The Nightowl Newswrap

by: BG & YD bring you the news

Fri Aug 05, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM CDT

• @TheOnion: Obama Turns 50 Despite Republican Opposition "After months of heated negotiations and failed attempts to achieve any kind of consensus, President Obama turned 50 years old Thursday, drawing strong criticism from Republicans in Congress. "With the host of problems this country is currently facing, the fact that our president is devoting time to the human process of aging is an affront to Americans everywhere," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who advocated a provision to keep Obama 49 at least through the fall of 2013. "To move forward unilaterally and simply begin the next year of his life without bipartisan support -- is that any way to lead a country?" According to White House officials, Obama attempted to work with Republicans right up until the Aug. 4 deadline, but was ultimately left with no choice except to turn a year older." (H/T to friend-of-BG-and-the-blog Gene Ha. Yes, that Gene Ha, the awesome comic book artist.)

• It took less than three months for Hucksterbee's "educational materials" company to release a history of 9/11 installment that completely omit's that it was Obama who got bin Laden. Seriously. "The goal of the videos is to reject "the 'blame America first' attitude prevalent in today's teaching," as the company's marketing materials put it, and offer up an "unbiased" view of the nation's historical events. The first video was about Ronald Reagan, and you can read just about how unbiased that one is here. ... So -- what does Huckabee's "unbiased" view of 9/11 look like? A lot of praise for the PATRIOT act (which it, should be said, many conservatives don't like), a lot of praise for the Department of Homeland Security, a lot of praise for Israel and the clear implication that President George W. Bush was responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden. ... The simple hook connecting all of Huckabee's videos centers around a multi-hued gang of kids from the fictional Amsterdam, USA who develop a time machine and proceed to use it to learn the facts about America's past. The 9/11 video opens on a school assembly in Amsterdam, where the principal introduces a day of reflection about 9/11 and members of the armed forces to meet with students.... On cue, one of our heroes' public school liberal propaganda kicks in. ... "I can't believe Principal Clark invited them here," one of the characters scoffs, gesturing to the military guests. "Doesn't he know that fighting is wrong?" ... "These people are defending our freedom," her friend responds. "Isn't that worth fighting for?" ... And we're off..."

• Americans still know who they're mad at. "Well, Congress has done it. It's hit its highest disapproval ratings since the New York Times/CBS News poll was created in 1977. In the wake of the debt debate, a full 82% of Americans are displeased with the legislative branch, with only 14% approval. ... It's not so much the deal that was struck on the debt ceiling increase, which Americans were split on: 46% actually approved of the deal versus 45%. It was the perceived motivations that have people upset. 82% of the poll's respondents said that disagreements between parties on the debt ceiling debate were due to "gaining political advantage," rather than "doing what's best for the country," which only 14% saw as the motivator for Congress. Those numbers perfectly mirrored the general Congressional ratings. ... As was the case with other polling around the debt deal, some individual political leaders have taken a hit. In this case, House Speaker John Boehner's disapproval rating went from 42% in April of this year to 57% now, while his national approval rating only went from 32% to 30%. President Obama saw a slight increase in his disapproval rating over that time as well, from 45% to the current 47%, but his approval went from 46% to 48%."

• It's the austerity, Stupid. "Investors fled Wall Street in the worst stock-market selloff since the depths of the Great Recession in early 2009 in what has turned into a full-fledged correction. ... The S&P 500 had its worst one-day percentage drop since February 10, 2009. The index's 10.7 percent drop over the past 10 days was the worst 10-day loss since March 2009 when the market bottomed out after year-long fall. ... The Dow Jones industrial average was down 512.76 points, or 4.31 percent, at 11,383.68, according to the latest available figures. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 60.27 points, or 4.78 percent, at 1,200.07. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 136.68 points, or 5.08 percent, at 2,556.39."

• Best. Excuse. EVAR! "Ever have one of those nights where you wake up with a hangover and $1 million worth of architecture contracts? ... No? Martin Resendiz (D), the Mayor of Sunland Park, New Mexico, certainly has. ... According to court documents, Resendiz admitted in a June 2010 deposition that he was drunk when he signed nine contracts with the architectural design firm Synthesis+ for $1 million worth of work. ... "The day I signed ... I had way too much to drink. It was after 5 p.m. and I signed it (the contracts) and I didn't know what I was signing," Resendiz wrote as a response to questions from lawyers for the firm. "My sister had to pick me up.""

• We may be hurting, but the super-rich are doing just fine, thank you very much. "Stores selling luxury items-Tiffany, Louis Vuitton and Gucci to name a few-were reportedly hit harder than other retailers in the recession. But now sales are soaring, so much so that many of those retailers are marking items up to attract more customers who equate price with quality. ... But while the notion of spending so freely and exorbitantly is beyond the imagination of the average American, the rich are thought to contribute disproportionately to economic growth. So as long as they keep buying Louboutins and Porsches, the effects of their spending on the economy should eventually trickle down to Main Street."

• Et tu, Newt? Last night we told you about GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain talking on the stump about how important American manufacturing is, but that he has his campaign t-shirts made in Honduras. On Wednesday Think Progress reported that Twitter-challenged candidate Newt Gingrich is also having his sham-paign t-shirts manufactured in an other Central American country, El Salvador.

• Fox "News" producers obviously have too much time on their hands. "When Fox News producers aren't coming up with simple-minded metaphors to "debunk" the scientific consensus on climate change, they're apparently turning their outrage machine onto a children's show for refusing to be "fair and balanced" like them. ... In a bizarre string of on-air attacks, Fox News hosts seem to be feigning outrage over the Nickelodeon show "Spongebob Squarepants" for a segment about global warming. Hosts have in recent days been claiming the cartoon was shown to students by the U.S. Department of Education, even though it wasn't, accusing its creators of trying to push a liberal political "agenda" on the nation's children. ... The department gave away "Spongebob" and "Dora the Explorer" books to elementary school kids at a Washington, D.C. event on July 20, but no cartoons were shown. Both books carry themes of conservation and environmental protection, as part of Nickelodeon's "Big Green Help" campaign, funded by numerous civic and community organizations."

• We have to give the devil -- in this case, Chris Christie -- his due for this. "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is firing back at critics in his own party who have questioned his decision to appoint a Muslim judge, Sohail Mohammed, to a state bench. Mohammed defended Muslims who were wrongly accused in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which some conservatives have suggested makes him an unqualified candidate. ... While defending his choice at a press conference, Christie made it clear he is "disgusted" by the "ignorance behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed." Paranoid fear of Sharia law has become a growing theme in Republican rhetoric, and Christie lashed out at those who would use Islamophobia to attack an exceptional judge."

• We imagine that the jurors reached their verdict against cult-leader and child-rapist Warren Jeffs in the first five minutes, then chatted for a couple of hours so it would look like they had to "deliberate." "The leader of a polygamist sect, who made headlines in 2008 when police raided his Texas compound and took away over 450 children, was Thursday found guilty of sexually assaulting two young girls. ... Warren Jeffs, the spiritual leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who submitted a letter to his trial which he said had been dictated by God, could now face up to 119 years behind bars. ... Jeffs, 55, had been put on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list in May 2006 for charges of accomplice to rape in Utah. ... He was caught outside of Las Vegas in August 2006 but his conviction on two charges stemming out of the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old first cousin was overturned last year by a Utah court. ... The Texas case stems from evidence gathered in the 2008 Eldorado raid."

• In just 40 short years, the American Psychology Association has gone from classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder to unanimously backing same-sex marriage. "Belying recent press coverage of pseudoscientific ex-gay therapy, the American Psychological Association voted unanimously 157-0 to support marriage equity as "the policy that the country should be moving toward." The world's largest organization of psychologists with over 154,000 members, the APA has previously endorsed full equal rights for LGBT citizens but took its position a step further with last night's resolution, citing numerous studies supporting the stability of homosexual relationships. It also criticized recent efforts to ban same-sex marriage, adding that "emerging evidence suggests that statewide campaigns to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage are a significant source of stress to the lesbian, gay and bisexual residents of those states and may have negative effects on their psychological well-being.""

• "Facts are meaningless - you could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson "This week, the Obama administration announced that all health insurers will be required to cover birth control and other women's health services without charging co-pays. This historic move has sent the burgeoning right-wing campaign against birth control into an apoplectic fit. Today, Fox News' America's Newsroom decided to feature one such activist in a "fair and balanced debate" on whether ensuring a woman's access to birth control is a good idea. ... Former Women's Media Center president Jehmu Greene offered the facts that support greater access to birth control. Namely, "50 percent of pregnancies in this country are unintended pregnancies" -- the leading reason why women seek abortions --  which costs the U.S. over $11 billion a year. Noting that contraception not only allows women to space out their pregnancies and commit to parenting, but also reduces the number of abortions, Greene determined the new policy to be a "text-book definition of win-win." ... Fox's anti-birth control "expert," Family PAC Federal Vice President Sandy Rios, however, found her own reasons to lambast the policy as "ridiculous." Telling Greene that she lives in "la la land." ... Surveying all of Rios's "arguments," Greene stated that Rios's ultimate goal "is she wants to put ideology over public health." To which Rios replied, "Yes, I suppose I do." Rios then offered these parting words to Greene: "You all make science a laughing stock. You present science and facts just to present your viewpoint."" (There's video at the link and we watched twice. She really is that dogmatic and that stupid.)

• Call us cockeyed optimists if you must, but we aren't convinced that the Bushco war criminals have gotten away scot-free just yet. "A lawsuit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, filed by an unnamed U.S. contractor who claims he was tortured by the military, will proceed to trial. ... The decision made this week by U.S. District Judge James Gwin is especially important to civil liberties advocates, who've seen a number of torture suits against former U.S. officials shot down by claims of immunity. ... In this case, originally filed in 2008, Judge Gwin considered a similar argument from the Obama administration: that a former official cannot be sued for their actions in any official capacity. ... However, since the plaintiff in the matter is a U.S. citizen whose constitutional rights were allegedly trampled upon -- and because Rumsfeld allegedly approved each individual harsh interrogation -- the suit is being allowed to proceed. ... The man, whose identity was withheld, is a translator in his 50s who helped U.S. Marines communicate with Iraqis. He claims he was abducted by U.S. military personnel in 2005 as he was due to return home from Iraq. Over the course of nine months he was allegedly beaten and interrogated about providing classified information to coalition enemies, then was released without explanation. He was never charged with a crime."

• Claiming authorship of ghostwritten studies is fraud and any academic who does it should be prosecuted. "Academics who lend their names to medical and scientific articles ghostwritten by the pharmaceutical industry should be charged with fraud under the the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), according to two University of Toronto Faculty of Law professors. ... The pharmaceutical industry often conducts research, but allows academic experts to submit it to scientific journals under their own name. Although medical professionals and academics have called for these "guest authors" to be sanctioned by journals, academic institutions and regulatory agencies, their recommendations have not been widely embraced. ... "It's a prostitution of their academic standing," Professor Trudo Lemmens said. "And it undermines the integrity of the entire academic publication system." "

• Last known "Pink Triangle" dies at 98 "Rudolf Brazda, last known survivor of the so-called "Pink Triangles" -- gays interned in Nazi camps because of their homosexuality -- died in France Wednesday aged 98, officials said. ... "Rudolf passed on peacefully in his sleep at dawn on August 3" at an old people's hospital in Bantzenheim, eastern France, said Philippe Couillet, a friend and associate of the deceased. ... Brazda, born in 1913, was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1942 and reamined there until it was liberated by US troops in 1945. ... After the war he moved to Alsace, the eastern French region that borders Germany, and lived there until his death."

• Australian police hunt for "neck bomb" attacker. "A manhunt was under way Thursday for an attacker who attached what turned out to be a fake bomb to a terrified Sydney teenager in a drama described as "like something out of a Hollywood movie script". ... Madeleine Pulver, 18, a member of one of Sydney's wealthiest families, endured a horrifying 10-hour ordeal after a masked man strapped a device around her neck at her home in the exclusive suburb of Mosman. ... A note was left at the scene in what was thought to be an extortion attempt. ... "Certainly the instructions were precise, they were such that led us to believe that we were dealing with a very serious and legitimate threat," Mark Murdoch, assistant commissioner of New South Wales state police, said."

• The grid can't handle the demand in Texas, causing power outages. "The National Weather Service chief calls it a heat wave more intense than any he can remember -- and nowhere is it being felt as intensely as in Texas, where high electricity use triggered power outages Thursday and Dallas saw its 34th straight day of triple-digit temperatures. ... Thursday afternoon, the power-grid operator in Texas declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 2, where companies that agree to see temporary power cuts get paid to be dropped. ... It also warned that Level 3 -- rolling blackouts across the state -- might be required later Thursday unless residents and businesses do more to voluntarily reduce electricity use. ... Dallas is also well on its way to breaking its record of 42 straight days at 100 or above, set in 1980. The Weather Channel's forecast through Aug. 13, which would be day 43, shows no day with a high below 102 degrees."

• Famine in Somalia has killed 29,000 children under five. "The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5, according to U.S. estimates, the first time such a precise death toll has been released related to the Horn of Africa crisis. ... The United Nations has said previously that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, a statistic that suggests the death toll of small children will rise."

• Double-dips are okay for ice cream cones and roller coasters, but economic recessions? Not so much. "It has been three decades since the United States suffered a recession that followed on the heels of the previous one. But it could be happening again. The unrelenting negative economic news of the past two weeks has painted a picture of a United States economy that fell further and recovered less than we had thought. ... When what may eventually be known as Great Recession I hit the country, there was general political agreement that it was incumbent on the government to fight back by stimulating the economy. It did, and the recession ended. ... But Great Recession II, if that is what we are entering, has provoked a completely different response. Now the politicians are squabbling over how much to cut spending. After months of wrangling, they passed a bill aimed at forcing more reductions in spending over the next decade. "

• FAA shutdown over -- for now. "The Obama administration has reached a patchwork agreement with Congressional leaders to end a 13-day partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, the Senate majority leader,  Harry Reid, said Thursday. ... The agreement signals an end, at least for a few weeks, to a standoff over policy issues that had left 4,000 agency employees out of work, idled tens of thousands of workers at hundreds of airport construction projects and cost the federal government more than $350 million in lost taxes on airline tickets. ... Congressional officials said the deal arranges rubber-stamp passage by the Senate on Friday of a bill that was approved by the House last month, extending the aviation agency's operations through Sept. 16. ... Only a few senators need to be present when the Senate convenes at 10 a.m., and if no one objects to the request for unanimous consent to pass the House bill, the impasse will officially be over. ... "This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain," Mr. Reid said in a statement. "But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that.""

And finally...

• It's that time of year again -- time to pass the hat and keep the lights on around here for another year. We used to do two fundraisers a year, in September and again in February, but last year we decided to do the regular fundraiser in September and then in February we asked readers to subscribe for the low, low price of just five dollars a month. (Isn't the Newswrap alone worth five bucks a month?)

  In the last year, a lot has changed, and one of those changes is me going back to school to pick up a History degree and fulfill pre-Law requirements. Given how busy September is going to be with getting back in the swim of teaching and studying, we are doing the fundraiser in August.

  Any help you can throw in the inverted Stetson will, as always, be greatly appreciated, and will keep us going for another year.

  Thanks in advance.

  -- BG