Sunday Morning Reading: May 20, 2012

By Martie Hevia | Blue Beach Song™

One of my great pleasures is waking up early on a Sunday morning, sitting in my favorite big comfy chair, with a hot cup of café-con-leche (a.k.a., café-au-lait, latté, or plain old coffee with cream and sugar), and reading an eclectic collection of articles from all kinds of magazines and newspapers. (And if you can throw in some soft skies on a drizzly cool day, with a warm fire in the fireplace, I am in heaven.) Whatever your rituals may be, here is my Sunday morning’s reading list. I hope you find these articles informative, interesting or entertaining. Enjoy! -Martie

Sunday Morning Reading: May 20, 2012

(Click on the Article’s Title)

• “Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on Afghanistan” by David E. Sanger, New York Times, May 19, 2012 | It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.
• “Spain’s Yearnings Are Now Its Agony” by Jonathan Blitzer, New York Times Opinion, May 19, 2012 | Spain’s fall from heady promise to Celtic gloom tells a story of democratic expectation gone sour… Spain was not only one of the chief protagonists of 20th-century Europe, it also tilled the bloody soil from which the union later sprang. The Spanish Civil War was the staging ground for the defining existential drama of the century: a gory crucible of democracy, fascism and communism in conflict. Its fate entwined with Germany’s, Spain was at the center of Europe.
• “Money Unlimited” by Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker Magazine, May 21, 2012 | How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision… The case, too, reflects the aggressive conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Court. It was once liberals who were associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court’s own precedents.
• “The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret” by Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone Magazine, April 16, 2012 | An inside look at how killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.
• “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind Aubrey McClendon’s Gas Boom’” by Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone Magazine, March 1, 2012 | It’s not only toxic – it’s driven by a right-wing billionaire who profits more from flipping land than drilling for gas.
• “Inside Obama’s Campaign” by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone Magazine, March 29, 2012 | The president’s reelection machine is gearing up to mobilize millions of volunteers. But are they too fed up to turn out? Ever since he charged to victory in 2008 on a movement of his own creation, President Obama’s relationship with his activist base has been an uneasy one. Instead of deploying his loyal army of 13 million citizen-activists to pressure Congress to enact his agenda, Obama essentially mothballed his massive campaign machine as soon as he took office. He also dispatched his top deputies – including Messina, a Beltway veteran of 17 years – to tell the “professional left” to sit down and be quiet.
  
• “Blood in the Water” by Bethany McLean, Vanity Fair, June 2012 | The op-ed heard round the world—Greg Smith’s scathing New York Times attack on Goldman Sachs, his employer of nearly 12 years—dealt another blow to the firm’s reeling reputation. Now the questions are louder than ever: Will C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein have to go? Who might succeed him? And does it matter?
• “Unhurtful Thoughts: A Preoccupied Brain Produces Pain-Killing Compounds” by Daisy Yuhas, Scientific American, May 17, 2012 | Spinal scans reveal the mechanism by which intense thinking can block pain receptors in the nervous system.
• “The Facebook story: from inception to IPO” by Thomas Houston, The Verge, May 18, 2012 | The social network in writing, from a Harvard dorm room to the NASDAQ floor
  
• “Facebook: How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked the Valley” by Brad Stone and Douglas MacMillan, Bloomberg Businessweek, May 17, 2012 | “If he’s going to keep inventing new ways to keep users coming back, figure out mobile, please Washington, navigate future privacy outrages, and fight off Google, he needs to keep Facebook’s core talent motivated. “
• “Pinterest Spreading to the Travel World” by Susan Farlow, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2012 | Vacationers can use the online photo bulletin board to quickly scan a destination’s food, historic sites and more. The tourism industry is also jumping aboard. 

Happy reading and I hope you enjoy the articles. -Martie

Martie Hevia © 2012 | All Rights Reserved