Waste of a fine meringue

In today's classy representation of the modern Republican Party we have Allen West who sent what he or Steve King say to themselves in the mirror every morning to Deborah Wasserman-Schultz:

You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives.

Oh well, let's see if we can get worse, if you're Michele Bachman you can give a reporter the kind of beating that Glenn Beck has to pay for.

And meanwhile those and a story like this...

Nearly one quarter of the Metropolitan Police’s press staff have worked for News International at some point, Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing commissioner, revealed today.

All get lost because some asshole decides to pie Rupert Murdoch and somehow make him into a sympathetic figure, no small trick.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Roger Ailes can have you murdered as long as he stays within his budget

That's comforting.

Q: What payments could executives like Rebekah Brooks sanction on their own?

James Murdoch says people like Brooks had budgets. As long as they stayed within those budgets, that would have been fine.

Are you paying attention Whitey Bulger?

Remember this patented technique:

Q: When did you realise a parliamentary committee had accused your executives of collective amnesia?

Rupert Murdoch says he does not know.

"Don't be too hard on me I'm a senile old man!"

Rupert Murdoch's testifying tact ... in addition to pounding the table when explaining what a big company he has to control ... is to play the senile old man. Infamous "bathrobe-wearing" mob boss Vincente Gigante didn't play old and doddering more effectively.

Look man

Don't bring that laptop, cellphone and paperwork to my home...that will look suspicious.

No just put it in the parking lot of the shopping center close to my house and I'll go find it. Because that's TOTALLY the logical and non-suspicious thing to do.

Connected to reality watch

This came up yesterday, but I was too lazy to mention it at the time.

Murdoch was attending a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in early July when it became clear that the latest eruption of the hacking scandal was not, as he first thought, a passing problem. According to a person briefed on the conversation, he proposed to one senior executive that he “fly commercial to London,” so he might be seen as man of the people.

He naturally ended up coming in a private jet. But how exactly would this be man of the people, like he'd choose to fly coach?

Now he's a rumor

If Murdoch does poorly tomorrow, he may be replaced as CEO of NewsCorp by -- apparently -- former pitching great Rollie Fingers.

Oh what a beautiful morning...

Schadenfreude's coming my way...

Rupert Murdoch, his son James and their sacked chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, will appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee at 2.30pm.

That's 9:30 a.m. eastern for Rupert to come forward...hopefully without the gratuitous buffalo shot.

And after 4,000 phone hacks, $250,000 plus in police bribes, and millions in hush money paid by his largest Sunday paper, he has a time-tested strategy for avoiding responsibility. He'll plead ignorance. "Oh it's such a big company, and I'm over in America, how could I possibly know what happens over here?"

Except, of course, for the last time he testified before Parliament in 2007 -- after phone-hacking of celebrities became known, but was purported by Murdoch, Inc. to be the work of one rogue reporter:

"For The Sun and News of the World he explained that he is a 'traditional proprietor'. He exercises editorial control on major issues - like which party to back in a General Election or policy on Europe."

It added: "Mr Murdoch did not disguise the fact that he is hands-on both economically and editorially."

We'll see if someone notices the distinction later this morning.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

This sounds awfully familiar

Guy who brought forth evidence embarrassing to UK's powers that be commits suicide.




Oops, sorry, no this one.

Although

If the crazies in the GOP refuse to raise the debt limit bringing about a great depression I guess it might save Rupert's ass.

So no need to be nervous at all.

I know FoxNews is trying to cover it as little as possible

But Rupert's comeuppance is on the verge of bringing down the British government. Which will make it even harder to ignore over here.

Mr Cameron had been on the brink of appointing the BBC’s Guto Harri as his media chief when he was Opposition leader. Mr Harri and his family spent a weekend with the Camerons in 2007 to discuss the job offer.

However, it went to Mr Coulson after Mrs Brooks got involved, according to sources in the Tory party and at News International.

She is said to have told Mr Cameron that the post should go to Mr Coulson to strengthen links between the Tories and News International.

So much for Murdoch not pulling the strings.

Korporate Kulture

News America, profiled today in the NY Times, was a NewsCorp. subdivision that true to all NewsCorp properties played hardball way over the line and has the many millions settlements to prove it...sound familiar?

Here's the kind of person Murdoch placed in charge:

News America was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in “The Untouchables” in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Emmel testified that Mr. Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy.

According to Mr. Emmel’s testimony, Mr. Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company’s philosophy — “bed-wetting liberals in particular was the description he used” Mr. Emmel testified — then he could arrange to have those employees “outplaced from the company.”

Liberal = 'Soft on Murder, big on ethics'.

Nice Parting Shot!

In addition to Rebekah Brooks getting the surprise unseen, but short, perp walk, the Commissioner of the Metro police force in London resigned yesterday having hired and taken favors from a former News of the World editor.

But notable is what the departing Constable said in comparing himself to the Prime Minister:

In an emotional statement yesterday evening he insisted he did not want to “compromise” the Prime Minister but pointedly said Mr Wallis had not been associated with phone hacking at the time Sir Paul employed him in October 2009.

He said that by contrast the full scale of phone hacking at the News of the World had begun to emerge when Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s former director of communications, resigned as editor

BOO YAH!

Hard hitting journalism FoxNews style

I Understand A White Collar Criminal Defense Is Expensive

So Brooksie's £3.5 million severance package will come in handy.

Anyone else wonder if the Fox Brain Room is being dismantled as I type (if it hasn't already)?

Still going with By Labor Day.

BUM BUM BAH!!!!!!!!!!

Rebekah Brooks, the daughter Rupert Murdoch says he never had (which makes his actual daughter real happy I'd reckon) ARRESTED!!!!

So many shoes have dropped it's like an Imelda Marcos' closet exploded.

Although now she won't be testifying on Tuesday...somewhat conveniently.

They and Republicans have so much in common

North Koreans sound more like Teapartiers all the time.

Five North Koreans Tested Positive For Steroids Because They Were Struck By Lightning, Says North Korea

But of course,

Pawlenty Decries ‘Catastrophic Scandal’ Of Freddie Mac, Appoints Top Freddie Mac Lobbyist As Campaign Co-Chair

Of course this guy is "a guy" and white and rich as opposed to poor and black like so many Freddie Mac beneficiaries so it's all good.

(all good except Pawlenty's ratings)

Forget Bolton, I'm getting my own tingly senses going

If you are starting to think "Attaturk sure is enjoying this whole Murdoch in trouble thing" you are damn right I am.

By Bolton's Boner it shall be done!

Former CIA guy goes back to time-tested, ever made, statement that Israel is going to bomb Iran in the Fall.

John Bolton is both aroused and enraged someone is stealing ("Mencia-ing") his act.

Just like a Republican

The 200 employees of News of the World got three months severance when Rupert shut the whole newspaper down because of the malfeasance they had no part in.

The people who oversaw his bidding however...

Five days after the News of the World rolled off the presses for the last time, Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of its publisher News International, walked out of the company with a severance package estimated by senior colleagues at £3.5m.

Her departure follows that of the final editor of the NOTW, Colin Myler, who is understood to be in line for a £2m pay-off, and two of the company's senior lawyers, Jon Chapman and Tom Crone, who will each get about £1.5m.

Wonder how much Les Hinton got?

Yep

The man knows Rupert like few others.



This also is interesting:

There will be many moves before Tuesday's date with Parliament...including much practicing for Rupert. I've seen this: they drill him. He can't stay on script without endless repetition.

I suggest someone like Tom Watson (the MP not the golfer) go at things from angles ol' Rupert hasn't prepared to obfuscate about.

Oh and when Rupert -- as he did yesterday -- claims "I COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE KNOWN" here's a nugget from the last time he testified under oath before Parliament.

Rupert Murdoch said he was "hands-on both economically and editorially" with his newspapers on the last occasion he gave evidence to a British parliamentary committee, the Press Association reports.

The media tycoon told the Lords communications committee four years ago that he was a "traditional proprietor" of the News of the World and the Sun, and decided their stance on issues such as Europe and which party to back in a general election.

That was four years ago during the height of phone hacking, BTW.

Yesterday he stated:

He said, however, that he attends to a lot of details in a multi-billion company with thousands of employees.

Funny how he's hands on, except -- of course -- when it might get his ass in personal trouble.

He'll pretty much be the living embodiment of Goya's famous painting of Saturn devouring his children over the next few days.

I'm sorry but who is lying?

Yesterday evening Rupert interviewed by an employee in the Wall Street Journal and said it is all no big deal, no problem at all, all a minor understanding, charges full of lies.

A few hours later, the person he had adamantly refused to get rid of, Rebekah Brooks...
gonzo.

Why tamper with "Perfection"?

This coming Tuesday will be quite entertaining I hope when Murdoch testifies in front of a committee of the British House of Commons (or it will turn out like a typical American Congressional Hearing and be quite awful), but Murdoch's sycophantic interview in the Wall Street Journal is full of wanking.

Murdoch, who will join his younger son James and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks at the hearing, added: "We think it's important to absolutely establish our integrity in the eyes of the public."

The chairman and chief executive of News Corp also defended the company's handling of the crisis, claiming it had made only "minor mistakes".

Yes, I'm sure Milly Dowler's family would agree -- it was all a "minor mistake" hacking their daughter's phone and making them think she was alive.

"When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right," he said.

Yeah, like this prompt correction -- it's all the liberals fault!

Rupert's interview does seem a lot like one Mubarak or Qadahfi (500th different spelling!) would give.

Thrill of blowing up brown people? Apparently "priceless"

It would be nice if journalists practiced the journalism of informing the populace of figures like this:

...the projected shortfall for the Medicare program “over the program’s 75-year planning horizon is less than 0.4 percent of GDP. This is less than one quarter of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This story, it seems "familiar"

Someday some American leader will actually anticipate something. Someday.

The man who murdered President Hamid Karzai’s half brother spent years as an ally of the United States in the war against the Taliban.

The killer, Sardar Mohammad, a police commander, met on several occasions with U.S. and British military officials, shared intelligence with Americans and played a part in Afghan arrests of scores of Taliban fighters, according to three relatives interviewed on Thursday in his home near Kandahar...

But one of Karzai’s brothers and a senior Afghan official said they were now convinced that the Taliban somehow won Mohammad’s allegiance in recent months and convinced him to carry out an assassination on the group’s behalf.

When has this ever happened before in this part of the world, other than pretty much every time? We and our policies of reflexive unthinking unconditional support of one country and bombing and/or occupying a fair share of the other countries in the region seems like such a clear path for consistent and unwavering popularity?

Better have a Predator drone fire off another missile to make us feel better.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Get your Obstructionism Muscles ready for kerning!

4.45pm: Rupert Murdoch and his son James have indicated that they will give evidence to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday, a News Corporation spokesperson told the Press Association.

I understand Roger Ailes will also be attending, sitting in the back looking at the MPs hungrily while holding a woman in a chain-mail bikini on a leash.

Nobody could not have anticipated

Or not already have known that NewsCorp is essentially a well-compensated intellectual (and now criminal enterprise) engaged in the petty jealousies of it's ruling family. A Borgia-like group who start wars (at least Cesare fought in his), like to display people in virtual cages, and use poison in their pens instead of in their soup.

In a 2007 affidavit, Spiegelman said “accepting freebies, graft and other favors was not only condoned by the company but encouraged as a way to decrease the newspaper’s out-of-pocket expenses…and that News Corp. attorneys had been instructed to ‘look the other way.’” There was a policy of “favor banking,” the affidavit said, “practiced on a much larger scale by Rupert Murdoch.” In 2001, Spiegelman said in the document, “I was ordered to kill a Page Six story about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club that would have angered the Communist regime and endangered Murdoch’s broadcasting privileges” as he was trying to get Beijing’s approval for his satellite-television service...

When celebrities criticized the Iraq War, Spiegelman added, he was told to remind readers of their show-business projects “in case they feel like boycotting.”

In similar fashion, Stern says the troops regularly received marching orders. “For a long time the Clintons were targets,” he said. “You couldn’t get enough dirt on the Clintons. Then Bill Clinton made a rapprochement with Murdoch, sucked up to him in the run-up to Hillary running” for the Senate in 2000.

“Then one day it was, ‘You can’t write anything bad about the Clintons.’ We had to kill stuff all the time. It filtered down from Murdoch. In the meetings we’d be told, ‘No way, mate.’”

Some Australians who were friendly with the Murdoch family, such as actress Nicole Kidman, “had a free pass,” Stern said.

I Call Bulls#$t.

Shorter Bancroft Family: Nobody could have predicted that Rupert Murdoch blah blah blah blah blah...

Nobody could have anticipated

I'm guessing the same sort of finding will eventually be shown about NewsCorp ("maybe" without the pederasty):

Ireland’s minister for children, Frances Fitzgerald, said that the report indicated that the Vatican’s “sole concern was the protection of the institution — not the children.”

via AmericaBlog.

"Angry Black Man" alert

Poor little Eric Cantor ran to the microphones to try to get a video made worthy of any hostage taking terrorist.

Oh, he was so scared of angry black man. Stay tuned tomorrow when Cantor proclaims Obama finally showed him the "whitey tape".

Finally, a character witness

After days of being pilloried, just because he oversaw a corporate culture that thought it was just fine to listen in on private voice mails of murdered children, Rupert Murdoch is finally defended by a person of appropriate character.

It is unlikely that Mr Murdoch, his son James, or Les Hinton committed crimes (Mr Hinton is a very decent man). Discerning people should not be impressed by the process familiar to me and other victims of it, of hostile media solemnly citing law professors and retired prosecutors and sources who spoke on condition of anonymity (usually tendentious fantasies of the journalists themselves), to comment on the Murdochs’ legal problems.

Signed,

Conrad Black, aka, soon to again be inmate number 18330-424.

Maybe someday soon Conrad and Rupert can commiserate in adjoining minimum security cells?

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Truth finally puts on pants -- no doubt Andrew Breitbart won't notice he's allergic to truth and justice

Well, what do ya' know:

Two union members accused of beating conservative activist Kenny Gladney outside an August 2009 town hall meeting in St. Louis were acquitted of all charges by a jury Tuesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Wonder if Kenny Gladney is married to backward "B-Girl" now?

Tbogg who is the Emile Zola of the "Gladney Affaire" (surely a proud moment for him) has more of the pathetic details.

Gladney’s testimony was the most damaging to the prosecution’s case. For starters, Gladney appeared in a neck brace, which brought back memories of him showing up at a tea party rally in a wheel chair despite the fact that he was running around with no obvious discomfort immediately after the altercation took place. The defense lawyer said that Gladney’s neck brace, which he was wearing because of surgery for a herniated disc, had nothing to do with the altercation, and Gladney did not challenge him on that point, so I assume it’s true. But this opened up a criticism from the defense lawyer who asked Gladney why he showed up at the tea party rally in a wheelchair. Gladney saidhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif, basically, that it was hot and he was on medication and “they didn’t have folding chairs or lawn chairs.” Ouch.

The defense lawyer also pointed out that Gladney had repeatedly claimed in the past that he was “handing out flags for free.” But this seemingly is in contradiction with his claim that he went to the rally to “make money” by selling buttons and flags. The defense lawyer suggested that Gladney said this because he thought it would make him appear more sympathetic, just as showing up in a wheelchair would make him appear more sympathetic.

A Bunch of Guys whose education stopped in the 8th Grade

Get into Harvard.

Pull it off at Yale like the Bush family and I'll be really impressed.

By all means

Oh how it will be fun to see Bachmann implode...when she doesn't even realize it is happening.

It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay.

Good luck Mitt, there's only about a sixth of the population that doesn't think stating this is repugnant, but loves it. And it is the sixth that watches FoxNews and votes in Republican primaries and caucuses.

Time to pay up

While waiting for the eventual story of Murdoch papers phone-hacking cancer-wards, Jerry's Kids, Tom Hanks, the Pope, and Nelson Mandela, it is good to remember there are further crimes and hypocrisies for Rupert to mine.

Remember when it was reported that GE didn't pay any taxes last year and Fox News went nuts because GE owned NBC and GE head Jeffrey Immelt supports Obama?

Why yes I do, good times.

Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.

Why that little scamp -- not paying taxes is the epitome of good citizenship if you are conservative and only became a citizen to acquire media properties. Why it is, I dare say, the very height of patriotism -- if you are a Republican.

Poor misunderstood Rupert, just ask Roger "Go Ahead and Call me Richard" Cohen.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

The Al Gore is Fat Act falls short

Dumbest piece of legislation this term (and that's pretty dumb obviously) falls a little short.

Tea Party conservatives fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to pass Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) BULB Act, which would have revoked lighting efficiency standards that are already reducing pollution, creating jobs, and spurring technological innovation.

I understand Al Gore also uses such innovations as "the zipper" and "pants" so perhaps the Teaparty will take up banning them for that reason next?

And no one really cares

The National League won the MLB All-Star Game. I remember when that was news and that happened every year.

I'm old.

I bet he cried

Casually xenophobic British ultra-nationalist Morrissey was bitten by a dog of unknown origin and — holy shit — he cracked a bone in his finger!

Shorter Roger Cohen

In which I deftly avoid Godwin's Law.

"I'm here today to tell you that Stalin was occasionally a good parent.

And Beria was often a kindly uncle."

Lack of Logic, it's not just for American Political Culture

From a parliamentary hearing in the UK on Murdoch's newspapers and phone-hacking -- and how they used the police to do so. The Chief Investigator Incompetent at the Metropolitan Police who years ago proclaimed Murdoch Inc's phone hacks limited is being grilled:

12.24pm: Lorraine Fullbrook, a Conservative, asks Yates if he has ever received payment from a news outlet.

Yates says he has never, ever, ever received payment. He thinks the question is amazing.

Q: Have any of your staff received payments?

That's "highly probable", he says. The Met employs 50,000 people.

That's impossible...yet highly likely.

Sounds like a case for the WaPo's "Fact-Checker".

WaPo's "Fact-Check" invents new Democrats only rating

The Pinocchio Test

Becerra is sincere in his convictions and his statement is true, so far as it goes. Yes, Social Security in the past has not contributed to the nation’s debt. But it’s basically a meaningless fact and actually distracts from the long-term fiscal problem posed by the retirement of the baby boom generation and the shrinking of the nation’s labor pool.

We are going to label this with that relatively rare rating: “true but false.” (Still need to get an icon!)

True But False

Fred Hiatt World where truth must bend to Village idioms.

So, um, why don't you shut the fuck up then?

The Israeli far-right and the American far right have a real affinity wide-sweeping generalizations based on a complete lack of knowledge:

Glenn Beck: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the ruling class, is about the destruction of Israel and the end of the western way of life. Period. That’s what it is. I don’t know a lot of Palestinians but I also don’t know a lot of Jewish people either. I don’t really classify people that way. They’re just people."

I don't really know, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

Huzzah!

Grand Old Psychopaths

Keeping it classy:

Arizona state Sen. Lori Klein (R) [w]hile showing off her “raspberry-pink handgun,” she “aimed it at a journalist” who was interviewing her about her pro-gun positions just outside the Senate chambers. The gun, a .380 Ruger, was loaded, and Klein did not have the safety on. Klein, however, told the reporter not to worry because “I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger.”

Another day another malevolent disclosure

This is simply non-stop entertainment.

Shortly after Scotland Yard began its initial criminal inquiry of phone hacking by The News of the World in 2006, five senior police investigators discovered that their own mobile phone messages had been targeted by the tabloid and had most likely been listened to...

Watching NewsCorp and the Murdochs meltdown is the best kind of entertainment, the entertainment of reaping the whirlwind.

Comeuppance

This was the best part of justice of the U.S. - Brazil match yesterday when late in extra time Erika of Brazil did her best Sergio Busquets impression and flopped on the ground as if she had been shot for a couple minutes and being carted off just to kill time.

She then popped right up and ran back on the pitch, thinking she had effectively killed off most of the game.

Ironically, that small portion of time she gave to the United States end up being the time in which the U.S. equalized.

Ha Ha!

Place Your Bets

On when we find out that Murdochian properties in America were hacking Democratic politicians' phones.

I'm going with "By Labor Day".

Three Murdoch Papers Reportedly Targeted Gordon Brown.

Dedicated to Austerity

Just because

Yeah, but they are cursed with that "socialistic health care" and shit

We'll never let that commie clap trap come here!

Alberta created more new jobs in June (22,000) than all 50 U.S. states combined (18,000), even though the U.S. population is 85 times larger than Alberta's...

Compared with the U.S., Canada has been a lean, mean, jobs-creating machine.

Adding jobs is also SOCIALISM!!!

Awful

River cruises are a normal family vacation outing in Russia.

More than 100 people, including many children, drowned when a riverboat filled with families cruising the Volga River sank over the weekend, rescue officials said on Monday, conceding little hope remained of finding survivors.

Apparently children were in an internal play area separate from their parents when the sinking occurred (apparently quite swiftly) causing them to be disproportionately among the victims.

Yet more fireworks

When is the U.S. media going to notice that FoxNews is the American brand of this bullshit?*

Breaking News

BBC business editor Robert Peston says the e-mails passed to the police on 20 June seem to suggest the News of the World was buying the private contact details of the royal family from a royal protection officer.

In the old days, there'd be several heads on London Bridge over this. Good times.

*Silly rhetorical questions, the answer of course is "Never, and when is Rupert writing me a check?"

I don't know how it will happend, or that it is even possible

But somehow Rich Lowry is going to end up making these digital pages stick together.

What?

Rupert and company are just not hooked up right.

One of the historic curiosities of the NoW's demise has been the resurrection on Twitter of the curious tale of Charles Begley. He was the paper's bespectacled, boyish-looking reporter who then-editor Rebekah Brooks made "Harry Potter correspondent" ahead of the release of the first film about the wizard in 2001, a task that involved him changing his name by deed poll and being ordered to permanently dress in robes and a hat. Begley finally objected after Brooks allegedly ordered him to don the outfit immediately after the September 11 attacks. Here's a Guardian account from the the time, and a Daily Telegraph piece detailing phone transcripts about Begley's worries.

These are simply horrible people -- and even worse perhaps -- ridiculous.

Up the Chain of Command

They're getting closer and closer to Rupert. As Steve Doocy would never say "THIS IS HUGE!"

Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, faces being questioned under police caution over her role in the phone hacking scandal which brought down the News of the World.

“What can I say? I’m not very bright”

Over the last week a pair of Republicans Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum ran into trouble over signing a pledge drafted by a far-right Iowa group to outlaw such things as gay people, pornography and the 13th Amendment.

When confronted with this Santorum had a rather novel answer.

"When I first read it, I was taken aback by it. I can't argue that I wasn't," Santorum told CNN's Candy Crowley.

But...

"But I understand why they're saying it, because it does undermine people's respect for the institution, respect for the people governing this country. If you can't be faithful to the people that you're closest to, then how can we count on you to be faithful to those of us who you represent?"

So in other words, "What they wrote was awful, but what the hey? I'll sign it anyway, because that's the frosty mix of excrement that Rick Santorum stands for".

Bravo.

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Get your own popcorn!

Oh my...it can get worse.



Rupert thinks just like Glenn Beck.

Suck on this

Today's last edition of Murdoch's News of the World had some subtle messages for his British Roger Ailes Rebekkah Brooks who remained wealthily employed while they lost their jobs.

Have staff who put together the News of the World's last ever crossword included some subtle hints for News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, the former editor who told them that the newspaper was to be shut down today?

The Independent's Whitehall Editor, Oliver Wright, has pointed out a few interesting elements in the quickie crossword on page 47. Its clues include:

Across
• Brook (6)
• lamented (8)
• Prestige (6)
• Stink (6)
• Catastrophe (8)

Down
• Digital protection
• Less bright
• Chair
• Pest
• Cease
• Criminal enterprise

I can't say I'm sad about the "grand bargain" falling apart

But the reasons are best summarized by Booman.

Boehner can't find the votes, doesn't want to run to Hoyer to get them, and has backed out of a commitment to a grand deal. The orange bastard is caught on flypaper and he's willing to set every dollar in the world ablaze to extract himself with his gavel intact.

Sound familiar?

The American media is still pretending Murdoch's thuggish behavior is limited only to Great Britain:

“I can think of at least two members of Parliament who could have been criticizing Murdoch five years ago, and said nothing because they were afraid,” said Chris Bryant, a Labour member of Parliament who serves on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and who has been a persistent critic of Mr. Murdoch.

It was Mr. Bryant who, at a hearing on press standards in 2003, asked Ms. Brooks, then editor of The Sun, whether she had ever paid the police for information. She was seriously displeased with the tough tone of his questions; so were other tabloid editors who spoke at the hearing.

A few months later, Mr. Bryant was the subject of an article in The Mail on Sunday, illustrated by a photo of him in his underpants that he had posted on a gay dating site. (He does not make a secret of his sexuality.) The News of the World also printed the story, copying the account.

After Mr. Bryant spoke last fall in Parliament against tabloid tactics, he said a friend received telephone calls from two Murdoch underlings. “They told him, ‘You know Chris Bryant? Just let him know that this will not be forgotten,’ ” Mr. Bryant related.

Oh, that never happens here...see every Murdoch media outlet.

So

How much pain are the wealthy being asked to endure?

Oh, that's right, none.

All the rest of us can fuck ourselves also.

Rest in peace Betty

Betty Ford was the greatest credit to Gerald Ford I can think of.

Imagine how hounded she and her pro-choice husband would have been in today's Republican Party...they were relatively hounded as it was.

Enjoy

A target of smear merchants giving some preppy practitioner of the same his comeuppance in the latest Murdoch sleazefest.

Obviously, it's the "deficits" fault

The time tested method of making sure no jobs are created has always been cutting government spending.

Good thing everyone in power and the media are making sure this long-known historical truth is not getting in the way of cutting government spending.

Only 18,000 jobs created in June, well below expectations...as usual per Atrios, the unders win.

Thank goodness for hard-hitting journalism

At NBC keeping the TRULY important stories alive.

Yeah, good luck with that one

Here's your campaign slogan:

Hey America, you can kiss your Playboy centerfolds and internet fap fests goodbye if Michelle Bachmann is elected. Tea Party/GOP nutcase Bachmann is the first candidate to sign THE FAMiLY LEADER pledge banning pornography

The pledge was put together by Iowa right-winger Bob Vander Plaats who you suspect with a name like that has a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge collection of snuff porn.

More Schadenfreude please!

Closing down News of the World (for the purpose of a long-planned reorganization) may not get Rupert out of this one.

Today, The Independent reported that hacking allegations have engulfed a second publication of Rupert Murdoch's -- The Sun -- his "best-selling" daily paper in the U.K. Previously, the scandal was confined to Murdoch's News of the World tabloid.

Y'know how to pick 'em

For years David Cameron laid down with Rupert Murdoch and came up with fleas while hiring Rupert's louse Andy Coulson to be his Communications Director.

Sometime thereafter:

Andy Coulson has been told by police that he will be arrested on Friday morning over suspicions that he knew about, or had direct involvement in, the hacking of mobile phones during his editorship of the News of the World.

Wow, public officials going to jail for malfeasance in their past. Dick Cheney is proud to be an American!

Meanwhile, yesterday former Murdoch employee as editor of the News of the World Peirs Anthony bemoaned how the scandal has affected the real victims:

"I have a lot of sympathy for those at the top. They couldn't know what's going on ..."

Which is why, I guess, Mr. Coulson is getting arrested, for not knowing what is going on. Meanwhile, Murdoch and his brood and British Roger Ailes, Rebekkah Brooks, remain employed and rich -- aka victims -- while they shut down News of the World and fire a few hundred employees, all while whining that actual journalist shut them down with y'know journalism. Meanwhile, in the U.S. see the earlier Dick Cheney comment.

But hey, at least the U.S. and Britain have one thing in common, they won't criminally punish torturers and war criminals.

Special relationship indeed.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Hypocrites gonna "Hypocrate"

Via Roger Ailes, National Review prime knob Andy McCarthy:

I love the bumper sticker Rush suggested at the top of the show today: “If you can’t do the time, do the crime in Florida!”

Truer words never bloviated.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Bailey?

Her No. 1 Iowa stroker backer:

Can you see Churchill sitting it out? It’s unthinkable. Can you see George Washington in 1776 sitting it out?”

Um, yeah. What do Churchill, Washington and Palin have in common other than brain death?

Could you see Churchill resigning after Tubruk?

Could you see Washington resigning during Valley Forge?

See, rhetoric works better when it is based in analogies that apply to the person you are comparing.

7:11 a.m. Central

Time for the Administration to start brow beating the base and calling them the problem.

Atrios is Saruman with a better grilling technique

He doesn't predict, he merely foretells:

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

The Republicans merely went on the record of wanting to eliminate it, now they will manage to run against the Democrats for actually tampering with it.

Galtland Acres

It isn't taking Minnesota's government shut down long to create a post-apocalyptic world suited for bad Kevin Costner movies or inevitable Viking playoff defeats:

Vandals went wild at abandoned Minnesota state parks over the holiday weekend, wrecking buildings and driving around closed gates as the government shutdown drags toward its second week.

I can only imagine what the Visogoths will do -- oh, that's right they are already running the Minnesota legislature.

Feel free to begin drinking your own urine Minnesotans.

Even "Worser"

Rupert Murdoch's latest abuse gets more outrageous every day:

Scotland Yard is investigating claims that families of members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked for the News of the World.

Murdered children, targeted; terrorist victims, targeted; war casualties, targeted. But leave it to ex-pat jackass Piers Morgan to cry for the real victims, Rupert Murdoch and his cronies.

"I have a lot of sympathy for those at the top. They couldn't know what's going on ..."

Well, I'll be

Even the conservatives in Great Britain (who to be fair would be more liberal than most Democrats in this country sadly) have summed up Rupert thusly:

Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative, said the Murdoch empire had become too powerful.

We have seen, I would say, systemic abuse of almost unprecedented power. There is nothing noble in what these newspapers have been doing. Rupert Murdoch is clearly a very, very talented businessman, he's possibly even a genius, but his organisation has grown too powerful and has abused that power. It has systematically corrupted the police and in my view has gelded this Parliament to our shame.

If only Americans would be similarly "fair and balanced" for real.

A Frothy Mix of Staggering Genius

Makes Bachmann look smart in comparison:

The Headline that is self-explanatory

"Mister Serious"

Paul "Eddie Munster/Ronald Reagan Love Child" Ryan admits that the deficit isn't a worry, it's using tax cuts to beget more tax cuts that matter.

Only the rich people matter, the little people can eat Little Debbies (and at this rate, this means literally small people named Debbie).

The Worst, gets worse

Apparently in Britain those newspapers that don't have Murdochian "Page 3 Girls" have the temerity to practice journalism. In addition to hacking the phones of celebrities for years, now extended to missing children, the Murdoch owned News of the World (NOTW) went even further.

* It is suspected that NOTW hacked into the phones of many of the victims of the July 7, 2005 terrorist bombings of the London subway that killed 52 people.

* It is suspected that several families of missing or murdered children over the last several years had their phones hacked by NOTW.

* NOTW placed a police investigator under surveillance as the latter was investigating the murder of a private eye linked to NOTW. Which doesn't sound at all ominous or the plot of a bad Hollywood thriller (based on a Bill O'Reilly novel).

* The Cameron government, rife with high level officials who worked for Murdoch, is on the verge of approving NewsCorp's multi-billion dollar takeover of yet another major television network (must be using on all that money Rupert made on Myspace) -- the groundswell of opposition is rising, or maybe just for once being listened to. NOTW is losing advertising revenue from major companies.

* The Guardian's Steve Bell perfectly summarizes Murdoch and his British version of Roger Ailes, Rebekah Brooks, claim it is "inconceivable" she knew of all this phone hacking.



Meanwhile, in this country, the matter is still just a blip as the media dictates our outrages at other things -- I mean Nancy Grace had built a gibbet for a hanging and everything!

Nobody watches big media's back in this country better than big media. A policy that has kept Howard Kurtz pay well into the six figures for many a year.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

But we'd already decided upon a hanging?

Apparently the unending drumbeat of everyone demanding guilt, especially those with a press badge, has run up against a unanimous jury. Bloodlust goes unrequited...for now.

Can we just let justice not be a sideshow again?*

Yeah, I know and you had long ago built the gibbet.

*Yes, I know, until the next zoo.

Nah, Too liberal

Believes in too many infrastructure expenditures on Concentration Camps and Autobahns -- though they'll probably like his lebensraum policy.

Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke.

Hard to believe

The History Channel actually has a decent show about decently done history with "How the States Got their Shapes".

And now back to "Pawn Stars".

Unattended

Yee-haw, I guess the market has decided that Michael Moore will be the next President.

According to one of the scant 50 people who attended the advance screening in Houston on Thursday (ed: of the ironically named "Undefeated"), the film is fairly predictable although there are some lessons to be learned.

The Worst

The American press has long managed not to report on the phone-hacking scandal that Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper 'News of the World' perpetrated. One never knows when Rupert will get out his check book for you to work at the Wall Street Journal or FoxNews so why harm your future prospects with actual journalism?

But maybe, just maybe, the actions of Murdoch's minions have finally gone too far.

In 2002 a teenage English girl Milly Dowler disappeared -- News of the World Reporters tapped into her telephone messages during the police investigation. Bad enough, but that is not all:

News of the World journalists intercepted – and deleted – the voice-mail messages of Milly Dowler.

The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive. Police feared evidence may have been destroyed.

If there's a low-class act of faux journalism to be performed in this world it has Murdoch's fingers all over it.

Yet, magically, the malfeasance never gets reported here.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Well that's kind of a relief

I was worried that suddenly I had a roach invasion, but it is just earwigs.

Yes, I have no life.

Looks like FoxNews

Was tweeting while masturbating.

Funny, you don't look a day over 220

Happy 235th America.

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
— Oscar Wilde

Obviously Wilde didn't live long enough to understand the sophistication of the Steel-Cage Match involving Baron Von Rashke, Nick Bockwinkle and the Iron Sheik; The Real Housewives of Hollywood; or twittering a shot of one's junk.

Or, of course, the tricorn hat guy at a Teaparty rally who thinks the 1812 Overture is really about Andrew Jackson.

So Happy Birthday anyway.

Today

Has been one of the best 'Meet the Press' episodes ever.

I look forward to the NY Times follow up article

On the economic difficulties of the very rich.

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent

Oh dear, and how can these poor sufferers be expected to pay slightly more in taxes when their workers are getting all greedy in comparison?

The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.

Yeah, but what about the average worker's corporate jet tax breaks, huh? Huh?!!!

Michele Bachmann wishes you to celebrate

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Happy 298th or so birthday 'Murica.

It's been a while

Surely Kim Jong-Il has something crazy to do or say?

Or does Mitch McConnell just make all other villains disappear into the background?

Yes, he sucks but at least

Michael Bey is also intellectually lazy.



Not that I'll see it without a commentary track making fun of it, but I still just pray there are no robot-balls in it again.

Degree of Overlap? Pretty high

26 Percent Of Americans Don’t Know U.S. Declared Independence From Great Britain

Harris Interactive Poll (conducted July 6-9 2007): 26% viewed Bush's job rating as "positive"

Speaking of over covered stories

When is Casey Anthony showing up at Teaparty events?

The Digby Beat

Tasering...it's now for kids you know and who you are aware have speech impediments and who you pull over while they are riding a bike -- surely the most dangerous kind of criminal masterminds.

Memories

Why does this clown have a job? /rhetorical

Exactly!!!

James Fallows:

The real problem is the dickishness of our mainstream political analysis, especially from the "savviest" practitioners. Back during my days as media critic, I argued in Breaking the News and a related Atlantic cover story that the laziest and ultimately most destructive form of political coverage came when journalists seemed to imagine that they were theater critics or figure-skating judges. The what of public affairs didn't interest them. All they cared about was the how.

In this case, the "what" of Obama's press conference -- the unbelievable recklessness of mainly House Republicans in inviting the largest self-inflicted economic wound in American history -- deserves every bit of frustration Obama showed, and lots more.

This is the "dog and pony show" put into the mainstream of media for big bucks that goes back to Broder, but set on high-beam by Cable news. Assholes like Halperin get paid big big bucks to look serious and discuss absolutely nothing. And the effect is nothing less than negligent homicide of the body politic.

Meanwhile we've had a mantra for forty years about "not negotiating with terrorists" while the current GOP is engaging in the most damaging form of terrorism against most every American without a nine-figure investment portfolio.

And thanks to the modern media, it's all about whether a black man trying to avoid it is allowed to look even mildly perturbed. The pieces are all set, the Republicans are allowed to be complete assholes and screw everybody and the fault will be Obama's for daring to ask for one fucking thing and then failing to be appropriately obsequious about it.

A short summary of tax loopholes the GOP refuses to close

Talk about walking into a trap to kiss Grover's ass.

I especially love the horse racing dodge, chinless wonder Mitch McConnell's most personal trinket.

Dear Mr. President

I got an email from you last night with "No Subject" in the header.

There's no way I'm opening that...it might be a jet tax.

Standing up for the little people

I truly cannot believe the GOP has drawn a line in the sand over this:

A visibly angry Santorum told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren that Obama’s targeting of corporate jet owners defies the candidate’s pledge to bring Americans together

And Santorum wasn't alone, a whole slew of Republican Senators joined in, defending the right of Corporations to keep buying their own jets rather than hiring people or paying their workers.

But they didn't call the President a "dick" so their position is quite sound and acceptable with the rest of the Village.