Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Diagnosis: Reform (Capital Eye)
For some individuals, how Congress aims to reform America’s health care system is literally a matter of life and death. For some industries, it could mean the difference between weathering the economic storm or shuttering their businesses. Nobody knows yet what the shape or scope of the final bill will be. It may not even make it to President Obama’s desk. But one thing is certain: The American health care system is set to get a lobotomy and diverse special interests are spending big bucks to make sure they’re in the surgery room when it happens.

Just so you’ll know what the parasites are protecting by these donations to Congress:
CEO Compensation: Who Said Health Care is in a Financial Crisis? (by Doctor K at WebMD, thanks to DCblogger at Corrente)
Those of you who are struggling to pay for your generic medicines or wondering why the doctor is charging you a $5.00 co-pay, give some thought to these facts about how our health care dollars are allocated. At the end of this post, there is a list of 23 health companies I found on Forbes.com, what the CEO was paid in 2005, and the average paid to the CEO in the past five years. Imagine adding vice presidents, Board of Directors, stock holders and the other 200-300 other companies all cashing in on your health. [TOTAL 2005: 559.8 mil, TOTAL 5-Year: 14.9 billion]

Bill Clinton Sees Hope for Health Care Changes, This Time (New York Times)
As he watches the new Democratic president take on the issue that stymied him 16 years ago, Mr. Clinton has concluded that Mr. Obama has a better chance than he did, both because of the way the new proposals are structured and because of a national mood that is more supportive of major action. “He’s got a better Congress, a more receptive climate,” Mr. Clinton said in a recent interview. “He also has, frankly, a better — at least more politically saleable — set of proposals.”
So why is Obama listening only to Blue Dogs, Republicans, and, like Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, servants of the health insurance parasites who make so much money by taking our money and then denying us coverage and care?

Daschle Folds on Federal Public Health Care Plan (The Note, ABC News)
In an attempt at bipartisanship, three former majority leaders of the U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole, offered their solution today to the biggest obstacle to achieving health care reform — a public option… In a blow to President Obama and many of his Democratic allies in the health care fight, the plan recommends that there be no federal public option, but rather state or regional public-sponsored networks that would compete with private health plans, according to the summary released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center. “If you want to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or dead on arrival, in my view you put the public plan in it,” Dole said when asked whether there were any non-negotiables to deal with when drafting the bipartisan recommendations.

Daschle beds down with the enemies of health care reform (by Alegre)
There’s absolutely no excuse for them to fail in getting at least a public option into a reform package.  This is the kind of thing we elected them to do – health care reform.  It’s what people have said they wanted in poll after poll after poll.  If the Democrats in Congress fail to push for a public option and push it hard – and if the WH fails to demand it – then it’s time we started asking the obvious question… What in the hell did we elect all of those Democrats for last November? [Emphasis added.] This should be a slam dunk dammit.  We don’t need high-profile Democrats bedding down with Republicans to scuttle reform. We need them to grow a spine and get this thing done and done right.

Republicans try to obstruct health care bill. (Think Progress)
[Wednesday], the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee began marking up Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) Affordable Health Care Act. Republicans, who pushed for the incomplete HELP legislation to be studied by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and then pretended that the agency scored the entire bill, tried to obstruct the effort by complaining that the CBO had not yet scored the full proposal. During the hearing, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) argued that the hearing be postponed until a full cost-analysis is available.

The GOP then maneuvered to introduce a host of amendments simply as a delaying tactic. Rather than offering constructive improvements that could lower costs and expand coverage, a good number of the GOP’s proposed amendments do nothing to solve the health care crisis. The Wonk Room has the run-down.

Senate Committee Delays Health Care Effort (Political Wire)
The Senate Finance Committee “has postponed the markup of its health care reform bill until after the Fourth of July recess,” Roll Call reports. The markup was expected to begin next Tuesday.

House Republicans Unveil Thin Health Care Plan (Political Wire)
Roll Call: “House Republicans presented a four-page outline of their health care reform plan Wednesday but said they didn’t know yet how much it would cost, how they would pay for it and how many of the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance would be covered by it.”

All Hat No Cattle

Taking the Hypocritical Oath (by Paul Krugman)
I know it’s a tough competition, but this just might be the most hypocritical thing I’ve seen in the past year: “On Monday, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) introduced the ‘Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized, and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS) Act of 2009,’ a new bill prohibiting Medicare or Medicaid from using ‘comparative effectiveness research to deny coverage.’” How bad is it? Let me count the ways.

1. Politicians who rail against wasteful government spending are taking action to prevent the government from reining in … wasteful spending.
2. Politicians who warn that the burden of entitlements is killing the federal budget are stepping in to block … the single most painless route to reducing the growth of entitlements.
3. They’re doing it in the name of avoiding “rationing of health care” … but they’re specifically addressing taxpayer-funded care. If you want to go out and buy a medically useless treatment, Medicare won’t stop you.
4. These same politicians are, of course, opposed to efforts to expand coverage. In other words, it’s evil for government to “ration care” by only paying for things that work; it is, however, perfectly OK, indeed virtuous, to ration care by refusing to pay for any care at all.

The Bipartisanship of Fools (by E.J. Dionne)
Where did we get the idea that the only good health care bill is a bipartisan bill? Is bipartisanship more important than whether a proposal is practical and effective?… It’s one thing to compromise to pick up votes, which one hopes is what Baucus is doing. It’s another to compromise in exchange for nothing at all. The first is bipartisanship with a purpose. The second is the bipartisanship of fools.

This can’t be good:
Dem, GOP centrists meet in secret (The Hill, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Centrist House lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are working together privately on healthcare reform.  The talks have been so secretive and politically sensitive that some members interviewed by The Hill refused to name other legislators involved in the bipartisan effort. 
“Centrist”, of course, means corporate bought hack.

New Poll Shows Tremendous Support For Public Health Care Option (Campaign for America’s Future, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Eighty-three percent of Americans favor and only 14 percent oppose “creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase” according to EBRI, a conservative business research organization. [Emphasis added.] This flatly contradicts conservatives’ loudest attack against President Obama’s plan to provide quality, affordable health care for all.

Obama Boost: New Poll Shows 76% Support For Choice Of Public Plan (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
New poll numbers from NBC/Wall Street Journal produce two major and potentially conflicting story lines when it comes to the Obama administration’s efforts for a health care overhaul. On the one hand, the American public overwhelmingly favors a choice between getting insurance coverage either through the private market or a government run option. Indeed, 76 percent of respondents said it was either “extremely” or “quite” important to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.”

Poll: On Health Care, Public Trusts Insurance Companies More Than GOP Leaders (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Wow. With the health care debate gearing up, some new numbers from Gallup suggest that the public doesn’t exactly have a tremendous amount of confidence in Republican leaders on the issue… Only 34% are confident that GOP leaders Congress will make the right decisions about health care reform — less than the insurance companies (35%) or the pharmaceutical companies (40%). By contrast, more have confidence in Dem leaders (42%), and even more trust Obama (58%).

So why do Republicans keep winning the day? How do we continue NOT getting what most of us want?
HOW WE STAY BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
How does your nation discuss major issues? Very, very poorly. Consider two more reports about health cares costs, found in [Wednesday’s] Post and Times. The Post assembled a trio of scribes to compile its report. They spoke about mammoth possible costs involved in reaching full coverage… It might cost quite a bit, the trio of scribes report… There’s nothing “wrong” or inaccurate about this news report. But in accord with established Hard Pundit Law, this report omits the most significant Big Giant Fact about our health-care system: On a per capita basis, we’re already spending twice as much as comparable nations which get better health outcomes and already have full coverage! [Emphasis added.]

Surely, any sane person can see the enormous big-picture relevance of that Big Fact. But this Huge Giant Fact simply never appears in our discussions of health-care “overhaul.”… Nor have [Americans] heard any liberal journal or interest group telling them this in a disciplined way–or much of anything else, for that matter… Our big career liberals tend to slumber and doze. By contrast, pseudo-con “think tanks” and Republican pols aggressively push anti-government spins. [Americans] have heard from the right. From our side? Perhaps not so much.
For more than eight years now, I’ve tried to make the point that we on the left need a media strategy. How many times will we allow ourselves to be outflanked, out-strategized, and overrun by a small minority of right wingers, before we start fighting back in a smart and coordinated way?

Another kindred spirit:
The Bi-Partisan Repudiation of the Left (by Peter Daou at Consider This News)
[I]f you look back at the Bush and Clinton years, rightwing hate found its biggest platform on major media outlets, who gladly provided national soapboxes to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and others, while elected Democrats said or did precious little about it and ran away from the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ mantle like the plague… [Y]ear after year, the traditional media and political establishment, including Democrats, allowed a parade of liberal-bashers to poison the national dialogue and to demonize a large segment of the population. The results are manifested today. And it continues…

Reporters and pundits who chuckle at hate radio hosts or regurgitate their words, and Democrats who fail to mount a vigorous defense of progressive ideology – or worse, happily shun the left – should consider the ramifications. I took heat for disagreeing with the ‘elevate Limbaugh’ strategy orchestrated by senior Democratic strategists and assisted by the White House. But I feel more strongly than ever that haters like Limbaugh, Hannity and O’Reilly should be marginalized, not legitimized and elevated. After all, words can have deadly consequences. Anyone who thinks it’s helpful to mock the “far left” – especially when that term is used overbroadly to describe a wide swath of dedicated progressive activists – is ignoring the results of the unmitigated assault on liberals and liberalism, a campaign of hate that has calcified the kind of blind hatred that ultimately leads to violence.

Action Alert: June 25th demonstration Washington DC (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Can’t come to Washington DC on June 25? Could you visit the district office of your Senator or Representative? If you can’t take time off from work, see if you can get a lunch time appointment, assuming your office is near your representative’s office. Ask them to support single payer. In person visits are the gold standard of citizen action.

At least one Republican makes sense:
Sen. Johnny Isakson thinks a public plan competing against private health care programs is a ‘good system.’ (Think Progress)
On Monday, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told the Georgia Public Broadcasting News that although he opposes a single-payer system, he would support a system where there is competition between public and private health care programs: “ISAKSON: Having private competition, facilities like Emory that are private, public like Grady competing with one another is a good system. What we have got to guard against is becoming a single-payer government system. You take competition out of health care and you’ll have less quality and a higher cost.”
Click through to listen to the audio.

Holy #*&%@$!!!!! ANOTHER Republican makes sense:
Frist On Using Reconciliation Process To Pass Health Care Reform: ‘It’s Legal, It’s Ethical’ (Think Progress)
On May 1, Congress passed President Obama’s budget, which included language allowing for the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform with a simple majority in the Senate. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said any use of budget reconciliation by Obama would be “regarded as an act of violence” against Republicans, and likened it to “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.” Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) made similar remarks, while Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) called reconciliation a “purely partisan exercise.”

But at least one Republican recognizes that the use of reconciliation — while rare — is not unprecedented or unethical, let alone “an act of violence.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show [Tuesday] morning, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said of budget reconciliation: “It’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it.” Further, Frist said that he believed Obama would be able to get a health care package passed this year:

WATCH: Conservative Media Paranoia Over Health Care Reform (by Brian Frederick & Karl Frisch at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Boortz fear monging: “Obama’s health care plan is going to end up killing people” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

GOP Planning Televised Counter-Attack Against Obama And ABC News (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
The Republican National Committee, furious with ABC News for granting the Obama administration airtime to discuss health care, is planning to use its in-house TV studio to air a counter-attack starring GOP members of Congress, according to an internal RNC memo I’ve obtained. [Tuesday], after ABC announced that they would be broadcasting wall-to-wall coverage next Wednesday from the White House featuring Obama answering audience questions about health care, the RNC slammed ABC for planning to air “a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda.” ABC dismissed the criticism.

Now, however, the RNC is planning to respond — on the air. In a memo sent to GOP press secretaries on the Hill that a source sent over, the RNC wrote: “…The RNC TV studio will be available the entire day of June 24th. Please RSVP at your earliest convenience as space is limited.” Read the full memo here.

Bruce: ABC News “turned into Monica Lewinsky … no more is it interns servicing the president, it’s an entire network” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

FLASHBACK: When Fox News boasted about its “unprecedented” access to the Bush White House (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Suddenly ABC News has become “state controlled” media because it’s working closely with the Obama White House on a primetime program. At least that’s how Michelle Malkin and her friends explain the world to their outraged readers. So if ABC News is now government controlled, what did that make Fox News in 2008? “FOX News’ Bret Baier was granted unprecedented access by George W. Bush as the president begins the final year of his extraordinarily consequential tenure. This historic documentary – shot in high definition – takes you inside the Oval Office, to the president’s Texas ranch, aboard Air Force One and into his private sanctums in the White House residence.”

Urge to surge (by Paul Krugman)
So I’ve been reading stories about a “surge” in housing starts. And it’s true that starts were up 17 percent over the previous month. But here’s the thing: new-home construction has come to a virtual standstill, so even large percentage changes mean only a handful of extra homes started. If we’re building 6 homes a month nationwide, and that goes to 7, it’s a 17 percent rise — but makes almost no difference in real life. OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but here’s what housing starts actually look like:

Only a Hint of Roosevelt in Financial Overhaul (by Joe Nocera, New York Times)
On Wednesday, President Obama unveiled what he described as “a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression.” In terms of the sheer number of proposals, outlined in an 88-page document the administration released on Tuesday, that is undoubtedly true. But in terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan — and more important, in terms of its overall effect on Wall Street’s modus operandi — it’s not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression. Rather, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value…

Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing: additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul. The new bank supervisor, for instance, is really nothing more than two smaller agencies combined into one. The plans calls for new regulations aimed at the ratings agencies, but offers nothing that would suggest radical revamping. The plan places enormous trust in the judgment of the Federal Reserve — trust that critics say has not really been borne out by its actions during the Internet and housing bubbles.

More notes on the regulation plan (by Paul Krugman)
1. Cheers for the extension of regulation, including capital requirements, to all “Tier 1 FHCs” — which, in the report’s jargon, means any financial institution, whether or not it’s a conventional bank, that might have to be rescued in a crisis.
2. Damnation with faint praise for the 5% “skin in the game” provision: it’s just too weak. George Soros, who should know, says it should be at least 10 percent, probably more.
3. Cheers for the poke in the eye to right-wingers eager to blame the Community Reinvestment Act.

Some Lawmakers Question Expanded Reach for the Fed (New York Times)
Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said the central bank’s failure to be a tough-minded regulator over the last decade had left him and other lawmakers without “a lot of confidence in the Fed at this point.”… Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who until recently was publicly supportive of an expanded role for the Fed, said a significant number of lawmakers have raised concerns and that it would probably be one of the harder issues to resolve.

Banks Brace for Fight Over Consumer Protection Agency (New York Times)
On Wednesday, President Obama proposed creating a federal agency that would require banks, mortgage lenders and credit card companies to provide consumers with a more nutritious diet, financially speaking. But what is good for consumers may not always square with what is good for banks. And the banking industry — which says it stands to lose billions of dollars — is bracing for a fight as the administration’s plan to overhaul the way the industry is regulated heads to Capitol Hill.
Banks don’t need no stinkin’ nutritious diets!

Where Credit Is Due (by Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review, book review of Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett)
I can’t imagine there’s a better vehicle to tell the story of credit derivatives—the financial instruments that laid the groundwork for the financial crisis—than the one Gillian Tett uses in Fool’s Gold. The author, a top reporter and columnist for the Financial Times, views the whole mess through the prism of a single company: JPMorgan Chase. As Tett sees it, the firm essentially invented the credit derivative, proselytized for it, and then avoided most of the excesses it enabled, only to watch it send the entire industry into a free fall.

That Tett has written a readable book about credit-default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, asset-backed securities, and so on, is itself an accomplishment (though it ain’t exactly beach reading). But she has a good story here, too, taking us inside the genesis of the crisis.
Buy it here.

Why the official Iranian election results are suspect (McClatchy)
In American politics, it would be as if President George W. Bush won re-election over Sen. John Kerry in 2004 by taking Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts, doing surprisingly well in liberal New York City and besting his 2000 vote totals by 40 percent.

Matt Bors (thanks to The Brad Blog)

Thousands of Iranians march in defiance as death toll reaches 32 (McClatchy)
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooded Tehran Wednesday in the fifth day of protests to demand the annulment of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, and more nationwide protests appeared to be in store.

Rep. Rohrabacher: Obama Is A ‘Cream Puff’ For Not Interfering In Iran (Think Progress)
[Tuesday], President Obama explained his relative public silence with regard to the situation in Iran, saying, “It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections.” Later in the day, on Radio America’s Dateline Washington, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) responded to Obama’s measured statements on Iran by calling him a “cream puff” and predicting that under Obama’s leadership “things” will get “very bad, very quickly”:

Report: Hillary And Biden Want Obama To Talk Tougher On Iran (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
A fascinating detail from this morning’s New York Times piece on the debate about President Obama’s response to events in Iran: “Even while supporting the president’s approach, senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.”… [F]or now the tell seems to be that administration officials are leaking on such a sensitive matter. Republicans who’ve been hammering Obama’s handling of the Iran crisis and are persuaded it’s a political winner for them seem likely to grab on to this to give their criticism legs.

Someone in Iran (Probably the Government) Isn’t Good at Photoshop (by Gabriel Snyder at Gawker)
A picture that shows that some Photoshopping was used to make the crowd at a pro-Ahmedinejad rally look bigger is racing around the Internet right now. We have no idea where it’s from (anyone read Farsi?) but everyone’s screaming propaganda! Which it probably is! But the Internet is full of fake shit, which people mostly (if they’re smart) just ignore. Last July, when Iran docotored a missile test photo to make it look 33% scarier, it ended up on the home page of the New York Times, a place that has a general disregard for fake shit.

Is Obama’s ‘Prolonged Detention’ American? (by Nat Hentoff)
We may have to find out how strong a shelter the Constitution will be under a plan being considered by President Obama for “a new legal system” that can indefinitely confine – possibly in American “Supermax prisons” – certain terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, and not only there. They cannot be tried in our civilian courts because they have been tortured (preventing evidence against them being admitted) or because as NPR’s Ari Shapiro puts it, they “would compromise sensitive sources and methods.” Like, he adds, if they’ve been tortured, the assumption could be “they’re dangerous because they’ve been tortured.”

Holder: Indefinite Detention Will Include Measures Of Due Process (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Eric Holder asserted on Wednesday that terrorism suspects indefinitely detained by the United States would be granted opportunities for due process, both before and during their detention. But he declined to detail how and where such appeals could take place, telling members of Congress that such specifics had yet to be agreed upon by the administration.
Is getting some opportunities for due process anything like being a little bit pregnant?

Attorney General Holder reminds Sessions who’s boss. (Think Progress)
[Wednesday] morning, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) slammed the Justice Department’s release of Bush-era memos authorizing the use of torture on terrorist suspects, telling Holder that his “predecessor, Judge Mukasey, and Mr. Hayden,” the former Director of National Intelligence, “didn’t approve of that at all.” Holder reminded Sessions that Mukasey and Hayden were no longer in charge.
Click through to watch the video.

Let’s hold Bush officials accountable for torture (by Anthony Romero and Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, Salon)
Torture is a crime and the United States engaged in it. Those are two indisputable facts. Given the mountains of evidence already in the public domain, any effort to deny or soften that harsh and devastating reality is either disingenuous, uninformed or a result of the human instinct to avoid painful truths. But one of the things that allows our democracy to endure is that time after time, no matter the misdeed, we have been willing to look ourselves in the mirror, acknowledge our wrongdoing and hold ourselves accountable.

Both of the authors of this piece chose professions devoted to protecting democratic principles, human rights and the rule of law. One of us is an Army prosecutor who resigned from six pending Guantánamo cases due to ethical failings of the tribunal system, and the other is the leader of the premier civil liberties organization in the U.S. We both understand that the process of self-examination and accountability has been, and remains, the only way to move forward and regain our moral and legal grounding.

Holder Wants As “Complete A Report” On Bush Lawyers As Soon As Possible (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Attorney General Eric Holder restated his intention on Wednesday to release a comprehensive report, declassified to the fullest extent, on the legal advice provided by the Bush administration in its authorization of enhanced interrogation techniques. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder said that delays in releasing the findings of the Office of Professional Responsibility’s (OPR) investigation into former President George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) was the result of administrative obstacles and not political foot-dragging or objections from the CIA

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: “It’s the President’s Justice Department.” (by bostonboomer at The Confluence)
I’ve been waiting for the W.O.R.M, but so far nothing. In his daily press briefing [Wednesdy], Robert Gibbs responded to a question by Jake Tapper on the Justice Department’s brief supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): “Q Does the President stand by the legal brief that the Justice Department filed last week that argued in favor of the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act?… MR. GIBBS: Well, again, it’s the President’s Justice Department. And again, we have the role of upholding the law of the land while the President has stated and will work with Congress to change that law.” In other words, yes, the President agrees with the argument that essentially draws an analogy between incest and same sex marriage–the same argument used by the Bush Justice Department!

Limbaugh still littering discussion of Obama and DOMA with mockery of gay community (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Robertson: Countries that embrace homosexuality go “down into ruin,” end “up in the garbage heap of history” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Obama’s Ratings Remain High (Political Wire)
Despite the theme that President Obama’s honeymoon may be over, Political Wire has learned that a new Pew Research poll will be out shortly that shows President Obama’s approval ratings remain high despite some policy concerns. In addition, as global threats rise, Obama gets generally good marks on foreign policy.

CREW POSTS DETAILS AND COPIES OF THE MISSING WHITE HOUSE EMAILS RELEASED BY ADMINISTRATION (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)
Nearly two years after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the Bush White House for both its refusal to restore the millions of missing White House emails and its failure to put in place an effective electronic record keeping system, the White House has finally released documents that support CREW’s allegations.

NSA analyst ‘improperly accessed’ Bill Clinton’s e-mail through domestic surveillance program. (Think Progress)
The New York Times reports today that members of Congress are increasingly concerned about the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, particularly the overcollection of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans. An anonymous former intelligence analyst tells reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that during much of the Bush years, the NSA “tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants.” Reportedly, one of the accessed domestic e-mail accounts belonged to former President Bill Clinton:

Six Democrats join GOP in overturning Obama administration’s efforts to cut F-22 funding. (Think Progress)
Last April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended capping production of the F-22 Raptor at 187 planes. Gates said the move was part of a series of changes in defense spending that he called “no-brainers.” (The F-22 has never seen action in either Iraq or Afghanistan.) [Tuesday], the House Armed Services Committee “threw a wrench in the Obama administration’s plans to end” the F-22 program, voting 31-30 on a measure marking up the Defense Department spending bill that would “add $369 million in extra funding to keep production of the Air Force’s most advanced jet alive.” Six Democrats … joined 25 Republicans in voting for the amendment.

Lieberman Bounces Back (Political Wire)
“Seven months after nearly becoming politically irrelevant, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is working closely with a president he actively campaigned against and is playing a leading role in moving major pieces of legislation through the upper chamber,” The Hill reports. In the wake of Sen. John McCain’s loss in the presidential election, “many political analysts said Lieberman was done. Defying the pundits yet again, Lieberman survived a major effort to take away his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship. And his political stock has spiked.”
Joe Lieberman was Obama’s mentor in the Senate. Obama ASKED that the neocon Lieberman be his guide.

Senatorial Affair Revealed Thanks to Housing Crisis (by Pareene at Gawker)
Why did Republican Senator John Ensign’s sexual dalliance with a married former staffer get revealed now? Because of subprime mortgages and the Nevada housing crisis! Ensign’s affair was with Cynthia Hampton, his reelection campaign treasurer. Hampton’s husband was an administrative assistant [to Ensign], which is awkward. Even more awkward: the Hamptons are broke, and maybe defaulting on their shitty mortgage. “…A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.”
I don’t see the connection.

Ensign Doubled Salary of Mistress (Political Wire)
“The one-time mistress and campaign treasurer of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) saw her salary double during the time of the affair,” the Las Vegas Sun reports. In addition, the woman’s 19-year-old son was paid $5,400 by a political operation controlled by Ensign.

Ensign quits Senate GOP leadership post (AP)
Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada has stepped down from his leadership post one day after admitting he carried on a marital affair with a woman who was on his campaign staff. Ensign conveyed his decision in a phone call with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who said he had accepted the resignation. Ensign was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, the fourth-ranking spot in the leadership.
Shouldn’t he resign his seat, too? That’s what he demanded of Clinton—but not of Vitter.

Louisiana Democrats Use Ensign Affair To Go After Vitter (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Citing Sen. John Ensign’s resignation from his GOP leadership position after copping to an extramarital affair, Democrats are now calling on David Vitter — another Republican with past marital misconduct — to drop his own post within the party. Presented with the right news hook, the Louisiana Democratic Party put out a press statement on Wednesday afternoon, urging its home state Senator to drop his title as Deputy Whip of the Senate GOP… The press release is the furthest that any Democratic politician or institution has gone in trying to reap political advantage from Ensign’s marital difficulties. In the day since the news broke, fellow Nevadan, Majority Leader Harry Reid, has said that the matter is private

The Deal with God (Political Wire)
“The Republican Party didn’t make a deal with the devil,” the Las Vegas Sun observes in the wake of Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) admitted affair.  “It made a deal with God, or at least people who said they were God’s representatives — a certain class of very political and ideological preachers… The deal, engineered by Republican operatives such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, went like this: Be against gays and abortion and for prayer in the schools, and in return, those preachers would proclaim the GOP the party of God and deliver millions of suburban and rural voters — enough to win elections for three decades.”

“But the deal carried a risk: Any behavior by Republican officeholders or public figures that seemed at odds with a certain kind of Old Testament morality — a tryst in an airport bathroom, a painkiller addiction, a sexual harassment lawsuit — and voters might feel betrayed and manipulated. And the deal would collapse.”
Nonsense. When it’s a Republican who’s caught fooling around, the right wing bullies the media into leaving it alone. When it’s a Democrat, the right wing bullies get weeks and weeks of mileage on how immoral Democrats are.

Republican Senator Seeks Details on Possible First Lady Involvement in IG Firing (Fox News)
A top Republican senator is asking whether First Lady Michelle Obama’s office played any role in last week’s firing of former service program Inspector General Gerald Walpin. The concern, one of several surrounding Walpin’s sudden dismissal, stems from the timing of a staff switch in the first lady’s office. Just days before Walpin got the boot, the White House announced Michelle Obama’s chief of staff would be appointed senior adviser to the agency Walpin was responsible for monitoring. Michelle Obama said at the time she and her outgoing staffer, Jackie Norris, would work closely going forward. With accusations now flying that the Walpin firing was politically motivated, the personnel change only adds to the list of questions Republicans have for the president.
Yes, I know it’s Fox News. Is this their attempt to create a ruckus similar to Travelgate? I don’t know, but what I do know is that the steady drip, drip, drip of manufactured scandals on the foreheads of Americans during the 90s is a big part of what made it possible for George Bush to be given the presidency in 2000. And for Hillary Clinton to be mercilessly trashed by so-called progressive blogs in 2008.

Madigan Urged to Consider Senate Bid (Political Wire)
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) “is under pressure from top Democrats to abandon her long-expected campaign for governor and instead seek President Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat next year, a switch she’s seriously considering,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Madigan’s political director said she will probably decide “within four to six weeks” whether to run for governor, Senate, or a third term as attorney general.

[Madigan] Met With Obama on Senate Run (Political Wire)
Lynn Sweet reports that Illinois Attorney General List Madigan (D) “is getting more serious” about making a U.S. Senate bid “but has a few conditions. If Madigan is to get in the Senate race, she wants an endorsement from Obama when she announces and she wants the Democratic primary field to be cleared of rivals.” One sign Obama might be open to her conditions: The AP reports Madigan met with the president last week at the White House. Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) “is waiting to see what Madigan does before deciding to run for the Senate, governor or stay put. If Madigan runs for Senate, Kirk, if he seeks higher office, would consider governor. If Madigan goes for governor, the Senate race would look better.”

Bush Ends His Silence (Political Wire)
Apparently six months of staying quiet was long enough for former President Bush. The Washington Times notes that Bush fired a few shots at the Obama administration yesterday during a Pennsylvania appearance. “Repeatedly in his hourlong speech and question-and-answer session, Mr. Bush said he would not directly criticize the new president… Several times, however, he took direct aim at Obama policies as he defended his own during eight years in office.”

Former SC official apologizes for racist remark aimed at Michelle Obama (McClatchy)
Former state election director Rusty DePass issued an apology Wednesday for his comments last week linking an escaped gorilla with the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama.

Schwarzenegger won’t agree to still more tax increases (McClatchy)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told Democratic legislative leaders Wednesday that he will not sign the budget plan adopted by a joint legislative committee.

PolitiFact to take a closer look at TV/radio pundits’ claims (St. Petersburg Times via Poynter Online)
The St. Pete Times’ PolitiFact invites TV viewers and radio listeners to submit claims they’d like to see vetted. “It’s hard to know how well this may be received by fans, who seem mostly to watch pundits telling them what they want to hear,” writes Eric Deggans. “But I admire PolitiFact for trying to bring a little sense and accountability to an increasingly hysterical arena.”
Great, now we need scorecards for those same pundits. Americans need to know if Rush Limbaugh, for example, lies 99.9% of the time.

Current TV show aims to tell stories ignored by MSM
Stories on Current TV’s Vanguard program have highlighted kidnappings in oil-rich Nigeria, the Mexican drug war, the risks taken by Somali refugees and lessons that can be learned from this recession. Jailed journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling work for the show.

Garber calls Stewart’s attack on CNN “a rare misstep”
By criticizing CNN for using social networking sites to report what’s going on in Iran, Jon Stewart “turned himself into a caricature: he fashioned himself as the crotchety Luddite who opposes new media platforms not on their merits, but because they’re new,” says Megan Garber. Stewart’s attack on CNN was “a rare misstep for The Daily Show’s normally trenchant media criticism,” she adds.
I’m sure that Jon Stewart won’t mind in the least being called a caricature. Or a character. Or even a fake newsman, which is what he calls himself.

Kurtz explains why he didn’t mention his CNN job when defending the network
Eric Alterman recently scolded Howard Kurtz for not mentioning, while defending CNN, that he collects a paycheck from network. “That was an oversight and won’t be repeated,” Kurtz tells Andrew Alexander. “In the online chats, we often discuss my CNN role week after week, as readers ask about, and sometimes criticize, my program. So my impression is that the connection is well known.”

Obama: ‘I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.’ (Think Progress)
During an interview with President Obama that aired on CNBC [Tuesday], chief Washington correspondent John Harwood said, “When you and I spoke in January, you said — I observed that you hadn’t gotten much bad press. You said it’s coming.” Harwood added that since then, Obama still hasn’t received much critical press and wondered if his administration isn’t being “sufficiently held accountable.” Obama, however, disagreed: “…It’s very hard for me to swallow that one. First of all, I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”
Click through to watch the video.

Fox Newser Arrested in Central Park Cyclist Incident (John Cook at Gawker)
Don Broderick, the Fox News Channel news writer accused of hitting a cyclist in Central Park earlier this month, dragging him four blocks, and fleeing the scene, has been arrested, according to an NYPD spokeswoman.

‘Next Time I’ll Rip Your F—ing Head Off’ and Other Charming Stories of Fox News’ Road Rager (by John Cook at Gawker)
We keep hearing more from people who once worked with Fox News writer Don Broderick. Even before he was accused of dragging a cyclist through Central Park, former colleagues tell us, co-workers were afraid to be around him… “He’s a creep and a bully,” says one of three former Fox Newsers who spoke to Gawker. “He really is crazy. People are frightened to turn their backs to him. The fact that he still works there is mind-boggling.” Neither Broderick nor Fox News returned calls for comment.

Boortz dubs Obama “Hugo Obama or Barack Chavez” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh declares “Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton … make millions of dollars trading off of imagined racism” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

WND’s Porter: If we don’t stop Obama “dictatorship … we’ll lose our lives” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
In her June 16 WorldNetDaily.com column, radio host Janet Porter writes that the Obama “dictatorship must be stopped. And it must be stopped now. If we don’t, we’ll lose more than our strongest ally in the Middle East and the free market – we’ll lose our lives.” 

Where are the conservative investigative journalism outlets?
Daniel Glover says it’s easy to take a potshot at the AP for liberal bias when it inks a deal to distribute the investigative reporting of what he calls left-leaning nonprofits. But, he points out, it’s hard to find conservative investigative journalism being produced on a consistent basis. “There are bright spots,” though, he says.
Huh? They’ve got stink tanks out the wazoo and a ton of oppo research that ALWAYS gets into the mainstream media.

Media Matters for America headlines

ABC Obama health care special brings out Fox News’ hypocrisy

Media revive Clinton-era smear, dub White House health care plan “ObamaCare”

Media trumpet Walpin claims without noting acting U.S. attorney’s allegations

Conservative media still promoting Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories

NY Times, John Fund omit McCaskill’s statement supporting White House removal of Walpin

Morris falsely claimed Obama favors “rationing,” eliminating certain medical procedures

NY Times selectively cited own poll results on Obama’s economic policies

Fox chyron asserted as fact that Walpin was “fired for protecting taxpayers”

After exclusive access, softball interviews during Bush admin, Fox News blasts ABC for White House exclusive

Kudlow let McCaughey claim health care bill “pushes Americans into low-budget plans”

In Iran, Fewer Journalists Each Day
The visas for many of the foreign journalists in Iran are expiring this week, depriving the world of independent sources of information about the violent protests that erupted after the disputed presidential election.

NPR editor: Iran wants journalists out so they can crack down
Many of the journalists who went to Tehran to cover last Friday’s election are there on one-week visas, and the country is rejecting requests for extensions, report Brian Stelter and Richard Perez-Pena. The visa for NPR’s correspondent in Tehran expires today, says NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins. “I think they want everyone out of there so they can crack down.”

Dan Rather: Tehran, Twitter, and Tiananmen
Massive protests, government crackdown, and media blackout – Tehran today sounds like Tiananmen Square two decades ago. But Dan Rather, who covered the China massacre, says the shift in the media landscape over the last two decades means there’s no comparison.

The Media Can Profit from Twitter’s Big Week (by Larry Kramer at The Daily Beast)
Raw, unfiltered, and without any known standards to follow, news on Twitter from nonprofessional journalists can be inaccurate and even dangerous. But even knowing that, the public is quickly gravitating toward interactive social networks and devices like Twitter.

“There’s a potential dark side to the Twitter revolution”
Jack Shafer wonders how long before the secret police start sending out organizational tweets — “We’re massing at 7 p.m. at the Hall of the People for a march to the Hall of Justice!” — and bust everybody who shows up?

Civic-Minded Chinese Find a Voice Online
Furor over a stabbing case has demonstrated the Internet’s potential as a catalyst for social change.

UK Gets Broadband Guarantee, P2P Clampdown In Big Govt Reforms (Paid Content)
The UK is getting new anti-piracy measures, a nationwide household broadband guarantee and reforms for its failing commercial public-service broadcasters in Digital Britain, a long-awaited and wide-ranging grand government policy paper. Amongst the interventions, unused cash from a digital TV switchover fund will encourage telcos to give 2Mbps to rural areas, while persistent illegal downloaders will get warnings and may have their internet connection throttled. But the BBC is unhappy that some of its funds will be used to fund the infrastructure roll-out and new multi-media news consortia. 

In Germany, Google Will Erase Street View Data on Request (Mashable)
AP writes: “Google had agreed to erase the raw footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals in Germany who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service.” This is important from the aspect of privacy. If the image is only blurred, and Google still keeps the unblurred imagery internally, it’s possible for Google to give the imagery to the court if ordered… This is a small victory for groups and individuals who are concerned over Street View invading their privacy, since courts in most other countries have been satisfied with Google’s policy of merely blurring the imagery upon request.

RadarOnline slapped with labor citations regarding octuplet watch
California’s top labor official Tuesday slapped four citations on the celebrity gossip website that has been chronicling the life of octuplets mom Nadya Suleman and her 14 children… [O]n Tuesday, the office of the state labor commissioner issued four citations against RadarOnline, alleging that it had not obtained an entertainment permit, filmed 2-month-old Noah and Isaiah Suleman outside hours approved by the state labor code, and did not have a studio teacher on site to ensure the infants’ health and safety… RadarOnline officials had no comment but said on their website: “Like any other news-gathering organization, Radar-Online.com is not required to obtain permits nor is it restricted to certain hours in its news-gathering operations.”

Vegas newspaper to comply with narrowed subpoena
A Nevada newspaper reported Wednesday it will comply with a narrowed federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about the identity of two people who posted Web site comments about a criminal tax trial. The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the U.S. attorney’s office in Las Vegas reduced its demand for information to “two comments that might be construed as threatening to jurors or prosecutors.”

Web beats TV, radio as preferred news source
The Internet is by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new poll.

There’s too much negativism about journalism, says EveryBlock co-founder
“Frankly, I think it’s going to be great,” Daniel X. O’Neil said at last weekend’s Chicago Media Future Conference. “I swear to God we’ll look back ten years from now and we’ll all be making an insane amount of money and we’re going to look at each other and we’re going to say, ‘Hey, you were there that day! Remember, we all thought we were screwed?’ No, we’re not. Everything’s great.”

Why didn’t Temple do at the Rocky what he now says newspapers should do?
That’s what some people are asking, and John Temple admits it’s a good question. “Think of what I’m writing as lessons from being in the trenches for many years, wishing I could have done things differently,” says the former Rocky Mountain News editor and publisher. “I’m not pretending I have the answers. I am saying what I would try to do if I were in a situation where all forces could align.”

Media Sector Mergers Seen Few and Far Between
Takeovers in the media sector are likely to be few and far between until at least next year, especially given the high gearing and shaky cashflows of many firms in the industry, bankers and financiers said on Wednesday.

Meet The People The Knight Foundation Thinks Can Save Journalism (Paid Content)
One wants to build a database for public records. Another plans to launch street-corner newscasts. A third wants to develop a tool to turn numbers into something more visually exciting than charts. They are among the projects getting parts of the $5.1 million that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is disbursing to push the envelope on community reporting. It’s the third year of the foundation’s five-year, $25 million Knight News Challenge, an international contest to fund digital news projects.
Click through for more winners.

NY Times/ProPublica Team Wins $719,000 Knight News Challenge Grant
A project to build and maintain a crowdsourced database of primary source material for use by investigative reporters was awarded a Knight News Challenge grant of $719,000 Tuesday, pairing old media stalwart The New York Times and non-profit news upstart ProPublica.

Las Vegas Sun parent creates a “hip and fun” TV news show
“If ‘The Daily Show,’ the Travel Channel, the Food Network and E! were to try to do a daily local show in Las Vegas, this is what it might look like,” Greenspun Interactive editor Rob Curley says of 702.tv. “We’ll … tell you what the governor’s latest vetoes are in Carson City, doing it in a way that puts a smile on your face or makes you chuckle a little.”

Claim: Private equity firm didn’t buy Blethen Maine Newspapers for the real estate
“We bought it for the newspapers, we intend to operate the newspapers, and the investment thesis is that the upside will come from the newspaper assets,” says Peter S. Brodsky of HM Capital Partners. “However, the real estate aspect of the transaction helped us get comfortable with the downside. If all doesn’t go well, we felt there was some value to the real estate – it helped us secure financing, as banks certainly were interested in learning what downside was.”

Boston Globe Bidder Will Work With Union
Stephen Pagliuca, a managing partner at Bain Capital private equity firm and an owner of the Boston Celtics basketball team, has emerged as a potential buyer for the Boston Globe and is said to be willing to discuss working with union leaders.

What happens to Massachusetts State House coverage if the Globe is sold or closed?
Adam Reilly writes: “Answers to these questions depend, to a large extent, on whether you see the current State House press corps as a) diminished but still robust, or b) as a fatally compromised shadow of its former self. Take the latter tack, as plenty of political veterans do, and it’s hard to be optimistic about how State House journalism might weather a reduced Globe presence on the Hill.”

Possible Snag in Tribune Sale of Cubs
Nearly six months after Tom Ricketts, a billionaire corporate bond investor and member of the founding family of TD Ameritrade, submitted the winning bid to buy the Chicago Cubs from Sam Zell’s Tribune Company for $950 million, key parts of the deal remain open.

News Corp. Sells Weekly Standard (Paid Content)
Philip Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group is buying the conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard from News Corp., the LATimes reported. Terms were not disclosed. The magazine was started in 1995 and edited by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. While the project was close to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s heart, the fact that The Weekly Standard had a circ of only 83,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, won’t mean that Murdoch will lose any of his influence with political decision-makers. After all, as owner of the Wall St. Journal, Murdoch has a much wider audience of influencers through the paper’s editorial pages than even more popular political magazines.

USA Today Publisher Says He Regrets Not Charging for Paper’s iPhone App (by Will Sullivan at Poynter Online)
Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put it back in. That’s a lesson newspaper publishers have learned when it comes to the Web and one that USA Today Publisher David Hunke recently addressed in regard to mobile news. The Associated Press reported: “In fact, Hunke said he regrets that USA Today didn’t start by charging for the newspaper’s iPhone application, which is free to download. ‘I’m not sure we realized what we had,’ he said. ‘I think that’s a value readers will be willing to pay for.’”

Publication of Holden Caulfield Novel Delayed
A federal district judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that Holden Caulfield, the querulous, precocious protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s most famous work, “The Catcher in the Rye,” will exist at least a little longer solely in a state of permanent adolescence, unburdened by the cares and recriminations of age. The judge, Deborah A. Batts, said a new book that contains a 76-year-old version of Caulfield cannot be published in the United States for 10 days while she weighs a copyright infringement case filed by lawyers for Mr. Salinger. The lawyers contend that the new book, published in Britain, was too derivative and that Mr. Salinger’s most well-known character was protected by copyright.

Time is advised to spruce up its Kindle edition
“Why not hire a graphic designer, a programmer and an editor, give them a small budget, and put out the best damn Kindle newsweekly you can?” writes Paul Smalera. “Why not deliver the magazine to users not when the issue hits newsstands, but when it hits the printing press? For that matter, why not include a midweek update with the arts and culture essays that have already closed for the week, and a few Kindle only stories or sidebars? Call it Time Ahead.”

New Digital Distribution Network for Men’s Health?
Men’s Health has introduced an iPhone application that uses new software capabilities to sell additional content directly through the app itself. The approach, which Apple says appears to be a first for magazines and even media companies, could open up a new digital distribution channel.

PlanetOut, Here Networks Merge
Here Networks on Wednesday completed a merger with the struggling PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Here targets the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender population through the Advocate and other magazine titles as well as through movies via Here Studios and Here Films.

“Planet Money” considers different revenue models
“One of many possibilities raised has been the possibility, like many not-for-profits, of having a for-profit fundraising arm,” says Adam Davidson, one of the “Planet Money” host/producers. But, he adds, “I can say with 100-percent assurance that our core goal is to be a not-for-profit, mission-driven company.”

Special effects outsourcing grows in India
Outsourcing to India, long dominated by software engineering and back-office work, is expanding in new terrain: special effects for movies.

Johnny Depp and Universal Want You to Rob a Bank #bankraids (Mashable)
We’ve now seen a plethora of brands and businesses try creative social media marketing campaigns to get the word out about their products or promotions… Now the movie business is hopping on the social media marketing train and leveraging the viral elements of hit Twitter games like Spymaster. Universal Pictures has just launched Bank Raids, an online game and microsite that marries the 1930’s Chicago gang milieu with Facebook and Twitter to promote the upcoming movie Public Enemies.

Interview: Part II: Jeff Zucker: Live Streaming Top Events Devalues Olympics (Paid Content)
In the two years since Jeff Zucker became president and CEO of NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), he’s shifted the digital strategy more than once; played an important role in creating the joint venture dubbed “ClownCo” by doubters and transforming it into Hulu; approved putting thousands of Olympic hours on broadband; and stared down Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) over iTunes pricing. During the first part of his interview with paidContent, Zucker said NBCU will make more than $1 billion from its combined digital efforts. In this second installment of edited excerpts, Zucker goes into more detail about some of those efforts including Hulu’s future, why we won’t see live streaming of primetime Olympics events, international plans, his dislike of premiering shows online and more.

Weather Channel Plans Flurry of New Programs
The Weather Channel is trying to draw an audience in primetime, one of its lowest-rated time periods, with a slate of original shows. It is also banking on star power — in the form of widely recognized weatherman Al Roker — to boost ratings in the morning.

N.J. Housewives Are Ratings Gold for Bravo
The Real Housewives of New Jersey (3.5 million viewers, 1.9 adults 18-49 rating) was the highest-rated season finale for the network’s entire Housewives franchise to date. Housewiveswas higher rated than any show on cable or broadcast Tuesday night.
Vapidity, apparently, sells.

Worst Driver Set for Travel Channel
The Travel Channel has picked up reality competition show called The Streets of America: The Search for America’s Worst Driver. Based on an international format, the show puts bad drivers through a series of challenges to find the worst of the bunch.

Ad Rate Stalemate Freezes Usually Hot TV Network Sales Time
Declining audiences, an extremely fragile economy, and bankruptcy filings by cash-strapped U.S. automakers — traditionally among the biggest TV advertisers — have made it more difficult for network advertising executives this spring to sell commercial time.

NBC Taps Microsoft For Ad-Sales System
General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal will use technology from Microsoft Corp. to sell commercial time on its broadcast and cable-TV networks in a process similar to the sale of online advertising. The change marks the latest development in a broader effort to refine the purchase of TV ad time.

EA COO John Pleasants: ‘Going Digital’ Is Key To Returning To Profitability (Paid Content)
There was a time when Electronic Arts was the game-company stock to own—with the most cutting-edge games and tons of cash on the books. But over the past few years, it has lost much of that luster. EA posted a $120 million loss for the most recent quarter—its fourth consecutive quarter in the red—and has laid off about 1,100 employees in the process.

While some analysts argue that now more than ever EA needs to focus on what it does best—retail sales—the company is instead testing out a bunch of new and unproven distribution channels (like digital downloads) and business models (like micro-transactions). In an interview with paidContent, COO John Pleasants says EA’s emerging digital strategy, which includes social gaming, virtual goods and even distributing games via OnLive, will get the company back in the black. He offered some hard numbers on micro-transactions, pre-paid game cards and insight into upcoming social-gaming acquisitions, as proof of why EA’s plan to generate at least $500 million in digital direct-to-consumer revenue this year isn’t just wishful thinking:

Perez Hilton Toning Down To Cash In
Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton plans to launch a kinder, gentler, and more advertiser-friendly new site in the next couple of months. That’s the hot gossip from Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of BlogAds.com, which handles operations and ad sales for the wildly popular site PerezHilton.com.

Huffington Post: Acquisition Bait, Now More Than Ever (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
It’s official: Betsy Morgan says she was indeed pushed out as the ineffectual CEO of the Huffington Post. But to what end? The new regime is downplaying profitability in favor of revenue growth — the ideal ramp for a sale. HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer tells the New York Observer that the new CEO, Eric Hippeau of HuffPo investor Softbank, “thinks this isn’t the time to be profitable-it’s the time to invest.”… Hippeau tells the Observer he’s “not here to fix” the publication, “I’m here to grow it… we’ll have deep partnerships with major players, which goes beyond content-sharing.” Maybe one of these “deep partnerships” will take the problem of making money as an independent business off HuffPo’s plate for good.

Bing Keeps Growing: Has Microsoft Finally Cracked Search? (Mashable)
In its second week since launch, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has continued its steady growth, according to comScore. Bing is up about 3 percentage points in both average daily penetration among US searchers and their total share of search results pages (which indicates the percentage of all actual searches, though is not an exact measure), compared to the week prior to launch. Bing now has 16.7% searcher penetration and a 12.1% share of search results pages among all US workday searches. Those numbers are also both up compared to its first week in the wild.

Google’s paying attention:
Google to Bing: We’re a Decision Engine Too! (Mashable)
If you visit[ed] the Google homepage [Wednesday], you will find, beyond the nifty Firebird ballet logo, a link that says “Discovering the web: Explore the world of Google search.” The resulting page, “Explore Google Search,” explains an array of Google’s blended search capabilities. It’s almost certainly a reminder by Google that it is also a “decision engine” with features to match. The “Explore Google Search” page itself is useful for novices and experts alike. It succinctly explains, with accompanying video, 16 different Google search features.

Add Context to Stories with Google Experimental Search (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
When you want information, often the context of that information is as important as the content. That’s why lately I’ve been playing with Google’s Experimental Search options… For instance, last night a journalism student asked me when I’d first heard the term “entrepreneurial journalism.” I honestly couldn’t recall, but her question made me curious. So I activated the “alternate views for search results” experimental search, which includes a time line view option. I searched for the phrase “entrepreneurial journalism” and got [a] time line chart showing when that term started getting really popular online. (It appears to have been around the mid to late 1990s.)

Keeping a True Identity Becomes a Battle Online
Some well-known names find they have to work hard at keeping squatters from claiming similar-sounding Web addresses.

What Display Meltdown? Big Brands Actually Upped Their Spending In Q1 (Paid Content)
Spending forecasts for display ads have been particularly grim—but new ad sales data from Nielsen actually shows that some of the biggest brands actually spent 27 percent more on display ads in Q109 vs. Q108. And one of their primary spending targets was YouTube, as display ad impression volume on the site jumped by nearly 580 percent year-over-year.

Survey: Elderly, poor narrow broadband service gap
Some groups that have lagged in signing up for high-speed Internet service, like the elderly, the poor and rural residents, have started to gain on those who have had a head start, according to a new survey. Those conclusions come as the government is set to decide how to spend $7.2 billion in stimulus money on expanding the availability of broadband. Broadband usage among those 65 or older grew from 19 percent in May 2008 to 30 percent this April, the Pew Internet & American Life Project said Wednesday.

Apple Fills in Some Gaps With Latest iPhone
Succumbing to consumer demand, Apple will finally add basic features like voice dialing and an improved camera.

AT&T relents on iPhone pricing for upgraders 
AT&T Inc. will allow some current iPhone owners to upgrade to a new model at the same price as new buyers when it is released Friday. Wednesday’s announcement comes after AT&T took some criticism from iPhone owners who felt that its prices were unfair. 

iPhone 3.0 excels at Wi-Fi hotspots
Thanks to improvements in the iPhone OS 3.0 software update released Wednesday, connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot with your iPhone or iPod touch should become almost as easy as roaming on the cellular network.

Tennis ace Sharapova unveils blinking phone dress
Former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova presented a prototype dress to reporters that is designed to light up when the wearer’s mobile telephone rings.

Doh! Homer Simpson gives driving directions
“Woo hoo! You have reached your destination!” Homer Simpson, star character of U.S. cartoon show “The Simpsons,” is ready to take you where you want to go.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Obama Extends Benefits To Gay Federal Employees (by The Cajun Boy at Gawker)
The AP [reported Tuesday] that the Obama administration plans to announce [Wednesday] that they’re extending the same benefits available to spouses of straight employees to the spouses of gay and lesbian federal employees… Interestingly, the move comes the day after two prominent gay men, activist David Mixner and blogger Andy Towle, announced that they would boycott an upcoming DNC fundraiser out of concern that the Obama White House was supporting policies detrimental to the gay rights cause. Coincidence?
And where did the idea come from? From Hillary, of course.

Obama OKs Some Benefits for Gay Federal Workers’ Partners (Truthdig)
It would take new legislation to extend full health coverage to the same-sex partners of federal employees, but President Obama, via presidential memorandum, will grant some benefits to them. The administration is already on thin ice with gay activists, some of whom are angry about a Justice Department brief defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the very law that prevents the government from recognizing the rights of gay couples.

Daniel Politi is not impressed:
Obama Throws Gays a Crumb (by Daniel Politi, Slate)
Due to this increasing disappointment in Obama’s administration, gay rights supporters couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the news. An adviser to the Clinton administration on gay issues tells the NYT that “more important now is what he says tomorrow about the future for gay people during his presidency.”

Discussing Obama and DOMA, Limbaugh litters monologue with anti-LGBT innuendo (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Reid Clarifies His Position On DADT: ‘We Would Welcome A Legislative Proposal From The White House’ (Think Progress)
During a press conference [Monday], Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) attracted attention when a reporter asked him whether the Senate will be pushing for a bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT): “…‘My hope is that it can be done administratively.’” The Obama administration has repeatedly resisted calls to suspend DADT by executive order. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs last month said that President Obama is looking for a “durable legislative solution,” and Obama himself has written that repeal of the policy “needs Congressional action.” Many LGBT bloggers immediately criticized Reid’s comments, saying that Obama and Congress were “playing hot potato over DADT.”

[Tuesday] in a statement to ThinkProgress, Reid’s office clarified the senator’s remarks, saying that what he is looking for is a “legislative proposal” from the White House. Additionally, while the Senate does not currently have a bill introduced, “a number” of senators are working on one.

…and your flag lapel pin, too! (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
When the whisperers and the naysayers try to appease the LGBTQ community that there is too much going on with two wars, the Great Recession, Healthcare reform, international tensions, and so forth, they need to be called on their bullshit… Right now, this very moment, the Dims have control of the White House, and the Congress, and enough of the Senate that they can make real change. By the midterm elections, they might not have it; hell they probably won’t have it if history is any guide. There is literally no better time than the present to make real progress. It will not happen on its own, the only thing that is missing is the political willpower and leadership…

What they are not willing to say (or put in writing) is that LGBTQ rights are not priorities. But let’s be honest for a moment: they are really saying that Human Rights are not a priority. I do not accept that, and I don’t think anyone else should either.

Some Media Reports Mischaracterize CBO Estimate of Senate “HELP” Health Reform Bill (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
The news media are widely reporting that, according to a partial and preliminary Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, health reform legislation that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) is developing would cut the number of uninsured by only 16 million people while costing $1 trillion over ten years. That conclusion, however, is incorrect… In essence, the CBO estimate covers only a part of the emerging HELP bill, and its findings about cost and coverage may differ substantially from what CBO finds when it analyzes the full legislation that the Committee issues. Observers would be well-advised to await such analysis before drawing conclusions about the legislation.

Health Care Reform Arithmetic for the Numerically Challenged (by Dean Baker)
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with preliminary projections of the impact of Senator Kennedy’s health reform bill. CBO had a projected cost of $1 trillion, with an addition 16 million people getting insured over this period. Republicans were quick to put the cost at $62,500 for each additional insured person. This is a good joke, but has no place in serious policy discussions. The relevant question is the cost per year ($6,250). If the projections were done over 20 years, then the cost would be $125,000 per insured person using the Republican methodology.

GOP Pushed For Incomplete Health Care Study, Then Politicized It: Hill Dems (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
On Monday afternoon, critics of a major health care overhaul seized on a report from the Congressional Budget Office showing that a Democratic reform bill could cost $1 trillion over ten years despite adding only 17 million Americans to the ranks of the insured. But the results are incomplete, and they know it. The CBO findings made for a traditional attack based around fears that the government would spend larges swaths of taxpayer money with minimum systematic change… The CBO’s findings, however, are for an incomplete piece of legislation, making the cost-per-coverage estimates much worse than they will ultimately be. Republicans on the committee knew this, according to Democrats. But they pushed for the bill to be studied by the CBO now. And when poor results came back, they ran with them.
I swear, it’s like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football.

And who kicked the empty air?
After CBO Analysis, White House Distances Self From Kennedy Bill (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
“This is not the Administration’s bill,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care reform legislation, “and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill.”… Gibbs’ reaction was the second from the White House in a matter of a few hours… Why the pushback? Because the CBO reported in a letter to Kennedy that his bill will cost $1 trillion over 10 years, adding only a net increase of 16 million Americans to the ranks of the insured — leaving tens of millions uninsured (depending on how many Americans you think are uninsured).

Or is it even worse?
Sebelius says Obama is working to perm[ane]ntly block single payer (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Health Justice[:] “Today, on NPR, Secretary Sebelius said that single payer is not only ‘off the table’ but that the President is considering measures to make sure it does not happen now or ever.” More than ever it is crucial that Congress pass no plan that prevents states from enacting their own single payer systems.
Joe Cannon says, “Obama has the balls to ask Americans to donate to his campaign for ‘real health care reform in 2009.’ I’m not making this up!”

ObamaCare: A Non-Existent Health Plan That Begins with Cuts (by Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report)
There is no Obama healthcare plan, “just mouthfuls of generalized rhetoric that changes with the moment, as Obama constantly woos the insurance, drug and hospital corporations.” However, Obama’s proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will take on lives of their own. That’s what Republicans have “been clamoring for for generations,” and Obama offered it to them, upfront. “In his rush to mollify the private healthcare profiteers, Obama has given away the pubic store.”

ZENO’S UNIVERSAL COVERAGE: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
We’re already spending twice as much as countries which already have universal coverage—and PW [a letter writer to the New York Times] is willing to pay more to get what they already have! The oddness of this framework would occur to almost anyone in a different context. To wit: You buy a car for $40,000. Your neighbor buys a car for half that amount–and his car is better! Someone then says your car can be almost as good as his–if you spend six thousand more. Almost anyone would see the oddness of that situation. And yet, that’s the situation which obtains with our health care system. But so what! PW is eager to spend [more]. In all likelihood, he doesn’t know … that we’re already spending twice as much as the countries which have what we want.

Other countries already have what we seek–and they spend half as much as we do!… Your current car cost 40 grand. But in France, they have better cars–for 20. For sixty years, your big news orgs haven’t told you that fact.

Fox Nation wonders if “Obama nationalizing health care” will be “the last straw” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality (by David Leonhardt, New York Times)
There are three main ways that the health care system already imposes rationing on us. The first … involves denying just about everything else. The rapid rise in medical costs has put many employers in a tough spot. They have had to pay much higher insurance premiums, which have increased their labor costs. To make up for these increases, many have given meager pay raises… So when middle-class families complain about being stretched thin, they’re really complaining about rationing. Our expensive, inefficient health care system is eating up money that could otherwise pay for a mortgage, a car, a vacation or college tuition.

The second kind of rationing involves the uninsured. The high cost of care means that some employers can’t afford to offer health insurance and still pay a competitive wage. Those high costs mean that individuals can’t buy insurance on their own…

The final form of rationing is … the failure to provide certain types of care, even to people with health insurance… The comparative-effectiveness research favored by the former Senate majority leaders and the White House has inspired opposition from some doctors, members of Congress and patient groups. Certainly, the critics are right to demand that the research be done carefully. It should examine different forms of a disease and, ideally, various subpopulations who have the disease. Just as important, scientists — not political appointees or Congress — should be in charge of the research. But flat-out opposition to comparative effectiveness is, in the end, opposition to making good choices.

“Health Care Rationing Rhetoric” (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
I believe that when it comes to health care, equity is the dominant principle. Everyone should have the chance to go to a beach, or the redwoods, or the Grand Canyon if they want to, these places shouldn’t be locked up as private property and completely inaccessible to those without the means to buy their way in. Everyone should have access to education as well, and in the same way everyone should have the access to health care. Access to life-saving and life-improving technology and treatments should not depend upon having sufficient household income. But if we don’t use the price mechanism to allocate health care resources, what mechanism do we use?… [I]t’s a question we’ll have to find a way to answer:

Excluded Voices (by Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review)
Ask any pol or business exec how to lower the cost of medical care, and most will reply “preventive care.” Average Americans apparently agree. A new poll by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Trust for America’s Health found that more than three quarters of Americans believe funding for preventive care should increase. The reasoning goes like this: if you catch illness early, it saves treatment costs in the long run. What can be more straightforward? Problem is, there’s oodles of evidence that prevention costs more than it saves.

Few in the media have cast a skeptical eye on preventive care as a magic wand that will make expensive medical care disappear. More should. To help those wanting to give audiences the complete story on preventive care, Campaign Desk talked to Rutgers research professor Louise Russell, whose work is well known in academic circles but less well known in the popular press.
Click through to read the interview.

Small business divided over requiring employer health care (McClatchy)
With 68 million workers, small businesses will have big clout in deciding the fate of President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system. In 1994, the small-business lobby, led by the National Federation of Independent Business, helped kill the Clinton administration’s plan, partly because it included an employer mandate. Since then, health costs have risen sharply. The proportion of small businesses that offer coverage also has fallen precipitously, to 38 percent last year from 61 percent in 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. The result: Among small businesses, there’s more support than there was in the past for government action of some kind.

Limbaugh on health care: “There is no crisis. … The crisis in health care here has been manufactured.” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Obama’s Latest Miniseries (by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post)
The screaming Drudge headline makes it sound like a major network had become a wholly owned subsidiary of the White House: “ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA.” The reality: Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer will be interviewing the president about health care next week… The Drudge item was based on a letter of complaint from the Republican National Committee, which said the programming could become a “glorified infomercial. . . . I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers,” chief of staff Ken McKay wrote.
Did the RNC complain when the networks gave George Bush as much time as he wanted to sell HIS policies?

Doocy dubs ABC the “All Barack Channel;” predicts health care forum will be “Valentine” to Obama’s “health care agenda” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

The question Pete Peterson never gets asked (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Morning Joe … hosted Pete Peterson, giving him an opportunity to plug his book and spread his doom and gloom about “entitlement reform.”… Nobody … asked Peterson about his opposition to health care reform in the early 1990s (”The issue is whether we can afford it. We can’t.”) Since then, health care costs have skyrocketed, taking Medicare costs with them. So the failure of health care reform in 1993/1994 not only resulted in tens of millions of Americans going without health care for the past 15 years, it also contributed to the soaring Medicare spending that Pete Peterson insists is a crisis. All of which suggests a second question somebody should probably ask Peterson: Why should we listen to you?

WSJ continues crusade against health care reform (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
The Wall Street Journal continues its assault on health care reform, warning of “total government control of the health markets.” Along the way, the Journal editorial hits the standard conservative media talking points on malpractice “reform.” The Wall Street Journal claims “trial lawyers and their stratospheric jury awards and settlements have led to major increases in the medical malpractice premiums, thus driving up the overall cost of U.S. health care.” But, as Media Matters has previously noted…: “…[M]alpractice costs amounted to an estimated $24 billion in 2002, but that figure represents less than 2 percent of overall health care spending. Thus, even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small.” [Emphasis added.]

The Journal then claims that as a result of lawsuits, doctors “practice defensive medicine, ordering unnecessary tests to immunize themselves if they do end up in court. Economists disagree on the precise burden of this legal fear, but some argue that it exceeds $100 billion a year.” Again, Media Matters has noted that these concerns are overblown: “…As FactCheck.org has noted, claims that ‘defensive medicine’ drives up medical costs — a principal Bush administration argument for tort reform — have been dismissed as inconclusive by the General Accounting Office and the CBO. The CBO went further, declaring that there is ‘no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending.’” [Emphasis added.]

More flawed AMA reporting (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Here’s how Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly describes the AMA: “The AMA, with about 250,000 members, is the nation’s largest physician group.” Connolly doesn’t give readers any context for that number. She doesn’t tell readers that 250,000 is less than a third of the 800,000 or so practicing doctors in America.  Or that the AMA membership figures include medical students and retired doctors, who account for about half of AMA’s members.  Connolly doesn’t tell readers that the AMA gets at least 20 percent of its budget from drug companies.  Nor does she tell readers the AMA has long opposed meaningful health care reform, and even opposed the creation of Medicare.
Ceci Connolly was demoted for her awful reporting on the 2000 campaign, especially making up demeaning stories about Al Gore. As you can see, she hasn’t changed her ways.

Obama: ‘Given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations,’ U.S. shoudn’t ‘be seen as meddling’ in Iran’s elections. (Think Progress)
Since [Monday’s] mass demonstrations in Iran over the disputed presidential elections, conservatives like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) have urged President Obama to “act” and make forceful statements against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s purported reelection. During a press conference today, Obama reemphasized his “deep concerns” about the election — but pointed out that, “given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations,” he wanted to make sure he did not appear to be “meddling” in Iranian affairs.
Click through to watch the video.

Obama rejects North Korea’s bid to be nuclear power (McClatchy)
Despite President Barack Obama’s assurance Tuesday that he won’t accept North Korea as a nuclear power, he has few options short of war and may have little choice but to find a way to live with the threat.

NKorea warns US of ‘thousand-fold’ military action (AP)
North Korea warned Wednesday of a “thousand-fold” military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked, the latest threat in a drumbeat of rhetoric in defense of its rogue nuclear program. Japanese and South Korean news reports said North Korea is preparing an additional site for test-firing a long-range missile that experts say could be capable of striking the United States. Russia’s deputy defense minister reportedly said it would shoot down any missile headed its way. The warning of a military strike, carried by the North’s state media, came hours after President Barack Obama declared North Korea a “grave threat” to the world and pledged that recent U.N. sanctions on the communist regime will be aggressively enforced.

The Three Essentials of Financial Reform (by Robert Reich, thanks to Economist’s View)
As the White House unveils its long-awaited proposals to prevent another Wall Street meltdown in the future, keep a lookout for three essentials. Without them the Street will revert to its old ways as soon as the coast clears…

1. Stop bankers from making huge, risky bets with other peoples’ money…
2. Prevent any bank from becoming too big to fail…
3. Root out three major conflicts of interest. (1) Credit-rating agencies should no longer be paid by the companies whose issues are being rated; they should be paid by those who use their ratings. (2) Institutional investors like pension funds and mutual funds should not be getting investment advice from the same banks that profit off their investments… (3) the regional Feds that are responsible for much bank oversight should no longer be headed by presidents appointed by the region’s bankers; non-bankers should have the major say, and the regional presidents should have to be confirmed by the Senate…

[T]he big bankers will fight every one of these with all guns blazing, and their lobbyists in full force. … Bottom line: Genuine financial reform will be almost as difficult to achieve as real universal health care. Immense private interests are amassed against the public interest in both cases because staggering amounts of money are at stake. …

The three steps to financial reform (by George Soros, thanks to Economist’s View)
Three principles should guide reform. First, since markets are bubble-prone, regulators must accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big… Second, … we must … use credit controls such as margin requirements and minimum capital requirements … to forestall … bubbles. Third, we must reconceptualise the meaning of market risk…

Markets are subject to imbalances… If too many participants are on the same side, positions cannot be liquidated without causing a discontinuity or, worse, a collapse… To avert a repetition [of the current crisis], the agents must have “skin in the game” but the five per cent proposed by the administration is more symbolic than substantive… It is probably impractical to separate investment banking from commercial banking as the US did with the Glass Steagull Act of 1933. But there has to be an internal firewall… The issuance and trading of derivatives ought to be as strictly regulated as stocks… Custom made derivatives only serve to improve the profit margin of the financial engineers designing them. In fact, some derivatives ought not to be traded at all.
That’s from a man who has made billions of dollars due to the market imbalances he talked about.

Steps to Financial market Reform (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
[S]ocialist sympathizer Robert Lucas, the Nobel prize winning economist at the University of Chicago … also favors extending regulation to the unregulated banking sector: “The regulatory structure that permitted these events to occur will have to be redesigned… The regulatory problem that needs to be solved is roughly this: The public needs a conveniently provided medium of exchange that is free of default risk or ‘bank runs.’ The best way to achieve this would be to have a competitive banking system with government-insured deposits. But this can only work if the assets held by these banks are tightly regulated.”

Is skin in the game the answer? (by Paul Krugman)
According to the Washington Post, one part of the soon-to-be-announced financial regulatory reform will be a requirement that lenders keep some “skin in the game”: “Lenders would be required to retain at least 5 percent of the risk of losses on each package of loan pieces, known as an asset-backed security…” Is that going to do the trick? I’d be more convinced if I hadn’t read my colleague Hyun Song Shin’s piece earlier this year… Shin argues that financial firms actually used securitization to take on more risk, not to sell it to unknowing clients. This suggests that forcing firms to hold on to some of the securitized debt won’t make much if any difference.

Has Anyone Noticed the Housing Bubble? (by Dean Baker)
Even a perfect regulatory structure will not work, if the regulators do not do their job. They will not have an incentive to do their job, if there are no consequences for not doing their job. In this case, we have seen the most disastrous possible regulatory failure — this is like the drunken school bus driver who gets all his passengers killed driving into oncoming traffic — and no one is held accountable. The message to future regulators is therefore to simply go along with the powers that be (i.e. the financial industry) and you will never suffer any negative consequences. It is remarkable that this perspective is completely absent from the coverage of President Obama’s regulatory reform proposal. The media failed dismally in its coverage of the housing bubble. They appear to have learned nothing from this failure.

Consumer prices rise less than expected in May (AP)
Consumer prices rose less than expected in May, fresh evidence that the recession is keeping inflation in check.

GM Finally Drops Controversial Jets But Not Without Cost To Taxpayers (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Six months after General Motors pledged to get rid of its fleet of private jets, the company is poised to finally get the planes off its books. But not before the aircraft cost the beleaguered automobile company – and by extension American taxpayers – an additional hundreds of thousands of dollars, including more than $240,000 for an airport hangar to hold the planes it never used.

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House (MSNBC)
Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

CREW SUES SECRET SERVICE OVER REFUSAL TO RELEASE WHITE HOUSE COAL EXECS VISITOR LOGS (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)
[On Tuesday], Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [filed] a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security based on the refusal of the Secret Service to provide CREW with White House visitor records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

FLASHBACK: Obama Promised To End ‘Secret Meetings’ And Make The White House The ‘People’s House’ (Think Progress)
MSNBC reports that the Obama administration has denied its request for the names of individuals who have visited the White House since the Inauguration… [B]efore his election, Obama promised that he would end the Bush administration’s practice of holding secret meetings in the White House, which is supposed to be “the people’s house”… The day after the Inauguration, Obama issued a memo saying, “my Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”… By opening up access to the White House visitor logs, Obama has an opportunity to fulfill his promise of making the White House the people’s house.

Key Obama Ally Says President Obama Did Not Follow the Law in IG Firing (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
After being briefed [Tuesday] on President Obama’s firing last week of Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the president did not abide by the same law that he co-sponsored – and she wrote – about firing Inspectors General. “The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said… “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

White House Plays Hardball; Says Fired IG Walpin Was “Confused, Disoriented” Engaged in “Inappropriate Conduct” (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
Norm Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President, outlined a number of reasons why President Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin. “Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation,” Eisen writes in the letter, a copy of which was sent to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a key Obama ally who today expressed concern that President Obama did not abide by a law she wrote — and he supported as a senator — requiring 30 day notice to Congress before an Inspector General could be terminated… Eisen charged that at a May 20, 2009 board meeting Walpin “was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.”

Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama Administration’s School “Turnaround” Plan (by Bruce A. Dixon at the Black Agenda Report)
Public-private partnerships between Chicago’s City Hall, where two men named Richard Daley have ruled more than 40 of the last 55 years, and a gaggle of corporate bagmen from the Gates, Bradley, Walton and other foundations have honed a disastrous “education reform” agenda that is now national policy. In Chicago, where dozens of neighborhood public schools have been shuttered and hundreds of experienced, predominantly black teachers fired in mid-career, resistance is brewing and spreading.

Obama drive for immigration reform faces an uphill road (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama, Democratic congressional leaders and advocates of revamping the nation’s immigration laws say that developing a comprehensive immigration bill this year is a top priority, despite an already full legislative plate that includes a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, overhauling America’s health care system, addressing climate change and conducting two wars.

Holder: DOJ Will Do All It Can To “Deter Violence” Against Abortion Providers (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Attorney General Eric Holder offered his most forceful condemnation to date of the murder of George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas doctor who ran a women’s clinic that provided late-term abortions, using the occasion to issue a broad warning about the rise of violent extremism. Speaking at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee conference on Tuesday, Holder pledged that the Department of Justice would do all it could to “deter violence against reproductive health care providers” and prosecute those who committed such acts.

FEMA Contracts Lost, Misplaced (The Note, ABC News)
With Hurricane season just over 2 weeks old the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General has released a report finding that FEMA needs to improve how it handles it’s disaster management contracts finding lost files, misplaced boxes and general shambles in the offices that oversaw billions of dollars of contracts. The DHS audit focuses on FEMA’s Acquisition Management Division (AMD) which oversees the contracting of services during a disaster ranging from shelter, to food and ice shipments and other essential services… According to the report, “A senior AMD management official said that ‘Lots of files are  missing—probably 30%.’”

New US climate report dire, but offers hope (AP)
Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours — global warming’s serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House.

CIA’s Technology Arm Taps Open Source for Enterprise Search
The company in charge of providing technology to the U.S. intelligence community has invested in an open-source firm to provide enterprise-search technology to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Why does the U.S. intelligence community have a private company in charge of providing technology to it? Why are we paying that company a profit, instead of hiring government employees to do the work? And why is there only one company—shouldn’t we be getting bids on this stuff?

Missile defense cuts won’t threaten security, Pentagon tells Congress (McClatchy)
The Pentagon Tuesday reassured senators that cutting $1.2 billion from the nation’s missile defense budget wouldn’t diminish the country’s ability to defend against a rogue missile attack from North Korea or Iran.

House passes war-funding bill, despite reservations (McClatchy)
A divided House of Representatives Tuesday approved by 226 to 202 a $105.9 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and help curb flu outbreaks.

House panel moves to stop detainee transfers (The Hill)
A House panel has approved legislation to prohibit the transfer of military detainees from Guantanamo Bay into the United States until the White House provides a plan.

Lawmakers ask Commerce Department to reject Gulf fish farms (McClatchy)
Citing environmental concerns and regulatory issues, Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and 36 other U.S. lawmakers have asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to reject a plan to allow fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lawmakers Controlling Government’s Budget File for Extensions on Personal Financial Disclosures (Open Secrets)
Members of Congress that control government spending and oversee the beleaguered financial sector are having a hard time getting their own finances in order, CRP has found. Forty of the 63 lawmakers who still haven’t filed their 2008 personal financial disclosure … reports, due May 15, sit on a congressional committee related to the federal budget, appropriations or financial sector oversight.

Ensign Admits to Affair (Political Wire)
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) is admitting he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff, KLAS-TV reports. Said Ensign in a statement: “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions… An aide in Ensign’s office said the affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008, with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office. Neither have worked for the senator since May 2008. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity.” Ensign has been testing the waters for a possible presidential bid in 2012.

Ensign Whacked Clinton For His Infidelities, Called Them “Embarrassing” For Country (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Sen. John Ensign’s admission late Tuesday that he had an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer over the course of nine months doesn’t seem likely to cause the type of wall-to-wall coverage that similar marital slip-ups have in the past. But it should, at the very least, re-open the longstanding debate over how much attention should be paid to a politician’s personal life. And when it comes to this topic, Ensign’s own record of denouncing the affairs and misconducts of other pols could come back to haunt him. During the height of the scandal surrounding Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, the Nevada Republican denounced the president’s conduct as “an embarrassing moment for the country.”…

Weeks later, Ensign would call on Clinton to resign. “I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through,” he was quoted saying at the time. “He has no credibility left,” he added. At the time, Ensign was in a tight Senate race with incumbent Harry Reid, an election he would ultimately end up losing. And he didn’t shy away from trying to exploit the moral trip-ups in Clinton’s personal life to benefit himself and the GOP.

Sestak Staffing Up For Senate Race Against Specter (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
In yet another sign that Joe Sestak is dead serious about taking on Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Dem primary, Sestak has started building a campaign staff for a Senate race, according to a Democrat with direct knowledge of the conversations. Sestak has interviewed a number of people who would work for his statewide communications operation and online outreach effort, and has talked to candidates for his field operation, the Democrat says. Meanwhile, three chief media consultants on Sestak’s 2006 and 2008 House races — J.J. Balaban, Doc Sweitzer, and Neil Oxman of the Philadelphia-based firm The Campaign Group — have signaled to Sestak that they’ll work for him if and when he enters the Senate primary.

Deeds Edges McDonnell in New Poll (Political Wire)
An Anzalone Liszt Research (D) poll in Virginia finds Creigh Deeds (D) leading Bob McDonnell, 42% to 38%. The poll was conducted for the Democratic Governor’s Association. Deeds has a 48% to 14% favorability rating while McDonnell has a 43% to 19% rating.

The Left Flank (by Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Right Wing activists wield more power than the Progressive activists. And the reason is, in my opinion, Right Wing activists put their issues first, their pols second. They remember what elections and politics are actually about – what the policy looks like in the end… George Bush LOST the 2000 election and barely won the 2004 election. His agenda was disfavored by the American People. And yet he got his agenda through the Congress… The American Presidency is only weakened on policy when Democrats hold the office. This is, in part, because the Left Flank of the Democratic Party is incredibly ineffectual.

I once thought that the Left blogs could help to change that. But it seems there is much more interest in being Charlie Cooks and Stu Rothenbergs or in engaging in food fights with the Right blogs and Glenn Beck than in shaping the policy of the country.

Cannonfire

As Furor Over Palin Joke Rages, Letterman Rises in the Ratings (New York Times)
Monday night, when Mr. Letterman offered his extended apology to Governor Palin and her family, he had his best night yet in the continuing late-night competition against NBC’s new “Tonight” show star, Conan O’Brien. In preliminary national ratings, Mr. Letterman pulled in 700,000 more viewers than Mr. O’Brien Monday night, 3.9 million to 3.2 million, his biggest margin yet over his new competitor. Mr. Letterman routinely trailed the former “Tonight” host Jay Leno by a million viewers or more. But as he has since his start on June 1, Mr. O’Brien was dominant among the younger viewers most television networks prefer — because most advertisers do —  winning by margins exceeding 100 per cent in categories like viewers between the ages of 18 and 34.

This is your progressive movement on 1935: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
Last Thursday, Campbell Brown asked a panel to evaluate Letterman’s jokes about Palin. Twice, Jeffrey Toobin said he disapproved of the old coot’s “slutty” joke. “I have a problem with the slutty line,” Toobin said. “I think that was totally inappropriate.” The second time around, progressive thinker Sam Seder offered his own “analysis.” This is your progressive movement on the year 1935: “…[F]rankly, I don’t even think that joke was sexist, per se… [H]e didn’t [call the governor of Alaska a slut]! He said–he talked about her slutty makeup!… There is a big difference there, because he is talking about appearance.”…

The cluelessness there is just stunning. Presumably, this resembles the way most white people “reasoned” in 1935. In that era’s majority entertainment, it was routine to subject African-Americans to standard forms of ridicule. People like Seder couldn’t see the problem with that. The jokes weren’t “racist, per se”–and everyone laughed! What was the fuss all about?… By the way: It’s great to see Seder has a daughter. As David Letterman once might have joked: What a lucky girl!

Glenn Beck declares: “I don’t care who the person is, we don’t make fun of their families” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Beck in April: Glenn Beck mocks Obama’s aunt’s “limp”

What’s 100,000 or so deaths “to retain political and professional credibility”? (by Will Bunch at Attytood)
A journalist named Michael Hastings has a must-read piece … analyzing what went wrong with media coverage in the run-up and then during the war in Iraq. As Hastings deconstructs it, there were many factors, including lack of foreign policy expertise by the journalists covering the story, a focus on the story from the White House perspective and on the politics of it all, and not the actual policy. But Hastings focuses on the reason that I find the most chilling: That Beltway journalists felt that staying with “the pack” — avoiding what would be a contrarian, and thus uncool (my word) position — was the safest way to climb the well-paying and prestigious career ladder.
It’s exactly what many so-called progressive bloggers did in 2008 by trashing Hillary Clinton and making a god of Obama.

The US Mainstream Media: Selective Omission and Planned Misinformation (by Solomon Comissiong at the Black Agenda Report)
There is method to the maddening homogeneity and shallowness of the U.S. corporate media. “Keeping the public as dumbed down as possible keeps their corporate clients happy and their political partners in power.” Media corporations advertise that they sell “news,” but what they’re really marketing is a daily defense of imperial rule. That’s why, for example, “they won’t tell you how so-called ‘free trade’ policies create sweatshops, plunder, mass migration, and civil unrest.”

Gene Randall “Reporting,” Inc. (by Brad Jacobson, Columbia Journalism Review)
Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall’s video “report” for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, “over to the dark side” and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy…

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley’s investigation presented multiple perspectives while Randall’s included only Chevron officials and consultants. Everyone interviewed in Randall’s piece, in other words, was paid by Chevron, including Randall himself. Randall’s video also clearly strives to resemble an authentic news report, employing classic stylistic TV news techniques, while never informing the viewer it’s a Chevron production. Most deceptive, however, is that Randall—looking like the consummate TV newsman—begins the video with the accompanying graphic “Gene Randall Reporting” and concludes with the voiceover: “This is Gene Randall reporting.”

PBS Blesses Old Religious Shows, But Bans the New (Washington Post)
The Public Broadcasting Service agreed yesterday to ban its member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted the handful of stations that already carry “sectarian” shows to continue doing so. The vote by PBS’s board was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming. Such a ban would have forced a few stations around the country to give up their PBS affiliation if they continued to broadcast local church services and religious lectures.

Jeffrey Rosen gets around to reading Sotomayor’s opinions; will other media notice? (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Jeffrey Rosen has, more than a month after writing “The Case Against Sonia Sotomayor” — gotten around to actually reading some of the judge’s opinions.  And the result is a much more favorable take on Sotomayor than he previously offered. Now, I don’t take Jeffrey Rosen seriously, and you shouldn’t, either.  Not until he corrects the factual errors that have been brought to his attention.  But the elite media doesn’t really mind that Rosen crops quotes to make it appear the speaker is saying the opposite of what he really said, or that he refuses to issue a correction, so they continue to take Rosen quite seriously.

So it will be interesting to see if Rosen’s more favorable assessments of Sotomayor get repeated and referred to in media coverage of her nomination as much as his critical assessments have been. But I won’t hold my breath.

Newsbusters falsely claims Bush would have won statewide Florida recount (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Newsbusters’ Mike Sargent pretends that George W. Bush would have won a statewide Florida recount in 2000. In fact, the very study on which Sargent bases that claim found that Al Gore would have won had there been a full statewide recount.  As the Washington Post put it: “An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins.”

Report ties increase in hate crimes to ‘anti-immigrant vitriol.’ (Think Progress)
A new report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund shows a close correlation between the increasingly volatile immigration debate and a growing number of hate crimes against Latinos and “perceived immigrants.” The report, “Confronting the New Faces of Hate,” calls out a number of restrictionist groups that consistently invoke anti-immigrant rhetoric as they try to make the case against immigration… According to the Washington Post, hate crimes against Latinos have been going up for four consecutive years, jumping from 426 to 595 incidents in the last year alone with a 40 percent overall increase between 2003 and 2007.

Army Officer: Bomb North Korea Before They Nuke Us, Like Iraq (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
Who was that insane lieutenant colonel telling Fox News we should bomb North Korea? That would be Robert Maginnis, who fought the gay menace for the Family Research Council, then claimed Iraq had many horrible weapons. Maginnis [on Tuesday] warned Fox’s Shep Smith about how North Korea has Taepodong-2 missiles on the pad ready to launch, possibly aimed at the U.S… Keep in mind Maginnis’ track record. Eight years ago, he participated in the a Pentagon program in which generals shilled for war, even though he felt “manipulated” and “very disappointed” with the quality of intelligence, as he later told the New York Times.

Neo-Nazis are in the Army now (by Matt Kennard, Salon)
Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has struggled to recruit and reenlist troops. As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing “moral waivers” in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up. Veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder have been ordered back to the Middle East for second and third tours of duty. The lax regulations have also opened the military’s doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences.

Georgia court ban on ‘exposing’ children to ‘homosexuals’ axed by state Supreme Court. (Think Progress)
In 2007, Eric and Sandy Ehlers Mongerson divorced, and a Georgia trial judge awarded custody of their four children to Sandy and visitation rights to Eric. Inexplicably, the judge also held that Eric was “prohibited from exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously threw out the trial judge’s ban.

Drugs Won the War (by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times)
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won. “We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”… Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average… Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad… Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment.

Media Matters for America headlines

NPR’s Zwerdling understated LGBT criticisms of Obama’s DOMA brief

Media deceptively claim stimulus funds going to “train station” that “hasn’t been used in 30 years”

Wash. Times minimized Princeton alumni group’s opposition to admission of women, minorities

Parroting GOP, media claim stimulus funding “guard rail to nowhere” — but project was cancelled

Ignoring ABC statement, Kudlow alleges ABC will devote programming to “help sell” Obama’s health care plan

More media misrepresent scope of preliminary CBO analysis of health bill

Blitzer did not challenge Boehner’s false claim that CBO scored “public option”

USA Today misleadingly described Judge Hamilton’s record in reporting Sessions’ attack

NY Times, Tapper misrepresent scope of CBO’s analysis of draft health reform bill

Politico did not note that it’s Luntz — not Obama — who’s talking about a “Washington takeover” of health care

The Kid at the State Department Who Figured Out the Iranians Should Be Allowed to Keep Tweeting
Jared Cohen, a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, placed a call to Twitter Monday, inquiring about their plan to perform maintenance in what would be the middle of the day, Iran time. Twitter then postponed their maintenance until the middle of the night Iran-time.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warns online media
Iran’s opposition announced a third day of street demonstrations Wednesday as the country’s most powerful military force warned of a crackdown against online media in its first pronouncement on the deepening election crisis.

North Korea Says U.S. Journalists Admitted to Smear Campaign
North Korea said that two U.S. journalists whom it jailed last week had admitted to a politically motivated smear campaign. Official media said they crossed the border illegally “for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK (North Korea) smear campaign over its human rights issue.”

Analyst: Half of U.K. Local and Regional Papers Could Shut By 2014
Up to half of the U.K.’s local and regional newspapers could shut within the next five years, an analyst warned. Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% between 2007 and 2013.

UK News Bosses Tell MPs: Let Us Fight Google Together (Paid Content)
UK newspaper publishers, in their latest plea for regulatory reform, want to be allowed to collectively lobby Google for story payments. It was among a litany of woes Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall, Johnson Press CEO John Fry and Trinity Mirror CEO Sly Bailey—sitting at the same table together—reported to the House of Commons’ culture, media and sport select committee’s inquiry on the future of local and regional media on Tuesday. Newspapers have made the Google-should-pay case before but this is the first time publishers have publicly discussed collaborating to tackle the Google problem, and it says everything about how pressing their problems are.

China Communist Party newspaper to expand coverage
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, is expanding its coverage as part of a reported multibillion-dollar drive to expand China’s international media influence. The staid daily that chronicles the activities of the party leadership and publishes editorials praising official policies plans to expand from 16 to 20 pages with more coverage of breaking and international news, it said in a notice on its Web site Tuesday. The newspaper’s 72 foreign and domestic bureaus will be upgraded, it said, without giving details.

China: Use of Controversial Software to Filter Web Is Optional, Official Says
An official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that while computer makers were required to supply an Internet filtering program on all new computers, they were not required to install it.

Vegas paper gets subpoena to ID online commenters
A Las Vegas newspaper says it has been served a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about readers who posted comments on the paper’s Web site.

You Don’t Have a Right to Anonymity (by John Cook at Gawker)
A British court has ruled that the Times of London is free to unmask an anonymous British blogger, just ten days after the National Review caused [an] uproar by outing a left-wing blogger named Publius. This is a good thing… [T]he notion that anonymous publishers have a right, in perpetuity, to keep their identities a secret—or that people who learn their identities are honor-bound not to reveal them—is nonsense. In both Blevins’ case and Horton’s, the motive behind their anonymity involved the inconvenience to their personal lives that would be entailed if they were revealed as the authors of their own ideas. Horton risked the ire of his employers, not to mention the victims and their relatives involved in the cases he discussed. And Blevins wrote that he didn’t want his left-wing advocacy to interfere with his private law practice, his law-school classroom, or his relationships with conservative family members. There’s nothing noble in proclaiming the value of ideas that you don’t have the courage to advocate to your own family…

There’s nothing inherently wrong with blogging anonymously…, though some motivations are more cowardly than others. And much good can and has come from people who are free to write the truth without bearing the consequences. But the decision to do so carries with it certain exceedingly obvious risks, and when the jig is up, it’s best for anonybloggers to endure the scrutiny with dignity rather than complain that people who had no obligation or interest in preserving their anonymity have behaved as such.

Beta life (by Jeff Jarvis)
NYU student Cody Brown delivers a neat take on the discussion about process v. product journalism last week, making distinctions between batch and real-time processing of journalism (read: The New York Times as opposed to blogs)… Brown says that for print, the “gestalt” is “batch processing.” How should it develop its brand? “As the voice of god.” How should it publish information on a developing story? “Cautiously… Compare and contrast with his take on online. Gestalt: “”Real Time Processing. Information is processed on the fly.” Brand? “An open platform… How to publish? “Instantly. When a page is able to be updated at any frequency, corrections can be made just as fast. Rumors and gossip can be used as leverage to get sources, who otherwise wouldn’t, to spill what they know…

It’s not just the standards, tradition, and ego of the legacy press that prevents it from enjoying the benefits of beta, Brown argues, but the perception and value of its practices and reputation. That would seem to argue that it’s impossible for the legacy to update from product to process. I’m not sure I agree, but I do think that Brown put the challenge clearly through one end of the prism. The question is whether the legacy press – for the benefit of its staff even more than its audience – can issue enough caveats to enable it to work real-time. Forget blogs in this discussion. Will The New York Times ever be comfortable working on the standards and practices of 24-hour cable news? Can it afford to? Don’t they have to?

Study: U.S. Newspaper Biz Expected to Lose $25 Billion by 2013 
The newspaper industry in North America will shed some $13 billion in revenue by 2013, according to new research from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Total advertising will fall by a cumulative 32.7%. 

AP eyeing better deals with Internet heavyweights
The Associated Press hopes to negotiate more lucrative licensing deals with major Web sites while mining new revenue from advertisers and readers as the 163-year-old news cooperative adapts to Internet-driven changes in the media. Chief Executive Tom Curley touched upon the AP’s financial priorities in a Tuesday interview after a meeting with employees in which he discussed possible revenue opportunities and initiatives to protect online content… Without offering specifics, Curley said the AP expects its revenue to fall this year and next…

Curley identified new licensing contracts with the AP’s largest Internet customers as his top priority… Readers also might be asked to pay to read and see some of the AP’s content, either on mobile devices or on computers, Curley said.

Yahoo Newspaper Consortium Adds Five Members (Paid Content)
The possible sale of Yahoo’s HotJobs would be a huge blow for members of the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium, as the alliance is the only source of help-wanted-ad revenue for nearly 200 papers. But that’s apparently not deterring papers from joining. The newspaper alliance announced five new members… The Yahoo alliance has been one of the few bright spots for newspapers in recent months. A recent estimate by AdAge found that the two-and-a-half-year-old consortium sold $50 million in Yahoo ad inventory, with about “several million” dollars in sales being added each week.

For Yahoo Newspaper Consortium Members, Targeting Is Now The Draw, Not Job Ads (Paid Content)
For websites still joining ad alliances like the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium and quadrantONE, the appeal is in the targeting and ad assistance—not the job listings. For the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, HotJobs was initially a main selling point, but with unemployment currently at 9.1 percent, job ads aren’t so hot these days. None of the five new consortium members have signed on for the HotJobs service. Instead, the newspapers all cited a desire to access Yahoo’s targeted inventory and online ad saleforce training.

Newspapers May Want to Rethink How High to Build Pay Walls
Forecast: Digital Ad Revenue Expected to Grow Again in 2011

Musictoob Launches Linking Tool For Bloggers… (Paid Content)
Pop music news and gossip site Musictoob thinks it has found a way for some aggregators to get around accusations of stealing content. The site has launched a new tool that lets any blogger link to outside stories, which then show up under the blogger’s URL but are still hosted on the site of the original publisher. Musictoob says that both the blogger and the site he or she links to register page views (A small frame also shows up on the top of the page.)… “Everybody who comes to the party gets rewarded,” says Michael Rovner, the general manager of Musictoob. “It’s actually loading—it’s not us stealing page views.” Musictoob is using the service, which it calls the Tuna Platform, on its own site—and it’s also now giving it away for free.

‘Boston Globe’ Iran Photo Gallery Nets 750,000 Page Views in First 24 Hours 
The Big Picture blog on Boston.com posted a very popular photo gallery this week of photos from the election demonstrations in Iran. The photographs, all from wire services, offered graphic evidence of the severity of the protests, and generated tremendous attention on Twitter and current affairs blogs.

‘Buffalo News’ to Print ‘NYT’ National Edition
The Buffalo News reports that it will begin printing The New York Times national edition in fall for distribution as far as Rochester and Toronto. The deal follows approximately $950,000 in press upgrades at the News, mostly for additional color capacity. The Times will be printed on one of the plant’s 5-year-old KBA Colora presses, the News on the other.

Hirschorn: The Economist Benefited From Being Semi Competent About the Web (Paid Content)
Michael Hirschorn writes an essay explaining why the British magazine is thriving while Time and Newsweek are in the inexorable state of decline despite their frenzied efforts… “By repositioning themselves as repositories of commentary and long-form reporting—much like [The Atlantic], it’s worth noting, which has never delivered impressive profit margins—the American newsweeklies are going away from precisely the thing that has propelled The Economist’s rise: its status as a humble digest, with a consistent authorial voice, that covers absolutely everything that you need to be informed about…”

But the more intriguing analysis…: “While other publications whore themselves to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), The Huffington Post, and the Drudge Report, almost no one links to The Economist. It sits primly apart from the orgy of link love elsewhere on the Web.” His point: by not whoring itself out completely on the Web, people value its print product more, while the opposite has happened at Time and Newsweek: they have succeeded to a larger extent online, as the print version declines.

MSLO Starts Selling Downloadable ‘How To’ Videos; Part Of `Martha University’ (Paid Content)
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia  has opened up Martha University, a section of the media company’s website that will sell “how to” videos covering recipes, entertaining, home decor and weddings. The videos, which are powered by iAmplify, a New York-based audio and video content distribution firm, will be sold for prices ranging from $5.95 to $12.95. Speaking at an industry event last month, Martha Stewart told paidContent that this new venture did not mean the company would be abandoning its ad-supported online model. Instead, it is meant to gauge consumers’ appetite for pay-to-download video. It will serve as a broader test of how much internet users will pay for content, something every media company is looking at right now.

Newsweek Pares an Issue in August
Newsweek typically skips a week of publication around Christmas, the Fourth of July and in August, printing a double issue to cover each two-week period. This summer, however, Newsweek readers will receive two double issues in August, on top of the one in July. 

Gisele Bundchen Mag Covers Strike Out at the Newsstand
Gisele, it turns out, doesn’t sell. Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar each put Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen on covers this year, and both promptly had their worst-selling issues off the newsstand in 2009. “It might be that she’s losing her looks,” quipped Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak.

Crowdsourcing comes to radio.
The emerging phenomena is being used to allow listeners to develop a station’s playlist in real-time. San Mateo, CA-based Jelli has developed a social music service that allows radio listeners — through online voting — to choose what should play next. CBS Radio’s “Live 105” KITS, San Francisco is the first station to deploy the technology.

Radio Hall of Fame to add three.
Three radio giants have been selected for posthumous induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame. The list includes Puerto Rican legend Jose Miguel Agrelot, who becomes the first Hispanic ever inducted into the NRHOF. Also being honored are longtime Phillies announcer Harry Kalas and Chicago talk host Studs Terkel.

Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business
It Should Take Its Cues From What Happened to Newspapers

Nielsen Concedes News Ratings Error 
Nielsen Media Research has conceded making an error and is performing a recount after the company’s ratings on Tuesday initially indicated that ABC’s World News most likely had its smallest audience ever.

Reception problems linger after DTV transition
The shutdown of U.S. analog TV service on Friday appears to have gone relatively smoothly, but as expected, a lot of viewers are having problems getting the stations they want.

Analyst: Why The Bullish Forecasts For In-Game Ad Spending Are Justified (Paid Content)
Various reports are forecasting that marketers will spend billions of dollars on in-game ads over the next five years—with some even saying that spending could grow by almost 30 percent to top $1 billion next year(per ClickZ). Meanwhile, the IAB is proposing new standards to help make it easier for companies to buy, sell and quantify the value of in-game ads. But with all forms of advertising taking budget cuts, is this bullishness around in-game ads justified? Yes—according to Citi Investment analyst Mark Mahaney.

Guessing game: How much money is YouTube losing?
Internet video leader YouTube Inc.’s losses have been overblown by some analysts, but corporate parent Google Inc. doesn’t mind the misperception, according to a study to be released Wednesday… San Francisco-based RampRate reasons the perception of large losses at YouTube helps Google negotiate more favorable contracts with movie, TV and music studios licensing their video. What’s more, copyright owners also are less likely to go to court in pursuit of unpaid royalties and damages if they believe YouTube is a big money loser.

Microsoft To Scale Back Its YouTube-Rival Soapbox (Paid Content)
Two years after making a strategic decision to launch a user-generated video upload service of its own rather than buy another site, Microsoft is pulling back from the market. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen tells CNET that the company is rethinking the strategy around the service it launched—Soapbox. Rather than continue to offer a wide selection of uploaded videos, Microsoft wants to create a “forum where bloggers and citizen journalists can post videos relevant to areas in which MSN focuses, categories like entertainment, lifestyle and finance”—if it keeps the service up at all.

MySpace to cut 30 pct of jobs to boost efficiency
MySpace said Tuesday it is cutting nearly 30 percent of its work force in a bid to become more efficient, bringing its staffing level more in line with its more popular rival, Facebook. The move, the latest cost-cutting effort at the site, comes less than two months after the unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. hired former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, 39, as its new chief executive. It also comes a day after data from tracking firm comScore show Facebook has caught up with MySpace in monthly U.S. visitors for the first time.

FIM Layoffs Underway; Unlike MySpace, No Specifics (Paid Content)
Fox Interactive Media quietly is cutting corporate staff… Is FIM being dismantled? Not now but it sounds like a very real possibility. In the meantime, it will be as lean as they can make it. Currently, FIM includes MySpace, Photobucket, Fox Sports Interactive, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, AskMen, the Fox Interactive Media Audience Network and the Digital Publishing Group.  The layoffs follow news that FIM has canceled plans to consolidate staff at a new Playa Vista office and is trying to get out of that lease.

Amazon Buys Mobile Product Search Startup SnapTell (Paid Content)
Amazon.com search subsidiary A9.com has purchased SnapTell, a startup that offers users a way to search for product information from their mobile phones. Its free iPhone and Android apps let people take a photo of a piece of media—like a DVD, CD, or video game—and then immediately see product information, including reviews.

Facebook Tests Twitter-Like Real Time Search (Paid Content)
Likely feeling left out of the real-time search craze, Facebook said Tuesday evening that it had started testing an update to its search service that includes “up-to-the-minute results” from status updates, notes, and links. The results are broken down into two groups: Those from the accounts of friends and those written by users who have made their profiles and content available to anyone.

Mac News Briefs: Daz 3D releases enhanced version of animation program
Daz 3D announced a new free version of its 3-D art and animation package Tuesday while rolling out an enhanced version of the application featuring professional-level tools.

DirecTV to offer targeted ads in 2011: WSJ
U.S. satellite television provider DirecTV Group is planning a new service allowing advertisers to reach viewers based on their locations, the Wall Street Journal said.

Cell Phone Execs Will Face Questions On Text Messaging Price Hikes
Over the last few years, telephone companies have been hiking up the price for text messages from as little as one-cent per message to 25-cents or more depending if the text is plain text or a multimedia text with photo, video, or audio.

Verizon and AT&T deny collusion on texting prices
U.S. wireless carriers Verizon Communications and AT&T took issue with assertions that they colluded in setting prices for text messages, saying on Tuesday that prices for most customers had fallen and the market was competitive.

IRS, Treasury want cell phone tax repealed
Company-issued cell phones might feel like a leash to some workers, a tether to the office even in their off-hours. They also are a taxable fringe benefit, something the Obama administration wants to change. The administration Tuesday asked Congress to repeal the widely ignored tax on the personal use of company cell phones, calling it outdated and difficult to enforce. The request comes a week after the Internal Revenue Service sparked an outcry when it sought ideas for how better to enforce the law.

Greeks to register prepaid cell phones
Greece’s prepaid mobile phone users will now have to register their identities in a bid to tackle illegal immigration and other crime, the communications minister said Tuesday.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

What Now Cartoons

Sebelius explains to Matthews that private insurers already deny care “every day” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommends denial of care as a model (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Report: Medicare Expansion Would Not Solve Problems “To illustrate what it might take to save Medicare, the commission describes how primary-care doctors, specialists and hospitals could be reorganized into ‘accountable care organizations’ whose members would receive bonuses if the organizations met quality and cost targets. To ratchet up the incentives, health-care providers who fail to meet cost and quality targets could be penalized, the report says.” If we do not speak out the health insurance parasites denial of care model will be legitimized under the pretext of cost control.

Analysis: Doctors’ boos show Obama’s tough road (AP)
Barack Obama isn’t used to hearing boos. For all the young president’s popularity, the response he got Monday from doctors at an American Medical Association meeting was a sign his road is only going to get rockier as he tries to sell his plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system. The boos erupted when Obama told the doctors in Chicago he wouldn’t try to help them win their top legislative priority — limits on jury damages in medical malpractice cases… Instead, Obama left the door open to some kind of compromise on malpractice…

Not long ago, doctors’ decisions were rarely questioned. Now they are being blamed for a big part of the wasteful spending in the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care system. Studies have shown that as much as 30 cents of the U.S. health care dollar may be going for tests and procedures that are of little or no value to patients…

[Obama] promised that Washington would not dictate clinical decisions. And he asked the doctors to imagine a world in which nearly every patient has insurance coverage and they can devote their full attention to the practice of medicine. “You did not enter this profession to be bean-counters and paper-pushers,” Obama said. “You entered this profession to be healers — and that’s what our health care system should let you be.” That line got him an ovation.
So let’s get out our calculators, shall we? If 30% of health care costs are attributable to unnecessary tests (see above), and another 30% of health care costs are attributable to profits, fat salaries for insurance company CEO, and paying clerks to deny coverage and claims (see here), that means ALMOST 60% OF HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURES ARE UNNECESSARY. Quite an eye opener, isn’t it?

So now are they going to tell us that if some of those testing companies close their doors, it will mean lost jobs? And that we’re just as obligated to keep them in business doing unnecessary tests as we are to maintaining insurance company profits and overhead? That it’s our duty?

You wouldn’t know it from news reports, but most doctors support national health care (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
In the comments section of my column about media coverage of the AMA, a reader writes: “Do you think you are fooling people? In this entire article, you never once address what the FAR MAJORITY of Doctors believe. They believe that a nationalized program will be the downfall of coverage and care as we know it… Do your job as a jornalist…” Well.  I’m no journalist; I’m a media critic.  But the reader is correct that responsible reporters should report the facts.  And the facts are that, despite what media reporting about the AMA’s recent comments would lead you to believe, most doctors support national health care.

On  Dobbs,  Pilgrim falsely suggests AMA represents “the nation’s doctors” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

The AMA Does Not Represent Us (Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris, members of Physicians for a National Health Program)
[T]he AMA represents less than one-third of America’s physicians, and half of those are retired. [Emphasis added.] In fact, the American Medical Student Association endorses universal health care reform. The AMA’s longstanding opposition to every effort to change health care financing, including Medicare in the 1960s, has resulted in decades of needless and countless morbidity and mortality. Sixty people die every day in this country simply for lack of access to health care. And instead of being an advocate for the only solution that accomplishes the goals of universal coverage and fiscal viability, the single-payer option, the AMA continues to be primarily a trade association looking out for the financial interests of its members… The AMA does not represent us.

Dean On Conrad’s Co-op Plan: Insurance Industry Licking Its Lips (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Sen. Kent Conrad’s proposal for a cooperative approach to health insurance coverage has created a unique challenge for progressive health care advocates who don’t object to the idea but find it inadequate… “This is a big mistake,” former Gov. Howard Dean told the Huffington Post. “These co-ops will be very weak. Many won’t have the half-million members that most experts think is necessary to influence the market… Insurance companies will be licking their lips.”… Added SEIU President Andy Stern through his active twitter account: “Health Care Co-op is distraction from need for real competition and cost control. Good idea and attempts to avoid important debate on costs.”

A health care flashback (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
Look what I came across while researching my column about media coverage of the American Medical Association (note the date): “…August 25, 1994… America’s corporations – the biggest buyers of health benefits – have been forcing reforms on their own for years. [Emphasis added.] Regardless what happens in Washington they’ll keep cutting costs, reducing chances that drug companies, hospitals and other medical providers would seek to sharply raise prices.” Just something to keep in mind the next time you see a news report offer industry-friendly spin that things won’t be that bad if comprehensive health care reform doesn’t happen.

On CNBC, David Goodfriend notes that conservatives have been calling health care reform “socialism” since the 1930s (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Obama to single-payer advocates: “go fuck yourselves” (by vastleft at Corrente)
Naturally, he wasn’t talking directly to us “liberal bleeding hearts.” Instead, he delivered the message to the AMA: “‘What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system,’ he said. I’ll be honest. There are countries where a single-payer system may be working. But I believe — and I’ve even taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief — that it is important for us to build on our traditions here in the United States.’”
Yes, well, slavery was once a tradition here in the United States, President Obama.

New Limbaugh argument against public health care plan: “[T]here’s no federal dog healthcare plan out there, and it’s working just fine” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Senate GOP Blocking Obama Nominees In Attempt To Delay Health Care And Climate Legislation (Think Progress)
In April, ThinkProgress noted that Republicans were blocking an increasing number of President Obama’s nominees to pursue ideological witch hunts and to facilitate self-interested horse trades. Two months later, a number of key nominees are still waiting and Senate Republicans are bottling up dozens more of Obama’s nominees in order to delay action on key Obama agenda items like health care and climate change legislation by consuming one of the most precious resources in the Senate: floor time.

Why Progressives Have to get Serious about Health Care Reform (Democracy Corps)
We are convinced that the country will support comprehensive health care reform — if we respect how voters will assess our plans, provide key information about how reform will work (particularly to reduce costs) and if the president carries forward with his educative role. This conclusion is based on our most current survey, which shows a plurality for the Obama plan, but short of a majority — which gets larger after a robust debate. The survey replicates questions we asked in 1993 when President Clinton launched his health care reform plans, and I write about those findings in the latest New Republic.
It happens over and over and over again. The policies that will benefit the greatest number of people are derailed, leaving us with nothing or even less.

All Hat No Cattle

Obama: Iranian voters’ voices should be heard (AP)
President Barack Obama says the world is inspired by the outpouring of Iranian political dissent, but Sen. John McCain said Obama isn’t speaking out strongly enough.

Iranian Council Agrees to Limited Recount (Washington Post)
Iran’s influential Guardian Council agreed Tuesday to recount some ballots from last week’s disputed presidential election, as pro- and anti-government demonstrators prepared to face off in a public square in the central part of the capital. The unusual step by the council, several members of which had supported President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bid for re-election, was quickly rejected as insufficient by the opposition… Their supporters said it would be difficult — if not impossible — to request a recount comprehensive enough to overturn what the government has said was a landslide in favor of Ahmadinejad.

Could Ahmadinejad actually have won? Read the disputed poll (McClatchy)
The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism, and the New America Foundation conducted a poll in Iran May 11-20, interviewing 1,001 people. They found Ahmadinejad with a large lead over his rivals.

Fleischer Claims ‘Substantial Reform Movement In Iran’ Is ‘Because Of George W. Bush’s Tough Policies’ (Think Progress)
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports [Monday] that former Bush flack Ari Fleischer emailed fellow Post reporter Glenn Kessler before any results had been issued in Iran’s hotly-contested presidential election to give credit to his former boss for the “reformists’ surge” there. “[O]ne of the reasons there is a substantial reform movement in Iran — particularly among its young people — is because of George W. Bush’s tough policies,” Fleischer wrote… Aside from the fact that Fleischer’s claim cannot really ever be verified (a tactic former Bush administration officials use when defending their failed policies), it’s clear that Iran’s power in the region has grown significantly in the region since 2001 — a point one wonders if Fleischer will also give Bush credit for.

REPORT: Key Terror Detainee Acknowledged ‘I Make Up Stories’ In Response To Torture (Think Progress)
The Bush administration has long justified its use of torture by claiming that it obtained valuable information from torturing 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed… But according to documents released by the Obama administration in response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, Cheney was lying. Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA after withstanding torture… The torture of Mohammed, who we know was waterboarded 183 times in one month, “underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture.”

The Good Soldier: Hillary Clinton As Secretary of State (by Peter Keating, New York Daily News)
Clinton has steadily accumulated power while expending hardly any political capital. For one thing, she has stirred an effective mix of politicos and diplomats into the top tiers of the State Department… Further, Clinton hasn’t made mistakes. There have been no Joe Biden–like gaffes, Tom Daschle–like embarrassments, or Judd Gregg–like turnarounds coming from Hillary. Or from her husband — these days, Bill Clinton would have us believe he spends his time shopping for trinkets, unable even to get Hillary on her cell phone.

Meanwhile, nobody else has developed an alternative foreign-policy power center within the administration… In public, Clinton has spent the last six months fundamentally realigning American foreign policy away from reliance on military force, toward what she calls (in a wise abandonment of the lefty academic phrase “soft power”) “smart power” — more diplomacy and international economic assistance. She has also been striving to ensure zero daylight between her and Obama on any issue, big or small, whatever positions she might have taken as a New York senator or presidential candidate. If Clinton minds toiling in Obama’s shadow, or representing her former rival as America’s best face to the world, she hasn’t shown it.
Hillary has always been a team player. That’s why the vicious attacks on her last year for being selfish were so infuriatingly unfair.

Bill Clinton, in new diplomatic role, urges help for Haiti (Truthdig)
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has been appointed as United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, says one of his first orders of business to help the impoverished Caribbean nation will be to ensure that $353 million in promised pledges from the international community actually end up in Haiti.

S. Korea Seeks Assurances From U.S. of Nuclear Shield (Washington Post)
As state media in North Korea continued to warn of possible nuclear war, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak flew to Washington for talks with President Obama at which Lee is expected to seek a written promise of continued U.S. nuclear protection. The United States has maintained a nuclear umbrella over South Korea since the Korean War and it periodically reaffirms that protection, although not at the level of a White House statement.

May housing construction jumps by 17.2 percent (AP)
Construction of new homes jumped in May by the largest amount in three months, providing an encouraging sign that the nation’s deep housing recession was beginning to bottom out.

Stimulus serves up Obama pork (Politico)
It became a sort of poster child for fiscal responsibility — a clean-coal power plant in Illinois that was one of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s pet projects. Democrats insisted they were so serious about keeping pork out of the stimulus bill that it was President Obama himself who blocked the FutureGen project from the massive spending package. “It shows that we’re serious about it,” Brendan Daly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman, said at the time. “The speaker said it, and the president said it: There will not be earmarks in this bill.” Earmarks? Perhaps not. But funding for FutureGen? Absolutely, to the tune of $1 billion.

The Department of Energy on Friday announced that the FutureGen project is on track after all, committing federal stimulus money to advance the project to its next stage. One reason: It was the only shovel-ready project that fits the requirements of the stimulus bill. Administration officials and the project’s other big backer, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), insist that’s not an earmark at all, as promised — because the stimulus bill doesn’t specifically name the FutureGen project as a recipient of the money. But others say that’s a distinction without a difference — that FutureGen is merely an earmark by another name.

Obama to create new agency (Politico)
President Barack Obama on Wednesday will call for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of his long-awaited plan for overhauling the nation’s market regulatory structure in response to last year’s meltdown, administration officials tell POLITICO. The promise to “re-regulate” the wounded financial system after the go-go years is one of the centerpieces of the president’s agenda, in a year when he’s taking on many of the nation’s most complex problems all at once. Officials call the overhaul by far the biggest since the 1930s.

The new independent agency – which Obama will begin talking up in a series of interviews on Tuesday afternoon — will look after consumers on matters like credit cards, with “a very clear line of accountability around products that they deem abusive of consumers, or misleading,” a senior administration official said.
Don’t know much about it yet, but it sounds like a good idea.

Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again (by Kevin Baker, Harper’s, subscription required)
Much like Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama is a man attempting to realize a stirring new vision of his society without cutting himself free from the dogmas of the past-without accepting the inevitable conflict. Like Hoover, he is bound
to fail. President Obama, to be fair, seems to be even more alone than Hoover was in facing the emergency at hand. The most appalling aspect of the present crisis has been the utter fecklessness of the American elite in failing to confront it. From both the private and public sectors, across the entire political spectrum, the lack of both will and new ideas has been stunning.
Because with the elite of our country, it’s all “I, me, mine, I, me, mine, I, me, mine.”

Why not turn the banks into regulated public utilities? (by lambert at Corrente)
Fred gave Timmy and Larry some space on his Op-Ed page, and they finish up this way: “By restoring the public’s trust in our financial system, the administration’s reforms will allow the financial system to play its most important function: transforming the earnings and savings of workers into the loans that help families buy homes and cars, help parents send kids to college, and help entrepreneurs build their businesses…” Well, if that’s all the banks are good for, then why do we need the huge CEO salaries, and all the “innovation,” and the one-day-a-week jobs, and all the weasels pulling down commissions? If banking’s going to become boring again, why do we need banksters?
Same comment as above.

CIA head says Cheney almost wishing US be attacked (AP)
CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.” Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney “smells some blood in the water” on the issue of national security. Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the U.S. less safe. He has been critical of Obama for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the U.S.

Intel officials ‘scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.’ (Think Progress)
After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaked a report warning of the threat of right-wing extremists, mainstream conservatives went into a frenzy, demanding that Secretary Janet Napolitano be fired. According to Newsweek, some local intelligence “fusion” centers ceased their operations monitoring right-wing extremists because of the conservative outcry. Now, after a series of murders by far-right extremists, intelligence officials admit they are taking the threat seriously: “They may talk about it less in public now, but law-enforcment and intel officials tell NEWSWEEK they’re quietly scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.”

Is Obama holding up E-Verify? (McClatchy)
Legislators and advocates are questioning President Obama’s commitment to enforcing immigration laws after, again, delaying when federal contractors need to adhere to an order to use an employment-verification system designed to identify illegal immigrants.

VA inspections show continued flaws (AP)
Fewer than half of Veterans Affairs centers given a surprise inspection last month had proper training and guidelines in place for common endoscopic procedures such as colonoscopies — even after the agency learned that mistakes may have exposed thousands of veterans to HIV and other diseases.

Mayors steamed by W.H. no-show (Politico)
America’s big-city mayors are steaming over what they view as “a very dangerous precedent” set by the Obama administration in its decision to shun the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Providence, R.I., this week. In its attempt to honor the picket line of a local firefighters union involved in a labor dispute with the city, the administration has inadvertently angered some of its staunchest supporters in urban America, who argue that by declining to send an official contingent to the three-day mayors’ conference, the administration is caving in to labor and snubbing local governments at a time of economic strife.
I think the administration made the right call on this issue.

Calif. Aid Request Spurned By U.S. (Washington Post)
The Obama administration has turned back pleas for emergency aid from one of the biggest remaining threats to the economy — the state of California. Top state officials have gone hat in hand to the administration, armed with dire warnings of a fast-approaching “fiscal meltdown” caused by a budget shortfall. Concern has grown inside the White House in recent weeks as California’s fiscal condition has worsened, leading to high-level administration meetings. But federal officials are worried that a bailout of California would set off a cascade of demands from other states. With an economy larger than Canada’s or Brazil’s, the state is too big to fail, California officials urge.

Exclusive: House Dems Planning Major Changes To Secret CIA Briefings Of Congress (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
In a move that could spark another fight with the GOP over CIA intelligence and secrecy, House Dems are quietly preparing to make major changes to the ways the CIA briefs Congress on covert actions, by broadening the pool of members of Congress who will have access to such private briefings, a source familiar with deliberations says. Dems on the House Intelligence Committee have drafted a new bill that would strip the President of his authority to limit such briefings to the so-called “Gang of Eight” — the leaders of the House and Senate from both parties, and the leaders of the Congressional Intelligence committees — and allow a larger group of members of Congress to attend.

The move, which is being championed internally by House Intel chair Silvestre Reyes, would also compel the CIA to keep a far more detailed record of these briefings, though these details still need to be worked out.

Congress OKs More FDA Regulation Over Tobacco-Funded Senators’ Opposition (Open Secrets)
Big Tobacco is closely tied to the small group of lawmakers who opposed recent legislation allowing greater FDA regulation of tobacco products and advertising methods…. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), has received more money ($359,100) since 1989 than any lawmaker but one from tobacco companies, many of which are based in his Tar Heel State Burr spearheaded the effort to defeat the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act… Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the all-time leader in reaping the tobacco industry’s contributions. Over the senator’s career, he has received $419,000 from PACs and individuals associated with major tobacco companies…

In addition to Burr and McConnell, 14 other Senate Republicans also voted against providing the FDA with more regulatory authority. They include: Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who has received $228,700 from the industry over time and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who has collected $194,150. One Democrat, freshman Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, joined them in opposing the legislation. Hagan received $19,200 from Big Tobacco during her 2008 cycle campaign. 

Ethics Panel Members Received Paltry PMA Contributions (Open Secrets)
Some members of Congress are currently drawing media scrutiny (and Justice Department subpoenas) as a result of their close financial ties to a defunct lobbying shop, PMA Group, which was raided by federal agents late last year. But the House Ethics Committee members who began an investigation into the firm’s activities last week have received relatively little in the way of campaign donations from PMA and its defense-contractor clients.  

Democrats Plan for Byrd “Contingencies” (Political Wire)
Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-WV) state of health “has prompted some quiet, behind-the-scenes discussions in the event the senator is unable to return to office,” the West Virginia Gazette reports. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) met with state Democratic Party chairman Nick Casey last week, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on a conference call to discuss contingencies.” Casey “is generally regarded as the consensus choice to serve as a placeholder for Byrd’s Senate seat in the event Byrd would have to step down prior to the 2010 elections.”

How Congress Really Works (Political Wire)
This new book by Rep. Henry Waxman and Joshua Green is a must-read for political junkies.  It’s described as an “inside account of how Congress really works by describing the subtleties and complexities of the legislative process.” The authors give readers “a rare glimpse into how this is achieved-the strategy, the maneuvering, the behind-the-scenes deals” and show “how the things we take for granted (clear information about tobacco’s harmfulness, accurate nutritional labeling, important drugs that have saved countless lives) started out humbly-derided by big business interests as impossible or even destructive. Sometimes, the most dramatic breakthroughs occur through small twists of fate or the most narrow voting margin.”
Buy the book here.

US Supreme Court refuses “Cuban Five” spy case (AFP)
The US Supreme Court Monday refused to hear the case of five Cubans serving prison sentences for spying in the United States, effectively upholding their conviction by a lower court.

Dem Establishment’s Fundraising Machine Kicks Into Gear For Specter (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
It’s striking how swiftly the Dem establishment has lined up behind Arlen Specter, making Joe Sestak’s expected primary challenge to the newly-minted Dem a major uphill climb. Here’s the latest: The Dem establishment’s money machine is kicking into gear behind Specter, with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief Robert Menendez set to help host a big fundraiser for Specter later this month at the swanky Regency Hotel in New York… The DSCC had always said that it would back Specter in a primary, though it doesn’t go out of its way to advertise it. And Harry Reid and even President Obama are likely to help raise cash for Specter, too. That the Dem money machine is kicking into gear for Specter so fast is yet another sign of what Sestak is up against.
I hope Jose Sestak kicks Specter’s, and the poohbahs’, asses.

Bloomberg Cruising to Re-Election (Political Wire)
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg beats William Thompson (D) in the New York City mayoral race, 54% to 32%, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Bloomberg sweeps the political spectrum, leading Thompson 49% to 40% among Democrats, 71% to 12% among Republicans and 59% to 26% among independent voters.

Pawlenty Will Explore White House Bid (Political Wire)
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), who has decided against running for a third term in 2010, “will spend the next two years traveling the country to see if he can build enough support to run for president in 2012,” his associates tell Washington Whispers. “The Republican, who is expected to play up his humble roots and past in a populist bid against President Obama, will decide in 2011 if there is enough of a base on which to build his campaign. Those close to “T-Paw” said that his focus is the presidency, not a vice presidential nomination or an effort to raise his name recognition en route to a bid in 2016.”

Fundraising Begins for a Jindal Presidential Bid (Political Wire)
A group of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) political supporters, “including an uncle of the governor’s wife, Supriya Jindal, are forming a federal political action committee to support a presidential run by the 38-year-old Republican,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. Though Jindal’s press secretary insists to the Baton Rouge Advocate that the governor, “does not support this effort,” an insider tells Political Wire that Jindal’s top aides manage their responsibilities “in the context of preparing Bobby for a 2012 run.”

Blago Attends the Theatre (by Pareene at Gawker)
Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe has a show called “Rod Blagojevich Superstar.” And because he is insane, the real Rod Blagojevich went to a performance of the show about how he was impeached as governor after being indicted for corruption.

WATCH Letterman Apologizes To Palin: “I Told A Joke That Was Beyond Flawed” (video)

Palin accepts Letterman apology (Politico)
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has accepted David Letterman’s apology on making a bad joke about her 14-year-old daughter. In a statement, Palin says she accepts Letterman’s apology “on behalf of young women like my daughters, who hope men who ‘joke’ about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve.”

State GOP staffer sends racist image of Obama. (Think Progress)
[A] racist e-mail was sent out by a legislative staffer for Tennessee GOP state senator Diane Black. The staffer, Sherri Goforth, e-mailed this composite picture of the country’s 44 presidents, which represents President Obama with only a set of eyes:

The GOP tries Social Networking! (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
Today we became aware that the GOP should have stopped with mastery of the Fax machine and pagers. It seems that there is something called Facebook that one of the more curious and adventuresome Elephants, South Carolina State Senate candidate Rusty DePass, decided to try his hand:

South Carolina Pol Apologizes for Obama Comment (Political Wire)
A former Republican party official in South Carolina “apologized after his posting on Facebook suggested a gorilla that escaped form a Columbia zoo was an ancestor of first lady Michelle Obama,” reports the Charlotte Observer… “The comment has since been deleted, but DePass confirmed to WIS-TV that he made it, apologizing and saying it was a joke about statements Obama has made about evolution.”

So Americans are moving away from considering themselves on the same side as these racists, right? Wrong:
“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group (Gallup)
Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.
Despite the fact that Americans consistently support most of the same things as those of us who call ourselves progressives or liberals, they call themselves conservatives. The right-wing media machine is very successful in that regard, and liberals have failed miserably to get their message out.

Bad Predictions (Political Wire)
Ronald Brownstein: “To reread the major political books from the years around Bush’s reelection is to be plunged, as if into a cold pool, back into a world of Democratic gloom and anxiety. Those books were linked by the common belief that Republicans had established a thin but durable electoral advantage that threatened to exile Democrats from power for years, if not decades. Many books from that time assumed Democrats could avoid that eclipse only by adopting the tactics used by Republicans in general and Rove in particular… In fact, by the time most of these books were published, the Republican ‘fortress’ looked more like a crumbling sand castle.”
So just remember this when you hear stuff about Democrats now being invincible: most of these pontificators have no idea what they’re talking about.

Axelrod tells grads why he left journalism for politics (Chicago Sun-Times)
President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod divulged a few secrets of his college days today as he told 1,300 journalism and other DePaul University graduates to “chase their passions” and not “succumb to the pull of the pull of the practical.”… Axelrod spoke of his start in journalism. “In those days, superb reporting played a historic role in uncovering the truth, shining a bright light on events like Vietnam and Watergate,” Axelrod said. “Journalists heped save the republic, and I wanted to be a part of that. But, over time, things changed. By the mid-1980s, journalism was becoming more business than calling. The front office began to take over the newsroom. The emphasis went from veracity to velocity, from reporting to receipts.” He said that’s when he went into politics.
Congratulations, David, for then helping to make politics more of a business than a calling.

Obama White House Woos New York Times (Politico)
Where George W. Bush’s team made a show of not caring about The New York Times, aides in this White House treat the paper with a deference that James Reston himself would have appreciated. Even routine news stories buried deep inside the A-section often quote high-level sources.

The Obama officials blocking accountability for Bush crimes (by Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory, Salon)
The battle against baseless, worthless grants of anonymity by journalists is, at this point, probably futile, since even many of the nation’s best and most valuable reporters — such as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer — seem helplessly addicted to it.  In an otherwise solid and at times enlightening article on CIA Director Leon Panetta and his resistance to investigating past CIA abuses, Mayer includes this passage at the beginning of her article to explain how Panetta was chosen only after Obama’s first choice, John Brennan, was rejected:

“A friend of Brennan’s from his C.I.A. days complained to me, ‘After a few Cheeto-eating people in the basement working in their underwear who write blogs voiced objections to Brennan, the Obama Administration pulled his name at the first sign of smoke, and then ruled out a whole class of people: anyone who had been at the agency during the past ten years couldn’t pass the blogger test.’”

What possible justification is there to grant anonymity to someone to spout these clichéd and factually false insults? First, as I’ve documented numerous times and as Mayer herself well knows, the case against Brennan was not that he was “at the agency for the past ten years” or even that he had anything to do with the torture program, but rather that (as she herself documents later in the piece) he explicitly advocated and defended many of the worst torture techniques and other Bush abuses. Second, unlike the individual who is willing to spout these insults only while cowardly hiding behind Mayer’s shield of anonymity, the bloggers who led the opposition to Brennan (including myself and The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan) all attached their names to their views and — as Spencer Ackerman notes – are about as far away as one can be from the trite, adolescent cartoons spewed by Mayer’s anonymous insulter. Third, one of the principal points of Mayer’s long article is that the objections to Brennan have been vindicated, because — as Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser — he has led the way in urging Obama to keep past CIA abuses suppressed and Bush crimes protected from accountability.

Congressional Black Caucus says Sunday shows need more diversity (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
Over the years Media Matters has released several detailed reports documenting the lack of ideological, racial and gender diversity within the media in general and on the all-important Sunday morning network political talk shows more specifically. Well, [Monday] The Hill reports that the Congressional Black Caucus is calling for increased diversity on the Sunday shows… In the past, the networks have contended that their guest line-ups reflect those in power despite the fact that little changed in 2007 after Democrats took control of Congress.  By their own standard one would expect things to look a little different on Sunday mornings these days.

Truthdig Wins 3 Journalism Awards (Truthdig)
Thanks to the LA Press Club for acknowledging the excellent work of our writers with three Southern California Journalism Awards. Congratulations to Chris Hedges, who won Online Journalist of the Year and Best Online Column, and Scott Ritter, who took home an award for Best Online Feature. Continue reading for the full list of 12 Truthdig finalists and links to the winning and nominated articles.

Carlos Watson Gets 11am Slot on MSNBC (TVNewser, Media Bistro)
Carlos Watson, who officially joined MSNBC as a dayside anchor in March, will be the host of the 11amET hour. His first day was [Monday]… Watson was recently asked not to promote his personal Website, The Stimulist, and although he didn’t mention the site by name, he did bring over one of the features. “Now we’re going to move on to my daily big thought,” said Watson, delivering his take in a segment called “The C-Note.” That name is used for his personal column on The Stimulist, and [Monday’s] topic was taken directly from his June 5th post.

O’Reilly still falsely suggesting he was only reporting that Tiller was “known” as “Tiller the baby killer” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

O’Reilly: Walsh’s position on late-term fetuses “has everything to do with destroying human life for trivial reasons” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Did Scientologists Get Fox News Gossip Fired? (New York Daily News)
Did Fox News bow to pressure from Kelly Preston, Tom Cruise, and other members of the Church of Scientology when it fired entertainment/gossip columnist Roger Friedman? That’s what the journo is expected to charge in a wrongful termination lawsuit this week.

Hannity claims Limbaugh didn’t make fun of Michael J. Fox (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Limbaugh proclaims events in “[t]he era of Obama” are “the kind of things that happen in totalitarian regimes” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Limbaugh claims that “global warming is a lie; global cooling is in full swing” (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

Boortz: People living in Katrina trailers, Section 8 housing and on welfare shouldn’t be allowed to vote (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)

National Review Online Is Sadly Losing Its Chief Source of Batshit Craziness (by John Cook at Gawker)
Kathryn Jean Lopez, who has in the past year led the National Review Online to ecstatic heights of tribal ululation free of reason and unhinged from political reality, is leaving. Going to picket abortion clinics full-time, we presume… Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review’s print edition, will take over Lopez’s duties… The fact that Lowry doesn’t appear to be hiring a replacement—it seems pretty clear from Lopez’ post that his new duties will not be temporary—is a further indication that the National Review is hurting for cash in the wake of Buckley’s death.

Gay rights ordinance up for discussion in Anchorage (McClatchy)
An ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation is again on the Anchorage Assembly agenda Tuesday with some last minute changes by the chairwoman, who is tweaking the controversial proposal to make it more palatable to both sides.

Fertilizer industry finds its alternative energy: corncobs (Truthdig)
American agriculture has become increasingly dependent on foreign sources of natural gas, a key ingredient in the nitrogen fertilizer that farmers use to get high yields of crops such as corn and wheat.

Media Matters for America headlines

Why doesn’t the NYT report AMA’s backtrack on public plan?

Wash. Times reverses meaning of Obama’s comments, falsely claiming he “admitted” doctors will bear brunt of spending cuts

Beck hosts “disenfranchised Democrat” … who’s also apparently an anti-Obama conspiracy theorist

NY Times article on Sotomayor property rights case tells only half the story

Fox News’ Bream ignored evidence undermining Long’s attack on Sotomayor as “extreme”

Beneath picture of Iranian election aftermath, “non-biased” Fox Nation asks if “Obama’s ‘Apology Foreign Policy’” is “failing”

Doocy twisted Biden remark to falsely claim administration backtracking on job creation

NBC’s Guthrie falsely suggests AMA represents “the nation’s doctors”

NY Times left out key facts in report on AMA

Hume, Will use Iranian election to promote long-standing opposition to engaging Iran

Iran bars foreign media from reporting on streets
Iranian authorities are restricting all journalists working for foreign media from firsthand reporting on the streets.

CNN Fail? Network Covers Iran Post-Election More than Any Other Cabler 
With Amanpour’s reporting from the ground and Fareed Zakaria’s heavy focus on the story during “GPS,” the Iran crisis was a major topic on air for the network. Still, as the New York Times notes, “It did not provide the kind of wall-to-wall coverage that some had expected.”

McClatchy almost didn’t send a reporter to Iran
“As the Iranian elections were approaching, we thought long and hard about whether we would send anybody, and for a long time we thought we wouldn’t because it simply costs a lot of money to send a reporter into Iran,” says McClatchy’s Mark Seibel. “Finally we decided that we needed to do it. They were giving out visas, and they aren’t easy to get. But to do that, what we did was cancel a trip for a reporter to Afghanistan.”

China Orders Patches to Planned Web Filter
Efforts to improve a censorship application suggest that the government still supports its use.

Music cos. vow to show Minn. woman shared 24 songs
The recording industry began its second attempt at proving that a Minnesota woman engaged in illegal sharing of copyrighted music on the Internet and should be held accountable.

Entertainment & Media Sector Recovery: Might Have To Wait Till 2011: PwC (Paid Content)
PricewaterhouseCoopers is coming out with its omnibus annual entertainment and media sector forecasts…, and the outlook is pretty grim worldwide, though Asia is looking much brighter than the North America and Europe, not surprisingly. According to its Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2009-2013: —The global entertainment & media market as a whole, including both consumer and advertising spending will grow by 2.7 percent compounded annually for the entire forecast period to $1.6 trillion in 2013.
Click through for more highlights.

WaPo’s Brauchli: Evaluating Online Fee Options ‘Prudently’ (Paid Content)
One question that inevitably comes up these days when a top newspaper exec talks online with readers: How can I pay you for online news? (Of course, that shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign that enough readers want to pay for online news to make it work.)  [Monday] was Washington Post Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli’s turn and, while the response didn’t move the needle one bit, it does offer a little insight into the way the paper is approaching the matter: “We’ve certainly considered whether it would be possible to charge for our content online. We fund our news operations from revenues generated largely by advertising. Online advertisers pay for an audience—the larger, the better. If we put up a wall that readers would have to pay to cross, and then readers didn’t cross it, our advertising revenues would probably suffer. So we are, you might say, evaluating our options prudently.”

But the rest of his answer sounds a lot less active in terms of options—and very uncertain that there is one: “That said, just about everybody in the news business is thinking about the question of whether or how to charge for news online. And if there were an answer that made sense for our readers, our advertisers and us, we’d no doubt weigh it seriously.”

Facebook and The Washington Post: More Than Meets the Eye (Mashable)
The Washington Post has pushed out Facebook Connect integration, allowing readers to login to the site using their Facebook credentials as opposed to a WashingtonPost.com account… Currently, The Washington Post uses Pluck to power a variety of social networking features on the site… However, all of these features, frankly, should be powered by Facebook. Facebook Connect would enable The Washington Post to import all of this data from the social network, instantly populating its community with vibrant content. Not to mention, The Post could gain significant traffic, as actions taken within its community – like commenting or chat – could be syndicated back into Facebook…

[O]ther papers should take note of what they could potentially be offering users and advertisers through Facebook Connect. It’s a strong alternative – or at least compliment – to a proprietary registration wall and social network. At present, there would seem to be both a lot of engagement and targeted advertising dollars being left on the table.

Murdoch had the vision to buy MySpace, but he didn’t know what to do with it
MySpace has become a textbook case of how quickly a digital juggernaut can become a has-been, writes Matthew Flamm. The head of a research firm tells him: “It may be that Rupert [Murdoch] is ultimately a newspaper guy. The idea [with MySpace] may have been, ‘We bought you, so make it happen for us.’”

Murdoch-Berlusconi Feud Plays Out in the Media
When Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi clash, it is no surprise that the dispute plays out across multiple platforms. In Italy, Berlusconi, the prime minister, has used an interview on one of his own television channels to accuse Mr. Murdoch of mounting a personal attack.

Why Is NYT Editor Bill Keller Writing Front-Page Stories?
“[New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller] had long wanted to visit Iran,” spokesperson Diane McNulty said, “and the occasion of the election seemed like a great time to do so, accompanying our reporter, Robert Worth. Bill had not planned to write articles, but when the story got so big, he did so.”

Village Voice Media to Launch Niche Ad Network
Village Voice Media, which publishes 15 alternative weekly newspapers across the U.S., is launching a niche online ad network comprised of local blogs and content sites — each of which mesh with the company’s demographics and indie sensibility.

Guild has an “offer of resolution” for Globe management
The Boston Newspaper Guild says it will bring its offer to a meeting Monday with Boston Globe management in an effort to come up with cost-cutting measures the union can support.

What’s The Boston Globe Worth? A Buck, More Or Less (by Ken Doctor, who analyzes the news business on his blog Content Bridges and for Outsell, an information-market analytics firm)
The potential upsides include buying an ad-based franchise at the bottom of a recession and being able to be a shiny, newly painted boat in a rising economic sea; 2010 ad numbers can’t be worse than this year’s… The potential downsides include inheriting a heavy-on-cost business model at a time when competitors from Huffington Post to Politico to local start-ups to emerging online initiatives of local broadcasters threaten to do further damage to daily newspapers. The new business models we’re seeing from the start-ups—small, editor-heavy, full-time staffs, growing legions of part-time reporters, columnists and bloggers, regional aggregation models—stand distant from the model of a paper like the Globe… Add, subtract, multiply, divide, though: the math still comes out pretty much to a buck.

Albany Times Union staffers reject outsourcing plan
By a 125 to 35 vote, employees of Hearst’s Albany paper rejected a plan that the Guild says would have given the company the power to outsource any and all jobs and lay off employees regardless of how long they’ve worked at the paper.

Seattle Times: Sale of Maine newspapers “does not solve the financial challenges we face”
The Seattle Times Co. didn’t disclose the price paid for Blethen Maine Newspapers. (The Times borrowed $213 million in 1998 for the acquisition.) “We were very reluctant to sell and are very sad about it,” says a spokeswoman. “If it were not for the severe recession, we would not have done so.”

Forbes is being tested as it never before has been
Brother Steve and Tim Forbes “have never been through anything like this, and they will find out if they have the management talent on hand to publish a magazine in this environment,” says former managing editor Dennis Kneale. Forbes is fighting to hang on to its subscribers, reports David Carr.

BusinessWeek Tries Pay Model Online
BusinessWeek will create a special presentation of its print magazine content that will only be available to subscribers. Roger Neal, general manager of BusinessWeek.com, said that while the print content will be available on the site for all to see, subscribers will get a different experience.

MRI Launches First Ratings System for Magazine Print Ads
Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI), will begin to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns that appear in those magazines. The system, called AdMeasure, is “designed to elevate magazine audience measurement granularity to the level of TV and the Internet.”

In Radio These Days, Small Is Better
In the near term, the best positioned radio broadcasters may be those exposed to smaller markets, where competition for ad dollars is less. Average revenue at stations in markets below the top 50 fell 6.6 percent last year compared with around 9 percent for bigger stations.

Clear Channel deal gives musicians Web channels
Artists like the Eagles and Christina Aguilera can now play DJ, at least online.

Virgin Media and Universal launch music service
Virgin Media, the cable TV operator owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, launched a new kind of music download subscription service Monday with Universal, the world’s largest music company. The service, described by the companies as a world first, will allow Virgin Media’s broadband customers in Britain to stream and download as many songs and albums as they like from Universal’s catalog for a fee.

But entertainment lawyers said the service was unlikely to solve the global music industry’s problem of billions of dollars lost to music piracy, and would need to offer content from big-name entertainers to be attractive to consumers.

Universal To Give Away Unlimited MP3s Via UK ISP (Paid Content)
With 95 percent of the world’s music downloads still estimated to be illegal, the world’s biggest music label is pushing the nuclear-option button. Universal, which has already been offering its catalog through all-you-can-eat DRM’ed services, is now offering the whole thing for MP3 download through an upcoming new unlimited-music package from UK ISP Virgin Media… Virgin said its new offering will be accompanied by a range of measures against illegal file-sharers.

CBSNews.com Relaunches; Still Needs the Traffic Hose (Paid Content)
[CBS] has relaunched CBSNews.com…The new site takes cues from CBS Evening News’ own design overhaul which rolled out a month ago on TV, and from the previous predominatly white background, has moved to a blended white and grey, with a premium on visuals. It starts with the main rotating visual carousel of stories, which as a feature is now becoming standard on a lot of general news sites. The site has also added lot more original content from CBSNews reports and columnists and content partners (Politico, CBS MoneyWatch, Washington Post and WebMD), more robust destinations for each of its news programs, and access to live coverage of breaking news and special events, it says…

Despite all this, CBSNews.com has a big challenge ahead, as it is the smallest in terms of traffic, compared to other network news sites like CNN.com, MSNBC.con and FoxNews.com.

Why moving “Nightline” to 10 p.m. ET makes sense
It could solve the problems of how to make primetime cheaper and what to do with the flagging evening newscasts, says James Poniewozik. “I and plenty of other critics have speculated in the past that, with 6:30 news audiences aging and shrinking, we might eventually see a primetime newscast instead. Putting a show like ‘Nightline’ in primetime could just be a backdoor answer to that issue.”

MGM Touting Low-Cost Programming to Cash-Strapped TV Stations
Nearly eight months ago, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer created a low-cost programming service for television stations called This TV. Stocked with B-level films, the venture serves up vintage fare like Beach Blanket Bingo as well as TV shows such as The Addams Family and The Patty Duke Show.

CBS Walls Off Neighborhood for Reality Show
In the latest reality show “social experiment,” CBS has walled off eight homes in an Atlanta suburb, forcing the neighbors inside to spend time with each other. “It will be a bizarre [experience] for all of them,” Producer Mike Fleiss said. “This is ambitious as it gets.”

Hollywood Hits the Stop Button on High-Profile Web Video Efforts
Big media’s attempt over the last two years to capitalize on the Internet video phenomenon embodied by YouTube and Saturday Night Live digital shorts has fallen victim to recession-triggered cuts and inflated expectations about the advertising revenue they would command.

YouTube Continues Hulufication, This Time With Ad Choices (Mashable)
YouTube has introduced the option for users to watch either a pre-roll ad (called a Promoted Video) or several in-stream ads. This will affect the longer, full-length content on the site (aka YouTube’s ever-growing number of shows). Essentially, before any ads or video start to play, the option now exists to choose to watch one longer commercial or to watch several smaller ads throughout your video. It’s currently only offered on a small percentage of video plays, but we can expect this to increase if the tests are successful.

Will Investors Leash Arianna Huffington’s Spending? (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
It’s a bold new future at the Huffington Post: investors have installed their own CEO; a CBS producer will launch a Gotham edition next month. Nevertheless, insiders are murmuring about belt-tightening, starting at the top… The board of directors, nominally in charge of business operations, clashed regularly with Huffington, a HuffPo insider said. “There were moments when the board would say, ‘Absolutely no more spending and hiring,’ and that would be violated.’” “Arianna is always hiring tons of people — five people to do the job one expert could do.”

It doesn’t help matters that Huffington has repeatedly used employees for personal errands, according to former staff. Throw in the recession and the earmark on HuffPo’s recent $25 million capital round — it’s reserved for expansion — and it’s easy to see why costs might be an ongoing conern.

WordPress.com, SocialVibe Partner To Let Bloggers Run Ads—But Only For Charity (Paid Content)
WordPress bloggers who want to generate ad revenue from their content have tradtionally had to upgrade from the free version of the service, to a platform (and domain) that they pay to host themselves. But WordPress parent company Automattic is planning to loosen that ad restriction, so that free accounts can run small ads. The catch is that they’re SocialVibe widgets—meaning that the proceeds go to a charity, cause or community organization—not to the bloggers themselves.

Twitter Delays Scheduled Maintenence for Iran
A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. But, recognizing the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran, last night’s planned maintenance was been rescheduled to today between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Google Maps for Android Gains Voice Search & Transit Directions
Google announced three enhancements for Google Maps for Android… 1. Voice search using English in American, Australian, and British accents… 2. Transit and walking direction… 3. Latitude Updates lets you communicate with friends and post messages. This seems to resemble the Dodgeball service Google bought and then let disappear. Note that this Google Maps for Android update needs to be manually selected and downloaded in the Android Market. It is not an automatic update.

Analyst: In Praise Of Yahoo’s Flat Market Share (Paid Content)
In a report [Monday], Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney presents Yahoo as a “turnaround story”—and his thesis is premised on the idea that in a “fluid” competitive landscape, flat market share is actually something to brag about for a big internet portal. Mahaney notes that Yahoo’s share of total time spent on the internet hasn’t changed much over the last three years, unlike Microsoft and AOL, which have both experienced a “pretty consistent decline.” So what sites have seen their share rise? Mahaney mentions Google… Mahaney notes that Yahoo has been able to retain its position in major categories, like sports, news, finance and mail—and has now held its share of the search market constant for much of the last year.
Click through for more highlights of the report.

How Yahoo Could Turn Third-Party Apps Into A Big Moneymaker (Paid Content)
So far, the introduction of third-party apps to Yahoo properties has been talked about mostly as a way for the portal to keep users on its own sites for longer. But in a report today, Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney raises the possibility that third-party apps could provide a new—and significant—revenue stream for Yahoo, a la the Apple App store. “To the extent that Yahoo is able to serve as a large platform for applications (free and paid), is able to highlight relevant applications to its users, and is able to make the purchase of the paid applications seamless … there is a potentially significant new revenue opportunity here for Yahoo,” Mahaney writes. He adds that app sales—which he refers to as “micro-transapptions” could be a “multi-billion dollar (profitable) revenue opportunity”—with other internet companies, such as AOL, Google and MSN cashing in as well.

About.com Bets On Celebrity ‘Experts’ To Boost Profile; Wolfgang Puck Gets His Image Buffed (Paid Content)
NYTCo-owned guide site About.com is formalizing the use of celebrities among its 800 “expert authors” who dispense advice on everything from acne to zoology. Over the past few months, About has offered a space to celebs like country music star Faith Hill, the New York Knicks’ point guard Nate Robinson, and Oscar-winning actress and author Marlee Matlin… The use of celebrity guest editors has been a popular way of getting some attention… About won’t be paying its celeb guest editors. Instead, it will give personalities who are probably in need of a image boost.

Facebook Chat: 1 Billion Messages Sent Per Day (Mashable)
[Monday], Facebook’s engineering team revealed that Facebook’s instant messaging (IM) system has grown like wildfire. Users now send 1 billion messages every single day. That impressive number becomes even more astounding when you consider that FbChat is barely a year old.

TweetPysch: Twitter Psychological Profiling Has Arrived (Mashable)
Dan Zarrella, a guest contributor to Mashable and a social and viral marketing scientist [has] taken two linguistic methods for unraveling the written word, combined it with the Porter stemming algorithm to reduce words to their base meaning, and created TweetPysch, a simple new service that derives a psychological profile based on a user’s last 1,000 tweets… The site is using the Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count(LIWC) methods to analyze every character and return primordial, conceptional, emotional, and cognitive content.

Microsoft Sues Three in Click-Fraud Scheme
About one in every seven clicks on an advertisement is estimated to be fraudulent, and Microsoft is trying to make that kind of deception more expensive for perpetrators.

Dead Grasshoppers Give Life to Social Media Marketing Campaign (Mashable)
Grasshopper, an 800 phone number provider for small businesses, decided to get the word out about their new name (they did a complete rebrand) by putting together a list of 5,000 of the most influential people in the US and sending them each a package of real chocolate covered grasshoppers with a simple message and video URL… The Grasshopper campaign proved to be very fruitful and buzz circulated on-air and across the web. To date, the company has seen a huge uptake in social media mentions, web traffic, and hopefully new customers. Here are a few notable stats from the campaign:

Turning the Masses Onto Mobile Broadband
Rapid deployment, and mounting Internet traffic, have caused many wireless broadband services to slow down from data overload.

Survey: Family time eroding as Internet use soars
The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California is reporting this week that 28 percent of Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That’s nearly triple the 11 percent who said that in 2006. These people did not report spending less time with their friends, however. Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the center, said people report spending less time with family members just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are booming, along with the importance people place on them.

Opera Unite: Web Browser Becomes the Web Server (Mashable)
Opera has had great success with their mobile browsers, but when it comes to the desktop, their growth hasn’t been phenomenal, despite the fact that Opera, at times, has been the fastest and/or (arguably) the browser with most features. Today, they’re unveiling a new feature. Opera Unite is a web server within a web browser. Instead of just browsing the web, Opera now lets you share files and photos, communicate with other users, chat, and host your web site directly on your own computer.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Elections – Iranian Style (Mario Piperni)

Barack Obama’s Psychology and Foreign Policy – Israel And Iran (Hillary Is 44)
We sympathize with the voters of Michigan and Florida Iran who have witnessed what is clearly a crooked caucus election delegate court with the preferred candidate of powerful interests and American Iranian Big Media getting delegates in an election he never ran in gifted an nomination election.

Protests Flare in Tehran as Opposition Disputes Vote (New York Times)
The streets of Iran’s capital erupted in the most intense protests in a decade on Saturday, with riot police officers using batons and tear gas against opposition demonstrators who claimed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen the presidential election. Witnesses reported that at least one person had been shot dead in clashes with the police in Vanak Square in Tehran. Smoke from burning vehicles and tires hung over the city late Saturday.
It’s too bad about the violence, but it’s good to know that there are places in the world where people don’t just give up and let the powers that be steal elections—or nominations.

Iran’s 2009 Election Results Suggest Massive Fraud…Just Like Ohio’s in 2004 (The Brad Blog)
It sounds a lot like Ohio 2004. A less than popular old-line incumbent facing massive public demonstrations against him and in favor of his main progressive challenger promising reform; polls that suggest a swell of support for the challenger; unprecedented turnout on Election Day; long lines at polling places; paper ballot shortages and names missing from voter rolls; widespread rumors, concerns and evidence of voter intimidation and vote-rigging, all accompanied nonetheless by a general feeling among the populace that the incumbent has been turned out, only to learn from officials, late on Election Night, that the incumbent has been declared the winner of a second term.

Iran supreme leader orders probe of vote fraud (AP)
Iran’s supreme leader ordered Monday an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country’s most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Stealing an Election, Iranian Edition (Political Wire)
Juan Cole: “I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad’s upset that does not involve fraud… But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.”

Iran reformists held after street clashes (BBC)
Up to 100 members of major Iranian reformist groups have been arrested, accused of orchestrating violence after the disputed presidential election.

Report: Defeated Ahmadinejad rival arrested in Iran (Haaretz)
Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, have responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and claim that the result was the work of a dictatorship.

Ahmadinejad Re-election a Blow to U.S.-Arab Allies (Wall Street Journal)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announced election victory Saturday could deal a blow to Washington’s Arab allies, who have been alarmed by Iran’s regional ambitions and hoped his ouster might moderate them.

Iran election result makes Obama’s outreach efforts harder (McClatchy)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s highly disputed reelection victory will complicate President Barack Obama’s push for better relations with the Islamic republic.

Obama’s Iran dilemma (Politico)
The notion of an “Obama effect” sweeping the Middle East appeared to collide with the realities of the Islamic Republic of Iran Saturday, as the country’s confrontational, anti-American president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, celebrated a landslide victory in Friday’s election amid wide doubts about the honesty of the official vote count.

Netanyahu endorses Palestinian independence (AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed an independent Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, dramatically reversing himself in the face of U.S. pressure but attaching conditions the Palestinians swiftly rejected. A week after President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would have to be unarmed and recognize Israel as the Jewish state — a condition amounting to Palestinian refugees giving up the goal of returning to Israel. Netanyahu, in an address seen as his reponse to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said the holy city of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Violence Up—Way Up—in Afghanistan (Think Progress)
Gen. David Petraeus announced Thursday that violence in Afghanistan has spiked 59 percent in recent months, hitting its highest level since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. American troops in the country now number 56,000 and will increase to 68,000 in the second half of this year. Petraeus said a coming increase in U.S. military activity signals that the trend of rising violence and casualties will continue.

Pakistan declares war on Taliban leader Mehsud (McClatchy)
Pakistan announced late Sunday that it would fight warlord Baitullah Mehsud in Waziristan in a gamble that will see the Pakistani troops confront the fountainhead of Taliban and al Qaida extremism.

Defiant North Korea ‘to weaponize plutonium’ (CNN)
North Korea said Saturday it would strengthen its nuclear capabilities, a defiant protest against the U.N. Security Council’s move to tighten sanctions against it. North Korea officials said they were enriching uranium and would weaponize all plutonium, according to KCNA, the state-run North Korean news agency. When enriched to a high degree, uranium can be used for weapons-grade material. Plutonium can be used in atomic bombs. These moves are in response to Friday’s U.N. resolution, according to the news agency, which referred to the resolution as a blockade.

Medicare for All (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
Clive Crook [of the conservative Financial Times] says “there are worse things than Medicare for all – and the present system might be one of them”:

Health firms paid Nancy-Ann DeParle $5.8 million (Politico)
The official overseeing White House health care reform efforts earned more than $5.8 million in the past three years from her work for major medical companies, according to a personal financial disclosure and other public records.

Obama’s Campaign on Health Care: Papering Over the Details (by Karen Tumulty, Time)
[A]t a certain point, the President won’t be able to remain so (deliberately) vague about what he wants to see in the final product, and the details of the plan will very much determine whether potential opponents will support him in the end. Nowhere is that clearer than on the controversial question of whether the health-care-reform scheme will include a “public option,” which would give people the choice of being covered under a government-financed program…

The AMA, which is the nation’s leading physicians organization, is not the political force that it once was, but its opposition could nonetheless complicate the push for overall reform. So as much as Obama is trying to stay with broad campaign themes emphasizing the larger need for health-care reform, he’s also going to have to spell out more clearly where he stands on some of its tougher questions. In fact, that kind of reckoning may come as early as Monday, when he reaches the next stop on his health-care campaign trail — a speech at the AMA’s 158th annual meeting in Chicago.

The healthcare war has officially begun (by Robert Reich)
A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal healthcare. It’s the only way to make healthcare affordable. It’s the only way to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets. An ersatz public option — whether Kent Conrad’s non-profit cooperatives, Olympia Snowe’s “trigger,” or regulated state-run plans — won’t do squat. The last president to successfully take on the giant healthcare lobbies was LBJ. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted because he weighed into the details, twisted congressional arms, threatened and cajoled, drew lines in the sand, and went to war against the AMA and the other giant lobbyists standing in the way. The question now is how much LBJ is in Barack Obama.

The big guns are out and they’re firing… Some congressional Democrats are willing and able to stand up to this barrage. Many are not. They need cover from the White House. The President can’t do this alone. You must weigh in and get everyone you know to weigh in, too. Bombard your senators and representatives. Organize and mobilize others. And let the White House know how strongly you feel. This is one of those battles that define a presidency. But more importantly, it’s one of those battles that define the state of American democracy.
Call your congresscritters (both representative and senators). Tell them we’re tired of all the caving to special interests. Tell them we demand what’s best for the most people. Tell them we want single payer.

Sherrod Brown: “I’d Have Trouble Voting For” Health Care Bill Without Public Plan (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
One of the leading progressives in the United States Senate left the impression on Friday afternoon that he would oppose major health care reform if it did not include a public option for insurance coverage… “I would have trouble voting for it without that,” he said of a bill without a public plan. “I would have difficulty supporting any health care plan that doesn’t keep the insurance companies honest.”
More like this, please.

Healthcare senators have industry ties (Boston Globe)
Members of both parties have industry connections, including Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin and Republicans Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, John Kyl, and Orrin Hatch, financial disclosure reports showed yesterday.

Rangel proposes $600 Million to subsidize health insurance parasites (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Rangel: “Health-Care Reform Needs $600 Million in New Taxes and Will Cost $1 Trillion” Now more than ever it is necessary to write letters to the editor and alert the public that this money is not to expand access to health care, it is to subsidise the failing business model of health insurance parasites. HR 676, Medicare for All would save us $350 BILLION a year. Never let anyone forget that. The proposed new taxes are not for sick people, they are for parasites.

Obama Identifies $313 Billion for Health Care Through Medicaid and Medicare Savings (by  Sunlen Miller and Sarah Tobianski at Political Punch, ABC News)
The $313 billion savings is in large part made up of savings from three big areas:  $110 billion from incorporating productivity adjustments and Medicare payments, $106 billion from reducing disproportionate hospital payments and $75 billion from better pricing of Medicare drugs.

Would you rather have a plan that covers everyone… and doesn’t screw them out of services, while saving money? (by vastleft at Corrente)
Hell, no!  [Emphasis added.] “…Some outside analysts have said that Congress may have to spend $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade to extend coverage to all Americans.”

NPR and the Biggest Obstacle to Health Care Legislation (NPR Check)
Guess what the biggest obstacle to health care legislation is? Could it be the mountains of cash being being poured into Congress by the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies so that they can override public opinion [and physician opinion] favoring government run health insurance? Or might it be obstructionists like Senator Baucus and “moderate” Democrat, Senator Kent Conrad? (or Evan Byah or Ben Nelson or …) According to NPR and Mara Liasson (…and PhRMA) the option of a public (government-run) plan “has emerged as the biggest obstacle to health care legislation.”…

As if Mara Liasson’s Friday morning take on a public plan wasn’t enough, NPR followed her report with Julie Rovner and Steve Inskeep providing their slant on the matter. Inskeep repeats the Republican argument about “this government plan [that] is going to offer a very nice service, which is good, but it’s going to be cheaper than private insurers can manage” and is “actually going to damage, as Republicans say, damage my private insurance company.” Neither Rovner nor Inskeep offers the most obvious response to this argument: if the government can offer a more efficient, cost-effective program than the private sector, what’s the problem?

Co-op Compromise Gives White House a Health Option (AP)
With Republicans fighting the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, members of President Barack Obama’s team said Sunday that they are open to a compromise: a cooperative program that would expand coverage with taxpayer money but without direct governmental control… While supporters from Obama’s left have advocated a government-run insurance option … presidential aides and congressional leaders in both parties have sought a speedy compromise. Leading that pack: the cooperative approach, similar to rural utilities that have government financial support but operate independently.

Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who chairs the Budget Committee, has offered the co-op idea as a way to avoid a bruising and protracted political wrangle on Capitol Hill. ”This really isn’t, to me, a matter of right or wrong,” Conrad said. ”This is a matter of: Where are the votes in the United States Senate?” That political situation has guided most of the talks. While Democrats control both chambers of Congress, they have only 59 senators — one short of the number needed to end a Republican filibuster. Even if Al Franken were seated as Minnesota’s second senator, Kennedy and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., are suffering health problems that could preclude them from casting votes to end the procedural delay.
I thought health care wasn’t going to be subject to filibuster. In which case, you don’t need Republican support, Democrats.

Tell your Gov. and state legislator, DON’T WAIT FOR OBAMA! (by DCblogger at Corrente)
“States are pushing ahead with their own reforms instead of waiting for the president to act.”

Something’s Got to Give in Medicare Spending (by Tyler Cowen, thanks to Economist’s View)
Drawing upon the ideas of the Harvard economist David Cutler, the Obama administration talks of empowering an independent board of experts to judge the comparative effectiveness of health care expenditures; the goal is to limit or withdraw Medicare support for ineffective ones. This idea is long overdue… Scholars have been applying comparative-effectiveness research to Medicare for years… If we are willing to take comparative-effectiveness studies seriously, we could make significant cuts in Medicare costs right now. We could cut some reimbursement rates, limit coverage for some of the more speculative treatments, like some forms of knee and back surgery, and place more limits on end-of-life-care.
You mean reduce the fraud? You mean reduce the number of unnecessary tests and procedures? But that would reduce PROFITS! Good idea, but it will take courage. Where is THAT going to come from?

COmmentary: Many health providers’ pledged savings actually boost spending (by Nina Owcharenko at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank)
Ideas such as expanding the use of electronic medical records and health information technology, greater investment in preventive and care management tools, and establishing best practice models are all commonly touted examples of delivery reforms. Unfortunately, most of these savings proposals are unproven and, ironically, some of them actually require more spending. Even the Congressional Budget Office, the score-keeper for Congress, cautioned against depending too heavily on these types of promised savings.

If the administration and Congress are serious about reforming the health-care system by rooting out waste and inefficiencies, their policies should be focused on empowering individuals and families.
How are individuals and families un-empowered now? By for-profit HMOs and insurance companies, which the Heritage Foundation wants to keep in business, so that they can keep contributing to the Heritage Foundation.

Commentary: Health providers can fulfill their pledge to cut costs (by Grace-Marie Turner at Galen Institute, funded by the pharmaceutical and medical industries)
Health spending can be reduced, but it won’t happen in meetings at the White House or in media events. It will happen only by engaging the power of competition and innovation in the private health sector. Market-friendly changes in public policy and countless innovations from the private sector have helped to moderate the rise in health insurance cost, create new models for care delivery and financing, and support the movement toward patient-centered health care.
Isn’t that what we’ve had? And isn’t that exactly what has failed? The Galen Institute also wants to keep the for-profit HMOs and insurance companies in business so that they can keep contributing to the Galen Institute. Are you starting to get the picture here? Our government is FORCING us to pay fees that include profits, some of which are used to support right-wing “stink” tanks that buy Congress to keep their profits going.

The American Empire Is Bankrupt (by Chris Hedges at Truthdig)
There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully… It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times.

Do you see what I see? [or, what recovery?] (Econbrowser)
Do you see what I see? I’m still looking for, and still not seeing, the economic recovery that everybody is talking about. One bit of good news this week was the Census Bureau report that nominal seasonally adjusted U.S. retail and food services sales rose 0.5% in May. But of the $1.57 billion increase in total spending, almost $1 billion of it came from extra spending at gasoline stations.

Source: FRED.

Americans Get Poorer More Slowly (Barron’s)
According to just-released Federal Reserve data, U.S. household wealth fell by $1.3 trillion in the first quarter, blessedly less than the previous three months’ $4.9 trillion loss, the biggest quarterly decline since such records started being kept all the way back in 1952. But it was the seventh straight quarter of declines, also a record for the series. U.S. jobs rebound is expected to be long, slow and scattered

Projection: It’ll be years before jobs return to much of U.S. (McClatchy)
Unlike the labor market collapse that killed millions of U.S. jobs in a matter of months, the nation’s return to peak employment will not be nearly as uniform nor as swift. While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster… Only five areas are expected to see a similar jobs recovery in 2010… Most of the country – 286 of 325 metro areas covered in the IHS analysis – aren’t likely to regain their pre-recession employment levels until at least 2012.

Stay the Course (by Paul Krugman)
A few months ago the U.S. economy was in danger of falling into depression. Aggressive monetary policy and deficit spending have, for the time being, averted that danger. And suddenly critics are demanding that we call the whole thing off, and revert to business as usual. Those demands should be ignored. It’s much too soon to give up on policies that have, at most, pulled us a few inches back from the edge of the abyss.

You Don’t Get a Vote! (by James Kwak at The Baseline Scenario)
The administration’s style has been to float policy proposals in public, listen to the responses (from other politicians, from the private sector, and from the blogs that Obama does not read), and adjust accordingly. When it comes to the financial regulation proposal that Tim Geithner is scheduled to deliver on Thursday, there may be little left after all the adjusting.

[W]hen you are reforming the regulatory structure of an industry where the existing regulators got it horribly, embarrassingly, catastrophically, world-historically wrong, the last thing you want to do is strike a compromise between the positions of the existing regulators. Members of Congress get votes, and they already have enough ties to the banking industry to worry about; letting the regulators, who don’t have votes, shape the deal makes it more likely that the final result will be watered down into nothingness. Which, of course, is exactly what the industry wants.

Regulators Feud as Banking System Overhauled (New York Times)
Two of the nation’s most powerful bank regulators were once again at each other’s throats. At a public meeting three weeks ago, John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, blasted a proposal to impose stiff new insurance fees on banks as unfair to the largest banks, which he regulates. The financial crisis stemmed in part from problems at small banks, he insisted. Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the regulator for many smaller, community banks, could barely hide her contempt. The large banks, she said, had wreaked havoc on the system, only to be bailed out by “hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in government assistance.” She added, “Fairness is always an issue.”…

The long-running and deeply personal feud between Mr. Dugan and Ms. Bair, two Republican holdovers with similar career paths in Washington, is now helping to shape President Obama’s attempt to revamp financial regulation aimed at preventing the regulatory lapses that contributed to the economic crisis. Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers and some senior Democratic lawmakers have suggested creating a single bank regulator. But the administration’s current version, which could be announced as early as this week, would not combine the regulatory agencies. Instead, it would give Mr. Dugan and Ms. Bair significant new powers — and could intensify their turf battles.
Yup, let’s encourage more infighting. It’s a good way to keep anything from being done.

Making Financial Regulation Work: 50 More Years (by Mark Thoma of Economist’s View, writing at The Hearing, Washington Post)
Banking regulation imposed in response to the Great Depression and the recurrent panics of the 1800s and early 1900s gave us 50 years of stability in the financial system without impeding economic growth… What happened? Deregulation beginning with the Reagan administration combined with financial innovation and digital technology led to the emergence of what is known as the shadow banking system. These are financial institutions that, for all intents and purposes, function just like banks but are not subject to the same rules and regulations and, in some cases, are hardly regulated at all…

So what should we do? In very broad terms, we need:
• Regulations that limit both economic and political power and discourage the buildup of excessive risk.
• Regulators willing to assertively enforce existing regulation, think outside the ideological box and take an active role in identifying areas where regulation is inadequate.
• Regulators with the means and power to stand up to the biggest and most powerful financial institutions. Making financial institutions less powerful by breaking them up into smaller entities is one means to this end.
• A culture within regulatory agencies and their supporting institutions that reinforces and encourages the regulatory process.

US House to debate Ron Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ bill (The Raw Story)
After months of activism and lobbying by Congressman Ron Paul’s supporters, House Resolution 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, will move out of committee to be debated by the full House of Representatives. In a show of cross-party unity, Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich became the bill’s 218th co-sponsor, pushing it over the threshold for debate in Congress… “The tremendous grass-roots and bipartisan support in Congress for HR 1207 is an indicator of how mainstream America is fed up with Fed secrecy,” said Congressman Paul in a Thursday media advisory. “I look forward to this issue receiving greater public exposure.”

Though the move from committee to full House is sure to hearten supporters, the Senate also has pending before it a bill which would have originally given Congress greater oversight of the Federal Reserve. But in its present form, notes Huffington Post writer Ryan Grim, a recent, ever-so-slight modification essentially ‘neutered’ the bill.
It’s what the powerful powers do every time: Yes, we need reform. We support reform. We support reform so much that we’ll make the rules for reform (which won’t really reform anything, but you won’t know that because the media we own will never tell you).

Fox on 15th (a.k.a. “The Washington Post”) Strikes Again (by Dean Baker)
Departing from normal news practice, the Washington Post put another editorial complaining about President Obama’s deficits on the front page. The subhead says it all: “Concern Mounts in White House as 2010 Elections Loom.” Who is concerned? The story doesn’t tell us. Who says that they are concerned? The story doesn’t tell us. But, the Washington Post wants to highlight the budget deficit, so it won’t let these details stand in the way, after all there were protesters in Wisconsin calling President Obama a socialist. That’s enough for a front page news story in the Washington Post.

Needless to say, the Washington Post has no problem ignoring completely far larger protests that don’t agree with its editorial agenda, much less putting them on the front page. It is incredible that at a time when close to 15 million people are out of work that the Washington Post can continue to obsess about the deficit. Of course this is also a paper that highlights on the front page that it is now easier to hire nannies. There is no doubt which side the Washington Post is on.

Why a Maine GOP senator is taking on oil speculators (McClatchy)
Oil prices shot past $72 a barrel this week, and a growing number of experts point to Wall Street speculators as a key reason why Americans are suddenly paying a lot more for oil and gasoline. Although soaring oil prices threaten the fragile economic recovery, most Capitol Hill lawmakers have remained silent about them, but not Sen. Susan Collins… Collins has been one of the few on Capitol Hill and even fewer Republicans who blame the rising oil prices in part on Wall Street investors. She and her allies, mostly Democrats, are trying to limit speculative investments in oil and other commodities, but they say they need more support from President Barack Obama.

McClatchy has been reporting for 14 months that speculative investment — not simply supply and demand — has been helping drive oil prices higher.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
Lambert asks, “Couldn’t we bulldoze Versailles instead?” It’s tempting. It’s certainly tempting.

You’re on the Battlefield Right Now (by Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
My head began exploding when I read the opening paragraph of this NYT article:… “Some administration officials have begun to discuss whether laws or regulations must be changed to allow law enforcement, the military or intelligence agencies greater access to networks or Internet providers when significant evidence of a national security threat was found.”… In other words, you’re on the battlefield this very minute, and your computer might be a deadly weapon. In these circumstances, it’s remarkably shortsighted and selfish of you to think your computer is yours and that you’re entitled to some nambypamby notion of “privacy.” What world are you living in? The Pentagon will decide what you’re “entitled” to. Or not…

[I]f the Obama administration is determined to consolidate and expand the scope and reach of the surveillance state, and it is, the fact that those who may wish to keep watch over a huge range of online activities, all in the name of “cybersecurity,” of course, know what they’re doing should not be a source of comfort for you. It should fill you with dread. And always remember: just as the government will never hesitate to manufacture an alleged justification for its overseas campaigns of terror, so too the government will find some reason, even if it has to concoct it out of less than nothing, if it decides to go after you.

Gays decry Obama’s stand on gay marriage case (AP)
Gay rights groups expressed dismay with the Obama administration Friday over its championing of the Defense of Marriage Act, a law the president pledged to try to repeal while on the campaign trail. The government filed a motion late Thursday to dismiss the case of Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, who are challenging the 1996 federal act. The law prevents couples in states that recognize same-sex unions from securing Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint taxes and other federal rights of marriage.

The Other Side of Justice (The Advocate)
Below are excerpts from an interview conducted with Harvard professor Laurence H. Tribe, who firmly believes DOMA is unconstitutional and would like to see it overturned, and yet is grateful that the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the legal challenge posed by the ninth circuit court case, Smelt v. United States.

Why Smelt posed a weak legal challenge to DOMA: “As someone who wants to see DOMA dismantled and invalidated, I would love it if this ninth circuit case would evaporate into the ether. Even though I personally believe that DOMA is unconstitutional, I think that this particular lawsuit is very vulnerable; it’s not anywhere near as strong as the one that was brought in the federal district court in Massachusetts [a suit filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders]…  A strategic Justice Department interested in a litigation strategy that has some realistic chance of success certainly would not have taken [the Smelt] case as the one in which the constitutional vulnerabilities of DOMA should be explored.
But is that the reason for the Obama administration’s objection to this case?

Obama removes AmeriCorps’s IG in spat with [Obama] friend (Time)
Obama’s move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin finding misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star.

Enough with the Obamathon (by Bill Maher)
[W]e need to marry the good ideas Obama really believes in with that Bush attitude and Bush certitude. I’d love for Obama to come out one day and say, “Jesus told me to fix healthcare.” Or, “History will decide whether stopping the polar ice caps from melting and drowning us all was a good thing.”… I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity.
What are those “good ideas Obama really believes in”, Bill? I’ve never heard him state unequivocally that he believes in anything. He’s a many handed guy: On the one hand… and on the other hand… You helped to trash Hillary for this guy.

Bush Defends Sotomayor (Political Wire)
In a CNN interview, former President George H.W. Bush defended Judge Sonia Sotomayor: “Said Bush: ‘I don’t know her that well but I think she’s had a distinguished record on the bench and she should be entitled to fair hearings… And she was called by somebody a racist once. That’s not right. I mean that’s not fair. It doesn’t help the process. You’re out there name-calling. So let them decide who they want to vote for and get on with it.’”

Europeans to U.S. on taking Guantanamo inmates: You first (Los Angeles Times)
U.S. officials trying to relocate detainees face skepticism from EU nations, who want to know why the U.S. can’t taken them itself if they pose no risk.

Yoo, Bush Administration Lawyer, Must Face Torture Lawsuit (Bloomberg) – John Yoo, a ex-Justice Department attorney who wrote memos justifying harsh interrogations of terrorism detainees, lost his bid to dismiss a lawsuit blaming him for alleged violations of a detainee’s rights. Jose Padilla, convicted last year of supporting terrorists and conspiring to commit murder, was detained for three years as an enemy combatant in the U.S., where he claims he was subjected to physical abuse. He sued Yoo, who wrote in advisory memos for the Bush administration that terrorism suspects weren’t protected by Geneva Convention bans on physical abuse. Padilla claimed Yoo created a system of torture. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White denied most of Yoo’s motion to dismiss the case, saying even enemy combatants are protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“Like any other government official, government lawyers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct,” White wrote in the ruling [Friday]. “The specific designation as an enemy combatant does not automatically eviscerate all of the constitutional protections afforded to a citizen of the United States.”

McCollum kicks off Florida race attacking Obama ’socialism’ (McClatchy)
In his first major speech as the Republican front-runner for governor, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum sought to link his likely Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, with the ‘’socialism” advocated by President Barack Obama.

Clinton Payback (Political Wire)
“Though it’s largely gone unnoticed — or at least as unnoticed as a former president can possibly go — Bill Clinton has jumped headlong into the 2010 election cycle, deploying his political star power to boost some of his family’s most steadfast allies — many of whom stuck their neck out on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign,” Politico reports. “No request — or campaign — seems too local for Clinton in his current loyalty tour.”
But the Clintons are all selfish, and everything. I know because the A-list, so-called progressive bloggers told me so. Oh, and who is Obama campaigning for?

Bush DOJ Failed to Enforce Federal Law Protecting Abortion Providers from Anti-Abortion Extremists (Think Progress)
After the 1993 murder of an abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which made any use of “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” against doctors and patients a federal crime. The law was an attempt to put an end to the constant wave of death threats, acts of vandalism, and clinic bombings. According to the National Abortion Federation, the “FACE law has had a clear impact on the decline in certain types of violence against clinics and providers, specifically clinic blockades.” Under the Bush Administration, however, criminal and civil enforcement of the law by the Department of Justice declined dramatically

Holocaust Museum Attack Is an Excellent Media Opportunity For Deranged Racists (by John Cook at Gawker)
Why would a right-wing extremist shoot up the Holocaust Museum? To get the message out. And it’s working—news networks are turning to neo-Nazi John de Nugent for background on James von Brunn. He’s thrilled about the publicity.. [As Rachel] Sklar notes, de Nugent has turned up on ABC News, CBS News, Fox News Channel, the Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and the BBC to offer his insights into von Brunn and the vicious right-wing extremist views that the two men share.

De Nugent is reveling in his media moment. He even made sure that his interlocutors described him according to his own deranged taxonomy, as opposed to the truth: “I am also happy to say that most media more or less correctly called me a ‘white separatist’ and NOT a ‘white supremacist’ after I made that point crystal-clear.”… P.S. Along with being a right-wing extremist, it also appears that von Brunn was a Republican.

Jamiol’s World

Socially Unacceptable (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)
Remember a couple weeks back when Barack, Michelle and their media entourage flew to New York City one Saturday night for dinner and a show?  Imagine what would have happened if the following week David Letterman did a “Top Ten” list of the worst moments of their trip and said this: “Number 2 – Finding out that the restaurant didn’t serve fried chicken and watermelon“ Not only would Letterman be retired right now, but so would the writers and producers of his show and the head of CBS would be offering profuse apologies to the Obamas… But it’s still permissible to call a woman governor “slutty,” at least as long as you pretend you were just joking.

Could Letterman benefit from his attacks on Palin? (by Alegre)
Seriously?  [An] AP writer found a new and offensive twist on Letterman’s attacks on Palin’s daughter.  I mean this guy actually thinks Letterman could come out ahead of the game after his offensive behavior… Unreal. Attack a woman on national television with vile and hateful “jokes” – laugh about her daughter getting knocked up and call her a slut and you’re everybody’s hero.  When are we going to stop rewarding people for sexist attacks on women?  

Fox & Friends Terrified of Ex-Gitmo Bartenders (by Pareene at Gawker)
The good people of Fox & Friends (which ones are Fox and which ones are the friends?) are outraged that their vacations might be endangered by four innocent men recently freed from years of wrongful imprisonment!… [W]e cannot send them back to China, because they will be tortured and executed. We cannot send them to America, because America is scared of people it wrongfully imprisoned for years without cause or due process. We cannot send them to some random other country, because who would want them? What a pickle!

Well it turned out that we could just send a couple of them to Bermuda, a little island inhabited by tropical drink umbrella peddlers and cruise ships. Now Bermuda is a “dependency” of the UK but the UK’s mild objections to this little relocation are basically unimportant. Especially compared to the very reasonable and important points brought up by Steve Doocy, the lady, and the guy who isn’t Steve Doocy. “We better warn Geraldo they could be coming to Puerto Rico!” Sure!

“Do you want to go to a place where that guy over there, in the sombrero, was actually trained in a terror camp in Afghanistan?” What a good point! No, I don’t want to go to this weird Mexican restaurant in Bermuda, with the Chinese Muslim staff! I’d imagine the food would be terrible!

British Vogue Editor’s Lame PR Coup: No More Size Zeros! (by Foster Kamer at Gawker)
The ground zero of Size Zero is here. Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, called out a bunch of prominent fashion designers for encouraging Size Zero models… How was this problem not in their control before? And why couldn’t Shulman extend her influence privately? She could’ve had conversations with these designers, who she can probably call up to her office whenever, rather than a poorly guarded, “leaked” letter. One aimed at winning a populism vote from an economically distressed public. Who could care less about fashion right now. Really, it’s a brilliant play.

Scarborough: “I also don’t think that we win the middle … by calling Barack Obama a communist or by calling Sotomayor a racist” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Media Matters for America headlines

Doocy twisted Biden remark to falsely claim administration backtracking on job creation

NBC’s Guthrie falsely suggests AMA represents “the nation’s doctors”

NY Times left out key facts in report on AMA

Hume, Will use Iranian election to promote long-standing opposition to engaging Iran

McLaughlin Group further crops NY Times clip of Sotomayor’s affirmative action comments

Disappearing Bush: WSJ falsely suggests Obama admin. took over Fannie, Freddie, AIG

Conservative media blast Krugman for column about right-wing extremism

Fox, MSNBC air NY Times’ cropped video of Sotomayor’s affirmative action comments

Responding to Krugman, Beck claimed of FEMA conspiracy theories: “Never said anything like it”

Cavuto again misleads on DHS report

Iran Cracks Down on Western Media as Protest Spreads
Iranian authorities criticized international media reports and took steps to control the flow of information from independent news sources as anti-government protests raged in the country for a second day Sunday.

CNN Debates Twitter’s Relevance While Ignoring Important World Events Being Reported on Twitter (by The Cajun Boy at Gawker)
Over the weekend CNN’s Howard Kurtz asked America the burning question, “are we going overboard with this Twitter business?” Meanwhile, CNN virtually ignored an event overseas with the potential to alter world history, an event reported extensively by Twitter users… Twitter served as a vital mode of Iranian citizen communication and as a channel to the outside world after the government shut down much of the web and blocked virtually all cell phone communications… Meanwhile, Howard Kurtz had Rick Sanchez and sportswriter Gregg Doyel on Reliable Sources for an utterly useless but incredibly ironic debate over Twitter’s relevance.

#CNNfail: Twitter Blasts CNN Over Iran Election (Mashable)
Twitter users blasted CNN this weekend for a lack of coverage of the Tehran protests, with Iranian citizens claiming ballot fraud and taking to the streets. Twitter has proven a powerful tool for spreading news of developing events in the country, but it has also taken on the role of media watchdog: thousands of Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to highlight a lack of Iran coverage from the news organization.

World of Risk for a New Brand of Journalist
Freelancers and others on unconventional assignments for start-up news organizations may find fewer resources to help them when they are in danger.

Glitches seen in China’s web filtering software
The designers of controversial Internet filtering software that China has ordered shipped with all new computers said they were trying to fix security glitches in the programme.

800,000 callers phone digital TV hot line
The Federal Communications Commission said that about 317,450 calls went into the help line, 1-888-CALL-FCC, on Friday alone, the day analog signals were cut off. Another 102,000 came in Saturday by 6 p.m. Eastern time. The total is still below the 600,000 to 3 million callers that the FCCexpected in early March would call on transition day.

Cross-ownership stay upheld.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals keeps its stay on the FCC’s revised media ownership rules allowing newspaper-broadcast ownership in the top 20 markets. On Friday, Chief Judge Anthony Sirica told attorneys to file status reports October 1. Critics expect the new Democratic FCC will reverse course.

NYT: Privacy may be a victim in cyber plan
The Obama administration’s plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising privacy and diplomatic concerns.

Accused Facebook Spammer Could Face Jail Time
An alleged spammer could face jail time in connection with a Facebook lawsuit after a judge referred him to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for criminal proceedings.

Man accused of using Craigslist to arrange wife’s rape
A 39-year-old man was charged Friday with raping a woman through an arrangement police say he made with her husband on Craigslist. The victim’s husband is also in jail, also charged with rape.

Knight Foundation sets aside $15 million for investigative reporting
At a time when newsrooms are shrinking and enrollment at journalism institutions is declining, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced a $15 million initiative to spur investigative reporting.

AP Pilot Program Will Distribute Nonprofit Watchdog And Investigative Journalism (Paid Content)
Four nonprofit watchdog and investigative journalism organizations will have their work distributed by the Associated Press to its 1,500 members as part of a six-month pilot project that starts July 1. The project, [announced Saturday] at the 2009 Investigative Reporters & Editors conference, is meant to encourage “public service” journalism—being seen more often today as a way to combat the gaps in newsroom budgets and staffs—by expanding the nonprofits’ reach and providing members with articles for publication at no cost to either. The first four are the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica.

Being available via a dedicated section of AP Exchange, the content management system that newspapers use to receive content from AP, syndications and each other, literally should make it easier for the nonprofits’ work to be published, which in turn makes it more likely newspapers will use it. The project will be evaluated and, if extended, may include other nonprofits.

‘Globe’ Potential Buyer Has Been Subject of Paper’s Critical Stories
Jack Connors’ company, Partners HealthCare, was the subject of an in-depth, three-part Globe series in late 2008 that claimed Partners contributed to the rising cost of health care in the area. “Partners became what some called the ‘800-pound gorilla’ of Massachusetts healthcare, able to bend insurers to its will,” one story stated.

Kindle Joins a Literary Ritual: Authors Can Autograph It
At a recent reading in Manhattan by David Sedaris, a reader presented his electronic-book device for the author to sign.

A New Entry Stakes Out Low-Budget Film
A group of entertainment professionals is establishing DF Indie Studios, a movie company that will focus on films with budgets of up to $10 million.

Porn industry healthcare clinic not cooperating, public health officials say
Public health officials said [Thursday] they have had no cooperation from the adult entertainment industry health clinic that recently confirmed a porn actress had tested positive for HIV, hampering their efforts to investigate how she contracted the virus.

Diary upgrades without rate hikes.
Arbitron has announced a series of steps to improve the diary methodology over the next year. They estimates it will cost $10 million to implement the changes, and so far the company’s is cutting costs instead of increasing rates. One factor: Nielsen’s return to radio.

FCC set to adopt AM on FM rules.
There’s been heavy lobbying over the last two months about whether AM stations using FM translators should be granted permanent status, and it appears the FCC will take action at its July 2 meeting. Broadcasters say it’s already making a difference in some markets — but LPFM activists worry it may mean fewer stations for them.

Clear Channel Launches Online Radio Player (by Rachel Kaufman at MediaJobsDaily, Media Bistro)
Clear Channel has launched iheartradio.com, an ad-supported online radio player that allows consumers to listen to 350 different am/fm stations and Clear Channel’s entire library of on-demand audio and video programming… [I]n the Sirius/XM/ITunes era, will anyone bite? And besides, won’t all the Clear Channel stations in the country be playing the same song? (Rim shot!)

Rumor: Facebook to “Undo” Twitter-like Homepage (by Adam Ostrow at Mashable)
Earlier this year, when Facebook moved towards a more Twitter-like homepage that focuses on status updates, the opposition was fierce – so much so that the company quickly responded to criticism and announced some changes they’d be making to bring back the features that users were missing… Why the change? Well, it turns out a lot of Facebook’s 200 million users aren’t like us – keeping the site open constantly or watching updates stream in real-time through a desktop client like TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. In turn, the concern is that these less active users are missing out on a lot of updates from friends, which, means less value from the service.

Adobe’s Acrobat.com Collaboration Services Emerge From Beta
Adobe Systems on Monday will move its Acrobat.com Web-based productivity and collaboration services out of beta and offer for-fee subscriptions to provide what the company hopes will be a new way for business users to collaborate on document creation.

Is Google About To Introduce A Microblog Search Offering? (Paid Content)
The Google Operating System blog reports that the company will launch a search service that will index content from Twitter and other microblogging sites, similar to Google’s current blog search offering. Results would also be incorporated into Google’s main web results. Google Operating System (which is not associated with Google) does not cite sources for its story but does note a recent Google listing, which refers to “Google’s MicroBlogsearch” and mentions Twitter as “the popular service associated with this format.” As the blog notes, it also wouldn’t be too surprising for Google to launch a way to search Twitter, considering that Google’s Marissa Mayer has said that that the company is “interested in being able to offer … micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search.”

Google Wants Artists to Work For Free, Is it Wrong? (by Stan Schroeder at  Mashable)
Google has called prominent illustrators to create new skins for Google Chrome, but there’s catch: they’re not offering them any money. Similar to how artists created artwork for iGoogle, Google is not planning to compensate them for the work they’ll do for Chrome; instead, they believe these projects are a good promotion for the artists. This has provoked a lot of negative comments from prominent illustrators, who think that a (very) profitable company such as Google should pay them for their work… However, even professional illustrators and designers should understand that they don’t get paid for these types of projects because Google is cheap, but because there’s a huge community of artists who have been doing it for free for years.
Yes, let’s destroy the possibility for artists to make a dime, TOO. Good idea. Everybody works for nothing, nobody can buy anything, economy is totally destroyed. Besides, how long will it be before the IRS catches on and starts taxing these bartering deals?

On Web and iPhone, a Tool to Aid Careful Shopping
GoodGuide is a Web site and iPhone application that lets consumers dig past the marketing spiel by discovering a product’s health, environmental and social impacts.

A World Without Local Car Dealer Ads?
Autos No Longer the Top Individual Spender on Spot TV

‘Bing’ Ballmer Says, ‘Don’t Drink That Poison Google Milk!’ (by Simon Dumenco at Advertising Age)
Five Ways to Find Meaning in Microsoft’s Branding of ‘Decision Engine’ Without Really Even Searching for It

Bigger Budgets Ahead For Viral Campaigns—Ad Nets, Not So Much (Paid Content)
Expect an influx of experimental social media campaigns (like Ford’s Fiesta Movement) to crop up over the next six months—as a majority of marketers recently told Forbes that they’d be increasing their viral marketing budgets at the expense of other tactics. About 42 percent of survey respondents said they’d spend more on viral campaigns later this year. Marketers were also bullish on SEO, with 40 percent saying they’d spend more. The one channel we’ll see a marked decrease in spending in is ad networks.

Providing Cellphones for the Poor
A federal program providing subsidized phone service now offers cellphones, showing how much society values them.

SingTel launches music service for mobile phones
SingTel, Southeast Asia’s largest telco, on Sunday launched in Singapore a service that lets mobile subscribers download music files and videos which it hopes to introduce to other parts of Asia.

Mobile money to poor seen $5 billion market in 2012
The market of mobile financial services to poor people in emerging markets will surge from nothing to $5 billion in 2012, U.S.-based microfinance policy and research center CGAP said on Monday.

Nokia launches new touch-screen music phone
Top cellphone maker Nokia launched three new handsets on Monday, including a new touch-screen model to follow its successful 5800 phone.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

White House

Obama in Green Bay: Broke no new ground; said Medicare/Medicaid on course to breaking Federal budget (by jawbone at Corrente)
Alas, the speech is the usual Obama points about health insurance reform: His list of reasons for change lead inexorably to single payer, but he just can’t do it. Won’t do it. Would be “disruptive.”… Obama begins by discussing socialized medicine and, after a few sentences, says that single payer is not socialized medicine. Then he repeats his lament that since we have a different system in place, it’s impossible to go with single payer. Altho’ he has said in his answer that Medicare is an example of single payer!

COWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Democrats hint compromise to win Senate health care deal (McClatchy)
Senate Democrats are offering to scrap a controversial government-sponsored health insurance provision in an effort to win more than a dozen moderate and conservative Republican votes to extend health care coverage to nearly 46 million uninsured Americans.

Should Health Care Reform Be Bipartisan? (by Ezra Klein, Washington Post)
Are 10 Republican votes worth lowering the subsidies from 400 percent of poverty to 300 percent of poverty and leaving out, say, eight million Americans? Are five Republican votes worth leaving out eight million Americans? Two Republican votes? It would be nice if someone published a table or something.

Co-op Health Plan Emerging as a Senate Option (by Robert Pear at The Caucus, New York Times)
Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee … said Thursday that the public plan could take the form of an insurance cooperative, owned and operated for the benefit of its members. “I am inclined, and I think the committee is inclined, toward a co-op,” Mr. Baucus said. “It’s not going to be public, we won’t call it public, but it will be tough enough to keep insurance companies’ feet to the fire,” Mr. Baucus said of the co-op.
Isn’t that what Blue Cross and Blue Shield were supposed to be? Look how well that worked out.

“Strong public option” = “peace in our time” (by vastleft at Corrente)
Once you accept the “public option” frame, it’s “goodnight, nurse!” for real health-insurance reform. It’s only happening about everywhere in the liberal blogosphere. OTOH, maybe a compromise with the Blue Dogs, Republicans, and death-by-spreadsheet crowd will work out just fine. It would be irresponsible not to equivocate.

Going Postal: Reid’s New Defense of Public Health Care (The Note, ABC News, thanks to Alegre)
“I’m confident both private companies and the option of public plan can live in harmony,” Reid said on the Senate floor [Thursday]. “When you send a birthday present to a relative to — say I want to send something to one of my children in Nevada, the products that I choose can be sent by FedEx, UPS, DHL, or the United States Postal Service… The Postal Service may not be perfect, but the public option is there, and the private companies, FedEx, UPS, know they cannot rip you off or [be] slacking on their service,” Reid said.

Health Care Overhaul Opponents Use Selective Stats (All Things Considered, NPR)
It’s become one of the most commonly cited statistics by opponents of the health overhaul being put together by Democrats in Congress: Creating a new government-run public health insurance plan would result in 119 million people losing their private insurance… The point of the study was to show that the number of people who would eventually join a government-sponsored public insurance plan would vary — dramatically — depending on how that plan is designed… For example, Sheils says, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York “has a plan which would require the public program to pay private payer rates — the same rates that other private insurers have to pay — and under that scenario we get only between 10 and 12 million people dropping private coverage.”

Good Gravy. Grassley calls Schumer’s plan “obnoxious” (by Alegre)
At least Nancy Pelosi is standing up for the public option.  She’s taken a head-count and told HuffPo that she won’t have the votes to pass a reform bill unless it includes a public option.  She also said that Conrad’s compromise (a system of co-ops) won’t be enough.  It’s got to include a public option or no deal. Meanwhile Grassley continues to be the mouthpiece for the party of NO when it comes to health care reform:  ”No public option, no employee mandate to either provide insurance or pay a penalty, and nothing that leads to rationing of health care.”  If you stick to Grassley’s criteria here we won’t have ANY changes to our current (and messed up) system.  

Well I’ve got news for Grassley… we’ve already got rationing.  With nearly 50 million Americans living without access to health care services, I defy him to show us how anything they could do in Congress could make things worse than they already are. 

Obama Reasserts Support For Public Plan While AMA Backtracks On Opposition (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
[Obama’s remarks in Green Bay] came just several hours after the American Medical Association said it would oppose a public option for coverage. But in a reflection of just how delicate this debate has become, the 250,000 member physician group largely backtracked from its opposition later in the day. “Make no mistake: health reform that covers the uninsured is AMA’s top priority this year,” a clarifying statement from the group read. “Every American deserves affordable, high-quality health care coverage.

How much clout will labor have in health care debate? (McClatchy)
This should be labor’s big moment: a Democratic White House and Congress poised to overhaul the nation’s health care system. Despite spending more than $113 million to help elect their ideological allies last November, unions are having a challenging time getting their way on Capitol Hill.

Randall Terry’s Free Beer, Wings, and Hate Party Not Well-Attended (by Pareene at Gawker)
Anti-abortion radical Catholic Mullah Randall Terry threw a press conference with free chicken wings and Guinness for journalists, yesterday. It did not boost attendance, really.

NRO’s Andrew McCarthy doesn’t read too good (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Over at The Corner, McCarthy’s busy bashing the Department Homeland Security that warned about possible acts of anti-Semitic violence from lone wolf white supremacists, just like the one that struck the Holocaust Museum. Y’know, the report  that also warned about right-wing domestic terrorists, like the one who is accused of assassinating abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, and the right-wing gun nut charged with killing Pittsburgh cops. But McCarthy’s angry because despite that obvious trend of far-right attacks, he’s sure the DHS report, which warned about precisely that kind of violence, was somehow off the mark.

Limbaugh: Obama “thrives and needs chaos”; people on the left “excited” by Holocaust museum shooting (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
As always, accusing others of his own nefarious motives.

Limbaugh: Obama is “ramping up hatred for Israel, … Jewish people” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh on Holocaust museum shooter: “This guy is a leftist if anything” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Limbaugh adds: “This guy’s beliefs, this guy’s hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.”

“Anti-Jew rhetoric … comes from the American left” and “circle of people close to” Obama (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Liz Cheney falsely claims Obama hasn’t said ‘I believe in American exceptionalism.’ (Think Progress)
Liz Cheney continued her seemingly unending campaign to flood the American media, and once again, she said something that isn’t true. This time, on CNN last night, she criticized the Obama administration for being “focused on the president’s popularity overseas.” “We’ve now seen several different occasions when he’s been on the international trips, where he’s not willing to say, flat out, ‘I believe in American exceptionalism,’” Cheney complained. But of course, Obama has said this.
Yes, and that’s one of the things I DON’T like about him. Click through to watch a video compilation.

Death Talkers (by William Rivers Pitt, Truthout)
Last March, Fox News personality Sean Hannity ran a poll on his web site asking readers what kind of revolution they’d prefer: military coup, armed rebellion or war for secession?… A month later, conservative radio host Glenn Beck accused President Obama of lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research in order to begin genetic development of a new master race… Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has accused the Obama administration of actively seeking to destroy the country by aiding terrorism and embracing socialism…

Where is all the fear and violence gaining inspiration? The same places it has been for a while now. Those right-wing media people keep talking, and people keep getting killed. Coincidence?

The Big Hate (by Paul Krugman)
[F]or the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House. And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

Conservatives Attack Shepard Smith, Call For His Firing (by The Cajun Boy at Gawker)
Well you just knew that Shepard Smith’s off the reservation intellectual honesty at Fox News would backfire… Reporting [Wednesday] after the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Smith credited the accuracy of a recent Homeland Security warning about violent, right-wing hate groups on the rise. He also mentioned an influx of nutty emails being sent into Fox. For this, he has drawn scorn… The conservative blog Atlas Shrugs went all the way in calling for Shep’s head in a post titled, .”Please Shepard Smith Out the Door”… And World Net Daily, the most widely-read conservative site online, launched a blistering attack, essentially insinuating that Shepard Smith is a closet crazy person capable of snapping just like James von Brunn did…

Meanwhile, Smith talked by phone to an ex-wife of James von Brunn on his show today, who said that his hatred for Jews and blacks began “in New York, when he worked there at an advertising agency.” Very fitting.

Holocaust Museum Shooter Von Brunn’s Digital Trail Disappears (Washington Post, via Democarcy in Action)
James von Brunn’s online presence began to vanish within hours after he was named as the suspect in the Holocaust Museum shooting.

DHS Urged To Expedite Updated Report On Right Wing Extremism (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Amid howls that it had politicized national security, DHS stepped back from a mid-April report it had issued on domestic threats from fringe right-wing groups… Several weeks later, the findings of the original study have been proven prescient, specifically in its warnings about violent acts from anti-abortion zealots and anti-Semites. Now, demands for that follow-up have grown more urgent.

AL QAEDA IS RECRUITING WHITE GUYS (The Stimulist, thanks to Gawker)
White guys are … playing an increasingly important role in Al Qaeda. Last January, an article in The Scotsman reported that “senior security sources” inside the British government claimed that Al Qaeda has recruited “as many as 1,500 white Britons.” Many of these new recruits were reportedly converted to Islam by radical fundamentalists while in prison. Some experts doubt the existence of this so-called “white army of terror,” but Al Qaeda is definitely embracing the powers of diversity.

Adding white men could make the group more dangerous than ever, says New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright, an Al Qaeda expert who wrote The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. “If Al Qaeda can transcend its stereotype,” he told us, “than they will become a lot more difficult to police.”

Matt Davies

Obama Bows on Settling Detainees (Washington Post)
The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.

Let’s Hear It for Fear (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
It’s not just that the Republicans are successfully fearmongering that has me so pissed off about this, or that the media didn’t challange them every step of the way. It’s that so many goddamned Dems helped them put the “bi” in bipartisan. Yes, let’s hear it for those Dems who live and die by the prevailing winds of public opinion – who would never dream of actually educating the voters instead of knuckling under to their uninformed emotions. You go, Weathervane Dems! Woo hoo!

Boehner: GOP Preparing Major Attack On Obama For Mirandizing Terrorists (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Buried in [an] interview that John Boehner did with ABC News is a preview of the Next Big And Very Scary GOP National Security Attack: A full-scale assault on the White House for Mirandizing terrorists. Boehner told ABC that national security was Obama’s Achilles heel, then added: “‘I think most Americans will be appalled that we’re providing Miranda rights to terrorists,’ Boehner predicted. ‘This thing is going to bubble up big.’”… Interestingly, Boehner’s call to arms came after it emerged that no less a national security luminary than David Petraeus said he had “no concerns at all” about the Mirandizing of terrorists. Not even Petraeus’ word can dissuade Republicans from taking this tack.

Robert Gates And Hillary To GOP Leaders: You’re Putting Our Security At Risk (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton are now thrusting themselves into the raging fight over the White House’s request for Congressional cash for the International Monetary Fund, demanding in a letter that GOP leaders back the funding or put our security at risk… In the letter, Gates, Clinton and a third signatory, National Security Adviser James Jones, say the IMF plays a key role in reducing the “security risks” the crisis “poses to our nation and the world.” The crisis, it says, risks destabilizing foreign economies, producing “unforeseeable reactions.”

U.S. Officials Say There are Indications North Korea is Preparing for a Third Nuclear Test (by Luis Martinez at Political Punch, ABC News)
U.S. officials say there are indications that North Korea may be preparing for a third nuclear test. A U.S. official tells ABCNews,“We can’t rule out the possibility that North Korea will detonate another nuclear device. There are signs that they may be considering this, but it’s unclear if ultimately they will go through with a test. All options appear to be on the North Korean regime’s table.”

Rivals in Iran both claim victory in election (AP)
Iran’s state news agency is reporting that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won re-election, but a reformist rival is also claiming victory. The rival claims came even before the close of polls on Friday. Official results are not expected until Saturday.

Stocks slip as investors await signs on economy (AP)
Stock are moderately lower as investors weigh recent signs of economic recovery and wonder what will be able to take the market higher

Wall Street’s Toxic Message (by Joseph E. Stiglitz)
[Among the legacies of the current economic crisis] … will be a worldwide battle over ideas—over what kind of economic system is likely to deliver the greatest benefit to the most people. Nowhere is that battle raging more hotly than in the Third World, among the 80 percent of the world’s population that lives in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, 1.4 billion of whom subsist on less than $1.25 a day… While there may be no winners in the current economic crisis, there are losers, and among the big losers is support for American-style capitalism. This has consequences we’ll be living with for a long time to come.

Geithner Said to Tell Bernanke Fed Gains Most in Rules Overhaul (Bloomberg)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Chairman Ben S. Bernanke in a June 9 meeting the administration will call for the Fed to be the regulator of firms deemed too big to fail, one of the people said. While a council of regulators would share oversight of financial risks, Treasury officials describe it as weak, lacking power to make final decisions on intervening with the firms, the people said.

Bailout Bank Execs Get Payouts (by Paul Kiel at ProPublica)
[Wednesday], the Treasury Department released new rules  on how much banks that received TARP money can pay their executives. Among the rules is one that prohibits golden parachutes – defined as any payment to a departing exec simply because the exec is leaving. But an examination of public filings shows that a number of executives at banks that received TARP funds have received large payments just for resigning. It’s unclear if the new rules will apply retroactively.
Click through for a rundown of these execs and the payouts they received.

‘Compensation Czar’ to Oversee Exec Pay (Truthdig)
The Obama administration on Wednesday enthroned Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg as its “compensation czar,” whose job it will be to oversee the salaries and bonuses of 175 top executives of our beloved bailed-out financial firms, including AIG, Citibank, Bank of America and GM. The White House’s initial call to cap executive pay at $500,000 is no longer on the menu.

Scrutiny of Bank of America’s Merrill purchase intensifies (McClatchy)
Lawmakers blitzed Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis on Thursday about why he didn’t alert shareholders to the deepening troubles behind his deal to buy Merrill Lynch and about whether he tried to pass blame to regulators.

Rove: Bush Administration Has ‘No’ Responsibility For Current Budget Deficits (Think Progress)
[Wednesday] night on Fox News, former top Bush adviser Karl Rove chastised President Obama for his economic recovery package Congress passed last February and criticized him for his new proposal to enact “pay as you go” budgeting rules — paying for spending increases by either raising taxes or budget cuts. “This is a cosmetic gesture. This guy is going to run up a $1.8 trillion deficit. That’s what it’s projected to be this year,” Rove complained. But when host Greta Van Susteren asked if the Bush administration is responsible for any of the deficit, Rove replied, “No.”
Click through to watch the video.

Power Problem (by Dean Starkman, Columbia Journalism Review)
We need to learn the lessons of the past eight years or so, even if the press doesn’t want to go along, and re-examine, from top to bottom, all the firewalls that were supposedly designed to protect us from precisely the financial catastrophe that has just occurred. These firewalls start with risk managers, officers, directors, etc., within the financial institutions, then extend outward to accounting firms, rating agencies, regulators, and yes, journalists.

Poll: GOP risks loss of respect if it goes after Sotomayor (McClatchy)
Republicans may have a window of opportunity to turn public opinion against President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, but a new poll finds that such a campaign could hurt their party’s already weak standing with Americans, especially Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing voter group.
When did the right wing ever care about loss of respect? All they care about is scaring everybody into doing what they want.

Senate, 79-17, approves tough FDA regulation of tobacco (McClatchy)
Government would have broad new authority to regulate tobacco products, slash nicotine content and restrict advertising under historic legislation approved overwhelmingly Thursday afternoon by the Senate.

Senators who opposed tobacco bill received top dollar from industry (McClatchy)
Among the 17 senators who voted against allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco are some of the top recipients of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry, which has donated millions of dollars to lawmakers in the past several campaign cycles.

Think of the Lobbyists (Political Wire)
Polls show New York Gov. David Paterson (D) as one of the least popular governors in the nation and the leadership revolt in the state Senate isn’t helping improve his stature. The governor has been “largely relegated to the sidelines” in the dispute, reports the New York Times.  However, Paterson made “one of the more unusual pleas for sanity” when he asked lawmakers to “think of the lobbyists” in urging their return to the Senate. He went on to explain that they had worked hard “to persuade legislative leaders and legislators of issues.”

Following Joke, Palins Say ‘No Way’ to Letterman Invitation (USA Today)
The Palins will not be visiting The Late Show anytime soon. “The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show,” Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said Thursday. “Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.”

Failing Up (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
What happens when you write an innuendo-laden hit piece on a prospective Supreme Court nominee without, by your own admission, bothering to read enough of her opinions or talk to enough of her colleagues to reach a fair assessment, in which you crop a comment by one of her fellow judges who described her as smart so that you can portray the judge as having said she is “not that smart” — a false charecterization you still have not corrected more than a month later? If you’re Jeffrey Rosen, and the target of your hit-piece is Sonia Sotomayor, Time magazine invites you to write more about her.

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