News Nuggets 751

The Centoes Cavern in Chichen-Itza, Mexico.  From National Geographic.

U.S. Is Quietly Getting Ready for Syria Without Assad from the New York Times

"Increasingly convinced that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria will not be able to remain in power, the Obama administration has begun to make plans for American policy in the region after he exits."

Why Euro Breaking Up Is So Hard to Do from the Financial Times [of the UK] via CNBC
"Members of the euro zone are suffering from a severe bout of buyers’ remorse. Many would like to disassemble the kit they bought almost 20 years ago and put together in the late 1990s and 2000s. But they can only break it, together with the entire structure of European co-operation. Meanwhile, the world looks on in horror at the possibility that the euro zone is about to unleash a wave of sovereign debt and banking crises. If so, it would not be the first time that European folly has brought ruin on the world."

Building on Daniel Yergin's "Peak Oil" item from two days ago:
New Fields May Propel Americas to Top of Oil Companies’ Lists from the New York Times
"Brazil has begun building its first nuclear submarine to protect its vast, new offshore oil discoveries. Colombia’s oil production is climbing so fast that it is closing in on Algeria’s and could hit Libya’s prewar levels in a few years. ExxonMobil is striking new deals in Argentina, which recently heralded its biggest oil discovery since the 1980s. Up and down the Americas, it is a similar story..."

Speak of the devil!!
The Pursuit of Energy and Visions of a Post-Oil Age: A Review of The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin from the New York Times
"Mr. Yergin is back with a sequel to “The Prize.” It is called “The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World,” and, if anything, it’s an even better book."

The Firsthand Experience of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" from Time Magazine
"In the 18 years under the policy, nearly 14,000 gay and lesbian service men and women were discharged. A new book, Our Time: Breaking the Silence of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” chronicles the experiences of both gay and straight service members through first person essays, detailing how the policy affected their careers and their lives. TIME spoke with Our Time's editor, Josh Seefried..."

President Obama's Deficit Plan Puts Him Back in Sync with Progressives from Politico
"President Barack Obama finally gave his liberal critics exactly what they wanted. His tough opening bid on deficit reduction and his feisty, defiant speech from the White House Monday were greeted with almost incredulous joy by progressives who have urged Obama to take this kind of hard line with Republicans since the day he was elected."

David Brooks Gets it All Wrong on Obama's Tax Plan (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"Is calling for higher taxes on the rich popular with the Democratic Party base? Sure. But what Brooks doesn't mention -- and may not even be aware of -- is that it's also popular with just about everyone else ... except for the conservative base of the Republican Party."

Polls Suggest Voters Supportive Of Obama’s Jobs Pivot from Talking Points Memo
"The jobs plan the President has touted is on solid ground in the polls: Gallup showed that a 45 percent plurality of Americans support it, as did a 43 percent plurality in a recent CNN/ORC survey. Within that jobs plan there are popular individual proposals -- a CBS/New York Times poll on Friday showed majorities supported all the components tested. It has the feeling of a brick-by-brick strategy: the President can build his standing on the economy by singling out issues that are popular on their own."

Mark Penn and Mark Halperin Agree: Economic Justice is Bad Politics (Alex Pareene) from Salon
"If Mark Penn and Mark Halperin are against it, his decision to endorse a millionaires' tax was obviously right."

The Road to Treadmill Serfdom (David Frum) from the Frum Forum
Our ON-THE-MONEY PUNDIT OF THE DAY!
"What you are hearing here is the secret of the Tea Party. Americans do not clearly distinguish in their minds between “rights” in the James Madison sense and what we might call “folkways.” The ability to live in a large suburban house, drive to work on a highway without tolls, buy a sausage and egg biscuit for a dollar, eat in the car, park for free at the office, and send the bill for any negative consequence to a solvent Medicare program – there are many people to whom that pattern of life means more than trial by jury or even freedom of the press."

I Love You, Ralph (Nader), But ... (James Fallows) from the Atlantic
"Maybe a primary challenge to Obama would not weaken him (unlike the situation with Carter and the first Bush) and would in fact push him in the direction you suggest and energize the party as a whole. It's true that Tea Party pressure has moved the entire Republican party to the right. But it's not obvious that it would work the same way with the Democrats. And even though the "intent" might not be to defeat Mr. Obama, that is likely to be one effect."

Five Things All the GOP Candidates Agree On. (They’re Terrifying) (Ed Kilgore) from the New Republic
"But the fact that the Republican Party has reached such a stable consensus on such a great number of far-right positions is in many ways a more shocking phenomenon than the rare topic on which they disagree. Here are just a few areas of consensus on which the rightward lurch of the GOP during the last few years has become remarkably apparent:"

Advantage: Perry (Charlie Cook) from National Journal
"Governor could cinch the GOP nomination if he steps out of Texas."

Stopping the Perry Steamroller (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
The frontrunner for the 2012 nomination has dipped in the polls and faces a Google gauntlet at Thursday’s debate. Howard Kurtz on why Perry’s rivals need some fresh ammunition—and fast."

MA-Sen: Elizabeth Warren Leads Scott Brown in New Poll from Daily Kos
Well, that didn't take long.  I said polling would indicate if I were wrong on Warren's chances in MA -- and it looks like I'm wrong.  Warren is looking remarkably competitive against Brown!
"Back in June, Elizabeth Warren was in the same low-30s, largely unknown, Democratic placeholder-type position as every other possible candidate. But because national Democrats and an array of progressive organizations took Warren's candidacy seriously, the local press was forced to as well. So even though Warren has yet to air a single ad on TV, her favorability rating jumped from 21-17 to 40-22."
This polling is open to several different interpretations.  First, that there is a frustrated inchoate anti-Wall Street sentiment out there just waiting to be tapped.  That view is reinforced by responses to the poll from business insiders cited HERE.  Another (not mutually exclusive) possibility is that an unusually raw and reductionist form of anti-incumbent attitude may be brewing among average voters.  If it is more the former, than Obama and the Dems might be on the right track with Obama's "class warfare" speech.  If more the latter, than incumbents from both parties and Obama need to be concerned.  I see lots of evidence for both possibilities.

DISEASE CURE NUGGET!!
Building a Better Bug: Can Scientists Beat Malaria by Reengineering the Mosquito? from the Atlantic
"The scientist in charge of the lab, Andrea Crisanti, a parasitologist and microbiologist at Imperial College London, has developed a technique that can spread a genetic modification through generations of the insects. “In one or two seasons, you can thoroughly attack an entire wild population at a chosen site,” he says. This breakthrough, heralded in Nature last spring, opens the possibility of replacing a region’s malarial mosquitoes with genetically modified competitors."