News Nuggets 757

A 1930 Duesenberg Willoughby, a classic car favored by Chicago mobsters.   What a wonderfully maintained vehicle!

If This is 'Class Warfare,' the Middle is Getting Pounded (James Werrell) from the Kansas City Star
"America now has more poor people than at any time in the 52 years records have been kept, according to an article in Time magazine by economist Rana Foroohar. The number of people living below the poverty line - a family of four living on $22,000 a year - has been rising for the past four years and now stands at 15 percent of the population. Foroohar asserts that the American Dream, the notion that anyone with grit and determination can improve his or her status, has become a sad joke. Americans now are less upwardly mobile than many European nations, including even stratified countries such as England, France and Germany. If you're born poor in America, you're likely to stay poor."

Slump Alters Jobless Map in U.S., With South Hit Hard from the New York Times
"The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show."
Some economic justice here -- given that it has largely been the southern states who have put the biggest GOP "juice the recession" clowns in office.

New-Home Sales on Track for Lowest Level on Record from MSNBC
"Sales of new homes this year could hit the lowest levels in the nearly 50 years the government has been tracking the data. New-home sales fell 2.3 percent in August to an annual rate of 295,000 units, the government said Monday."

And, why not, lets have some more good economic news:
Most Food Stamp Recipients Have No Earned Income from the Wall Street Journal
"Some 70% of households that relied on food stamps last year had no earned income, a new report shows. More than 40 million individuals and nearly 19 million households tapped the food stamp program in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While the recession technically ended in 2009, a sluggish economic recovery left millions out of work or underemployed and leaning on the government for assistance last year."

Three Reasons the White House is Taking Health Reform Straight to Supreme Court from the Washington Post
"The conventional wisdom has always been that, for the White House, a longer timeline on health reform’s legal challenges is better: it gives the law more time to be implemented and benefits to kick in. So why did it choose the faster route to the Supreme Court this time? There are at least three reasons that could make a 2012 Supreme Court decision a more compelling one for the White House:"

Johns Hopkins Scientists Figure Out How to ‘Disarm’ AIDS Virus from the medical journal Blood via Raw Story
"Research results published last week in the medical journal Blood indicated the treatment method could lead to a vaccine against the virus, which affected about 33.3 million people worldwide at the end of 2009.  Scientists said their new method works by eliminating a membrane of cholesterol used by HIV to disguise itself and disarm the immune system. ... By stripping it of that essential cholesterol membrane, the AIDS virus is attacked by the immune system and shut down."

U.S. To Hand Over Iraq Bases, Equipment Worth Billions (Dan Froomkin) from the Huffington Post
"With just over three months until the last U.S. troops are currently due to leave Iraq, the Department of Defense is engaged in a mad dash to give away things that cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to buy and build.  The giveaways include enormous, elaborate military bases and vast amounts of military equipment that will be turned over to the Iraqis, mostly just to save the expense of bringing it home."
You betcha'!  No one is saying so but I remain convinced that the original plan under Bush 43 was TO STAY in Iraq.  Now we are faced with the biggest "Going Out of Business" sales in world history!

Obama Strength? Reshaping the Judiciary (DeWayne Wickham) from USA Today
"The president's greatest accomplishment, which he ought to mention in every speech to his core supporters, is what he has done to reshape the federal judiciary. Nothing is likely to have a longer lasting impact on the interests of the people who put him in office than his appointments of federal judges."

Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and the Argument Over `Class Warfare’ (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"...the arguments from Warren and Obama — and the conservative responses to them — suggest that it’s a good thing that we’re having this argument. ... In contrast to months of fighting it out on austerity/spending cut turf favorable to the GOP, Dems are now arguing for fairer taxation, in order to reduce the deficit, on the grounds that we’re all in this together. Meanwhile, Republicans are fighting to defend low taxes on the rich even as they decry “class warfare,” which gives Dems an opening to ask who, exactly, Republicans are fighting for. Whatever the political benefits of this argument for Dems, it’s a good one for the country to hear."

Rick Perry's Really Bad Weekend (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"Rick Perry ended last week with conservative leaders and activists openly mocking his performance in a debate and expressing serious doubts about his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. And the bleeding didn't stop over the weekend."
Just the latest in the GOP's cascade of clowns!  We started with, let me see, I guess it goes back to Queen Sarah and her Gabrielle Giffords "It's all about me" moment.  From there, the GOP's presidential pageant has seen one debutant after another go careening off the runway: Mitch Daniels (whose wife rightly didn't want the spotlight); John Huntsman (whose GOP died with Gerald Ford years ago); Donald Trump (the first of the MEGA-clowns); Newt Gingrich (whose campaign went bad faster than processed fake cheese); Michelle Bachmann (someone shockingly viewed as a "more serious" candidate than Queen Sarah); all followed by our latest Gong Show contestant, Rick Perry with his guns blazing and his awe-inspiring 10-0 election winning streak -- and he barely scans the audience once before tripping into the tuba section.  Filling out this astounding field are none other than Ron Paul and Herman Cain (two "no chance Charlies" that have basically become placeholders for "none of the above").  

A related take on Perry:
Republicans Falling In and Out of Love (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post
"At this point, you have to wonder if the GOP will fall in love with anybody. I’m trying to imagine the candidate who can maintain credibility with the party’s establishment and Tea Party wings. If the ultra-flexible Romney isn’t enough of a political contortionist to do it, who is?"

And where is the latest "savior-of-the-minute" candidate, Chris Christie?
Christie Courted, Still Says No from the Wall Street Journal
"A determined cadre of Republican donors is casting wishful eyes on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in an 11th-hour push to persuade the former prosecutor to enter the 2012 presidential race. The drive reflects lingering discontent in some GOP quarters over the current crop of GOP candidates, particularly since the recent stumbles of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has led in national polls of Republican voters." 
Shocking!  It's a total mystery to me why he doesn't leap onto the stage!

Which leads naturally to this item:
How Lucky Is Mitt Romney? (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"Perhaps the latest non-Romney savior Chris Christie will jump into the race. Or perhaps Perry can learn to memorize his cue cards (or take dramatic action to shore up his anti-illegal immigration bona fides). Failing that, we may see a man walk into the nomination of a party whose electorate is dying to vote against him, simply because nobody else could stand in his path without keeling over."

Beltway Doesn't Get Romney's Vulnerability (Erick Erickson) from CNN
"The media, in effect, have become film critic Pauline Kael, who allegedly expressed surprise when Richard Nixon won, because no one she knew had voted for him. This is what is going on with Mitt Romney."

The GOP’s Purity Test (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"The party now punishes any deviation from conservative orthodoxy in the presidential primaries. Howard Kurtz on why some candidates are running from their records."

The Republicans Can Win, but They Can't Lead (Charles Pierce) from Esquire Magazine
"It is not possible to run for president as a Republican these days without at some level having to become a parody of yourself. Running within a radicalized, self-contained universe with its own private, physical laws and its own private history, with its own vocabulary and syntax that has to be learned from scratch almost daily, requires an ongoing manic re-invention that can do nothing but make the candidate look ridiculous to people outside that universe."

At Least Perry Has an Excuse (Sandy Rios) from Townhall
"Florida’s straw poll results weren’t good for Perry, but they were worse for Romney. Voters may not think much of Perry’s position on immigration, but it seems they still prefer an honest hesitator over a slickster with all the answers.  And if Perry did so poorly, why did he still take second place? "