News Nuggets 699

A newly-discovered Turquoise Lizard in Papua, New Guinea.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT MURDOCH NUGGET!!
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Ran 'Black Ops' Department, Former Executive Claims from the Daily Telegraph [of the UK]
"Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television channel had a “black ops” department that may have illegally hacked private telephone records, a former executive for the station has alleged. ... Dan Cooper, who helped launch Fox News as managing editor in 1996, said that a “brain room” carried out “counter intelligence” on the channel’s enemies from its New York headquarters."
Now why, prey, would a legitimate news organization need a 'black ops' department?

News Corporation Admitted in 2009 to Hacking U.S. Rival’s Website from Raw Story
"News Corporation admitted at a trial in 2009 that computers at its U.S. marketing division, News America Marketing, hacked into the secure website of a rival U.S.-based company 11 times, according to Bloomberg."
Bloomberg's original story is HERE. As an aside, along with the Guardian and the New York Times (see below), Bloomberg News Service has been all over this Murdoch story.  Indeed, in my view it has been lapping the Wall Street Journal virtually every news cycle.

Syria: Past the Point of No Return (Paul Salem) from the National Interest
"The crisis in Syria is passing the tipping point. After four months of repression, protests are large and getting larger."

Gaddafi Short on Money and Fuel (Daniel Stone) from the Daily Beast
"As the Libyan rebels continue to drive toward Tripoli, U.S. intelligence officials say that the embattled Muammar Gaddafi is showing new signs of strain and desperation."

In Libya, Freedom Boosts Berber Boom in Western Libya from Agence France Presse
"Speaking Berber could land people in jail under Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's rule, but since the rebels now control the Nafusa mountains southwest of Tripoli, it now represents the language of freedom. As such, Berber culture has flowered anew. It is on the radio, in newspapers and museums, in songs and in language courses."

As U.S. Steps Back, Europe Takes Bigger Role in Mideast Peace Push from the New York Times
"That may suit the administration just fine. The White House, several officials said, has deliberately kept a low profile since President Obama’s speech on the Middle East in May, in which he tried unsuccessfully to break the stalemate by proposing a starting point for negotiating the contours of a Palestinian state."
Had to happen.  Someone needs to start stepping up -- the US cannot be everyone's version of the lone ranger.  The ranger has a really bad hangover right now and won't be able to buy Silver new horseshoes anytime soon.

A related item here:
Pentagon Braces for Much Deeper Military Spending Cuts as Part of Debt Deal from the Washington Post
"While a reduction of $1 trillion would be significant, he said, it would represent a much smaller-percentage decline in defense spending than what the Pentagon encountered at the end of the Cold War, when its budget declined by 36 percent between 1985 and 1998."
A good development if it happens.

Has Roger Ailes Hacked American Phones for Fox News? (Leslie Savan) from the Nation
"... rumors have floated in the press and on the Internet about possible phone hacking in that special-security-clearance-only bunker at Fox HQ for years."

The Evil of Rupert Murdoch (Roger Simon) from Politico
"I had a conversation with him about various sections of the paper. “I don’t understand anything about American sport,” he told me breezily, “but I know the coloreds like it.” I told him that in America we no longer used the word “coloreds,” that it was considered insulting. He looked at me the way Queen Victoria might have looked at a footman who had told her she was using the wrong fork to eat her pheasant. The evening went downhill from there"

Guardian, N.Y. Times Worked to Break News Corp. Hacking Case from the Washington Post
"Two newspapers on opposites sides of the Atlantic were instrumental in cracking open the massive phone-hacking scandal in Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire. And they might not have been able to do so without a little Anglo-American cooperation."
GOOD FOR YOU, NY Times!! Good to see some US news organization is on the stick!!

Obama Tries to Box in House GOP (Steve Benen) from Washington Monthly
"The president wasn’t speaking from prepared remarks, so it’s possible this came together by accident, but it sounded to me like Obama was intentionally boxing in House Republicans. The point wasn’t to endorse the Gang of Six, per se, so much as to use the Gang of Six to make a larger point: the White House wants a balanced approach, a bipartisan group in the Senate wants a balanced approach, and the American mainstream wants a balanced approach. Now all we need is for the House majority to wake up and smell reality."

GOP Leaders Must Free Themselves From the Tea Party’s Grip (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"Media reports are touting the Senate’s Gang of Six and its new budget outline. But the news that explains why the nation is caught in this debt-ceiling fiasco is the gang warfare inside the Republican Party. We are witnessing the disintegration of Tea Party Republicanism."
From your pen to God's ear, E.J.!!

Two distinct narratives on how the debt ceiling issue is playing out:
(1) Is GOP Quietly Negotiating a Surrender in Debt Ceiling Fight? (Jonathan Bernstein) from the Washington Post
"Where do things stand in the debt limit mess? My best guess: What we’re really seeing right now is Republicans attempting to implement an organized retreat and surrender."
My suspicion is that Bernstein is largely correct here.  


Politico has a somewhat different take:
(2) Debt Limit Compromise Resisted by House GOP from Politico
"“They are going to torch the House,” said one veteran Democratic strategist, predicting a steady escalation of political heat on Republicans in the remaining days before the Aug. 2 deadline."

Fourth Openly Gay Judicial Candidate, Nominated By Obama from the Huffington Post
"President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that he is nominating Michael Walter Fitzgerald to serve as a judge on the federal court for the Central District of California. Fitzgerald is the fourth openly gay judicial candidate Obama has no"

Why Taxpayers Are So Angry—and So Wrong About Spending (Mark Thoma) from the Fiscal Times
"The fact is, most people believe they pay far more to the government than they receive in return. To a surprising degree, Americans underestimate their actual consumption of government services and tax break"

The GOP’s Fuzzy Math (Matt Miller) from the Washington Post
"It’s one thing for a political party to lose its moral bearings – after all, community values evolve, and large swaths of people and their elected representatives can end up on the wrong side of history on such questions as slavery, suffrage, and civil rights. But when a party loses its mathematical bearings – well, that’s a little shocking. Yet that’s what’s happened to the Republican Party."

House GOP Suicide Squad Gets Bigger (Steve Benen) from Washington Monthly
"Senate Republicans figured if the letter picked up no more than 50 signatures, the Senate’s “Plan B” could pick up some Democratic support, get through the House, and offer a way out of this mess. If Walsh’s effort picked up 100 signatures, we’re all in big trouble. Greg Sargent reports today on the Suicide Squad’s progress. The news isn’t good."

The Victimhood Myths of Palin Fans (Jonathan Kay) from Salon
"...in 2009, when I criticized her decision to resign as governor of Alaska. Many of the right-wing critics who supplied comments on my newspaper's website plainly had decided that Palin was a sort of political Christ figure, who has been martyred for America’s political sins."
A very disturbing picture of Palin fans.

AMAZING WORLD WAR II PHOTO NUGGET!!
Blitz Britain: Amazing Color Pictures of London Under Siege from Nazi Bombers During World War II from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"For many, photographs from the World War II have only been seen in grainy black and white. But now, new colour images have emerged that show the full horror of the destruction inflicted by Nazi bombings across London."
Awesome pictures!!

EBOOK NUGGET!!
E-Book Revolution Upends a Publishing Course from the New York Times
"As the students scribbled in notebooks and clicked on laptops, Ms. Pittis recounted some of the biggest developments in the industry so far in 2011."

BEATLES PHOTO NUGGET!!
Beatles Photographs From Their American Debut Head To Christie's (PHOTOS) from Huffington Post
"Photographer Mike Mitchell was only 18 when he received a presspass to document the Beatles as they arrived in Washington D.C.'s Union Station to perform their first concert in the country. For almost 50 years the photographs from that historical moment in Beatlemania had been gathering dust in Mitchell's basement -- until he became a victim of the U.S. housing crisis. It was then that the photographer decided to dig them out and approach Christie's about auctioning the black-and-white pictures."