Newt Gingrich gained fame in the 1990s with his original Contract With America, and now he hopes to re-energize his humdrum poll numbers with a retooled version for the 21st century. Gingrich will unveil his new contract today, and the Des Moines Register says it mirrors the original with its…
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Defence secretary reveals there had been a ‘complete breakdown of trust’ between the military and the rest of Whitehall The Ministry of Defence has to accept a share of the blame for the depth of cuts to the military budget that have led to thousands of redundancies, the defence secretary, Liam Fox, has said. In his first interview this year, Fox revealed that there had been a “complete breakdown of trust” between the military and the rest of Whitehall over ballooning costs, and that this had hampered his efforts to protect the defence budget. Fox told the Guardian that military chiefs working within the Ministry of Defence at the time have to take some of the blame for allowing the situation to get so out of control. “I think the MoD consistently dug a hole for itself that it eventually found that it could not climb out of,” he said. “It is irritating to hear some of those who helped create the problem criticising us when we try to bring in a solution.” The crisis reached its peak at the end of Gordon Brown’s time as prime minister, he said. “I think there had been a loss [of trust] and in the latter part of the Brown government there was an almost complete breakdown between the MoD and the Treasury and the MoD and No 10.” His combative remarks are bound to provoke a fresh row over the government’s cuts to the armed forces, though Fox made it clear the MoD had been its own worst enemy at times. Speaking as the navy was poised to tell 1,100 sailors and support staff they are being made redundant – one third will be compulsory – Fox said he wanted the armed forces to “take the pain early” so the military can balance its books and regain lost credibility. Morale within the forces had “taken a knock” but most people understood that reform “had to be done”. Fox also said he believed critics of the military campaign in Libya had been “silenced” and proved wrong. He said he hoped there would be no more job losses beyond those already announced and that the Royal Navy might need to “increase in size towards the second half of the decade”. There might yet be recruitment in other areas. Asked if would sack military or civilian commanders if costs ran out of control again, Fox said: “Yes. And I’d cancel projects that look like they are not coming to fruition.” He made it clear that he had never considered quitting, nor would he, whatever the pressures upon him. “To walk away and let something unacceptable happen isn’t very brave,” he explained. Fox said the problems at the MoD had been building for some time and that when he took over he had no confidence that the figures he was being given were accurate, which made negotiating with a sceptical Treasury very difficult. The attitude towards the MoD was “here we go again”, he said. “I was never convinced in early months that the department actually knew what the cost of things were.” He renewed his attack on Labour for letting matters spiral out of control, saying: “How anyone would allow a department of that size to operate without controls on its spending is literally beyond me.” Fox said he believed that trust was being repaired, but at a high price. The MoD has had to make sweeping cuts to personnel and equipment to come within budget, changes that have been undertaken against a backdrop of near relentless criticism from former members of the services. He admitted the decision to approve job cuts was the most painful he had had to make, but that he believed the worst was now over. “Debt is a strategic issue. Countries that cannot produce economic wellbeing cannot defend themselves properly in the long term. None of us knows what will happen in the economy in the next decade. But we are setting as good a course as possible without knowing what the weather will be. I am as confident as you can be that the big decisions have been taken.” Fox did not rule out that defence spending might rise again, above and beyond the 1% increase for equipment that was announced earlier this summer. “As the economy recovers, we will all go into the usual negotiations with the Treasury. We will all be fighting our own corner. I do think there has been a shift in Whitehall dynamic. And the MoD is held in better esteem now.” On Libya, Fox defended the cautious approach of Nato’s military campaign, and said that he believed that this may have helped to heal some of the wounds inflicted in the region by the Iraq war. “We stuck like glue to our initial belief that minimising civilian casualties would not only give us the high moral ground over Gaddafi, but that in the post-Gaddafi environment we have different values. And in many ways that was laying to rest some of the views in the Arab world that came out post-Iraq.”He described Labour’s recent proposals for reforms to defence as “a pointless exercise … a grotesquely crude instrument which suggests they have learned little from their appalling mismanagement of the MoD.” Liam Fox Defence policy Tax and spending Ministry of Defence Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Conservative pontificators are always recycled on TV no matter how ridiculous and petty they are. Tucker Carlson left CNN to start an even worse show on MSNBC after Bush was reelected that failed pretty quickly. Anyway, he soon jumped on the web and started the Daily Caller to be part of the online revolution. His site is quickly becoming a reflection of his own failed pundit career. See, truth and facts do not matter. Greg Sargent details their latest atrocity. Not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. As you may have heard, the Daily Caller took a terrible hit yesterday after falsely reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency is looking to hire 230,000 new “bureaucrats” — at a cost of $21 billion! — to implement new climate rules. The tale quickly went viral on the right as the latest example of Obama overreach and government run amok, and the fact that the tale was comically absurd on its face didn’t seem to slow the frenzy. But now the Daily Caller is doubling down on the story, and the argument it’s making in its own defense is really something to behold. To back up: As Kate Sheppard noted yesterday in her post debunking the original Daily Caller story , there are only 17,000 employees at the EPA, which alone makes the Daily Calle r’s claim ridiculous. Not only that, but the legal brief that formed the basis for the Daily Caller story was actually pointing to the 230,000 new employees as a theoretical outcome to be avoided . That is, EPA was arguing that the high number of new employees would be necessary if the agency didn’t have a so-called “tailoring rule.” This rule, which actually restricts the EPA’s regulatory powers to limiting emissions from the largest greenhouse gas producers, is being challenged in court, and EPA is trying to defend it. Case closed, right? Well, no, of course not. Today, in response to the criticism, Daily Caller executive editor David Martosko said the publication is standing by the story : “The EPA is well-known for expanding its reach, especially regarding greenhouse gas emissions. What’s ‘comically wrong’ is the idea that half of Washington won’t admit it. The EPA’s own court filing speaks volumes,” Martosko said in an email. “What’s more likely: that the Obama administration’s EPA wants to limit its own power, or that it’s interested in dramatically increasing its reach and budget? Anyone who has spent more than a few months in Washington knows the answer,” he added. This truly is low comedy. The Daily Caller is now claiming that the original tall tale is true, simply because, well, the government regulatory apparatus by definition wants to expand rapaciously in reach and power. Once it has been established that government regulation is inherently onerous and bad and relentlessly expansionary, literally any fact at all can be pressed into service to support that unshakable overarching truth — even facts that directly contradict it. Nothing else could possibly be true, and therefore, it isn’t. This isn’t meant in a glib way. Recognizing the absolute irrelevance of the facts at hand is central to understanding what’s really going on in situations such as these. This is an old story, but you almost never see examples in which the cynicism is quite this brazen. In this sense, the Daily Caller really has revealed a larger truth, albeit not the one it intended. So they make stuff up and then do what conservatives usually do, they continue to promote falsehoods. Their is no lie big enough for them not to try and ferment into a full-blown Villager story like Hot Air ‘s (read: out of thin) idiotic “Ford Gate” lie that was debunked by Ford. Breathless thread title at Hot Air reporting a piece from a columnist from the Detroit News web site : “Ford pulls bailout-criticism ad after pressure from Obama administration” Much talk about about phone calls and pressure from the WH to pull a Ford ad talking about Ford not taking a bailout. Comments follow about Big Brother’s control of private industry. Great story, but it turns out to be BS as the Hot Air updates admit: Update: Ford is responding on its Facebook page that it didn’t pull the ad under pressure, but instead had it rotate out normally. That doesn’t explain why Ford pulled it from its YouTube account, though. Update II: Actually, it appears that Ford deleted the ad and then reposted it on Friday, for some reason, where it now has only 305 views. Or the Solyndra nontroversy garbage: David Roberts at Grist has a great overview today of the Solyndra nontroversy, based partly on recent polling and focus groups. The upshot? Support for solar energy remains strong even among conservatives, and the non-scandal “scandal” is basically confined to the Fox News nuts:… read on. Snippy Tuck The truth is that it is (it’s a legal case, click the link to read the explanation),the Daily Caller has been shown to be pathetic fools — and Tucker Carlson and his minions, like the petulant children they are, refuse to admit they were wrong. Recall this sad little episode back in the day when Carlson would pollute the airwaves on a regular basis. That anecdote was almost certainly a total lie from beginning to end. EDITOR’S NOTE: “Journalists” make corrections, propagandists make things up.
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Australian carrier Telstra has revealed this 4.5-inch colossus from HTC, and the above picture from CNET shows it’s likely to arrive under its Holiday moniker. This is the first LTE smartphone announced for Australia, while something similarly tall, dark and Android recently arrived in Korea as the HTC Raider 4G . CNET reports specs that tally with that other model: the big screen is qHD and the power comes from a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU coupled with 1GB of RAM. Like the Raider, the Holiday appears to be running Sense 3.0, not the refreshed 3.5 iteration that debuted on the Rhyme , and it looks primed to be one of the first handsets to launch on AT&T’s brand new 4G network. So, expect to hear more from Ma Bell on this ” titanic ” rival soon. HTC Holiday spotted sunning itself on Australian shores originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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This certainly takes Piranha 3D to a whole new level. Piranhas attacked at least 100 beachgoers this weekend in the Piaui state in northeast Brazil, according to UOL Noticias. The bathers were mostly bitten on their feet and were treated at a hospital near Terezina, the capital of Piaui. Though there have been sporadic attacks
Continue reading …It seems Georgia Tech officials are a little, well, teed off. The students’ tradition of stealing the “T” from Tech Tower has spun a little out of control, and students are now swiping the “T” from signs all over campus, reports the AP . From the sports stadium to the library,…
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AP baseball writer Ben Walker looks back at Wednesday night’s games that decided both the National and American league wild card spots and the monumental September collapses by Boston and Atlanta. (Sept. 29)
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Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls have gone online. (Sept. 29)
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The Flying Joe has fall flavors of coffee Happy National Coffee Day!! National Coffee Day 2011 riseabove09 says: Apparently today is National Coffee Day . Watch me drink this whole pot by myself. #gonnagettheshakes
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