Children in Brooklyn find ways to cool off. (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
The heat is ridiculous. Be sure to check up on any elderly and infirm. Stay inside with the AC. For New Yorkers who don't have AC, find a local cooling center by
clicking here or calling the City at 311.
- Hey, guys, we need your votes! A member of the Daily Kos family is a semi-finalist in Working America's "My bad boss" contest. Read her "Boss with no heart" story and vote today.
- Norway has a Timothy McVeigh:
While police have not officially named him, Norwegian television and newspaper reports have identified the suspect as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, of Norwegian origin.
A picture is emerging, gleaned from official sources and social media, of a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who may have had an issue with Norway's multi-cultural society.
Norwegians are a peaceful, tolerant people. If convicted, Breivik faces a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. Norway does not have a death penalty or life imprisonment. Norway is a prosperous, open society with little poverty, generous government benefits, strong regulation of private business, and restrictive gun control laws. You'd want to live there.
Let us hope this event doesn't change who the Norwegian people are. There are evil people in the world. Always will be. We must hope that they do not let Breivik do to their society what we let Osama bin Laden did to ours.
- Why is David Beers of Standard & Poor not only threatening to downgrade U.S. Bonds over the debt ceiling, but also over federal budget issues? Ezra:
“What we’re saying now,” explains Beers, “is we question whether despite all the discussions and intense negotiations, if they can’t reach this agreement, will they be able to reach it after the election?”
Put slightly differently, if Washington hadn’t tied the debt ceiling to a deficit-reduction package, and economic policy was still being made with a minimum of fuss, perhaps S&P would be less bothered now. But the bitter disagreements of the last few months have carried a cost. By showing how much trouble the two parties will have cutting a deal now, they’ve left observers like S&P wondering if we can cut one later, either.
As they put it in their most recent research update, “we believe that an inability to reach an agreement now could indicate that an agreement will not be reached for several more years. We view an inability to timely agree and credibly implement medium-term fiscal consolidation policy as inconsistent with a ‘AAA’ sovereign rating.”
So S&P is literally saying that America is not acting like a country that deserves a AAA-credit rating. Nice job, Congress.
I'd add that the creditworthiness of U.S. Bonds is backed by the almost unlimited power of the U.S. Congress to tax a very large economy. Bondholders expect to be paid with revenues. If there is downgrade despite a debt ceiling increase, it should be because of the GOP's resistance to taxation to pay the bills.
- A view into how Wall Street views America defaulting on its debt:
While the derivatives (credit default swaps) are signaling a less than 1-in-20 chance of default within five years, banks, hedge funds and money managers are using the insurance-like contracts to bet that failure by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders to reach a budget agreement may lead to profits of as much as 13 percentage points at a cost of about 0.6 percentage point for the next year.
- Salon compares Obama of 2010 to George H.W. Bush of 1990.
- News Corp.'s James Murdoch appears to be in trouble.
- The BBC may be one of the chief beneficiaries of the Murdoch scandal because prior to the explosive story breaking, the Tory coalition government had all but declared war on the BBC:
David Cameron has held secret talks with Sky TV owner Rupert Murdoch at No10, raising fears the Tories are set for a war on the BBC. The media baron sneaked in by a back door for a private meeting with the Prime Minister on Tuesday.
Neither Downing Street nor Mr Murdoch's News Corp would say why they met or for how long. But MPs fear Mr Cameron has agreed to pay back the billionaire tycoon for his newspapers' slavish support in the election campaign. Mr Murdoch stands accused of writing the Conservatives' media policy. The Tories have already agreed to two of his key demands - abolishing the media regulator Ofcom and axing the BBC Trust.