Visual Source: Newseum
Deval Patrick explains how Grover Norquist hynotized the GOP:
Everyone knows that we have to reduce the deficit. Everyone also knows that reducing government spending and addressing revenue shortfalls have to be a part of the plan. This isn’t partisan; it’s pragmatic. Some might even call it conservative. But Norquist and the rest of the radical right have so hypnotized the Republican leadership that they can’t come out and say it. For them, maintaining their rhetoric about spending cuts is more important than preserving the civic investments that make America stand out from the rest of the world.
The always insightful Rick Perlstein looks at the legacy of Betty Ford:
Betty Ford always seemed to be vindicated in the controversial things she kept doing. Which, of course, is one of the definitions of a genuine leader. One afternoon four years ago in Beaver Creek, a Colorado resort, I saw it for myself.
A year after Gerald Ford’s death, Betty Ford closed up the family house in Vail, Colo., and was offering its contents for sale at a conference center in Beaver Creek. A smaller, outer room contained items of lesser value: cassette tapes President Ford dubbed from friends (John Philip Sousa, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir); books by John Grisham and Danielle Steel; period relics like “The Women’s Liberation Board Game” with a sticker reading “Property of Gerald and Betty Ford.” (I’ll forever regret being too cheap to shell out the $20 for that item.)
The second room held more valuable items, including books inscribed by their authors. Few were signed to the president. When Americans sent gifts to the Fords, they usually sent them to Betty.
The authors, most of them obscure, had written recovery memoirs and cancer memoirs and feminist manifestos, autobiographies bearing witness to struggles of every description. They had never met Betty Ford. But they wrote to her with an intimacy that was almost embarrassing for an outsider to read, as if they were writing to a loved one. Which, in a certain sense, they were. She had taught them how not to feel ashamed.
USA Today looks at the debate about whether chain restaurants should disclose calorie counts to their customers:
Watching your weight at your favorite chain restaurant is going to get a lot easier next year, when a new federal rule requiring calorie counts on menus is expected to kick in.
By the numbers: A tub of popcorn at some movie theaters has 1,200 calories, according to a 2009 study.
By the numbers: A tub of popcorn at some movie theaters has 1,200 calories, according to a 2009 study.
But if lobbyists for theater owners, supermarkets and alcoholic beverage makers have their way, you'll be kept in the dark about the caloric content of an array of other consumables.
That's too bad. With Americans supersizing their restaurant orders and their waistlines, the more information, the better. Today, 34% of Americans are obese, more than double the number in 1980.
Putting calorie counts on menus is no cure-all for the obesity crisis, which has complex roots and no easy solutions. And in places where such disclosures are already required, the jury is still out on whether they work. But critics, who charge that the new rules are the height of nannyism, miss the point.
The Boston Globe praises President Obama for "putting the national interest first" by advocating benefit cuts and revenue increases:
AT HIS nationally televised press conference yesterday, President Obama showed his determination to solve an egregious problem - and it isn’t the debt ceiling. As fiscal negotiations have dragged on, what’s scaring businesses at home and lenders abroad is not simply the possibility that America won’t pay its bills; it’s also the growing awareness that America can’t pull together in a crisis [...]
Obama frustrates many Democrats by refusing to enter the partisan fray. But his commitment to devising a middle path is all that’s keeping Washington from chaos. Fortunately, GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic leaders have been willing to come to the bargaining table, but their rank and file members aren’t fully on board. It’s vital that all members of Congress heed Obama’s call to leadership. More than their political future is at stake.
But Eugene Robinson points out that we shouldn't blame "both sides" for holding up the deal -- it's the GOP that's controlling the dynamic through their obstructionist tactics:
Washington has many lazy habits, and one of the worst is a reflexive tendency to see equivalence where none exists. Hence the nonsense, being peddled by politicians and commentators who should know better, that “both sides” are equally at fault in the deadlocked talks over the debt ceiling.
This is patently false. The truth is that Democrats have made clear they are open to a compromise deal on budget cuts and revenue increases. Republicans have made clear they are not.
Put another way, Democrats reacted to the “grand bargain” proposed by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner by squawking, complaining and highlighting elements they didn’t like. This is known throughout the world as the way to begin a process of negotiation.
Republicans, by contrast, answered with a definitive “no” and then covered their ears. Given the looming Aug. 2 deadline for default if the debt ceiling is not raised, the proper term for this approach is blackmail.
Bloomberg looks at how Rupert Murdoch went "from party darling to pariah":
July 12 (Bloomberg) -- At the News International party last month, Rupert Murdoch got the reception he's used to in London, with political figures of every stripe and from the Prime Minister down paying court at the Kensington Palace event.
When he returned to the city two days ago, the 80-year-old was jostled by camera crews and faced shouted questions. Asked if David Cameron was likely to speak to Murdoch during this week's visit, an official in the prime minister's office struggled to answer over their laughter at the idea.
Allegations last week that News Corp. staff hacked into the phones of murdered schoolgirls and terror victims and paid police for stories prompted Murdoch to close the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid on which his U.K. media empire was founded. Politicians from all parties have called for his planned purchase of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc to be scrapped and some question whether his company is fit to own a broadcasting license at all.
"The days of Rupert Murdoch as a man that people will fly halfway around the world to see, whose phone calls get taken, are over," said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Sussex University and the author of "The Conservative Party From Thatcher to Cameron." "All the party leaders have been distancing themselves."