Given that I have continually written about the importance of the independent vote, reading this poll is an early sign of bad tidings for Democrats and President Obama.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A majority of independent voters disapprove of how Barack Obama’s handling his job as president, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-three percent of independents questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say they disapprove of how Obama’s handling his duties in the White House, with 43 percent in approval. That result marks the first time in a CNN poll that a majority of independents give the president’s performance a thumbs-down.

Obama’s overall approval rating of 53 percent is down 3 points from a month ago, and down 8 points from June. Forty-five percent of those questioned disapprove, up 5 points from a month ago and up 8 points from June.

I’m watching Chris Matthews, sadly, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) thinks waterboarding isn’t torture because we used it on our own people during SERE school.

Let me tell you my little knowledge of SERE school.

They take “students”, put them into a MOCK scenario where they are behind enemy lines, teach them to escape and evade, to resist, and, during it, we waterboard the students UNTIL they break.

Is that torture?  YES.  If you torture a person, no matter whose soldiers it is, until they break, it IS torture.

Chris Matthew’s just made a great point; no one during this training MEANS to harm them, much less kill them.  PRISONERS in our custody do not have that.

It’s not that the information in this essay is wrong, because it isn’t wrong.  It’s that the information is provided in a “if you think it’s so easy, think again, so, you may as well quit thinking about it and support the Democratic Party” context.

Nobody thinks it will be easy.  Nobody believes that it will cure the ills facing our government overnight.  In fact, it probably won’t change a thing for a decade, maybe even two.

But, given the current situation of our government, a third political party is the only choice.

It was in May 2007 that I wrote this diary at Daily Kos about the importance of the independent vote during elections.  In it, I detailed how the independent vote gave the Democratic Party the majority in Congress in the 2006 election.

In Dec 2008, I wrote this essay on how both political Parties could lose the independent vote.

After two and a half years, who is finally starting to agree with me?  Daily Kos.

You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see what was coming near the end of the election.  With the race ending, Sen. Barack Obama was putting together his economic transition team, which I wrote about here.

Obama’s economic team:

1 – William Daley – Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000

2 – Robert Reich – University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997

3 – Penny Pritzker – CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt

4 – Roger Ferguson – President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, 1997-2000

5 – Lawrence Summers – Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001

6 – Anne Mulcahy – Chairman and CEO, Xerox

7 – Richard Parsons – Chairman of the Board, Time Warner

8 – Paul Volcker – Former Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve 1979-1987

9 – Rahm Emanuel – United States Representative (IL-05)

10 – Jennifer Granholm – Governor, State of Michigan

11 – Robert Rubin – Director and Senior Counselor, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999

12 – David Bonior – Member House of Representatives (Michigan) 1977-2003

13 – Laura Tyson – (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)

14 – Antonio Villaraigosa – Mayor, City of Los Angeles

15 – William Donaldson – Former Chairman of the SEC, 2003-2005

16 – Eric Schmidt – Chairman and CEO, Google

17 – Roel Campos – Former Commissioner of the SEC, 2002-2007

Did anyone see one name on that list, one, that looked like it belonged?  I didn’t either.

So, why are we surprised by who else was brought in?  

This turd of reasoning has been floating around awhile; if you investigate the Agency it will have a chilling effect which will hamper officers decision making and situations.

The answer, regrettably, is yes. Agents who relied on previous decisions not to prosecute are back in potential peril. And their angst and uncertainty will be shared by others in the intelligence community, particularly if the investigation is officially broadened.

The agents’ concern over their potential liability for past acts is understandable, given the relative legal uncertainty in which they operated. Most people believe that they know intuitively what torture is, but precisely what techniques meet the legal definition of torture is anything but clear.

WRONG….

Sometimes, even I am amazed at just how beholden the media has become to politics.  But then, The State newspaper in South Carolina continues to remind me.  

When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared, the revelation that he went to see his mistress in Argentina was only a matter of time.  His staff couldn’t come up with a coherent, believable story and his press spokesman was left scrambling to cover for his disappearance.  Of course, anyone with any political savvy knew something was up when South Carolina United States Senator Jim DeMint tossed Governor Mark Sanford under the bus the day before the press published the story.  What we see now, however, is The State newspaper trying to take credit for their own incompetence and revise the history of the whole sordid affair.          

The State newspaper was able to grab an exclusive interview with the returning Governor at the Atlanta airport, but, the airport ambush of Governor Sanford wasn’t as much about investigative journalism as it was about saving journalistic face for The State newspaper.  It was reported that The State newspaper had evidence of the affair for six months.  The State newspaper got the story first because they did have the story first.  They merely refused to investigate or report on it until they simply didn’t have a choice.  When The State published the emails they had sat on for six months, Mark Lett, a VP at The State, had to defend not only the publication of the emails, but, explain why The State didn’t report on the affair sooner.