Saturday Reads

Posted: July 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Democratic Politics, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, George W. Bush, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, Republican politics, Social Security, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 30 Comments

Good Morning news junkies! I’m filling in for WonktheVote today. She is taking a little break from blogging, so Dakinikat, Minkoff Minx, and I are going to take turns doing the Saturday Reads for a little while. So what’s in the news today? Let’s see…

After his blow-up-the-economy plan passed the House yesterday, John Boehner gave a very defensive-sounding speech to justify his treasonous behavior.

A defiant House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) late Friday defended his debt-ceiling plan by saying it is the only viable plan on paper so far….

“I’ve offered ideas, I’ve negotiated,” Boehner said in closing debate on his bill. “Not one time, not one time did the administration ever put any plan on the table. All they would do is criticize what I put out there.

“I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States,” Boehner continued to grumbling among Democrats. “Hey, I put revenues on the table in order to try to come to an agreement in order to avert us being where we are. But a lot of people in this town can never say yes.”

He also defended including the ridiculous balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in his bill.

“It’s time for this to happen,” he said. “It enjoys support from both houses of this Congress, and it enjoys bipartisan and widespread support across our country.”

No. It doesn’t, Mr. Speaker.

A short time later the Senate put Boehner’s bill out of its misery.
 Now what?

Despite a day of frenzied legislative maneuvering and another attempt by President Obama to rally public opinion behind some kind of compromise, the two parties made no visible progress in finding common ground, leaving Washington, Wall Street and much of the nation watching the clock toward a deadline of midnight Tuesday.

Reid has made some changes in his plan, hoping to appeal to Senate Republicans. The NYT didn’t elaborate on what these changes are. At Huffpo, Michael McAuliff and Sam Stein say Reid’s plan is now a lot like Mitch McConnell’s. But whatever its contents, Republicans in the House plan to hold a “symbolic vote” on it today in order to “send a message” that whatever the Senate agrees on will not pass the House.

These people are playing with fire. It’s looking like they’re not going to meet the August 2 deadline either.

The seemingly unbridgeable impasse between the two parties as the deadline for raising the nation’s debt limit approaches has Tom Daschle losing sleep, as he never did when he was a Senate Democratic leader in the mid-1990s and Congressional Republicans forced government shutdowns rather than compromise on spending cuts.

“That was nothing compared to this. That was a shutdown of the government; this could be, really, a shutdown of the entire economy,” Mr. Daschle said. “You can’t be too hyperbolic about the ramifications of all this.”

Democrats and Republicans with legislative experience agree that even if both sides decided Saturday to raise the $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling and to reduce future annual deficits, it would be extremely difficult for the compromise measure to wend its way through Congress before Tuesday’s deadline, given Congressional legislative procedures.

But all signs point to August 2 passing with no budget bill. As we all know, President Obama could end the struggle at any time with an executive order, but then he’d have to put off gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for a little bit longer. He can’t allow that, now can he?

Stay tuned…

There has been a disturbing string of sexual assaults on women in Ann Arbor, Michigan over the past two weeks. the assaults have taken place near the University of Michigan campus. There have been six attacks, two of which were rapes. In the others, women were grabbed and fondled, but managed to escape.

Two different composite sketches of the suspect have been developed. Police aren’t sure if there is just one perpetrator two. The FBI is now involved in the investigation.

The agency will be assisting Ann Arbor police at the city’s request, said FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold. She did not provide any details about the agency’s role.

The six attacks occurred between July 15 and 26, and between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. The victims were traumatized, said police spokeswoman Lt. Renee Bush.

Ann Arbor Police Chief Barnett Jones said he did not know if the attacks were linked. He warned in a letter to university staff, faculty and students that there was a “predator or predators operating in our community.”

Emily Zinn and her boyfriend were sleeping when one of the rapes took place right outside their apartment.

…an 18-year-old woman was pulled behind a wall outside Zinn’s bedroom window and raped on July 18.

She first noticed something was wrong when she and her boyfriend, Matt McAnelly, 24, a University of Michigan graduate student, heard the girl sobbing outside about 12:45 a.m.

“We heard a girl crying and ‘Help me, help me,’ ” Zinn said. “She was saying, ‘He left, I’m alone,’ so we didn’t really know what was happening.”

The couple heard nothing while the girl was being attacked.

This monster (or monsters) must be stopped ASAP.

Is the U.S. on the verge of a revolution?

On last night’s The Big Picture with progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann, author Neil Howe discussed how he and William Strauss came to accurately predict today’s political crisis in their 1997 book “The Fourth Turning,” and offered speculation as to what might happen next….

Speaking of the generational differences between today’s new guard and the retiring baby boomers, Howe said that cultural forces have essentially forced this crisis, with “culture warriors” and “values voters” in direct contention with “gen x” for control of the national budget.

“Are we on the verge of another ‘fourth turning’ — another major crash leading to a world war and a world-wide depression?” Hartmann asked.

“No,” Howe said. “I hope it won’t be bad. I hope the destructive will be avoided to the furthest extent possible and the constructive, which always comes out of a fourth turning… will be maximized.”

Watch it:

———————————————–

A judge has ordered the release of Richard Nixon’s grand jury testimony about the Watergate scandal.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request by historian Stanley Kutler, who has written several books about Nixon and Watergate, and others to unseal the testimony given on June 23 and 24 in 1975.

Nixon was questioned about the political scandal during the 1970s that resulted from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington….

Lamberth ruled in the 15-page opinion that the special circumstances, especially the undisputed historical interest in Nixon’s testimony, far outweighed the need to keep the records secret. Grand jury proceedings typically remain secret.

The Obama administration opposed the release of Nixon’s testimony. It figures, doesn’t it?

Finally, here’s a fascinating bit of historical revisionism from George W. Bush.

In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Bush reflects on what was going through his mind at the most dramatic moment of his presidency when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York’s World Trade Center.

Bush was visiting a Florida classroom and the incident, which was caught on TV film, and has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently blank face.

But Bush claims he deliberately decided to stay in his seat so as not to alarm the children and to “project a sense of calm.”

“I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm,” he added.

I wonder what “crises” he’s talking about? Just about the only thing he did as Governor of Texas was execute people. Let’s watch Bush’s demeanor on 9/11/2001 and see how well he projected “a sense of calm.”

——————————————

Here’s what one of the children who was in the classroom that day had to say about it:

“The president he just sat there, and his face — he just went dead,” says Jaimie, who was among the second graders in the classroom where President Bush learned of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Jamie’s one of the kids featured in Nickelodeon’s Linda Ellerbee news special, “What Happened?: The story of September 11, 2001,” which debuts Sept. 1.

That’s all the news I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Friday Reads

Posted: July 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 60 Comments

Good Morning!

I’m really glad it’s Friday and I’m wondering what the markets will be doing.  There’s more extremist nonsense coming out of the Congress in the debt ceiling and deficit debate. Let’s take a brief look at the headlines.

First, it appears that Pell Grants are under attack. 

House conservatives who have stalled legislation to raise the national debt limit are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare.

Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.

There’s speculation that some of the teabots may have their districts cannibalized by an angry Speaker of the House in redistricting measures.

Jim Jordan’s open defiance of Speaker John Boehner’s efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe House seat in next year’s election.

Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch  today  that Jordan’s disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.

“Jim Jordan’s boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody’s thinking,” said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The easiest option for everybody has presented itself.”

Jordan’s rural 11-county district, which has a 60 percent Republican voter index, “is easy to cannibalize because it stretches so far,” the other source said.

Michele in Wonderland thinks the impasse on the debt ceiling is not an emergency.  Can some one please tell this woman to report to someplace where she can buy a clue or a brain or some sanity?

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann again brushed off warnings from leaders in both parties that the country would face disastrous economic consequences if the government fails to raise the debt ceiling by next Tuesday.

“I do not believe for one moment that we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States,” Bachmann said Thursday during a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington.

Bachmann, a House member from Minnesota, has been a staunch opponent of the debt ceiling hike for months, saying the move poses no threat to the markets or to the American public and would only give President Barack Obama license to increase government spending.

Other insane Bachmann stories today including her defense of using Federal Loans for her own housing while lambasting the very agencies that helped her afford her house.  Evidently, it’s not welfare when she does it.

GOP presidential contender Michele Bachmann (R) has been in hot water in recent weeks for personally taking advantage of hundreds of thousands of dollars in government aid while denouncing the very programs she benefited from. Most recently, the Washington Post discovered that Bachmann and her husband signed for a $417,000 home loan backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac just weeks before she called for the two mortgage giants to be entirely dismantled.

Bachmann has been a consistently fierce critic of mortgage lending programs and has advocated abolishing the government sponsored mortgage enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet she took out the maximum possible loan from those programs to finance her family’s move to a lavish 5,200-square-foot home on a golf course.

Bachmann also wants to declare her family business’ “pray away the gay” discredited therapy practice put off limits.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) visited the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday for a speech and question-and-answer session. The GOP presidential contender’s remarks focused mostly on her opposition to raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances. She did field one question on an issue we’ve covered: reports that the Christian counseling clinic she co-owns with her husband tries to cure gay people of homosexuality. Bachmann has repeatedly dodged questions on the issue, and even gone so far as to cut off interviews with Iowa reporters who broach the subject; when I caught up with her outside the MoJo DC office recently, she was a no comment (literally, she didn’t say anything).

On Thursday, Bachmann was asked if she believes homosexuality is a lifestyle decision that can be cured. So, with her husband sitting to her left at the Press Club, how’d Bachmann respond? By dodging the issue entirely and declaring her spouse, her children, her foster children, and her business off limits:

The next interesting trial on TV should be that of Polygamist Cult Leader Warren Jeffs who is being tried for sex assault on a 12 year old girl.  Jeffs wants to act as his own lawyer.

Prosecutors said they have an audio tape of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs sexually assaulting a 12-year-old child, The Salt Lake Tribune reported on its websiteThursday.

The revelation came during opening statements on Jeffs’ trial on child sexual assault charges.

The prosecutor also said DNA evidence would prove that Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl, the Tribune reported.

Earlier Thursday, Jeffs threw the trial into disarray when he fired his defense lawyers and demanded the right to represent himself, which the judge then granted.

“It’s not as easy as it looks on TV, Mr. Jeffs,” State District Judge Barbara Walther told him. “You’re on your own.”

Jeffs refused to answer when Walther asked him whether he wanted to make an opening statement, the Tribune said.

Jeffs, the leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, is charged with child sexual assault and aggravated child sexual assault in connection with his “spiritual marriages” to a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in remote west Texas.

There is also DNA evidence.

Here’s a great article from Alternet on how Wall Street broke the economy.   It’s an interview with Gretchen Morgensen on her new book.  Here’s a great conversation on how predatory lenders fed bad loans into Fannie and Freddie.

TM: After the S&L crisis, we were going to fix Fannie and Freddie, but things only got worse. When you ask the fox how to clean the henhouse…

GM: You make a good point about who’s to blame. Blame falls on both sides of the aisle in Congress. It’s not an either-or, Democratic or Republican issue, not a liberal or conservative issue — there’s enough blame to go around. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were primary movers in the push for home ownership. And there’s nothing wrong with that, owning your own home is a deep-seated wish in the American psyche. The problem was in the execution. You don’t lure people in who are unsophisticated, who don’t understand what they’re doing. You certainly don’t offer them the kinds of poisonous loans that were targeted to minority borrowers; low-income borrowers; first-time home buyers.

TM: Targeted by Fannie and Freddie or targeted by predatory mortgage lenders?

GM: This is where Fannie and Freddie step aside and the mortgage lenders step into the breach. Countrywide was Fannie Mae’s biggest provider of loans. A lot of the losses that taxpayers are footing at this moment came very late in the game, in 2005, 2006, mortgages that were really ugly and really poisonous. Fannie Mae led the way, pushing for home ownership, degrading underwriting standards, pushing for more relaxed lending standards. Then the predatory lenders take the ball and run with it because there’s so much money to be made.

TM: And because of Fannie Mae’s initiative, so little risk.

GM: So little risk. Fannie Mae was either guaranteeing the loans that Countrywide and other lenders were making or taking them into their own portfolios. The taxpayer was essentially taking on the risk. There is an unholy alliance between Fannie Mae, a government sponsored enterprise, and predatory lenders and Wall Street. Wall Street saw Fannie Mae creating pools of loans that they would sell to others to sell to investors. Wall Street took that ball and ran with it, issuing trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities bursting with predatory loans.

I’m glad to see her clarify the misunderstanding of the role of Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage meltdown.  It wasn’t their affordable housing role that created the bigger mess.  It was their lack of due diligence in investigating loans packaged by known predatory lenders and their managers who were dealing themselves quota bonuses.  Congress didn’t watch what they were doing either.  They just assumed they were following their mandate.

I’m happy to see that a Judge will allow a defamation suit against propagandameister Breitbart to proceed.  The suit was filed by Shirley Sherrod and dealt with the horrible edit job his site did to make her look like some kind of racist.  You may recall she used to work in the Department of Agriculture.

Last year, Breitbart published a video of Sherrod describing to an NAACP conference how she overcame her own racist attitudes. However, a video from that speech was deceptively edited to make it appear that she was describing how she used the power of the government against a white farmer.

She was fired from her post at the agriculture department within hours of the clip hitting Breitbart’s website, and for at least a day the world believed Sherrod was a racist who abused her power to harm a white farmer.

Once it became clear that was not the case, the government offered her the job back, but she declined. Even after a formal apology from the White House and an offer to talk to the president, Sherrod still refused.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took it a step further and offered her a position dealing with civil rights and discrimination issues at the USDA, but Sherrod declined and vowed to sue Breitbart over his deceptive prank.

The suit also targets Breitbart colleague Larry O’Connor and one other unnamed defendant.

Lawyers for the defense argued that the suit was invalid because it was triggered by a matter of “pure opinion,” not statements of fact.

So, that should give you something to think on this morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?  Please!  Share with us!

 

 

 

 

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: House of Representatives, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Good Morning! It’s iced coffee weather, I love it! Now let’s see what’s happening in the news.

In one of the most childish episodes in an incredibly childish debt ceiling debate, the House Republicans yesterday used a scene from a Ben Affleck movie “The Town,” to fire themselves up to burn down the U.S. economy. Here’s the clip:

Transcript:

Affleck: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. We’re gonna hurt somebody.”

Friend: “Whose car are we gonna take?”

Yeah, they’re gonna hurt somebody, for sure. BTW, I noticed the media generally is leaving out that line about hurting someone. It must be some kind of oversight, right?

The Washington Post reported that

After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides.

“I’m ready to drive the car,” West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full-throated support for the plan.

However, a leading conservative lawmaker, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said enough Republicans appear to oppose Boehner’s plan that it would not be able to pass the House on GOP support alone.

At Huffpo, Sam Stein got Ben Affleck’s response to all this.

in a statement his spokesperson provided to The Huffington Post, he suggested that Republicans use a different one of his movies next time they need to whip votes.

“I don’t know if this is a compliment or the ultimate repudiation,” said the actor, who is currently in Turkey directing and starring in “Argo,” an adaptation of the Tehran hostage crisis. “But if they’re going to be watching movies, I think “The Company Men” is more appropriate.”

That latter Affleck flick focuses on the plight of middle age men who have been laid off during the recession. (One of them, depressed about being unemployed, later kills himself.) Whether that message would resonate in the GOP caucus is anyone’s guess. But the likelihood is that McCarthy knows his members a bit better than Affleck. According to the Post, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla), one of the most intransigent Tea Party members of the Freshmen class, was won over by the gambit.

Good grief. Allen West is a complete dweeb. But “Tea Party activists” are “revolting against Boehner,” says Fox News.

“Boehner must go,” Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips said in his blog on Wednesday, calling the speaker a “big government Republican” who “worships at the altar of massive spending.”

“We need a speaker who is a leader. We need someone with courage and vision. Boehner has none of those qualities. He is not a leader,” Phillips wrote. “John Boehner simply wishes to be the manager in chief of the welfare state. His vision of the GOP and the speakership involves golfing, drinking and not rocking the boat.”

But Tea Party-backed lawmakers on Wednesday stood up for Boehner, even though they prefer another plan – “cut cap and balance,” which would allows the nation to borrow $2.4 trillion more money in exchange for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That measure passed in the House last week but died in the Senate.

“My Republican leadership in the House is doing a great job,” freshman Rep. Joe Walsh said at a Tea Party rally Wednesday. “Imagine having to negotiate with Barack Obama. Imagine having to negotiate with Harry Reid. Give John Boehner, give Eric Cantor all the credit in the world.”

Um…. No comment.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/27/tea-party-activists-revolt-against-boehner-amid-debt-crisis/#ixzz1TMhRq1j3

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/27/tea-party-activists-revolt-against-boehner-amid-debt-crisis/#ixzz1TMhKTmqX

Let’s hear it for Sheila Jackson Lee.

At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security today about the radicalization of young Somali American Muslims by the al-Shabaab terrorist group, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said the committee should hold a hearing on “right-wing extremists” in the United States.

Jackson Lee used much of her allotted five minutes to question panelists with expertise on radicalization about the alleged hacking into telephones of 9-11 victims by the now-closed News of the World tabloid in England.

“I would add to that, that I would like to have a hearing on right-wing extremists, ideologues who advocate violence and advocate, in essence, the terrorizing of certain groups,” Jackson Lee said.

Yay Sheila!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a cold case that had been solved after 50 years, the abduction and murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in Sycamore, IL. Yesterday Maria’s body was exhumed to allow for modern tests to be run.

Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, a former neighbor of the victim’s, was charged this month in her slaying.

Officials say they exhumed the body in hopes that modern technology will help their murder case.

McCullough, 71, a former police officer who was living in the Seattle area, waived his extradition rights and was released Wednesday to Illinois authorities. He arrived at the jail in DeKalb about 4:50 p.m.

Family members said they agreed to the exhumation, but it was difficult to face.

“Although the events are very difficult and very unsettling, we understand the necessity for these things and we are in complete agreement and thankful for the way that this case is being handled,” said Charles Ridulph, 65, Maria’s older brother.

Finally, there may be justice for Maria and her family.

At the Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan has the “dish” on CNN’s obnoxious replacement for obnoxious Larry King, Piers Morgan. Piers denies he was ever involved in phone hacking when he worked for the News of the World, but Sullivan says Piers is l-l-l-l-lying.

The Texas ACLU is planning to organize a “family, faith, and freedom” event to compete with Governor Rick Perry’s “Christian” prayer rally.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas announced Wednesday they would be partnering with Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) to host an alternative to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer rally in Houston.

“Gov. Perry’s decision to sponsor a ‘Christians-only’ prayer rally is bad enough. That he turned to an array of intolerant religious extremists to put it on for him is even worse,” said Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This event unites us in our conviction that government should have no favorite theology and that it must always strive to ensure that all citizens – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and others – are full and equal partners in the public square.”

The event, called “Family, Faith and Freedom” be held Friday evening August 5, one day before the start of the “The Response,” an evangelical Christian prayer rally in Houston.

Good idea. Well that’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Tuesday Reads: Heroes and Villains

Posted: July 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Labor unions, morning reads, psychology, religious extremists, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!

Well, the President gave another speech last night, and it frankly put me in mind of the movie Groundhog Day. I think Obama’s handlers should be told to keep him under wraps until such time as he actually has something to say. I’ve had it with this whole debt ceiling mess, and I’m not going to say anymore about it in this post.

Instead, here’s an inspiring story that Dakinikat called my attention to: German tourist rescued teens during Norwegian island massacre.

A German tourist is being hailed as a hero for rescuing at least 20 people from a gunman’s rampage on Utoya island in Norway, according to media reports.

Marcel Gleffe, 32, was with his family Friday at a campground across the water from the island when he heard gunshots, Der Spiegel reported. He and his family looked out from the shore, thinking it might be fireworks, but instead they saw a plume of smoke and a girl swimming frantically in the water and screaming.

Gleffe got into the boat he had rented and set off, Der Spiegel said. He was the first person to reach the island where Anders Behring Breivik gunned down dozens of youngsters at a summer camp….

“You don’t get scared in a situation like that, you just do what it takes. I know the difference between fireworks and gunfire. I knew what it was about, and that it wasn’t just nonsense.”

We need a lot more people like Marcel Gleffe in this world. And what do you know? Via The Hinky Meter, here’s another hero: David Kemp of Beaverton, Oregon.

Kemp knew something was wrong when he was jogging on the Seaside promenade Saturday and saw 6-year-old Hailey’s face as she struggled to get away from Knox when having a Fantastic Race on a group of people.

“She was scared to death – terrified,” Kemp said.

He asked Hailey if she knew the woman and she shook her head in horror.

“I knew there was a problem at that point (and) that this is very, very serious. This child is terrified,” he said.

He knew he had to do something, especially when he heard what sounded like a death threat.

“She kept telling Hailey: ‘I am your queen; I am going to take you to see our king, our Lord. I am taking you with me.'”

Kemp broke the woman’s grip on the little girl, and when the kidnapper tried to get away, he chased her down and held her till police arrived. This isn’t the first time Kemp has been a hero.

In 2004 he rescued a woman who was injured by a hit-and-run driver and left lying in the road. Then he found the car which led to an arrest.

He’s also chased down and caught a shoplifter running from a store and another time he caught a robber who just held up a Hallmark shop.

Finally, there’s Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, who was instrumental in ending the four-month-long NFL owners’ lockout. At the press conference announcing the agreement yesterday, Kraft apologized to the fans.

“First of all I’d like, on behalf of both sides, to apologize to the fans that for the last five, six months we’ve been talking about the business of football and not what goes on on the field and building the teams in each market, but the end result is we’ve been able to have an agreement that I think is going to allow this sport to flourish over the next decade and we’ve done that in a way that’s unique among the major sports that every team in our league, all 32, will be competitive, we’ve improved player safety, and we’ve remembered the players who have played in the past.

During the months of the lockout, Kraft was going back and forth between labor talks and his wife Myra’s bedside. She was ending a long battle with cancer, and was buried on Friday.

It’s difficult to imagine how trying – emotionally, physically, mentally – these last few weeks have been for Patriots owner Robert Kraft, as his beloved wife, Myra, was dying of cancer and difficult negotiations dragged on between NFL owners and players over the terms of a new collective-bargaining agreement.

[….]

“He is a man who helped us save football,” Jeff Saturday, the center for the Indianapolis Colts and a member of the NFLPA’s executive committee, said Monday after the league’s players joined the owners in approving a new collective-bargaining agreement. “Without him, this deal does not get done.”

Kraft previously had made it possible for New England to keep its football team when he bought the Patriots in 1994 just as they were about to move to St. Louis. Kraft is proof that people can be wealthy and remain decent human beings.

Randy Vickers, America’s chief of cybersecurity has abruptly resigned without any explanation.

The director of the agency that protects the federal government from cyber attacks has resigned abruptly in the wake of a spate of hacks against government networks.
U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) director Randy Vickers resigned his position Friday, effective immediately, according to an e-mail to US-CERT staff sent by Bobbie Stempfley, acting assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, and obtained by InformationWeek. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson confirmed the email was authentic.

The DHS has not provided a reason for Vickers’ sudden departure and the spokesperson, who asked to remain anonymous, declined to discuss the matter further. Vickers served as director of US-CERT since April 2009; previously, he was deputy director.

Current US-CERT deputy director Lee Rock will serve as interim director until the DHS names a successor for Vickers, according to the email.

Was he forced out? Maybe we’ll learn more about this today.

David Neiwert is an expert on right wing extremist groups–he’s written two books about them–and he had a post up yesterday on Crooks and Liars about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist/mass murderer. It would be hard to choose excerpts from the story–please read the whole thing if you can find time. One important point Neiwert makes is that Breivik is not “crazy,” he’s just a right winger with connections to a group in Norway that is similar to the Tea Party here.

Scott Shane had an excellent article yesterday in the NYT on the connections between Breivik’s sick ideology and a number of American bloggers and media personalities. Of course Dakinikat has been writing about this for the past couple of days also.

The Guardian UK has an in depth article about Breivik, his appearance in court, his threats that “more will die.”

The rightwing extremist who confessed to the mass killings in Norway boasted in court on Monday that there were two more cells from his terror network still at large, prompting an international investigation for collaborators.

After Anders Behring Breivik pleaded not guilty, despite admitting that he had carried out the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya island, officials said it was possible he had not acted alone.

Prosecutor Christian Hatlo said Breivik had been calm in court and “seemed unaffected by what has happened”, adding that the suspect had told investigators during his interrogation that he never expected to be released.

“We can’t quite rule out that someone else was involved. This is partly based on the information that there are two other cells,” Hatlo said.

The prosecutor said he could not discuss whether Breivik had organised the cells or whether he was working alongside them. Police have said they have no other suspects at present.

It also emerged on Monday that Norway’s police security service had been alerted to a suspicious chemical purchase by Breivik in March, but had decided not to investigate further.

Norwegian officials have lowered the number of deaths from the attacks to 76.

At the Daily Beast, Michelle Goldberg, who wrote about about right wing Christian fundamentalism, discusses Breivik’s hatred of women.

Conservatives worried about the Islamization of Europe often blame feminism for weakening Western societies and opening them up to a Muslim demographic invasion. Mark Steyn’s bestselling America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It predicted the demise of “European races too self-absorbed to breed,” leading to the transformation of Europe into Eurabia. “In their bizarre prioritization of ‘a woman’s right to choose,’” he argued, “feminists have helped ensure that European women will end their days in a culture that doesn’t accord women the right to choose anything.”

This neat rhetorical trick—an attack on feminism coupled with purported concern about Muslim fundamentalist misogyny—is repeated again and again in Islamophobic literature. Now it’s reached its apogee in mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” Rarely has the connection between sexual anxiety and right-wing nationalism been made quite so clear. Indeed, Breivik’s hatred of women rivals his hatred of Islam, and is intimately linked to it. Some reports have suggested that during his rampage on Utoya, he targeted the most beautiful girl first. This was about sex even more than religion.

It’s a fascinating article with lots of psychological background on Breivik’s misogyny.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Monday Reads

Posted: July 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | 25 Comments

Good Morning!

I’ve still been following some of the same stories that we talked about this weekend.  The Federal Deficit standoff continues with each side going to its time out corner to write its own plan.  More and more information about the home grown Norwegian terrorist comes up showing that he was basically an extremist Christian “Crusader” who felt that killing innocent people was necessary to stop the forward march of “multicultural Marxists”. There’s rumors that the Norwegian police may be looking for British associates of the terrorist who Fox News now refers to as a mad man and NAZI.  This is despite a lot of evidence that he and others like him try to paint themselves as”Zionists” and pro Israel. They’ve even offered up help. This is something that Israeli leaders have condemned as not being pro Israel.

In numerous online postings, including a manifesto published on the day of the attacks, Breivik promoted the Vienna School or Crusader Nationalism philosophy, a mishmash of anti-modern principles that also calls for “the deportation of all Muslims from Europe” as well as from “the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

According to the manifesto, titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” and published under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, the Vienna School supports “pro-Zionism/Israeli nationalism.”

The Norwegian terrorist attack has put focus on right wing extremist groups in Europe and should lead us to closely examine similar movements in this country.  Fiercely nationalistic and anti-immigrant, these organizations have been networking over the internet.

The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics. While the parties themselves generally do not condone violence, some experts say a climate of hatred in the political discourse has encouraged violent individuals.

“I’m not surprised when things like the bombing in Norway happen, because you will always find people who feel more radical means are necessary,” said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who has studied far-right issues in Europe. “It literally is something that can happen in a number of places and there are broader problems behind it.”

The most astounding recent news is that the Norwegian many may be linked to a UK group.

Detectives investigating Norway’s bomb attack and mass shooting are thought to be probing the suspect’s possible links to the British far right.

Police have been examining the background of Anders Breivik, who reportedly claimed he was recruited by two English right-wing extremists at a meeting in the UK in 2002 attended by seven other people.

Trisha Tritch at NYT has a great piece up on  How the Deficit Got This Big. It’s exactly what we’ve been saying here forever.

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole.

So, let’s try to move away from the big stories. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies argues that preventative services for women–including access to birth control–is essential to women’s health. The ACLU explains the importance of these findings.

This is a huge step forward for women’s health, as the IOM’s recommendation is a significant move toward ensuring that contraception is provided without co-pays or other out-of-pocket expenses in new insurance plans under the health reform law.

Last summer, the federal government commissioned the IOM, an independent medical authority, to review and recommend women’s preventive health services that should be included in the Department’s final guidelines on preventive services that are expected later this summer. In a true showing of support for women’s health, the IOM recommended that the list of services should include “the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods.”

The IOM’s recommendation, if adopted, will ensure that millions of women have access to the safe and effective contraception they need, which is a critical component of basic health care for women. Without contraception, women have more unintended pregnancies and are less likely to get the prenatal care they require to carry a healthy pregnancy to term.  Out-of-pocket expenses for birth control, which can range between $15 and $50 per month, burden a woman’s ability to access and use contraception consistently, especially if she is already managing a tight budget. Eliminating extra out-of-pocket costs would remove a major barrier to contraception access, allowing women to make their own personal decisions about whether or when to have children, regardless of the size of their pocketbooks.

National Geographic has a fascinating read up on five hypothesis about the origins and purposes of Machu Picchu.  I watched the TV program and was surprised to find that one of the biggest ones is that it was actually a royal resort. This is one place that I’ve always wanted to visit.

Verano’s interpretation of the Machu Picchu skeletons is consistent with one of the most popular theories about the site: that it was the royal retreat of the 15th-century Inca Emperor Pachacuti.

According to this idea, Machu Picchu was a place for Pachacuti and his royal court, or panaca, to relax, hunt, and entertain guests.

“The members of Pachacuti’s panaca may have lived there during the year for a few days, weeks, or months,” said Guillermo Cock, a Lima-based archaeologist who has also received funding from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

The “royal estate” theory, first proposed in the 1980s, is largely based on a 16th-century Spanish document that referred to a royal estate called Picchu, which was built in the same general area as Machu Picchu.

Yesterday, nearly 800 same sex couples tied the knot in New York.  Now, we just need to get DOMA off the books so these couples can enjoy the same federal rights as all married couples.

“Marriage equality is alive and well,” New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the body’s first openly gay leader, said in a press briefing outside the clerk’s office, eliciting cheers from spectators. “All of the great stories and love that are pouring out today — they show what all of us who have fought a lifetime for this knew and know, that moving rights forward makes us a better society.”

The victory for gay-rights advocates, which was championed by Governor Andrew Cuomo and made headlines worldwide, more than doubled, to 35 million, the number of Americans free to marry either gender.

City officials were prepared to marry today all 823 couples — gay and straight — who entered a lottery last week. They expected to beat the previous record for most weddings in one day, set by 621 couples on Valentine’s Day in 2003. About 60 judges were on hand to grant judicial waivers eliminating the state’s 24-hour waiting period.

Okay, so those are my offerings for this Monday morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list?

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