June 2013 archive

NSA Scandal Seems to Have Done Serious Damage to Obama’s Image

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Monday June 17, 2013 7:40 am

It appears the recent revelations about the NSA surveillance programs and President Obama’s less than honest defense of them has done some real damage to his standing with the American people.

According to a new CNN poll, Obama’s job approval rating is now negative. Only 45 percent approve of how he is handling his job while 54 percent disapprove. This is the lowest it has been in CNN’s poll since 2011.

Even more concerning for Obama is that for the first time a majority of the country doesn’t see him as honest and trustworthy. The poll found 49 percent view him as trustworthy while 50 percent do not. This may not seem terrible, but this is a nine point drop in the number who see him as honest in less than a month. Back in May, 58 percent said Obama was honest.

Once you lose the public’s trust it becomes much harder to defend your actions going forward because you will no longer be given the benefit of the doubt.

Obama doubles down on NSA defense as poll numbers slip

By Justin Sink, The Hill

06/17/13 05:57 PM ET

The interview underscored the defensive posture the White House has adopted in recent weeks, with the president arguing that the NSA spying is “transparent” despite Rose noting that the independent court created to monitor the program served essentially as a rubber stamp.

…

(A) new poll released Monday by CNN found significant damage to the president’s brand.

Half of those surveyed said they do not believe the president to be trustworthy, the first time a majority has held that opinion. Moreover, the president lost 10 points among independents and 17 points among those under 30, suggesting widespread unease about the programs.

Phil Singer, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said Obama’s task is complicated by other controversies, including the Internal Revenue Service’s admitted targeting of conservative political action groups and the Justice Department’s investigations into reporters.

…

Obama has come under fire from the left for attacking Bush’s policies as a candidate but then employing similar policies as president. Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old contractor who leaked the programs to the press, said he did so in part from disappointment with Obama.

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said public perceptions that Obama has somehow shifted on the use of surveillance programs since entering the White House is a problem.

“The issue is especially challenging given that there had been an expectation going back to the 2008 campaign that the choice between civil liberties and national security was a false choice,” said Lehane. “He has the double burden of both trying to justify the policies and make clear how they are in fact consistent with the political brand he established as far back as 2008.”

…

Strategists say the White House needs to regain control of the news cycle to prevent the slip in the polls from becoming a permanent downward spiral.

“Over the last several months, events have dictated this president instead of this president dictating events,” Singer said.

Surveillance programs divide Democrats

By MAGGIE HABERMAN, Politico

6/17/13 4:29 PM EDT

And in a politically peculiar moment – in which liberal icons like Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, up for reelection next year in a purple state, have loudly endorsed the National Security Agency tactics – the issue creates a vacuum into which a candidate on the left end of the spectrum could step into the 2016 fight.

…

Indeed, the darling of the progressive left, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), may be the only person who could easily thread the needle on this issue, having come to Congress just this year (her aides insist she is not running for president). But she – like most prominent Democratic elected officials – has had a muted response to the NSA, suggesting she’s waiting to see how it plays out.

Still, the atmosphere created by the NSA’s tactics could be ripe for a new figure on the left – if not Warren, then perhaps a Democratic primary challenger to a sitting senator. The goal wouldn’t necessarily have to be winning an election but using the campaign as a launchpad to become a progressive icon.

…

“I think Democrats are ultimately going to have a hard time jumping on the side of the progressive left” on national security, said foreign policy blogger Steve Clemons. “Democrats have tried so much to rid themselves of the Vietnam taint that they couldn’t be trusted … to make national security decisions.”

…

The prospective Democratic field includes governors who have had little to do with such national security decisions (Andrew Cuomo, John Hickenlooper, the fairly hawkish Martin O’Malley), but also senators who voted to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar and New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, for instance).

Voting to renew FISA may be a potential negative for senators eyeing higher office. But Clinton and Biden have an inside-the-tent perspective on the Obama White House that other prospective nominees don’t.

…

When the initial NSA disclosures were made in news outlets in the past few weeks, a 2006 interview in which Biden told CBS News that the Bush-era snooping was “very intrusive” got new traction. “I was talking about a different program then,” Biden told a pool reporter following him last weekend about then versus now. “It was a different program.”

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos, said he doesn’t “anticipate anything” being said by either Biden or Clinton on this front in the foreseeable future – unless issues like old interviews force the matter, and even then, only rhetorically.

“Both have presidential designs, and no president (or wannabe president) willingly gives up executive power,” Moulitsas, who has been deeply critical of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for defending the NSA programs, said in an email.

In a signal of the difficulties facing any presidential hopeful who isn’t a governor, Moulitsas added, “Rather than be outraged by this gross violation of our constitutional freedoms, Congress has, in mostly bipartisan fashion, decided to lecture us on how they are only lying to the public for its own good. I just wish we had more whistleblowers, and more U.S. companies talking about what the government is trying to make them do.”

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Predator

With apologies to Wallace Stevens

Other readings: “On Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the X-47B.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a Predator A

In which there are three missiles

III

The Reaper circled in the autumn winds.

It was the eye of the operation.

IV

A marine and his rifle

Are one.

A marine and his rifle and a Raven

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The Hellfire explosion

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the drone

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the Global Hawk

Circles the heads

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the predator is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the drone flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of drones

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Washington

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For an RQ-7.

XII

The village is a ruin.

The Predator must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The Predator sat

In its hangar.

Originally published at Voices On The Square

So, last night I had trouble getting to sleep because I had been arguing on the internet! Stupid, I know, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. There’s a lot going on in my life and people would think that I have enough on my plate, why in the world would I stress myself out over anything more; why take on anything additional. Well…because things bother me.

I have tried to go the mindless route, it just does not work for me. I don’t want to be one of those people they stop on the street for a candid video who cannot tell you who the attorney general is or not know what’s going on in the world or what my government is doing. So, when somebody on the internet tries to tell me that I shouldn’t mind that my government is collecting information they have no right to be collecting because Google or Target is collecting information or that I shouldn’t worry because it’s the same government that has my Medicare info, what’s the big deal, oh, that bothers me a lot.

I usually keep this post non-political, but this week I just can’t do that. There is much in my life that I need to compartmentalize, much that I need to live day by day, some hour by hour just to get through.  But here’s the thing, why; why am I fighting so hard to do that? For some dystopian future? No, fuck that noise.

So, yes, I take care of what I need to at home:  My kids, my mom, my own achy ass, I play a few games, I do love me some hidden object games, I watch some teevee, but I don’t need both hands to count my “must see’ shows.   And in my spare time? Oh, some shit bugs the shit out of me. Sometimes it keeps me up at night. I really wish I didn’t mind, but I do. I mind terribly.

To quote a phrase from a well known blogger at a formerly liberal, progressive web site:

Don’t tell me what you believe, show me what you do and I will tell you what you believe.

I give you President Barack Obama defending the Bush Administrations surveillance state.

Obama Defends Authorization of Surveillance Programs

by Peter Baker, The New York Times

“Some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney,’ ” Mr. Obama told Charlie Rose on his PBS interview show. “Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know, he took it all lock, stock and barrel.’ My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather, are we setting up a system of checks and balances?” [..]

Yet like Mr. Cheney, who appeared on “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend, Mr. Obama defended the effectiveness of surveillance programs in heading off threats to the United States. “The one thing people should understand about all these programs, though, is they have disrupted plots, not just here in the United States but overseas as well,” he said. He added that while other factors were at work, “we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs.”

Partial transcript:

Keep in mind that this president employs and supports two known liars, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander, both of whom have continuously lied to Congress about the surveillance programs. This president has approved unchecked wiretapping something he said he would end when campaigning for office.

Mr. Obama has said he does not believe he has violated the privacy of any American but this is what he does.

So what does he believe? Certainly not the Constitution and our right to protection from illegal searches.

Insurers Inflating Books, New York Regulator Says

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH, The New York Times

June 11, 2013, 8:50 pm

Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York’s superintendent of financial services, said that life insurers based in New York had alone burnished their books by $48 billion, using what he called “shadow insurance,” according to an investigation conducted by his department. He issued a report about the investigation late Tuesday.

…

Insurance is regulated by the states, and Mr. Lawsky said his investigators found that life insurers in New York were seeking out states with looser regulations and setting up shell companies there for the deals. They then used those states’ tight secrecy laws to avoid scrutiny by the New York State regulators.

Insurance regulation is based squarely on the concept of solvency – the idea that future claims can be predicted fairly accurately and that each insurer should track them and keep enough reserves on hand to pay all of them. The states have detailed rules for what types of assets reserves can be invested in. Companies are also expected to keep a little more than they really expect to need – called their surplus – as a buffer against unexpected events. State regulators monitor the reserves and surpluses of companies and make sure none fall short.

…

The transactions at issue are modeled after reinsurance, a business in which an insurance company pays another company, a reinsurer, to take over some of its obligations to pay claims. Reinsurance is widely used and is considered beneficial because it allows insurers to spread their risks and remain stable as they grow. Conventional reinsurance deals are negotiated at arm’s length by independent companies; both sides understand the risk and can agree on a fair price for covering it. The obligations drop off the original insurer’s books because the reinsurer has picked them up.

Mr. Lawsky’s investigators found, though, that life insurance groups, including some of the best known, were creating their own shell companies in other states or countries – outside the regulators’ view – and saying that these so-called captives were selling them reinsurance. The value of policies reinsured through all affiliates, including captives, rose to $5.46 trillion in 2012, from $2.82 trillion in 2007.

The chief problem with captive reinsurance, Mr. Lawsky said, is that the risk is not being transferred to an independent reinsurer. Also, the deal is not at arm’s length. And confidentiality rules make it difficult to see what secures the obligations.

The New York State investigators subpoenaed this information and discovered that some states were approving deals backed by assets that would not be allowed in New York; Mr. Lawsky referred to “hollow assets,” “naked parental guarantees” and “conditional letters of credit.”

…

Insurers, unlike banks, have no prepaid fund like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to make customers whole in the event of a collapse. That’s why Mr. Lawsky said he feared that taxpayers might have to be called to the rescue again.

The Next Crash And The Next Bailout Now

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

at 11:15AM Jun 13, 2013

Give them a suit with rubber pockets and they’d steal soup.

Learning from the sweet — and largely unprosecuted — techniques of their pals in the financial-services industry, it appears that the moguls, poobahs, and panjandrums in the insurance industry are finding their own special ways to game the entire system into the poorhouse.

…

You think any of these guys looked at what happened in 2008 and thought, “Boy, those guys really were crooks and bought the country a helluva catastrophe. We should learn from them and not do that ourselves.” Nope, I guarantee you the first thoughts among the people who thought up this scam for the insurance companies was, “Holy crap, look at the dough those guys made!” And I guarantee you those same people all got raises. The upper levels of American capitalism is so rotten with amorality, so utterly devoid of any conventional sense of ethics, let alone social responsibility, that it hardly seems worth pointing it out any more. Congratulations to America’s graduate schools of business. You have bred three generations of vampires to feed on the rest of us. It’s as though every medical school in the country adopted the basic approach to thoracic surgery of Sweeney Todd and married it to the economic philosophy of Bialystock And Bloom.

Does Robert Reich call for creation of a Third Party?

The Two Centers of Unaccountable Power in America, and Their Consequences

Robert Reich

Thursday, June 13, 2013

There are two great centers of unaccountable power in the American political-economic system today – places where decisions that significantly affect large numbers of Americans are made in secret, and are unchecked either by effective democratic oversight or by market competition.

One goes by the name of the “intelligence community” and its epicenter is the National Security Agency within the Defense Department. If we trusted that it reasonably balanced its snooping on Americans with our nation’s security needs, and that our elected representatives effectively oversaw that balance, there would be little cause for concern. We would not worry that the information so gathered might be misused to harass individuals, thereby chilling free speech or democratic debate, or that some future government might use it to intimidate critics and opponents. We would feel confident, in other words, that despite the scale and secrecy of the operation, our privacy, civil liberties, and democracy were nonetheless adequately protected.

But the NSA has so much power, and oversight of it is so thin, that we have every reason to be concerned. The fact that its technological reach is vast, its resources almost limitless, and its operations are shrouded in secrecy, make it difficult for a handful of elected representatives to effectively monitor even a tiny fraction of what it does. And every new revelation of its clandestine “requests” for companies to hand over information about our personal lives and communications further undermines our trust. To the contrary, the NSA seems to be literally out of control.

The second center of unaccountable power goes by the name of Wall Street and is centered in the largest banks there. If we trusted that market forces kept them in check and that they did not exercise inordinate influence over Congress and the executive branch, we would have no basis for concern. We wouldn’t worry that the Street’s financial power would be misused to fix markets, profit from insider information, or make irresponsible bets that imperiled the rest of us. We could be confident that despite the size and scope of the giant banks, our economy and everyone who depends on it were nonetheless adequately protected.

…

That neither Republicans nor Democrats have done much of anything to effectively rein in these two centers of unaccountable power suggests that, if there is ever to be a viable third party in America, it will may borne of the ill-fated consequences.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Tom Shorrock: Put the Spies Back Under One Roof

For decades, the N.S.A. relied on its own computer scientists, cryptographers and mathematicians to tap, decode and analyze communications as they traversed phone lines and satellite networks. By the 1990s, however, advances in personal computing, the growth of the Internet, the advent of cellphones and the shift in telecommunications to high-speed fiber-optic lines has made it difficult for the N.S.A. to keep up.

As the commercial world began to surpass the N.S.A., some in the agency began looking to the private sector for solutions. In 2000, thanks in part to an advisory committee led by James R. Clapper Jr., now the director of national intelligence, the N.S.A. decided to shift away from its in-house development strategy and outsource on a huge scale. The N.S.A.’s headquarters began filling with contractors working for Booz Allen and hundreds of other companies. [..]

Congress must act now to re-establish a government-run intelligence service operating with proper oversight. The first step is to appoint an independent review board – with no contractors on it – to decide where the line for government work should be drawn. The best response to the Snowden affair is to reduce the size of our private intelligence army and make contract spying a thing of the past. Our democracy depends on it.

Roger Cohen: Obama’s German Storm

Germany is normally a welcoming place for American leaders. But President Barack Obama will walk into a German storm Tuesday provoked by revelations about the Prism and Boundless Informant (who comes up with these names?) surveillance programs of the U.S. National Security Agency.

No nation, after the Nazis and the Stasi, has such intense feelings about personal privacy as Germany. The very word “Datenschutz,” or data protection, is a revered one. The notion that the United States has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or Skype conversations of German citizens has been described as “monstrous” by Peter Schaar, the official responsible for enforcing Germany’s strict privacy rules. When the German bureaucracy starts talking about monstrous American behavior, take note.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

June 18 is the 169th day of the year (170th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 196 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1812, War of 1812 begins

The day after the Senate followed the House of Representatives in voting to declare war against Great Britain, President James Madison signs the declaration into law–and the War of 1812 begins. The American war declaration, opposed by a sizable minority in Congress, had been called in response to the British economic blockade of France, the induction of American seaman into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. A faction of Congress known as the “War Hawks” had been advocating war with Britain for several years and had not hidden their hopes that a U.S. invasion of Canada might result in significant territorial land gains for the United States.

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire, including those of present-day Canada. The Americans declared war in 1812 for a number of reasons, including a desire for expansion into the Northwest Territory, trade restrictions because of Britain’s ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, and the humiliation of American honour. Until 1814, the British Empire adopted a defensive strategy, repelling multiple American invasions of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. However, the Americans gained control over Lake Erie in 1813, seized parts of western Ontario, and destroyed Tecumseh’s dream of an Indian confederacy. In the Southwest General Andrew Jackson humbled the Creek nation at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend but with the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the British adopted a more aggressive strategy, sending in three large armies along with more patrols. British victory at the Battle of Bladensburg in August 1814 allowed the British to capture and burn Washington, D.C. American victories in September 1814 and January 1815 repulsed British invasions of New York, Baltimore and New Orleans.

The war was fought in three theaters: At sea, warships and privateers of both sides attacked each other’s merchant ships. The British blockaded the Atlantic coast of the U.S. and mounted large-scale raids in the later stages of the war. Both land and naval battles were fought on the frontier, which ran along the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River. The South and the Gulf coast saw major land battles in which the American forces destroyed Britain’s Indian allies and defeated the main British invasion force at New Orleans. Both sides invaded each other’s territory, but these invasions were unsuccessful or temporary. At the end of the war, both sides occupied parts of the other’s territory, but these areas were restored by the Treaty of Ghent.

In the U.S., battles such as the Battle of New Orleans and the earlier successful defense of Baltimore (which inspired the lyrics of the U.S. national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”) produced a sense of euphoria over a “second war of independence” against Britain. It ushered in an “Era of Good Feelings” in which the partisan animosity that had once verged on treason practically vanished. Canada also emerged from the war with a heightened sense of national feeling and solidarity. Britain regarded the war as a sideshow to the Napoleonic Wars raging in Europe; it welcomed an era of peaceful relations and trade with the United States.

CNN host of GPS and editor of Newsweek International, Fareed Zacharia made this video before Pres. Barack Obama decided to send arms directly to the Al Qaeda backed rebels in Syria.

Oh Thank God–Finally, War With Syria

by Russ Baker,

Now, the Obama administration is preparing for war, in an astonishing echo of the George W. Bush administration’s misleading justifications for invading Iraq. [..]

No one is likely to demand good hard evidence for the use of chemical weapons. After all, the Bush administration and its lies for war was so…very long ago. [..]

None of these military adventures were ever about anything remotely honorable. So, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you just have to get over it. You may feel better believing the system of which you are part has noble intentions, or that the party you prefer is somehow more principled.

The truth is actually pretty simple: no matter which party is running things,  globally dominant governments do not make decisions based on humane do-goodism.  In the halls of power, decisions are based on a consensus of hard-headed “realists,” whose concerns do not extend to human rights, the safety of women and children and other civilians, or the “self-determination” of non-Americans. “Spreading democracy around world”? Um, no.

This entry into a new Middle East conflict isn’t going over very well with the American public. Only 20 percent support this action, while 70 percent oppose it. Opposing to arming the rebel is strong across party lines, as Jon Walker at FDL Action shows with this graph from Pew:

Click on image to enlarge

At FDL News Desk, DSWRight makes some very salient points that this is not Rwanda and not how you get people to the table:

This is not Darfur or as Bill Clinton may infer Rwanda. This is a sectarian civil war where the Sunni majority is taking on a Shiite aligned government as part of a larger factional struggle in the region. [..]

In what world is that a way to launch peace talks? America is not neutral (and to be fair never has been) but starting off negotiations by claiming one of the parties at the talks must leave power is not going to advance the ball very far.

Getting in the middle of a regional conflict like Syria may even be dumber than Iraq, which is really saying something. And what if the rebels win? Then Al-Qaeda and friends come to power. After they are done massacring the losers and sectarian minorities they can help launch attacks against America. The Syrian intervention is all kinds of stupid.

This is not going to go well. Should anyone be surprised that Pres Obama’s approval rating is dropping?