Video: Do you hate those musical birthday cards? This cat does too.

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Lieberman's Internet "Kill Switch" makes a return

Lieberman proposed this once before. He's back at it, just in time for the SOPA and PIPA debates. CBS News (h/t Amanda Marcotte; my emphasis):

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.
...
Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those "crucial components that form our nation's critical infrastructure."

Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. ... The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government's designation of vital Internet or other computer systems "shall not be subject to judicial review." Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include "provider of information technology," and a third authorized the submission of "classified" reports on security vulnerabilities.

So there are two parts to this story. The first is the obvious — Mr. Security, Sen. Joe Lieberman (along with colleague "moderate" Republican Susan Collins), would like to hand tons of power to the president.

Do you wonder what a "cyberemergency" is? Or what the president could do if he declares one? Well, that's nicely unclear:

President Obama would then have the power to "issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency." What that entails is a little unclear, including whether DHS could pry user information out of Internet companies that it would not normally be entitled to obtain without a court order. One section says they can disclose certain types of noncommunications data if "specifically authorized by law," but a presidential decree may suffice.

Read the last sentence again. It says what you think it says — domestic snoopage.

The second part of this story is about the media. Go back to the CBS News story and read the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, where I placed the inter-paragraph elipsis in the quote.

The deleted section starts "Internet companies should not be alarmed". Note how that statement appears to be a bare assertion by the writer, until you jump past a bunch of pro-forma senatorial details and get (if you're still reading that paragraph) to the anonymous "Senate aid" attribution part. The "Senate aid" quote isn't a quote until you read that part — no quote marks to show someone else is the speaker.

So the piece is neatly crafted for the fast reader as follows:

1. The Internet "kills switch" bill is back.
2. (But) it's not a problem, so not to worry (plus eye-glaze phrases with names).
3. (After all) "We're not trying to mandate any requirements ..." (plus eye-glaze phrases with tech words like "backbone").

That "fast reader" I mentioned is most people on the planet. Do you think CBS News has an agenda?

If so, that makes three — Lieberman, who always wants Daddy to have the biggest stick available (wonder what he's hiding); CBS News, which wants to be news-credible without alarming the sheep with what the news actually contains (in this case at least); and Susan Collins, who's providing "moderate Republican" cover for a radical proposal, and is safely not up for re-election until 2014).

The radical stars aligned. This will get a new set of votes soon. The Senate is fun place these days. Al Franken sponsors PIPA, the "kill the Internet" bill; the full Senate passes the NDAA "Indefinite Detention by the Military" bill; and now Lieberman's Internet Kill Switch bill will return for discussion and a vote.

Dear Team Not So Smart As You Think — this is a terrible way to ask for votes in 2012. Just sayin'.

GP Read the rest of this post...

CNBC: The $30 Billion Problem DC Is Not Discussing

CNBC often is there to act as a cheerleader for Wall Street but they also have their moments where they provide valuable information. This time, they're on the money with this problem that nobody in Washington is talking about which is the negative impact of high gas prices on the US economy. It seems as though every time the price hits a really ridiculous number, there is plenty of talk about doing things differently but in the end it's always just talk. The Democrats have made some attempts to address the issue with demanding higher fuel efficiency from the auto makers and promoting high speed rail, which is all great. Unfortunately the Republicans are so closely tied to Big Oil, they view any change as a threat so they fight it. More times than not the GOP is more forceful than the Democrats so they end up delaying programs if not defeating them. When I visit the US from abroad, I'm still surprised at the number of enormous cars and the general waste of energy that I see in the US. Compared to the much higher cost of energy in Europe, it's not possible to be so casual with energy and it's not possible to have as many inefficient cars on the road. Plenty exist, as I discovered, but there are many more efficient cars on the road compared to the US. A few years back, before gas prices really went up, I borrowed a car (in France) for vacation and it cost €130 to fill the tank. Needless to say, that was the last time I borrowed that car. The Dutch transformed their country from a "normal" car based society following WWII to the best cycling country in the world. It didn't happen overnight, but was the end result of issues including the gas crisis of the 1970's. Most people still drive cars, but they also do a lot of commuting using bikes which is both energy efficient as well as healthy for the population. Something needs to change with our energy policy and ignoring the problem is not the answer. How can we afford not to change? there are no easy or quick answers which probably doesn't help in terms of building a consensus. Look back at how painful the health care debate was or the Wall Street reform. There are a lot of moving pieces and a number of fronts to open up to build a holistic plan that will succeed. Kicking the problem to the next crisis is no plan. CNBC:

According to economist Nigel Gault, every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil raises gas prices by about 25 cents. The average American home buys about 1,000 gallons of gasoline every year, so every quarter increase in gas takes about $250 per year from your pocket. Multiply that by more than 110 million households and Gault estimates that steals about 0.2 percent from U.S. GDP. That may not seem like much, but 0.2 percent of our $15 trillion dollar economy is about $30 billion dollars per year. These are big numbers that grow if gas prices go higher. And remember, salaries have been stagnant. Using Gault’s assumptions, if gas prices rise by $1 per gallon, it would steal about 0.8 percent from economic growth, or more than $100 billion per year. Now consider all of the debate about tax cuts on the rich. One group estimates that the economic cost to the country of those tax cuts on the top 5 percent of wage earners has been about $1 trillion, or $100 billion per year, since they were enacted in 2001.

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Last 100 years in 10 minutes

It's from a Western perspective, but still very interesting. (Though I don't see how the Lewinsky affair makes the list.) What would be great is to see similar videos from other perspectives such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. Read the rest of this post...

The GOP problem—they can't get to the right of Obama without looking stupid

Glenn Greenwald has a nice observation in The Guardian that's worth noticing.

His key point — Obama is so far to the right, especially on national security, that no GOP candidate can get to his right and look credible.

Greenwald:

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party's defining beliefs. ... Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him ... only by moving so far to the right ... that they fall over the cliff of mainstream acceptability, or even basic sanity. ...

How do you scorn a president as a far-left socialist when he has stuffed his administration with Wall Street executives, had his last campaign funded by them, governed as a "centrist Republican", and presided over booming corporate profits even while the rest of the nation suffered economically?

Greenwald notes that there is a little room to Obama's left on a few domestic policies, and calls attention to the future makeup of the Supreme Court in particular:

The president's 2009 stimulus spending and Wall Street "reform" package – tepid and inadequate though they were – are genuinely at odds with rightwing dogma, ... And the Supreme Court, perpetually plagued by a 5-4 partisan split, would be significantly affected by the outcome of the 2012 election.

But on foreign policy, there's no sane room to Obama's right at all:

[H]ow can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature [Dems coddling America's enemies] when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Pass through that list again. This is Obama's genius, if you will — to sell his soul to the right-wing devil and actually get a good price, the presidency.

Mephistopheles will get his revenge, but after Obama is out of office. Obama may indeed be a Top Four president — on a list that contains Nixon and Bush.

Greenwald concludes that the current GOP crop is "forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd."

No wonder the GOP debates seemed like episodes of some weird high-concept reality show — a verbal version of Dancing with the Under-Rehearsed Stars. Thanks to Obama's takeover of both political parties, it's all they have to offer.

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Pew poll: Obama leads Romney and Perry by huge margin among Hispanics

A new Pew poll shows Hispanic voters favoring Obama over Romney and Perry by a huge margin. Wash Post:

Obama leads Romney by 68 percent to 23 percent and Perry by 69 percent to 23 percent among Hispanic voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points for the sample.

Though it's also a question of enthusiasm and turnout. Sure, hypothetically you might favor one over the other, but you still need to be motivated to get out and vote, donate, volunteer, and more generally to talk up the candidate. None of those necessarily go hand in hand with favoring the candidate in a poll.

Obama’s job approval rating has dropped among Hispanic voters by nine percentage points since last year, the survey found, dipping to 54 percent — in part because of a 15-point drop among Hispanic Democrats. His job approval among voters overall stood at 49 percent in a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month, meaning the president remains more popular among Hispanics than with the broader electorate.

Well, that's one way of looking at it. Another is to note that 67% of Hispanic voters voted for Obama in 2008.  Still, that's basically the same percentage that says they'll vote for Obama over Romney or Perry, so perhaps he's doing fine.  Still, I worry about enthusiasm, not just among Hispanics, but among all core Democratic constituencies.  I think the President has started to turn address that problem, but he needs to do more before the election. Read the rest of this post...

More violence, more death in Syria

What exactly is the Arab League doing and what value are they providing? Last night they were reassured by what they saw even though more deaths were reported yesterday. The Arab League knew what they were getting themselves into when they signed up for this job and they need to start doing a lot more unless their real goal was to provide cover for Assad. Al Jazeera:

At least 13 people have been killed in fresh violence across Syria, activists said, as Arab League observers continue their mission to visit flashpoint cities in the country. Six of the dead were said to be taking part in an anti-government demonstration in the central city of Hama on Wednesday. Local rights groups say others were killed in Homs, Aleppo and Idlib. Video shared by activists from the protest in Hama showed gunshots being fired and black smoke rising above the city. Dozens of men were marching through the streets, chanting "Where are the Arab monitors?"

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Euro drops to 11 month low against greenback

There have been a few short term false starts, but this time, it does look like the euro has a lot of room to drop against the dollar. Between the eurozone banks borrowing spree plus the hoarding, it feels like 2008 all over again and we know how that story played out. The Guardian:

The euro weakened about 1% percent against the dollar and the yen on Wednesday, the day before an important auction of long-dated Italian debt, while US stocks slid more than 1% on concerns about the economy in early 2012. The European single currency hit a fresh 11-month low against the dollar of $1.291 and a 10-year low against the yen as data showed banks were hoarding the cash recently injected by the European Central Bank rather than lending it out – a bad omen for the European economy in 2012. "If European banks are still this concerned, it's not a good sign," said Karl Schamotta, senior markets strategist with Western Union Business Solutions. "That underlines the possibility that this liquidity crunch is getting worse and will continue into the new year.

The euro also hit another record, a ten year low against the yen. Read the rest of this post...