May 22, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Monday, June 21
by OVAL OFFICE WATCH June 21, 2010
Obama to send staffers to Arizona - SEE HERE.
Reports: U.S. halts funding for Egypt-Gaza Wall - CLICK HERE.
Pelosi Paying $18K a Month for New San Francisco Office - GO HERE.
White House begins new Stimulus push
Dan Lothian & Paul Steinhauser, CNN.com
Vice President Joe Biden Thursday helps kick off what the White House calls "Recovery Summer," a six week long push to highlight what the administration says will be jobs created this summer and fall by a surge in federal stimulus spending across the country.
The vice president, who oversees implementation of the Recovery Act, gives a report later Thursday to President Barack Obama that lays out a projected spike in stimulus activity and how it will contribute to what the White House says will be a steady climb to 3.5 million Recovery Act jobs by the end of the year.
On Friday, Obama travels to Columbus, Ohio, to mark the groundbreaking of what's touted as the 10,000 Recovery Act road project to get underway.
On Monday, Biden visits Midland, Michigan, for the groundbreaking of a new advanced battery manufacturing facility, which was made possible by a $161 million stimulus grant awarded last year.
In addition to the Obama and Biden events, the White House says that five Cabinet Members and other senior officials will hold kickoff ceremonies across the country Thursday and Friday, which they say are the first of over two dozen site visits and groundbreakings Administration officials will participate in across the country in the weeks ahead. Read article.
No Easy Exit from Afghanistan
George Will, NewsMax.com
Evidently Hamid Karzai did not get the memo on terminology. U.S. military commanders have stopped using the word "operation" to describe the drive, now delayed, against the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city.
This word connotes danger and stirs dread among the population, whose allegiance is the prize for which counterinsurgency is waged. But Afghanistan's president, speaking there last Sunday, anticipated a "purification operation," saying "this operation requires sacrifice."
It has been four months since Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, in words that reflect the military's embrace of nation-building, "We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in" to Marja. It took longer than expected to reach a more inconclusive outcome than expected in that town of about 80,000, which last month McChrystal called "a bleeding ulcer."
Hence the delay from spring until autumn in tackling Kandahar, with its population of perhaps 800,000. It is, he says, "more important we get it right than we get it fast."
Fast, however, is U.S. policy.
In his reverent new book "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," Jonathan Alter reconstructs the administration's deliberations about Afghanistan in autumn 2009.
Vice President Joe Biden, walking with the president to the decisive meeting with Gen. David Petraeus and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was assured by Obama that the policy of beginning a significant withdrawal in 2011 was a direct presidential order.
Alter reports that Obama, whose mantra for the military was "Do not occupy what you cannot transfer." Read article.
Who is Kenneth Feinberg?
Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post.com
It's been a busy few weeks for Kenneth R. Feinberg: The Washington National Opera reappointed him last month as president of its board of trustees, granting him a third two-year term. And now President Obama wants him to oversee an escrow account funded by BP that will compensate the victims of the April 20 Gulf Coast oil spill.
Challenging? Yes, but whether it's putting a value on the footage of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the use of "Agent Orange" during the Vietnam War, the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Virginia Tech shootings or the global economic crisis, Feinberg is the go-to guy on some of the most emotional and legally challenging questions of the last decade.
The son of a tire salesman and bookkeeper from Brockton, Mass., Feinberg graduated from the University of Massachusetts and New York University Law School. He acted in college, briefly considered a theatrical career and teaches an opera course at the Levine School. Read article.
New Rules Of Engagement
Trevor Butterworth, Forbes.com
We don't know yet whether whistle-blowing Web operation Wikileaks has hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department documents provided by U.S. Army Specialist Bradley Manning or whether it will publish them. But in the meantime Wikileaks' Julian Assange is providing ammunition to those who believe that the fragile new world of cybersecurity demands a more flexible approach to the rules of engagement.
As Dr. James Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts it, there is increasing frustration at being unable to come up with an effective defense to these kinds of events, and it has led some to advocate lowering the boundaries of response. "This would be a mistake," he says. "The world will not respond well to the use of this kind of force."
But why should the world know? Why go after Assange directly when, as the New Yorker so memorably pointed out, "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog." Assange has called Wikileaks "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis." But this assumes that state actors will just put their hands up and say, "this is infuriating but … whatever," because they are bound to certain kinds of rules of engagement as state actors.
What if a western intelligence agency were to succeed in getting Wikileaks to post hostile information on a third party that, in turn, would have no compunction in going after Assange and anyone associated with the site? Wikileaks can point to its formidable array of volunteer technologists to check up on sources or to screen out dubious or obnoxious information, but the history of spycraft testifies to both human ingenuity and organizational failure. The chain of virtual proxies and non-state actors that could be deployed against the site is dizzying and potentially deadly.
There are two distinct ethical problems at play here. Read article.
85 percent of Americans say freedom of the press more important than saving struggling newspapers.
Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner.com
More devastating news today from Rasmussen Reports for the FTC's "Reinventing Journalism" project, as fully 85 percent of the respondents to a national telephone survey say protecting freedom of the press is more important than saving existing newspapers.
Perhaps even more worrisome for the FTC is the fact that only 19 percent of the respondents think it's appropriate for the government to be involved in efforts to prop up existing newspapers, according to Rasmussen.
The FTC's "Reinventing Journalism" project is only at the staff discussion level for now, but there is clearly an effort supported by President Obama to mount some kind of bailout for the newspaper industry similar to those previously conducted by the administration in taking over GM and Chrysler, as well as multiple Wall Street firms, most of the mortgage industry and key elements of the insurance industry. Read article.
Congress Mulls Bill to Revise Birthright Citizenship
Matt Rocheleau, ABC News.com
Anyone born on American soil is an American.
That's an unconditional right, according to the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
It's not an exclusively American practice. Worldwide, about 30 nations (mostly in the Western Hemisphere) have similar birthright citizenship policy. Citizenship based on where a person is born, is called jus soli, which is Latin for "right of the soil."
But jus soli is primarily a New World right. Today, there are no European nations that grant jus soli. Most countries in Europe use a jus sanguinis policy, which determines citizenship based on having an ancestor who is a citizen.
A bill making its way through Congress, if passed, would bring the US more into line with current European birthright policies. But in the wake of the controversy over Arizona's new immigration policy, any changes to the 14th Amendment would likely become another flashpoint in the debate over illegal immigrants. Read article.
The myth of Iran's 'isolation'
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post.com
In announcing the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, President Obama stressed not once but twice Iran's increasing "isolation" from the world. This claim is not surprising considering that after 16 months of an "extended hand" policy, in response to which Iran accelerated its nuclear program -- more centrifuges, more enrichment sites, higher enrichment levels -- Iranian "isolation" is about the only achievement to which the administration can even plausibly lay claim.
"Isolation" may have failed to deflect Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it does enjoy incessant repetition by the administration. For example, in his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that "the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated." Two months later, Vice President Biden asserted that "since our administration has come to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated -- internally, externally -- has fewer friends in the world." At the signing of the START treaty in April, Obama declared that "those nations that refuse to meet their obligations [to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, i.e., Iran] will be isolated."
Really? Read article.
The Future of Free Speech
Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
My goal here has been to understand what makes for a well-functioning system of free expression, and to show how consumer sovereignty, in a world of limitless options, is likely to undermine that system. I have also attempted to show that the First Amendment should not be taken to ban reasonable efforts, on the part of government, to improve the situation. I do not intend to offer a set of policy reforms or any kind of blueprint for the future. But it will be useful to offer a few ideas, if only by way of introduction to questions that are likely to engage public attention in the first decades of the twenty-first century.
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The #twittergulag saga continues: @gopfirecracker suspended, others still trapped
May 21, 2012 11:54 PM
#freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker— Dale Holt (@DaleHolt8) May 22, 2012 Come on conservatives! Everyone rallied around @ChrisLoesch when he was suspended! Now its @gopfirecracker so stand up! #freegopfirecracker— Schmoop (@RGSchmoop) May 22, 2012 Hey @twitter and @support – #FreeGOPfirecracker's account has been suspended. Please fix this mishap. Thank you.— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) May 22, 2012 [...]
Cory Booker tweets #IStandWithObama; Hashtag hijackers flood the zone
May 21, 2012 11:39 PM
Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, the Democrat who defended Bain from the Obama campaign's attacks yesterday morning, has been backpedaling more furiously than a clown on a high wire. Tonight, in an effort to mollify his critics on the Left, he posted four tweets that included the hashtag #IStandWithObama. Conservatives immediately took over the #IStandWithObama hashtag to mock President Obama, and within an hour it became a trending topic.
Cory Booker tries to clear up his position on Bain attacks
May 21, 2012 10:25 PM
Cory Booker continued his quest to run screaming away from the apparently too candid comments he made on Meet the Press on Sunday. Despite attempts earlier today to #FreeCoryBooker from those trying to force him to apologize Booker went on the Rachel Maddow show to do everything he could to walk back what he said. Que the mockery.
Obama's 'When you're president' picture spawns hashtag
May 21, 2012 09:59 PM
"When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot." -Barack Obama
Cue #WhenYouArePresident
Obama takes anti-Romney rant to Twitter
May 21, 2012 09:49 PM
It started off this morning with a video of a woman named Valerie from Indiana posted by Barack Obama’s official Twitter account. 12 hours, 12 tweets and a failed hashtag later, Obama’s reelection team took the day to tweet ongoing misinformation about Mitt Romney’s record in the private sector, specifically Bain Capital’s work with the [...]
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