David Cameron just finished his statement and questions are coming. Here’s a live feed.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Open Thread: Blood Drive
I’m giving blood this morning, and I encourage anyone interested to do so, too. As usual, in the summer there’s a critical shortage of blood, so give early and often. This is an open thread.
Mr Murdoch Goes to Parliament
Sir Paul Stephenson’s grilling before the Home Affairs committee is happening now, Murdoch and Brooks are coming later. It’s being shown on cable on BBC America — here’s a live stream. I couldn’t find a live stream watchable in the US, maybe someone can link to one in the comments. So far, questions are smarter and more pointed, and the pace of the hearing is much faster than a Senate or House committee.
“Gate” is an overused suffix, but I agree with James Fallows on this:
Notes to the young: this is the first story in memory that recreates the effect of living through Watergate. The revelations don’t stop, what would have seemed unimaginable fantasy a week ago is hard news today, and there is no obvious firebreak ahead that will bring the disclosures to an end. I suspect that some people on the other end of the revelations have thought about the parallel too.
I mis-spent a good part of the summer of 1973 watching the Watergate hearings on TV. One big difference between that scandal and this one is that John Dean or Alexander Butterfield weren’t found dead in their apartment the day after John Mitchell or Spiro Agnew resigned.
Claiming Marcus
Here’s Dan Savage’s response to the pearl clutching about Marcus Bachmann:
Gay people who point out how fruity Bachmann is aren’t saying there’s something wrong with being fruity, or gay, or with guys who look, speak, walk, or dance the way Bachmann does. A lot of us look, speak, walk, and dance that way. And we don’t think there’s anything wrong with us for looking, speaking, walking, or dancing that way—I’ve never met a gay man who objected to Modern Family‘s Cam. And we certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay. But Marcus Bachmann sure does. He thinks there’s a whole lot wrong with being gay. When we point out that this same Marcus Bachmann acts like a huge homo—like a messy, married, dishonest, closeted version Cam—we’re hoisting that pansy on his own hateful petard.
Marcus Bachmann is attacking us and we’re we’re claiming him. We’re embracing him, we’re saying that we recognize ourselves in him, and that turns the stigma Marcus Bachmann promotes back on Marcus Bachmann.
Open Thread
Looks like we’re overdue for one.
How Losing is Winning
Though it’s encouraging to see a CBS News poll showing that the debt ceiling fight is hurting Republicans the most of all, I doubt that this will discourage the Tea Party wing, since a majority of the public isn’t happy with anyone’s handling of their hostage crisis. If your fundamental belief is that the country will be better off with less government because government itself is a bad thing, it’s no big deal if our main representative institution, Congress, is viewed as a worthless, do-nothing repository of indecipherable procedure.
The House teatards just won a wave election by running against Congress, and they think they can repeat that trick. So, the number they’re looking at isn’t the public’s approval of their work in Congress, it’s the public’s overall approval of Congress. As long as the latter number is somewhere north of zero, they see a major political opportunity. It may be crazy ideology that started this hostage crisis, but it’s cold political calculation that’s keeping it going.
Another One Down
The Guardian is reporting that John Yates, who was in charge of the Metropolitan Police’s phone hacking investigation, will resign today. That’s two top officials of the most important police force in England gone within two days’ time.
In related news, someone had better call the waahmbulance for the WSJ, because their latest editorial sounds like a teenage girl’s Facebook status update:
We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world.
Here’s a interview from July 5. After watching it, I agree with the Journal: why would we think that News Corp journalists would be tarnished by being associated with an organization as forthright and forthcoming as this one?
That last clip is via Jay Rosen, who has an interesting discussion of how a PR firm can keep its reputation while working for a firm with such a deeply entrenched culture of lying.