Recycled Story Or Real News?

Late! Breaking! Politico! Scuttlebutt! is that Norm Coleman might finally get to replace Michael Steele as RNC Chair:

Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman is considering a run for chairmanship of the RNC, POLITICO has learned, and has begun talking to associates about taking on Michael Steele, should the embattled current chairman seek another term in January.

Coleman is planning to attend the RNC’s summer meeting next month in Kansas City, in part to be on hand for a tribute to longtime New Jersey Committeeman David Norcross, who is stepping down from his party post. But senior Republicans say the former senator’s appearance at the committee’s gathering will also allow him to meet the party members who will pick the next chairman and signal to them that he’s interested in the job.

In the last month, Coleman has had private conversations with multiple high-level GOP officials about the party’s chairmanship in an attempt to sound out his prospects.

In an e-mail, the former St. Paul mayor said only that he was working to help Republicans in 2010.

“My focus is on the 2010 elections,” Coleman wrote in response to questions about his interest in the RNC post. “We have a huge opportunity to stop the Democrats’ out-of-control spending and losing the opportunity would be devastating for the country.”

A close confidante, however, said Coleman is “intrigued by the [RNC] opportunity.”

Whoop-te-doo. He’s been actively wanting the gig since March of 2009, you know.

Choking more slowly

Mel Frykberg, IPS:

[Israeli human rights organization] Gisha reports that there has been a moderate rise in the volume of trucks entering Gaza and an increase in imports of consumer goods, but that this volume still falls way below pre-embargo days, and isn’t sufficient to meet the daily needs of Gaza’s 1.5 million civilians.

During the week after Jun. 20, 695 trucks of goods entered Gaza. This compares with 2,400 per week prior to the closure, and meets only 30 percent of Palestinian needs. Over the past three years 2,328 trucks entered Gaza on a monthly basis compared with 10,400 trucks monthly prior to the blockade.

Additionally, items which could be used for industry and manufacturing and which present no security threat are still being restricted. There appears to be “no change in the policy of inflicting economic warfare or by preventing entry of goods necessary for production,” says the Gisha report. “Textiles, industrial-sized buckets of margarine, glucose, packaging boxes and other raw materials are still banned.
…
A major step towards helping to rehabilitate Gaza’s economy would be permitting exports on which Gaza’s economy is heavily reliant. A 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005, agreed to 400 daily truckloads of exports. In the last three years 295 export trucks have exited Gaza.

Killing people slowly is no less murder than killing them quickly.

An environmental heroine will be at Netroots Nation

You can listen to Majora Carter’s speech at TED here.

This was shown on Democracy Now. Carter will be speaking at Netroots Nation.

Remember the good old days?

Remember the good old days when we laughed at the Soviets with their G-U-M stores, which were the only place you could buy anything? Leslie Patton and Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s divide-and- conquer strategy prevailed in Chicago by pitting construction workers against employees who will stock shelves and ring registers. …

“Wal-Mart played on the whims of the building trade unions, and the rest gave in,” Reverend Booker Vance, a spokesman for Good Jobs Chicago, a coalition of local unions, congregations and community groups, said in a telephone interview. “You have a lot of smoke and mirrors, and Wal-Mart would like to give the impression that they acted in good faith, but they have not.”

We’re not all that far from being the butt of our own joke. See also here.

Thers Has A Message For All Of Us

It involves courage, cowards, and other things.

And it references To Kill a Mockingbird. Major win.

Suh-prahz! Suh-prahz! Suh-praiz! Breitbart’s USDA Hit Is Falling Apart Faster Than His ACORN One Did

Get a load of all of this:

On CNN, wife of farmer says former USDA official is a “friend” who “helped us save our farm”

Breitbart’s Sherrod/NAACP story disintegrates

Why won’t Breitbart release the full Shirley Sherrod/NAACP video?

Media Matters: The right-wing rage machine unloads a frenzy of race-baiting

It’s ACORN redux: Did Breitbart mislead on purpose, or was he duped?

Of course, just as with the ACORN hoax, all of this comes too late to save the career of the African-American woman he smeared. I hope she sues him, just as one of his ACORN hoax victims is suing O’Keefe.
_____________________________
Charles adds, here’s a typical post from the Breitbart boards:

As Breitbart says, Context is everything. The context for this is that it’s an unremarkable post on Andrew Breitbart’s website.

Among other posts:
“She [Sherrod] belongs in prison.”
“Fire Shirley Sherrod along with all the other Obammunists.”
“To think that there are tens of thousands at 100,00+ of these hos working for the Federal Government,…. “
“Aunt Jemima racist ??? Say it ain’t so. !”
“We see the results of the liberal ADC program where unwed mothers are paid to have illegitimate babies…who are then neglected and grow up to become non-productive members of society themselves…waiting to be able to collect ‘their own’ government checks! “
“Welcome to obamas race war. “
“Lynch Obama signs….how do we know they didn’t plant them.”
“I am sick and tired of being called “racist” by this country’s greatest “racists”……the NAACP. It’s membership numbers are dropping like a stone among Jews, because of it’s blatant anti-Semitic declarations and comments. “We live in an upside-down time in which a group that wants inalienable rights for everyone is labled racist while the accusers espouse a dependant culture that keeps people enslaved to government just so corrupt pols can play the role of master.”
“I guess this is reparation time with the Kenyan man. “
“But I see that the current administration truly wants “RACE” to be a distraction with all the sneaky, backroom, NON-TRANSPARENT, REGRESSIVE socialist/marxist/communist agenda that they are FORCING down the throats of America. “
“‘m from Albany, GA. Shirley Sherrod is from here. Her & her kind have destroyed the great little city of Albany. We have fast become the New Detroit. People, if you don’t stop these lazy, lying, racist people like Sherrod, you will face the same thing we here in Albany, GA are facing: Gang murder, violence, drug wars, high taxes that get you nothing in return, cheating teachers, lost business. “

Nope. No racism in the Tea Party.

Getler does good

Via FAIR, here is Michael Getler’s verdict on PBS’ airing of a sycophantic, Republican-funded tribute to George Shultz, the unindicted Reagan Secretary of State. It’s not gracious, but it concedes the point:

The Ombudsman Column
Turmoil Over ‘Turmoil’
By Michael Getler
July 16, 2010

The e-mails, several hundred of them, began pouring into my mailbox early Monday evening. They began very soon after the media watch group known as FAIR — for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting and which describes itself as “progressive” in approach — took issue with a new three-part, three-hour PBS series about former Reagan-era Secretary of State George P. Shultz. As is frequently the case when FAIR gets something in its crosshairs, it tells its subscribers where to complain.

The First Rotten Fruit Of The Citizens United Ruling In Minnesota

Here they are, straight from the “bipartisan” group MN Forward, which is run by Brian McClung — who until just a few weeks ago was Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty’s chief spokesperson.

Oh, yes: As MRW notes, their first TV ad is pro-Tom-Emmer (Emmer being the Republican pick to replace Tim Pawlenty) and their first Tweeter followed is none other than Deputy MNGOP Chair Michael Brodkorb, who of course has his own history of posing as an “independent” voice when in fact he’s not.

Things I Found On Twitter Today

From MRWtweets:

MNGOP DEPUTY CHAIR PROMOTES BLOG FEATURING CARTOON OF OBAMA AS GANG-RAPIST http://bit.ly/aZlLwg http://bit.ly/dAB7qf

And again from MRWtweets:

@MNForward a bipartisan, multi-candidate group, or Emmer front? 1st ad pro-Emmer; first Tweeter followed is @mbrodkorb

And from David Dayen at Fire Dog Lake:

Dodd Plays Pundit, Tries to Knife Elizabeth Warren Nomination http://fdl.me/acLY11 (from @ddayen)

Oil spill in Northeast China/bad news in the Gulf. Updated

Jamil Anderlini of FT reports that two pipelines between a Liberian tanker and on-land tanks in Dalian harbor have exploded. China’s strategic oil reserve is in Dalian. Apparently the fire is out and the spillage of oil has been halted. Still, 50 sq. km of one of China’s least polluted ports are covered in oil.

A number of other environmental catastrophes have occurred recently in China.

In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a report from Reuters of seepage around the capped Deepwater Horizon:

late on Sunday, the U.S. government released a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley from retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen that referred to seepage near the mile-deep (1.6 km-deep) well as well as “undetermined anomalies at the well head.”

Update: Leaks are “inconsequential.”