Rupert Murdoch ... Through The Years

The man himself in 1969 ... and other great shots of Rupert Murdoch.[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/nC_TABRS-Tg/rupert_murdoch_
through_the_years.php

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Obama In Afghanistan

After a day of rumors and a White House furiously trying to quash reports, it has now been confirmed that President Obama is in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit on the anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Obama will address the nation[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/Ldp4lQ8XpOA/obama_in_afghan
istan.php

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May Day: The Whole World is Waking, Which Side
Are You On

Joyce L. Arnold, Liberally Independent, Queer Talk, equality activist, writer.

?The Whole World is Waking? headlines at OWS. Florence Reece wrote the song ?Which Side Are You On?? in 1931. The question is as relevant today as then. Her husband was a union organizer with United Mine Workers of Harlam County, Kentucky, and the efforts were met with corporate resistance largely enforced by law enforcement. The song is one of those used in today?s May Day actions, including with Guitarmy. Tom Morello helped organize the thousand or more guitarists and accompanying percussionists and many more general noisemakers, who marched in NYC to Union Square to perform ?World Wide Rebel Songs.?

?Get Up! Get Down! There?s Revolution in this Town!? is one of the refrains frequently chanted. Put that with ?Which Side Are You On?? and ?The Whole World is Waking?, and the message is that ?we the people? have a choice to make ? or rather, a series of choices. That message is integral to today?s actions, and to the future of Occupy and related actions and advocacy.

On Day 228 of the Occupation, it?s been a very busy May Day around the world, and actions continue ? from protests in front of banks and media outlets, to marches to teach-ins to picnics to music. Many Occupy events are scheduled for the evening. Many smaller locations have only late afternoon / evening actions. And according to OWS, labor and immigrant organization actions ? some related with Occupy, some not ? are largely scheduled for late afternoon.

On Day 228 of the Occupation, it?s been a very busy May Day around the world, and actions continue ? from protests in front of banks and media outlets, to marches to teach-ins to picnics to music. Many Occupy events are scheduled for the evening. Many smaller locations have only late afternoon / evening actions. And according to OWS, labor and immigrant organization actions ? some related with Occupy, some not ? are largely scheduled for late afternoon.

Of course the numerous marches and gatherings of all sizes and kinds have included a police presence, and at least in NYC, accompanied by police ?legal observers,? who join those from, among others, the ACLU. One arrest was for ?standing too close to the curb.?

There?s way too much going on to do more than this very cursory overview, and encourage you to check out links, especially since actions continue. At OWS, see ?Live Updates,? and scroll through it for an idea of some of what?s gone on, and continues. Also check out Greg Mitchell?s May Day live blogging at The Nation.

For live streaming, see Global Revolution. These include international as well as U.S. May Day actions. See also Occupied Air.

I?ve seen several reports of May Day Livestreams being blocked. I don?t know if this is accurate, but I do know the feed has been interrupted consistently, which at least in my experience, is unusual.

One specific story getting a lot of attention, via NewsNet5:

The Cleveland office of the FBI announced Tuesday the arrests of five people who allegedly tried to blow up a bridge in northeast Ohio. …

The report says the ?bombs? were actually ?duds,? though the five involved didn?t know that. Apparently there are no connections with any of the May Day event organizers, and Occupy Cleveland denied that the five were acting on behalf of Occupy. Apparently for safety reasons, however, the May Day Event sponsored by OC, North Short AFL-CIO, Jobs for Justice and more was cancelled. Naturally, this was picked up by the anti-OWS crowd, and spun accordingly.

The OWS and other Twitter feeds include a lot of pro-Occupy messages, but also a good number of anti-Occupy expressions, which isn?t unusual. A few examples of both follow. Interpret for yourself. I?m thinking that if today?s Occupiers are throwbacks to ?hippies? then their critics are throwbacks to ?America, love it or leave it? crowd of the same era, who interpreted any criticism of the status quo as ?un-American? and ?unpatriotic.?

Twitter Feeds:
Anti-Occupy tweets

If I lived in NYC I would be at #ows throwing water balloons at the hippies today filled with soap & water.

Hey #OWS Put the Doritos down, go up stairs and tell Mom and Dad you’ll be back when you find a job!! #youcandoitlosers

?@FreedomNJ Happy May Day: remembering the 100 Million killed by socialists Lenin, Mao, Che, Stalin, Hitler #OWS | #Nj @michellemalkin

George Hatt?@gohatt #OWS jerkoffs at it again — letting us know what it would be like living in a communist country.

Pro-Occupy tweets

Report that the Immigrant Justice march has been kettled at 41st and Park. #OWS is sending relief. #m1nyc

Michele Preziuso?@michip94 Arrests going down on Willburg bridge. #OWS #M1GS

laura?@laurapcd1 @greensboro_nc perfect weather for the #mayday march at 5pm! #m1gs #ows

OccupyIthaca RT @Chicagoist: Today?s May Day march could be a sign of things to come later this month. bit.ly/Iqu0NO #occupychicago #NATO

May 1st – International Guerrilla #Gardening Day bit.ly/InternationalS?

remembering the haymarket martyrs- executed fighting for the 8 hour day

NYPD Raids Activists? Homes Before Tomorrow?s Occupy Wall Street Protests gaw.kr/qHAb

My best suggestion at this point is to click on the links above ? and these are only a few of those available ? and follow the May Day actions as they continue happening.

(May Day General Strike via OWS
May 1 General Strike via OWS
1 De Mayo via Occuprint)

Read The Full Article:
http://taylormarsh.com/blog/2012/05/may-day-the-whole-world-is-waking-which-side-
are-you-on/

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Obama Leads Romney by Eight in Virginia

It looks like President Obama has a good chance of winning Virgina again this election. He currently holds an eight point lead over Mitt Romney in the state, according to Public Policy Polling. his popularity in Virginia has remained decent. Virginia has[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/-guJnSFaXtE/

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Paul Ryan Tries Keeping Up With Etch-a-Sketch
Mitt By Pretending His Ayn Rand Fandom Is an 'Urban Legend'

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Paul Ryan is trying out for the job of being Mitt Romney's running mate by completely rewriting his own history. Which would make him a nice match with Romney. Guess he's trying to prove that he can keep up with the boss's Etch-a-Sketch approach to history.

We saw last week that Ryan now wants to pretend that he never really was a big Ayn Rand fanboy, since he figured out that Rand doesn't go down very well with the Bible thumpers who comprise the GOP's most reliable base. But even after he was called out as a liar, he's still trying to run away from his Randbot past -- most recently in Jonathan Weisman's profile of Ryan for the New York Times:

Ryan likes to dispel two "urban legends" around him. First, he said, he is not a disciple of Rand, the strident libertarian. Second, he never drove the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

In fact, there is some truth to both. In a 2009 Facebook video, Ryan said the "kind of thinking" in the Rand epics "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" was "sorely needed right now."

As for the Wienermobile, one summer as he was pressing Oscar Mayer Lunchables and turkey bacon on meat buyers in rural Minnesota, two "very nice young ladies" who were driving the hot-dog-shaped vehicle did let him "take it for a spin," he confessed.

This is classic NYT Beltway-style soft-pedaling: Ryan didn't merely say a few nice things about Rand in that 2009 video, which you can watch above. Here's the whole transcript:

RYAN: You know, it doesn't surprise me that sales of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have surged lately with the Obama administration coming in, because it's that kind of thinking, that kind of writing, that is sorely needed right now. And I think a lot of people would observe that we are living right in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking.

But more to the point is this: The issue that is under assault, the attack on democratic capitalism, on individualism and freedom in America, is an attack on the moral foundation of America. And Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this to me is what matters most. It is not enough to say that President Obama's taxes are too big, the health-care plan doesn't work for this or that policy reason, it is the morality of what is occurring right now and how it offends the morality of individuals working toward their own free will, to produce, to achieve, to succeed, that is under attack. And it is that what I think Ayn Rand would be commenting on, and we need that kind of comment more and more than ever.

Contrast that with what he tried to claim last week:

?I reject her philosophy,? Ryan says firmly. ?It?s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person?s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,? who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. ?Don?t give me Ayn Rand,? he says.

As Blue Texan noted, Ryan spoke at a big event honoring Rand back in 2008:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

And in 2003, he was chirpily describing for the Weekly Standard how he forced Rand's turgid prose upon his benighted employees:

?I give out ?Atlas Shrugged? as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well? I try to make my interns read it.?

Of course, as Scott Keyes at ThinkProgress observes, there are plenty of reasons why someone with Republican presidential aspirations might want to rethink their love of Ayn Rand, considering that she was a flaming atheist who despised Christians.

Mike Lux has more.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/paul-ryan-tries-keeping-etch-sketch-

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GOP Madness, 2012, Round 1, Match 9

Yesterday we concluded the first half of the first round's 16 matches. Now, for the next eight weekdays, we get to see who those early winners will face in the second round.

The bracket is here. Today's winner will face the GOP debate audience booing the gay soldier in the second round.

1. TIM PAWLENTY DROPS OUT

Tim Pawlenty was a two-term governor of liberal Minnesota?winning reelection in 2006 by the slimmest of margins despite amassing what was a surprisingly conservative record for the state. Thus, he had a compelling story?electable in hostile territory, scandal free, while stepping on very few conservative third rails. He was an asshole on immigration, on a woman's right to choose, on labor, on freedoms for non-Christian fundamentalists, etc., etc. And being Minnesota governor gave him a sort of home-field advantage in next-door Iowa. In other words, he seemed to be the perfect candidate on paper.

Problem was, he was boring. I mean, really boring. So boring, that they had to bust open the Michael Bay playbook to try to jazz him up:

He wasn't going to light up the world, but he had all the markings of a decent candidate, and he kicked off his campaign in May of 2011 to a fair amount of fanfare. A columnist in the Wall Street Journal announced:

The T-Paw moment has arrived.

(I'm trying to relive the excitement while stifling a yawn.)

"T-Paw's" moment may have arrived, but he ended it on Aug. 13, 2011 after coming in third at the Ames Straw Poll behind?try not to laugh?Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul. In other words, all it took was 4,823 irrelevant and insignificant votes for Bachmann at the political equivalent of a county fair to convince Pawlenty that he was through. It was the only logical conclusion! As Ames goes, so goes Iowa, right? Let's look at some of the past winners: Pat Robertson in 1987, Phil Gramm in 1995, and Mitt Romney in 2008. Umm ... okay, maybe it's not so relevant.

Incidentally, Romney learned his lesson from 2008. He skipped out on the contest and got just 567 votes. But he didn't give a shit. He was actually trying to win the nomination.

Which leads to the obvious question?did Pawlenty simply lack the fire for a drawn out presidential nomination contest? Or was he just really stupid and convinced himself he couldn't compete against the Bachmann juggernaut? Because had he stayed in, he would've been the logical anti-Romney. And unlike Rick Santorum (1,657 votes at Ames) and Newt Gingrich (385 votes), Pawlenty's odds would've been better than even to take the nomination.

2. RICK SANTORUM THINKS BARACK OBAMA IS A SNOB FOR WANTING PEOPLE TO GO TO COLLEGE

Every so often, Barack Obama says that college should be affordable for every kid who wants to attend, and that everyone should get career training of some sort. You know, stuff like:

Tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

And this:

They don't all have to go to four-year colleges and universities -- although we need more engineers and we need more scientists, and we've got to make sure that college is affordable and accessible. But we also need skilled workers who are going to community colleges, or middle-aged workers who are allowed to retrain, have a commitment to work, have that work ethic.

And this:

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential?schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college?even if their parents aren't rich.

All of this infuriated Rick Santorum because, you know, he's an assole.

President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.

His audience loved it, because, you know, nothing says "not a snob" more than having an undergraduate degree from Penn State, an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, and a J.D. from Dickinson?then railing against anyone else who might also want to get educated.

Eventually, Santorum was forced to retreat on Fox News:

I've read some columns where at least it was characterized that the president said, we should go to four-year colleges. If it was in error, then I agree with the president that we should have options for people to go to variety of different training options for them.

Read some columns? Perhaps he shouldn't get his "news" from Newsmax and wingnut email forwards.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/1qvc4ORjGCo/-GOP-Madness-2012-Roun
d-1-Match-9

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Romney’s Openly-Gay Spokesperson Resigns
After Facing Pressure From Anti-Gay Right Wing

Richard Grenell, the openly-gay conservative foreign policy spokesperson hired by Mitt Romney, has resigned from the campaign following right-wing pressure, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin reports. “[M]y ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign,” Grenell said in a statement, which came less than two weeks after he was hired. Conservative groups like the American Family Foundation painted Grenell as a “homosexual activist” and condemned Romney for bringing him on board. From his statement:

GRENELL: I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama?s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

Rubin reports that Grenell was also frustrated for “being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president?s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign.”

The former spokesperson for U.N. Ambassador John Bolton had also come under fire for tweeting all sorts of flippant comments about liberals, Democrats, women and, especially, U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration. Only a day after the announcement of his new post, Grenell joked on Twitter that President Obama had committed treason by passing missile secrets to the Russians. Shortly after his appointment, he scrubbed much of his online presence, deleting over 800 tweets and taking down his personal website.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/05/01/474811/grenell-resign/

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Independent Analysis Confirms That Hydraulic
Fracturing Caused Drinking Water Contamination In Wyoming

by Jessica Goad

A recent study from the Environmental Protection Agency showing that chemicals from hydraulic fracturing had contaminated groundwater has just been validated by an independent hydrology expert.

The impact of natural gas drilling ? particularly hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” ? on drinking water and groundwater has been heavily debated. It has also been one of the most serious PR issues for the oil and gas industry.

In December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency found official evidence that poisonous chemicals from fracking had contaminated water near drill rigs in Pavillion, Wyoming. That study has now been backed up by an independent expert. In a report released today, commissioned by several environmental groups, Dr. Tom Myers writes that:

After consideration of the evidence presented in the EPA report and in URS (2009 and 2010), it is clear that hydraulic fracturing (fracking [Kramer 2011]) has caused pollution of the Wind River formation and aquifer… The EPA?s conclusion is sound.

Myers then details the Pavillion area?s unique geology and water pathways, as well as the shoddy construction of the wells that likely contributed to water contamination.  He also outlines a number of ways that EPA can improve on its analysis and continue to collect critical data.

When EPA released the draft findings last December, the natural gas industry and its elected allies were quick to pounce and attacked it as ?scientifically questionable,? ?reckless,? and lacking  ?a definitive conclusion.?

Importantly, Myers notes in his report that:

The situation at Pavillion is not an analogue for other gas plays because the geology and regulatory framework may be different.

Nevertheless, it is a reminder for politicians like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe who continue to claim that there has ?never been one case ? documented case ? of groundwater contamination.?

However, the lack of public data makes it difficult to gather evidence of drinking water contamination.  As New York Times reporter Ian Urbina noted in an investigation last August, researchers often are:

?unable to investigate many suspected cases because their details were sealed from the public when energy companies settled lawsuits with landowners.

The oil and gas industry is exempt from portions of a number of environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act.

Jessica Goad is Manager of Research and Outreach for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/01/474711/independent-analysis-confirms-
that-hydraulic-fracturing-caused-drinking-water-contamination-in-wyoming/

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Former NBC President Warren Littlefield on
Television From ‘Will & Grace’ to ‘Glee’

Kevin Fallon interviewed Warren Littlefield, who ran NBC’s Entertainment division during the fertile years of 1993 to 1998 to talk about his new book, an oral history of Must See TV. He doesn’t have anything illuminating to say about the present, dismal state of NBC?does anybody??but Littlefield does have some interesting context to offer on the fight to get NBC to go forward with Will & Grace:

Management said, “What the hell are you doing? Why are you developing Will and Grace?” It’s network television, and we have advertisers to answer to. Advertisers are not ready to embrace, at the core of a show, a relationship between a gay man and straight woman. What are you doing?…As I looked at the world, we lived in a world where I saw that relationship all the time. It was this gap. Television had ignored it. I knew that Max and David had a great feel for that world and those characters. They just needed to be convinced that we would actually go forward with it if they wrote it. I said to them, “If you do a great job, we’ll have to.” And that’s what they did. So then in order to kind of hip-check my management, I made sure that I went to Jimmy Burrows. When Jimmy fell in love with the project, I knew that no one could stand in the way…Lo and behold, advertisers said, “Oh, this is a really funny show.” That’s all they saw. So there was no protest. There was no advertiser boycott. It just went on and continued to carry the torch of what Must See TV stood for.

It’s one of the clearest cases I’ve ever seen of executives being afraid to greenlight something they didn’t have personal experience with, and overestimating the negative reaction as a result. I’m sure there are others. It’s rather sad to me that if someone doesn’t see a potential audience or kinds of relationships with their own eyes, they’d be unable to imagine that it exists. I don’t assume that my experience is the sum total of the world, and I do believe it’s incumbent on me to broaden that pool of experiences I have to draw on. Gay men and their straight female friends aren’t unicorns. Neither are middle-class black families. It’s infinitely irksome that gatekeepers wouldn’t have learned this basic lesson, and that it keeps the world of entertainment smaller and more limited by poverty of imagination than it has to be.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/05/01/474448/former-nbc-president-warren-lit
tlefield-on-television-from-will-grace-to-glee/

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Former Bain Capital Director And Top Romney Donor
Pens Book Calling For Even More Income Inequality

Income inequality in the United States has skyrocketed over the last several decades and especially since the Great Recession, so much so that it is now worse than in Ivory Coast and Pakistan. It may even be worse than it was in Ancient Rome, a society built on slave labor.

That income inequality is crushing the middle class and its political power. But don’t tell that to Edward Conard, a top donor to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney who gained notoriety during the campaign as a million-dollar mystery donor who set up a shell company to shield his identity. Conard, a former director at the Romney-founded Bain Capital, is working on a new book in which he argues that income inequality is a good thing, and what the U.S. really needs is more of it, the New York Times’ Adam Davidson reports:

Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich?s role in our society. ?Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You?ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,? to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year.

Conard instead argues that income inequality helps everyone because investors grow wealthy by creating products that benefit the 99 percent. Though to an extent that is certainly true, Conard’s line of thinking leads to the supply-side policies that are proven failures at “growing the pie” for everyone. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, for instance, were supposed to create jobs and spark economic growth for everyone. They did neither, instead saddling the nation with unsustainable debt and deficits that Republicans are now using to justify massive budget cuts to programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes.

And while investors like Conard made luxuries available to some Americans, they also bankrupted companies and left workers without jobs, pensions, or health care. Bain Capital, in fact, made billions of dollars for people like Romney and Conard while bankrupting nearly a quarter of the companies in which it invested.

Further, Conard believes the financial industry — the same financial industry that sold “shitty deals” and purposely exploited consumers — isn’t to blame for the financial crisis. Instead, it was investors who created an “old-fashioned run on the bank” that created the crisis. That’s a view that, as Davidson notes, “is not shared by many analysts.” It is, however, a view that is shared by Conard’s favorite presidential candidate, who has admitted that he is “not concerned with the very poor” and has promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that aimed at preventing another such crisis.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/01/474673/romney-donor-income-inequality
/

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