Kelsey Grammer has played a president , and in an upcoming TV series he’ll play a mayor … so why not run for political office in real life? That’s what he may very well do after he retires from acting, Grammer tells the New York Post , although he’s vague on when that…
Continue reading …Roll Call ‘Political Wire’ Features Cartoon Depicting Nazis Winning World War 2 If U.S. Had Balanced Budget Requirement Then
August 1, 2011 No Comment
Roll Call “Political Wire” editor Taegan Goddard selected a drawing by liberal Arizona Daily Star political cartoonist David Fitzsimmons for his August 1 “Cartoon of the Day.” The cartoon (embedded after the page break) depicts a battle-scarred U.S. Capitol and White House in 1942 outside of which Nazi and Japanese Empire flags fly in lieu of the Stars and Stripes. A speech balloon coming from the Capitol dome reads, “At least we didn't go into debt,” while the caption reads “If Congress had passed the Tea Party's Balanced Budget Amendment in 1940.” Liberals may be fond of that talking point, even though it's patently false and Goddard should know it. From the Republican Study Committee website : One proposed balanced budget amendment sponsored by RSC member Rep. Joe Walsh (IL-08), H.J.Res 56, would require the President to submit and Congress to enact a balanced budget, cap federal spending at 18% of GDP, and prevent future federal tax increases. Congress could only waive these provisions by a two-thirds vote, except in times of declared war or by three-fifths majority during times of military conflict. It would also require a three-fifths majority to raise the federal debt limit. Congress swiftly declared war on Japan and Germany in December 1941. If Walsh's amendment were in effect then, the declaration of war would negate the peacetime need for a two-thirds vote to spend over 18% in GDP, raise taxes, or balance the budget. Fitzsimmons has had more outrageous cartoons, however. On July 27, Fitzsimmons fantasized about President Obama sending in a Navy SEAL team to assassinate Tea Party Republicans:
Continue reading …Acoustic Research ARRX18G XSight 18-Device Universal Learning Remote Control with Touchscreen Color Display
August 1, 2011 No Comment
Type: CE Title: Acoustic Research ARRX18G XSight 18-Device Universal Learning Remote Control with Touchscreen Color Display See all customer reviews Product Description: Xsight Touch Universal Remote Features: Controls up to 18 devices from thousands of brands Easy remote-guided setup Color LCD touchscreen Dedicated on-screen activity buttons Contoured backlit buttons See the details
Continue reading …(CNN) – The pro-Sarah Palin documentary, “The Undefeated,” suffered disappointing box office sales over the weekend, earning just over $5,000….
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Former Labour MP jailed for 16 months for expenses fraud in March is released after serving a quarter of his sentence Jim Devine, the former Labour MP jailed for 16 months in March for expenses fraud has been released after serving a quarter of his sentence. Devine was freed early, from Standford Hill Prison in Kent, under the home detention scheme. He will remain tagged and spend the last eight months of his sentence on probation. Devine, who had been MP for Livingston, was found guilty of a gross breach of trust for claiming over £8,000 in parliamentary expenses, some for cleaning and stationery. The trial judge Mr Justice Saunders said Devine had been “lying in significant parts of the evidence he gave”. But critics saidhis release would do little for confidence in the criminal justice system. Emma Boon, from The TaxPayers’ Alliance, said the early release “makes his sentence look like a hollow gesture and will do nothing to help restore public faith in parliament”. Devine, a former psychiatric nurse and union organiser, has since been declared bankrupt. He is the third former MP jailed over the parliamentary expenses scandal to be released, following Eric Illsley and David Chaytor. A fourth former MP, Elliot Morley, a one-time climate change minister, remains in prison, along with Conservative peers Lord Taylor and Lord Hanningfield. Illsley, 56, who was jailed for 12 months in February after pleading guilty to £14,000 in expenses fraud, was released in May after three months behind bars. Chaytor, 61, served four-and-a-half months of his 18-month sentence after falsely claiming over £22,000 of taxpayers’ money. Devine was election agent to Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary and one of the Labour party’s leading thinkers. Devine was best man at Cook’s wedding to second wife Gaynor and he then went on to succeed him as MP for Livingston when the Cook died from a heart attack in August 2005. Devine used his maiden speech in the Commons to pay tribute to the Labour politician as “the outstanding parliamentarian of his generation” and admitted he had “big shoes to fill”. Devine had told his Southwark crown court trial that he was acting on advice given with a “nod and a wink” by a fellow MP in a House of Commons bar but his defence was rejected by the jury. MPs’ expenses Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Lawyers for firm contracted to NI said it deleted emails on nine occasions since May 2010: there was ‘nothing abnormal’ Senior MPs want to question further one of News International’s technology suppliers, after the firm responsible for overseeing its day-to-day emails revealed that hundreds of thousands of them had been deleted on a total of nine occasions from the newspaper publisher’s server since May last year. Lawyers acting for HCL, the firm contracted to oversee News International’s email system, told the home affairs select committee that it was aware of “nothing which appeared abnormal, untoward or inconsistent with its contractual role” – but went onto to advise MPs to direct further questions to News International. The law firm, Stuart Benson, acting for HCL, said: “It is entirely for News International, the police and your committee as to whether there was any other agenda or subtext when issues of deletion arose and that is a matter on which my client cannot comment and something you will no doubt wish to explore direct with News International.” Keith Vaz, chair of the committee, said he was most surprised by the deletions and added that the MPs would be seeking further details from HCL, the firm contracted to oversee the News International’s ‘live emails’, typically those less than 15 days old. Meanwhile, Labour MP Chris Bryant, an active campaigner against phone hacking, said: “All these dubious deletions prove yet again how much better it would have been if the Metropolitan Police secured the whole system back in 2006. “It certainly looks as if, in the words of one Metropolitan Police officer to the Commons culture select committee, that News International were deliberately thwarting their investigation.” HCL said it had been aware of discussions around at minimum nine separate episodes of email deletions – part of the internal company archive which the Met are using to examine the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World. HCL’s lawyers also noted that a second unnamed supplier had been responsible for emails more than a couple of weeks old, and at times HCL had co-operated with this vendor in deleting material. HCL identified three sets of email deletions in April 2010, including a deletion of a public folder of a live email system that “was owned by a user who no longer needed the emails”. A further 200,000 emails “stuck in an outbox” were deleted in May 2010 to restore email functionality. In September 2010 a further pruning of historic emails occurred to help stabilise the email archival system, which had been having “frequent outages” since November 2009. In January 2011, HCL was asked about its ability to “truncate” a particular database in the email archival systems. HCL “answered in the negative and suggested assistance from the third party vendor”. In February 2011, emails were deleted in an older version of the software. Finally, in July 2011 HCL deleted emails from the live system as “relocation errors” had occurred when the systems were moved. News International sources indicated that the email deletions were part of sensible housekeeping of an email system that had been unstable, and at one point had gone down for three days. The company says it has a good working relationship with police investigating the hacking crisis, although last month it emerged that Scotland Yard investigators were unhappy about the scale of the deletions . Separately, a firm of solicitors drawn into the News International phone-hacking scandal is expected to reply shortly to the home affairs select committee as to how it came to write a key letter to the newspaper group that was then used by the company to contend that phone hacking had not been widespread at News of the World. The firm, Harbottle and Lewis, is consulting the Metropolitan police before deciding how to reply to requests from the select committee to spell out how it came to write a letter taken to mean that only one reporter was aware of phone hacking at the paper. The New York Times reported at the weekend that the letter sent by Harbottle and Lewis to the culture, media and sport select committee was redrafted more than once. The firm had been hired to review the email of the tabloid’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, who had pleaded guilty to hacking the mobile phone messages of royal household staff members. The letter said “no reasonable evidence” had been found that senior editors knew about the reporter’s “illegal actions”. A News International spokesman said: “NI keeps back-ups of its core systems and, in close co-operation with the Operation Weeting team, has been working to restore these back-ups.” Phone hacking News of the World News International Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Patrick Wintour Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
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Embattled Congress party further weakened as upper house forced to shut on opening day of new parliamentary session Long-awaited laws in India to fight corruption, protect farmers from unscrupulous developers and boost economic growth look less likely to be passed after tumultuous scenes in the national parliament on Monday. Within minutes of the start of a new parliamentary term, opposition politicians forced a shutdown of the upper house, an indication that the bitter partisan politics of recent months are set to continue. The lower house was adjourned after the death of a member of parliament during the recess. The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and other senior figures in the ruling coalition government, which is led by the Congress party, had appealed for calm and co-operation. Singh, 78, said he hoped the five-week session would be “constructive and productive”. However the opposition has smelled blood in recent months, with an already fragile government weakened by a series of corruption scandals, runaway inflation and the recent terrorist blasts in the commercial capital, Mumbai. “The government is on the back foot,” said Sushma Swaraj, a senior politician with the rightwing Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). Vinod Mehta, editor of the news magazine Outlook India, said the coming weeks would see “a lively parliamentary ding-dong”. “The opposition has a great deal of ammunition. Every day there is more trouble for the government. But it still has a comfortable majority and so will limp on,” Mehta said. Parliamentary work has ground to a virtual standstill this year amid acrimonious battles over graft and other issues. Many of the 32 laws to be debated in the coming term are deeply controversial, including allowing foreign investment in supermarkets, cutting subsidies and restructuring loss-making state-run utilities. One crucial measure tackles land rights, the source of often violent protests. Congress party strategists see other proposed laws – such as proposals to share mining royalties with local communities and to expand a scheme to give cheap food grains to the poor – as critical to their chances of consolidating traditional support among hundreds of millions of rural voters before national polls in 2014. Also the subject of bitter argument is a proposed anti-graft bill that would establish a new watchdog independent of the government. Campaigners cite polls apparently showing that the government’s version of the bill is seen by most voters as watered down. In recent days, a senior Indian economic advisory panel has warned of slowing growth and cut the annual growth forecast to 8.2% from 9%. India Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
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Newsnight and World at One off air as NUJ labels claims that ‘six out of seven staff’ were working as ‘absolutely ludicrous’ Newsnight and The World at One were among the programmes forced off air yesterday as journalists at the BBC walked out for the second time in three weeks – and management and unions argued about how well the action was supported. Radio 4′s Today programme ran but was an hour shorter than usual, while a string of unknowns led by a former ITV regional news presenter led the news bulletins. Gavin Grey, who used to work for ITV Meridian, fronted the 1pm bulletin, while the Six O’Clock bulletin was presented by Chris Rogers, a BBC News stand-in. Lucy Adams, the BBC’s director of business operations Lucy Adams said “six out of seven staff” were working with “all our services on air” and “limited changes to planned programming” with the BBC’s 24 hour news channel remaining on air. Michelle Stanistreet, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said it was “absolutely ludicrous” to suggest such a high level of staffing, which she said was “completely untrue”. “The NUJ has several thousand members at the BBC and there have been only a handful of reports of people crossing the picket lines,” said Stanistreet, who suggested BBC management was living in “fantasy land”. The strike followed an earlier 24-hour walkout on 15 July in protest at compulsory redundancies at the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring, where the corporation is looking to axe 387 posts because of cuts in government funding. Explaining his decision to come in, Radio 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell said he had consulted widely with colleagues but could not find anyone who supported the strike, and felt a responsibility to licence fee payers to come into work. “I supported the pension strike and I supported this strike last time round [on 15 July] but ultimately we have a responsibility to the people who pay us,” said Campbell. Picket lines were lightly staffed, with six people outside White City, the home of BBC Television, at lunchtime, and three at Broadcasting House, where the radio stations transmit from. However, the mood outside the World Service’s Bush House HQ – where the dispute is centred – was more defiant. A 20-strong picket line held a giant sheet with the words, “BBC kills World Service”. Martin Plaut, Africa editor at the World Service, said: “I’m furious to be on strike today. I’m really not happy at all. In all my time at the BBC – I joined in 1984 – I’ve never seen the BBC in this state.” The strike was due to end at midnight on Monday, and will immediately be followed by an “indefinite” work to rule by NUJ members. All broadcasting unions are due to meet BBC management on 11 August to discuss the corporation’s stance on redundancies in the light of further impending cuts as a result of director general Mark Thompson’s Delivering Quality First initiative, which is aimed to make cost savings of 20%, as the corporation contends with a flat licence fee settlement. BBC BBC World Service Radio industry Television industry Radio 4 Radio 5 Live Nicky Campbell BBC1 BBC2 Trade unions John Plunkett Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The United States has now experienced more than 3 years of an economy worse than anything Japan experienced in its “lost decade” of the 1990s, and we are still dead in the water economically. The real unemployment rate, when you include discouraged workers and part timers/short-term temporary workers desperate for a full time job, is hovering frighteningly close to 20%, with any marginal progress in the private sector being more than wiped out by government sector cutbacks. The American middle class is being crushed by flat or declining wages, higher prices on most essential items like energy and groceries, and declining value in home prices. And the deal on the default crisis agreed to last night, combined with a continued weak response to the housing crisis, will (absent a major reversal in the next Congress) lock us in to a spiral even more destructive to the middle class. It will be a lost decade on steroids. Our government’s focus should be on how to rebuild, expand, and strengthen the economic position of working and middle class Americans. We will not get out of the hole we are in without most Americans being able to spend more, save more, and make sure their kids are well educated. Without a little more economic standing and security, most people who want to start new businesses won’t have the ability to get their new enterprise off the ground. Without customers who have the ability to spend a little more money, small businesses won’t be able to survive and expand, and won’t have the confidence to hire new workers to help them grow. Without seniors being able to afford to take care of themselves economically through Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, already stressed middle class families will have even less to spend in their local communities. Unless the number of foreclosures and underwater mortgages start to decline, tens of millions of homeowners who should be building economic equity will have no confidence to buy new products, start new businesses, or do anything else to grow the economy. In order for our economy to get on the right track, more Americans need to have money to spend, save, and invest- it is as simple as that. Hoping that rich people suddenly start creating more jobs, hoping that cash-flush big businesses suddenly starts investing in expansion when their customers don’t have the money to buy anything, hoping that the confidence fairy suddenly spurs millions of new jobs: it is just a crock. When you hear generalized talk about more government cutbacks, it can all sound harmless in theory. And there is of course some wasteful government spending out there- subsidies to millionaire farmers, poorly written government contracts that allow contractors to make money even when they screw things up, subsidies for oil companies that make plenty of money, etc- but most of the cuts that will be made aren’t even in these areas of obvious waste. They’ll cut money for education and Pell Grants; they’ll cut the R and D spending that could produce important new technological breakthroughs; they’ll cut investments in green jobs that are key to the future; they’ll cut spending on badly outdated infrastructure projects; they’ll cut money for social service agencies that are helping people create productive lives for themselves. I wrote a few weeks back that whatever deal would be cut would be a bad deal, and I was right. When the President didn’t push to make the debt ceiling extension part of last year’s lame duck session deal, and then waded into these negotiations instead of announcing that the only default deal he would accept would be a clean bill, he set himself up for this kind of unbalanced deal that has turned into an attack on the middle class. This deal, of course, could have been far worse: defense spending could have been off the chopping block, and Social Security could be on it. But it is still a terrible bill. This country needs to fundamentally re-align its policies and its priorities. The engine of our economy, and our only hope for the future, is a strong middle class. We need to put that middle class back into the center of our economic policy.
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Authorities say a Kansas woman who was run over by a Beach Patrol pickup truck in central Florida is in stable condition. A Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman the 33-year-old was sunbathing on the beach when the incident happened. (Aug. 1)
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