Angry president lashes out after Republicans walk away from talks on borrowing limit, raising the spectre of US default Talks to stave off a potentially catastrophic US default on debt payments were in crisis as Republicans and Democrats struggled to avert a disaster that could trigger a global economic crisis. Both sides agree that the US needs to pass legislation to raise its debt limit above its current level of $14.3 trillion (£8.7tn). But negotiations collapsed in acrimony late on Friday over details of a package of spending cuts and tax rises that would help to pay for such a move. A visibly angry President Barack Obama attacked the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, for refusing to return his phone calls and then abandoning the negotiations. “I’ve been left at the altar now a couple of times and I think that one of the questions that the Republican party is going to have to ask itself is: can they say yes to anything?” If agreement is not reached, it could trigger what had once been unthinkable: a US default on its debt payments. If that happened, most experts predict, it would see a plunge in stock and bond markets worldwide that would threaten a new great recession. The deadline for agreement is just over a week away, on 2 August. Though most people still expect a deal of some kind before then, preparations for the worst are being made. Obama is being briefed by senior officials on the consequences of default on Wall Street, and major banks and institutions are laying the groundwork for survival investment strategies. “I still believe in the end we will avoid default, but we are playing with fire,” said Larry Haas, a former official in the Clinton White House. Others put it even more bluntly. “Members of Congress are juggling with hydrogen bombs,” said Professor John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California. In order to thrash out a deal and get talks started again, Obama ordered top congressional leaders from both parties to meet him at the White House and explain how they were going to move forward. That demand showed the seriousness of the situation, but also raised the prospect that some sort of “fallback option” could emerge that would see a short-term rise in the debt ceiling. However, such a plan would only be likely to delay the problem until later in the year. The Republicans have shifted dramatically to the right on economic matters, especially taxation, in the wake of the rise of the Tea Party. The Republicans captured the House of Representatives last year with the help of a number of new members the Tea Party supported. Many Republicans have signed pledges never to agree to tax rises of any sort and fear a backlash from supporters if they agree to a debt deal that includes attempts to raise money from wealthy Americans and big corporations. Instead they want a settlement that focuses on slashing programmes such as social security and health spending on the poor and elderly, as well as defence and other parts of the government. So far Obama has sought to accommodate Republican demands and offered more than $1.6tn in government spending cuts, but only in return for tax rises on the rich. That has not yet been enough to bring Republicans on board. In a letter to Republicans in Congress, Boehner said: “The White House is simply not serious about ending the spending binge. A deal was never really close.” Obama is also coming under serious fire from Democrats, who accuse him of being a poor negotiator and too willing to meet Republican demands at the expense of the liberal wing of his own party. Many Democrats have been horrified at the concessions he has already made on cutting government spending on the poor, sick and elderly. They argue that the most vulnerable Americans would pay the bill for a crisis that began on Wall Street. Leading progressives have slammed Obama’s tactics and fear that he may agree to even harsher cuts. Progressive groups, like MoveOn, have sent out campaigning letters and urged phone call protests as a way of persuading Democrats not to back the cuts. “It is tragic what is happening right now,” said Robert Greenwald, a Hollywood director turned progressive documentary filmmaker. Greenwald said ordinary Democrats felt betrayed by Obama. “If he agrees a deal that has these cuts, then the president has done a disservice to millions of people who worked for him to get him elected; who believed in him and who fought for him.” A CNN poll last week backed Greenwald’s comments. The survey showed that Obama’s approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71%, the lowest level of his presidency. That, however, may not worry the White House as it focuses on the 2012 election. Some observers believe liberal voters will still turn out in force again to vote for Obama. “Obama has flexibility to move to the right, because he believes progressives will still vote for him. They have nowhere else to go,” said Pitney. But there are signs of growing anger and revolt in the party as Democrats scramble to protect America’s already shaky welfare programmes. A few voices are even whispering of searching for someone to lead a primary challenge against Obama. “Who knows? Maybe there will be a challenge from the left. If progressives are disgusted enough, I would not rule it out. It would send a message,” said Haas. US economy Economics US domestic policy United States Barack Obama John Boehner Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
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Survivors of London bombings call in lawyers to investigate allegations that officers may have passed on addresses Survivors of the 2005 London bombings have asked lawyers to investigate allegations that Scotland Yard “sold” or passed on the confidential contact list of the 7 July victims to reporters working for News International. Beverli Rhodes, chair of the Survivors’ Coalition Foundation, said that a number of 7/7 victims suspected that personal contact details, including mobile phone and ex-directory landline numbers as well as home addresses, were passed by officers to News of the World journalists. The former security consultant, who specialised in counter-terrorism, said she had been contacted by a number of survivors of the bombings who said they had been approached by News of the World reporters with bogus stories of how they obtained their details, which they believe may have originated with the police. Their concerns have been discussed with the London law firm McCue and Partners. A spokesman said the survivors were considering their next step, having made requests for the Met to provide answers. Rhodes said: “Scotland Yard had the full list of survivor contact details. I am pretty sure that is how the News of the World got my home address. I had only moved there maybe three or four weeks before News of the World reporters turned up. The only place where my new details were stored were the post office, bank, doctor and Scotland Yard. “The suspicion is that the full list was given or sold on to the newspaper or News International or fell into someone’s lap when visiting the Yard. One of the survivor’s phone numbers is not listed and only known to me and family, but they had addresses to homes, home phone numbers, mobile phones.” She said that after the hacking scandal gathered momentum following the Milly Dowler revelations, several survivors approached her asking if she had provided their personal details to News of the World reporters. “Two News of the World reporters told them they had got their details from me. They asked: ‘Did you give my number to these reporters?’, and I said: ‘No, never’. These reporters knew an awful lot of specific information and asked very detailed questions.” Rhodes is now demanding that McCue and Partners officially request details from the Metropolitan police to establish if their concerns are substantiated. Scotland Yard has started to contact the relatives of 7/7 victims to warn them they were targeted by the News of the World . It is understood that bereaved family members may have had their mobile phone messages intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the paper, in the days following the London bombings. The Dowler revelations are likely to increase pressure on Andy Coulson, the paper’s former editor, and David Cameron, who hired him as his spokesman. Last week recently resigned News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, in response to questions from Paul Farrelly MP, said she was away when Dowler’s phone was hacked and the paper was edited by her deputy, Coulson, or associate editor, Harry Scott. Sources have indicated Coulson was editing the paper then. “It was the Milly Dowler revelations that broke the camel’s back,” Farrelly said. “Rebekah Brooks has let it be known that she was away at the time, so this brings it all back to Coulson.” Brooks’s comments will raise further questions about the cache of emails exchanged between senior editors on the paper which have now been handed to police. There is speculation that they will show who on the paper commissioned the hacking of Dowler’s phone. Although Rhodes has not been contacted by the Met, she has spoken to other survivors. She was one of more than 700 victims of the attacks, which killed 52 people, and was severely injured by the bomb that hit the Piccadilly line tube near King’s Cross. Rhodes, from Ashford, Kent, said the request from reporters involved sensitive details on compensation claims and the nature of injuries. She provided the names of two News of the World reporters who previously had not been connected to the phone-hacking scandal. A McCue and Partners spokesman said the firm was evaluating the allegations and “considering their position”. Among those known to have been contacted by officers working on Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking, are Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed at Edgware Road tube station. He said they told him his mobile phone number, ex-directory landline number and address had been found in records made by Mulcaire. Another is Sean Cassidy, father of a victim, and Paul Dadge, famous for helping victims during the attack, who has also been reported to have been emailed by the Met and told his name was in Mulcaire’s records. Last week Scotland Yard was asked to investigate claims that News of the World reporters paid officers to obtain people’s locations by tracking their cell phone signals – known as “pinging”. Phone hacking 7 July London attacks News of the World Andy Coulson Rebekah Brooks Police Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Mark Townsend Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Survivors of London bombings call in lawyers to investigate allegations that officers may have passed on addresses Survivors of the 2005 London bombings have asked lawyers to investigate allegations that Scotland Yard “sold” or passed on the confidential contact list of the 7 July victims to reporters working for News International. Beverli Rhodes, chair of the Survivors’ Coalition Foundation, said that a number of 7/7 victims suspected that personal contact details, including mobile phone and ex-directory landline numbers as well as home addresses, were passed by officers to News of the World journalists. The former security consultant, who specialised in counter-terrorism, said she had been contacted by a number of survivors of the bombings who said they had been approached by News of the World reporters with bogus stories of how they obtained their details, which they believe may have originated with the police. Their concerns have been discussed with the London law firm McCue and Partners. A spokesman said the survivors were considering their next step, having made requests for the Met to provide answers. Rhodes said: “Scotland Yard had the full list of survivor contact details. I am pretty sure that is how the News of the World got my home address. I had only moved there maybe three or four weeks before News of the World reporters turned up. The only place where my new details were stored were the post office, bank, doctor and Scotland Yard. “The suspicion is that the full list was given or sold on to the newspaper or News International or fell into someone’s lap when visiting the Yard. One of the survivor’s phone numbers is not listed and only known to me and family, but they had addresses to homes, home phone numbers, mobile phones.” She said that after the hacking scandal gathered momentum following the Milly Dowler revelations, several survivors approached her asking if she had provided their personal details to News of the World reporters. “Two News of the World reporters told them they had got their details from me. They asked: ‘Did you give my number to these reporters?’, and I said: ‘No, never’. These reporters knew an awful lot of specific information and asked very detailed questions.” Rhodes is now demanding that McCue and Partners officially request details from the Metropolitan police to establish if their concerns are substantiated. Scotland Yard has started to contact the relatives of 7/7 victims to warn them they were targeted by the News of the World . It is understood that bereaved family members may have had their mobile phone messages intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the paper, in the days following the London bombings. The Dowler revelations are likely to increase pressure on Andy Coulson, the paper’s former editor, and David Cameron, who hired him as his spokesman. Last week recently resigned News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, in response to questions from Paul Farrelly MP, said she was away when Dowler’s phone was hacked and the paper was edited by her deputy, Coulson, or associate editor, Harry Scott. Sources have indicated Coulson was editing the paper then. “It was the Milly Dowler revelations that broke the camel’s back,” Farrelly said. “Rebekah Brooks has let it be known that she was away at the time, so this brings it all back to Coulson.” Brooks’s comments will raise further questions about the cache of emails exchanged between senior editors on the paper which have now been handed to police. There is speculation that they will show who on the paper commissioned the hacking of Dowler’s phone. Although Rhodes has not been contacted by the Met, she has spoken to other survivors. She was one of more than 700 victims of the attacks, which killed 52 people, and was severely injured by the bomb that hit the Piccadilly line tube near King’s Cross. Rhodes, from Ashford, Kent, said the request from reporters involved sensitive details on compensation claims and the nature of injuries. She provided the names of two News of the World reporters who previously had not been connected to the phone-hacking scandal. A McCue and Partners spokesman said the firm was evaluating the allegations and “considering their position”. Among those known to have been contacted by officers working on Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking, are Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed at Edgware Road tube station. He said they told him his mobile phone number, ex-directory landline number and address had been found in records made by Mulcaire. Another is Sean Cassidy, father of a victim, and Paul Dadge, famous for helping victims during the attack, who has also been reported to have been emailed by the Met and told his name was in Mulcaire’s records. Last week Scotland Yard was asked to investigate claims that News of the World reporters paid officers to obtain people’s locations by tracking their cell phone signals – known as “pinging”. Phone hacking 7 July London attacks News of the World Andy Coulson Rebekah Brooks Police Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Mark Townsend Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Leahy On Balanced Budget Amendment Proposals: ‘Our Constitution Deserves Protection’
July 23, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Sen. Pat Leahy did a great job of knocking down his fellow member of the Unites States Senate, John Thune after he went onto the floor and pretended like this “cut, cap and balance” nonsense that we saw passed in the House was either something responsible to get our economy back on track, or something that had any chance in hell of being anything other than a political stunt and a talking point for Republicans with their fake claims that any of them have ever had any real interest in balancing our budget. Here’s more from Leahy’s site with his speech on the Senate floor — Leahy On Balanced Budget Amdt. Proposals: “Our Constitution Deserves Protection.” : Mr. President, unlike any Republican in the House or the Senate, I have voted for a balanced budget. We balanced the budget under President Clinton. Not only balanced the budget, but started paying down the national debt. He was able to leave hundreds of billions of dollars in surplus to his successor, who determined with Republican votes to go to war in Iraq and pay for the war with a tax cut. That’s why we had to borrow the money from China and Saudi Arabia. Not a single Republican voted for a real balanced budget when they had a chance to. In fact, it passed in the Senate only because Vice President Gore came and broke the tie. I was proud to vote for that balanced budget. Not a gimmick, but a real balanced budget. We had to actually make tough choices. We did. We balanced it. We had a surplus. But when you talk about amending our Nation’s fundamental charter, the Constitution of the United States, it’s not something Congress and the American people should feel forced to do in the face of a financial crisis. I take seriously my senatorial oath to support and defend the Constitution. Now, I know that there are a lot of pressure groups demanding that elected representatives sign pledges about what they will and will not do. The pledge I follow, the one I was honored to make at the beginning of this Congress, is to uphold the Constitution. That’s what I intend to do as I represent the people of Vermont. The House-passed bill, H.R.2560, which the Senate is now considering, claims to impose a balanced budget of future congresses but it doesn’t even contain the proposed constitutional amendment the supporters are seeking to adopt. Nor did the bill pass with two-thirds of the Republican-controlled House voting in favor. That threshold is what is required, of course, to pass a constitutional amendment. The House vote was more than 50 votes short of that necessary number. The process by which this bill has been brought to the Floor of the Senate is an affront to the Constitution that we’re sworn to protect and defend. Instead, the House bill denies authority to meet the Nation’s obligations until Congress passes a type of constitutional amendment that will actually make it more difficult to reduce our national debt. That kind of constitutional blackmail has no place in a democracy, and no place in our laws. It’s why the Founders did not include a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget or prohibition against incurring debt in our Constitution. They knew full well that would have been foolish and dangerous and self-defeating to the Nation they were seeking to establish. And I respect the wisdom of the Founders to uphold the Constitution, which has served this Nation so well for the last 223 years. Let us not be so vain to think we know better than the Founders what the Constitution should prescribe. I reject the notion that for political reasons we need to rush consideration of an ill-conceived and evolving proposal for a constitutional amendment. I’m going to stand with the Founders. I’ll defend their work and our Constitution and oppose a proposed series of constitutional amendments which incidentally haven’t even had a hearing. Amend the Constitution and we haven’t even had a hearing on it. Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are permanent. They’re not bills or resolutions that can be abandoned or fixed. They are not just a bumper sticker or a sound bite. Each word matters to hundreds of millions of Americans and future generations. I have never seen — and I have been here 37 years – I’ve never seen the solemn duty of protecting the Constitution treated in such a cavalier manner. I wish that those who so say they revere the Constitution would show it the respect it deserves rather than treating it like a blog entry. I am concerned how some in recent years have sought to impose their view by unilateral objection to compromise with minority obstruction. That has, at times, seemed to be the rule in the last few years. Some have tried to undermine the legitimacy of President Obama. Filibusters and requirements for supermajorities have become routine. They’ve stymied congressional action on the part of the American people. This year should be a cautionary tale that convinces all Americans that the risks of default and ideological impasse to them, to interest rates, to financial markets, and to our household budgets are too great. We need only recall the game of chicken earlier this year with the Government shutdown. I cannot help but think, if we don’t take the steps we should, we will see our interest rates go up, we’ll spend hundreds of billions of dollars in extra interest to China, which they can spend on infrastructure, they can spend on medical research, they can spend on education; we won’t have it here in the United States. That’s what the other side seems to want. We’ve seen the danger that irresponsible brinkmanship can promote. We should guard against it. Building into the Constitution a supermajority requirement for fiscal policy invites political blackmail and gridlock. We’ve seen enough of that already. The source of our budgetary problems does not lie with the Constitution. The Constitution remains sound. It is lacking the political courage to do what is right. The last time we balanced a budget, not a single Republican voted for that balanced budget. Yet it created enormous surpluses. These proposed constitutional amendments would not cut a single dime from the debt or Federal budget. Rather than deal with our problems, some want to require that we deface the Constitution with a measure that will by its own terms not be effective for five years, if it were to be adopted by two-thirds of both houses, the Congress, and then ratified by three-fourths of the states. Put that another way — at least three election cycles from now. We get our bumper stickers today, but we kick the can down the road three election cycles. Congress has the power now to take steps to avoid a Government default, and get us on the path to rebalancing the budget, just as we did at the end of the Clinton administration. This debate is a distraction from the hard work and hard choices that need to be made. Proposed amendments to the Constitution are not just unnecessary, they’re unwise and dangerous. In my view, the House-passed bill, the proposed amendment, demeans our Constitution. Never in our history have we amended the Constitution, the work of our Founders, to impose budgetary restrictions or required supermajorities for passing legislation and now we’re saying, let’s do it, let’s do it on a whim, let’s do it without any hearings, let’s do it because we can do it. All Senators swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That’s our duty and responsibility. The Constitution has allowed America to flourish, and adapt to new challenges. We have amended it only 17 times since the Bill of Rights. Our Constitution deserves protection. I stand with the Constitution today. I am going to support the motion to table this ill-conceived legislation. Here’s Thune’s speech he was responding to. Click here to view this media
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Another 200 taken to hospital following crash after train lost power due to lightning strike in Zhejiang province At least 32 people have died after a high speed train crashed into a stalled train in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang on Saturday, causing four carriages to fall off a bridge. Another 200 people have been taken to hospital following the accident which occurred after the first train lost power due to a lightning strike and was then hit from the back by another bullet train following it, according to state television. A preliminary investigation by the Zhejiang provincial government showed that four coaches of the moving train fell off the viaduct, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The cars plunged about 20-30 metres from the elevated section of track. Several other carriages were derailed in the accident near Wenzhou, 860 miles south of Beijing. Both trains were headed for the coastal city of Fuzhou; one from Beijing, the other from Zhejiang’s provincial capital, Hangzhou. “The train suddenly shook violently, casting luggage all around,” Xinhua quoted survivor Liu Hongtao as saying. “Passengers cried for help but no crew responded.” The total power failure rendered useless an electronic safety system designed to warn following trains of stalled trains on the tracks and automatically halt them before a collision can occur. Railways minister Sheng Guangzu ordered an in-depth investigation of the accident. China’s government has spent billions of dollars improving the railway network of the world’s most populous country and has said it plans to spend $120bn (£73bn) a year over several years on railway construction. The vast network has been hit by a series of scandals and safety incidents over the past few months. Three railway officials have been investigated for corruption so far this year, and in February Liu Zhijun was sacked as railways minister for “serious disciplinary violations”. He had spearheaded the investment drive into the rail sector over the last decade. The flagship Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line has been plagued by power outages, leaving passengers stranded for hours on stuffy trains at least three times since it was opened earlier this month. The link is the latest and most celebrated portion of a network the government hopes will cover over 28,000 miles by the end of 2015. China guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Hm. Notice how the Fox talkers aren’t claiming that the weather proves there’s no global warming now?
July 23, 2011 No CommentHave you noticed how all those Fox talkers like Sean Hannity and Neil Cavuto who like to make global-warming jokes when heavy snowfalls arrive in the winter are utterly silent on the subject right about now, when the nation is enduring what could prove to be a historic heat wave? Shauna Theel at Media Matters noticed too : Over the past week, Fox News has not mentioned human-induced climate change or global warming while reporting on or discussing the current heat wave, according to a search of Snapstream video and Nexis transcripts. The Washington Post reported that this “long duration, widespread heat wave continues to bake virtually the entire central U.S” and “969 daily high temperature records were either tied or broken in the country” through July 16. The Post further reported: Climate change research indicates that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases may already be increasing the likelihood of extreme heat events like this one, including the 2003 European heat wave that killed tens of thousands. Also, recent studies have projected much hotter summers beginning as soon as just a few decades from now as the climate continues to warm. However, it will take months if not years for scientists to determine whether climate change has played a role in turning up the heat so far this summer, and in this heat wave specifically. NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt told Media Matters it’s “very probable that any particular heat wave happening now will be shown to have become more likely because of global warming,” adding: “Of all the different extreme events that can happen, the partial attribution of heat waves to ongoing climate change is one of the easier connections.” Schmidt explained that there are a number of questions to ask when considering whether global warming may be contributing to extreme weather events: 1) A sniff test – does it make any sense that this effect might be linked? (this doesn’t mean that non-obvious things can’t happen, but the burden of proof is higher). 2) Are there analyses in the scientific literature that indicate that models do in fact show a change in this extreme as a function of increasing global temperatures? Are these analyses credible? (this will depend on the scale involved, etc.), do all models show the same thing? 3) Have we seen increases in the data already? (this can be hard since the data on extremes is not very extensive). 4) Are the expected changes in the statistics commensurate with what has been seen? (i.e. if models predict a 10% increase but the increase has been 100%, then it’s not clear we have understood what is going on). In the case of heat waves, the answer to each of these questions is yes, Schmidt said. The National Research Council explained in a recent report that heat waves are expected to become “more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting” in the United States and around the globe as a result of human-induced climate change. Not that any of this will ever be reported on Fox News.
Continue reading …David Brooks Blames Potential Breakdown in Negotiations on President Obama Not Talking Nicely Enough to Republicans
July 23, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media There are a whole lot of things I find troubling about this situation we’ve got going on right now over raising the debt ceiling — the fact that the Republicans decided to take the entire United States economy hostage with their initial refusal to just pass a clean bill , or that President Obama has continually ceded to Republicans one talking point after another on everything from tax cuts and the so-called “job creators” to putting Social Security out there as something to negotiate with when it adds nothing to our budget deficit among others. The one thing that is not a problem with what’s been going on in Washington over the last few months, is President Obama being too harsh with Republicans or not talking to them nicely enough if he wants to bring them along. I wish he’d done the George W. Bush routine after they refused to give him a clean vote and gone on television day after day and hammered them for being completely irresponsible by not giving him an “up or down” vote, and explained to Americans that what they were refusing to do is pay for spending that the Congress — whether these “tea party” a.k.a. extreme right wing Republican freshmen were a part of that or not — had already consented to when they voted to approve the spending with these illegal invasions of countries that were not a threat to us or their giveaway to the pharmaceutical industries with Medicare Part D, not to mention Bush using the excuse of a surplus to jam through his tax cuts for the rich. Naturally David Brooks, always eager to make excuses for the extremists in the Republican Party or pretend as though he’s surprised that they have finally devoured that party when this faction has always been the one they’ve catered to in order to win elections, now just thinks even at this late hour that if President Obama just talked to all of them a bit more nicely, they would not act like the extremists they are that are perfectly willing to just burn the whole house down for some so-called political purity on taxes. Brooks also ignores the fact that these astroturf “tea partiers” might be more than happy to see the United State’s economy crash and burn for reasons Karoli laid out in her post here . I doubt that our president just talking a little bit nicer to them would make any difference at all if their agenda is to help anyone profit from crashing our economy, but Brooks sure would like the viewers of PBS to think so. I’m of the opinion that quite the opposite is true, but that’s what I think about most of what David Brooks — our great American turd polisher for horrible right wing policies we should always push back against — has to say about anything. JIM LEHRER: Mark, tell us what’s going on. MARK SHIELDS: Jim, what you have just seen is the rupture of the summit. This had been a summit deal involving the speaker of the House, a Republican, and the Democratic president of the United States. Nobody else had been really party — party to it, other than Eric Cantor, the Republican House leader. But the Democratic leadership, the House and the Senate were not party to it, and nor were the Republicans in the Senate. So, what it came down to, we’re now at a he said/he said breakup. And the time is now short. I mean, the grand deal appears to be in shambles. And now the urgency is to raise the debt-ceiling and get it done. JIM LEHRER: What do you think happened? DAVID BROOKS: Yes, shambles, a complete meltdown, apparently. I have never seen a presidential press conference with a president so angry in public. And I — you know, I sort of think he’s maybe mostly right on the substance. He laid out — apparently in the next few hours, they are going to be laying out the details of what the White House offer was. And there was a lot of revenue cuts. There was some — or spending cuts — there was some entitlement cuts. There was some revenue increases. So if those are real, then I think it was a pretty good deal. But the president’s tone of being the only adult in Washington, everyone else is a child, that he’s going to summon people to the White House as if they are kindergartners, well, even if you agree with them on the substance, it’s kind of hard to go along with someone who is insulting you all the time. And so I think the president took a big risk. Maybe we will see his tone, as he is giving it to them, he’s angry, he’s treating them like children, but a lot of people will take a look at it and say, a little — there’s some arrogance and self-superiority there. JIM LEHRER: Well, it’s 6:36 as we’re speaking, Eastern time, and the president’s still speaking at — in the White House Briefing Room, still raising hell with the Republicans. DAVID BROOKS: Right. JIM LEHRER: We don’t know — but he says, Mark, that he’s going to — he has called the bipartisan congressional leadership to the White House tomorrow, Saturday, for a meeting. But if Boehner says he’s not negotiating, what’s going on? That’s what I am trying to get what — we don’t know. MARK SHIELDS: Well, John Boehner said he himself was going to now negotiate with the leaders of the Senate and to try and come up with something. That was in his statement. So — but the president did say not to come for a meeting. He said be at the White House tomorrow morning at 11:00 and come up with a suggestion — a solution, that it’s up to you. Now, to the best of my knowledge, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi have not been — Steny Hoyer — have not been a party to this. And it’s — so, you know, I don’t know how they are supposed to come up with a solution between now and 11:00 tomorrow morning. But that was the president’s ultimatum. JIM LEHRER: Yes. DAVID BROOKS: Yes. MARK SHIELDS: And I do think, Jim, that it probably raises the ante and makes greater the likelihood that the Mitch McConnell-Harry Reid compromise has new legs and new life. JIM LEHRER: For the record, the president just left the White House Briefing Room… MARK SHIELDS: OK. JIM LEHRER: … having — but the Gang of Six now, everybody was very optimistic about that. We had two of the members on last night. And they said, hey, we’re — that’s — we’re the only guys in play here. We’re the only people who have a plan on the table. It looked like that was going to be — that was — there was going to be peace in our time. Do you know what happened with that? DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think it — we — the Gang of Six plan was vague enough, but it had an outline of what — essentially where they were going. JIM LEHRER: Yes. DAVID BROOKS: If the president’s right, then his — his offer was to the right of where the Gang of Six was. And if the House Republicans rejected that, then the Gang of Six would surely not be acceptable, because the gang of six included a lot more revenue than what the president says he’s offered. Now, we’re not sure of what the president really offered because we don’t know the details. But he’s — if they rejected what Obama was offering, believe me, the Gang of Six wasn’t going to be acceptable for House Republicans. JIM LEHRER: Boehner said in his written statement was that, “It’s all about taxes. The president is emphatic that taxes have to be raised. As a former small businessman, I know tax increases destroy jobs.” And that’s what he hung it on. And that’s been the issue from the very beginning, has it not? MARK SHIELDS: Well, it has certainly been the issue with Republicans. JIM LEHRER: That’s what I meant. MARK SHIELDS: That’s right. And John Boehner, according to all reports and reporting, was more open to considering revenue being raised by closing down tax expenditures and tax loopholes. JIM LEHRER: Not raising tax rates or anything, but raising revenue, yes. MARK SHIELDS: Rates, that’s right. That’s right. JIM LEHRER: Yes. MARK SHIELDS: Yes, that’s verboten for Republicans. You can’t raise the rate. JIM LEHRER: Yes. DAVID BROOKS: Yes. MARK SHIELDS: And for some, you can’t even raise revenues. But John — John Boehner was in active discussions with that. So we will — we will now find out, you know, how it broke up, why this marriage can’t be saved, you know, what — you know, who walked out on whom. DAVID BROOKS: If I could just… JIM LEHRER: Yes. DAVID BROOKS: … where we’re headed… JIM LEHRER: Yes. DAVID BROOKS: Because I don’t think — if the president says come here tomorrow and submit to me your plan, that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to be willing to be treated like that. So, nothing is going to happen tomorrow. And so maybe we will get to the McConnell-Reid. I — a lot of House Republicans signed a letter saying, we will not support that. JIM LEHRER: Explain what the McConnell-Reid idea is. DAVID BROOKS: The McConnell-Reid is too complicated to explain and understand. JIM LEHRER: OK. DAVID BROOKS: But, essentially, it is a very complicated set of procedures which allow Republicans to raise the debt without ever actually voting for it, and it gives the Democrats a lot of uncomfortable votes. JIM LEHRER: And the president essentially has the power to do it. DAVID BROOKS: Yes. It’s a — and it hands a lot of authority over to the White House. So, it’s a very cynical series of gestures which does nothing but kick the can down the road. Then the second offer and the more likely solution to all this is some sort of minimal, just, OK, we will take what we can get. And there are sort of $500 million over 10 years of cuts sitting on the table. And that would be the default position which we may fall back to. The problem with that is the rating agencies have said — or at least one of them has said, that’s not enough. If you don’t really cut $4 trillion, then we’re going to — we’re going to downgrade your debt and interest costs will then rise for a lot of us. And so that is the most likely political solution. It may be a disastrous financial solution. JIM LEHRER: Is there — is there a stench of this kind of political gamesmanship here, rather than hard-held philosophy and ideological and policy differences? MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think, Jim, it’s been a mud fight right from the beginning. It’s been an unappealing, unappetizing spectacle. The president had an edge over the Republicans in measures of public opinion as casting himself as the grownup and caring more about compromise and more willing to compromise. But neither side was really being elevated to Mount Rushmore status throughout this whole process. It’s been — I think it’s hemorrhaging confidence in Washington, in the federal government, in our ability to act maturely and responsibly together. So I — I think it’s been a loss all the way around. And now we’re down to the point of, you know, look, we’re staring right down the barrel of Aug. 2. JIM LEHRER: Is it conceivable that they will not make a deal, or they will make it in such a way that the government of the United States of America will actually go into default? DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I had been going in thinking there was a 10 or 20 percent chance of that. Now I would move that up to 30 or so. I still wouldn’t say it’s likely, but I think it’s entirely — entirely likely. The atmosphere now, which we saw today, is so poisonous. I think the Republicans have been way too rigid on substantive grounds. But if you’re going to have a negotiation, there has to be a set of demeanors. You have to get people to want to help you. And if you insult them continually, well, it makes it hard even if you have the substance on your side. And I think the president did nobody any favors with his press conference. I would have — I wish they had said: You’re hot right now. Have a press conference tomorrow.
Continue reading …Why right-wing domestic terrorists are our big blind spot: Let’s start with the media
July 23, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Some of our readers have been wondering C&L, of all places, jumped on the speculative bandwagon that presumed early on yesterday that the terrorist attacks in Norway were the work of Islamic radicals — speculation that turned out, of course, to be dead wrong. After all, we have been warning for several years now that assuming that terrorism is the sole realm of brown-skinned Muslims is a recipe for disaster. But the reality is that we, like everyone else, only published “is it Islamists?” speculation because that was the only speculation available from the so-called “terrorism experts. (And for what it’s worth, we only posed it as a possibility with a question mark, and declined to speculate about the meaning of it in terms of Muslims.) And the reason for it is that everyone in the press acted like a mindless pack in broadcasting the first bit of “expert” information that came along — even though the “expert” in question was in fact completely wrong, and working from dubious information in the first place. Benjamin Doherty at Electronic Intifada has the complete story of “How a clueless ‘terrorism expert’ set media suspicion on Muslims after Oslo horror” , setting out the whole sequence of pack behavior: The New York Times originally reported: A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. In later editions , the story was revised to read: Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist. The source is Will McCants, adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. On his website he describes himself as formerly “Senior Adviser for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. Department of State, program manager of the Minerva Initiative at the Department of Defense, and fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.” This morning, he posted “Alleged Claim for Oslo Attacks” on his blog Jihadica : This was posted by Abu Sulayman al-Nasir to the Arabic jihadi forum, Shmukh, around 10:30am EST (thread 118187). Shmukh is the main forum for Arabic-speaking jihadis who support al-Qaeda. Since the thread is now inaccessible (either locked or taken down), I am posting it here. I don’t have time at the moment to translate the whole thing but I translated the most important bits on twitter. The Shmukh web site is not accessible to just anyone, so he is the primary source for this claim. McCants stated from the beginning that the claim had been removed or hidden, and on Twitter he even cast doubt on whether it was a claim of responsibility at all. enlarge … McCants later reported that the claim of responsibility was retracted by the author “Abu Sulayman al-Nasir.” Furthermore, according to McCants, the moderator of this forum declared that speculation about the attack would be prohibited because the contents of the forum were appearing in mainstream media. It does seem more than a little bit odd that genuine “jihadis” would post on a closed forum that a former US official and “counterterrorism expert” openly writes about infiltrating. The result was that the NYT’s bad reportage gave a green light to every other TV journalist and every so-called “terrorism expert” who only seemed to have information about Islamic terrorism to run wild speculating that this was a product of Muslim radicals. This was especially the case, of course, at Fox News, where Greg Burke quickly declared from his seat of expertise in Rome that “this looks like the work of Al Qaeda,” as well as Fox “terrorism expert” Peter Neumann, who agreed wholeheartedly (with an assist from the network’s chryon writer, too). Moreover, as Doherty observes, none of these folks will ever pay the price for being dead wrong. After all, Steve Emerson — who infamously led the American journalistic pack down the same dead end in 1995 by declaring the Oklahoma City bombing likely the work of Muslim radicals — is still peddling his snake oil: Disseminating false, unverifiable information should be a blemish on McCants’ credibility, but what is more likely is that his failure will harm other communities elsewhere before it harms his career. Moreover, you have to wonder when the media will wake up and realize that their operative paradigm for understanding terrorism is broken. As we observed this morning about the attacks : It’s also a sobering reminder that, while we’ve been obsessing nationally over the supposed threat of Islamist radicals — embodied by Peter King’s haplessly myopic hearings on domestic terrorism — the reality remains that right-wing extremist terrorism remains the most potent domestic-terrorism threat in America as well. Indeed, the number of violent domestic-terrorism incidents has been steadily rising for the past two years, but the threat has gone largely ignored. Indeed, the Obama administration has kowtowed to right-wing complaints by gutting our own government’s intelligence-gathering capacities in this area. Charles Pierce has a piece in this month’s Esquire describing how, indeed, “the truth is, the overwhelming majority of our terrorism has always been homegrown. And it is times like these — times of anger and disaffection — when we turn on ourselves, and kill” (and he gives our work a nice shout-out, too): At the beginning of this year, not long after they’d found the bomb on the bench in Spokane, a journalist named David Neiwert put together a list of nearly thirty acts of right-wing political violence that had taken place, or had been foiled, in the United States since the summer of 2008 — or roughly since Barack Obama’s presidency began to be seen as a genuine possibility. The list began with Jim David Adkisson, who killed two people in a Unitarian church in Tennessee because he was angry at how “liberals” were “destroying America.” It included two episodes in April 2009, one in Pittsburgh and one in Florida, in which men who were sure that Barack Obama’s government was coming for their guns opened fire on law-enforcement officers who had come to investigate them on other matters. Some of the crimes on the list were briefly sensational — Scott Roeder’s murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, or Joseph Andrew Stack’s flying his small plane into a building in Austin in protest of the Internal Revenue Service, or the incoherent array of violent crimes committed by the “Sovereign Citizens Movement.” But most of them barely made the national radar at all. In December 2008, a woman in Belfast, Maine, named Amber Cummings shot to death her sleeping husband, James, who’d been savagely abusing her. Upon arriving at the Cummings home, investigators found Nazi paraphernalia and a stash of chemicals indicating that James Cummings was preparing to make a “dirty bomb” that he planned to detonate at Obama’s inauguration. Except in the local media, that aspect of the case disappeared completely. James Cummings and his bomb had nothing to do with Scott Roeder’s handgun or Joe Stack’s airplane. It is a fertile time for such things. The country elected a black president with an exotic name. The economy, wrecked by a rigged game at the highest levels, continued to grind through a jobless recovery. The national dialogue grows coarser and wilder, and does so at a pace accelerated by technology. People sense the fragmentation — things are falling apart — even while they take refuge in those fragments of life that seem safest and most familiar. Charlie is a great writer, so be sure to read the whole thing . Here is the whole list, and an interactive map with links to each of the stories we’ve assembled. (It’s actually in need of a brief update, which I hope to get to in the next few days.) Click on map to see interactive version. It might actually be a good idea if Peter King wants to hold hearings on domestic terrorism. But it needs to tackle the whole threat, and not just the one our xenophobic myopia readily identifies.
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Andy Barr is just the latest political reporter to go through the revolving door into the realm of partisan politics. Oddly enough Barr is leaving the inside-the-Beltway tabloid Politico just as a former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) staffer is joining the paper. NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell discussed the MSM-Democratic politics nexus in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Friday. You can watch the full segment in a video embedded below the page break:
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enlarge At last, the DADT repeal certifications have been received from all branches of the military and President Obama has notified Congress that requirements for repeal have been met. As of September 20th, DADT will be no more. From his email to those waiting for this day: Today, in accordance with this law, I signed the certification that will end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” once and for all. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also have certified that the military is ready for the repeal. Sixty days from now, on September 20th, the repeal will be complete and gay men and women will be able to serve their country openly.
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