Not since the worst days of the Great Recession in October of 2008 (during the Cheney/Bush disaster) has the Dow Jones plunged to this level, and lost over 500 points in one day.
Thanks, Regressive republican Congress and Teabaggers, for holding the country hostage so you could force through your agenda of taking in absolutely no additional revenue in the form of taxes on millionaires, or even the closing of tax loopholes that corporations take advantage of. Thanks for bringing us to the brink of economic disaster to have your way, a technique no party has ever abused before in American history, bringing the US on the edge of defaulting on our loans. Thanks for not only refusing to spend money to push this sluggish economy forward, but for actually cutting spending and firing more and more government employees, thereby slowing down the economy even more, adding to the unemployment rolls, and diminishing the amount of payroll taxes the US collects because there are fewer people working.
The investors, speculators, buyers, and everyone remotely connected with the stock market are so jinxed by your selfish, destructive, un-American behavior, that the market lost over 500 points, plunging almost as low as it did at the end of the Bush administration. Investors fear plummeting into another recession.
Remember this graph? It's the last year of the Bush administration and the first year of the Obama administration. You can see Obama's first year is a mirror image of Bush's last year. Bush left after losing 750,000 jobs a month in the center of the graph. We lost fewer and fewer jobs during the Obama administration, as seen by the smaller and smaller blue lines, and then began gaining jobs. Last year we were gaining around 200,000 jobs a month!
Oh, but the Regressive republicans wouldn't stand for that very long. Nope. Are they going to stand for economic improvement with a president that's the "wrong" party, the "wrong" age, the "wrong" color? Not with another election coming up in 2012.
The stimulus money that was pushing the economy ran out. There's been no talk of another stimulus. So instead of spending more temporarily to get us out of this deep, deadly Bush recession, the Regressive republicans did the exact opposite: cutting programs, cutting funding, and firing government employees.
Let's hope voters remember who insisted on this debt ceiling / job killing / spending cuts bill next year.
This is now so much more than a story about hacking. It's about bribery, deception, interfering with the police investigation of a homicide, invasion of privacy, political corruption, collusion and immoral practices.
August 16 UPDATE: A former News of the World reporter has alleged that there was a massive cover-up of phone hacking at the paper. Details here.
July 19 UPDATE: Sean Hoare, the whistleblower to this whole phone hacking scandal, was found dead in his apartment earlier this week.
July 18 UPDATE: Britain's second-highest cop, police commissioner John Yates has resigned because of his refusal to investigate phone hacking in 2009.
July 17 SECOND UPDATE: Late today Britain's top police chief quit in the face of allegations that police officers had accepted money from Murdoch's News of the World paper and not done enough to investigate hacking charges that surfaced as far back as 2005. This has apparently been going on for a long time and the corruption runs deep. More info here from Reuters.
July 17 UPDATE: Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch's former British CEO, has been arrested in London.
July 15 SECOND UPDATE: Another major player in Rupert's criminal corporation resigns... From the Associated Press:
LONDON (AP) — Rupert Murdoch accepted the resignation of The Wall Street Journal's publisher and the chief of his British operations on Friday as the once-defiant media mogul struggled to control an escalating phone hacking scandal with apologies to the public and the family of a murdered schoolgirl.
July 15 UPDATE: Murdoch's Chief Executive of News Corp, Rebekah Brooks, has resigned as of this morning.
July 14 UPDATE: The FBI has begun an investigation on Murdoch and News Corp's alleged hacking of the phones of 9/11 victims. Several prominent politicians, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), have called for investigations into News Corp. activities to see if any U.S. laws were broken by the company. As of today 9 arrests have been made.
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The world is caving in around Rupert Murdock. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
It all started in England when Prince William dealt with a knee injury. Information from his phone conversations with his doctor, which no one else knew about, mysteriously appeared in Rupert's News of the World tabloid. This started an investigation called for by Buckingham Palace and continued by The Guardian, a well-respected British newspaper.
Turns out the voice mails of 4,000 private citizens were hacked by Rupert's minions -- including home and mobile phones. Members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, even a 13 year old girl who disappeared were hacked. Rupert's minions hacked the girl's phone and listened to cries of appeal from her parents. When voice mail messages were full, these scumbags deleted them to make room for more. This led police to believe the girl was listening to, and deleting, her messages. Eventually they found her dead body.
So in addition to the criminal activity of hacking into 4,000 private phones, they interfered with the investigation of a homicide.
Scumbag Murdoch's employees also hacked phones of deceased British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Now it's becoming evident that he and his minions hacked into the phones of the victims of 9/11. Collusion and corruption even included top officials of Scotland Yard.
Who else has Rupert Murdoch and his band of criminals hacked in this country?
After 168 years of publishing, Rupert was forced to shut down his News of the World tabloid last weekend. The final Sunday edition was free of advertisements. Many non-profit organizations that were given the chance to run free ads in the final paper declined.
The managing editor of the News of the World tabloid is now managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, also owned by Rupert Murdoch.
A spokesperson for the family that formerly owned the Wall Street Journal has stated earlier today that they rue the day they sold their newspaper to him.
The far reaching scandal has forced Murdoch to withdraw his $12 billion bid to purchase satellite giant British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) satellite news service. He has apparently given up (for now) his obsession to completely take over the news media in Britain.
Murdoch's News Corp. is a criminal enterprise and needs to be investigated and shut down. So far 2 of his editors have been arrested. In the last several days the value of News Corp stock has dropped $10 billion. Rupert has been purchasing his own stock by the billions in order to attempt to keep the value up.
Criminal activity this widespread is systemic and cannot possibly occur without the knowledge of News Corp's top officials, including Rupert Murdoch.
The investigation is just beginning in both the US and England.
Although this story is huge, it is barely being discussed on Fox.
Interesting that when Sarah Palin's email was hacked, Bill O'Reilly said "the hackers...should GO TO PRISON FOR A VERY LONG TIME." You only need watch the first 20 seconds below. Apparently hacking is a very serious crime when Fox's owner isn't the one doing it.
So let's see if I understand this. If you hack into The Quitter's email, you should "go to jail for a long time." If Fox's owner hacks into 4,000 people's phones including the Royal Family's and Gordon Brown's, it's not a story that deserves much attention from this same Fox Hole.
The Regressive republicans want it both ways. They complain and whine about jobs and yet on the local, state and national level they're firing government workers by the tens of thousands, including teachers, cops and firefighters. This last jobs report shows that private sector jobs increased by about 60,000 (still not high enough, of course) but minus the 40,000 that were fired from state and local positions, the net increase was about 20,000.
So they're whining about jobs one minute and firing thousands the next. They actually want the jobless rate to increase for their own political gain next election year, as un-American and treasonous as that sounds. The Ditz from Minnesota admitted that yesterday, when a CNBC reporter said as unemployment rises so does your chance to be elected next year, to which she replied with a big cheery "I hope so!"
And let's remember that last year the Regressive republicans won back the House by running on "jobs, jobs jobs!"
So, Mr Weeper of the House, where are the jobs? Have John Boner and the Regressive Republicans in the House put even one jobs bill on the table? No. They only things they've become obsessed with are abortion, same sex marriage and even more tax breaks for millionaires.
It's simple. Without a big stimulus putting work and money in the pockets of Middle Americans, they can't spend money and push the economy forward again.
Giving greater tax breaks to millionaires does nothing. They've had these tax breaks for 10 years and aren't handing out jobs -- they're sitting on their money. If the middle class gets jobs and money, THEY SPEND IT. More buying = more selling. Supply and demand both rise. If the middle class has money to spend, the economy moves forward. Problem solved.
They claim to be strict Constitutionalists. They claim every law needs to be backed by the Constitution. Yet though they claim to "love the Constitution," the Regressive Republicans came up with 42 amendments in the last Congress alone to attempt to change the Constitution.
As listed on The Rachel Maddow Show, these are just a few of the more recent attempts to change the document the rightwingers allegedly love so much:
Amendment to make English the official language
Change the Fourteenth Amendment so you are not necessarily a US citizen by being born here
Ban the US government from buying stock in a company
Ban the president from entering into a treaty that would change US currency into some sort of global currency
Repeal Seventeenth Amendment, where we get to elect senators
Parental rights amendment to make sure the UN doesn't repeal parents' rights
Ban gay marriage
Ban abortion
Ban desecration of the flag
Ban deficits
Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment to ban the income tax
Keep this in mind the next time one of them screams about this law or that law "that's un-Constitutional!" The United States Constitution apparently is a document that should be changed, at will, for the convenience of whatever the Regressives are pushing at any given moment, to suit their agenda.
Title says it all. And the poll was paid for by a rightwing radio host, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
When asked if they preferred Obama or Palin, 42% of responders leaned towards Obama, while only 36% chose Palin. Of those who preferred Obama, 35% said they felt strongly about their choice. 24% felt similarly about Palin.
"Although it is some time from now, thinking about the election for President of the United States next year, if the election were held today and the candidates were Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Sarah Palin, for whom would you vote or are you undecided?"
Yes, the man who has suffered mass resignations for the past two weeks from his alleged presidential campaign -- and who has been married three times -- is giving advice to New York State which recently legalized same sex marriage, the 6th and largest state to do so.
America, according to Gingrich, is "drifting toward a terrible muddle."
Newton Leroy Gingrich says he thinks marriage is "between a man and a woman." Or in his case, between a man and a woman... and another woman... and another woman.
Although he strongly opposes gay marriage, he continues his enthusiastic support for adultery.
He said he thinks the nation should be defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. I have to wonder what Newt's gay sister thinks of this.
Hey, if you want to "defend marriage," then work to outlaw divorce. That's what's destroying 50% of marriages in this country.
This week marked the return of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV, at his former time of 8pm eastern. Here are the Top Ten reasons to watch Countdown, as presented by Keith on The Late Show with David Letterman:
Current is on DirecTV Channel 358; Dish Network Channel 196; Comcast Channel 107; ATT Uverse Channel 189; Time Warner Channel 103 or 142.
Atlanta-based far rightwing AM radio blowhard Neal Boortz:
"We got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta."
The next day, Boortz's spokespeople as well as Cox Broadcasting, which syndicates him, back-pedaled and pretended that rant wasn't racist and didn't call for vigilantism and direct violence, namely, shooting people who he thinks look like thugs in the streets.
If a Liberal said something like that, he would have been fired immediately.
After appearing on Fox's Sunday news program with Chris Wallace, and stating that "the most consistently misinformed media viewers in every poll is Fox... Fox viewers," Jon Stewart discovered that his statement was wrong. Turns out Fox viewers apparently were not THE MOST uninformed viewers in every poll, but rather at or NEAR the bottom in every poll.
Nonetheless, on his very next show, he displayed a couple of dozen total lies perpetrated by the Fox channel. It's a very funny segment:
Last week, Newton Leroy Gingrich's entire staff of top advisers abandoned ship. And a couple of weeks ago we heard that Gingrich, who wants to be the financially conservative president, had a half million dollars in debt to fancy-shmancy jewelry store, Tiffany's.
Now, another two top fund-raising campaign aides resigned, and we've discovered Mr Financial Responsibility had another million-dollar line of credit to Tiffany's. Nothing illegal here, of course, but how do you justify such a thing when your campaign is already cash-strapped?
Sarah Palin's stops a couple of weeks ago turned out to be public relations disasters. ("The Statue of Liberty was a gift, warning us not to make mistakes other countries made; Paul Revere fired shots and rang bells to warn the British," etc.)
Even The Daily Show's John Oliver said to Palin at one of the stops, "This bus is the perfect metaphor for your presidential campaign: a flag-draped monstrosity with no real direction."
Seems like the tour has stopped as quickly as it began. But it was never meant to kick off a presidential campaign. Even a head as empty as hers has enough of a brain to know that she can't win the Republican nomination, let alone the general election. It was a vacation/promotional tour to push her ghost-written books and her upcoming self-indulgent movie, hilariously called Undefeated.
Gov Mark Sanford, REPUBLICAN, yet mysteriously identified with a (D) on Fox
Sen David Vitter, REPUBLICAN from Louisiana
Hypocrite Cantor
What do these three men have in common? Well, they are all Republicans. And they all have recently had embarrassing sex scandals. Actual sex scandals involving actual physical sex between them and their mistresses / aides' wives / prostitutes.
But not one had been asked to resign by Fox or any of the major Republican members of Congress at the time of the scandals, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia).
Now, it's about Anthony Weiner.
Anthony Weiner (D-New York)
He recently admitted to emailing / tweeting lewd pictures of himself to women. He also chatted online with some of them. No physical sex, no paying prostitutes, no laws broken that we know of. Yet Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) has said he thinks Weiner should resign.
Typical Regressive Republican Hypocrisy as you would expect. Visit Rachel Maddow's website and watch a great piece she did on msnbc earlier this evening, actually showing video clips of Cantor saying he doesn't think it's up to him whether Sanford, Vitter or Ensign should resign -- the voters in their states should make that decision. But he was right there pushing Weiner (D) to resign for a much lesser offense.
Seems like if David Vitter, who paid prostitutes and actually had sex with them, can remain in office, so can Anthony Weiner.
Some background music for reading this blog entry:
Yes, Simple Sarah. The Half-Term Governor of Alaska. The Twitter Quitter. She who "don't know much about history." Or anything else for that matter. But let's concentrate on history.
The Statue of Liberty
Did you know it was meant to remind us not to make the mistakes other countries made? Or that it was so we don't go gettin' all Socialist and stuff? Well, according to Sarah Palin at a rally in September 2010, “This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies."
And then a couple of days ago it became, "It is, of course, the symbol for Americans to be reminded of other countries -- because this was gifted to us, of course, by the French -- other countries...warning us to never make the mistakes that some of them had made. This is a symbol, a reminder, of what it is that we can do right in the name of freedom."
No, Sarah. You get an F. It's actually a welcome to immigrants! You know, those foreigners the rightwingers can't stand! No wonder poor Sarah couldn't keep that thought in that head!
Here's what it actually says:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Then, just a few days later, we learned the true story of Paul Revere:
"He who warned uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."
No, Sarah. You get another F.
As any elementary school student can probably tell you, Paul Revere was not attempting to warn the British when he rode around crying, "The British are coming." Nor was he ringing bells and trying to protect gun rights.
Wow. Just wow.
And to make matters worse, some of Palin's brainless followers tried to cover her ignorance of American history by rewriting it! -- changing the entry on Paul Revere in Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit) to reflect the nonsense she blathered on the subject.
