Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, has written to Lord Justice Leveson, who leads the British judicial inquiry into media ethics, asking if he has uncovered any evidence relating questionable practices in the US.
"I would like to know whether any of the evidence you are reviewing suggests that these unethical and sometimes illegal business practices occurred in the United States or involved US citizens," Rockefeller writesin a letter released on Wednesday.
The development adds to the potential dangers facing News Corp, a publicly-traded company with its headquarters in New York. Rockefeller has taken a close interest in the unfolding phone-hacking saga, but it is the first time that a Senate committee member has acted in his official capacity.
...
The commerce committee covers all means of communications in the US – including telecommunications, free-to-air broadcasting and cable TV. It also has oversight over the Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory body that has final say on the issuing of broadcast licences, including the 27 licences issued to the Fox TV network that is the jewel in Murdoch's crown.
Will the UK investigation start opening the floodgates here in the U.S.?
STEPHANOPOULOS: It's clear you think that's going to be a vulnerability for Governor Romney. But coming out of Iowa, coming out of the debate last night, going into this primary here in New Hampshire, are you more convinced than ever that he's going to be the nominee?
AXELROD: Well, I don't know what the answer is to that. I mean, it's clear there are a majority of Republicans who are resistant to him. He only got a quarter of the vote in Iowa. This is essentially his home state. He has one of his homes here, and he was the governor of the neighboring state. So we'll see how this process goes.
But his fundamental problem is one of trust. I don't think conservatives trust him and I don't think moderates trust him. And you saw last night him shifting on a whole range of positions from abortion to China to taxes.
Interesting to hear Axelrod echoing Gingrich on the 25% for Romney as an Iowa Caucus "win.: There's a continued Democratic defining of expectations to Mitt as a way to show how little his own party supports him, as DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Talking Points Memo:
“He’s coming off what at some point probably wont even be defined as a win in Iowa where fewer voters came out for him than came out in 2008.” She added that anything less than 50% in New Hampshire should be interpreted as a sign of weakness given his close ties to the state.
She also had a memorable line regarding his "job creator" claim that I'm sure the DNC hopes becomes a new meme for Romney:
“Mitt Romney, I think, is more of a job cremator than a job creator,” Schultz said. She added: “He was a corporate buyout specialist at Bain Capital. He dismantled companies. He cut jobs. He forced companies into bankruptcy and he outsourced jobs and sent jobs overseas. That’s not a record to write home about, that’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s something voters need to know.”
Axelrod essentially said the same thing, but in a way that chips away at Romney's trustworthiness:
STEPHANOPOULOS: He also started to take some fire last night on his tenure at Bain Capital. And something you, Democrats, the Democratic National Committee, have really been hitting hard all through this campaign so far. He's not backing down at all. You saw him last night, Governor Romney saying his team at Bain Capital is responsible for creating 100,000 jobs. Do you have any qualm with that number?
AXELROD: Absolutely. Not me, forget about me -- every independent fact checker who's looked at it, including the Associated Press last night, after the debate, said he can't back up that number, and his campaign has conceded --
STEPHANOPOULOS: He says that net-net--
(CROSSTALK)
AXELROD: I know he says it's a net-net number, and he said I'm a numbers guy. The problem is that neither he nor his campaign can furnish any evidence to support that.
But let's talk about Bain and let's talk about what it was and what he did. His partner said in The L.A. Times, our job was not to create jobs, our job was to create wealth for our partners. And here's what they did. They closed down more than 1,000 plant stores and offices. They outsourced tens of thousands of jobs, and they took 12 companies to bankruptcy. And on those bankruptcies, he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars. He says this is the real economy, this is the model for the country. I don't think those are the values that people want to animate our economy. He's not a job creator, he's a corporate raider. Those aren't the values that we want to lead our economy.
Party support. Expectations. Trustworthiness. Values.
This serves the purpose of fighting back against Romney's constant attacks on Obama without dragging the President into the mud too early.
And if he really is the inevitable nominee, nice to soften him up early before his self-definition has taken root in the media -- or with the American people.
Hilarious responses to Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry's instant-classic gaybaiting ad, essentially a storm of "Dislikes" on YouTube (heading towards 300,000 Dislikes vs. 6,000 Likes as I write this) and also inspiring a bit of research that is too good to be believed:
I guess he may not want gay soldiers to serve openly and honestly in the military, but gets his fashion cues from Brokeback Mountain.
As Will Truman wrote this week, the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination process has entered an entirely new realm never seen before: satire. You couldn't write a clown show like this:
It occurred to me the other day as I was leaving a comment elsewhere: if someone had written a TV show and the plot followed the current Republican primary, I would have some serious problems with it. Namely, I would pan the show as unrealistic. A joke. Liberal Hollywood’s parody of what the Republican Party is. Herman Cain? Who the hell acts like that. There is no way that a party would seriously give a serial-adulturing, ideologically muddled, lobbying-compromised former House Leader a shot at the nomination. Hollywood couldn’t devise a more repugnant figure as the potential head of a party that they want noting to do with. The comparisons between Rick Perry and Rob Ritchie have, of course, frequently been made. But in some sense, Ritchie would seem downright normal compared to a lot of the candidates. And though the connection hasn’t been made, I see some similarities between Mitt Romney and Bob Russell, the simply unpalatable (to many) candidate who doesn’t belong there but is there because he’s there and his biography doesn’t entirely discount his presence.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a reporter who asks a stupid question echoing the GOP (especially Romney) canard that President Obama is somehow an appeaser of America's enemies, gotta love the smackdown from Mac Daddy Barack:
Yeah, ask Bin Laden. At the bottom of the deep blue sea. My prediction holds: the 2012 Obama landslide will best his 2008 win.
Lawrence O'Donnell does a great job of debunking the notion that former half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin will run for the GOP 2012 Presidential nomination, while simultaneously eviscerating the news media for covering her like she is -- i.e., falling into her p.r. generating trap:
As I've said before, there's a relatively new grifter class of Republican conservatives who are vying for shows and appearances on Fox News, at GOP and Tea Party-type events, churning out books and generally competing for the guaranteed Conservative Dollar. This means that Sarah Palin is actually rivals with Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and even, now, Mike Huckabee. (His declining to run in order to preserve his current income made that clear.) Fox News is built on narrowcasting to their rightwing viewership base, and the game for individuals is all about being outrageous enough in your pandering to prejudice and ideology to beat your comrades in conservatism to that audience's paycheck.
While I find them dismissible for other reasons, I do not put Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty or John Huntsman in the grifter category. They may pander, but they are still politicians rather than solely con artists. I'd even, for the moment, put Rick Santorum in the non-grifter category. (I would not, however, put him in the "intelligent" category.) Ron Paul is at a higher level altogether, because I don't see him lying or bending his positions to try and win any nominations. He's essentially as honest as Obama, if ideologically opposed.
As O'Donnell points out, the pity isn't that Palin et al are grifters or that her chump fans waste their cash on her.
It's that our national political media even pays attention.
During the 2008 presidential campaign one Fox News executive repeatedly tried to smear Barack Obama with charges of "socialism."
Liberal watchdog group Media Matters has uncovered audio that indicates Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon was just engaging in what he called "mischievous speculation."
In 2009, Sammon told an audience aboard Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college that his 2008 attempt to link Obama to socialism was "a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."
"Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, 'spread the wealth around,'" Sammon said. "At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."
During the 2008 campaign, the then-Washington deputy managing editor repeatedly suggested that Obama had socialist tendencies.
The lie is admitted and do you think for a second he'll be fired?
As would happen (oh the Conservative outcry) were the situation reversed and he was on NPR?
Nic Robertson, correspondent for CNN in Libya, tears into the Fox News lies of the week:
Glad to see him standing up. It's barely news now that Fox News lies (while the Fox Network has some great shows) except to the rubes who follow it and let it form and/or reinforce their fallacious opinions.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's new media/new media merger comes today's: Keith Olbermann is reported by The NY Times as headed to Current TV. That's a move from establishment cable media to new media grassroots, continuing the narrative one day later.
Current TV is a public affairs channel which was co-founded by Vice President Al Gore. If Olbermann goes there, he would be landing at a much smaller channel than his former home, MSNBC. (The Times notes that Current is only available in 60 million homes, whereas MSNBC is available in 85 million homes.) He would also not be able to start for some months; the deal he made with MSNBC upon his departure stipulated that he not appear on television for at least half a year. But the move would allow Olbermann to potentially bring a whole new audience to Current.
It's a social media world. The new broadcast channels are Facebook and tablet apps. The gates of international broadcast have been blown open, there's a huge populist train riding through -- and picking up both speed and passengers, and both AOL and Olbermann have jumped on aboard.
I'm concerned that the WikiLeaks diplomacy bomb released today will lead to some sort of crackdown on Internet freedom and provide misdirection in support of anti-Net Neutrality legislation. I'm worried that the sharing of information between government agencies that began after 9/11, which was in part allowed to happen by a lack of inter-agency information exchange, will be squelched.
According to Le Monde (in translation), a cable relayed to Washington a conversation between the emir of Qatar and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) last February: "Based on over 30 years of experience with the Iranians, the emir concluded the meeting by saying that we shouldn't believe but one word in a hundred that the Iranians say." The prime minister of Qatar told Kerry later that trip that Ahmadinejad told him: "we beat the Americans in Iraq, the final battle will be in Iran."
The president of the Upper House of the Jordanian Parliament, Zeid Rifai, was said in a cable (translated) to have told the U.S. that "the dialogue with Iran will go 'nowhere', adding: 'bomb Iran or live with a nuclear Iran: the sanctions, the carrots, the incentives, have no importance.'"
The Omanis were similarly concerned, according to cables relayed by the New York Times, as an Omani military official told officials that he could not decide which was worse: "a strike against Iran's nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran."
The United Arab Emirates' deputy defense chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, called Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "Hitler" to U.S. officials, also "stressed 'that he wasn't suggesting that the first option was 'bombing' Iran,' but also warned, 'They have to be dealt with before they do something tragic.'"
The Saudis, the Bahrainis and even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were all similarly inclined, as has been widely reported -- El Paisreported that Mubarak's hatred for Iran was called "visceral" and the New York Times reported the existence of cables referring to the Saudi king's "frequent exhortations" to engage in military action against Iran. The Bahrainis, too, are said to be keen to see Iran's nuclear program halted, and King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is said to have blamed problems in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Iranian government -- and both Kuwaiti and Yemeni officials reportedly told U.S. diplomats similar things about Iranian involvement in fomenting dissent in their own countries.
For far too long the Arab countries in the Middle East have acted like it's Israel against Iran and "Not I! Not I!" What these leaks prove is that there is certainly reason for common ground between Israel and it's neighbors, that they are not afraid of Israel but, rather, Iran, and that their hypocrisy knows no bounds on this issue.
I'm also not against the reported (by Forbes) revelations to come from WikiLeaks regarding the evil at the high end of the contemporary banking industry:
“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”
It doesn't get better than this, from today's POTUS press conference in response to a question from the Fox reporter:
"I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site...
"We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts. And we've got to be clear about that. We've got to be clear about that because ... if we're going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get. The folks who are most interested in a war between the United States or the West and Islam are al Qaeda. That's what they've been banking on.
"And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in: how do I make sure I can get a good job, how can I make sure that my kids get a decent education, how can I make sure I'm safe, how can I improve my lot in life. And so they have rejected this violent ideology for the most part, overwhelmingly.
"And so from a national security interest, we want to be clear about who the enemy is here. It's a handful, a tiny minority of people who are engaging in horrific acts and have killed Muslims more than anybody else.
"The other reason it's important for us to remember that is because we've got millions of Muslim-Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And, you know, when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?
"I've got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan, in the uniform of the United States armed services. They're out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we've got to make sure that we are crystal clear for our sakes and their sakes: They are Americans. And we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don't differentiate between 'them' and 'us.' It's just 'us.'"
Check out the passion and thoughtfulness for yourself:
We all know that FNC isn't really a news organization but a propaganda organ. But per Kevin Drum, it may be Satan's mouthpiece:
There have been three big conservative outrages that have choked the airwaves over the past couple of weeks. #1 was about a bunch of scary black men, the New Black Panther Party. #2 was about a bunch of scary Muslims who want to build a triumphal mosque on the sacred soil of Ground Zero. #3 was about a vindictive black woman who works for the government and screws the white people she deals with. The running theme here is not just a coincidence.
It's not a coincidence. It's called the GOP's Southern Strategy and it's been around since 1968, courtesy of Richard Milhous Nixon. And, of course, one of his key campaign operatives, Head of Television, was Roger Ailes -- President of Fox News:
"To have people say that I was such a racist was unbelievable," she said of the fallout from the video and Fox coverage. "My whole life, if you look into what I have done, my father was murdered in 1965. If you look at all of us, we all hurt with that and we got involved into the movement and channeled our effort into good, instead of hating.
"I am getting hate calls and e-mails at this point. I got one call last night at my house at 12:30 a.m. that said 'you lost your job, good for you' and 'bitch' There are people out there who will believe that I am a racist person, even though the story is getting out there."
She said her husband, Charles, and her two children, who also live nearby in Athens, Ga., were surprised, but have been toughened by years of seeing her work in the civil rights movement: "They had to grow up in the movement so they have had to deal with stuff like this through the years. We did not always take the easy road. They have some thick skin as a result."
The Fox News stoking of reverse-racism fears have reached a new benchmark today. Last week it seemed to peak with a wildly overblown "new Black Panthers" story that the teabagger/Fox watchers loved for how it seemed to neutralize their own racist elements, another extension of the vile Glenn Beck lie that President Obama (half-white) is some sort of reverse racist. Which circle of hell does Beck want to end up in, anyway?
This kind of blood libel leads to blood-letting, but today it led to the firing of a fine civil servant, thanks to a misleadingly edited video propagated, if not actually edited, by evil angry white winger Andrew Breitbart. A known liar, Breitbart's posting led to a Fox News noise storm, and ultimate to the firing of Shirley Sherrod, Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia, by a completely fearful and moronic Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture.
The story is essentially that Sherrod was telling the story about how she realized her own racism in an experience over twenty years ago when called upon in another position to help some white farmers, and learned to correct her own behavior. The edited version leaves out the realization part, making Sherrod look like she's admitting that she's an unrepentant racist.
The whole charade fell apart when the farmer couple, now older but still alive, came forward to defend Sherrod as having actually been responsible for saving their farm. It's one of those movie-type moments that make you love America and want to stand up and cheer...and hiss outright villains like Breitbart, Fox News and, yes, knee-jerk Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack has to stop defending his decision, which he made without allowing a real investigation, similar to the Fox News campaign that led to the resignation of environmental leader Van Jones from the Obama White House. The Obama Administration has to start standing up to Fox News and the rightwing lie machine again, and definitively. Stop letting them set the agenda. Stop looking like wimps for doing as they say. Fight the hell back -- that's what we want from our leaders anyway.
It's not just Faux News but they lead the pack. I'd say America is stupid, but it's not really the people, per the calls in this video compilation, it's the pundolts:
Mark Halperin can usually be counted on to act like a typical Washington, DC villager and go with the conventional wisdom, if not bolster it. So it surprised me to read his completely against-the-grain piece on how President Obama's administration is shaping up:
It is too early to assess the ultimate measure of victory: whether the President's actions have been prudent and beneficial, domestically and internationally. But by Election Day 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government. Not bad for a guy whose opponents (in both parties) for the White House suggested that he was too green in national life to know how to do the job — and whose presidency began in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis that demanded urgent attention and commanded much of his focus.
He goes on to praise his hiring acumen with lead personnel decisions Vice President Joe Biden and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (Compare to his opponent, Sen. John McCain, who's key personnel decision unleashed money-grubbing Sarah Palin on the world.) He goes further, enumerating goals being met:
In the months ahead, the President will likely pass a financial-regulation overhaul (despite this past weekend's snags), manage the confirmation of a second Supreme Court nominee with relatively little commotion, announce the reduction of the U.S. troop level in Iraq to about 50,000, showcase the undercovered gains on education reform, take advantage of the improving economy to tout his stimulus efforts and sharpen his "Obama-Biden future vs. Bush-Cheney past" argument to help stave off massive Democratic losses in November. He also has a decent chance to pass a small-to-medium-size energy bill. True, some promises, like comprehensive immigration reform, will remain on the sidelines, but most of his major goals will be completed or well under way.
This is why I believe that no matter the generic poll numbers right now, responsible-thinking adult voters (whom I'd like to believe are in the majority, if only by a hair) will look at what the Democrats were handed at the start of 2009 and judge the President's party more kindly than seems indicated now.
There's an old saying that the final decision on whom the public will vote in as President isn't made until after the World Series. I'm betting the same for the House and Senate -- and that passing health care reform -- under President Obama's unexpected leadership -- will look like the pivotal move that saved the Democratic Party.
Could the opening video of this piece be any squarer for 2010? Stoner movie clip, duh-uh? Hidden identity and having to explain common grown-up discretion?
At least the two professional women in the interview, particularly the psychiatrist, appear smart, calm and experienced.
With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. He gets $13 million a year from print (books plus the ten-issue-a-year magazine Fusion). Radio brings in $10 million. Digital (including a newsletter, the ad-supported Glennbeck.com and merchandise) pulls in $4 million. Speaking and events are good for $3 million and television for $2 million.
It's like a Star Trek channel that just provides that alternative universe for its adherents to wallow in day-in-day-out and replace actual reality with something that plays to their sensibilities without relief.
And Glennie just reveal what everyone with half a brain should already know. The word "News" in the channel name is meant as satire.
Nico Pitney, who led the new journalism charge during the Iran uprising earlier this year, publishing tweets and smuggled info, often through Iranians in the U.S. with family still over there, schools the always frustrating Howie Kurtz and others including a flack from the rightwing Washington Times who keeps intentionally mistaking FNC for a journalistic rather than propagandistic operation, in just why the Obama Administration was dead right to go after Faux News:
Key is the 80% anti-Obama slant during the "news" portions of their daily broadcast (I'm assuming the 20% was more neutral than positive), as they pretend to differentiate from the opinion, which is often actually dangerous to the physical survival of our fairly elected President.
What's interesting to me is how the Washington Times person starts off talking like a concern troll that the Admin has made a bad move, that it's backfiring, rather than engaging with the substance of the charge, and continues that tack most of the rest of the piece. Interestingly enough, Jane Hall who left Fox may not appear to agree with everything Pitney says, but her reasons for quitting back him up completely.
And please, no more false equivalencies with MSNBC. Sure, Maddow and Olbermann lean left, but they back it up with real facts, not innuendo and smears, often using the GOP politicos' own words, while at the same time MSNBC gives the entire morning to Joe Scarborough, former GOP Congressman. And they actually practice reasonably objective journalism, the traditional kind, during their news coverage. FNC is actually run by the most successful Republican campaign strategist of the past thirty years, for an avowedly conservative mogul from Australia who's key holdings includes the coarse muckraking rag, The New York Post and the conservative (editorial) Wall Street Journal. Oh, and they called the 2000 election for George Bush before the Florida results were final, influencing the election finish -- that was George's cousin John Ellis who made the call -- talking to George five times that night.
My take: the Obama Administration is right to call out FNC for being different than the others and give them the asterisk. It rallies the true believers and forces a lot of others to spend time defending FNC, which only creates a smoke/fire perception and opportunities for guys like Pitney to go on the air and point out the FNC bias.
Since Obama always thinks long strategy rather than short news cycle, those decrying the wasted time and effort by the Admin now don't see how the set up is long-haul. The tarnish on FNC isn't going to go away after a week. It's just defining it now and forever. Or at least until Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch buy the farm, and new owners move in.
But anyone would be foolish to lose that loyal 2-3 million viewer audience that keeps paying the bills. The business model works for FNC. It just doesn't work for America.
Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, explains in the most upfront manner possible, that this is not going to be a passive White House, thank the good Lord. She does it in this interview with the sometimes disingenuous Howie Kurtz of CNN, with the focus of the first 2/3 on why Fox News is not a news network like any other, but rather what we all know it to be (in so many words): a propaganda unit:
"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological... what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party."
"Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again... when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition."
"[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news organization like CNN is."
This is exactly the tone that every single Democrat needs to take with Fox News, and in the long run it will help the other (actual) cable news networks with their own identities, assuming they are finally over being the "me, too!" network to Fox. You can't beat FNC in the cable news ratings because it isn't news, it's reality TV with its own orbit of stars, or rather it's alternative reality, with assumed values of a fictionalized works and soap opera-long plotlines.
In any case, it's nice to have Dems with cajones and like Rep. Alan Grayson (R-FL), Ms. Dunn has them:
Now let's see if FNC fairly covers the real story happening right now in our America.
