Wingnut media downplays heat wave in US

Remember the old "it's snowing here in X city now so there's no global warming" joke from the climate change deniers? Now that it's a record heat wave in many parts of the US, they're ignoring that as well. An inconvenient truth, indeed. More from Media Matters:

See, NOAA keeps track of records for different time scales: The daily record compares the temperature on July 24, for instance, to the temperature on every previous July 24; the monthly record compares the temperature on July 24 to the temperature of any day in July of any year; and the all-time record compares the temperature on July 24 to the temperature of any day in any year. On top of that, NOAA provides these records for both the highest maximum temperature and the highest minimum (nighttime) temperature.

Sheppard is reporting the all-time records, describing them as though they are daily records, and ignoring everything else.

Here's the data (from NOAA) on the number of U.S. records broken or tied in the month of July so far:

All-Time Highest Maximum Temperature: 70
All-Time Highest Minimum Temperature: 175
Monthly Highest Maximum Temperature: 125
Monthly Highest Minimum Temperature: 330
Daily Highest Maximum Temperature: 2,125
Daily Highest Minimum Temperature: 4,787

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Worth watching: Boeing and FAA investigative report

At midnight last Friday, a Congressional funding impasse led the Federal Aviation Administration into partial shutdown. As a consequence, some 4,000 FAA workers have been furloughed. Although crucial air traffic control functions continue, airport construction and collection of ticket taxes will halt until some solution is worked out. ThinkProgress reported that the root of the shutdown is a GOP effort to strip FAA employees of union rights -- what a surprise! According to the Washington Post, House Dems will introduce a bill to end the shutdown. But all this is just introduction, not the point of this post.

Seeking news about the FAA led me to this documentary which I highly recommend you watch. It's about Boeing allegedly knowing that production of some aircraft has been faulty, yet doing nothing to fix the situation. Toward the end, the report gets into the 'regulated-industry-as-customer' approach to oversight that characterizes the worst of our corporate-captured government's failure.

It's a great piece of muckraking journalism by al Jazeera English, a multi-faceted story about which I'd heard nothing until now. It was originally published in late 2010 but it remains relevant. It's a classic story of the public put into peril by corporate malfeasance in the name of profits, and enabled by higher-ups at a, ahem, responsive government agency. There's a cast of many, including honorable and courageous whistleblowers from the ranks of Boeing and the FAA -- people who put their public-interest ethics ahead of their careers and paid the price. Well worth your time. It's led me to check on which kind of aircraft I'll be flying on later this summer. Really.

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WSJ admits coverage of News Corp hacking scandal was poor

Quite the understatement.

The Wall Street Journal "could have done a better job" when it published an interview with proprietor Rupert Murdoch in which he said News Corporation had made only "minor mistakes" in managing the phone-hacking scandal, according to the paper's special editorial committee.

In a report published in the Journal on Monday designed to answer critics of its phone-hacking coverage, the committee – set up when Murdoch bought the paper in 2007 – admitted that its journalists failed to cover the scandal as promptly as its rivals. It also offered criticism of a one-sided interview earlier this month, just 24 hours before News Corp lost two of its most senior newspaper executives, including Les Hinton, who was responsible for the Dow Jones newswires.

"[The Journal] could have done a better job with a recent story allowing Mr Murdoch to get his side of the story on the record without tougher questioning," the report said, adding "We have discussed this with the involved editors."

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Krugman: Obama "wasn’t the one we were waiting for"

Paul Krugman in a short, succinct comment:

At this point, we just have to accept it as a fact of life: Obama doesn’t, and maybe can’t, do outrage — no matter how much the situation calls for it. The purpose of last night’s speech, if there was one, was to rally the nation against crazy Republicans. But there were no memorable lines, no forceful statements of the very stark reality. “Now, now, that’s not reasonable” isn’t going to move multitudes.

It turns out, I’m sorry to say, that he wasn’t the one we were waiting for.

Krugman is referring to Obama's lack of outrage in his most recent speech. But he might as well be referring to his lack of fight for progressive (or even Democratic) values.

There is no party in American politics, and no presidential candidate, who represents Progressive policy and values. That's a problem.

There's no place to vote your dissatisfaction, which means there's no way to measure your dissatisfaction. Obama needs a primary as a gift, the way a blind man need eyesight. How will he see what's out there waiting for him if there's no way to show him.

Without a primary, 2012 will be a battle between the Koch-financed and the Bank-financed for control of the country. Dueling billionaires, like choosing between the third son of Caesar and the fourth son to wear the crown.

GP Read the rest of this post...

TSA again humiliates cancer survivor

Is it so difficult to show some respect for fellow humans? It should not be asking too much, but maybe a few more lawsuits like this will help address this problem. MSNBC.com:

Sawyer, who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine through an opening in his abdomen, said he was traveling through Detroit Metro Airport on July 14 on his way to Orlando when he was singled out for a pat-down.

“Before I could even get (out) the words, ‘I want this done privately,’ the TSO agent began patting me down in public,” said Sawyer. “I said ‘Whoa! I have a medical condition.’ He said, ‘I know,’ and continued the pat-down.”

TSA policy states that travelers “should be offered a private screening before the beginning of a pat-down inspection if the pat-down will require the lifting of clothing and/or display of a covered medical device.”

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Geithner’s role in the debt ceiling disaster

It's been written that the current most powerful economics adviser in the White House is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. You could argue that the team-lead on the Dem side of this disaster is Treasury, and Geithner.

That said, here's Felix Salmon on how we got here, via Brad DeLong. Bottom line — Treasury decided to "go big" and this is the result (my emphasis):

The lion’s share of the blame here belongs with the Republicans in general, the House Republicans in particular, and the Tea Party caucus within the House Republicans most of all. But it’s not like these people’s existence or intransigence was any great secret. And so the White House tactics over the course of the past few months look dangerously naive….

The budget debate, of course, sets near-term taxation and spending. So seeking to make a virtue out of necessity, Treasury entered negotiations over the debt ceiling to do something longer-term: to put in place a decade-long “fiscal straitjacket” which would constrain future Democratic and Republican administrations alike…. Treasury’s bright idea backfired catastrophically. Far from putting the US on a course of long-term fiscal prudence, it put the country on a log raft with no paddle, careening straight towards a deathly waterfall…. [E]ngag[ing] the House Republicans on long-term fiscal issues was a silly idea — these are people who think you can raise revenues by cutting taxes. A fiscal straitjacket, necessarily, involves some mechanism for raising taxes; since that was always going to be anathema to the Republicans, there was no point even trying to construct one.

The cost of Treasury’s tactical mistake is going to be enormous.

Naiveté? Possibly? Electorally driven (and entirely self-centered)? Certainly. Does it matter?

I guess we'll find out. However this turns out, I hope Geithner finds a nice place for himself on Thank You Street when this mess is over and the next president gets to mislead us. The workman is worth his wages.

GP Read the rest of this post...

AP: Obama allegedly offered to cut the meager tax increases in half to save HCR

It certainly sounds like something he'd do. Check out this tidbit buried in an AP story from yesterday:

Each side offered accounts of secret maneuvering designed to put the other side in a poor light.

Democratic officials said Obama called Boehner on Saturday night, one day after the collapse of compromise talks, and offered to reduce his demand for new tax revenue by $400 billion.

In return, Obama said that he wanted Republicans to abandon their demand to cancel parts of the year-old health care law if future deficit cuts did not materialize.

This official said Boehner rejected the proposal on Sunday.

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Trump on Fox: Let US default so Obama loses in 2012

So ruining the country is an OK deal if that means the GOP might win in 2012. How patriotic. McClatchy:

Donald Trump has some advice for the Republican Party. The New York real estate tycoon went on "Fox & Friends" Monday morning and told the hosts that if the GOP wants to ensure that President Barack Obama isn't re-elected, all it has to do is not make any deals with Democrats and default on Aug. 2.

Trump seems to think that using the country's sparkling AAA credit rating as a sacrificial lamb and letting the nation default would damage Obama, who has been willing to put everything including entitlements on the table, more than it would hurt Republicans, who have refused to raise revenues on the richest Americans and companies during the debt ceiling negotiations.

"When it comes time to default, they're not going to remember any of the Republicans' names. They are going to remember in history books one name, and that's Obama," Trump said.

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Cantor tells Teabagger caucus to stop "whining," vote to raise debt ceiling

I guess we'll see just how powerful the Teabaggers really are, now that the number two Republican in the House, Eric Cantor, has told them all to stop whining, and support Boehner's bill to raise the debt ceiling. If Cantor is becoming a Teetotaler, and he's supposed to be the hard ass, then the GOP leadership is finally telling the Teabaggers to shut up and take a hike.  It'll be interesting to see if the Teabaggers accept their new status as legislative pushovers. Read the rest of this post...

Graphic shows how Bush created deficit, not Obama

Click for larger version

The GOP would have you believe that Obama created the debt. And Obama would have you believe that both sides created the debt. In fact, it's George Bush who created the lion's share of our debt. Sadly, no one wants to talk about that fact. Read the rest of this post...

Glenn Beck: Murdered Norwegian campers were like Hitler Youth

Absolutely despicable, but we knew that already.

Glenn Beck, the rightwing US broadcaster and Tea Party favourite, has compared those who were massacred on the Norwegian island of Utøya to the Nazi party's youth wing.

"There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler youth, or, whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics. Disturbing," said Beck on his syndicated radio show.

The comments were condemned by Torbjørn Eriksen, a former press secretary to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway's prime minister.

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A key point absent in DC: American people care about jobs and the economy

While Washington dithers and brings the country to the brink of another economic collapse, the American people are pretty cranky about jobs and the economy. And neither party is free of their wrath. It really is the economy, stupid. And jobs, stupid. From the Washington Post:

More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But Americans’ discontent does not stop there. The survey also found that Americans harbor negative feelings toward congressional Republicans. Roughly as many people blame Republican policies for the poor economy as they do Obama. But 65 percent disapprove of the GOP’s handling of jobs, compared to 52 percent for the president.

There's bad news for both parties in this poll. That's because people aren't feeling particularly good about the economy:

The dissatisfaction is fueled by the fact that many Americans continue to see little relief from the pain of a recession that technically ended two years ago. Ninety percent of those surveyed said the economy is not doing well, and four out of five report that jobs are difficult to find.

And, while we know the White House is hyper-focused on independent voters, this should be worrisome:

Still, Obama receives higher marks from crucial independents than Republicans when it comes to jobs. But appeasing his own party could prove to be a bigger challenge.

The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

So, maybe the base does matter. And it's a safe bet the unemployment rate will matter next year, too.

For two years now, I've been hearing people say: "Next, we're going to pivot to jobs." Seems like the American people haven't seen the pivot yet, either. Read the rest of this post...

Pro-austerity Conservatives start making excuses for putrid economy

Again, remind me why the US Republicans want to implement these awful policies? Having an economy shut down and then slap yourself on the back for doing so is bizarre.

An unrepentant David Cameron prepared consumers and the markets for publication on Tuesday of gruesome growth figures by admitting Britain's "path back to growth will be a difficult one", but insisting no shortcut lay in either a fiscal or monetary stimulus.

The chancellor, George Osborne, also set out his defence ahead of an expected political battering by claiming he had "turned Britain into a safe harbour in a storm" by focusing so rigidly on deficit reduction. He admitted: "There are risks to current and future growth."

Both the prime minister and the chancellor spoke about the depth of Britain's economic difficulties on Monday after being briefed on the growth figures for the second quarter to be published by the Office for National Statistics .

The figures are expected to show Britain's economy has flatlined for almost a year, contrasting with strong growth in Germany and, to a lesser extent, France.

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BP's "disappointing" $5.6 billion quarter

Poor little lambs. Selling off oil fields to pay for trashing the Gulf of Mexico cost them a few percentage points that otherwise would have gone into the pockets of a few people. How tragic.

BP's profits for the second quarter of 2011 disappointed Tuesday after cuts in production stemming from last year's Deepwater Horizon accident.

Profits of $5.6 billion for the second quarter of 2011 were up by 13 percent over the same period last year. The jump happened amid record oil prices, however.

Oil and gas production in the second quarter were down 11 percent from the same time in 2010, to 3.43 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

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Chinese upset with train crash coverup

Unfortunately this is SOP for the Beijing government. Following the earthquakes a few years ago, grieving parents were swept under the carpet by the government who covered up the shoddy construction. Fudging numbers, whether for economic growth or food production has been a staple of this regime since the beginning. At this point it's likely only a matter of time before the authorities turn against the critics, as they always do. The Guardian:

Chinese authorities face growing public fury over the high-speed train crash that killed at least 38 people and injured 192, with the disposal of wreckage and attempts to control coverage of the incident prompting allegations of a cover-up.

The railways ministry has apologised for the collision in eastern Zhejiang province and announced an inquiry. Spokesman Wang Yongping added: "China's high-speed rail technology is up to date and up to standard, and we still have faith in it."

Internet users attacked the government's response to the disaster after authorities muzzled media coverage and urged reporters to focus on rescue efforts. "We have the right to know the truth!" wrote one microblogger called kangfu xiaodingdang. "That's our basic right!"

Leaked propaganda directives ordered journalists not to investigate the causes and footage emerged of bulldozers shovelling dirt over carriages.

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