Click here to view this media It may not be clear which candidate won the Republican presidential candidate in Iowa Thursday, but Fox News host Chris Wallace might be the obvious loser. Wallace found himself being booed by a crowd that didn’t appreciate the relatively tough questions he posed to Newt Gingrich. “Speaker Gingrich, one of the ways we judge a candidate is the campaign they run,” Wallace explained. “In June, your entire staff resigned along with your staff here in Iowa. They said you were undisciplined in campaigning and fundraising. Last report you were a million dollars in debt. How do you respond to people who say that your campaign has been a mess so far?” “I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions,” Gingrich shot back as the audience booed Wallace. “I would love to see the rest of tonight’s debate asking us what we would do to lead an America whose president has failed to lead, instead of playing Mickey Mouse games.”
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Click here to view this media It may not be clear which candidate won the Republican presidential candidate in Iowa Thursday, but Fox News host Chris Wallace might be the obvious loser. Wallace found himself being booed by a crowd that didn’t appreciate the relatively tough questions he posed to Newt Gingrich. “Speaker Gingrich, one of the ways we judge a candidate is the campaign they run,” Wallace explained. “In June, your entire staff resigned along with your staff here in Iowa. They said you were undisciplined in campaigning and fundraising. Last report you were a million dollars in debt. How do you respond to people who say that your campaign has been a mess so far?” “I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions,” Gingrich shot back as the audience booed Wallace. “I would love to see the rest of tonight’s debate asking us what we would do to lead an America whose president has failed to lead, instead of playing Mickey Mouse games.”
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Company confirms spill from flow line serving Gannet Alpha platform and takes further measures to isolate it Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to contain an oil leak at its Gannet Alpha platform in the North Sea, but declined to specify the size of the leak. “We can confirm we are managing an oil leak in a flow line that serves the Gannet Alpha platform. We deployed a remote-operated vehicle to check for a subsea leak after a light sheen was noticed in the area,” a Shell spokesman said. “We have stemmed the leak significantly and we are taking further measures to isolate it. The subsea well has been shut in, and the flow line is being depressurised.” Asked about the size of the leak, a Shell spokeswoman declined to say. One of the wells at the oilfield 112 miles east of Aberdeen has been closed, but Shell did not specify whether output was reduced. According to Argus Media, the Gannet field produced about 13,500 barrels of oil between January and April. The field is co-owned with US firm Exxon and operated by Shell. A document available on Shell’s website says the Gannet facilities have capacity to export 88,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Shell also said it had restarted its North Sea Brent Alpha and Bravo fields on Thursday after a seven-month shutdown, while two other fields remained shut. The company shut all four of its Brent platforms, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, in January for repairs. “Brent Alpha and Brent Bravo are producing gas for export via the Flags(far north liquids and gas line) to the St Fergus gas plant,” Shell said. “It is anticipated that Brent Delta will resume export in the near future and Brent Charlie will restart in early 2012.” The statement said that the work at the Brent fields was technically challenging and depended on the weather in the area. Before the shut-in, the four Brent fields produced about 4.5 million cubic metres a day of gas, less than 2 percent of current UK gas demand, and just 20,000 barrels per day of oil. Brent was once Britain’s largest oilfield, and still has global significance as one of the four key North Sea crude streams along with Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk. Royal Dutch Shell Oil spills Oil Oil and gas companies guardian.co.uk
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Paul Krugman is still running around with his hair on fire over how we’re ignoring unemployment — and the Very Serious People still ignore him. Go read the rest: Check out the opinion page of any major newspaper, or listen to any news-discussion program, and you’re likely to encounter some self-proclaimed centrist declaring that there are no short-run fixes for our economic difficulties, that the responsible thing is to focus on long-run solutions and, in particular, on “entitlement reform” — that is, cuts in Social Security and Medicare. And when you do encounter such a person, you should be aware that people like that are a major reason we’re in so much trouble. enlarge For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. When you’re bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older. When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability. Unfortunately, giving lectures on long-run fiscal sustainability is a fashionable Washington pastime; it’s what people who want to sound serious do to demonstrate their seriousness. So when the crisis struck and led to big budget deficits — because that’s what happens when the economy shrinks and revenue plunges — many members of our policy elite were all too eager to seize on those deficits as an excuse to change the subject from jobs to their favorite hobbyhorse. And the economy continued to bleed. What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending for the time being — with mass unemployment and incredibly low borrowing costs, we should be rebuilding our schools, our roads, our water systems and more. It would involve aggressive moves to reduce household debt via mortgage forgiveness and refinancing. And it would involve an all-out effort by the Federal Reserve to get the economy moving, with the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems. The usual suspects will, of course, denounce such ideas as irresponsible. But you know what’s really irresponsible? Hijacking the debate over a crisis to push for the same things you were advocating before the crisis , and letting the economy continue to bleed.
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Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe wants to cut 220,000 jobs in four years The US Postal Service has announced radical plans to cut one in five jobs, reduce services and water down staff retirement and healthcare deals as the government agency struggles to keep costs in line with plunging demand. Among proposed cutbacks to services, many of which will require legislative changes, is a plan to reduce mail delivery from six days a week to five. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe wants to remove 220,000 posts in four years and believes about 120,000 of them will have to be layoffs – pitching him at loggerheads with unions. In an official statement, the US Postal Service (USPS) said: “Our most significant area of cost is in compensation and benefits, and one key driver of those costs is simply the sheer size of our workforce. “Based on current revenue and cost trends, and assuming a move to 5-day delivery, the Postal Service can only afford a total workforce by 2015 of 425,000, which includes approximately 30% lower cost, more flexible, non-career employees.” Donahoe is calling for emergency legislation to remove the USPS from layoff protection agreements it has entered into with unions. He said the postal service would be “insolvent next month” because of sharp declines in the usage of services. In the last four years the USPS said postal volumes had declined 20% while prices remained capped at the rate of inflation. Adding to cost pressures, Congress has insisted the USPS pre-fund its heathcare and retirement plans. Donahoe said the service made a net loss over the period of $20bn(£12.4bn) – a figure disputed by unions. In addition to cutting jobs, Donahoe also wants to withdraw from federal healthcare and retirement plans, replacing them with lower-cost provisions funded by the USPS directly. In response Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said: “The issues of lay-off protection and health benefits are specifically covered by our contract. Each of them has historically been covered in collective bargaining between NALC and USPS. The Congress of the United States does not engage in contract negotiations with unions and we do not believe they are about to do so.” Donahoe’s proposals were provocatively announced just days before executive and union leaders were due to formally open collective bargaining talks. Rolando accused USPS leaders of trying to use the current financial crisis “to strip postal employees of our bargaining rights”. Developments in the US are being watched by British counterparts, concerned that trends seen in America could be repeated in the UK. Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, argued that cutting the US Postal Service by 20% is an alarming move which will devastate services and bring job losses when America is already struggling with economic woes. “It’s a real concern because the USPS, like Royal Mail, has been a gold standard for postal services throughout history. Customers and staff will suffer as a result of severe cuts. “There’s a worrying trend of downgrading postal services worldwide which we hope the UK will not follow. Businesses, consumers and the general public all value the UK’s postal service and we want to see service standards maintained with six-days-a-week deliveries and universal pricing. These were commitments which were secured in the recent Postal Services Act, therefore there should be no question of such reductions in Britain.” US unemployment and employment data US economy United States Postal service Royal Mail Simon Bowers guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Mitt Romney used to tout his pro-life bona fides by relaying the story about a family friend of his who died in 1963 from an infection due to an illegal abortion. In a 1994 debate he offered, “On the idea of ‘multiple-choice,’ I have to respond. I have my own beliefs, and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people. Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.” Well, he did waver from that. Luckily, Justin Elliot from Salon.com did a story about that “family relative” Romney has stopped talking about. This week on TYT Now we talk to Elliot about his story. Below is the whole show from this week. We talk about President Obama having the audacity to put the wars on the books so it looks like he single-handedly spiked the deficit. And wages. And the lack thereof. And I talk about why Congress and this Congress specifically has earned our hate.
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Prime minister forced to retreat after calling riot tactics timid as ICM poll shows public side with police Senior police officers were in open revolt over the government’s police reform agenda on Friday, reacting furiously to criticism of the way they handled the riots, and turning their fire on the home secretary, Theresa May, after she suggested she had instructed the police to take a tougher line. Faced with an onslaught from all levels of the police, David Cameron tried to beat a retreat, lavishly praising the police after he and May had on Thursday in the Commons described police tactics as timid and highlighted police admissions that their initial plans to counter looting had been misguided. May said on Wednesday she had insisted that special constables be mobilised and all police leave should be cancelled, remarks that were seen to threaten the cornerstone of police operational independence. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, described the role of the politicians as “an irrelevance”, pointing out that by Monday the police had decided to mobilise huge numbers of officers into London. He said he briefed Cameron about the decision after the prime minister returned from holiday on Tuesday morning. Derek Barnett, president of the Police Chief Superintendents’ Association, also said the return of the politicians did not make any difference. “The decisions to deploy police officers in large numbers was made well in advance of politicians becoming involved,” he said, adding that the point of politicians returning from holiday was only to give “a sense there is now someone back in charge of the country and offering political leadership”. Asked about claims by Cameron that policing had been too timid, Tim Godwin, the acting Metropolitan police commissioner, said: “I think, after any event like this, people will always make comments who weren’t there.” He insisted that the changes in tactics and police numbers were due to commanders, not politicians. “I think the issue around the numbers, the issue around the tactics – they are all police decisions and they are all made by my police commanders and myself.” Political sources described Orde as incandescent with Tory attempts to take credit for toughening the police line, adding it underlined his fear that government plans for elected police commissioners will politicise the police. The sources added Orde was still interested in becoming the new Metropolitan police commissioner, but only on his own terms. The row came as an ICM poll for the Guardian showed the public sided with the police and not the politicians over the handling of the riots. The poll conducted this week shows less than a third of voters think the prime minister or the London mayor, Boris Johnson, have performed well. Only 30% say Cameron has done a good job, against 44% who say the opposite. For Johnson, the figures are 28% good job and 38% bad. By contrast, 45% think Godwin has done well, against 27% who say the opposite. The ICM poll also showed most are concerned that the police facing 20 % cuts in budgets already do not have enough resources. Following a meeting of the government’s Cobra committee, Orde told politicians: “Let us be clear about one thing – the distinction between policing and politics remains. The police service will make the tactical decisions and quite rightly we must and should be held to account.” Earlier this week he had ridiculed a suggestion by Cameron that water cannon should be put on standby, saying they would be entirely useless. Orde also praised the British model of policing, arguing the small number of injuries showed police tactics of minimum force had worked. He also revealed he had urged May to hold a conference on comparative international policing styles, adding pointedly: “I sense if we do that the British model will come out well on top.” Bill Bratton, the US policeman admired by Cameron and credited with cleaning up New York, said he was interested in looking at the position of Metropolitan police commissioner. Orde set himself against Cameron’s plans to allow outsiders join the force at high ranks, saying the “leadership of this service understands policing. We all started where our brave officers were the other day. We start at the bottom, we move up and we learn and we move on.” He also contradicted Cameron’s claims that 20% cuts to police budgets over the next four years would have no impact on police visibility. He said: “Chief constables have minimised the impact on the front line. We will have to have some very honest, straightforward conversations with government in years three and four. We have to understand what sort of service we want and we want it to do, and not do.” Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland secretary who worked with Orde in Northern Ireland, offered his strong support, saying: “He is a reformer that stands up for his officers and tells it like it is in a non-party political way. The Conservatives would be mad not to appoint him Metropolitan commissioner if he wants the job, but he will do it only on his terms.” Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire, opened another front against government plans to introduce elected police commissioners to oversee chief constables, with elections due next May at a cost of £100m. He said the mutual aid programme which saw 16,000 put onto the streets of London would not work with elected commissioners. “Mutual aid relies upon the unfettered ability and operational discretion to do things for the greater good rather than for local popularity. The surge the prime minister talks about can only be achieved by coordinating assets across 43 forces. If there are elected police and crime commissioners this will not happen. Each will have been elected on different political platforms and there will be all sorts of parochial decision making about their priorities.” Despite the scale of the rioting, and accusations the police mishandled the initial disorder in Tottenham, public trust in the police seems uniformly strong. Overall, 61% of those polled say they are confident that the police enforce the law fairly, uniformly and without prejudice. By contrast, 36% say they are either not at all (10%) or not very (26%) confident. There is some evidence that younger or poorer people are less likely to trust the police than older or better off ones but in all categories, a majority are satisfied. However the public are far less confident about the police’s ability to keep order. A majority say they think the police lack sufficient resources. The finding could add to opposition to cuts in police numbers and funding. In the Commons on Thursday Cameron came under fire from the Labour leader Ed Miliband and some backbenchers over plans for cuts. While 41% say they are either very (6%) or quite (35%) confident the police have been given adequate resources, 56% say the opposite. People on lower incomes are the most likely to think the police are under-resourced. UK riots Metropolitan police Police London David Cameron Opinion polls Crime Cobra (Civil Contingencies Committee) Patrick Wintour Sandra Laville guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Religious Expert: ‘Racist White Bloc’ of Tea Party Republicans Won’t Stop Obama Reelection
August 12, 2011 No Comment
MSNBC on Friday featured liberal religious expert Frank Schaeffer to slam the ” racist white bloc ” of Tea Party Republicans who won't allow Barack Obama to succeed. Martin Bashir guest host Jonathan Capehart interviewed the author about religion and the 2012 GOP presidential nominees. Schaeffer, whose father was the late evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer, smeared, ” You have genuine fanatics, sincere about their belief like Michele Bachmann , who got into politics because she read my father's books in the 1980s when she was at ORU, Oral Roberts Law School.” [See video below. MP3 audio here .] Citing a column by the New York Times' Timothy Egan, Capehart wondered, “For example, he prays for rain, they have an extreme drought. He holds prayer services and the markets tank. Is God listening to Rick Perry?” Schaeffer blasted conservative Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama: “…a lot of ordinary Americans who aren't on the religious right understand something and that is as the first African-American president, he has been up against a racist white bloc in the Republican Party that has come dressed as the Tea Party…” He also predicted the President would be reelected by “a wide margin” and added, “Most Americans understand that in a second term, [Obama] is going to come out swinging and do a lot more than in the first term when the obstructionists have been swept out of the way. And I predict that.” Schaeffer absolutely despises evangelical conservatives. In a July 06, 2011 MSNBC appearance, he insisted that they ” hate ” America. On July 25, he compared these Christians to the Taliban . A transcript of the August 12 segment, which aired at 3:33pm EDT, follows: JONATHAN CAPEHART: Much of the conversation surrounding the GOP candidates has been in regard to religion and how much of a role it plays in the in their personal lives and how much of a role, if elected, it will bleed into their role as President of the United States. And within the field of the possible candidates, perhaps the two most attached to faith, at this point, are Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. For more on this, I'm joined now by Huffington Post contributor Frank Schaeffer, author of Sex, Mom and God. Frank, it seems that in many way, religion has become one of the main focal points when it comes to the GOP candidates, especially when speaking about Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah, you have two different types of candidates running in the primaries on the Republican ticket you year. You have genuine fanatics sincere about their belief like Michele Bachmann, who got into politics because she read my father's books in the 1980s when she was at ORU, Oral Roberts Law School. And then you have people who are pretending to be sympathetic to the Tea Party, to the religious right, to the far right, and those candidates, between those two groups, they all have to pay lip service to a kind of religious extremism that comes out of the anti-abortion movement, the Tea Party, the anti-Obama movement, but really, religion is a big deal in year's primary. CAPEHART: Frank, Texas Governor Rick Perry is set to officially announce his run tomorrow, and Timothy Egan has an interesting column in the New York Times that pointed out that when Rick Perry prays to God, they tend to not get answered. For example, he prays for rain, they have an extreme drought. He holds prayer services and the markets tank. Is God listening to Rick Perry? SCHAEFFER: Well, I'm not sure God like politicians very much in general, left or right. They tend to take his name in vain a lot for purposes if you took the religion he says he believes seriously, you know, you would assume that you shouldn't use God's name in this context anymore than I should say that God endorsed my latest book and so you should buy it. You know, his is not normally the way that religion is supposed to be used. And so when he calls a national prayer meeting and says he is a Christian, in his Bible is a passage saying that when you pray go into the closet, do it in secret and don't let other people see your good works. And the Republican field, you know, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin sniffing around the edge, and these people use religion the way, you know, that old-time snake oil salesmen used to use their, their, you know, their patent medicine labels and it is rather disgusting from the point of view of religion. And that is where we are at. And, essentially, what we have got now is a bunch of people who use religion as a patent medicine to give themselves some kind of credibility with a bloc of about 20 percent of the American voters who believe, for instance, that the world was created in six days, that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that Israel has to be there because it foretells the coming of Christ. There is a small group of Americans who are literal about this, and this little bloc of people happens to have the Republican Party in a hammer lock through the primary process. CAPEHART: Right. SCHAEFFER: They don't represent the nation, but they represent the people who have GOT the primaries in a hammer lock.
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Police watchdog follows up voluntary referral from force after claims Surrey policeman passed case details to paper The police watchdog is investigating an allegation that a Surrey officer gave information about the Milly Dowler murder investigation to the News of the World. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it was investigating the claim following a voluntary referral from the force. “An IPCC deputy senior investigator has been over at Surrey police this morning to get more information about the case and will be writing to the Dowler family, via their solicitors at their request, this afternoon and offering to meet to give them more detail,” the commission said. “Until then, it would not be appropriate for us to make any further detail public.” The Guardian understands that the allegations relate to the early stages of the investigation into Milly Dowler’s disappearance. It is thought a Surrey police officer met a female journalist from the News of the World at a social event in London and told her details about the leads that officers working on the case were following. It is not thought that he was paid for the information. Sources claimed the officer in question was publicly admonished in front of colleagues when the paper subsequently published the information in a story, taken off the case, and then disciplined. The Dowler family’s solicitor, Mark Lewis, said he had not been told how long the IPCC investigation will take. “They need to look at their own information about who the officer was, what he said and what he gave out,” he told the BBC News channel, referring to the information passed voluntarily to the commission by Surrey police. The revelation last month that a mobile phone belonging to the teenager was accessed by the News of the World triggered a wave of public revulsion that led directly to the closure of the 168-year-old paper. The Dowler family received a personal apology from Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the paper’s owner News Corp. They also met with the prime minister. Lewis said the family were upset to learn a policeman may have passed information to the paper during the original 2002 investigation. He said Milly’s parents had already endured the trial of Levi Bellfield, who was convicted this year of murdering Milly, during which they were cross-examined aggressively by Bellfield’s lawyer. That was followed almost immediately by allegations that Milly’s voicemail messages were listened to by the paper and then deleted in order to create room for more messages to be left. News of the World Independent Police Complaints Commission Police Milly Dowler Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Crime James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Mitt Romney just didn’t have a terrific day, no matter how he and Fox try to spin it. Here is his “out of the gate” remark when asked about “the deal” Congress and President Obama agreed to on the debt ceiling during last night’s debate. BAIER: …with Congresswoman Bachmann and Congressman Paul in being against that final compromise deal. So to phrase it another way, if you were President, you would have vetoed that bill? ROMNEY: Look, I’m not going to eat Barack Obama’s dog food, all right? What he served up was not what I would have done if I’d have been President of the United States. Well, let’s look at what they wouldn’t have done, shall we? Here are all eight candidates vowing they would have rejected a deal that was one dollar of tax cuts to every ten dollars of spending. Amazing. The visual should make a great ad. Click here to view this media Oh, and by the way. I’m fairly certain Mitt Romney’s dog wouldn’t eat the dog food he was serving either after being crated and strapped to the top of the family car a few years back. Just another dogfood day.
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