Gingrich: I Will Take on the Big Boys on Wall Street

And that pesky political correctness.

"People are just sick and tired of being told what they’re allowed to think, what they’re allowed to say"

Should Journalists Tell the Truth?

New York Times: Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.


Jay Rosen

Something happened in our press over the last 40 years or so that never got acknowledged and to this day would be denied by a majority of newsroom professionals. Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to. These include such things as “maintaining objectivity,” “not imposing a judgment,” “refusing to take sides” and sticking to what I have called the View from Nowhere."

Gingrich Threatens to Sue TV Stations For Airing Romney Ad

Newt Gingrich has threatened to sue TV stations airing ads by a group backing Mitt Romney claiming he was fined for ethics violations. In letters sent to TV stations in Florida and South Carolina, the Gingrich campaign, said ads asserting the Georgia Republican was "fined" for violating House ethics rules are false and represent "a defamatory communication, which exposes this station to potential civil liability," NBC News reported Thursday.

"In turn, we do hereby DEMAND that your station immediately REFUSE, and if started, CEASE airing any such advertisements," the letter said.

Unemployment Falls to 8.5%

Dollar Rises Against Euro, Yen

Jobless Rate Falls to 8.5%

U.S. Jobless Rate Drops to Lowest Level Since February 2009

200,000 Jobs Added in December

Jobs

Since Start of Recession (Dec. 2007) - MINUS 6,083,000

Since President Obama Took Office - MINUS 937,000

Jan - Dec. 2011 - PLUS 1,640,000

What Happened to Reuters?

And why would they hire Gregg Easterbrook?

The Most Indebted Country In The World

Dealbook: A Call for a Write-Down on Irish Debt

Oct. 14 (New York Times) -- DUBLIN -- A major write-down on Greek debt appears to be inevitable. But what about Ireland?

Bailed-out Irish banks continue to pay interest to their bondholders on 75 billion euros in debt -- about half the country's gross domestic product -- and despite Ireland's improved economic performance over the past year, many here believe that these institutions should suffer the same haircut that the banks holding Greek debt are expected to absorb.

"We need to write this stuff off," said Peter Mathews, a voluble banking and real estate consultant who was recently elected to the Irish Parliament on a robust bank-bashing platform.

Mr. Mathews estimates that if you include household and nonfinancial corporate debt, Ireland's total debt burden is a shocking 490 percent of its G.D.P. -- which, he claims, makes Ireland the most indebted country in the world.

No Dumpster Diving!

NOGENT, France, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- The mayor of an affluent Paris suburb says as a result of recent incidents citizens are being banned from digging through other people's trash.

This Week with Christiane Amanpour - September 25, 2011

Guests:
David Plouffe - Presidential Advisor
Austan Goolsbee - Fmr Obama Economic Advisor
Mohamed E-Erian - CEO Pimco
Chrystia Freeland
George Will
*********************************

Amanpour: wow look at the newly combative Obama!

Plouffe: We need action Christiane! Now!

Amanpour: Harry Reid says there’s jam on the floor

Plouffe: But Boehner said Obama was jello

Amanpour: incredibly some Democrats don’t
like parts Obama’s jobs plan

Plouffe: it’s got tax cuts, new schools, fast trains and
fun for the whole family

Amanpour: John McCain’s economic advisor says
it’s only a band-aid

Plouffe: Well when you’re bleeding you use a
damn band-aid!

Amanpour: that’s technically true

Plouffe: it’s called the American Jobs Act -
who doesn’t like American jobs?

Amanpour: Bill Clinton and other rich people said
we shouldn’t raise taxes on the rich

Plouffe: it’s a question of fairness Christiane

Amanpour: I suppose

Plouffe: we’re cutting taxes for everyone but the rich
who take advantage of these ridiculous loopholes

Amanpour: is it time to panic?

Plouffe: No - that was a year ago

Amanpour: thanks for coming

[ break ]

Amanpour: Oh noes the Dow is down!!!

Audience: aayyyiiiieee

Amanpour: George you are an expert on
international economics

Will: Imagine if things were really bad - that’s what
we face in my imagination

Amanpour: wow

Will: the next recession is the fault of lazy
unionized Greeks

Goolsbee: Europe sucks - USA! USA!

El-Erian: the world finally staged an intervention
with Europe - it was on Bravo and very moving

Freeland: this is like 2008 - everyone knows an
economic collapse is coming but no one is doing at anything about it

Amanpour: what is going to happen in Europe
in two words?

Freeland: massive shrinkage

El-Erian: we need a Sputnik moment!

Will: let Greece fail!

Amanpour: but George that’s terrible

Will: the fucking Italians are going to bring
us all down - screw ‘em all

Freeland: you’re an idiot

Goolsbee: Europe’s banks have no assets -
only worthless mortgages and stolen Holocaust art

Amanpour: is the political system completely broken?

El-Erian: we are all in the back seat of a car driven
by politicians bickering on their iPhones instead
of watching the road

Amanpour: what if the Chinese stop not buying our stuff

Freeland: the Chinese are freaked out by Tea Party

Amanpour: I know the feeling

Will: it takes real courage to admit that trying to
unify Europe was a bad idea - look at how successful
Europe was from 1914 - 1945

Goolsbee: The European Union has become a
Monty Python skit

Europe: We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune
but we take it in turns to act as a sort of executive
officer for the week but all the decision of that
officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting

Amanpour: okay okay

El-Erian: we should fix housing, credit and growth

Amanpour: brilliant

Freeland: Businesses are rich but they won’t spend their money

Will: Barack Obama is persecuting Boeing

Amanpour: no one expects the Obama Inquisition!

*****************************************************

Sultan of Oman Pays for Hiker's Release

Diplomatic sources told NPR that Oman's sultan, Qaboos bin Said, paid $500,000 each to free Bauer and Fattal – the same amount paid to liberate Shourd. Oman also provided a private plane to transport the two men to its capital city of Muscat much like it did with Shourd.

The State Department had no immediate comment on Oman's involvement in Wednesday's releases. But when Shourd was freed, department spokesman P.J. Crowley praised Muscat as "a key interlocutor" that helped "work this case with the Iranian government."

House Rejects Disaster Bill With Spending Cuts

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House rejected a bill that includes $3.65 billion in aid to victims of Hurricane Irene and other natural disasters, a setback for Republican leaders controlling the chamber.

Some Republican lawmakers objected to the measure’s overall cost and House Democrats opposed a spending cut in it, leading to the bill’s defeat. The vote against the bill was 230-195. The dispute raises the specter of a government shutdown because the disaster assistance is attached to a measure needed to fund the government until Nov. 18. The current fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Congress is in recess next week.

Give a Kidney, Lose a Job

(AP) - A Philadelphia woman says she lost her job after taking off time to donate a kidney to her son.

Claudia Rendon tells WTXF-TV she lost her job last week at an aircraft repair training company after taking time off to donate the kidney to her son, Alex.

The company tells WTXF it was within its rights to dismiss Rendon.

Absolute Last Thing To Do

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) - European banks may resort to more jobs cuts or zero bonuses as they struggle to maintain fixed compensation levels amid deteriorating financial markets.

The companies are facing shrinking revenue and higher costs after raising base salaries of investment bankers by as much as 100 percent. That decision, which followed regulations to curb bonuses in the wake of the credit crisis, is irreversible even if conditions worsen, lawyers and consultants said, leaving banks with fewer options in their bid to improve margins.

"The absolute last thing banks will want to do is cut current salaries unless they have an explicit contractual right to do so," said Jason Butwick, a London employment attorney at law firm Dechert LLP. "The legal, reputational, commercial and logistical risks of going down that route are huge."

Name That Speaker!

"We don't impeach people, we don't charge people with treason because we disagree with them on public policy. You might say that they're wrong, you might say lots of things about how misguided they are, but you don't up the ante to that type of rhetoric."

Yes, Rick Santorum is now the reasonable candidate in the GOP Primary.

Mitch McConnell: Cave Man

The legislation would require Obama to suggest spending cuts to accompany those increases in the debt limit, but would not require such cuts. The legislation would prohibit Obama from recommending tax increases along with the requests to increase the debt limit.

Also, Obama would be not be allowed to “point and laugh” as he signs any debt limit increase. He would, however, be permitted one "low mordant chuckle."

Rupert Murdoch's Reign of Terror

Shortly after Scotland Yard began its initial criminal inquiry of phone hacking by The News Of The World in 2006, five senior police investigators discovered that their own cellphone messages had been targeted by the tabloid and had most likely been listened to.

“If it is true that police officers knew their phones had been hacked, it is a serious matter that requires immediate investigation,” said John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which investigated phone hacking. “It would be shocking.”

The lead police investigator on the phone-hacking case, Andy Hayman, left the Metropolitan Police in December 2007 after questions were raised in the news media about business. Mark Lewis, a lawyer who represents a number of high-profile hacking victims, said in an interview that he believed that Mr. Hayman was unwilling to investigate phone-hacking because he feared that the newspaper would reveal his relationship with a woman who worked at the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

McConnell on Party Loyalty

Sen. Mitch McConnell:
The only thing I can tell you at this point is that there are differences. I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.

Begun the Drone Wars Have

the debate over drones is like debating the merits of computers in 1979: They are here to stay, and the boom has barely begun. “We are at the Wright Brothers Flier stage of this,”

Grifting the Grifters

June 20 (Washington Post) -- WASHINGTON — A judge is handing former White House chief of staff John Sununu a loss in a suit over a half-million-dollar consulting fee and a warning against handshake deals.

Lamberth closes his opinion with some practical advice: "When it doubt, write it out."

This Week with Christiane Amanpour - June 19, 2011

Guests:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
Husain Haqqani (U.S. Ambassador from Pakistan)
David Ignatius
Liz Cheney
******************************
Amanpour: hey we’ve been bombing
Libya for 90 days

Audience: woot

Amanpour: Senator McCain are you worried
that the GOP has suddenly discovered isolationism?

McCain: indeed they are putting party politics
over the good of then nation

Amanpour: wow

McCain: but Obama is also to blame for
deferring to those cheese-eating French

Amanpour: what about the War Powers Act?

McCain: John Kerry and I are on top of that

Amanpour: will we be at war there
for the standard 6 months to 10 years?

McCain: Yes! Predators are in the fight!

Amanpour: are the GOP Presidential
candidates isolationists?

McCain: there’s always been a strain of isolationism
in the GOP that seem to pop up whenever a Democrat is President

Amanpour: that’s true

McCain: you know yokels like Bachmann
and Cain would be the first to attack Obama if
Qadaffi had killed 700,000 people

Amanpour: but is there a vital national interest?

McCain: Reagan invaded Grenada because
those medical students were about to graduate and come here

Amanpour: what about Libya

McCain: Barack Obama had to bomb
Libya because of Pan Am 103 and German disco

Amanpour: the GOP candidates have
suddenly realized Obama has gotten us bogged
down in a useless war in Afghanistan

McCain: I don’t what the hell Mitt Romney
is talking about

Amanpour: few people do

McCain: the surge worked!

Amanpour: so I’m told

McCain: I admit Afghanistan is a big mess
but the Taliban are very mean

Amanpour: should we just leave?

McCain: we need to invade Eastern Afghanistan
but give the show one more season to gets its ratings up

Amanpour: I see

McCain: It’s a Crocker!

Amanpour: Pakistan arrested the informants
who helped the U.S. get Osama bin Laden

McCain: because we abandoned Pakistan years ago!

Amanpour: ok

McCain: we’ve poured billions in Pakistan
and we’re not getting a good return on our investment

Amanpour: it’s the Lehman Brothers of Central Asia

McCain: we need to stay there forever

Amanpour: what do you think of the
GOP Presidential candidates?

McCain: they’re all appeasing isolationist idiots

Amanpour: thanks for coming Grumpy

[ break ]

Amanpour: why is Pakistan so mad about the
U.S. military action on the soil?

Haqqani: we’re just trying to find out
what happened

Amanpour: It looks like the people who
helped catch the world’s worst terrorist are being punished

Haqqani: oh no not at all

Cheney: the Pakistanis were embarrassed -
but let’s not be too hard on them we love those crazy guys

Ignatius: Americans were shocked that
Pakistan allowed bin Laden to live in their country

Haqqani: that’s bullshit David

Ignatius: but the Pakistanis were shocked
that we violated their sovereignty

Amanpour: aren’t we in more danger
from terrorism than ever?

Cheney: We are at war - it’s very naive to think
we cannot police the world

Amanpour: really?

Cheney: if Michelle Bachmann is elected
we will surely be attacked again

Amanpour: the American people seem
to be tired of war

Cheney: Obama is soft on attacking on
Libya and Herman Cain is just crazy

Amanpour: that’s fascinating

Cheney: Obama creating a terrible deficit

Amanpour: I though deficits don’t matter

Cheney: who said that?

Amanpour: do you know where the terrorists are?

Haqqani: if Americans are tired of the
war imagine how people in Afghanistan feel

Ignatius: Obama has concluded that killing
terrorists is working but nation-building is not

Cheney: no we must never pull troops
out of Afghanistan!

Amanpour: easy there Liz

Cheney: Attack! Bomb! Kill!

Amanpour: we’ll take a break

[ break ]
***************