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Entangled in his newspapers disgusting practice of hacking into the private e-mails and phones of innocent victims, Rupert Murdoch appeared before Parliament yesterday and boldly took responsibility and apologized. Or did he?

Murdoch took a time honored approach to controversy and scandal. He butchered the English language in the service of his personal and business self-interest, carefully choosing words that cloaked insincerity in the fine linen of humility.

In what is being called an apology he stated, “I also have to say that I failed, I am very sorry about it.” Seems straightforward enough.

But now come the verbal gymnastics. First, “It was an omission by me.” OK, what is that supposed to mean?! It’s the classic “non-denial denial,” asserting that while he had nothing to do with the evil act Machines Tattoo, he would take responsibility for it as head the organization. I didn’t do anything wrong Tattoos Ink, but I’m sorry. The extent of Murdoch’s and other executive’s knowledge of the hacking is at the heart of the continuing investigation Tattoo Case Box, and not just in Britain. So without directly saying it, he’s denying knowledge and intent. Hmmm.

The next step is even better. Not only is Murdoch not personally accountable for the hacking, he’s really its victim. “There’s no question in my mind that… someone took charge of a cover-up, which we were victim to and I regret.” Woof. Rogue hirelings have betrayed and victimized him.

It’s a “non-apology apology” to steal a phrase. Back in the day Bill Safire and Bill Schneider would eat this kind of thing alive. Both men understood that journalists do more than repeat statements, they explain what they mean. It may be that Rupert Murdoch was asleep at the switch and a few bad apples caused a problem. It may also be that by word, deed and culture he was the architect of a pervasive attack on the privacy rights of innocent victims. The factual uncertainty about what happened in Murdoch-ville remains, and even Rupert is entitled to the final results of the investigation before we render judgement.

But public people are the custodians of the language and when it is debased or manipulated, deeper wrongs are committed than the deeds of the moment. It is always, always a sign of deeper political and social problems when leaders abuse language for their own purposes. Journalists have to point an accusing finger when the language is bent in the service of protecting the powerful. After all, Murdoch’s a newspaper man and ought to be the last one to use double-speak in such an important and delicate matter. “J’accuse.”

A few weeks ago Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA who is retiring from the House this year, gave a memorable interview to New York magazine in which he criticized President Obama for aggressively pushing health care reform.  Frank says he warned Obama the Democratic Party would pay “a terrible price.”

Apparently Frank was not alone in counseling Obama to take health care off the front burner. “At various points, Vice President Joe Biden, senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised the president to focus entirely on the economy and leave comprehensive health care for another day,” Jonathan Alter, senior editor of Newsweek reports. “‘I begged him not to do this,’ Emanuel told me when I was researching my book about Obama’s first year in office.”

After the law passed Alter asked Obama why he overruled his team.  The president responded,  “‘I remember telling Nancy Pelosi that moving forward on this could end up being so costly for me politically that it would affect my chances’ in 2012.”  But he and Pelosi agreed that if they didn’t move at the outset of the his presidency, “it was not going to get done.”

In 2009 Obama put country above party.  Bringing health security to over 30 million Americans, strengthening the social compact and laying the foundation for a major restructuring of our health system were sufficient rewards for him to accept the political risks.

Almost exactly 45 years before Obama’s decision we witnessed another profile in political courage. Former Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, after becoming president on the death of JFK, aggressively and decisively ended the south’s filibuster against a Civil Rights Act Tattoo Of Tattoo Machine, ensuring its passage in July 1964.  In 1965 he secured enactment of the Voting Rights Act.

As is the case with the health care law, the Constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act was tested.  Southern states argued the federal government had no right to force the private sector to treat blacks and whites the same.  The Supreme Court ruled it did.

One hundred years after the Civil War, millions of southern black people effectively gained the right to vote.  LBJ also put country above party, at least the country that strives to honor the foundational moral values of the Declaration of Independence.

LBJ, like Barack Obama, understood the risks involved in extending democracy to those excluded because of the color of their skin.  “When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day Tattoo Machine Price,” former LBJ Press Secretary Bill Moyers recalls in his book Moyers on America. “I asked him what was troubling him. ‘I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,’ he said.”

LBJ was right. Nixon quickly embraced what came to be known as the Southern Strategy. He appealed to southern whites who were as angry then as Tea Party members are now about the federal government’s telling them what to do.

On August 3, 1980 the Southern strategy became explicit when Ronald Reagan delivered his first post-convention speech at the Neshoba County Fair outside Philadelphia, Mississippi after being officially chosen as the Republican nominee for president.  Reagan declared, “I believe in states’ rights.” Given the location his message was unmistakable. For in June 1964 Philadelphia was the site of the murders of voting rights activists James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white student from New York City; and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white organizer and former social worker also from New York.  The national outrage over their deaths helped LBJ gain passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

For giving black people the right to vote the Democratic Party did indeed pay a terrible price.  In 1964, according to the Economist,  the former Confederate states had a total of 128 Senators and Representatives; ll5 were white Democrats.  Today white southern Democrats account for just 24 of the South’s Congressional delegation.  In 1963, Congressional delegations from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Caroline consisted entirely of white Democrats. Today they have none.

Without LBJ’s courageous actions, Barack Obama would never have had a chance to become president.  But like LBJ, Obama’s actions have also led his party to pay a high price.  In 2010 Democrats lost control of the House.  Republicans swept to power in two dozen states.  And this November they may well win a trifecta by gaining control of all three branches of government:  Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court.

We can argue about whether ObamaCare (a term the Republicans coined that Obama has proudly embraced) is flawed or a step in the right direction.  I’m of the half-a-loaf school.  But why has it generated such hostility?  One can point to the individual mandate but those who cannot pay will be heavily subsidized.  In his interview, Frank comes up with another theory based on his many years having to gauge the psychology of his constituents.  “I think he (Obama) underestimated… the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the health care with poor people.”

LBJ didn’t underestimate the sensitivity of white people to share the ballot box with black people. Almost half a century later that sensitivity remains.  In 2011 Tattoo Ink For Cheap, after Republicans swept to victory in state legislatures and governorships they immediately moved to restrict ballot access by enacting burdensome voter registration laws.

They were emboldened by the 2008 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Indiana’s voter photo ID law.  The state could not identify a single case of voter fraud that would be prevented by requiring a photo ID, but the Court ruled that the burden of proof was not on Indiana to prove there was a problem.  The burden of proof was on those who claimed changes in voter laws would impose a “significant burden.”

The Supreme Court decision applies to states not under the Voting Rights Act.  But that Act required jurisdictions with a history of suppressing minority voting to pre-clear any proposed voting regulations with the U.S. Department of Justice.  And that law (Section 5) imposes the burden of proof on the state to prove the change would not abridge the right to vote by minorities.  The DOJ has rejected both Texas and South Carolina’s voter registration changes after concluding that Hispanic voters in Texas, for example, are at least 50 percent more likely and possibly more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver’s license or a personal state-issued photo ID, the two kinds of photo ID Texas allows.

With a Republican in the White House it is likely the Voting Rights Act will no longer be enforced.  It is even more likely the health care reform will be overturned.  If that should come to pass would it mean that LBJ and Barack Obama made a political mistake?  Should we have waited even longer to give black people the right to vote or to move toward universal health care?

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CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Politicians often start their speeches addressing the big development of the day. When Barack Obama took the rain-soaked stage here, the new material at the beginning was the sad news that his grandmother had died. “She has gone home,” he said, his voice halting. “It’s hard, a little Tattoo Supplies, to talk about.”

Barack Obama

Obama used a handkerchief to wipe away a few tears, a rare moment of spontaneity from a highly controlled candidate. He paid tribute to the woman who raised him in a two-bedroom apartment while his mother lived in Indonesia. She was one of the “quiet heroes,” he said, moving her story into his stump speech. “Not famous names, not in the newspapers, and each day they work hard. They aren’t seeking the limelight. In this crowd there are a lot of quiet heroes like that. The satisfaction they get is seeing that their children and grandchildren get a better life.” It was to those quiet heroes, he said, that his campaign was dedicated.

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Madelyn Dunham’s grandson may be elected president Tuesday, which makes her death so poignant. A chapter in Barack Obama’s life is closing in a definitive and complete way.

In Obama’s last day of campaigning before the voters have their say, he traveled through Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, facing the same large crowds that have met him at each stop along the way. “I have just one word for you,” Obama said at the start of each of his rallies. “Tomorrow.” His message was simple: “I’ve made the arguments. Now it’s all about who wants it more.”

After hundreds of arid hotel rooms, soggy sandwiches, and countless handshakes and smiles for the camera, Obama can now rest a bit—no matter what happens. No more making sure he thanks the right local officials before every speech and properly pronounces their names. No more unwrapping his hotel bathroom cup from the sanitary plastic. On Monday night, he went home to Chicago to sleep in his own bed. In the coming days, he’ll stay there for the longest uninterrupted stretch in more than a year.

Obama’s final day of campaigning began with 45 minutes at the gym and a phone call to African-American leaders. Joined by Oprah, according to Politico, Obama said he looked forward to watching his daughters play on the South Lawn of the White House.

Though it was his last day of campaigning, Obama did not let up on McCain. He did mix his remarks with occasional compliments, though. He congratulated McCain on “the tough race that he’s fought” and reiterated that McCain was a genuine hero. When knocking him for misunderstanding the economy, Obama said: “It’s not because he’s a bad man. He doesn’t understand what’s happening in America.”

On Election Day, Obama will vote and make a quick visit to neighboring Indiana. He’ll also squeeze in a basketball game and visit with friends. His aides say he doesn’t watch the election returns, because, as David Axelrod explained, making the universal hand signal for mindless talk, “He doesn’t like all the chatter.”

At the last rally of the campaign, in Manassas, Va., Obama faced a crowd of 90,000 spread up a hillside. Members of the audience said they had come to watch history. At the back of the crowd of mufflers and ski hats, school-bus-size letters spelled out “Vote for Change.”

At the conclusion of his remarks, Obama, dressed in suit slacks and a black windbreaker, reprised a story that was once a staple of his stump speech but that he hasn’t told for a while. He told of his encounter with Edith Childs, a city councilwoman from Greenwood Tattoo Supplies, S.C., who had lifted his spirits at the start of his campaign when his rallies were small and no one gave him a chance. She inspired him with her chant of “Fired up and ready to go.”

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Writer and Iraq Memory Foundation Director Kanan Makiya was online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday Bandage dresses sale, March 13, to chat with readers about Slate’s series of articles by “liberal hawks” reflecting on why their initial support of the Iraq war was wrong. Read Makiya’s piece here.

Kanan Makiya: Hello. This is Kanan. I have just joined.

_______________________

Peaks Island Buy DKNY Clothes, Maine: Do you believe that the Sunni militias fostered by the U.S. will, in the long term, enhance stability or undermine it?

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Kanan Makiya: I think this is still an open question. We don’t know. What we do know is that the Iraqi government is at the moment blocking their entry into the police and army and treats them in an overly suspicious manner. That does not bode well for the future

_______________________

Antwerp, Belgium: Mr. Makiya, I find your take on the consequences of 30 years of living under a dictatorship very interesting. No doubt any society would need time and careful management to overcome that. I apologize if I come off sounding anti-American, but I can’t help but wonder that the total failure (for four years essentially) of the American/U.K. forces to provide basic security in Iraq—border control comes to mind—allowed groups like al-Qaeda to come in and put a crowbar into existing fissures like the Sunni/Shiite divide. I mean Replica DKNY Clothes, the divisions were there, but there was nobody there to keep these fissures from becoming wider and deeper and deadlier, resulting in an almost civil war.

I just heard some American on BBC World arguing that most of the casualties among civilians (nobody even knows how many) were caused by terrorist and sectarian attacks. Probably Discount Herve Leger v neck, but by allowing the situation to deteriorate White Herve leger sale, I believe the U.S. administration should shoulder at least part of the blame. To summarize, “shock and awe” was the start of the war, but I continually have been “shocked and awed” by the plain incompetence and the intellectual dishonesty that this U.S. administration has shown in regard of the consequences of this invasion of Iraq.

Kanan Makiya: The failure to control Iraq’s borders on day one after regime change was a strategic blunder of incalculable consequences. It all goes back to inadequate troop levels not to knock Saddam out, but to maintain the peace after his overthrow. The problem of the borders incidentally pertains not only to Qaeda but to Iranian intelligence and Revolutionary Guard member for whom access into Iraq is until today a very easy thing

_______________________

Fairfax, Va.: How much should the media be held accountable for its role in obscuring the truth about Iraq from the American people?

Kanan Makiya: I am not sure I would hold the media responsible for telling lies about Iraq. Perhaps much earlier, before August 1990, it should have done more to inform Americans on the atrocities being perpetrated in Iraq.

_______________________

dva: I’m struck by Makiya’s last paragraph, which talks about the unreadiness of the Iraqis to deal with the world after liberation. (Or “liberation.”) I’ve spent my life studying the former Soviet Union and the past twenty years working there, including substantial time as a USAID contractor. His description of the Iraqi people precisely fits the populations of every post-Soviet state I ever have worked in. (It’s no surprise, and it says nothing bad about the people Buy DKNY Dresses, as everyone but the saints simply adapted to get along. How do you respond to a woman who says she hates Yeltsin because she has to break herself again? She did it to fit in the Soviet Union, and now has to do it again.)

Lots of Americans, in the U.S. government and out of it, have encountered and dealt with this phenomenon of the atomized population since 1991, and it was first noted after World War II. No one with any historical memory or experience should have expected anything other than this unreadiness to cope with the world from the Iraqi population—nor should anyone have been surprised that shaking it off requires generations. Lots of things weren’t thought through in the rush to a “short victorious war” in Iraq, but in my humble opinion this is one of the most important omissions.

Kanan Makiya: I agree with much of what you say. But was it really possible to “know” in advance something like how Iraqis would react? Their whole world was in flux; everything and everybody was on the move. Ideas were palpably changing by the day. I experienced that personally for nearly 4 years. Everything looked like it was possible, and yet it wasn’t. Leaders said one thing one day, and another the next. Iraqis were learning what it meant to be political. In the beginning they were like infants in swaddling clothes learning how to walk. Remember how they v=braved the bullets in 2005 to vote.

_______________________

Laurel, Md.: How much of the administrative failure was because of de-Baathificaiton? Were a lot of reasonable, functionable individuals kept out of jobs they should have had just because they had joined the party out of employment convenience?

Kanan Makiya: The effects if De-Ba’thiification were for the most part psychological. They led Sunnis to feel, understandably so, that they were being targeted. One must, after a experience like Iraq’s, hold people accountable. But one also must have structures of forgiveness in place. After all everyone had been implicated in the violenece of the regime after 30 years.

_______________________

Trebuchet:”I underestimated the self-centeredness and sectarianism of the ruling elite and the social impact of 30 years of extreme dictatorship,” When you are referring to the ruling elite, are you talking about little George and Dick Cheney? Yes, it is hard to overestimate the self-centeredness and sectarianism of that ruling elite, but thankfully, their regime has ended sooner than planned…

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Once the current Mazda6 reaches the end of its life cycle, Mazda will begin production on the next-generation car. The automaker won’t be building the midsize sedan in the U.S. anymore. Currently, the Mazda6 is built in Flat Rock Chloe Dresses sale, Michigan, at the AutoAlliance International assembly facility that the Japanese automaker shares with Ford. The Blue Oval brand churns out the Mustang in Flat Rock, and with Mazda moving on, there could be trouble ahead for the pony car.

According to analysts polled by Bloomberg, the current pace of Mustang production is not enough on its own to sustain the Flat Rock plant. The AAI has a capacity of 240,000 vehicles in a year Discount Herve Leger v neck, yet the Mustang sold 73,716 units in 2010. Ford is reportedly working with Mazda to find other uses for the site Buy Herve Leger gown, which would be a better alternative to having Mazda simply walk away.

The flipside of Mazda ending U.S. production of its Mazda6 is that Ford will have increased options as to what it can do with the Mustang. Still Discount Christian Audigier Clothes, unless the Blue Oval starts churning out a hybrid, wagon, crossover and pickup truck version Replica DKNY Clothing, Ford will need something else to keep Flat Rock in the business of building cars, especially until the ‘Stan’s next scheduled redesign for 2014.

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Automotive News reports Lexus won’t be getting any diesel engines from BMW as part of the new collaboration between parent company Toyota and the German automaker. BMW and Toyota are set to team up on next-generation green technology Buy Hale Bob Dresses, though the two will apparently stick to crafting a new lithium-ion battery instead of swapping diesel tech. BMW will serve up a few small-displacement diesel engines for use in European Toyota models Buy Bandage dresses, but it won’t supply direct-competitor Lexus with any oil-burning lumps. Right now Herve Leger sale, European buyers can expect to see 1.6-liter and 2.0-liter BMW diesel engines to show up under the hoods of certain Toyota products soon.

That should help Toyota immensely in a market where 52 percent of all vehicles sold are diesels. Lexus Buy Emilio Pucci Dresses, meanwhile DKNY Clothing sale, will continue to focus on plug-in hybrid and hybrid models to position itself as a niche innovation company. Automotive News reports Lexus has nailed down a European market share of just 0.2 percent over the past 11 months.

Tim Pawlenty in Des Moines, Iowa

DES MOINES—Iowans think of themselves as particularly discerning voters. They like to tell reporters how they like to meet candidates a few times before coming to an opinion—on this trip I hadn’t even gotten to my rental car before someone made this point—and candidates tell this story back to voters at nearly every stop as a way of buttering them up. But Iowa also has another political truth that is supposed to be equally iron-clad: Voters are so wedded to ethanol subsidies that if you oppose them, it won’t matter how many times you shake a voter’s hand and look him in the eye—he won’t support you.

The first truth may be overblown, and the second one is wrong, or at least more complicated than portrayed. The politics of ethanol have changed in Iowa from the days when ethanol was regarded as some kind of newfangled invention. Unwavering support for ethanol tax credit is no longer the secret password required for success in Republican politics.

You wouldn’t know this from the Republican candidates running for president. Two weeks ago, Tim Pawlenty came to Iowa to announce his candidacy and call for the phasing out of ethanol subsidies. He said it was a sign of the hard truths he was willing to tell the voters. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said it wasn’t even worth campaigning in Iowa because he opposes the subsidy Montblanc Replica Watches, and as a result voters won’t even consider him. “I understand how the politics work there Replica Franck Muller Watches for Cheap,” he said. Mitt Romney said he supported the subsidies and was quickly denounced by former Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire for “pandering” to voters.

Rush Limbaugh said Pawlenty was “politically gutsy” for his stance on the corn-based fuel. He stood before the voters of the corn-growing state and told them something they didn’t want to hear. But how brave was it? It is the mainstream Republican position in Iowa that ethanol subsidies must be phased out. Chuck Grassley Replica BMW Watches, the state’s senior senator Fake Breguet Watches, has authored legislation that calls for a gradual decrease in the subsidy. The state’s Republican governor and the state’s agriculture commissioner support the reduction. Even the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association—also known as the ethanol lobby—supports this position. “It used to be if you were for ethanol you were for the VEETC,” said Monte Shaw of IRFA, using the shorthand for the main ethanol subsidy. “Today you can be for ethanol and want to see VEETC go away.”

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Candidate Obama regularly claimed he would tell hard truths on the campaign trail but he never much did it. Pawlenty may be following the same model. But he does win some points for bravery Replica Longines Watches, however. “The truth about federal energy subsidies, including federal subsidies for ethanol, is that they have to be phased out,” he said. So Pawlenty wasn’t just aiming at the $6 billion-a-year ethanol subsidy but all energy subsidies, including those for oil and solar and wind. Depending on what you define as a subsidy that could total anywhere from $17 billion, the conservative government estimate, to $50 billion, the estimate made by Doug Koplow, a specialist in energy subsides at Earthtrack in Cambridge, Mass.

That’s just fine with the Iowa ethanol lobby. “Iowans look forward to Gov. Pawlenty further detailing his plans to ‘phase out’ petroleum subsidies, perhaps in a speech in Houston, Texas,” said Walt Wendland, president of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, in a press release.

To figure out Republican candidates’ positions on ethanol subsidies requires a familiarity with the federal budget that most Americans simply don’t have. Ethanol production receives different kinds of help. The subsidy with the direct effect on the federal budget (and therefore the most political potency in the era of the deficit-obsessed Tea Party) is the 45-cent blender’s tax credit. Known formally as the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) Chopard Replica Watches, it costs $6 billion a year and is scheduled to disappear this year.

The bravest position would be to allow the tax credit simply to expire on schedule. That’s the position of Rep. Ron Paul. That’s Sen. Tom Coburn’s position. It’s not Pawlenty’s position. He said the phase-out “can’t be done overnight because companies have invested a lot.” His call for a gradual phase-out is in keeping with the spirit of what Grassley and the state’s leadership have proposed.

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Everything has its cost. And in the case of Volkswagen’s new WRC effort, that cost appears to be Dakar.

The German automaker has dominated the famous rally raid for the last three years Fake Ferrari Watches for sale, but if the latest reports come to pass, VW could be preparing to retire the Race Touareg. Volkswagen Buy Cheap Replica Burberry Watches, it seems Fake Concord Watches, has nothing left to prove out there on the dunes How to buy Replica Dolce & Gabbana Watches, and with its focus shifted on the World Rally Championship, a return to Dakar doesn’t look to be in the cards.

The news will undoubtably be welcomed by X-Raid Fake Richard Mille Watches, the team operated by Sven Quandt (of the Quandt family that owns BMW) which has campaigned off-road Bimmers and Minis at Dakar for the past several years, and which has come closest to defeating Volkswagen. The team will reportedly be returning to the South American event next year with four of its specially-built Mini Countrymen, and with Volkswagen out of the way, this team looks poised to finally claim the trophy.