July 2013 archive

In a stunning race to the bottom, recent popular policies like spying an all Americans, proposing cuts to earned benefits, and prosecuting whistleblowers and journalists instead of fraudulent Banksters have sent Obama approval ratings soaring to heights not seen since the very same period in the mega awesome presidency of George W. Bush.

Poll: Obama’s job approval plunges; Congress, especially GOP, still unpopular

By David Lightman, McClatchy

Monday, July 22, 2013

Stung by Americans’ persistent worries about the economy and a capital gripped by controversy and gridlock, President Barack Obama is suffering his lowest job approval numbers in nearly two years, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

The plummeting numbers – still higher than those of Congress – come after weeks of rising gasoline prices, revelations about domestic spying and turmoil in the Middle East.

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“Clearly six months into his second term there’s been falloff across the board. It’s not like one group bailed on him,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the poll.

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The president has been weathering a succession of spring and summer political storms. In May, news broke that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted for special scrutiny tea party groups seeking tax exemptions. In June, the administration was rocked by revelations about secret government programs that collect data from U.S. phone records and the Internet.

Foreign policy is also taking a political toll. This month, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was ousted, and Syria remained a bloody battleground. By a 48-41 percent margin, people disapproved of how the president is handling foreign policy. In April, approvals slightly outnumbered disapprovals.

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And though the nation has technically been in an economic recovery for four years, most Americans aren’t feeling it. Fifty-four percent said they thought the U.S. remains in a recession, and 60 percent saw the country going in the wrong direction.

Poll: President Obama nears all-time low

By TAL KOPAN, Politico

7/24/13 6:47 AM EDT

Just 45 percent of those surveyed in the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll said they approved of the job the president was doing, a drop of 3 points from June. Fifty percent said they disapproved.

That’s close to the lowest numbers registered for Obama in the poll, a 44 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval rating registered in November 2011.

The poll’s numbers reflect Americans’ assessment of how Obama is handling the economy: Forty-four percent said they approved and 51 percent said they disapproved.

Pollsters also pointed to a drop in support among African-Americans as a possible explanation for Obama’s falling numbers, as 78 percent approve of Obama’s work, a 10 point drop since June and 15 point drop since April.

Obama’s approval rating is the same as George W. Bush’s was at this point in his second term, while Bill Clinton’s approval rating was significantly higher, at 56 percent, during this point in his second term, The Journal said.

About the only bright spot is Congress is doing worse-

When asked if they would vote for a ballot measure that would replace every member of Congress, 57 percent of adults polled said they would.

Let’s hear it for electoral victory!

First Time in Over a Year Democrats and Republicans Are Tied in the Generic Ballot

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Wednesday July 24, 2013 11:16 am

The latest NBC/WSJ poll has some good news for Republicans. They are tied with Democrats in the Congressional generic ballot with each party currently at 44 percent. An equal number of Americans want the next election to result in a Republican controlled Congress as want it to result in a Democrat controlled one.

This is the first time in almost two years Republicans have finally closed the polling gap. Democrats have held at least a small lead over Republicans in NBC/WSJ polling since October of 2011.

This is especially good news for Republicans because they don’t even need to win more votes than the Democrats to make real gains in Congress next year.

Yes, Neoliberal policies are poised to deliver the same kind of resounding success they did in 2010.  Heck of a job, congratulations.

Our regular featured content-

• On This Day In History July 25 by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundit by TheMomCat

These featured articles-

• Not W by ek hornbeck
• “This is Huge” by ek hornbeck
• The NSA – Hiding a Shadow Government Behind a Haystack, “To Keep Us Safe” by joe shikspack

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

When the wannabe cop, George Zimmerman, shot an unarmed teenager through the heart for having too much skin pigmentation, a racist jury of skin pigment-challenged women decided it was a good and just thing to do because they heard the large man with the gun screaming for help.

Betcha a jury of non-skin-pigment-challenged men would have heard the unarmed teenager as the one screaming for help from the heavier stalker with the gun.

There was, as usual, lots of ignorant, untruthful testimony in the trial but how could anyone top the imaginary African-American DNA the pathologist claimed was found?

It is not hard to differentiate biology from culture though both contribute to the individual. A racist cannot do so because he or she is blinded by color they claim, like sociologists, to be unable to see.

When Jesse Owens caused a stir in the 1936 Olympics by outrunning Der Fuehrer’s Supermen, learned scholars wrote in scientific journals that Jesse had the advantage of the negroid foot.

But Jesse had a caucasoid foot when someone bothered looking at Jesse’s foot rather than his face.

So then wasn’t Jesse a caucasian with the same disadvantage, if such it be, as the German supermen?

If there were a God, would He not save us from this hateful color bigotry?

The pathologist was undoubtedly relying on continental ancestry but that does not exactly fit continents nor does it comport with skin pigmentation.

Caucasian and Negroid arose from physical anthropologist’s attempt to differentiate sub-species of Homo sapiens before DNA.

Continental ancestry based on DNA groupings includes the South Asian sub-continent for “European” ancestry while the “African” ancestry in popular and also misleading popular misconception includes only sub-Saharan Africa in broad categorization.

There is no DNA for culture and bigotry that twists both to accommodate popular prejudices.  

Best,  Terry  

Our regular featured content-

• On This Day In History July 24 by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundit by TheMomCat

These featured articles-

• Chris Hedges: Betrayal by the Liberal Elite by TheMomCat
• Amash – Conyers Action by ek hornbeck
• Hoarding Commodities: Big banks making a buck off of…a can of soda? by TheMomCat

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

I just love these last minute votes.  I’m convinced they hold them this way so we don’t have time to organize.

Yay democracy.

GOP insurrection heats up over surveillance

By David Sirota, Salon

Monday, Jul 22, 2013 2:56 PM UTC

In an attempt to prevent Washington lawmakers from having to publicly declare their position on the National Security Administration’s mass surveillance, will congressional leaders formally snuff out one of the last embers of democracy in the U.S. House? This is one of the big questions this week in Washington, as the Republicans who control the House are resorting to brass knuckled tactics in an effort to thwart one of their own.

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As I learned from four-plus years working in the Capitol’s lower chamber during President Bush’s first term, the U.S. House of Representatives runs like a politburo did in a typical Soviet satellite state. Decisions about what even gets voted on – much less passed – usually happen behind closed doors, with a handful of party leaders handing down orders to the rest of the body’s loyal apparatchiks. That means most legislative drama can’t be seen by voters, and it means congresspeople rarely have to cast public votes on anything the House Speaker doesn’t want them to vote on. By design, this system (which differs from the Senate, where all members can force votes on almost anything) deliberately protects majority party House members from having to cast embarrassing campaign-ad-worthy public votes against the minority party’s proposals.

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Assuming Amash and the bipartisan coalition around his amendment doesn’t back down, there should be little doubt that Permanent Washington and supporters of mass surveillance will soon pivot to the “support our troops” frame. As they always do, they will insist that any delay of any bill relating to the military – in this case the Defense Appropriations Bill – is akin to not supporting the troops. Appealing to the most cartoonish mantras of militarism to try to force the bipartisan coalition to back down, the assertion will be that Amash’s amendment is unpatriotic and treasonous because it might delay the passage of the bill, which would supposedly then leave American troops naked and unarmed on various battlefields across the world.

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Amash’s amendment says the opposite – that Congress needs to have an open debate over that program. In the process, he and his bipartisan coalition have engineered a big moment in the fight over liberties and rights – and that includes Americans’ basic right to know where their own elected officials stand on issues as fundamental as privacy and mass surveillance.

Should lawmakers respond to such a critical moment by blocking a vote on the amendment and then passing a defense bill funding more surveillance, the harrowing message should be clear: Congress will be saying that We the People shouldn’t be permitted to see where our government officials stand on key public policy questions, but government officials should be allowed to continue surveilling, collecting and datamining the most intimate details of all of our lives.

Yet despite their best efforts there will be a vote- probably tomorrow.

Amash (R-MI) & Conyers (D-MI) offer amendment to curtail NSA, NSA against it, vote soon

by Gaius Publius, Americablog

7/24/2013 10:00am

If you want to make a difference, lobby your member. House member phone numbers are at the link. Please use it. And if there’s an extra phone call in your future, you might check out the names in this list. They’re lobby-able as well. So far we’re on the upswing and the tide is with us. Might as well use it.

Me, I’m scoring this vote, and I’ll publish the list of heroes and villains as soon as I have it.

You, please do lobby. I’ll tell you why tomorrow, but for now, just know it’s not useless to act. You won’t always win, but please, do act. Rush Holt’s bill repealing the Patriot Act is also coming; you can join those who are causing a scene, and feel very good about it at the same time. After all, the NSA already knows what you think about them, so there’s nothing to lose, is there.

Snowden’s Whistleblowing Creates Climate for Critical House Vote on NSA Surveillance

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Wednesday July 24, 2013 9:24 am

Introduced by Republican Representative Justin Amash and Democratic Representative John Conyers (both from the state of Michigan), it would restrict the “federal government’s ability under the Patriot Act to collect information on Americans who are not connected to an ongoing investigation. The bill also requires that secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court opinions be made available to Congress and summaries of the opinions be made available to the public,” according to the amendment’s sponsors.

A press release indicating at least thirty members of the House support the amendment contends the Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act (LIBERT-E Act) imposes reasonable limits on the federal government’s surveillance.” It “puts some teeth into the FISA court’s determination of whether records the government wants are actually relevant to an investigation, and “it also makes sure that innocent Americans’ information isn’t needlessly swept up into a government database” by attempting to prohibit the “type of government dragnet that the leaked Verizon order revealed.”

President Barack Obama, however, opposes this effort to curtail the power of the NSA. White House spokesperson Jay Carney said, “We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counter-terrorism tools.” And, “His blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.” (Notice the White House does not mention the name of the Democratic Representative who also introduced the amendment, misrepresenting the bipartisan support for this amendment.)

NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander also spent yesterday holding emergency "top secret" meetings with Republicans and Democrats to convince them not to restrict the power of the NSA to conduct surveillance that would broadly sweep up Americans’ communications.

The Liars Are "Very Concerned" Program They Lied About Will Be Defunded

By: emptywheel

Tuesday July 23, 2013 10:11 pm

Buried at the bottom of a broader story on opposition to the Amash-Conyers amendment, CNN offers a very solicitous account of the White House statement opposing it, making no note of how absurd the entire premise is.

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CNN does, however, provide James Clapper and Keith Alexander an opportunity to give their readout of the TS/SCI briefings they gave Congress.

In spite of reporting describing it as a lobbying session, these noted prevaricators claim their job wasn’t to persuade, it was just to answer questions.

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Sort of gives you the impression they failed to persuade, huh?

But if their mission was really to “provide information” and “get the facts on the table,” then what have all the unclassified briefings been about? Is this claim they were only now “providing information” yet another indication that they were, perhaps, misinforming before? Again?

That, to me, is a big part of this story: that two men who have lied repeatedly about these programs felt the need to conduct Top Secret briefings to provide information that hadn’t been provided in the past.

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This program is problematic for several reasons: it is overkill to achieve its stated purpose and it violates the intent of the Fourth Amendment.

But add to that the trust those overseeing the program chose to piss away by lying about this collection repeatedly in the past.

If Amash-Conyers does pass (and it’s still a long-shot unless each and every one of you manages to convince your Rep to support it), it will be in significant part because Clapper and Alexander abused the trust placed in them.

Update:

Amash-Conyers Fails 205-217

By: emptywheel

Wednesday July 24, 2013 7:00 pm

In one of the closest votes in a long time for civil liberties, the Amash-Conyers amendment just failed, but only barely, by a vote of 205-217.

The debate was lively, with Mike Rogers, Michele Bachmann, and Iraq verteran Tom Cotton spoke against the amendment; Amash closely managed time to include a broad mix of Democrats and Republicans.

The amendment outlawed U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government, while allowing assistance for other purposes.

Beyond restricting overt U.S. support of the Contras, the most significant effect of the Boland Amendment was the Iran-Contra Affair, during which the Reagan Administration circumvented the Amendment in order to continue supplying arms to the Contras, behind the back of Congress.

House forces vote on amendment that would limit NSA bulk surveillance

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Tuesday 23 July 2013 15.26 EDT

Republican congressman Justin Amash prevailed in securing a vote for his amendment to a crucial funding bill for the Department of Defense that “ends authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act.”

“The people have spoken through their representatives,” Amash told the Guardian on Tuesday. “This is an opportunity to vote on something that will substantially limit the ability of the NSA to collect their phone records without suspicion.”

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In a sign of how crucial the NSA considers its bulk phone records collection, which a secret surveillance court reapproved on Friday, its director, General Keith Alexander, held a four-hour classified briefing with members of Congress. Alexander’s meeting was listed as “top-secret” and divided into two two-hour sessions, the first for Republicans and the second for Democrats. Staffers for the legislators were not permitted to attend.

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Amash’s amendment, supported by a Michigan Democrat, John Conyers, unexpectedly made it through the House rules committee late on Monday night, a feat for which the second-term legislator credited House speaker John Boehner.

The amendment would prevent the NSA, the FBI and other agencies from relying on Section 215 of the Patriot Act “to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.”

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(Oregon Senator Ron) Wyden, in a wide-ranging speech, reiterated a warning that the authorities government officials believe themselves to have under Section 215 of the Patriot Act might also allow the NSA or FBI to retain bulk medical records, gun purchase records, financial transactions, credit card data and more. “Intelligence officials have told the press that they currently have the legal authority to collect Americans’ location information in bulk,” he noted

Wyden assailed administration and intelligence officials for describing their surveillance as limited in public remarks while secretly briefing legislators about their broad scope.

“The public was not just kept in the dark about the Patriot Act and other secret authorities,” Wyden said. “The public was actively misled.”

On July 2, James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, apologized to Wyden for erroneously saying the NSA did “not wittingly” collect data on millions of Americans. While not naming names, Wyden alluded to a comment made by Alexander last year in which the director of the NSA said publicly: “We don’t hold data on US citizens.”

“When did it become all right for government officials’ public statements and private statements to differ so fundamentally?” Wyden said in his speech.

“The answer is that it is not all right, and it is indicative of a much larger culture of misinformation that goes beyond the congressional hearing room and into the public conversation writ large.”

That culture faces one of its first major legislative challenges as early as Wednesday with the vote on Amash’s amendment. There are others: a Senate bill introduced in June and co-signed by Wyden would compel declassification of the rulings of the secret Fisa court that sets broad rules for the NSA and FBI’s collection and analysis of phone records and online communications.

Additionally, the NSA itself has indicated its willingness to consider abandoning the phone-records collection provided the telecommunications companies it partners with retains the data. And a former judge on the Fisa court wrote an op-ed for the New York Times advocating the secret surveillance court adopt an adversarial process, with a lawyer appointed to “to challenge the government when an application for a FISA order raises new legal issues.”