enlarge Credit: CNN Damage Control In The World Of Murdoch. Click here to view this media Coming as a shock, and amidst an ever-rising tidal wave of anger and disgust, News Of The World decided to shut it’s doors and publish its last edition this coming Sunday. After 168 years, it comes down to this. The ever-deepening scandal currently overtaking Newscorp and News International is now taking on the appearance of shell game. Attempt to find the elusive pea while fighting distractions from hands. As it was reported on this edition of PM from BBC Radio 4, news was swift and abrupt. A short, terse statement from James Murdoch, son and heir-apparent expressed remorse and regret, while former Editor and now Chief Executive of News International Rebekah Brooks took the life preservers and split out the back, leaving colleagues and staff abruptly unemployed and drowning. As PM Anchor Eddie Mair asked “Are you rejoicing?” the answer came back ultimately no. Or as Michael Wolff pointed out “Rupert Murdoch is now naked and scared”. The question now is, what next? It would seem shutting News Of The World was a maladroit attempt at damage control – the out-of-sight/out-of-mind analogy, but I think it has gone way too far for that. The damage is still being revealed, the guilt is slowly making its way up the ladder. As was pointed out in the broadcast, Prime Minister David Cameron is now in a very precarious position because of his personal relationships with both Murdoch and Brooks, appointing disgraced (and now possibly jailed) Andy Coulson to Communications Director and facing the looming issue of the proposed buyout of BskyB by Newscorp.Questions are now coming to light as to just how much Cameron knew about Coulson and how much he chose not to know at the time of his appointment. But as was also pointed out, this scandal has repercussions all over Parliament because of the nature of Politics and the Press, not only the immense damage that has been done to Scotland Yard. But this is what’s currently going on in the UK only. That’s all we’re hearing about for now. The subject of just how widespread this system of hacking has been with any other publications, or news outlets currently owned by Newscorp throughout the world begs a much more alarming question. If this has been company policy, it’s highly unlikely this scandal is confined to one newspaper in one area alone. Think cockroaches. It’s just speculation at this point and as I said yesterday, this story is far from over. But for now, here is the July7th edition of PM, followed by another BBC Profile. This time it’s the elusive Rebekah Brooks. enlarge Rebekah Brooks – beyond the facade, a player. Click here to view this media The wonders won’t be ceasing for a long-long time.
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US president predicts agreement on nation’s debt ceiling will give companies the confidence to recruit workers again Barack Obama has blamed political wrangling over the US debt ceiling for a jump in unemployment to 9.2%. The US president warned that uncertainty over a deal being hammered out between Republicans and Democrats, which involves plans to raise taxes, cut government spending and stimulate the economy, is stopping businesses hiring. His comments follow figures that show employers last month hired the fewest workers for nearly two years, crushing hopes of a turnaround in the jobs market, and adding to jitters to world stock markets. Companies added only 18,000 jobs in June, the US labour department said, compared with the 90,000-120,000 that had been forecast. It was the weakest reading since September 2010. Speaking at the White House, Obama said that once Congress reached an agreement on the debt ceiling, businesses would have the confidence they needed to add workers to their payroll. Austan Goolsbee, head of the president’s council of economic advisers, added that the jobs report showed “the need for bipartisan action to help the private sector and the economy grow – such as measures to extend the payroll tax cut, pass the pending free trade agreements and create an infrastructure bank to help put Americans back to work”. He said: “It also underscores the need for a balanced approach to deficit reduction that instils confidence and allows us to live within our means without shortchanging future growth.” In London, The FTSE 100, which was up about 27 points before the release of the June payroll figures, dropped more than 55 to 5,998.81 as investors fretted about the global impact of a US slowdown. The private sector added 57,000 jobs last month – against expectations of 110,000 – and the government shed 39,000. Rob Carnell, of ING bank, described the figures as “absolutely awful” and said they would “rock” the markets. Markets analyst Louise Cooper said: “There was a collective gasp on the trading floor here at BGC when the non-farm payrolls number was released … This number is worrying.” America was the country where flexible employment laws were supposed to ensure that, in an economic recovery, people were re-employed quickly and easily. “Eighteen thousands jobs created in a country of 400 million people with a 9.2% unemployment rate means that more needs to be done. But what? “[Regarding] monetary policy – the federal funds target rate is already at 0.25% – [there is] no room to cut there and QE2 [the second round of quantitative easing] finished last week. [With] $14tn debt and the deadline for the budget deal on 2 August, fiscal policy is tightening. Most economists are expecting a rebound to the US economy in the second half of the year [and] this number will cause them to return to their models.” The labour department also revised May’s disappointing job creation figures down, to 25,000 (previous estimate: 54,000), and the figures for April down to 217,000 (previous estimate 221,000). The figures are particularly disappointing after strong job creation figures on Thursday prompted many analysts to raise their forecast for Friday’s figures, from a consensus of 90,000 to 120,000. Those figures, from American payroll processor ADP, said that the private sector added 157,000 jobs last month – more than double the number expected and dwarfing the 36,000 jobs added in May. US unemployment and employment data US economy United States Global economy Economics US politics US Congress US domestic policy Phillip Inman Tom Bawden guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media As Ryan Grim noted in his article this week, despite some House Republicans threatening impeachment if President Obama resorted to this to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt, but at least one Republican member of the Senate thinks the Constitution would trump the law — 14th Amendment Option May Be Legit, Says Leading Senate Republican : Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Thursday that the Constitution may trump the debt ceiling, allowing the administration a way out of the default impasse. Negotiators are considering gutting the social safety net in exchange for a vote to lift the debt ceiling. Grassley, in a conference call with local reporters, said that there may be another way out. “There’s one thing that hasn’t been talked about yet, and I haven’t checked on the constitutionality of it — and I read the Constitution, but I don’t remember reading this — but in the 14th amendment, there’s something that says something about the debt of the United States government shall be honored,” Grassley said, according to a recording of the call. “The 14th Amendment includes a public debt clause that insists the obligations of the government ‘shall not be questioned.’” “So people are looking at the fact that maybe the debt ceiling bill that Congress presumably has to pass for the government to borrow more maybe is contrary to that constitutional provision, and that the administration may take out [loans] on their own — just to borrow money — and say that they can ignore the law,” he said. Grassley said that he was personally supportive of the debt ceiling, because it focuses attention on spending, but that if its existence was unconstitutional, there was nothing he or his colleagues could do. “I think it’s a discipline that Congress uses effectively from time to time, maybe not to cut down on the amount of spending but to have a refresher course,” he said. “It’s a good discipline, so it bothers me if the Constitution provision would trump it, but that would be up to the courts to say. But who’s going to argue against the Constitution? It’s the basis of our government; it’s the law of our land, and everybody has to abide by it.” “The Constitution trumps the law, obviously,” he said. Read on…
Continue reading …Krauthammer Corrects ‘Inside Washington’ Host: David Brooks ‘Is Not A Conservative’
July 8, 2011 No Comment
Like so many members of the press, “Inside Washington” host Gordon Peterson wrongly thinks New York Times columnist David Brooks is a conservative. When Peterson depicted Brooks this way on Friday, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer marvelously corrected him with surprising support from Politico's Evan Thomas (video follows with transcript and commentary): GORDON PETERSON, HOST: Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader’s talking about conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks’ column on July 4th which he says the Republican Party is no longer a normal party. It’s been infected, Brooks says, by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical governing alternative. Its members, Charles, he says don’t accept the logic of compromise. What do you think of that? CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, forgive me, but I have to correct your copy again. Conservative columnist? He’s a great columnist, but he’s not a conservative. PETERSON: You don’t consider him a conservative? KRAUTHAMMER: No, I don’t. NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: (Laughing off-camera.) KRAUTHAMMER: I think he’s a moderate, and he straddles… TOTENBERG: (Off-camera) He’s a moderate conservative. EVAN THOMAS, POLITICO: (Off-camera) No, I think he’s a moderate. KRAUTHAMMER: No, he’s not a conservative. He’s a moderate. He’s open to all views. For the record, when I interviewed Brooks at the 2008 Republican National Convention, he confirmed that he was just slightly right of center and considered himself a moderate. Unfortunately, any opinion columnist that's not a liberal is considered a conservative these days. This, of course, is another one of the reasons the public isn't exposed to close the level of conservative opinion as they are liberal views: those brought on to give the conservative side are oftentimes moderates. Bravo, Charles. Bravo.
Continue reading …Pew Analysis Finds Despite Recovery, Women Are Losing Jobs While Men Are Finding Them
July 8, 2011 No CommentSo it’s not your imagination: Women are losing jobs and men are finding them . Thank God we’re back to the Godly order of things, right? The sluggish recovery from the Great Recession has been better for men than for women. From the end of the recession in June 2009 through May 2011, men gained 768,000 jobs and lowered their unemployment rate by 1.1 percentage points to 9.5%.1 Women, by contrast, lost 218,000 jobs during the same period, and their unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 8.5%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. These post-recession employment trends are a sharp turnabout from the gender patterns that prevailed during the recession itself, when men lost more than twice as many jobs as women. Men accounted for 5.4 million, or 71%, of the 7.5 million jobs that disappeared from the U.S. economy from December 2007 through June 2009. Employment trends during the recovery have favored men over women in all but one of the 16 major sectors of the economy identified in this report. In five sectors, notably in retail trade, men have gained jobs while women have lost them. In five other sectors, including education and health services and professional and business services, men gained jobs at a faster rate than women. And in an additional five sectors, such as construction and local governments, men lost jobs at a slower rate than women. The sole exception to these patterns is state government , a sector of the economy in which women have added jobs during the recovery while men have lost them. But since we have so many Republican governors who are firing state workers, I’m sure we’ll get those numbers in line with the rest of them. Progress!
Continue reading …Today is one of them, and mostly because it’s fraught with nonsense about what one person said or what another one didn’t say, who signed what and how loudly the noise machine can amplify it . For example, David Plouffe didn’t say the unemployment rate wouldn’t determine the outcome of the 2012 election. This is what he said: I would make a general statement, though, because there is a lot of attention focused on the unemployment rate. The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers. In fact, those terms very rarely pass their lips. So it’s a very one-dimensional view. They view the economy through their own personal prism. You see, people’s — people’s attitude towards their own personal financial situation has actually improved over time. You know, they’re still concerned about the long-term economic future of the country, but it’s things like “My sister was unemployed for six months and was living in my basement and now she has a job.” There’s a — a “help wanted” sign. You know, the local diner was a little busier this week. Home Depot was a little busier. These are the ways people talk about the economy. They don’t talk about it in the terms of Washington. And so their decision next year will be based upon two things, okay, how do I feel about things right now, and then, ultimately, campaigns are always much more about the future, and who do I think has got the best idea, the best vision for where to take the country? I would submit to you that a healthy percentage of Americans, far more than a majority, believe the president has a very sound vision for where the country needs to go. So, you know, people won’t vote based on the unemployment rate. They’re gonna vote based on, “How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?” But of course, Mitt Romney jumped on it right out of the gate and said Plouffe should have been summarily fired for such a thing. It’s all bluster, posturing, and playing to the base and it gets old and boring because it’s fundamentally dishonest. By comparison, however, we have Michele Bachmann signing virulently anti-gay statements while saying outright that she hopes the high jobless rate helps her get elected . Because this is what it all is for these Republicans. Politics. Never mind that the unemployment rate can be directly linked to the loss of public sector jobs . Michele Bachmann doesn’t care, because she wants high unemployment to work for her politically in order to get elected. I hate it. I hate that the media never calls these people out on their cynical, self-serving, made-for-TV hissy fits, I hate the distraction it creates, I hate the way gossip turns to truth and I hate the way it causes people to just disengage entirely from the process. Most people get tired of constantly having to filter the magnified crap out there to try and discern the truth, and so they just tune out entirely. Republicans count on that, hoping that if they just reinforce key messages they will win. Death panels. High Unemployment, etc. becomes a three-word slogan instead of reality. And god forbid there’s anything like nuance involved, because the media won’t decode it and the Republicans will run sixty zillion ads magnifying it. Grrrr. Happy Friday. PS: It’s not just here. This is a stellar example of how ridiculous the media is here and abroad. This isn’t a joke, but where is the interviewer looking this guy in the eye and telling him to lose the prepared sound bite and answer the damned question? [h/t Andrew Sullivan ]
Continue reading …Today is one of them, and mostly because it’s fraught with nonsense about what one person said or what another one didn’t say, who signed what and how loudly the noise machine can amplify it . For example, David Plouffe didn’t say the unemployment rate wouldn’t determine the outcome of the 2012 election. This is what he said: I would make a general statement, though, because there is a lot of attention focused on the unemployment rate. The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers. In fact, those terms very rarely pass their lips. So it’s a very one-dimensional view. They view the economy through their own personal prism. You see, people’s — people’s attitude towards their own personal financial situation has actually improved over time. You know, they’re still concerned about the long-term economic future of the country, but it’s things like “My sister was unemployed for six months and was living in my basement and now she has a job.” There’s a — a “help wanted” sign. You know, the local diner was a little busier this week. Home Depot was a little busier. These are the ways people talk about the economy. They don’t talk about it in the terms of Washington. And so their decision next year will be based upon two things, okay, how do I feel about things right now, and then, ultimately, campaigns are always much more about the future, and who do I think has got the best idea, the best vision for where to take the country? I would submit to you that a healthy percentage of Americans, far more than a majority, believe the president has a very sound vision for where the country needs to go. So, you know, people won’t vote based on the unemployment rate. They’re gonna vote based on, “How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?” But of course, Mitt Romney jumped on it right out of the gate and said Plouffe should have been summarily fired for such a thing. It’s all bluster, posturing, and playing to the base and it gets old and boring because it’s fundamentally dishonest. By comparison, however, we have Michele Bachmann signing virulently anti-gay statements while saying outright that she hopes the high jobless rate helps her get elected . Because this is what it all is for these Republicans. Politics. Never mind that the unemployment rate can be directly linked to the loss of public sector jobs . Michele Bachmann doesn’t care, because she wants high unemployment to work for her politically in order to get elected. I hate it. I hate that the media never calls these people out on their cynical, self-serving, made-for-TV hissy fits, I hate the distraction it creates, I hate the way gossip turns to truth and I hate the way it causes people to just disengage entirely from the process. Most people get tired of constantly having to filter the magnified crap out there to try and discern the truth, and so they just tune out entirely. Republicans count on that, hoping that if they just reinforce key messages they will win. Death panels. High Unemployment, etc. becomes a three-word slogan instead of reality. And god forbid there’s anything like nuance involved, because the media won’t decode it and the Republicans will run sixty zillion ads magnifying it. Grrrr. Happy Friday. PS: It’s not just here. This is a stellar example of how ridiculous the media is here and abroad. This isn’t a joke, but where is the interviewer looking this guy in the eye and telling him to lose the prepared sound bite and answer the damned question? [h/t Andrew Sullivan ]
Continue reading …On Fox & Friends, Bozell Discusses $76 Trillion UN Plan to Fight ‘Climate Change’
July 8, 2011 No Comment
On Friday’s Fox & Friends, MRC president Brent Bozell appeared to discuss a piece by MRC’s Dan Gainor on the latest global-warming command-and-control blueprint from the United Nations –
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Click here to view this media Ed Schultz went after Sen. Orrin Hatch in his Psycho Talk segment for his little screed this week saying that the poor need to “share some of the responsibility” for shrinking the debt. TPM has more on that. Dems Go After Hatch For Saying Poor Need To Do More To Shrink The Debt : The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is going after Sen. Orrin Hatch for saying that the poor need to “share some of the responsibility” for shrinking the debt. “The top 10 percent are paying 70 percent of all income taxes. The top 50 percent pay something like 98 percent of all income taxes. Fifty-one percent don’t pay anything,” Hatch said. “Democrats say they [the 51 percent] pay payroll taxes. Well, everybody does that because that’s Social Security. They pay about one-third of what they’re going to take out over the years in Social Security,” Hatch said . “Obamacare — a family of four earning over $80,000 a year — gets subsidies. Think about that. That’s what we call the poor?” “Republican priorities are completely out of whack and Orrin Hatch’s comments prove that point,” DSCC’s Shripal Shah told TPM. “It’s bad enough that Republicans are doing everything they can to protect tax breaks for millionaires and special interests, but the fact that the Republican idea of shared sacrifice means going after the those who are struggling the most is completely reprehensible,” Shah said. As I already pointed out here , Joshua Holland did a great job debunking last year why saying that the poor in this country don’t pay their share in taxes even if they don’t pay any federal income taxes is bunk. I wish Ed Schultz had made that point in this segment as well, but he didn’t. Maybe anyone that is on Twitter can make Ed and his staff aware of that fact on his feed at @WeGotEd.
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Libyan leader says he will send hundreds of supporters to ‘martyr’ in Europe in revenge for NATO campaign Muammar Gaddafi has threatened to send hundreds of Libyans to launch attacks in Europe in revenge for the Nato-led military campaign against him. In a speech on Libyan television the Libyan leader said: “Hundreds of Libyans will martyr in Europe. I told you it is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But we will give them a chance to come to their senses.” The Canary Islands, Sicily, other Mediterranean islands as well as Andalusia in southern Spain were Arab lands that should be liberated, he said. Gaddafi, whose forces have been battling rebel fighters increasingly encroaching on his territory and Nato warplanes, was speaking to a crowd of about 50,000 in the desert town of Sabha, about 500 miles south of Tripoli. The speech appeared designed to show that he still enjoys support in the areas of Libya still under his control. “You will regret it, Nato, when the war moves to Europe,” he said. “The Libyan people have no problem, the colonial powers are the ones who have a problem. They want to control our oil. They are jealous because God gave us the gift of oil,” Gaddafi said. “We do not fear them. We have no choice but to resist, become martyrs and fight on till the end.” Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Africa Nato Arab and Middle East unrest guardian.co.uk
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