Press writes that Al Qaeda's foothold in Southeast Asia appears to be gone."
With Arab Spring-like uprisings happening in urban centers across the Middle East, why would you choose to go off to hide in a cave somewhere to engage in years-long plots to go to the West and blow up people there? The real action is in places like Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, Sudan and many other places where real change is really happening.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs On The SS Chinese Economy (Gordon Chang) from Forbes Magazine
"With an economy expanding in the low single digits — if it is growing at all — we would normally expect Beijing to take significant action. So what is the worst economic indicator of all? The fact that Chinese officials are doing so little at this crucial moment."

David Plouffe: From Knife Seller to the President’s Hard Edge from the New York Times
"Fiercely data-driven, Mr. Plouffe revels in the company of spreadsheets, lists, maps and the Baseball Almanac. Fiercely competitive, he once decked a colleague in a friendly touch football game for taunting him. Fiercely unsentimental, he expends zero amazement over his career climb from selling knives door to door to a first-among-equals status in the White House’s closed circle."

GOP Takes A Break From Judicial Obstruction (Matt Taylor) from the National Memo
"Furman's confirmation, coupled with the nearly-unanimous approval a day earlier of another Obama nominee, Cuban-born Adalberto Jordan, suggests that congressional Republicans might be rethinking their strategy of lock-step obstruction of the president's judicial nominations, which many argue has led to a vacancy crisis."

Birth Control-Centered Gender War Boosts Democratic Campaigns (Laura Bassett) from the Huffington Post
"Where are the women? The question, posed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to an all-male panel at Thursday's House Oversight Committee hearing on a new birth control coverage requirement, has rapidly turned into a political rallying cry, sparking a viral online campaign and lighting a fire under Democratic campaigns."

Ten Republican Wars of 2012 (Daniel Rigney) from Salon
"Lately the Republican Party and its presidential candidates (and debate audiences!) have been firing their missiles at a broad array of ideological targets. Here are ten fronts on which the party seems to be waging its ongoing war against the future."

Rush Limbaugh, Secret Democrat (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"That's the only explanation for why the right-wing blowhard is leading the GOP off a culture-war cliff."

Poll Finds Most Virginians Oppose Changes in Abortion, Gun Laws from the Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Another measure that could reach the governor would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion. Of those polled, 55 percent say they oppose the requirement and 36 percent support it. The House and Senate have passed versions of the legislation."

In January, Romney Spends Nearly Three Times his Haul from CNN
"Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Monday announced raising $6.5 million in January while significantly depleting their resources as his campaign fought to win two of the first four Republican contests. The campaign burned through $18.7 million in January, ending the month with almost $7.7 million on hand and no debt, according to Federal Election Commission findings"

Mitt Romney Campaign Downplays Michigan After Calling It A Must Win (Sam Stein) from the Huffington Post
"A top aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Monday downplayed expectations for next week's Michigan primary, saying Romney, whose father served as Michigan governor, didn't have to notch a win in the state."
WOW!! You have to wonder what their internal polling is showing if their spokesperson is saying this! I have assumed right along that Romney's ad blitz in Michigan would carry the day for him there -- but after this, you have to wonder.

Why Mitt Romney's Presidential Prospects May Not Be Salvageable (Walter Shapiro) from the New Republic
"Even more devastating for Romney is that elite Republicans have begun to conclude that he cannot, if nominated, beat Barack Obama. ... The solution to many problems of political authenticity is for the candidate to abandon the dictates of his handlers and just go with his instincts. The problem for Romney is that the doctrine of “Let Mitt Be Mitt” would probably produce a candidate with the warmth of a business consultant and the inner conviction of a market-based algorithm. In short, hiding behind that Mitt Romney mask is (yikes) another Mitt Romney mask."
FYI: it is my observation that Shapiro is one of the MOST knowledgeable and clear-eyed pundits out there on GOP establishment thinking.

There Will Be No Saviors for the GOP in 2012 (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"Prominent Republicans keep hoping for someone to rescue them from its slate of mediocre candidates. But the party’s biggest problem is the ideological bloodlust of its base."

Mitt Romney's Michigan Problem: Reagan Democrats: Swinging the Reagan Democrats (Andrew Romano) from Newsweek
"Blame the frosty homecoming on the Independent Voters Formerly Known as Reagan Democrats. Economically populist and socially conservative, these blue-collar, largely Catholic, largely unionized workers tend to swing. In 2008 they helped put Barack Obama over the top. In 2010 they returned to the GOP. Now they seem to be recoiling from Romney."

Santorum’s Elite Problem (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"... being loathed by disproportionately influential people is a big problem. ... And of course this is a problem for Santorum not just as a nominee but in getting the nomination in the first place."

Romney Inability to Clear Field Leads to Possibility of Contested Convention, More GOP Names from FOX News
"... could a brokered -- or contested -- convention be in the cards? And could New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels or anyone else come in to save the day? "I don't see how that can happen," Ryan, R-Wis., the chairman of the House Budget Committee, told NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's just too late, I think.""

Some Republicans Whisper About a Plan B from CNN
"In a whispering campaign not ready to go public, some senior Republicans are so anxious about the state of the GOP race they are actually considering the unheard of: a scenario that would lead to another
candidate entering the Republican primary race, and potentially an open convention."

Replacing Mitt? So Much Harder Than It Looks (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"If you’re really a gold standard candidate, you’re going to step in to steer the half-capsized ship coming out of the epic crap-storm of a brokered convention? Really? So not going to happen."

November's Republican conundrum: Can Santorum get beyond GOP base? Can Romney get the GOP base? from Daily Kos
"One reason Republican elders are futilely pounding on Mitch Daniels's door at this late date is Mitt Romney. The other is Rick Santorum. To the elders, each man appears to be parading around with a big "L" for loser-in-November engraved on his forehead."

Paul's Pantry Turns Down Planned Parenthood Food Donation from Fox News 11 [of Green Bay, WI]
"An area Catholic food pantry whose mission is to feed the hungry says no to Planned Parenthood. As part of its Martin Luther King food drive, Planned Parenthood collected 50 pounds of food. It hoped to donate the food to Paul's Pantry. “What was told to me was that they simply said we do not want any food donations from you period,” said Lisa Boyce, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin."

Romney and Obama Vie for Title of Most Charitable; Santorum Gave Least to Charity from the Washington Post
"... when you calculate charitable giving based on adjustable gross income, Obama actually takes a lead. He and Michelle gave 14.2 percent of their AGI, while the Romneys gave 13.8 percent."

Rick Santorum Could Take Republicans Down with Him (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
"Republicans haven’t quite thrown away what they see as a winnable presidential election, at least not yet. But they’re trying their best. In GOP circles, there is more than a whiff of panic in the air. Unemployment is still painfully high, Americans remain dissatisfied with the country’s direction, even the most favorable polls show President Obama’s approval at barely 50 percent — and yet there is a sense that the Republicans’ odds of winning back the White House grow longer day by day."

ADOLF HITLER NUGGET!!
Adolf Hitler Sounds Like a Lousy Date from the Atlantic
"A Frenchman who claimed to be Adolf Hitler's illegitimate son died without being able to prove it, but his lawyer has come forward with a new stack of evidence, including a description of the awkward courtship of a teenage girl and a German corporal during World War I."
Stories like this have come and gone over the years with most of them proving to be total BS. This one seems to have more foundation to it. Hitler's World War I years are the most difficult to untangle -- simply because he lied about them so much later in life. If true, this would certainly add an interesting dimension to that period. It seems to me that there should be away to prove something here if some dna analysis could be brought to bare.

News Nuggets 888

2012-02-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: How do you imagine complex numbers? Apparently, colors help. In this award-winning illustration, complex numbers (combinations of real and imaginary numbers) are given different colors, zeros are represented by black spots and singularities (which approach infinity) are represented by white spots. Beats me what it all means -- but the picture sure looks interesting. From Smithsonian Magazine.

Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets from the New York Times
"Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes."

Rising Democracies Take on Russia and China (Ted Piccone, Emily Alinikoff) from the National Interest
"Russia and China are increasingly isolating themselves from a widening consensus that human-rights violations demand an international response. In one corner, established and newer democracies, more attuned to their voters at home, are under pressure to support movements for universal rights. In the opposite corner, China and Russia are silencing domestic dissent at home while trying to prop up comparable autocrats abroad."

Navy SEALs: Obama’s Secret Army (Daniel Klaidman) from Newsweek
"At a time when many Americans think their government is inept, the ‘Special Operators’ get the job done. Just ask the President, who is doubling down on the Navy SEALs."

Afghan Textbooks to Cut Out Much of the Country's Post-1973 History (Isobel Coleman) from the Atlantic
"Education has been one of Afghanistan's few bright spots since the Taliban fell, but the government is taking a big step backward."

Greece Must Default if it Wants Democracy (Wolfgang Münchau) from the Financial Times [of the UK]
"When Wolfgang Schäuble proposed that Greece should postpone its elections as a condition for further help, I knew that the game would soon be up. We are at the point where success is no longer compatible with democracy. The German finance minister wants to prevent a “wrong” democratic choice. Similar to this is the suggestion to let the elections go ahead, but to have a grand coalition irrespective of the outcome. The eurozone wants to impose its choice of government on Greece – the eurozone’s first colony."
A very interesting take on the Greek debt crisis!

The Way Greeks Live Now from the Sunday New York Times Magazine
"At some point, I asked Hadjigeorgiou how the crisis was affecting him personally. Life was getting difficult, he acknowledged. Then, prodded a bit more, he mentioned that he had not been paid by his newspaper, the major left-leaning daily, in four months. Nor had any of his colleagues at the paper. "

Pain Without Gain (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"Last week the European Commission confirmed what everyone suspected: the economies it surveys are shrinking, not growing. It's not an official recession yet, but the only real question is how deep the downturn will be. — And this downturn is hitting nations that have never recovered from the last recession."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stepping Down in 2015 from United Press International
"Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will step down from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 to give President Obama, putatively in his second term, a chance to name a liberal as her successor."
Why 2015? If you wanted Obama to name your successor, you should have stepped down last year, not three years from now. What if Romney wins in November? My guess: you'll stick around until 2017.

Ideological Hypocrites (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"When we talk about hypocrisy in politics, we usually highlight personal behavior. The multiply-married politician who proclaims "family values" while also having affairs is now a rather dreary stock figure in our campaign narratives. But the hypocrisy that matters far more is the gap between ideology and practice that has reached a crisis point in American conservatism."

Two Charts That Should Terrify Republicans from Talking Points Memo
"If Republicans seem spooked to you these days, here’s why. President Obama’s political comeback over the past several months aligns neatly with when he began more aggressively attacking the GOP and politicking for economic growth and equality back in September. But over that same stretch, the economy began moving in the right direction. "

DeWine: 'Abundantly Clear' Romney Would Lose to Obama (Michael Warren) from the Weekly Standard
"“When I endorsed Governor Romney, I thought he was the best candidate to beat Barack Obama. As this campaign has played out, it is abundantly clear he is not, and I believe he [would] lose in November,”"

The Trouble With Mitt (Ben Domenech) from Ricochet
"By demanding an ideological shift from a more populist, more fiscally conservative base they no longer direct or control, Romney’s most prominent backers failed to learn any of the right lessons from what led to the 2009-2010 cycles. They failed to realize that the base expected more from a candidate, from a leader, than the politics and policy of the past. "

A GOP Nightmare Scenario (Jonathan Bernstein) from the Washington Post
"...the possibility of a long- drawn-out struggle raises another possibility — a GOP nightmare scenario — that has gone unexplored. Specifically: What if Santorum wins the bulk of contested primaries and caucuses and leads in national opinion polls — but Mitt Romney wins the nomination? If that happens, the general election could get a whole lot tougher for him."

Are Republicans Looking for a New Candidate? (Daniel Politi) from Slate
"If Romney loses Michigan GOP leaders will be scrambling to find a "Hail Mary" contender."

What? Me Worry? (David Weigel) from Slate
"It’s too early to say who will win in November. But Republicans increasingly seem to think it won’t be them."

Here’s How the GOP Presidential Race Blows Up, and a New Candidate Comes on the Scene (James Pethokoukis) from the Enterprise blog at the American Enterprise Institute
"A tippy-top Republican, unprompted, yesterday sketched the germ of a plan for a new candidate if Rick Santorum upsets Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Feb. 28. ... Our friend said: “If somebody came on the scene that week after Super Tuesday with, ‘I’m coming in. I’m taking a look at this,’ there are enough delegates. He would suck all the oxygen out of the race. People wouldn’t even give a shit who won on these other dates in March that are after Super Tuesday. I mean, seriously, who would care? It would all be about a new savior.”"
Bzzzt!! Whoever this "friend" is, is working off of yesteryear's playbook. "Who would care?" ALL of those voters and volunteers who have been working, voting and becoming invested in the race as it is configured. The idea that some beltway fixers will be able to swoop in at some point and effectively nullify the results up to that point is sheer fantasy -- particularly given the anti-establishment mood of many GOP voters. Its only effects would be to send another train into the wreck -- and to severely burn a potential GOP candidate who may have excellent chances in 2016. What do they think -- that Romney and the others will just quietly go away and not fight tooth and nail against any late entrants? I could be wrong but if I were Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, or Marco Rubio or some other "serious" contender, WHY would you throw the dice in this election cycle when 2016 (with no incumbent to face) would be so much easier and cleaner? Rick Perry's experience should serve as a clarion call for caution to all potential "saviors." In 2016, they would have the opportunity to plan and build a real campaign. As Hillary, Obama, and Romney's experience show, it takes years to build an effective campaign. You can't do it on the fly. The only ones who might seriously consider this prospect are more second- and third-rate candidates like the ones that have already thrown in their hats for this primary season. Quick! Get Tim Pawlenty on the phone!!

Is Santorum the Sharon Angle of 2012? (Jennifer Rubin) from the Washington Post
"Two stories surfaced last week that amount to a loud vote of no confidence in Rick Santorum as the GOP nominee. ABC News reports that a top Republican senator wants a new choice if Santorum wins Michigan. Why? ‘He’d lose 35 states,’ the senator said, predicting the same fate for Newt Gingrich.”"

Rick Santorum and the Politics of Theology (David Firestone) from the New York Times
"In Mr. Santorum's eyes, unless you adopt his particularly Christian theology, you can't be his kind of president."

Rick Santorum Plays Hard to Conservative Base in Ohio from the Los Angeles Times
"As he bounded from one cheering throng to the next in the battleground state of Ohio, Rick Santorum roused his conservative base Saturday..."

Mitt Romney Goes on Attack as Rick Santorum Improves in Polls from the Los Angeles Times
"Mitt Romney launched an aggressive assault on Rick Santorum in person and over the airwaves Friday even as fresh evidence emerged of how momentum had shifted in the Republican presidential race..."

Michigan Race Tightens, But Mitt Romney Is Still In Trouble from Talking Points Memo
"...it seems as though Romney’s extreme number of flip-flops on everything from abortion to his embrace of Republican icon President Ronald Reagan, have done more than that just inflict near-term damage — it’s created a very soft image of Romney’s conservative credentials in GOP voters’ minds."

GOP Candidates Romney, Santorum Appeal to Fringe Voters from the Editorial Board of the Detroit Free Press
"... if it sounds as if everything Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have been saying in metro Detroit this week is calculated to appeal to the most extreme fringe of their party, it’s because that’s who’ll most likely decide their fate next week Tuesday. The risks inherent in this shortsighted strategy are self-evident."

BAD BREAKDOWN NUGGET!!
Newt Gingrich’s Bus Breaks Down in West Hollywood from lgbtpov.com
"The presidential hopeful who recently called gay marriage a “perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism,” set off a Boystown brouhaha last night when his Newt 2012 campaign bus broke down in West Hollywood."
You can't make this stuff up! Also, just as an aside: what was Newt doing in West Hollywood?

TV DOCUMENTARY NUGGET!!
Bill Clinton’s Life Splendidly Chronicled by PBS’s ‘American Experience' (Lloyd Grove) from the Daily Beast
"A New PBS documentary shrewdly examines the ex-president’s penchant for rising, falling, and endlessly resurrecting himself."

OBAMA BOOK REVIEW NUGGET!!
The First Marriage: A Review of The Obamas, by Jodi Kantor (Douglas Brinkley) from the New York Times
"The difference when a head of state's spouse performs an advisory role is that both the content and its consequences resonate through a lot more than one household. And that's the point of Jodi Kantor's new book, The Obamas. Call it chick nonfiction, if you will; this book is not about politics, it's about marriage, or at least one marriage, and a notably successful one at that."

News Nuggets 887

2012-02-19T01:07:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A lighted picture of the late dictator Kim il Sung is all that illuminates this view of Pyongyang in North Korea. From National Geographic.

TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!

1. Is Iran Behind the Death of its Own Scientists? from Commentary Magazine
"As Potkin Azarmehr, a brilliant Iranian blogger and journalist based in the UK suggests, the hand behind the assassinations in Iran may just as likely be the regime’s. Potkin reviews the four hits and offers some useful insights on why the four individuals were unlikely to be targets for Israel but may have been likely targets for the regime:..."

2. Where China Isn't Winning (David Lundquist) from the National Interest
"Beijing may be poised to overtake Washington economically, but the sorry state of Chinese universities will hold the country back."

3. Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It from the New York Times
"He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman. Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice."

4. Nattering Nabobs of Negativism (Dana Milbank) from the Washington Post
“How many of you,” Scott Rasmussen asked the crowd at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, “have ever mocked or made fun of the president’s call for hope and change? Raise your hands.” Most people in the Marriott Wardman Park hotel ballroom raised their hands. There were cheers and whoops. “With all due respect,” the conservative pollster and commentator told them, “I’d like to say that’s really stupid.” This time, there was uncomfortable laughter. “Voters are looking for hope and change as much today as they were in 2008,” Rasmussen explained, and “you ought to be encouraging Republican candidates, people you support, to offer that positive step forward.”

5. The Electoral Wasteland (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times
"It's stunning how little the current Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States."

6. Poll: New Phase and Shifting Balance from Democracy Corps
"This survey sees a collapse of the Republican brand at almost all levels. Negatives associated with the Republican Party have not been this high since right after they lost the country in 2008. ... These results may not simply be the result of a spot of good economic news and rough news cycles for Republican nominees, but the beginning of long-term structural changes that will characterize the 2012 election cycle. .... The Republican brand is in a state of collapse – over 50 percent of voters give the Republican Party a cool, negative rating. The presidential race and the congressional battles are interacting with each other to drive down their lead candidate, the party, and perceptions of the congressional Republicans."

7. New Rules (Bill Maher) from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher
Scroll down to the "final rule":
"You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is Barack X. And he's an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who is coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worse yet, Saul Alinsky! And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But, now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. "

8. Romney Bid Rocked by Voters Shredding Rulebook (Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Tackett) from the Bloomberg News Service
"“Through very little fault of his own, Romney is the front-runner, but he’s probably the weakest Republican front- runner in the history of the party,” said Dan Schnur, an aide on Senator John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid ... “He just had the bad timing to run for president at a time when the party establishment had much less influence over the nominating process,” Schnur said. The strength of political parties is being undercut as the full impact of the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L) Citizens United case is being felt for the first time."

9. Is Romney Going To Run Out Of Money? (Zeke Miller) from BuzzFeed
"Santorum goes to the small-donor well, but Romney may have to dip into his own pockets to survive the long haul. Looking “under every stone.”"

10. The Front-Runner’s Missing Magic (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"At CPAC, he mentioned the soul of America, the durability of the Constitution, the perfidy of taxes, the evil of Planned Parenthood: boilerplate, all of it. It’s sometimes as if he’s trying to run out the clock — on the primary season as well as the event in question — before anyone seriously questions the front-runner status that was handed to him early on."

Now, for the regular news nuggets for Sunday, February 19th.

UP-FRONT POLITICS & GENDER NUGGET!!
A withering, on-target missile sent at the sudden turn towards gender issues that the GOP has taken over the last two weeks.
Right Wingers Go Wild Against Women Around the Country (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"This isn’t politics. It’s not even theology... And it’s most certainly not morality. It’s quite the opposite of morality. It’s a consequence of a mindset that equates compromise with capitulation, that insists on purity, that attempts to abuse the tools of democracy to secure anti-democratic outcomes, and that is driven by rage against modernity. And it’s hardly an accident that all these forces come together to assume their foulest shape against women."

ALSO UP-FRONT JUDICIAL NUGGET!!
Two Justices Suggest Citizens United Ruling Should be Reconsidered in Montana Case from the Washington Post
"In Friday’s order, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer said the upheaval in the world of campaign finance since the Citizens United decision does not bear out the majority opinion."
I suspect the thing that will turn one of the GOP justices on this case is what's happening in the GOP primaries: utter chaos because the likes of Gingrich and Santorum (two candidates who under normal circumstances would be forced out due to lack of resources) are able to stay competitive and even inflict MAJOR damage on the "establishment" candidate because of one or two well-heeled sugar daddies who, because of Citizens United, can simply continue to throw money at their favorite nut.

The Iranian Leadership’s Precarious Grasp on Power (David Frum) from the National Post [of Canada]
"In its fear, the regime reaches out to kill, ordering terror attacks against the Saudi ambassador to the United States and — most recently — against Israeli diplomats in India, Thailand and Georgia. Yet these plots have mostly gone awry, suggesting a serious weakening of Iran’s
international terror capacities. At home, though, the frightened and unpopular regime has turned deadlier than ever. It murders in hopes of intimidating, and it intimidates because it has lost all legitimacy."

America's Youth Uprising (John Nichols) from the Nation
"The renewal of labor militancy and radical politics is being led by a rising generation with its own rock-and-rap passion."

In Polls, Obama Wins on Contraception Compromise, Catholics Hold Steady (Douglas Schoen) from the Daily Beast
"Despite the outcry from bishops and Republicans, polls show the president’s contraception compromise has the approval of voters. Why is the GOP ignoring the numbers?"

Is the 2012 Republican Primary Just Like the 2008 Democratic Primary? (Jesse Contario) from the Huffington Post
"Republicans like to say their current primary fight is "just like" the 2008 primary between Obama and Clinton -- but it's just wishful thinking. Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Michele Bachmann and others think a bruising battle toughens the victor, and is "just like" the Obama-Clinton race in 2008. But there are important differences between the two elections, some that may create difficulties for the eventual GOP nominee."

Republicans and the Culture Wars: Why It Won't Work This Year (Michelle Cottle) from the Daily Beast
"Not long ago, Republicans could turn to issues like guns and gays when the going got tough. But Michelle Cottle says none of today's candidates has the makings of a culture warrior."

On the same topic:
Never Fight a Culture War on the Internet (Jen Doll) from the Atlantic
"Maybe the GOP (or more specifically, certain members of the party) returned to the '50s in just one day, but the rest of us haven't. Beyond the obvious social and cultural shifts of the last 60 years, there is one major factor: the Internet."

When Do Political Rules No Longer Apply? (Stuart Rothenberg) from Roll Call
"Traditionally, there are “rules” that apply in politics as well. But this year, things seem different. They don’t seem to apply, which is a problem for those of us who look at the past to understand the present and to project future outcomes."

D’oh! Romney’s Auto-Bailout Dance Enrages Tea Party Too from Talking Points Memo
"Mitt Romney is stuck in the worst possible position this week in Michigan when it comes to the auto bailout. On the one hand, he’s being pilloried by both Democrats and the local press for his confusing criticism of the federal intervention that rescued the auto industry. On the other hand, his claim that he would have rescued Detroit too — maybe even with similar measures! — is drawing jeers from conservatives as well. "

Rick Santorum: Will Women Vote for Him? from Politico
"After hammering away for a year at the message that Republicans are indifferent to women’s health and economic well-being, President Barack Obama’s party has been handed a nearly perfect political punching bag in the former Pennsylvania senator, whose down-the-line cultural conservatism is a major selling point in the 2012 primaries."

EDUCATION NUGGET!!
Enrichment Classes Don’t Offer Credit, But They Can Change Lives from the Washington Post
"Personal enrichment education — instruction for fun or self-improvement in a nonacademic setting — is booming. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “self-enrichment education teacher” is one of the 30 fastest-growing occupations, with employment projected to rise from about 254,000 in 2008 to almost 335,000 in 2018, a 32 percent increase. The same economic factors behind an increase in job-specific education are fueling demand for enrichment classes, says Julie Coates, vice president for membership services at the Learning Resources Network, an international association of lifelong learning programs based in River Falls, Wis."

News Nuggets 886

2012-02-18T06:31:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: The Cascade Room in Dan's Cave near Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. From National Geographic.

Thousands Protest Across Syria, Hail 'Resistance' from CNN
"Thousands of Syrians defied their government's relentless, bloody crackdown by staging hundreds of public protests Friday in cities nationwide."
What brave people. What else can you say.

Russia 'Bloodthirsty' and China 'Misguided' for Vetoing Syria Action (Editorial) from Al-Seyassah [of Kuwait in English]
"It is a truism to say that Russia has never bet on a winning horse. But sad to say, the most painful turn of events has been the conversion of China - an emerging economic and demographic power - into the acolyte of a mafia-controlled country. Has Beijing also lost its global compass, has it failed to see the rivers of blood flowing in Syria, or is this simply a case of dictators flocking together?""
An interesting third-party perspective on China and Russia's positions in the "world order."

Iran's Offer to Talk About Its Nuclear Program Eases Tension For Now (Michael Adler) from the Daily Beast
"Does Iran mean business with its offer to discuss its nuclear program, or is it merely trying to buy time against increasingly tough economic sanctions and a possible escalation towards war?"
The problem Iran faces now is that they have ZERO credibility with the international community -- and they have shown a remarkable proclivity (using the language of international diplomacy) for "dicking around."

Why Iran Thinks it Needs the Bomb (Ray Takeyh) from the Washington Post
"The key to unraveling the Islamic republic lies in understanding Iran’s perception of itself. More than any other Middle Eastern nation, Iran has always imagined itself as the natural hegemon of its neighborhood. ... Under the auspices of an austere and dogmatic supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a “war generation” is taking control in Iran — young rightists who were molded by the prolonged war with Iraq in the 1980s"

Supreme Court Blocks Montana Campaign Finance Ban from the Huffington Post
"The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the Montana Supreme Court's decision upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending. The ruling Friday evening sets up a possible full-blown U.S. Supreme Court rematch over the 2010 Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited corporate campaign spending."

Harry Reid Will Ask Obama To Recess Appoint All Nominees If GOP Delays Continue from the Huffington Post
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) fired a warning shot to Republicans on Friday: Stop blocking President Barack Obama's executive branch nominees or I'll ask him to bypass the Senate and recess appoint all of them."

Why Not Frack? Reviews of The End of Country by Seamus McGraw, Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale by Tom Wilber, and Gasland (Bill McKibben) from the New York Review of Books
"Because of the potential profits, the agents of various companies have fanned out across the back roads of the region in a remarkable land rush, seeking to lock up drilling rights on the hitherto not-very-valuable acreage of marginal dairy farms and cut-over woodlots. The two books under review tell the story of that land rush."

Obama’s Not Entirely Accidental Comeback (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"The question hovering over both accounts is what explains, and what we can learn from, Obama’s changing posture. Was he played for a sucker? Was it all a plan? ... I’ve always believed that Obama’s habit of extending his hand, and thus exposing bad-faith claims, is the essence of his political style."

‘Where Are The Women?’ Democrats Go On Offense Over Contraception from Talking Points Memo
"Democrats have a new rallying cry when it comes to the Obama administration’s hotly contested contraception rule. Thursday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) gazed an all male panel at yesterday’s House Oversight hearing and asked, “Where are the women?” The question is being repeated by Democrats and women’s rights groups as they attempt to shape the narrative of the contraception issue."

Contraception’s Con Men (Garry Wills) from the New York Review of Books
"By a revolting combination of con men and fanatics, the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office. ... Omnidirectional bad-faith arguments have clustered around what is falsely presented as a defense of “faith.” The layers of ignorance are equaled only by the willingness of people “of all faiths” to use them for their own purposes. Consider just some of the layers:..."

Why Do They Do It? (Jonathan Bernstein) from the Washington Post
"Despite polling that should have warned them off against embracing the birth control flap, Republicans have charged full on into electoral catastrophe. But this most recent episode is part of a broader pattern of embracing unpopular positions, despite obvious risks: Medicare, the payroll tax cut debacle, and the debt ceiling mess. Why are they doing it? Why would a political party choose to risk disaster?"

Will the Tea Get Cold? (Sam Tanenhaus) from the New York Review of Books
"The authors put the national total of “very active grassroots participants” at 200,000—a tiny fraction of those said to be “strong” supporters and less than a third of a single average-sized congressional district. It is, in other words, not a mass movement at all, and it appears to be losing steam. Even in congressional districts in which Tea Party–backed candidates won in 2010, enthusiasm has waned."

Romney Bid Rocked by Voters Shredding Rulebook from the Bloomberg News Service
"Labeled a front-runner early, he now finds himself getting weaker rather than stronger, raising a prospect unthinkable only two weeks ago: He could lose. The conventions that have defined the primary process for the last 40 years have been turned inside out, and Romney’s fortunes have fallen."

Romney Straining to Get to the Right of Genghis Khan (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"“Mitt Romney wants to manage Washington, D.C.,” he told an enthusiastic crowd in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I want to burn it to the ground, slay its inhabitants, and stack their skulls in pyramids reaching to the sky.” Romney’s advisers privately fret that such sharp rhetoric may play badly with upscale suburban swing voters in a general election. Their dilemma is that they cannot attack Genghis’s often harsh positions without reinforcing doubts about Romney’s own right-wing bona fides."

Can Romney Find a Way to Connect with GOP Voters? (Karen Tumulty) from the Washington Post
"So why is he having so much trouble making the sale with the Republican electorate? Many of his allies and supporters are increasingly worried that the problem is Romney himself. Until now, Romney and his well-financed allies have been able to dispatch any opponent who presents a threat by drowning the potential usurper with negative advertising. But the fact that a new one emerges each time he vanquishes another betrays the existence of a deeper discontent with Romney himself."

Romney Camp Blindsided By DeWine's Betrayal from BuzzFeed
"Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's decision to withdraw his support from Mitt Romney and throw it behind Rick Santorum didn't just come as a shock to pundits and politicos watching the Republican primary—it appears to have blindsided the Romney campaign itself."

Santorum’s Gospel of Inequality (Charles Blow) from the New York Times
"Rick Santorum is becoming increasingly unhinged in his public comments. Just look at some of the things he has said recently."

Santorum’s Surge Holds Steady So Far (Nate Silver) from the New York Times
"Ten days after Rick Santorum's surprisingly strong wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses, there is no sign that his surge in the national polls is abating."

SCHOOL REFORM NUGGET!!
Schools We Can Envy: A Review of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? by Pasi Sahlberg (Diane Ravitch) from the New York Review of Books
"The “no excuses” reformers maintain that all children can attain academic proficiency without regard to poverty, disability, or other conditions, and that someone must be held accountable if they do not. That someone is invariably their teachers. ... Faced with the relentless campaign against teachers and public education, educators have sought a different narrative, one free of the stigmatization by test scores and punishment favored by the corporate reformers. They have found it in Finland."

CLASSIC DISNEY SEND-UP NUGGET!!
Disney's 'Heartwarming' Live-Action The Lady and the Tramp trailer from The Week
"The scene that elevated sloppy spaghetti eating to a romantic ideal gets a real-life update."
It just goes to show that simple can be simply HILARIOUS! Check out the video.

PRESIDENT'S DAY NUGGET!!
Five Myths about the Presidency (Aaron David Miller) from the Washington Post
"As we prepare to celebrate Presidents’ Day, let’s correct some common misconceptions about the job and the people who have held it."
As a historian, I don't completely buy every one of these statements -- but it is interesting and, for the most part, on the mark.

News Nuggets 885

2012-02-17T06:42:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Divers exploring the Hang Ken Cave far below Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam. The newly discovered cave is the world's biggest cave passage—up to 66 stories tall.

UP-FRONT POLLING NUGGET!!
Poll: New Phase and Shifting Balance from Democracy Corps
"This survey sees a collapse of the Republican brand at almost all levels. Negatives associated with the Republican Party have not been this high since right after they lost the country in 2008. ... These results may not simply be the result of a spot of good economic news and rough news cycles for Republican nominees, but the beginning of long-term structural changes that will characterize the 2012 election cycle. .... The Republican brand is in a state of collapse – over 50 percent of voters give the Republican Party a cool, negative rating. The presidential race and the congressional battles are interacting with each other to drive down their lead candidate, the party, and perceptions of the congressional Republicans."
Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos comments on this poll HERE.

Is Iran Behind the Death of its Own Scientists? from Commentary Magazine
"As Potkin Azarmehr, a brilliant Iranian blogger and journalist based in the UK suggests, the hand behind the assassinations in Iran may just as likely be the regime’s. Potkin reviews the four hits and offers some useful insights on why the four individuals were unlikely to be targets for Israel but may have been likely targets for the regime:..."
While this analyst is too quick in my view to dismiss the possibility of Israel's role, I have LONG suspected that it was the Iranians themselves that were largely responsible for the offing of many of their "scientists". Interesting evidence for it here.

How History Lessons Could Deter Iranian Aggression (Fareed Zakaria) from the Washington Post
"We are hearing a new concept these days in discussions about Iran — the zone of immunity. The idea, often explained by Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, is that soon Iran will have enough nuclear capability that Israel would not be able to inflict a crippling blow to its program. In fact, while the specifics are fresh, this is not a new strategic concept at all. Nations have often believed that they face a closing window to act, and almost always such thinking has led to disaster."

Where China Isn't Winning (David Lundquist) from the National Interest
"Beijing may be poised to overtake Washington economically, but the sorry state of Chinese universities will hold the country back."

Greek Exodus: Workers Flee to Canada and Australia (Barbie Latza Nadeau) from the Daily Beast
"Forget austerity. Thousands of Greeks, hung out to dry by the EU’s bailout requirements, are fleeing in record numbers—as far away as Canada and Australia. Barbie Latza Nadeau reports."

Jobless Claims Keep Falling; Inflation Pressure Still Low from CNBC
"New jobless claims took an unexpected dip last week, while producer prices presented a mixed but still relatively tame inflation picture, according to government data released Thursday."

Moochers Against Welfare (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"There is a strange redness to America’s safety net. Why do the regions that need the helping hand elect politicians who want to tear it down?"

House Democrats Walk Out Of One-Sided Hearing On Contraception, Calling It An 'Autocratic Regime' from the Huffington Post
"Three Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control rule on Thursday to protest Chairman Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) refusal to allow a progressive woman to testify in favor of the Obama administration's contraception rule. The morning panel at the hearing consisted exclusively of men from conservative religious organizations."

Is Contraceptive Debate GOP’s New ‘Terry Schiavo Moment’? (Michelle Goldberg) from the Daily Beast
"The GOP just can’t quit when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. But now polls are showing that the all-out assault may backfire come November."

What are Republicans Thinking? (Irwin Carmon) from Salon
"The continuing obsession with limiting contraceptive access shows how out of touch GOP politicians are."

The High Price of the Hard Right Turn (David Frum) from the Daily Beast
"Republican strategy over the past 2 years has been premised on the assumption that President Obama is so hopelessly weakened that the GOP needn't bother addressing centrist voters at all. That was never a very plausible assumption, and now Ron Brownstein has the data to suggest that beyond "implausible," the assumption is outright wrong. ... Whether it is the Ryan plan or the debt ceiling showdown or—now—contraception, Republicans have spent three years talking to themselves. It has been a narcissistic self-indulgence—and may soon prove a very costly one as well."
Brownstein's article is HERE.

OUR PUNDIT-OF-THE-DAY!!
The Electoral Wasteland (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times
Every line of this column is DEAD-ON in describing the GOP primaries and the voters who are showing up!!
"It's stunning how little the current Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States."

Obama Continues to Box In His Opposition (Bob Burns) from Salon
"Nothing could more obvious – and to a progressive, encouraging. Barack Obama has managed, particularly since the disaster of the 2010 midterm elections, to box in the GOP into narrower and narrower confines. And in doing so he has opened up a 15 point lead in some polls over his likely challenger, the erstwhile “severely conservative” Mitt Romney. Obama, by luck or design, is beginning to stand out as the only sane guy in the room."

Obama Up Big in Michigan from Public Policy Polling
"Michigan is looking more and more like it won't be in the swing state column this fall. PPP's newest poll there finds Barack Obama leading the entire Republican field by double digits."

The Long Slog: Projecting the Republican Race Through June (Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley) from the University of Virginia Center for Politics
"Electorally, therefore, Santorum appears to have two things in his favor as he tries to build on his stunning rise over the past week and a half. First, religious conservatives, a key demographic in many forthcoming state contests, love him. Second, he is not Mitt Romney and has become the leading “not-Romney” candidate, an odd title that has determined a large chunk of the nominating battle so far. There are 15 states, mainly Southern, where more than 30% of the population is part of the
“Evangelical/Protestant Tradition,”"

The GOP’s Chaotic Primary Calendar Makes Early Nomination Clinch Tough (John Avlon) from the Daily Beast
"The party’s primary schedule makes it unlikely that a candidate will amass the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination before late May or even June, ensuring a bloody primary battle—and even raising the possibility of a brokered convention."

Poor, White and Republican (George Packer) from the New Yorker
"Perhaps the biggest political puzzle of our time is why, as the lives of working-class whites have descended from the stability and comfort of “All in the Family” to the chaos and despair of “Gran Torino” and “Winter’s Bone,” these same Americans have voted more and more reliably Republican. ... Gulbranson’s moment of hesitation contains a certain explanatory power. He doesn’t want to say that he can’t live without government."

Romney Struggling to Attract White Working Class (Alan Fram) from the Associated Press
"Republican Mitt Romney is faltering with white working-class voters crucial to his party's drive to capture the White House, even as he tries to fend off a rising GOP challenger, Rick Santorum, who wields strong blue-collar appeal."

Rick Santorum’s Lucky Culture War Over Contraception (Kristen Powers) form the Daily Beast
"With pivotal primaries coming up, Santorum is riding high on a wave of conservative protests against Obama’s contraception mandate—an issue that’s kryptonite for Romney. Plus, Caitlin Dickson on the GOP's push to overturn Obama’s contraception compromise."

Conservative Pundits Find Romney Disengaged, and Say That’s Puzzling from the New York Times
"From the television studios of Fox News to the pages of The Weekly Standard, the refrain of the conservative opinion machine is virtually the same: Mitt Romney doesn’t talk to us, doesn’t get us. “There’s actually a cultural disconnect between a lot of conservative thought leaders and Mitt Romney,” said Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”"
"Thought leaders"? Am I wrong or is that a term used exclusively by right-wingers? I never hear anyone else use that term to describe specific branches of the punditocracy, left, right or center. It has always struck me as a term that Chairman Mao would have used when he strategized about how to manipulate "the masses." or which next group of intellectuals he was going to send to the gulag.

How Mitt’s Emotion Deficit is Doing Him In Among Republicans (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"Romney isn’t sinking because of the flip-flops. He’s sinking because of his robotic reasonableness. Michael Tomasky on how Mitt became the Al Gore of the GOP."

Can I Get on the Mormon “Do Not Baptize” List? (Forrest Wickman) from Slate
"How to avoid being baptized after you’re dead"

TRAGIC JOURNALISM NEWS!!
At Work in Syria, Times Reporter Dies from the New York Times
"Anthony Shadid, center, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict, died, apparently of an asthma attack."
Terrible news! Shadid was an awesome reporter on all things relating to conflicts in the Middle East. His obituary is HERE.

News Nuggets 884

2012-02-16T00:32:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: African buffalo in Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda. From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT ROMNEY CAMPAIGN NUGGET!!
Is Romney Going To Run Out Of Money? (Zeke Miller) from BuzzFeed
"Santorum goes to the small-donor well, but Romney may have to dip into his own pockets to survive the long haul. Looking “under every stone.”"
Interesting. I had assumed right along that Romney's coffers were just brimming with cash -- particularly when you look at how much he spent in Florida and he seems to be preparing to spend in Michigan. This article suggests that the coffers are NOT getting replenished at nearly the rate they need to be. EVERY paragraph in this item (if true) bespeaks a campaign that will be in deep trouble if the primary season goes long. The Washington Post covers the same topic here.

Aggressive Acts by Iran Signal Pressure on Its Leadership from the New York Times
"A flurry of actions and statements by Iran this week suggest its leaders are responding frantically, and more unpredictably, to the tightening of sanctions by the West."

Beating History: Why Today's Rising Powers Can't Copy the West (Heather Horn) from the Atlantic
"If BRICs want to grow as rich as today's powers, they'll have to find a new model, because the Industrial Revolution could only happen once."

Citizens United Part II: Montana Supreme Court Collides With U.S. Supreme Court (Mike Sacks) from the Huffington Post
"The fate of Montana's century-old ban on corporate political spending is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a possible sequel to the hotly contested Citizens United decision handed down two years ago. In 2010, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations' independent spending in elections does not corrupt -- or even appear to corrupt -- the political process. On Wednesday, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock submitted a brief to the Court with facts that suggest otherwise as he urged the justices to uphold his state's ban on corporate political spending."
Now, wouldn't it be something if just two years of experience with Citizens United could persuade one or more justices to flip on this decision and strike Citizens United down! Something devoutly to be wished!

Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science from the New York Times
"Disclosed files from the nonprofit Heartland Institute outline a plan to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, and they identify some corporate donors."

Obama Winning His War on Coal from the Editorial Board of the Intelligencer, Wheeling News-Register [of West Virginia]
This is a very right-wing paper, a total mouthpiece for the coal industry -- so I take their bitching here as a sign that Obama is making some real progress here on the elimination of coal-fired power plants.
"Time may already have run out for Americans to defeat President Barack Obama in his war against the coal industry. Many utility companies already have run up the white flag. ... A few weeks ago it was revealed at least 32 coal-fired power plants in 12 states, including West Virginia and Ohio, would be closed so utility companies could comply with the Obama administration's air pollution regulations."

President Obama Birth Control Compromise Divides Catholic Leaders (Laura Bassett) from the Huffington Post
"... prominent progressive Catholics broke with Catholic bishops and Republican lawmakers on the issue Wednesday, saying Obama had won them over when he revised the rules to allow faith-based institutions to opt out of providing the coverage."

Obama Is Reassembling the Coalition That Swept Him to Victory (Ronald Brownstein) from the Atlantic
"If the president maintains his support in key demographics, Mitt Romney would be in serious trouble in a head-to-head matchup."

2008 Obama Coalition Returning (Ed Kilgore) from the Washington Monthly
"...the latest general election (he especially utilizes Pew’s) polls show Obama hitting his marks among element after element of his 2008 coalition to a degree that is truly remarkable, at least in a trial heat against Mitt Romney."

Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent (Nate Silver) from the New York Times
"The last time I considered Barack Obama’s re-election chances in this magazine, in mid-November, things were looking pretty bleak for the president. The statistical model I used measured three key factors — a president’s approval rating, economic growth and the ideological orientation of his opponent — and taken together, they showed that Obama had become a slight underdog to win re-election. Three months later, his position is much stronger."

Fox News 'Course Correction' Rankles Some from Politico
"The grumblers were picking up on a strategy that has been under way for some time — a “course correction,” as Fox chief Roger Ailes put it last fall — with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency. Lately, Fox has increasingly promoted its straight-news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and debates of the Republican primary season. Just last week, it hired the openly gay liberal activist Sally Kohn as a contributor. All along, Fox watchers warned that it risked alienating conservative true believers as it inched toward the center. Well, consider them alienated."
IF FOX is moving to the center (and I am not convinced that it is), it may have something to do with a story I heard last year about a growing conundrum Roger Ailes began to perceive as the Tea Party really began throwing its weight around: namely that the conservative counter-narrative that FOX News was helping to sustain was becoming so at-variance with REALITY that FOX anchors were increasingly looking ridiculous and GOP candidates running for office were finding it harder and harder to sustain counter-narrative fictions and not sound like complete looney tunes when it came time to compete in general elections. Ailes still has the same goal: to help the GOP triumph over the Dems, but now sees perhaps that he can't continue to feed the most radical right-wing elements without actually damaging the very party he's trying to support. Too late, dude. Damage done.

Sweet Home Michigan? (Chuck Todd et al.,) from MSNBC
"Either Michigan is the place where he rights his campaign's ship and continues his methodical march to the nomination. Or it’s the place -- because of all the advantages he enjoys in the state -- where we all realize he might not recover to become the GOP nominee. (And trust us, if Romney loses Michigan, the GOP noise about finding a new candidate will become deafening.) That's what's at stake in Michigan two weeks from now. There’s no overstating the importance of this race."
And there he is in Michigan blasting the auto bailout in an effort to win over the Tea Partiers! I would be a surprise if this strategy actually works.

Michigan: A Firewall for Romney—or the Bonfire of His Hopes? (Molly Ball) from the Atlantic
"Mitt Romney's supporters believe there's no way he'll lose his home state. But Rick Santorum sees an opportunity to topple a fragile front-runner."

The GOP’s Emerging Bob Dole Problem (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"The last Republican to take on a Democratic president never recovered from his primary season wounds."

Mitt Romney, the Inevitable and Unelectable Man (Dan Kennedy) from the Huffington Post
"From the start, Romney's candidacy has been defined by two dynamics. On the one hand, there's little doubt that he is absolutely unacceptable to right-wing Republicans, which is to say the people who actually comprise a majority of activists in the nominating process. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time a serious candidate for national office such as Romney was lucky enough to run against such a weak field of competitors."

Mitt Romney's Car Wreck in Michigan (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"Mitt Romney, son of Michigan, is trying to speed away from a car wreck of an issue. So far, it’s not working. With the Michigan primary coming up on Feb. 28, Romney was thought to be the favorite in a state where his father was not just governor but a top auto executive. But there’s this teensy problem of a New York Times op-ed piece that Mitt wrote in 2008 after Barack Obama was elected, headlined: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”"
HOW MANY TIMES have we seen this election cycle where GOP candidates have embraced at some point the everything-Obama-has-done-is-wrong-and-evil meme -- only to have to later retreat or simply pretend they never said such things. Here's Romney in Michigan realizing pretty late in the game how deeply he's thrust his own foot into his own mouth. This, like so many other cases one sees with the GOP 'smart set', is so much a product of saying whatever you need to say to win today's "news cycle" and to show how wrong you think Obama has been on everything -- with no thought as to how it might look when, lo and behold, you actually need to campaign later in a place like, say, Michigan. Myopic desperation on their part it seems to me.

Rick Santorum Knows What Women Want. Who Else Would Know Better? (Alexandra Petri) from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Silly women. Professional accomplishments are for men. Any notions to the contrary stem from, as Mr. Santorum called it in his 2005 book, "It Takes a Family," "radical feminism's misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect." I'm glad he's here to tell us these things. No, social value and self- respect derived outside the home can't be what women really want. And if there's a man out there who knows what women really want, it's Rick Santorum."

Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special' (Conor Friedersdorf) from the Atlantic
"What separates issues that are in the proper purview of politics from matters best left to individuals? I'd hate to draw that line for everyone, but watching Rick Santorum in the much-discussed interview above, I'm confident in declaring that he's put himself on the wrong side of it."

Santorum: Birth Control ‘Harmful to Women’ (Jennifer Rubin) from the Washington Post
"This is how, in part, he lost Pennsylvania — by appearing extreme and schoolmarmish, too far to the right of average voters in a purple state. If he is the nominee in 2012, he might get some blue-collar fellows, but what about those women in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.?"
I've come to view Jennifer Rubin as the quintessential mouthpiece for the GOP establishment, the beltway crowd that are determined to saddle the Republicans with Romney as their nominee come hell or high water.

Santorum Off to an Early Start in the West from the Washington Post
"While Romney has rolled out a string of endorsements from elected officials in Oklahoma, Washington state and Idaho, Santorum has spent the past few days meeting with pastors, condemning the expansion of same-sex marriage laws and of government, and touting his conservative values."

CHINESE DIPLOMACY NUGGET!!
For the Vice President of China, Tea Time in Iowa from the New York Times
"Vice President Xi Jinping of China returned to Muscatine, Iowa, where 27 years ago he mingled with locals on an agricultural research trip."

News Nuggets 883

2012-02-15T08:34:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: This on-target cartoon comes from Alas: A Blog.

UP-FRONT GOVERNMENT BENEFITS NUGGET!!
Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era (Suzanne Mettler) from the Department of Government at Cornell University
"Respondents were asked, first, whether they had “ever used a government social program, or not.” Later, they were asked whether they had ever benefitted personally from any of 19 federal social policies, including some that belong to the “submerged state” and others that are visible and direct in their design and delivery. Table 3 presents the percentage of beneficiaries of each of several policies who reported that they had never used a federal social program."
The following chart comes from this study:

With Cities Under Fire, Assad Sets Date for Syrian Referendum from the New York Times
"With Syrian cities under fire and residents saying life is ever more unbearable, President Bashar al-Assad set a date later this month for a referendum on a new constitution, the state-run SANA news agency said on Wednesday, a gesture apparently designed to offer some kind of government-controlled change after almost a year of the most sustained crackdown in the so-called Arab Spring."

Russia Nuclear Disaster Narrowly Averted In Submarine Fire from Reuters via the Huffington Post
"Russia came close to nuclear disaster in late December when a blaze engulfed a nuclear-powered submarine carrying atomic weapons, a leading Russian magazine reported, contradicting official assurances that it was not armed."

Nazi Baggage Complicates Germany's New Role as the 'America of Europe' (Bernd Ulrich) from Die Zeit [of Germany in English]
"Germany is gradually taking on the role in Europe that the U.S. has long played on the global level: As the country that uses and occasionally misuses its power, is to blame for everything, is supposed to save everyone, and which has to endure insults for how it goes about doing it. … But there was one thing the Americans could never be accused of: sending six million Jews to their deaths and plunging half the world into war."

Pakistan’s Musharraf Has Been Accused of Knowing Osama bin Laden’s Hideout (Bruce Reidel) from the Daily Beast
General Ziauddin Khawaja, an ex-security chief for Pakistan, accuses former president Pervez Musharraf of knowing where bin Laden was hiding and saying nothing."

News Corp. Civil War Shows No Signs Of Ending; Company Gives Anonymous Sources To Police from the Huffington Post
"The Times, one of Murdoch's own papers, revealed Tuesday that News Corp. has given the names of some of its journalists' anonymous sources to police. The report, which is behind the paper's paywall online, is sure to cause another round of internal skirmishing within News Corp., which has broken out into what some are calling a "civil war.""

The Rich and the Not-So-Rich Republicans (Harold Meyerson) from the Washington Post
"Republicans have reached their 1984. I don’t mean this in the Orwellian sense, though Republicans have more than their share of Orwellian impulses. Rather, I mean that the kind of divisions that have
characterized Democratic presidential primaries since the 1984 contest between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart have now popped up in GOP primaries as well: This year, Republicans are dividing along lines of class."

Adulthood, Delayed (Derek Thompson) from the Atlantic
"The Great Recession postponed financial independence for millennials, and altered the idea of what it is to be grown up."

A Widow’s Wisdom (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times
"In Walla Walla, Wash., same-sex marriage finds an unlikely Republican champion."

Drumming up a Phony War on Religion (Eugene Robinson) from the New York Times
"Just how has this “hostility to faith in America” manifested itself? ... In his speech at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, Obama cited New Testament scripture in arguing for economic and social justice. Conservatives blasted him for, um, quoting the Bible. This is a war? This is a march to the guillotine? Romney and Gingrich know better; they’re just cynically pandering to religious conservatives. "

Mormon Baptism Of Wiesenthal Kin Sparks Jewish Outrage (Howard Berkes) from NPR's news blog
"Two decades of anger, apologies and agreements have failed to keep the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from ending posthumous Mormon baptisms of prominent Jews and holocaust victims. In the latest incident, the parents of the late Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of a Nazi death camp and an advocate for holocaust victims, were baptized in a Mormon ceremony."
If I were Rick Santorum, I would demand that Romney give his opinion on this and the general principle of Mormon baptism of the dead. As a former bishop of the Mormon Church, Romney was very much involved in this process. So ... does he agree with this process (which, if yes, would almost certainly further alienate the evangelicals more than they already are) or not (which, given his status as a former bishop would make him look like a pandering hypocrite). Romney loses this conversation no matter what he says.

Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets” from the Carolina Journal Online
"A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day."
IF TRUE, this is astounding. However, I will say there is something a little off about this story. It smells just a little bit of a "set up."

Poll: Catholics' Approval of Obama Little Changed from Gallup
"Catholics' views of President Obama were little changed during a week in which the administration battled publicly with Catholic leaders over whether church-affiliated employers should have to pay for contraception as part of their employees' health plans."

Poll: Obama Holds Edge Over GOP Hopefuls from CBS News
"President Obama holds a significant lead over each of his potential Republican opponents in the general election, according to a poll released Tuesday by CBS News and the New York Times. That includes Mitt Romney, who was even with Mr. Obama last month."
Americablog has a plethora of stories and analysis relating to this and other polls showing Obama's resurgence.

Obama's Revived Coalition Spells Trouble for Romney (Ronald Brownstein) from the National Journal
"Whether the electorate is viewed by race, gender, partisanship or ideology (or combinations of the above), Obama's numbers against Romney now closely align with his support against McCain, according to the 2008 exit polls. Overall, the Pew survey put Obama ahead of Romney by 52 percent to 44 percent, close to his actual 53 percent to 46 percent victory over McCain."

It’s Not Just National, Obama Improving In Swing States Too from Talking Points Memo
"... while nationwide numbers provide a snapshot of the country’s mood, the battle for the presidency will be fought state by state. So are Obama’s numbers also looking up in the all important swing states? It sure looks that way."

Rick Santorum’s Pincer Movement (Ross Douthat) from the New York Times
"Mitt Romney is getting hit from his left and his right by the same opponent."

Severe Conservative Syndrome (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. ... That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism."

Rick Santorum's Very Real Surge, in Poll Numbers from Daily Kos
"There's been a lot of attention on Michigan. It was a state supposedly safe for Mitt Romney, the state where his father once ran as governor. Yet as the numbers above demonstrate, it's become prime real estate for Santorum, with a conservative electorate more interested in knee-capping the Romneybot than in playing favorite son."

Obama Shatters GOP’s United Front On Birth Control from Talking Points Memo
"... as GOP leaders push to repeal the requirement entirely, the White House is welcoming that battle. The shift is looking like an act of political jujitsu as Obama has not only unified his base but splintered the GOP coalition, which initially appeared united against the President’s rule."

Does the GOP Care About Latino Voters? (Dana Milbank) from the Washington Post
"When it comes to Latino voters, Republicans must have un impulso suicida. What else but a death wish could explain the party’s treatment of the fastest-growing voting bloc in the nation?"

PBS NUGGET!!
‘Downton Abbey’ and How PBS Got Cool from the Daily Beast
"The massive success of 'Downton Abbey' has brought PBS an increase in donations, funding for 'Masterpiece,' a boost in ratings for other programs, and an unlikely place in the zeitgeist."

News Nuggets 882

2012-02-14T00:21:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Hamsters giving a team effort on

Valentine's Day. From the Daily Mail of the UK.

Arguing for Obama, Justice Antonin Scalia (Jay Bookman) from the Atlanta Journal Constitution
"The most relevent to the current controversy is a a 1982 case that closely parallels the current discussion over contraception. In United States v. Lee, the Supreme Court found that there was nothing
unconstitutional in requiring an Amish employer to withhold and pay Social Security taxes for his workers even though “the Amish faith prohibited participation in governmental support programs.”"

Birth Control Debate: Why Catholic Bishops Have Lost Their Grip on U.S. Politics—and Their Flock (Tim Padgett) from Time Magazine
"Although major Catholic groups like Catholic Charities and Catholic Health Services accepted that revision, the bishops are holding out for more. But their crusade to be exempted from the mandate is likely to fall short of its grail. If so, it’s because Obama read the Catholic flock better than its shepherds did."

The Bishops Go Off the Deep End (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"Rejecting the Obama contraception compromise, they display their irrelevance to moral and political dialogue."

Family Ties, Without Tying the Knot from the New York Times
"More and more states are considering same-sex marriage, and yet fewer Americans are choosing to marry. What are the legal implications for relationships that are based on something other than marriage?"

Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona (Gary Younge) from the Nation
"The authors of Arizona’s new law want to collapse Latino identity into white American mythology."

Conservatives At CPAC Search For The Right's Woodward And Bernstein (Michael Calderone) from the Huffington Post
'Several conservatives, in interviews and on CPAC panels, said that young, right-leaning journalists have the chance to influence the establishment -- or as they say, "liberal" -- media, as well as the ability to launch new sites to broaden the media landscape. They talked about harnessing the potential of the Internet and social media to offer a counter-narrative to the national press, while arguing that the Obama administration and Democratic-aligned organizations aren't being covered aggressively enough."
Finally, it's being said openly what's been happening for decades behind the scenes: the creation of a conservative "counter-narrative" as a central element in long-term GOP planning. What's the purpose of the narrative? To pursue Democrats and their Elected officials. It has nothing to do with creating fairness or "balance". It is a purely partisan exercise -- and it showcases patently false underlying
assumptions: that the so-called mainstream media is engaged in largely partisan exercises with their reporting -- as if editors at the WaPo or NYT get up each day wondering how they can stick it to this or that GOP candidate, lawmaker or president. Don't get me wrong: I accept (as studies have shown) that the MSM has a modest liberal bias in their reporting of many (not all) topics. BUT there is a difference between having a bias in your reporting (every reporter is biased) on the one hand, and doing reporting as a LARGELY PARTISAN EXERCISE on the other, which is what FOX news does -- and it's what is being advocated here. Read this whole item, and you will see several examples of conservatives coming from the false premise.

Winning the Future? (John Heilemann) from New York Magazine
"Obama’s reelection chances are looking good right now, but the next nine months are full of storm clouds."

How Obama’s Budget Throws A Big Punch At The GOP from Talking Points Memo
"It calls out Republicans nearly a dozen times for their adamant refusal to take a penny in new revenue from wealthy Americans, dooming recent administration efforts to reduce deficits or stimulate the economy with new spending."

Obama’s Tactic Could Yield Political Results (Norman Ornstein) from Roll Call
"As Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain is fond of saying, Congress, with an approval rating of 9 percent to 13 percent, is down to “blood relatives and paid staff.” It is no wonder that President Barack Obama is running against the “do-nothing” 112th Congress and that the pitch is resonating with lots of voters."

The Front-Runner’s Missing Magic (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"Almost all of the presidents elected over recent decades have been propelled by pockets of intense enthusiasm, which can paper over so many specific political predicaments and eclipse tensions with the base. ... "It's hard to find a single Republican, including those most solidly behind him, who demonstrates true passion for him or can do even a persuasive pantomime of it. They call him effective, not inspirational. They praise his competence, not his charisma. He doesn't exert any sort of gravitational pull on his party."

PPP: Santorum Surges 15 Points Ahead of Romney Among Republicans Nationally from Americablog
For some reason the PPP link isn't working.
"Santorum is now completely dominating with several key segments of the electorate, especially the most right leaning parts of the party. With those describing themselves as 'very conservative,' he's now winning a majority of voters at 53% to 20% for Gingrich and 15% for Romney. Santorum gets a majority with Tea Party voters as well at 51% to 24% for Gingrich and 12% for Romney. And with Evangelicals he falls just short of a majority with 45% to 21% for Gingrich and 18% for Romney."

Santorum Catches Romney in GOP Race: Obama Leads Both in General Election Matchups from the Pew Research Center
"Barack Obama now holds an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney in a general election matchup, and he has gained significant ground among independent voters. A month ago, 40% of independents said they would back Obama over Romney – today 51% say they would, while the number expressing support for Romney has slipped from 50% to 42%. Over the course of the campaign, Romney’s image among independent voters has suffered substantially."

How Rough it’s Gotten for Mitt (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"When not completely melting down is considered good news, you’ve got a problem."

Dead-End Kids (Todd S. Purdum) from Vanity Fair
"The longer the Republican contest goes on, the greater the task of diplomacy facing the eventual victor. Some of the losers will command significant constituencies. They will demand respect—and something more."

Grover Norquist on the GOP Candidates: All We Need is Someone Who Can 'Handle a Pen' from Daily Kos
"We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. ... Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States."
Oh, Romney and his team must be so reassured! "Damning with faint praise" doesn't do justice to Norquist's hilarious back-handed Romney take-down. Read Norquist's comment and the associated commentary on the comment.

Here's more on Norquist's CPAC speech:
Norquist: Romney Will Do As He's Told (David Frum) from the Daily Beast
"In his charmingly blunt way, Norquist articulated out loud a case for Mitt Romney that you hear only whispered by other major conservative leaders. They have reconciled themselves to a Romney candidacy because they see Romney as essentially a weak and passive president who will concede leadership to congressional conservatives ... To date, sad to say, Romney has worked hard to confirm this image of weakness."
And these are Romney's SUPPORTERS saying these things!! How pathetic!

Romney Backers in Congress Second-Guessing Campaign from The Hill
"Supporters of Mitt Romney on Capitol Hill are second-guessing his campaign strategy after he got beaten soundly in thee contests this past week. They say the setback in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado put more pressure on Romney to win decisively in Michigan and Arizona on Feb. 28 to avert a messy and prolonged fight for the nomination."

WORLD WAR II PHOTO NUGGET!!
Life on the Front Lines: Extremely Rare Color Photos of U.S. Troops Before and After D-Day from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Extremely rare and striking photos of the days leading up to and after the historic D-Day invasion have been put on display, nearly 70 years after World War II's dramatic turning point. The full-colour images, taken by photographer Frank Scherschel, display anxious American soldiers as they prepared for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy."

MEDICAL NUGGET!!
Alzheimer's Brain Plaques 'Rapidly Cleared' in Mice from the BBC
"Destructive plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients have been rapidly cleared by researchers testing a cancer drug on mice."

News Nuggets 881

2012-02-13T08:15:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Sumatran tiger cubs at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX. From Zooborns.

Chinese Trade Figures Raise the Alarm for Global Economy from the Guardian [of the UK]
"China's import decline sharper than expected, suggesting that even with holiday factored in, world's second-largest economy is slowing markedly."

Nixon's Great Decision on China (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"Richard Nixon is hardly a role model, overall; he was a devious president who encouraged illegal actions by his subordinates. But he was a clever strategist -- never more so than in the opening to China that culminated in his February 1972 visit to Beijing. Yet even Nixon, the practiced hypocrite, might not dare to buck conformity today. Doing the unexpected is almost forbidden in American politics these days."

'Do Not Follow Me Down the Road to Jihad. Go and Get a Good Education in the West': Osama Bin Laden’s Extraordinary Instructions to his Young Children from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
The real story here is how the Pakistanis have been treating bin Laden's family.
"Sadah, a 24-year-old journalism student, says the children will not eat and have not seen the sun for nine months. ... Amal, a 29-year-old Yememi, and the two other wives, Khairiah and Siham, have gone on hunger strike to protest against their imprisonment, according to Sadah."

Hacking Cases Focus on Memo to a Murdoch from the New York Times
"As dozens of investigators and high-powered lawyers converge on Rupert Murdoch’s News International in the phone hacking scandal, attention has focused on the printout of an e-mail excavated three months ago from a sealed carton left behind in an empty company office. Addressed to Mr. Murdoch’s son James, it contained explosive information about the scale of phone hacking at The News of the World tabloid — information James Murdoch says he failed to take in because he did not read the whole e-mail chain."

Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It from the New York Times
"He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman. Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice."
When I see or read about people like this, I become almost physically ill.

How Obama Set a Contraception Trap for the Right (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
Conservatives gleefully revived the culture wars. But they're not winning. How Obama set a trap for the right."

Has Obama Cornered Republicans On Contraception? from Talking Points Memo
"Republicans are doubling down in their assault on President Obama’s birth control requirement, insisting that his accommodation of religious nonprofits does not address religious concerns. But by attempting to keep the heat on Obama, the GOP might be diving head-first into a culture war over contraception that social conservatives lost long ago in the minds of the public."

War on Birth Control (Rachel Maddow) from the Washington Post
"... the relevant political context here is more than just a 2012 measure of Catholic bishops’ influence on moral issues. It’s also this year’s mainstream Republican embrace of an antiabortion movement that no longer just marches on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to criminalize abortion; it now marches on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, holding signs that say “The Pill Kills.”"

Beyond Pelvic Politics (Nicholas Kristof) from the New York Times
"I MAY not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives. ... My well-heeled readers will be furrowing their brows at this point. Birth control is cheap, you’re thinking, and far less expensive than a baby (or an abortion). But for many Americans living on the edge, it’s a borderline luxury."

GOP Will Fight To Let ANY Employer Deny Birth Control Coverage from Talking Points Memo
"Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday."

We Need a Second Party (Thomas Friedman) from the New York Times
"You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you’ve got only vowels that spell nothing? What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with. That’s what Republican primary voters seem to be doing. They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing."

Republicans United on Goal — Beat Obama — Divided on How to Get There (Karen Tumulty) from the Washington Post
"In a contentious primary race, the Republican Party finds itself defined by its differences, unable to unite behind one message or one candidate."

Mitt Romney As Tarantino's Superman (Christopher Orr) from the New Republic
"Superman was born Superman. It's Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the "costume." And in the way Superman plays Kent--weak, self-doubting, cowardly--we see his critique of the human race. It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney's desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona--angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic--is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be."

Mitt Romney’s Problem With Conservatives: He’s Not Selling What They Want (Peter Beinart) from the Daily Beast
"The GOP frontrunner cannot catch fire with conservatives because he wants to run on a platform of fixing the economy and restoring jobs—but they’re more interested in fighting a culture war about limited government and greater freedom."

10 Years After Salt Lake City Olympics, Questions About Romney’s Contributions from the Washington Post
"Today, even Romney’s critics concede he helped drive a remarkable about-face for the Salt Lake Games, which was remembered Wednesday in a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the opening of those Olympics. But in Utah, another view of Romney’s contributions also has taken hold, with some questioning whether he overstated his contributions, and the extent of the crisis, for political gain."
Boy -- you know that anti-Romney swift-boaters are working overtime when you start seeing stories like this. Romney's tenure with the Olympics is his last big accomplishment that has not been undercut or tainted. Now it's up for "the treatment." Republican or Democrat, this is now the new normal -- even within the GOP itself.

The Politics of Resentment: Sarah Palin’s Mockery of Barack Obama Rouses CPAC Crowd (Eleanor Clift) from the Daily Beast
"The former Alaska governor's broadsides against Obama drew louder cheers than the GOP candidates did. Eleanor Clift on Palin and the politics of resentment."

Rick Santorum’s Plan to Derail Mitt Romney from Politico
"Rick Santorum’s campaign is eyeing a pair of swiftly approaching Midwestern primary states as its best — and perhaps only — opportunity to deal a mortal blow to Mitt Romney and permanently transform the Republican presidential race into a one-on-one duel to the finish."

Ron Paul, Rick Santorum Suggest Foul Play From Romney Campaign (Sam Stein) from the Huffington Post
"Mitt Romney scored two minor but symbolically important victories on Saturday -- a first-place finish in the CPAC Straw poll and a win in the Maine caucus -- each of which set off accusations of foul play from the second place finisher. In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) suggested that Romney had doctored the results of the CPAC contest."
No matter how you slice it, Paul and Santorum's charges are, on several levels, quite brilliant. Whether they are sincere or not remains to be seen. But by insinuating that both results were, in essence, "tainted" it not only serves to nullify whatever benefit Romney might get out of these contests but even reinforces the Romney-as-the-GOP-Establishment-Guy meme all the anti-Romney people are singing these days.

Michelle Obama Creates More Upbeat Images (VIDEO) from Politico
"First lady Michele Obama's Let's Move tour has been punctuated by memorable images -- pushups with Ellen DeGeneres, tug of war with Jimmy Fallon -- and now there's one more: a video of her performing the "platypus walk.""
I CAN'T imagine any other First Lady doing what Michelle does here!

Wooing the First Dresser from the New York Times
"There is arguably no more powerful influence in American fashion today than the country’s stylish, risk-taking first lady, Michelle Obama."

RUSSIAN CULTURE NUGGET!!
TV in Putin’s Russia: Jesters, Strivers and a Longing for Normalcy from the New York Times
"Russian television has embraced a more playful self-awareness, with hints of harsher realities."

News Nuggets 880

2012-02-12T00:51:00.002-05:00

DAYEE PICTURE: Lake Liluk, the 'spotted lake,' near Vancouver, BC in Canada. The spots are caused by unusual mineral deposits. From the Daily Mail of the UK.

TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!

1. Obama, Explained (James Fallows) from the Atlantic
"Whether things seem to be going very well or very badly around him—whether he is announcing the death of Osama bin Laden or his latest compromise in the face of Republican opposition in Congress—Obama always presents the same dispassionate face. Has he been so calm because he has understood so much about the path ahead of him, and has been so clever in the traps he has set for his rivals? Or has he been so calm because, like the high-school kid on the plane, he has been so innocently unaware of how dire the situation has truly been? This is the central mystery of his performance as a candidate and a president."

2. Republicans Need More than Rhetoric on Defense (George F. Will) from the Washington Post
"Through 11 presidential elections, beginning with the Democrats’ nomination of George McGovern in 1972, Republicans have enjoyed a presumption of superiority regarding national security. This year, however, events and their rhetoric are dissipating their advantage."

3. Sorry, Mitt: It Won't Be an American Century (Charles Kupchan) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Abroad, the charge for the next U.S. president can hardly be to stick his head in the sand and deny that the global distribution of power is fast changing. On the contrary, it is to react soberly and steadily to the implications of such change and ensure that the United States remains secure and prosperous even as economic and military strength spreads to new quarters. President Barack Obama is on the correct path."

4. One Town’s War on Gay Teens (Sabrina Rubin Erdely) from Rolling Stone Magazine
"In Michele Bachmann's home district, evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate. After a rash of suicides, the kids are fighting back."

5. The 2016 Election, Already Upon Us (David Leonhardt) from the New York Times
"DISTANT as it may now seem, with the Republican race dominating the news and President Obama sitting in the White House, the Democrats are not all that far from the tumult of another nominating contest themselves."

6. Clint, Rick and the Limits of Pessimism (E.J.Dionne) from the Washington Post
"What do Rick Santorum and Clint Eastwood have in common? Sorry, Rick, you haven’t made it yet as an Eastwood-style make-my-day cultural icon. But in different ways, Santorum and Eastwood have demonstrated the limits of both an entirely negative slant on politics and a pessimistic take on America’s future."

7. Does Romney Even Like Republicans? “Muttonheads” Discomfit Mitt (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
" [George] campaign was subsequently chewed to bits between the twin gears of a mindless press corps and rabid right-wing nationalists. “The rest of our [electoral] system I know pretty well,” young Mitt wrote to his father, “only one thing I can’t understand: How can the American public like such muttonheads?” Four and a half decades later, muttonhead-lovers continue to madden Romney, whose frustration has oozed out through blind quotes from his aides."

8. Mitt Romney’s Character Flaw (Jonathan Capehart) from the Washington Post
"Mitt Romney can’t translate his carefully manufactured aura of inevitability into reality because no one believes he is who he says he is. We all know this. But after his triple loss last night, I’m convinced that Romney’s problems with the Republican primary electorate and voters in general go deeper. They sense a lack of character in someone for a job that requires bedrock principles and core beliefs. And as far as I can tell, Romney has none."

9. What the Self-Manufacturing of Romney Hath Produced (Charles P. Pierce) from Esquire Magazine
"The transformation is now complete. Willard Romney, my former governor, the man who campaigned here for the Senate and lost, and who campaigned for governor here and won, has fashioned himself into the most carefully manufactured fake in the recent history of American politics."

10. The First Principles of Rick Santorum (Molly Worthen) from the New York Times
"One dismissive reviewer of Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Santorum is “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century.” (An opponent once said the same of that other provocative Catholic conservative, William F. Buckley, Jr.) This is no insult: it is the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservative evangelicals...."

Now, to our regular nuggets for Sunday, February 12.
UP-FRONT POLITICS NUGGET!!
Nattering Nabobs of Negativism (Dana Milbank) from the Washington Post
“How many of you,” Scott Rasmussen asked the crowd at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, “have ever mocked or made fun of the president’s call for hope and change? Raise your hands.” Most people in the Marriott Wardman Park hotel ballroom raised their hands. There were cheers and whoops. “With all due respect,” the conservative pollster and commentator told them, “I’d like to say that’s really stupid.” This time, there was uncomfortable laughter. “Voters are looking for hope and change as much today as they were in 2008,” Rasmussen explained, and “you ought to be encouraging Republican candidates, people you support, to offer that positive step forward.”

A Loss We Can Live With (James Traub) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"The endgame in Afghanistan isn’t 2013 or 2014; it’s already happened. The only thing now is to make sure that the retreat is not a total disaster for those we leave behind."

Myanmar’s Startling Changes: Unravelling the Mysteries of a—so far—Peaceful Revolution from the Economist [of London]
"ANOTHER day, another milestone: there appears to be no let-up in the frenetic pace of Myanmar’s political transformation."

Vladimir Putin, Falling Czar (Jeffrey Tayler) from Businessweek
"Defying protests, Putin is poised to return as Russia’s President. But his days are numbered."

Vatican Besieged by Leaks, Conspiracies from the Associated Press
"The Vatican is being besieged by near-daily leaks of confidential documents and tabloid-style reports of alleged financial mismanagement, political infighting and gossip about who might be the next pope — all coming out at an exceedingly delicate time for the Holy See and Benedict himself."

Eight Arrested in British Tabloid Scandal from the New York Times
"British authorities arrested eight people on Saturday, including five employees of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, as part of an investigation into bribery of public officials by journalists, according to Scotland Yard and the newspaper’s parent company."

U.S. Navy Names Warship after Gabby Giffords from the Agence France-Presse
"The US Navy named a new warship after Gabrielle Giffords on Friday, honoring the former Arizona lawmaker who survived a gunman’s bullet to the head a year ago. The USS Gabrielle Giffords represented a fitting tribute to a congresswoman who embodies the navy’s “unwavering courage,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said at a ceremony at the Pentagon."
What, was she on the House Armed Services Committee? While I can get that this is intended as an honor for Ms. Giffords, it DOES strike me as just a little off-key. A congressional office building, sure! A park or a conference on non-violence -- totally. But ... a warship?!

Two COMPLETELY divergent views on the contraception issue. The sources tell you a lot of what you need to know about how this will play nationally.
President Obama’s Win-Win Reversal on Contraception from the Editorial Board of the Washington Post
"THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION appears to have found an elegant way out of its contraceptive problem — or, perhaps more to the point, to the political problem created by its approach to contraceptive coverage."

Immaculate Contraception: An 'Accommodation' that Makes the Birth-control Mandate Worse from the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal
"The real audience for this non-compromise are the many voters shaken that the White House would so willfully erode the American traditions of religious liberty and pluralism, most of whom don't adhere to
anti-contraceptive teachings."

Catholic Tribalism and the Contraceptive Flap (Joan Walsh) from Salon
"Watching liberals defend a church they disagree with showed us that even Catholic insiders can feel like outsiders."

Students At Catholic Colleges Protest Lack Of Access To Birth Control (Ariel Edwards Levy) from the Huffington Post
"When we hear conservative Catholic organizations ask what we expected when we enrolled at a Catholic school, we can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to have their medical needs met. When students found out that the [Obama] administration was going to help us in this way, there was an environment of jubilation, just celebration. ... People who haven't gone to these schools don't realize it, but on the campuses, people are talking about it, they're excited about it, and they vote."

New Rules (Bill Maher) from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher
Scroll down to the "final rule":
"You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is Barack X. And he's an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who is coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worse yet, Saul Alinsky! And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But, now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. "

Sarah Palin Unleashes GOP Id On Worshipful CPAC Crowd from Talking Points Memo
"Even for a party that’s made anti-Washington sentiment its number one talking point, It was an especially provocative passage given that two of the current GOP presidential frontrunners, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, have had post-Congress careers working for special interests in Washington."

Palin Says Brokered Convention Would Not Hurt G.O.P. from the New York Times
"Sarah Palin said Saturday that Republicans should be in no hurry to wrap up the presidential nominating contest, declaring that a competitive campaign until the August convention in Tampa would not complicate the party’s efforts to defeat President Obama."
YEAH!! You tell'em, honey!! Don't you let those insiders tell you to hurry things up!! August sounds perfectly good to me too!!

Senate Republicans Seek to Make Joblessness Worse with Forced 'Volunteer' Work (Laura Clawson) from Daily Kos
"Senate Republicans want to change federal law to ... require all long-term unemployed people to "volunteer" 20 hours a week to continue receiving benefits, with an additional bill introduced by North Carolina's Richard Burr calling for them to spend 20 hours a week looking for work. Those requirements could be added to Republican efforts to allow drug testing requirements and to deny unemployment insurance to people who don't have high school diplomas."
Read the whole thing.

Poll: Santorum Surges into the Lead from Public Policy Polling
"Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul."
The numbers get WAY more interesting if Gingrich drops out. Check'em out.

Poll: Gingrich, Santorum lead in Georgia (Walter Jones) from Savannah Now
"Former Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich is leading among primary voters in the state he represented for two decades, and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum is second in a poll released Friday."

News Nuggets 879

2012-02-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A scene of Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the deep freeze that has seized most of eastern Europe. From thebestofrussia.ru.

One Town’s War on Gay Teens (Sabrina Rubin Erdely) from Rolling Stone Magazine
"In Michele Bachmann's home district, evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate. After a rash of suicides, the kids are fighting back."

In the Contraception Furor, the Loud Voices of a Few Threaten Revolutionary Gains of All U.S. Women (Lisa Miller) from the Washington Post
"By conflating abortion and contraception in their rhetoric, and putting both in their sights, the ideologues in this new war are rolling back decades of medical and social progress and reverting to an era when all gynecological and obstetrical matters were yucky and bad — what my grandfather used to call “female trouble.” In an editorial this week in the Washington Examiner, Republican hopeful Rick Santorum used the words “abortion,” “contraceptive” and “sterilization” in the same sentence, as if they were interchangeable..."

Birth Control May Now be Wedge Issue Against GOP (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"At his press conference this morning announcing the new shift in contraception policy, Obama said: “I understand that some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue. But it shouldn’t be.” The irony is that after this announcement, this very well may become a wedge issue — against Republicans."

Obama Birth Control Compromise Defuses Religion Issue (Dana Goldstein) from the Daily Beast
"The president made a common sense compromise—but the flare-up reveals an absurdity of America’s health-care system, where a woman’s boss is involved with her sex life."

The White House’s Convenient Contraception Controversy (Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"The White House’s decision to force Catholic hospitals to dispense emergency contraception was a hot topic at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday. And that’s probably AOK with the Obama campaign."

Obama Punks the GOP on Contraception (Amanda Marcotte) from Slate
"The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. "

A Birth-Control Compromise Could Divide the Right (Irin Carmon) from Salon
"Obama's birth control move may have satisfied most sides -- and revealed the truth about the bishops' opposition."

Senate Dems Grow Optimistic About Obama Chances in 2012 from The Hill
"Senate Democrats are optimistic about President Obama’s chances of re-election and think he may have coattails this November. Just six months ago Democrats were worried Obama was on his way to a defeat that might also cost Democrats their majority in the Senate."

Those Mudslinging Republicans (Doyle McManus) from the Los Angeles Times
"At this point, the GOP looks more like a collection of warring tribes than a cohesive political force. Fiscal conservatives don't have much use for social conservatives. ... The long and relentlessly negative campaign is making all the GOP candidates less likable to independent voters, who will probably determine the outcome of this fall's general election."

Even At CPAC Conservatives Seem Despondent About 2012 Choices from Talking Points Memo
"The incredibly divisive Republican presidential primary has taken its toll on the mood at this year’s conference. Conversations with attendees tell the same story: none of the candidates has them all that stoked about the next 10 months."

Mitt Romney's Struggles Take Republican Angst To New Heights (Jon Ward) from the Huffington Post
"The angst within the Republican Party about Mitt Romney's candidacy has risen to such levels that some of the most experienced, influential members of the party are still talking about a late entry into the GOP primary."
I think you would have to be a heartless fiend to not have moments where you'd pity Romney and his team -- if for nothing else than the TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars they've spent trying to convince cranky GOP voters that they really ARE enraged and that they really DO hate that socialist-fascist in the White House, here knowing that once the nomination is secured they will have to run for the political center to have any chance of winning in November.

Rasmussen Tracking: Obama With A Ten Point Lead Over Romney from Talking Points Memo
"The Rasmussen tracking poll of a possible matchup between President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney shows Obama with a ten point lead in their polling."

The Crowd Pleaser (David Brooks) from the New York Times
"Mitt Romney seems to be trying to please everybody but has ended up pleasing few. Just what David Riesman would have called an other-directed man."

What the Self-Manufacturing of Romney Hath Produced (Charles P. Pierce) from Esquire Magazine
"The transformation is now complete. Willard Romney, my former governor, the man who campaigned here for the Senate and lost, and who campaigned for governor here and won, has fashioned himself into the most carefully manufactured fake in the recent history of American politics."

The First Principles of Rick Santorum (Molly Worthen) from the New York Times
"One dismissive reviewer of Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Santorum is “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century.” (An opponent once said the same of that other provocative Catholic conservative, William F. Buckley, Jr.) This is no insult: it is the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservative evangelicals...."

Newt Gingrich Rips GOP Establishment at CPAC Conference (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"Gingrich strikes a revolutionary tone at CPAC conference. Howard Kurtz on the stark contrast with Romney’s attempt to romance the right."

WORLD WAR I NUGGET11
Archaeologists Find the Bodies of 21 Tragic World War One German Soldiers in Perfectly Preserved Trenches Where They were Buried Alive by an Allied Shell from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"The bodies of 21 German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed. The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in."

MEDIEVAL INVADER NUGGET!!
Invaders: Destroying Baghdad (Ian Frazier) from the New Yorker
"I wondered how a world figure like Hulagu could be so well known, apparently, in the far reaches of Asia, and the opposite of that here. I also wondered, in terms of simple fact, if it could be accurate to say that Cheney and Powell were worse than he."

News Nuggets 878

2012-02-10T06:23:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Lake Assal in Djibouti. We had posted a poor quality version of this striking image several weeks ago. Thought we'd get this quality image. Amazing. From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT POLITICAL NUGGETS!!
1. Mitt Romney’s Character Flaw (Jonathan Capehart) from the Washington Post
"Mitt Romney can’t translate his carefully manufactured aura of inevitability into reality because no one believes he is who he says he is. We all know this. But after his triple loss last night, I’m convinced that Romney’s problems with the Republican primary electorate and voters in general go deeper. They sense a lack of character in someone for a job that requires bedrock principles and core beliefs. And as far as I can tell, Romney has none."

2. The "Frontrunner" (Erick Erickson) from Redstate.com
"The other night I was having dinner and Pat Cadell, Jimmy Carter’s pollster and a very honest liberal, came up to me. He said bluntly that if his side’s front runner had lost 3 of the first 8 elections and been swept out last Tuesday, by Wednesday the Democrats would have a new candidate in the race. He is right. Yet the Republican Party has decided instead of finding a new guy to do what it can to get Romney across the finish line no matter how bad the limp."
A short, devastating comment on the Romney candidacy. Read the whole thing.

Israel Teams with Terror Group to Kill Iran's Nuclear Scientists, U.S. Officials Tell NBC News from MSNBC
"Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders."

Why Russia Supports Assad (Dmitri Trenin) from the New York Times
" Russians suspect that the real reason for the West’s pressure on Damascus is to rob Tehran of its only ally in the region. ... What the Russians are most worried about, however, is that Israel may strike at Iran, dragging in the United States and thus precipitating a major war with Iran sometime this year."

God Bless George F. Will (Jacob Heilbrunn) from the National Interest
"Will's column amounts to a vivisection of Mitt Romney, who has made a number of ostentatious claims about how he would restore the American preeminence that has allegedly been squandered by the Obama administration ... The real problem with the GOP approach is that it maintains the illusion of omnipotence. It leaves behind great-power status for the "I am the greatest" approach. The GOP worships unilateralism."

American Consumers’ Confidence Gains With Improvement in Job Data: Economy from Bloomberg News Service
"Fewer Americans than forecast filed claims for jobless benefits last week and consumer confidence rose to the highest level in a year, pointing to gains in spending as job prospects brighten."

Student Loans Could Be America's Next 'Debt Bomb,' Report Finds from the Huffington Post
"Slightly more than 80 percent of bankruptcy attorneys say the number of their potential clients with student loan debt have increased "significantly" or "somewhat" in the past three to four years, according to a survey by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. And there's little hope those debtors will get out of their obligations; 95 percent of bankruptcy attorneys surveyed said that very few student loan debtors will be discharged from their loan as a result of undue hardship."

Employment Rate For Young Adults Lowest In 60 Years, Study Says (Alexander Eichler) from the Huffington Post
"Are you young and looking for work? You're in good company. Just 54 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 currently have jobs, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. That's the lowest employment rate for this age group since the government began keeping track in 1948."

Obama, Explained (James Fallows) from the Atlantic
"Whether things seem to be going very well or very badly around him—whether he is announcing the death of Osama bin Laden or his latest compromise in the face of Republican opposition in Congress—Obama always presents the same dispassionate face. Has he been so calm because he has understood so much about the path ahead of him, and has been so clever in the traps he has set for his rivals? Or has he been so calm because, like the high-school kid on the plane, he has been so innocently unaware of how dire the situation has truly been? This is the central mystery of his performance as a candidate and a president."
An interesting (and very long) long-form look at Obama's presidency so far.

For Komen, No Going Back to Charity as Usual (Joy-Ann Reid) from the Miami Herald
"Now, Komen for the Cure can go back to doing what it does best: putting on pink-clad, heavily corporate sponsored foot races in major cities to raise awareness — and lots of money — for the fight against breast cancer. Except that they can’t go back. There are some things you just can’t take back.."

Why Doesn't Anybody Ever Argue Over Men's Bodies? (Karen Heller) from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Maybe the trick is for Planned Parenthood to focus more on men's reproductive health and start performing vasectomies. Women's bodies are battlefields, but we never seem to argue about men."

Rubio Bill Lets ANY Employer Deny Birth Control Coverage from Talking Points Memo
"Legislation introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to reverse the Obama administration’s birth control rule would effectively permit any employer to deny contraception coverage in their employee health plans, critics note."
WOW! This seems like quite an escalation on this issue. Maybe I'm missing something, but this also seems like a politically risky move! While all the talk seems to be about how worked up many Catholics are, this legislation should get the attention of women everywhere and virtually anyone concerned about women's health. The thing that gets me about this move (and others we've been seeing from other GOP lawmakers) is that, here we are eight months from a major general election, and Republican candidates and non-candidates alike seem to still be trying to shore up their support among the most conservative wing of their own party.

At CPAC, Republican Candidates Are Courting Their Base (Lloyd Grove) from the Daily Beast
"At the conservative conclave, everyone from Oliver North to Chuck Woolery says they're still shopping for their man. Which candidates are making a love connection with the base?"

White House Gives Romney a Social Issues Death Hug (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"At the press briefing just now, White House press secretary Jay Carney twice highlighted the fact that as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney supported a contraception policy that was very similar to the one Obama has now adpoted, to much criticism. Romney has been attacking Obama over the issue, and Carney was asked to respond."

'Anybody But Romney' Wins Everywhere, as GOP Turnout Tanks (John Nichols) from the Nation
"Santorum is a story. But he is not the story. The story is the fact that Mitt Romney lost so very miserably in three battleground states. Romney finished second in Colorado and Missouri and, remarkably, barely mustered a third-place finish (behind Santorum and Ron Paul, barely ahead of Newt Gingrich) in Minnesota. But the place on the list is less telling than than overwhelming levels of opposition to Romney."

The Anti-Romney Vote : The Republican electorate is saying, “We don’t want Romney!” (Thomas Sowell) from National Review
"If Romney turns his well-financed character-assassination machine on Rick Santorum, or Santorum resorts to character assassination against either Romney or Gingrich, the Republicans may forfeit whatever chance they have of defeating Barack Obama in November."

Romney's not getting much love these days:
The Wages of Pandering from the Editorial Board of the National Review
"Mitt Romney has done himself no favors in developing a reputation for political inconstancy, but a flip-flop on his recently reaffirmed support for automatic increases in the minimum wage would be welcome. Indexing the minimum wage to inflation is bad economics, bad public policy, and bad politics: the full trifecta of political incompetence."

Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign Stuck in Lukewarm (Amy Gardner and Rosalind S. Helderman) from the Washington Post
"Republicans are expressing fresh concerns that Mitt Romney is limping toward the presidential nomination, suffering new blows at the very moment he needs to grow stronger if he is to take on President Obama in November."

Where's the Rest of Them? Santorum's Rise, Romney's Weakness, and the GOP Coalition from the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal
"Mr. Romney admits the comment about the poor was "a mistake," but the concern isn't that he misspoke. It's what the episode reveals about Mr. Romney's inability, or unwillingness, to defend conservative principles. He seems to retreat at the first sound of a liberal moral argument. This means he'd play defense against President Obama, who is distilling his campaign to a moral defense of taxing the rich and government redistributive justice."

Low Turnout and the Big Tune-Out (Peggy Noonan) from the Wall Street Journal
"The Romney campaign is better at dismantling than mantling. ... Mitt Romney's aides are making the classic mistake of thinking the voters want maturity, serenity and a jolly spirit. What they want is a man who knows what time it is, who has a passion to reform our country, and who yet holds these qualities within a temperament that is mature, serene and jolly."

KENNEDY BOOK NUGGET [of a sort]!!
Sure, Mr. President, if You Really Want Me To: A Review of ‘Once Upon a Secret’: Mimi Alford on Her Affair With Kennedy (Janet Maslin) from the New York Times
"“Once Upon a Secret” can be better appreciated for what it really is: the strangest memoir about secrets and lies since “The Politician,” by Andrew Young, exposed the delusional arrogance behind John Edwards’s presidential campaign. Like Mr. Young, Ms. Alford seems to have little idea how badly her stories reflect on herself."

DISNEY MUSEUM NUGGET [of a sort]!!
Portrait of the 'Perfect American family': Walt Disney's Secret Apartment is Frozen in Time Above Disneyland's Fire Station from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"He's the man who built the world where dreams come true. But tucked away from Cinderella's castle, fireworks and whirling theme park rides, Walt Disney treasured his own private hideaway in the Disneyland hills of Anaheim, California. On the second floor of the Main Street Firehouse, the film producer's little-known Victorian apartment remains almost exactly as it did nearly 60 years ago."
Over the firehouse!? It sounds like the low-rent district. Why not in Cinderella's Castle for heaven's sake ... or one of the better parts of the haunted mansion?

News Nuggets 877

2012-02-09T07:55:00.002-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: An image that captures the chill and darkness of a winter in Saint Petersburg, Russia. From thebestofrussia.ru.

Should China Abandon its Non-Interference Policy? (Iain Mills) from the Word Politics Review
"China's long-standing policy of non-interference in the sovereign affairs of other nations is a cornerstone of its Peaceful Rise foreign policy doctrine. But as recent events have brought sharply into focus, the current approach fails to protect China’s expanding overseas interests and has caused a trust deficit with regard to China’s intentions at an intergovernmental level. This raises the question of how long the non-interference policy can be sustained, and whether Chinese interests would be better served by abandoning it for a less rigid position."

Republicans Need More Than Rhetoric on Defense (George F. Will) from the Washington Post
"Through 11 presidential elections, beginning with the Democrats’ nomination of George McGovern in 1972, Republicans have enjoyed a presumption of superiority regarding national security. This year, however, events and their rhetoric are dissipating their advantage."
A broad, startling critique of the GOP's incoherent and stupid approach to foreign policy coming from a surprising source.

Same general topic; different perspective:
The GOP Scrambles for a Bogeyman (Harold Meyerson) from the Washington Post
"Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, one thing is increasingly clear: Boy, do the Republicans miss communism. ... With the collapse of the Soviet Union, then, the task of demonizing Democrats became vastly more difficult, as this year’s Republican presidential contest illustrates."

On Contraception, Tales From the Kitchen Table (Gail Collins) from the New York Times
"...they don’t seem in the mood to compromise. Church leaders told The National Catholic Register that they regarded any deal that would allow them to avoid paying for contraceptives while directing their employees to other places where they could find the coverage as a nonstarter."

Why White House Sees Political Opportunity in the Contraception Battle from the Washington Post
"Numerous pundits have predicted that the requirement —and its narrow exemption for churches — will be a political liability for Obama. But where Shields sees “cataclysmic” fallout, the White House sees something quite different: a chance to widen the reproductive health debate beyond abortion to issues like contraceptives, winning over key demographics of independent voters in the process."
Eleanor Clift has a similar take on this subject HERE.

The White Underclass (Nicholas Kristof) from the New York Times
"We need a national conversation about the dimensions of poverty or a chunk of working-class America could be calcified into an underclass."

Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact (Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri) from the journal, Psychological Science
"... we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact."
The Guardian of the UK has a commentary on this study HERE.

Wisconsin GOP's Vow of Omerta on Redistricting Busted Wide Open from Daily Kos
"...since any further resistance probably would have meant jail time ..., WI Republicans finally caved and forked over the goods. And ho-lee sh*t. I'm not even sure I can do justice trying to summarize what they produced, but it all describes a remarkable conspiracy to draw the new maps in utter secrecy and try to protect the process from public scrutiny by covering it with a bogus cloak of attorney-client privilege."

Mitt Romney is Dazed and Confused (Roger Simon) from Politico
"Romney is known as an even-keel kind of guy. Doesn’t get too high, doesn’t get too low. But Tuesday he lost three states to Rick Santorum, and it threw him and his campaign into disarray and confusion."

Winners and Losers from Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri (Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"A supposedly less-important Election Day on Tuesday got pretty interesting by the time it was all said and done. We’ve combed through all the results so we can lay it all out for you — as usual — in the form of winners and losers."

Rick Santorum Wins Confirm Mitt Romney Weakness: Read The Polls (Mark Blumenthal) from the Huffington Post
"The results in the eight contests so far demonstrate two continuing difficulties for Romney. The first is his apparent problem with very-low-turnout caucus states. ..."

Republican Enthusiasm Issue is Real from the Public Policy Polling
"Going deeper inside the numbers: -25% of conservatives are not at all excited to vote this fall, compared to only 16% of liberals. -The percentage of Tea Party voters 'very excited' about voting in November has declined from 73% to 62% since late July."

The Vest Man Won: What Rick Santorum’s Surprise Victories Mean for Mitt Romney (John Dickerson) from Slate
"Mitt Romney sure hopes there's a safety net. His campaign needs it. His cautious and measured run for the presidency has been thrown off stride by Rick Santorum's victories Tuesday in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. The GOP nominating race has become a clash of vampires and zombies."

Romney’s Even Bigger Problem (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"But starting a little more than a week ago the two started separating and the current TPM Poll Average has President Obama with an almost 7 point lead over Romney, in other words a real lead."

In Santorum’s Sweep, Sign of G.O.P. Unease With Romney (Michael Shear) from the New York Times
"Rick Santorum’s sweep of Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s three Republican presidential contests sets the stage for a new and bitter round of intraparty acrimony as Mr. Romney once again faces a surging conservative challenge to his claim on the party’s nomination."

Romney Losing His Mojo After Caucus, Primary Losses to Santorum (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"Rick Santorum’s sweep exposed glaring weaknesses in Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Howard Kurtz on whether the ex-senator can capitalize on conservative qualms about Romney."

Clint, Rick and the Limits of Pessimism (E.J.Dionne) from the Washington Post
"What do Rick Santorum and Clint Eastwood have in common? Sorry, Rick, you haven’t made it yet as an Eastwood-style make-my-day cultural icon. But in different ways, Santorum and Eastwood have demonstrated the limits of both an entirely negative slant on politics and a pessimistic take on America’s future."

Mitt Romney’s Night from Hell (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"A stunning sweep by Rick Santorum pushes the GOP race closer than ever to complete chaos."

New Book Exposes Secret World of J. Edgar Hoover from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"J. Edgar Hoover assembled the largest collection of pornography in history to meet his insatiable sexual demands, according to a new biography. The former director of the FBI built up a vast stock of adult films made by Hollywood stars before they were famous which he watched for his own titillation - or to blackmail them."

WORLD WAR II NUGGET!!
Pacific Battlefield Tourism: A Dream Island Littered with Deadly Relics from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"World War II ravaged the tiny island of Peleliu in 1944 as US and Japanese forces clashed in one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific campaign. Rusting tanks, wrecked aircraft and live shells strewn across the island continue to attract battlefield tourists to this beautiful but dangerous place."

MEDIEVAL SPORTS NUGGET!!
Try Medieval Hot Pants? Surely, You Joust from the New York Times
"A skeptic finds out that wearing a 60-pound suit of armor like the kind used on the History channel’s new series “Full Metal Jousting” is not for the faint of ... anything."

News Nuggets 876

2012-02-08T08:12:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: An astonishing view of the Milky Way galaxy from the "Wall Street" Canyon at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. From the Daily Mail of the UK. See more from this series at the end of today's posting!
U.S. Evaluating Size of Baghdad Embassy, Officials Say from the Washington Post
"The United States in Iraq, population 16,000, is a country within a country. It has a $6 billion budget, its own airline and three hospitals, and imports virtually all of its food. Its central fortress, otherwise known as the Baghdad embassy compound, is nearly as large as Vatican City. But what seemed like a good idea seven years ago — when plans to construct the embassy and its various outposts were initiated and U.S. interests in Iraq appeared limitless — now increasingly looks like a white elephant of questionable value and staggering expense, critics say."
Another Bush-era fiasco for US taxpayers to choke on!! Let's be really clear about what has happened here: whether they said so or not, the Bush folks and their pals in Congress (read John McCain et al.) had always planned for the US to STAY in Iraq permanently. This "embassy" is in fact a combination of a military base and a transplanted "Green Zone" as what existed in Baghdad. Just the latest example from Bush's expanding legacy of fiascos both in Iraq and across the Middle East.

Iran’s Achilles’ Heel (Efraim Helevy) from the New York Times
"Ending Iran’s influence in Syria would transform the Middle East."

Putin Is Already Dead (Leon Aron) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"The sweeping protests that have riled Moscow signal the end of Russia's strongman, but the real gains will require millions to adopt the project of democracy and dignity."

Sorry, Mitt: It Won't Be an American Century (Charles Kupchan) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Abroad, the charge for the next U.S. president can hardly be to stick his head in the sand and deny that the global distribution of power is fast changing. On the contrary, it is to react soberly and steadily to the implications of such change and ensure that the United States remains secure and prosperous even as economic and military strength spreads to new quarters. President Barack Obama is on the correct path."

Online Feminism's Big Win Against Komen for the Cure (Jessica Valenti) from the Nation
"With Karen Handel's resignation, online feminism's victory against the giant cancer charity is complete. ... Just three days after the behemoth breast cancer foundation Komen for the Cure announced they would defund Planned Parenthood—about $600,000 in grants for cancer screening for low-income women—the organization was forced to reverse their decision when the online backlash became too big too handle. And just this morning, the Komen official widely considered responsible for the debacle, its new vice president for public policy Karen Handel, resigned with a surly letter that implicated the whole Komen board [1] in the decision."

Why the Komen/Planned Parenthood Breakup—While It Lasted—Was Good for Feminism (Amy Schiller) from the Nation
"It might not look like it at first, but Komen’s actions and the ensuing backlash are a huge boon for the feminist movement. The fact that Planned Parenthood will again be eligible for funding in future grant cycles, on top of the $3 million it has raised in the past week, just makes the incident a win-win. But the Komen controversy still has ramifications beyond the budgets of the two organizations: it provided a long-overdue spotlight on the difference between feminism as a brand and feminism as a political movement."

Komen Incites Women’s ‘Tahrir Square Moment’ (Gloria Feldt) from the Daily Beast
"Komen’s dirty trick was nothing new, but it should galvanize women to fight the powerful fringe obsessed with others’ sex lives, writes former Planned Parenthood president, Gloria Feldt."

Obama: The Most Polarizing Moderate Ever (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
"Obama is the most moderate Democratic president since World War II. Which raises a question: How can Obama simultaneously be one of the most divisive and most moderate presidents of the past century?"

Clint Eastwood Chrysler Super Bowl Ad Shows Obama Messaging Is Weak (John Avlon) from the Daily Beast
"Clint Eastwood says his Chrysler Super Bowl commercial isn’t pro-Obama—but the ad’s emotional power and appeal remind us how ineffective the president’s own messaging campaign has been."
No truer words have been said. It is in this area that the Obama team has failed most dramatically: selling their policies. The messaging has INDEED been dreadful!

Obama Inches Past Romney In Virginia Presidential Race from Quinnipiac
"For the first time in this election cycle, President Barack Obama inches ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the leading Republican candidate, 47 - 43 percent in Virginia, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today."

Revisiting ‘That Vision Thing’ (Josh Kraushaar) from the National Journal
"Lacking a clear message of why their ideas are better, Republicans could squander their chance to take the Senate and White House."

Failed Candidates and Faded Icons Reflect Tea Party Decline (Naureen Khan) from the National Journal
"Heroes of yesteryear are either sitting on sidelines or proving ineffectual."
The Tea Party is on its way out! Who called it?! Looking ahead to the 2012 election in November, I wonder how long the GOP leadership will be quacking in its boots in fear of this growing constituency of zombies.

Santorum Sweeps Midwestern GOP Races from Raw Story
"Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) won the Missouri GOP primary and Minnesota causes on Tuesday."

Santorum Romps Through Clean Sweep (Markos Moulitsas) from Daily Kos
An interesting (and not surprisingly snarky) analysis of the results from last night.
"he still suffers the problems of cash (or lack thereof) and organization. A week ago Santorum was bragging about having raised $200,000, which was hilariously quaint and charming -- not enough for a House race, much less a White House bid. But the GOP base doesn't seem to care anymore. They want blood, and now united behind a single candidate, they're ready to deliver some serious pain to their party establishment."
Given that there were no delegates at stake last night, analysts are still unanimous that it was a TERRIBLE night for Romney. Some fairly representative examples follow:

Danger Signs for Mitt Romney as Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri Ready Vote (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"He faces a tight Minnesota race, but a worse problem is his weakening position vs. Obama. Plus, 15 fun facts about Tuesday's primary states."

Mitt Romney Has Reason to Be Concerned (John Fund) from the National Review
"... what Romney won’t be able to explain away is just how much more poorly he did tonight in those three states than in his 2008 showing — when he lost the GOP nomination for president."

The Front-Runner Who Leaves the GOP Cold (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
Even at this point, after Romney trounced Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary and the Nevada caucuses, there are some fairly compelling reasons for Republicans to pause before bowing to the party establishment’s decision that Mitt must be It. First is the fact that so many GOP voters still can’t summon much enthusiasm for their likely standard-bearer."

Minnesota Deals Mitt Romney his Biggest Blow (Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"Tuesday was an embarrassing night for Mitt Romney, and nowhere was that more true than in Minnesota. This was a state where the former Massachusetts governor had nearly everything going for him:"

Santorum Spanks Romney in Midwestern Primaries (Paul Begala) from the Daily Beast
"It was a stunning repudiation of the ostensible frontrunner. Mitt’s super PAC outspent Santorum’s 40 to 1—only to come in third place in Minnesota?"

G.O.P. Race Has Hallmarks of Prolonged Battle (Nate Silver) from the New York Times
"Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable."

Preferring the 'Sweet Meteor of Death' Over Romney (Erik Erikson) from RedState.com
"For months I have said I am for “Not Romney.” It is not because I think either Gingrich or Santorum have a better shot at winning than Romney, but because I still hold out hope for a broker convention to save us from ourselves. ... Romney certainly should not expect me or other conservatives to do anything for him in the general election other than, hopefully it won’t just be me, showing up to vote for him. That’s about all I plan to do for the man."

MARILYN MONROE NUGGET!!
My Day with Marilyn: Stunning Black and White Photos Show Effortless Glamour of Hollywood's Greatest Sex Symbol After They were Hidden in a Drawer for 50 YEARS from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"The photographs, taken by LIFE photographer Ed Clark, were shot in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in August of 1950. He revealed in a 1999 interview with Digital Journal that a friend from 20th Century Fox had called him about a ‘hot tomato’ he just signed."
The photos are really GOOD. It's surprising they were never published.

VETERAN NUGGET!!
The Very Last World War I Veteran Has Died from the Atlantic
"Florence Green joined the RAF at the age of 17 and died just before her 111th birthday, which would have been Feb. 19. "

AMAZING NATURE-GALAXY PHOTOS NUGGET!!
A Galaxy Not So Far Away: Salt Lake City Photographer Captures Spectacular Images of Our Own Milky Way Arched Over the Pillars and Canyons of Utah from the Daily Mail [of the UK]

"Salt Lake City photographer Royce Bair uses digital cameras and what he describes as a 'copious collection of portable incandescent and flash lighting equipment' to capture his unique views of the night sky over Utah's spectacular canyons."

News Nuggets 875

2012-02-07T00:25:00.001-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A flamingo at the National Zoo in Washington DC. From Smithsonian Magazine.

Banks to Take a Hit on US Home Loans from the Financial Times [of the UK]
"Investors in US home mortgage securities will be forced to write down a “substantial” amount of principal – up to $40bn – for distressed borrowers as part of a national settlement against leading US banks to resolve allegations of widespread foreclosure abuses, the Obama administration has said. ... The Obama administration, which recently announced the formation of a new state and federal unit to investigate alleged frauds involving home loans and mortgage-backed securities, intends to use the threat of litigation against large US financial institutions to extract additional aid for struggling borrowers, Mr Donovan said."

Kicking Down the World's Door (Tom Engelhardt) from the Nation
"...the cuts that matter are already in the works, the ones that will change the American way of war. They may mean little in monetary terms—the Pentagon budget is actually slated to increase through 2017—but in imperial terms they will make a difference. A new way of preserving the embattled idea of an American planet is coming into focus and one thing is clear: in the name of Washington’s needs, it will offer a direct challenge to national sovereignty."

Media Forced Komen Apology: With Andrea Mitchell Taking the Lead (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"The conventional narrative is that Komen’s supporters rose up in unison, but it was the big news organizations that turned up the heat until the breast cancer organization had no choice but to melt."

Komen for the Cure: How the Group's Founder Courted Controversy (Sandra McElwaine) from the Daily Beast
"Nancy Brinker, founder of the organization that battled Planned Parenthood, is no stranger to controversy. Sandra McElwaine on how she miscalculated her most public moment."

America's Young People Turn Against 'Patriotic Bravado' (Editorial) from the Gazeta [of Russia in English]
"Young people, who are now entering active public life and building careers, are distinguished by a greater openness, tolerance and a positive outlook. But at the same time, they have a declining tendency toward patriotic bravado and perceive the theme of American greatness more calmly and with far less pathos."

White House To GOP: Only One Way Around Defense Cuts — And You’re Not Gonna Like It from Talking Points Memo
"The officials conducted the briefing under the condition that they not be quoted directly, but their position was unambiguous — the White House will not support any effort to swap out scheduled cuts to defense programs (and other automatic cuts) unless Congress passes a balanced package of deficit reducing legislation of equal or greater measure."

Obama Holds Edge Over Romney in General Election Matchup, Poll Finds from the Washington Post
"Boosted by improved public confidence in his economic stewardship, President Obama for the first time holds a clear edge over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a hypothetical general-election matchup, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."

Is Obama's Coalition Re-Emerging? (Ronald Brownstein) from the National Journal
"One striking aspect of the new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday is how closely the internal results of its head-to-head match-up between President Obama and Mitt Romney track Obama's performance against John McCain in 2008."

A Rust Belt Revival for President Obama? (Josh Kraushaar) from the National Journal
"... the most underplayed development are signs that the president's approval rating is ticking upwards with the group most resistant to him, non-college educated, working-class whites. Over the last week, several surveys have suggested that Obama is gaining some ground with this group, in both national and statewide polling. If these gains stick, it's something that should be very concerning to the Romney campaign, which is dependent on winning overwhelming support from blue-collar white voters as part of a winning GOP coalition."

The GOP Primary Season’s Real Winner (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"President Obama’s reelection prospects are a lot brighter now than they were a few months ago. ... To put the numbers in some context, here’s a look at how recent incumbent presidents have stood in the ABC/WaPo survey at roughly this same point in their reelection years.:"

New Poll Finds The More People Learn About Romney, The More They Dislike Him (Josh Marshal) from Talking Points Memo
"By a more than two to one margin, Americans say that the more they learn about Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, the more they dislike him..."

The Flub Watch Never Stops for Obama’s Team from the New York Times
"Mr. Romney said, “I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’ ” Both moments were perceived by the Obama re-election campaign as another gift from Mr. Romney — now dubbed “the gift that keeps on giving” by some on the Obama team."

Clint Eastwood Makes Obama's Day (George E. Condon Jr.) from the National Journal
"President Obama's ad-makers may have to pay royalties to Clint Eastwood after a remarkable two-minute Chrysler commercial that aired on the biggest of all stages - the Super Bowl - and gave a pretty good preview of what the president's reelection commercials might look like. At the very least, the ad and Eastwood's powerful narration make it much, much more difficult for Republican front-runner Mitt Romney to keep pushing his line that Washington should have let the automakers go into bankruptcy."

Romney Rises, but No End in Sight for GOP Race (Rick Klein) from ABC News
"...this is where delegate math is not Romney’s friend, not this year. The proportional allocation of delegates — as opposed to the winner-take-all format that dominated previous cycles — combines with a back-loaded calendar to leave virtually no chance for Romney to end the race quickly, unless his rivals cooperate."

Does Romney Even Like Republicans? “Muttonheads” discomfit Mitt (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
" [George] Romney's campaign was subsequently chewed to bits between the twin gears of a mindless press corps and rabid right-wing nationalists. “The rest of our [electoral] system I know pretty well,” young Mitt wrote to his father, “only one thing I can’t understand: How can the American public like such muttonheads?” Four and a half decades later, muttonhead-lovers continue to madden Romney, whose frustration has oozed out through blind quotes from his aides."

Tea Party ‘Is Dead’: How the Movement Fizzled in 2012’s GOP Primaries (Patricia Murphy) from the Daily Beast
"A giant killer in 2010, it never came off the sidelines in the 2012 primaries—and may end up with the nominee it loves least. Now a Tea Party leader tells Patricia Murphy the movement is “dead” and “gone.”"
Indeed, because what they wanted was a credible candidate who could powerfully deliver their chaotic jumble of preposterous BS. NONE of the contenders could pull it off. It was like looking for an exceptionally obese ballerina to carry off the lead role in Swan Lake.

Paul Capturing Delegates Could Force Fed Changes on Republicans (Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Joshua Zumbrun) from Bloomberg News Service
"He’s going to ask for a speaking role at the convention and try to have some influence in the party platform,” Republican strategist John Feehery said of Paul. That would likely mean adding some tough anti-Fed language to the party’s formal agenda, such as mandating an audit of its monetary policy or sharply curtailing its power by eliminating its task of promoting employment so it focuses exclusively on price stability."

For Minnesota And Colorado Caucuses, Polls Are Sparse But Hint At A Rick Santorum Surprise (Mark Blumenthal) from the Huffington Post
"On Tuesday, Republicans will attend precinct caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and vote in a non-binding primary in Missouri. Polling for these contests has been extremely sparse, and may be just a rough guide to the outcome, but the available data suggests that Rick Santorum may have a strong showing in the two Midwestern states."

The GOP’s Economic Sabotage (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"When GOP congressman Allen West dismissed falling unemployment as “number games,” he was pointing the way forward for his party—into disinformation and deliberate destruction."

Obama's Grandmother Hurt in Car Accident from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Sarah Obama, 91, suffers minor injuries when the car she is travelling in rolls over on the way to Kogelo, Kenya."

SINGLES NUGGET!!
Singled Out: Are Unmarried People Discriminated Against? (Maura Kelly) from the Daily Beast
"From health insurance to housing, singletons get the short end of the stick. Maura Kelly explores the rights of the unwed."

HOLLYWOOD MOVIE NUGGET!!
25 Movies We Can't Wait to See from Entertainment Weekly

OUTER SPACE NUGGET!!
Is There an Ice-Spewing Volcano on Titan? Big Pic (IMAGES) from Discovery News
"Cryovolcanoes aren't like any volcano you find on Earth, even though planetary scientists think they might look similar. On Titan, the only solar system satellite massive enough to hold on to a substantial
atmosphere, the temperature hovers at around 94 K (or -290 Fahrenheit). These frigid conditions ensure that elements that can be found in gaseous form on Earth are in liquid or even solid form on Titan's surface."

ANCIENT EGYPT & ROME NUGGET!!
The Oldest Modernist Paintings from Smithsonian Magazine
"Two thousand years before Picasso, artists in Egypt painted some of the most arresting portraits in the history of art."

BARBARIAN NUGGET!!
Nice Things to Say About Attila the Hun from the Smithsonian Magazine
"As recently as a century ago, when the British wanted to emphasize how barbarous and how un-English their opponents in the First World War had grown—how very far they had fallen short in their sense of honor, justice and fair play—they called the Germans “Huns.” Yet there are those who think we have much to learn from a people who came apparently from nowhere to force the mighty Roman Empire almost to its knees."

News Nuggets 874

2012-02-06T08:03:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: A gray wolf at the Wolf Haven Sanctuary in Washington State. From National Geographic.
UP-FRONT LOCAL FIASCOS NUGGETS [yes, plural]
1. Allegheny County Reassessment Favors Properties with Higher Prices, Review Finds; Low-end Properties Assessed at Twice Value from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"The reassessment of Pittsburgh treated expensive land and buildings gently, while overestimating the values of low-priced properties. The Allegheny County-run reassessment fell far short of the goal of
distributing the tax burden fairly among owners of high-dollar properties and residents of modest homes. Those are the findings of a Post-Gazette review of new assessments on 130,977 taxable properties in the city and Mount Oliver."

2. Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12 School Regroups After Single-gender Plan is Scrapped; Insufficient Planning, Discipline Problems Negate Changes Sought from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"The image of the first day of school at the new Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12 in Homewood still sticks in one teacher's mind. "I think the first day in August was so beautiful. They came in their uniforms. You could see the expectations that things were going to be different. We're really going to focus on our learning," she said. But on Aug. 22 -- opening day of the new offerings of single-gender classes -- the school wasn't ready"
What the hell is going on with the Pittsburgh public schools!? Seemingly, every year now the district rolls out a new BIG "reform" [sometimes overlapping, and even contradicting "reforms"] and, after disrupting the routines of everyone involved, toss in a boatload of incomprehensible faculty and staff relocations and dismissals, and, what do we have at the end of the day? Not just a failed experiment -- but a fiasco!! Most people realize that the city schools are in critical condition and have been for years -- but, in my view, there are way too many doctors in this emergency room right now!

Unanswered Questions on Afghanistan (Christopher A. Preble) from the National Interest
"Though vague, the Afghanistan-withdrawal announcement is good news—and a brilliant political move."

Heartless Sino-Russian UN move is a massive realpolitik win for West (Jonathan Kay) from the National Post [of Canada]
"On a realpolitik level, this is a massive win for the West: The Western powers enjoy the moral advantage ... China and Russia, on the other hand, will now be implicated in every protestor death in ever Syrian city on every day until Assad falls from power."

The Privatization Trap (Mike Konczal) from Salon
"From schools to prisons, outsourcing government's works typically ends with cronyism, waste and unaccountability"

Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen's Anti-Abortion VP, Drove Decision To Defund Planned Parenthood from the Huffington Post
"Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation's leading anti-breast-cancer charity, has insisted that its since-reversed decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood arose from a routine change in criteria for grant eligibility that had nothing to do with abortion politics. But a Komen insider told HuffPost on Sunday that Karen Handel, Komen's staunchly anti-abortion vice president for public policy, was the main force behind the decision to defund Planned Parenthood and the attempt to make that decision look nonpolitical."

Why Obama? An Argument to Reluctant Progressives for Supporting the President's Reelection (Armando) from the Daily Kos
"What I suggest then is an appraisal of the upcoming election from the perspective of what is at stake, in the short and medium term, for the issues progressives care about. I'll engage in this exercise below the fold."
Now. let me say I strongly disagree with this author's analysis of Obama's "opportunities" as they existed in 2009 or 2010 -- but the view looking forward is interesting.

Obama’s Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month (Nate Silver) from the New York Times
"Here’s a spoiler: reports that say more than 150,000 jobs have been created can generally be interpreted as good news for Mr. Obama. Reports that come in at under 150,000 jobs could put him on a trajectory toward defeat. However, the matter is worth examining in more depth."

A Good Week for Planned Parenthood (Joanna Weiss) from the Boston Globe
"...in those three days of fury, Planned Parenthood got precisely the publicity it needs. Indeed, even in the midst of the crisis, some Planned Parenthood officials could see the silver lining. ”It’s creating an opportunity for us to really educate the public,” Tricia Wajda, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, told me on Thursday. ”We haven’t been able to effectively communicate our preventative services before.”"

The Media’s Abortion Blinders (Ross Douthat) from the New York Times
"In the most recent Gallup poll on abortion, as many Americans described themselves as pro-life as called themselves pro-choice. A combined 58 percent of Americans stated that abortion should either be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal in only a few circumstances.”
Let me say up front I'm skeptical of these numbers -- but if they are even close to true, pro-choice advocates have reason to be very concerned. Roe v. Wade CANNOT hold up if this trend is real -- especially when combined with the low priority Democratic lawmakers have given to judicial
appointments both under Clinton and now under Obama. While the GOP fights to the last ditch to get the most conservative judges confirmed, the Democrats (neither their lawmakers nor their voters for the most part) don't. But there is more to this than simple inertia on the part of Democrats. NOW, Planned Parenthood and other supporters of a woman's right to choose have for decades not been attentive enough to on-goingly making the public case for Roe. Much as the scientists who accept global warming, pro-choice advocates have been largely absent from the public debate between the pro- and anti-choice positions. The pro-life message is pervasive; the pro-choice message is not. The fact that the message is more complicated and nuanced then the pro-life message (as usually communicated) makes no difference. I have not heard any widely distributed message in decades that actually attempted to convince voters that women have a right to privacy and that women required the final say over their own bodies. If you question this statement, ask a young person between the ages of 18 and 25 (1) if they support Roe v. Wade and (2) if so, why? I've been asking this off-and-on for several months and what I get back is, first, genuine ambivalence. What is more disturbing are the answers to "why?" I have YET to hear someone respond with a clearly stated privacy or women's right-to-choose argument. It is my observation that, at some point in the 1980s, pro-choice advocates seemed to assume that they had made their case, enough said. My fear is that Roe and its protections (already under assault everywhere) will ultimately completely fall away -- simply because supporters on the left can't muster enough enthusiasm among themselves and enough support from ill-informed younger generations. Even as some herald the Komen about-face (if that is what it is), I fear for Roe today.

Romney Cuts Loose O'Donnell, Perhaps Out of Ego (Michelle Cottle) from the Daily Beast
"The GOP frontrunner apparently cut loose the man who whipped his debate skills into shape out of fear that he was being overshadowed. Michelle Cottle on how ego trumped strategy."

Romney's Gaffe Problem (Jacob Heilbrunn) from the National Interest
"Romney might make a good or even great president. But he is a terrible politician."

In Nevada, Economic Woes, Anti-Obama Sentiment Fail to Draw Large Turnout from the Las Vegas Sun
"Mitt Romney’s easy victory in Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses might, in the long run, be less important than the fact that a surprising number of Republicans who could have participated Saturday chose to stay home. Republicans’ disappointing turnout foreshadows difficulty energizing GOP voters in Nevada, a key swing state in November’s general election."

'She's a spy!': Reporter Banned from Nevada Caucus from the Los Angeles Times
"“You’re a bunch of liars!” someone shouted. “Spy! She’s a spy!” someone else said. A woman waved a button at me, which said: DON’T BELIEVE THE LIBERAL MEDIA. Tough crowd, I thought. Then a man walked over to me and said if I didn’t leave, he’d call security. So I left the room while voters cast their ballots. A short time later, a male party volunteer tried to tell precinct 1721’s leaders that they were wrong, but at that point I was persona non grata. When I tried to reenter the room, an elderly man said people were still voting, grabbed my arm, pushed me away and shut the door in my face."
THIS is what happens to a free media when one party demagogues and demonizes the press for forty years. The GOP has little to fear from a free and independent media when voters themselves actually attack that self-same media.

Gingrich Down and Finally Out of the Running (Jennifer Rubin) from the Washington Post
"Gingrich’s presidential campaign is caput, whether he knows it or not. Before Saturday’s humiliating loss, many conservatives were already signaling to Gingrich that they’d had quite enough of him."

The Great Man’s Wife (Maureen Dowd) from the New York Times
"“She’s a transformational wife,” Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, told me. “She’s the wife who makes the candidate think he is destiny’s gift to mankind, born to greater things.”"

Michelle Obama’s Charm Offensive (Margaret Carlson) from the Daily Beast
"She’s cooking with Leno and doing push-ups with Ellen. Margaret Carlson on how the first lady helped defuse a juicy White House tell-all—and why her husband’s campaign should take note."

MILITARY BOOK NUGGET!!
New Biography of General Petraeus Misses the Man (John Barry) from the Daily Beast
The review title aside, this is a really interesting article about what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"By force of will, Petraeus was beginning to turn things around, at least tactically. But he arrived too late, and he knew it. Obama’s decisions recognized the political reality that, as in Vietnam, patience back home had run out. Perhaps the glitter of Petraeus’s career masks a tragic irony: he educated the U.S. Army to fight a kind of war for which there will never be enduring domestic support."

CRIME NUGGET!!
Killers’ Families Left to Confront Fear and Shame from the New York Times
Normally, stories involving mass murder receive little attention on this blog. This is one of the few areas where cable stations keep the public well-informed!! But this story is different. It discusses how the families of some of these mass killers try to pull their lives back together after arrest and conviction. Very interesting.
"Like relatives of other violent criminals, she has found herself ill prepared to deal with the complex set of emotions and circumstances that further unhinged her life after her brother’s crimes. "

GERMAN HISTORY NUGGET!!
Long-lost Thomas Edison Recordings Give Voice to Otto von Bismarck for the First Time from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"For the first time, 21st-century audiences are able to hear the voice of Otto von Bismarck, one of the 19th century's most important figures."

News Nuggets 873

2012-02-05T07:28:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Springbok gazelles take in the morning light in the Kalahari in South Africa. From National Geographic.

TEN BEST NUGGETS OF THE WEEK!!

1. Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran? (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"This U.S. policy — signaling that Israel is acting on its own — might open a breach like the one in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned an Israeli-European attack on the Suez Canal. Complicating matters is the 2012 presidential campaign, which has Republicans
candidates clamoring for stronger U.S. support of Israel."

2. Obama’s Faster, Smarter Afghan Exit from Afghanistan (Leslie H. Gelb) from the Daily Beast
"Kudos for Obama and his team! They’ve announced a quick end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan—a surprise decision of strategic skill and political courage."

3. The World has Changed, Mr. Romney (Fareed Zakaria) from the Washington Post
"I’d like to call attention to a line you have used repeatedly: “This is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century.” I leave it to the president to describe what he believes, but as the author of the book “The Post-American World,” let me make sure you know what exactly you are attacking. “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else,” I note at the very outset. I am optimistic about America, convinced that it can prosper in this new world and remain the most powerful country on the planet. But I argue that the age of American unipolarity — which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union — has ended."

4. Out of Afghanistan: Incredible Stories of the Boys who Walked to Europe from the Guardian [of the UK]
"The country is so dangerous it's no wonder so many leave, travelling alone across the Middle East in search of a new life."

5. Russian Protests – Echoes of US Civil Rights Movement (Leon Aron) from the Christian Science Monitor
"To see the December protests in Russia as primarily a political wave is to miss a more fundamental leaven at work in Russian society: a moral awakening akin to the American civil rights movement. An early test is Saturday, when a massive protest in Moscow is planned."

6. Davos and Disconnected Elites (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"As the “best and brightest” from the developing world plug into the global grid, they inevitably unplug from their local political, business and cultural networks. It’s a subtler version of what used to be called the “brain drain.” The entrepreneurs keep their businesses at home, where they are making their money, but they and their children join the global elite in a web of Four Seasons hotels and Ivy League tuition bills."

7. How Conservatives Lost their Moral Compass (Neal Gabler) from Politico
"There is a reason we have never previously had a hatemonger like Rush Limbaugh enjoy popularity for as long as he has. The reason was shame. ... Surely when a group can publicly cheer a man’s death for not having health insurance, the sense of shame is gone. It faded not only because liberals had subverted it by casting it as a conservative scheme to corset society, but because conservatives managed to delegitimize it."

8. Romney and Gingrich Set the GOP on a Path Toward Self-Destruction (John Batchelor) from the Daily Beast
"A GOP professional laments the “slime and dirt and muck attached not only to the two candidates but also to the party itself.”"

9. The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich (Gail Sheehy) from Vanity Fair [from 1995 but posted last week]
"From the cauldron of his childhood—the father who abandoned him, the manic-depressive mother who loved him too much, the stepfather whose anger shaped the family—Newt Gingrich emerged with a heroic need that became his mission. Some samples: "I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.” ... In the spring of 1977, she was in Washington to attend a census-bureau workshop when Gingrich took her out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. He met her back at her modest hotel room. “We had oral sex,” she says. “He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, T never slept with her.’” Indeed, before Gingrich left that evening, she says, he threatened her: “Tf you ever tell anybody about this, I’ll say you’re lying.’”"

10. Voter Frustration Makes for Tumultuous GOP Primary (Ann Gerhart) from the Washington Post
"For now, they are angry and anxious and uncertain, sick of a bunch of elites in Washington who can’t fix their lives and suspicious of all promises, and their 2.6 million votes reflect the deep cracks in a party of people who can’t seem to get along. This has been the most turbulent Republican presidential race in a generation."

Now -- back to our regular nuggets for Sunday, February 5, 2012

UP-FRONT POLITICAL JUNKIES NUGGET!!
The 2016 Election, Already Upon Us (David Leonhardt) from the New York Times
"DISTANT as it may now seem, with the Republican race dominating the news and President Obama sitting in the White House, the Democrats are not all that far from the tumult of another nominating contest themselves."

Russia: Sort of, but Not Really (Thomas Friedman) from the New York Times
"The sheer brazenness of such protests and the anger at Prime Minister Putin among the urban middle classes here for treating them like idiots by just announcing that he and President Dmitri Mevedev were going to switch jobs were unthinkable a year ago. The fact that the youths who put up the banner were apparently not jailed also bespeaks how much Putin understands that he is on very thin ice and can’t afford to create any “martyrs” that would enrage the antigovernment protesters, who gathered again in Moscow on Saturday. But what will Putin do next?"

The GOP’s ‘Europe’ is a Land of Make-Believe (Martin Klingst) from the Washington Post
"... when Romney, Gingrich and Santorum warn about “socialist Europe,” they sound as though they are talking about the Soviet empire, which vanished long ago. ... My problem as a European living in the United States is that it is not Joe the Plumber who is bashing Europe but three longtime politicians who want to be president — people who should know better. "

What Is a Conservative? (various pundits) from Time Magazine
"Mitt Romney’s advance toward the Republican presidential nomination has provoked a lively conversation about what it means to be a conservative in America today. TIME asked a number of right-leaning thinkers to answer one of three questions to help define both their ideology and their challenges for the future"

Planned Parenthood Gets Image Boost on Komen Win from Politico
WAS this a win? Lots of chatter in the blogosphere that Komen still has not actually agreed to RESTORE PP's funding.
"... when Komen announced last week it planned to pull grants for breast cancer screenings, they got an unexpected response: the Internet exploded with thousands of angry supporters and others who gave the group $3 million."

Ari Fleischer Secretly Involved In Komen Strategy On Planned Parenthood from Think Progress
"Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood."
NOW it all makes perfect sense! There was a familiar feel to this whole Komen scandal, especially in the basic way that it disturbed the fabric of the political universe. Now it's clear -- the familiarity came from the sheer scale of the ham-handed incompetence of the people involved -- and, lo and behold, what do we find at the center? A former Bush official.

Why Dems Think They Have A ‘Sword Of Damocles’ In Tax Fight from Talking Points Memo
"The defense cuts — along with an additional $600 billion in reductions to domestic spending — were part of the “sequestration” that was meant to encourage the Deficit Super Committee to strike a deal on cutting by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. It failed. And Republicans, after initially signing off on the cuts, now say they’re unacceptable. Not so fast, say Dems."

Cancer Charity's Effort to Privately Defund Planned Parenthood Backfires from The Hill
"The push to privately defund Planned Parenthood didn’t just fail last week — it backfired into a potentially serious setback for the group’s most ardent critics."

Judge: Obama Eligible to be Georgia Candidate from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"In a 10-page order, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed one challenge that contended Obama has a computer-generated Hawaiian birth certificate, a fraudulent Social Security number and invalid U.S. identification papers. He also turned back another that claimed the president is ineligible to be a candidate because his father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of Obama's birth."

The GOP Presidential Race So Far from the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times
"With three primaries and a caucus behind us, we've learned more about the candidates as campaigners than as potential presidents, and not enough about their differences on the issues."

Coulter, Romneycare, And The GOP Crackup (Timothy Noah) from the New Republic
"I thought it would be fun to offer some sort of prize--say, a bronze replica of the 1939 Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact--to the first Fox News personality to endorse Romney's absurd claim that Romneycare (good) was entirely different from Obamacare (bad). I never dreamed that Ann Coulter would beat me to the punch."

Newt Gingrich Plots His Comeback (Lloyd Grove) from the Daily Beast
"He's been buried by an avalanche of attack ads, and outspent 5-1. That's when Speaker Gingrich is at his most dangerous. In the bunker with 2012's comeback kid."

BRITISH TV-BOOK NUGGET!!
Remains of the Days: Three Books Explore the Reality Behind the World of ‘Downton Abbey’ from the New York Times
"The merchant class, which is to say the publishing industry, is mining the popularity of “Downton Abbey” with the release and re-release of two books that inspired the show, and the inevitable companion volume to the TV series (inevitably titled “The World of Downton Abbey”)."

News Nuggets 872

2012-02-04T04:39:00.000-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: Van Gogh's "Garden in the Auvers" at a new exhibition of Van Gogh's works in Philadelphia. See the Impressionist Art Nugget below. From the New York Times.

UP-FRONT ROMNEY CAMPAIGN NUGGET!!
Mitt Romney Splits with Brett O’Donnell from Politico
"A GOP operative who won plaudits for bolstering Mitt Romney’s recent debate performances is not being retained by the frontrunner’s campaign, an apparent victim of internal tensions over staff receiving too much credit for the candidate’s comeback, POLITICO has learned."
What a DUMB move!! Fine bit of gratitude this guy gets! This little story speaks VOLUMES about what I can only categorize as the fecklessness of both Mitt Romney and the people around him! Think back to 2008 -- Obama had no problem with people like Dave Favreau, Axelrod, Plouffe, Penny Prizker, (even his body man, Reggie Love, for God's sake) getting media attention for the important differences they were making with and for Obama the candidate. But here's this poor GOP slob who (for the first time in Romney's FIVE SOLID YEARS of campaigning) actually made Romney a noticeably better debater and campaigner -- and what happens?! HE, the slob, gets the axe because he got the slightest flash of media attention! The guy should have been rewarded, not FIRED! This suggests a deeply insecure candidate and/or campaign staff. Wow!

Russian Protests – Echoes of US Civil Rights Movement (Leon Aron) from the Christian Science Monitor
"To see the December protests in Russia as primarily a political wave is to miss a more fundamental leaven at work in Russian society: a moral awakening akin to the American civil rights movement. An early test is Saturday, when a massive protest in Moscow is planned."

Obama's Turn on Nuclear Weapons: The White House and its Warheads (Joseph Cirincione) from the journal, Foreign Affairs
"The United States would shift from being able to fight two major wars simultaneously to increasing its focus on Asia. But the president also explained that reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal would be key to future defense: "We will continue to get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems," he said, "so that we can invest in the capabilities we need for the future." Policy, meet budget."

Afghan Shift: The U.S. is Right to Curtail Combat from the Editorial Board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Americans who believe the United States has put enough lives and money into Afghanistan should be pleased by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's statement Wednesday that the U.S. role will be shifted from combat to training sooner than planned, to mid-2013. The situation on the ground, as well as U.S. interests at home, show this is the right move for several reasons."

Jobs Report Comes in Far Above Expectations. Official Unemployment Rate Falls to 8.3%, 'U6' at 15.1% from Daily Kos
"The fact that the official rate fell at the same time 250,000 workers entered the work force is a good sign."

January Jobs Report is Good News for Obama (Rachel Weiner) from the Washington Post
"Below the top-line numbers were other encouraging signs: Hiring was widespread across many high-paying industries, pay increased, and 2011 numbers were revised upward. If that trend continues, Obama’s reelection prospects will continue to strengthen."

Recovery Winter Arrives With HUGE 243,000 Increase in Payroll Employment (Matthew Yglesias) from Slate
"Folks, welcome to the recovery winter. When the December payroll employment number came in strong, a lot of doubters said the BLS just didn't have the seasonal adjustment factor right and a lot of the new hiring was "really" temporary and Christmas related. Well today the January numbers are out and they're even better than December was..."

What Will the GOP Complain About Now? (Andrew Leonard) from Salon
"The economy adds 243,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate falls again. Finally, a really encouraging jobs report."

Some Republicans are Very Concerned About the Poor (Alex Pareene) from Salon
"They're mostly concerned that the poor are getting away with something."

Susan G. Komen Enters the McCarthy Era from the Reid Report
"With one policy change, the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure has gone from a respected heal advocacy charity, to a crass political actor. And that’s a shame."

Bait And Switch: GOP Leaders Renege On Debt Limit Deal Defense Cuts from Talking Points Memo
I'm so shocked.
"Boehner’s Thursday comments came moments after Senate Republicans unveiled their plan to partially phase out the enforcement mechanism by reducing the federal workforce and freezing federal pay. Both developments indicate Republican leaders no longer regard their own deal as sacrosanct. Now Boehner’s pressuring the White House to let Republicans off the hook for the piece of the deficit enforcement mechanism that was designed to make them negotiate in good faith. And Democrats are furious."

Anatomy Of A Come Back? Charting Obama’s Approval from Talking Points Memo
"After a debt agreement was done, Obama immediately made a successful pivot to jobs, and the public responded. Nothing in the jobs package Obama proposed came to fruition, but that was likely part of the political calculus..."
Good graphic

Should GOP Even Have an Agenda? from Politico
"The divide within the party is sharp. McConnell and other influential senators believe the party should avoid putting out a detailed platform and focus squarely on Obama’s record, while a range of junior senators—and some veterans like Sen. John McCain—think the conference should lay out a Contract with America-type agenda [...] But the strategies all carry great risk."

Voter Frustration Makes for Tumultuous GOP Primary (Ann Gerhart) from the Washington Post
"For now, they are angry and anxious and uncertain, sick of a bunch of elites in Washington who can’t fix their lives and suspicious of all promises, and their 2.6 million votes reflect the deep cracks in a party of people who can’t seem to get along. This has been the most turbulent Republican presidential race in a generation."

WI-GOV: Scott Walker to Meet with Prosecutors on John Doe Investigation from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Gov. Scott Walker has hired two criminal defense attorneys and will be meeting with Milwaukee County prosecutors about the John Doe investigation into his current and former aides."

PENNSYLVANIA ENVIRONMENT NUGGET!!
Cabot Admits its Dimock Water Arsenic Claim was a Mistake (Donald Gilliland) from the Patriot-News [of Harrisburg]
"The arsenic Cabot Oil & Gas recently said was not in the water in Dimock wasn’t even arsenic. It’s the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First?” routine, Marcellus style."
Here you have gas-drillers that have no interest in finding out how dangerous their practices are meeting local/state water authorities who are too incompetent to judge what impact the gas drillers are having -- being challenged by a federal environmental agency that ALSO seems to lack the competence AND the interest in really finding out what's so. God only knows what's really going on and what the real dangers are!

FACEBOOK IPO NUGGET!!
David Choe, Facebook’s Millionaire Graffiti Artist (Jimmy So) from the Daily Beast
"When the company goes public, David Choe, who painted its headquarters and got paid in stock options, will become very, very rich. Jimmy So looks at the man and his art."

CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND NUGGET!!
Freedom Rider Diane Nash: Challenges Students to Get Involved (M. Abdul-Qawiyy) from the New Pittsburgh Courier
"Known for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, Diane Nash spoke of her experiences as a young woman and challenged the students to get involved in change as the keynote speaker for the Pitt Black Action Society, Jan. 17 at the William Pitt Assembly room."
Wow -- wish I had been there. Diane Nash is one of my big-time civil rights heroes.

IMPRESSIONIST ART NUGGET!!
In the Eye of His Storms from the New York Times
"In the catalog to “Van Gogh Up Close,” a succinct, revelatory exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the art historian Anabelle Kienle notes van Gogh’s repeated references in his letters to “a blade of grass,” “a single blade of grass,” “a dusty blade of grass.” "

News Nuggets 871

2012-02-03T08:42:00.002-05:00

DAYLEE PICTURE: China's winter festival. From Foreign Policy Magazine.

Premature Evacuation from Afghanistan?: Why Cutting and Running in Afghanistan is Good Politics for Obama (Michael Cohen) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Obama probably understands better than his opponents that such attacks have rather limited political saliency. Voters strongly oppose the war in Afghanistan and have for quite some time. Indeed, 56 percent of Americans would, if they had their way, bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan immediately."

Did Obama Just Declare Victory in Afghanistan? Why Not? Nothing Else has Worked (Fred Kaplan) from Slate
"What does this all mean? A few inferences can be drawn with fairly high confidence.
First, President Obama really is getting out of there."
A fairly clear-eyed assessment of Obama's shift in the pace of withdraw.

Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran? (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"This U.S. policy — signaling that Israel is acting on its own — might open a breach like the one in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned an Israeli-European attack on the Suez Canal. Complicating matters is the 2012 presidential campaign, which has Republicans
candidates clamoring for stronger U.S. support of Israel."

Effort to Rebrand Arab Spring Backfires in Iran from the New York Times
"Iran invited young activists to Tehran for a conference on the “Islamic Awakening,” but the fact that no one from Syria’s opposition was invited disrupted the whole script."

Susan G. Komen Fights to Contain Planned Parenthood Damage from Politico
"If this was supposed to be damage control, Susan G. Komen for the Cure proved Thursday that it has a lot to learn."

Komen Supporters Jumping Ship on Guidestar.org from Daily Kos
"Guidestar.org is an extraordinarily important resource for nonprofits. Prospective donors, if they're smart, check out a nonprofit at guidestar.org before even considering giving a donation. ... The Personal Reviews section, which I honestly did not know existed before today, exploded in the last two days, and brought SGK's rating down to one star out of five. "

Reimagining Speaker Pelosi from the Wall Street Journal
"John Boehner realizes, if many Republicans don't, that retaining the House is no sure thing."

To Fix Image, Republicans in House Think Small from the New York Times Unpopular and divided, the once mighty House Republicans are laboring to repair their image and frame a new agenda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/politics/to-fix-image-house-gop-thinks-small.html?_r=1&hp

Romney Playing With Fire on Afghanistan (Alex Roarty) from the National Journal
"But for a candidate diligently preparing his general election argument on every other policy, this is an odd political play."

The GOP’s “Entitlement Society” Myth (Robert Reich) from Salon
"Newt and Mitt blame our economic woes on the use of food stamps and unemployment insurance. They have it backwards."

The GOP’s Rush to the Right in Congress (Michael Tomasky) from the Daily Beast
"Washington loves a lullaby—like the one about both sides deserving blame for the decline in bipartisanship. Thankfully, a new study tells the truth about who’s really responsible."

Who Had the Worst Week in Washington? The Tea Party from the Washington Post
"In recent days, some voices that have defined the movement over the past two years — former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, erstwhile 2012 candidate Herman Cain, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle and real estate mogul/self-promoter Donald Trump — offered their endorsements in the GOP presidential race. And the political world yawned in unison."

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and GOP Rivals’ Ferocious Battle in Nevada Caucus (Ben Jacobs) from the Daily Beast
"Romney comes into the Nevada caucus on Saturday with a strong organization and Mormon support, but Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul are all jockeying for a strong showing in a state sharply divided between Tea Party conservatives and moderates."

Coulter's Shameful Defense of Romneycare (Philip Klein) from the Washington Post
"Ann Coulter’s support for Mitt Romney entered a new stage today with a column offering an all out embrace of Romneycare. In the process, she insults the intelligence of conservative critics of the law and doesn’t address their actual arguments against it. ... This is a shameful argument, and she must have a very low opinion of conservatives if she thinks this is actually true. "
Y'know -- it's interesting. In right-wing land, we have reached a point where people can't have straight-forward policy differences: it HAS to be framed in both personal and moral terms. Coulter becomes shameful; Obama becomes Hitler or Stalin; Romney becomes whatever bad thing Newt can think up today.

The Gingrich Playbook (Doyle McManus) from the Los Angeles Times
"He expects to be fighting all the way to the GOP convention floor."

BRITISH LITERATURE NUGGET!!
Revealed, the Real-life Neighbors of Dickens called William Sykes and Scrooge Who were the Inspiration for his Best Loved Characters from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Characters from Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol were based on real-life people who lived near writer, research claims. "The names of Bill Sikes and Scrooge may have derived from real people linked to the famous writer, according to new research. The thug in Oliver Twist, the famous Christmas Carol miser and the ghost of his deceased partner have all been associated with people who worked or lived near Dickens's first London home."

GOLD TREASURE NUGGET!!
We've Still Got a Few Quid then! Bank of England's Glittering Stash of £156BILLION in Gold Bars Stored in Former Canteen Under London from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
The pictures are interesting!
"Despite the financial crisis, it seems the country still has some money left in the Bank of England's vault beneath London. In fact, there are stacks of gold bars worth a whopping £156billion stored in an old canteen deep below the streets of the capital."

BIG SHRIMP NUGGET!!
We’ll Need a Bigger Barbecue! World’s Biggest ‘Prawn’ Discovered as Scientists find ELEVEN INCH Crustacean in Deep Sea from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"A British expedition to one of the deepest parts of the ocean has discovered an enormous species of crustacean that looks like a prawn and is 11ins long."