‘Mubarak: bad guy, right? Protesters: bad guys, right?’ Events in Egypt cause conniption fits and confusion over at Fox studios Fox News hosts were torn between their idealistic belief in freedom and democracy for all people, and their fear of repercussions for the US if the people of Egypt prevail. Sean Hannity Hannity was disappointed by the Obama administration’s ambiguous response to the Egyptian riots and didn’t see much hope of a positive outcome ( view clip here ). “I am unaware of any democratic revolution that’s taken place in an Arab country and so my scepticism is that we’re going to see the Muslim Brotherhood, ElBaradei or some type of extremist, as bad as Mubarak is, some type of extremist element take over in Egypt.” He asks his guest, conservative commentator Ann Coulter if she shared his suspicion. Coulter admitted that she was not an expert on Egypt, but that she is somewhat of an expert on unruly mobs and liberals (flip sides of the same coin, apparently). And she agreed wholeheartedly with Hannity that there was no hope of a positive outcome as the protesters were a “dangerous mob”, some of whom were going around “smashing national museums and decapitating mummies”. Hannity did point out that the “mob” might, in fact, have some legitimate concerns worth protesting over and he alluded (in a somewhat garbled fashion) to the extremely high unemployment rate, particularly among the Egyptian youth. Do you not … look, if you’ve got 40% or 50% of the population living in poverty and 30% of the young people – you know, ah, 60% of the population is under 30 and 90% of them can’t find work – there seems to me that there is some democratic motivations behind some of the protest. What I’m worried about is that has now been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and those that want to take power, which will put in place a far worse dictatorship than the one we see now. Coulter chimed that changes do need to be made in Egypt and that the regime was “brutally unfair” and a dead-end society, (which she claimed, to no objection from her host, is the same sort of society that Obama wants to create in America). But she still maintained that no good can come from the current demonstrations, and that President Obama was wrong to lend even tepid support to the protesters. Hannity did not demur at her assessment, reiterating his fear that the worst may be yet to come. Bill O’Reilly O’Reilly was less concerned with the problems facing the Egyptian people than with finding the best way to ensure America’s interests continue to be served. He discussed the issue with Glenn Beck ( view clip here ). “So let’s connect the dots here. Mubarak: bad guy, right? Thirty years we’ve been dealing with this guy, and we’re in bed with him. We pay him a billion and a half dollars a year aid, and most of it goes to the military, but it goes back to his pocket a lot of it. OK? And he does us favours.” Beck agrees that Mubarak is, indeed, a very bad guy who has done very bad things, as O’Reilly elaborates on the positives and negatives of propping up a dictator. I mean, he’s against the jihadists. He doesn’t cause any trouble with Israel. He takes some of the al-Quaida captives and dunks them in the water, whatever he does to them, and he generally cooperates with the United States on global initiatives. Meanwhile, he brutalises his own people and they hate his guts. So, while O’Reilly had some reservations about the plight of the Egyptian people living under a brutal regime, he was more worried about Egypt falling to the jihadists whom he believes are the single greatest threat to democracy. Beck argues that the communist-socialist-progressive movement is an equally dangerous threat, but they both agree that America cannot afford an all-out war. We can’t fight they way we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. I agree with you 100%. We have to do surgical stuff and we have to be more ruthless. We do stand for democracy. We do stand for that. We just don’t have … in some places. As he struggles to complete his thought, Beck, wearing his humanitarian hat, jumps in to remind him that Mubarak is “torturing people with our money”. In response, O’Reilly finds himself playing devil’s advocate for the devil he knows. Think about it: 30 years, you had Carter, Clinton, two years Obama, Reagan … they had nowhere else to go in that country. I’ve been there. It’s chaos. They had no where else to go! The chaotic state of the world seems to have been contagious in Fox News land, too. Glenn Beck Earlier on his own programme ( view clip here ), Glenn Beck had so many devils dancing around in his brain as a result of the chaos in Egypt that he was at a total loss as to who to support, who to oppose or, indeed, what to do about any of it, other than to urge his viewers to follow the events in Egypt very closely as they are sure to have dire repercussions for Americans. He admitted that, some years ago, he would have been all too apt to ignore the happenings of so remote a region (he’s referring, I believe, to his young adulthood when he was, by his own account, more focused on substance abuse). But those days are over. He studied the issue all weekend and raised so many questions in relation to it that it was almost impossible to find one salient point to focus on. For example, he was concerned that a Muslim Caliphate is about to take over the Middle East and parts of Europe; that China is going to control Asia and North Africa, Australia and probably New Zealand; and that Russia will be taking over the old Soviet block and, for some random reason, the Netherlands. He also wondered if the chaos did not really happen because “a Tunisian kid had his fruit cart taken away,” and that the downtrodden and unemployed are not really rioting because they are downtrodden and unemployed but because they are being manipulated by darker forces who are out to undermine democracy at all costs. (I’m not sure how bringing down a dictatorship undermines democracy, but there you go.) Then, there was the issue about whether the Middle East is really capable of self-rule, or if they are “crazed animals” who have to be “contained by some dictator”. All in all, it was a wearying hour of television. His thoughts on the “coming insurrection”, of which he spoke in a quivering voice seem worth sharing, however. I’ve told you that this is a global movement. Could you play this out for me and just humour me for a second? Here, we have Egypt. It started in Tunisia, Tunisia then leapfrogged Libya and went right over here to Egypt. But the fires are starting here, as well [Libya]. But we see them here [Egypt]. This [Tunisia] is already in revolution and flipped. This is in revolution. I want you to look where Israel is, right here, and Israel, the Gaza strip is on fire. You have any idea, this strait, how much congress [sic] is done through here. You, also, this little area. All the oil from the UAE, everything flows through here. So, the Middle East is on fire. What’s even more worrying is that Beck believes the chaos has already spread beyond the Middle East to North Africa, and even much closer to home. Morocco is on fire. What’s across from Morocco? Spain, connected to France and Germany and Italy, also on fire, and Greece, also on fire, which brings you right back here to Turkey. The entire Mediterranean is on fire. More than that, it’s not just the surrounding countries of the Mediterranean; it also spreads up here. You have the UK and Ireland already with riots in the street! So, there you have it: Asia, Africa and Europe are all in flames. America is surely next, and it’s all because of jihadists and the socialist-communist-progressives with their sick, Soros-funded agenda that people are entitled to a living wage and jobs with benefits. It’s chaos out there, you know. Egypt Fox News Fox US television Glenn Beck Republicans Islam Religion Protest US politics US foreign policy Tunisia Sadhbh Walshe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …408 Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs sold in US during January, limited supply probably to blame
February 2, 2011 No Comment
The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are alike in a lot of ways: both rely on electric motors for their locomotion, both have earned Car of the Year awards (Volt in North America , Leaf in Europe ), and both have had stunningly low sales in their first couple of months on sale. January’s numbers have just come out and the Volt leads the way with 321 vehicles sold or leased, while Nissan scores an even weaker 87 purchases. That compares to figures of 326 and 19 , respectively, for the month of December. Before we all start writing off the EV as DOA (again), let’s remember that both companies have massive back-orders for their electrified people carriers, leading us to believe that the most likely cause for this slow trickle of deliveries is a limited supply rather than dwindling demand. Production volumes of the Volt and Leaf are expected to ramp up as we go forward, so panic’s inadvisable — unless we come around to January 2012 and are still looking at fewer sales than the Joojoo managed. 408 Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs sold in US during January, limited supply probably to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …ABC Uses Health Care Ruling Against Obama to Whack Romney, CBS and NBC Downplay
February 1, 2011 No Comment
Rather than bring in a top White House official to respond to a federal judge declaring Obamacare unconstitutional, ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday used the occasion to attack possible presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Highlighting the individual mandate that was struck down, Monday, Stephanopoulos focused on Massachusetts' health care plan passed when Romney was governor: “You not going to apologize for the individual mandate?” Following up, the morning show host chided, “So, let me be specific: Are you apologizing for imposing that requirement that people buy health insurance?” GMA should be given credit, however, for providing in depth coverage. In addition to the Romney interview, there was a news brief. CBS's Early Show virtually ignored the decision, offering only a short news read by anchor Jeff Glor. Glor briefly informed, “A second federal judge has ruled this nation's health care overhaul law is illegal. Unlike the first ruling against the law, a Florida judge ruled yesterday the entire law should be invalidated. At issue, the requirement for mandatory coverage.” NBC's Today also allocated scant coverage. Justice correspondent Pete Williams read from the decision, but then observed, “The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by 26 states. All but two of them with Republican governors.” Stephanopoulos, despite using the occasion as an opportunity to grill Obama's opponents, provided the most context. Talking to Romney, he quoted: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Major court ruling. Federal judge down in Florida targeted individual mandates, said that the President Obama health care reform is unconstitutional and in doing that, he wrote this: He said “It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began as result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with power to force people to buy tea in the first place.” Do you agree with that?
Continue reading …On Christmas Day 2009, Robert Park crossed into North Korea, shouting “South Korea and America love you.” After spending 43 days in detention, he was released . That was one year ago, but his ordeal is far from over, reports the Washington Post . The Christian missionary says he lost his mental…
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Click here to view this media Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy joined The Dylan Ratigan Show for his daily rant to explain why America should support the protests in Egypt.
Continue reading …This is one of those situations, is it not, where you read 20 things and you think good point, fair point, hadn’t thought of that, interesting way to look at it, and at the end of it all your head is kind of spinning. Through it all, though, the one thing I’m suspicious of is heavy moral throwdowns by pundits. Obama must do this or that. X or Y or Z proves the absolute hypocrisy of America, or whomever. Nonsense. Nobody writing those kinds of things knows what’s going on inside. Granted, what’s going on outside is important: America should send the right signals to the protestors and the rest of the world. But presumably, there’s lots going on that none of us knows about. It would be my guess that especially after today, with those massive protests, Washington is telling Cairo privately that violent repression is out of the question and will produce severe consequences. I would hope that Obama makes another statement, a few ticks stronger than his last one, in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, these paragraphs from today’s NYT story about Washington sizing up ElBaradei as a potential leader of Egypt rang all too true: But now, the biggest questions for the Obama administration are Mr. ElBaradei’s views on issues related to Israel, Egypt and the United States. For instance, both the United States and Israel have counted on the Egyptians to enforce their part of the blockade of Gaza, which is controlled by the militant Islamist group Hamas. But in an interview last June with the London-based Al Quds Al-Arabi, Mr. ElBaradei called the Gaza blockade “a brand of shame on the forehead of every Arab, every Egyptian and every human being.” He called on his government, and on Israel, to end the blockade, which Israeli and Egyptian officials argue is needed to ensure security. Ah. Now we’re learning something important here. The Times goes on to detail the deep distrust of ElBaradei among neocons. Cirincione, fyi, is a good guy: Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a friend of Mr. ElBaradei, said Monday that Mr. ElBaradei wanted Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Israel, along with India and Pakistan, is not a signatory. One senior Obama administration official said that it was not lost on the administration that Mr. ElBaradei’s contentious relations with the Bush administration helped explain why he was now being viewed by some as a credible face of the opposition in Egypt. “Ironically, the fact that ElBaradei crossed swords with the Bush administration on Iraq and Iran helps him in Egypt, and God forbid we should do anything to make it seem like we like him,” said Philip D. Zelikow, former counselor at the State Department during the Bush years. For all of his tangles with the Bush administration, Mr. ElBaradei, an international bureaucrat well known in diplomatic circles, is someone whom the United States can work with, Mr. Zelikow said. However, he allowed, “Some people in the administration had a jaundiced view of his work.” Among them was John Bolton, the former Bush administration United States ambassador to the United Nations, who routinely clashed with Mr. ElBaradei on Iran. “He is a political dilettante who is excessively pro-Iran,” he complained. Meanwhile, at The Nation, Ari Berman notes : ElBaradei’s emergence has angered pro-Mubarak neoconservatives, such as Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vide president of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which is closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. “There is a myth being created that ElBaradei is a human rights activist,” Hoenlein told an Orthodox Jewish website on Sunday. “He is a stooge of Iran, and I don’t use the term lightly. When he was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for which he got a Nobel Peace Prize, he fronted for them, he distorted the reports.” So this is what’s going on, probably. The administration is feeling some heat from these kinds of sources. Ultimately, Obama and Clinton do not, I would expect and hope, agree with Bolton and Hoenlein. And ultimately, I would expect and hope, ultimately meaning pretty soon, they will embrace Mubarak’s ouster more publicly. But these are complicated things. I know that this thread is now going to be full of indignant fulmination against Israel. That’s not my intent. My intent is to show that there are a lot of factors in play here. I want to be clear that I obviously do not think the administration should sit on its hands here for Israel’s sake; what’s going on in Tahrir Square is inspiring and quite clearly deserves the support, issued in the right way at the right time, by the United States of America. Rather, I am saying that the US, given its role in the world, has to weigh things more carefully than any other country in the world does before it speaks and acts. I think we’ll do the right thing, but the right thing must be done at the right time in this case. Obama administration US foreign policy Egypt Israel Michael Tomasky guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Era Of Cheap Food Is Coming To An End. Blame Wall Street Hedge Funds.
January 31, 2011 No CommentYet another stick in the spoke s of the geopolitical world wheel! And of course, climate change has nothing to do with the extreme weather affecting crops around the world — and neither does the fact that Wall Street hedge funds have allegedly been locking up the commodities marke t, driving up the costs of food. That’s because we live in America, where reporters never ask rude questions! U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices — which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 — will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts. The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. “Even if we have a good year, we are not going to have the inventories we’ve seen before. I really do think the time of cheap food prices is over, and that’s just it,” said analyst Chris Mann of Traders Group Inc in Chicago. “Everything is set to the point where supply equals demand right now. But if you pull one thing out of it, or if you disrupt the equation in some little way or tweak it, I think, with inventories as tight as they are, it will really have an impact on prices. A drought, a flood, anything,” said Mann. You’ll notice he doesn’t mention a thing about hedge funds pouring massive amounts of money into the commodities market after the housing market collapsed, and instead driving up food prices — which in turn, promote global economic and political unrest: When this process of “hedging” was tightly regulated, it worked well enough. The price of real food on the real world market was still set by the real forces of supply and demand. But all that changed in the mid-1990s. Then, following heavy lobbying by banks, hedge funds and free market politicians in the US and Britain, the regulations on commodity markets were steadily abolished. Contracts to buy and sell foods were turned into “derivatives” that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. In effect a new, unreal market in “food speculation” was born. Cocoa, fruit juices, sugar, staples, meat and coffee are all now global commodities, along with oil, gold and metals. Then in 2006 came the US sub-prime disaster and banks and traders stampeded to move billions of dollars in pension funds and equities into safe commodities, and especially foods. “We first became aware of this [food speculation] in 2006. It didn’t seem like a big factor then. But in 2007/8 it really spiked up,” said Mike Masters, fund manager at Masters Capital Management, who testified to the US Senate in 2008 that speculation was driving up global food prices . “When you looked at the flows there was strong evidence. I know a lot of traders and they confirmed what was happening. Most of the business is now speculation – I would say 70-80%.” Masters says the markets are now heavily distorted by investment banks: “Let’s say news comes about bad crops and rain somewhere. Normally the price would rise about $1 [a bushel]. [But] when you have a 70-80% speculative market it goes up $2-3 to account for the extra costs. It adds to the volatility. It will end badly as all Wall Street fads do. It’s going to blow up.” The speculative food market is truly vast, agrees Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, president of the Strategic Investment Group in New York. She estimates speculative demand for commodity futures has increased since 2008 by 40-80% in agricultural futures .
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enlarge In Paul Ryan’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week, he fretted over our social safety nets becoming hammocks. Here’s what he said: We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency. So what I want to ask Congressman Paul Ryan is this: How’d it feel to rest in the hammock? How did it feel to know you could go to college and read crap like Ayn Rand because of that hammock? Because Paul Ryan, youngest child in a family of four, had a great big hammock hanging in his living room that sent him to college. One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death. With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college . To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer. See how that worked? Congressman Paul Ryan loses his father at age 16, and Social Security steps up to ease the burden. Of course, his mother also received Social Security benefits as his father’s surviving spouse. Seems like it was such a great hammock for Ryan that he just doesn’t want anyone else to share it. [h/t Blue Texan ]
Continue reading …The protests in Egypt are about democracy first and foremost, but wouldn’t you figure there’s probably some element of economics in there? There usually is. And we know that there are many desperately poor people in Egypt. This Wikipedia page uses two rankings to show that the average per capita income in the country is just $6,367 (IMF numbers) or $6,200 (CIA World Fact Book). The United States is around $47,000 in both, while the UK is around $35,00 in both. Qatar, Luxemborg, Norway and Singapore lead the way. So it’s dirt poor. But lo and behold, but some other measures things aren’t as bad as they could be. From Think Progress : According to the CIA World Fact Book, the U.S. is ranked as the 42nd most unequal country in the world, with a Gini Coefficient of 45. In contrast: – Tunisia is ranked the 62nd most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of 40. – Yemen is ranked 76th most unequal, with a Gini Coefficient of 37.7. – And Egypt is ranked as the 90th most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of around 34.4. The Gini coefficient is used to measure inequality: the lower a country’s score, the more equal it is. Obviously, there are many things about the U.S. economy that make it far preferable to that in Egypt, including lower poverty rates, higher incomes, significantly better infrastructure, and a much higher standard of living overall. But income inequality in the U.S. is the worst it has been since the 1920′s, which is a real problem. Here’s the chart . The UK by the way ranks 92nd, so slightly less unequal than Egypt. No I would not rather live there. It’s just a dramatic way to highlight the terrible thing that has happened in the US. Our society is more unequal than at any time since 1920. It is not desirable or sustainable. And it makes America an awfully poor model for the developing world. Egypt United States Michael Tomasky guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …At AP, ‘Waivers’ Are For Sports, Not Health Care; NYT Saves Outrage for ‘Something Is Worse Than Nothing’ Plans
January 31, 2011 No Comment
It would appear that if it weren't for the center-right blogosphere, Fox News, a few business dailies, a few conservative pundits, and talk radio, very few people would know about the hundreds of waivers granted by the Obama administration to companies, unions, not-for-profits, states, and other entities wishing to be spared the burdens of complying with Obamacare for at least another year. The latest count as of last Wednesday's Health and Human Services Department press release was 732, including four states: Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, and Tennessee. That the waiver situation is not more widely known is largely due to the fact that the establishment press has shown almost no interest in it. The Associated Press has had five days to cover HHS's latest release. It is news, as HHS's release was, as far as I can tell, the first indication that “Over 500 waivers were granted in December.” Here is the result of a search on ” health waivers ” (not in quotes) at the AP's main web site at about 10:00 this morning: In other words, there's nothing relevant. Related searches on ” exemptions ,” ” waiver ,” and ” waivers ” return nothing relevant to HHS's release. At the New York Times, a search on ” health care waivers ”
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