It in the 15th paragraph below…

MCM

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
The ‘Right-Wing Nutters’ Who Are Pushing the Country to the Brink
George Zornick | July 28, 2011

There’s a tense vote count in Washington today as House Speaker John Boehner tries to rally Republican members behind his debt ceiling plan. After one postponement and public disapproval by many prominent House Republicans, Boehner’s plan is teetering on the brink.

The conservative rebellion against Boehner’s plan is being driven by Tea Party activists and many of the freshman members they helped elect. For months, the House Republican leadership has been quietly tutoring [1] these members on the intricacies of the federal budget and the need to raise the debt ceiling, using what Politico called a “stunningly simple” presentation of color-coded charts and graphs. This week, leadership even showed a clip [2] from a Ben Affleck action movie to help persuade the members to act.

But so far, the aggressive pitch doesn’t seem to be working—at one point this week, Boehner was only eight votes [3] from defeat. And if he cannot rally his party to support a dreadful plan with no chance of ultimate passage anyhow, what can he get them to vote for? In the words [4] of British Business Secretary Vince Cable, “The biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few right-wing nutters in the American Congress.”

Read more.

July 28, 2011
New Hacking Case Outrages Britain
By RAVI SOMAIYA

LONDON — Britain was awash in a new surge of outrage over the phone hacking scandal on Thursday as news emerged that Scotland Yard had added to the list of probable victims a woman whose 8-year-old daughter was murdered by a repeat sex offender in 2000.

The tabloid at the center of the scandal, The News of the World, aggressively championed the campaign of the grieving mother, Sara Payne, for a law warning parents if child sex offenders lived nearby. Mrs. Payne had written warmly of the paper in its final issue, calling it “an old friend.”

A statement released on behalf of Mrs. Payne by the Phoenix Foundation, a children’s charity she founded, described her as devastated and disappointed.

Read more.

House panel approves bill forcing ISPs to log users’ web history
By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, July 28th, 2011 — 9:41 pm

The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect and retain records about Internet users’ activity.

CNET reported the bill would require ISPs to retain customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses for 12 months.

The bill passed by a vote of 19 to 10, and is aimed at helping law enforcement track down pedophiles.

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The Centrist Cop-Out
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
29 July 11

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

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July 28, 2011
Carnal Confusion
The Strauss-Kahn Handlers Crank Out the Lawsuits
By PAM MARTENS

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and aspirant to the Élysée Palace, has left a trail of DNA from Davos to Paris to Gotham (and that’s just what he’s acknowledged). But that’s not the only mess he’s left others to clean up.

Putting aside the criminal charges and allegation of attempted rape on two continents for a moment, Strauss-Kahn, or DSK as his compatriots like to call him, has singlehandedly humiliated the International Monetary Fund, the luxury Sofitel Hotel, his current wife (Anne Sinclair), his daughter (Camille), his second wife (Brigitte Guillemette), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (where he is alleged to have had sex between the file cabinets), the luxury Porsche auto brand (prior to his arrest in New York, the French Socialist Party member was tooling around Paris in a Porsche Panamera which is priced in the range of $150,000 and whose ownership was tied to a French media/armaments conglomerate, Lagardère), his fellow Caviar Socialists, the lovable entertainer Zippy the Chimp (accuser Tristane Banon called DSK a “rutting chimpanzee”). He’s accomplished for the image of powerful French politicians what Guantanamo accomplished for the image of U.S. justice: a law free zone.

Given this trail of smoldering ash, one might expect a little humility from DSK and his take-no-prisoners lawyers and advance men. But no. The whole pack is suing left and right – that’s literally the political left and the political right.

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The NY Times’ Ostrich Act On JFK Assassination Getting Old
By Russ Baker on Jul 27, 2011

Despite overwhelming contrary evidence, Oswald still labeled “leftist”

Nobody’s perfect. But it’s hard to think of anything as unworthy of a high-quality journalistic institution as the New York Times’ decades-long determination to never, ever, find any reason to question the original story spun by the Warren Commission on the JFK assassination. No matter how much new evidence has come out to the contrary.

It reminds a bit of the forever-blinkered character Sgt. Schultz on the old tv showHogan’s Heroes (“I see NUUU-singg”—here’s a good clip, watch first minute of so…)

Ask any reporter, privately, what he or she thinks on this issue. Putting aside those who will demur on the basis of not having read widely on the topic (a surprisingly large number), you’ll find most believing that the “lone nut” or “Leftist loner” narratives about Oswald are utter junk. This would certainly apply in the New York Timesnewsroom.

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Source: crewof42.com

Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight Tim Phillips Spoke at Norweigan Killer’s Political Party Event

Anders Behring Breivik, detained in the deadly Oslo bombing and shooting that has left 92 dead, has links to Norway’s anti-government political group the Progress Party, according to the LA Times:

On social media forums, he claimed to be a disgruntled former member of Norway’s anti-tax, small-government Progress Party, according to the Norwegian Nettavisen news service. His postings reflected strong anti-Islamic views and a deep skepticism about the mixing of different international cultures.

Read more.

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Norwegian Killer Linked to Tea Party and English Defence League
by craig on July 23, 2011 1:09 pm

Anders Behring Breivik posted links to the Atlas Shrugs website of the Tea Party’s Pamela Geller. Here you can see him under the name of Anders Behring (his middle name) posting links to Geller’s “Atlas Shrugs” site. That cache page is bing translated from Norwegian.

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Evil Corporate Tax Holiday Gains Bipartisan Support
POSTED: JULY 26, 9:12 AM ET

Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley’s plan is to offer a pseudo-holiday – not the full-fledged happy-ending massage the companies wanted (i.e. a reduction from 35 percent+ to 5.25 percent) but a mere ten-point shave.

The madness that is the proposed tax repatriation holiday is continuing and gathering steam. More and more members of congress are coming out of the woodwork, scratching their chins in contemplative consideration as it were, pretending that they’ve just realized what a great day a corporate tax holiday would be – not that they’ve taken gazillions of dollars from the firms lobbying for it or anything.

The latest convert seems to be Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley. Berkley’s plan is to offer a pseudo-holiday – not the full-fledged happy-ending massage the companies wanted (i.e. a reduction from 35 percent+ to 5.25 percent) but a mere ten-point shave:

Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, is the latest lawmaker to consider legislation allowing multinational companies to send offshore profits to the U.S. at a reduced tax rate.

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