NPR ombud: Yeah, that Soros money might be a credibility problem

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/25/npr-ombud-yeah-that-soros-money-might-be-a-credibility-problem/

Gee, ya think?  More than seven months after NPR accepted a grant from Open Society Foundation for its Impact on Government project without naming left-wing activist George Soros as the source, its ombudsperson Alicia Shepard finally got around to addressing the issue of credibility, despite the immediate negative reaction to the decision.   Shepard spoke with people inside and out of NPR, most of whom at least worry that the network has set itself up for accusations of coverage bias:

The Open Society grant was announced last Oct. 18 – ironically the same day that then NPR analyst Juan Williams made his infamous remark on Fox News about feeling nervous when he sees Arabs in Muslim garb on airplanes. He was later fired.

The timing was awful, as the poorly handled firing led to a firestorm of criticism from the right – many whom believe NPR caters to a liberal audience and that the government has no business funding public radio.

Yeah, the timing was awful, all right, but both decisions were highly questionable even without the embarrassing juxtaposition.  The criticism hasn’t just come from conservatives, either, as Shepard notes.  Howard Kurtz blasted NPR for its decision last October when it became public:

No news organization should accept that kind of check from a committed ideologue of any stripe.  Even if every journalist hired with the cash from Soros’ foundations is fair and balanced, to coin a phrase, the perception is terrible.

Others within NPR questioned how the organization handled the donation, which didn’t exactly set records for transparency:

“I remember the email announcing the Impact of Government project only mentioned the Open Society Institute,” said one staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for obvious reasons. “My cubicle mate immediately said, ‘Isn’t that Soros?’ We Googled to confirm…and were appalled that his name had not been included, as if the company didn’t think it was important or were trying to hide something.”

Imagine that!  What else might they be hiding?

Shepard later quotes Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor’s criticism of NPR for taking the money — and tries to draw an equivalence between MRC and NPR:

“NPR took $1.8 million from a man who also spent $27 million trying desperately to unseat President George W. Bush in 2004, yet NPR still claims to be neutral,” said Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center. “Conservatives know that isn’t true. The Soros money just proved it. Will NPR deploy some of that new-found wealth to investigate Soros’ global empire? No, he signs the checks.” [Gainor's Soros pieces.]

Gainor’s position carries the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow, and is affiliated with the Media Research Center. Pickens is as well-known on the right as Soros on the left. Wealthy conservatives also fund media groups. In fact, the Franklin Center for Government and Integrity also has a statehouse project that funds reporters to improve state government coverage. The organization is funded by private donations which they do not make public.

Uh, true … and MRC doesn’t purport to be an unbiased source of news, either, with a “firewall” between its funding and its reporting.  In fact, in its mission statement, it clearly states that MRC is dedicated to exposing liberal bias in the media in support of conservatives.  The Franklin Center is less explicit about its politics, but it also isn’t setting itself up as an independent news organization, and its efforts aren’t funding news outlets.  They reach out to “non-profit journalism group[s]” and individual reporters who want training and resources.  Shepard sets up these false equivalences to soften the criticism that NPR has earned by taking money from Soros without proper disclosure.

Why did it take Shepard so long to respond to these concerns?  She claims that she avoided the subject for months in order to see whether people inside and outside of NPR were concerned about the issue, but it has been a consistent criticism since NPR’s announcement.  Why report on it now?  Maybe her disclosure will explain it:

Until Wednesday, I was on the board of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, which is an independent group of 60 news ombudsmen in 17 countries. ONO is a cash-strapped group that meets annually to talk about issues unique to the role. It receives money from Soros’ foundation, which this year provided translation in Spanish, English and French at the 2011 conference in Montreal. ONO has a budget of about $30,000 and would welcome money from any group wanting to support media transparency.

Maybe NPR should demonstrate a little more of it first.

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664_pf.html

In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007 

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.
GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.
U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.
That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.
Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.
In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer
"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."
Waterboarding Used on at Least 3
Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.
In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.
U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.
Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.
The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.
Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.
Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.
Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.
"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."
Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.
In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) andRon Wyden (D-Ore.).
In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."
Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

The rise and rise of a pity-for-Osama lobby

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10493/

The chattering classes’ ‘uncomfortable feeling’ with the killing of bin Laden is underpinned more by moral cowardice than political principle. How did ‘I hate bin Laden and I’m glad he’s dead’ become the most shocking thing one can say in polite society?

his week we have shuttled from an atmosphere of congratulation, even muted celebration, over the killing of OBL to what Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and High Priest of the Chattering Classes,describes as a ‘very uncomfortable feeling’ about the killing of OBL. Those who dare to celebrate his death – mainly young American jocks – have been denounced as ‘abhorrent’ and ‘sickening’, and now the main way you advertise your decency, your membership of the civilised, upstanding, oh-so-unAmerican classes, is by wondering out loud if poor old OBL shouldn’t have been arrested and put on trial rather than having a bullet planted in his head.

This pity-for-Osama lobby, this bishop-led congregation of ‘uncomfortable’ moral handwringers, might pose as radical, denouncing America’s military action in bin Laden’s compound as ‘Wild West-style vengeance’. Yet in truth it is fuelled by self-loathing more than justice-loving. These critics are not opposed to Western intervention in principle – indeed, most of them have demanded ‘humanitarian’, political or legalistic intervention in other states’ affairs at one point or another. No, it is a discomfort with decisive action, a fear of what such action might lead to in the future, and a belief that people in the West should douse their emotional zeal and learn to be more meek, which motors the creepingly conformist anti-Obama and pro-Osama (well, almost) brigade. There is little, if anything, in this outburst of concerned liberal moralism that is worth backing.

The most striking thing was the speed with which the great and the good of the Western liberal elite sought to distance themselves from those vulgar, excitable Yanks and to express a more erudite and PC view of OBL’s demise. Barely 24 hours had passed since the dumping of bin Laden’s body in the sea before observers were describing President Obama as a ‘mobster’. ‘Are we gangsters or a Western democracy based on the rule of law?’, asked has-been mayor (and wannabe mayor) Ken Livingstone, who is so used to doing politics in the rarefied environs of London’s mayoral office that he doesn’t realise that the rule of law might not be so neatly applied during a shoot-out in a compound in Pakistan. Elsewhere the killing of bin Laden has already been described as a ‘war crime’ (isn’t everything these days?) while human rights campaignerssay it would have been a better advert for Western values if justice against OBL had come ‘from a legitimate court of law rather than the end of gun’.

It didn’t take long for these apparently decent lovers of justice over violence to expose their real fears: that the sight of a few young Americans chanting ‘U-S-A!’ in response to OBL’s death might invite even more Islamist retribution upon us. One writerdescribed this ‘frat boy reaction’ as ‘abhorrent’ – it is ‘sickening’, she said, and, more revealingly, it has ‘no dignity’. ABritish columnist said the anti-OBL shindigs were the products of a ‘patriotic reflex’ – that is, a nationalist kneejerkism amongst America’s unthinking classes – which is apparently ‘intense and pervasive’. In response to the chant of ‘We killed bin Laden!’, the columnist said: ‘If “they” killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, then “they” also bombed a large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan, “they” murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and “they” gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near Mahmudiyah.’ Yep, that’s right – if you celebrate the killing of OBL then you are also implicitly celebrating American atrocities overseas, including rape. Gang-rape-loving dunderheads.

The most telling phrase in that article was ‘they’, which was used again and again, always in quote marks, to refer to ordinary Americans. Because much of the ‘uncomfortable feeling’ over the killing of bin Laden is really an ‘uncomfortable feeling’ with, if not outright disgust for, ‘them’, the people who make up America, and for the ideals of modern America itself. This is ‘very much the American style’, sniffed Livingstone about the anti-OBL get-togethers (which, by the way, were only relatively small, party-style expressions of a fleeting emotion). Other commentators have said that they ‘recoiled’ at the ‘gloating that Americans went in for’. Behind the high-falutin’ expressions of passion for justice over shoot-to-kill, much of the pity-for-Osama lobby is really concerned with expressing its moral superiority over apparently vengeful Americans. Where ‘them’ Yanks still have an attachment to nationalism and war, ‘we’ Europeans are post-nationalist, cosmopolitan, empathetic rather than vengeful, and are far more comfortable with having a man in a wig rather than a man with a gun sort out our moral and political problems.

Of course, such anti-Americanism is not confined to Europe. As we have seen in the 10 years since 9/11 it is rife within America itself, where the better-educated classes have long had an ‘uncomfortable feeling’ in relation to the antics and emotions of the American masses. And so it was that Timemagazine, in keeping with the modern trend for explaining away every emotion as a product of evolution or of involuntary brain activity, said that human beings are ‘wired to perceive the punishment of rule-violators as rewarding’. In seeking to explain the appearance of frat boys outside the White House,Time cited scientific research showing that ‘when people witnessed snitches receiving painful electric shocks, the pleasure regions of their brains were activated (but only in men)’. Of course, some people – not ‘them’, but ‘us’ – are immune to this hardwired desire for vengeance and can rise above it to express a more considered ‘uncomfortable feeling’ with OBL’s death.

This is an explicit attempt to delegitimise the political and moral response of some American people to the killing of bin Laden. Their joy seems so alien to the better-minded classes that it can only possibly be explained as a ‘reflex’, an unfortunate ‘evolutionary trait’. It has ‘no dignity’, we are told, but rather springs from a base and instinctive ‘human taste for vengeance’. It is extraordinary, and revealing, how quickly the expression of concern about the use of American force in Pakistan became an expression of values superiority over the American people. The modern chattering classes are so utterly removed from the mass of the population, so profoundly disconnected from ‘ordinary people’ and their ‘ordinary thoughts’, that they effectively see happy Americans as a more alien and unusual thing than Osama bin Laden. Where OBL wins their empathy, American jocks receive only their bile.

There is nothing principled or properly anti-imperialist in the speedily rising critique of the killing of OBL. Indeed, many of those currently attacking Obama would have preferred it if bin Laden had ended up in one of the international courts, which themselves are political theatres for the expression of Western superiority over foreign peoples (usually black ones). If Obama’s troops really did mete out ‘military vengeance’ against someone they judged to be evil, then these courts continually serve up ‘legal vengeance’ against people judged to be war criminals. Also, it is striking that many of the critics of Obama express concern about the alleged emotions behind American militarism – vengeance, Wild West fury, a lack of basic decency – rather than being concerned about the moral question of whether America should have the right to intervene in other states. It’s the sentiment they hate, more than the use of military force overseas per se.

No, the now widespread ‘uncomfortable feeling’ with the shooting of bin Laden is really an expression of moral reluctance, even of moral cowardice, a desire to avoid taking any decisive action or expressing any firm emotion that might have some blowback consequences for us over here. It is the politics of risk aversion rather than the politics of anti-imperialism, the same degraded sentiment that fuelled the narcissistic ‘Not in my name’ response to the Iraq War in 2003.

So these critics fret that the killing of bin Laden, and the ‘scenes of jubilation’ it gave rise to, might heighten the threat of another terror attack. Watching Americans celebrate OBL’s death, Ken Livingstone said: ‘I realised that it would increase the likelihood of a terror attack on London.’ This is really a call to elevate precaution over action, meekness over passionate political feeling, staying at home over taking risks, all in the name of protecting ourselves from any possible future action by a hot-headed Islamist. In this sense, the disdain for America and its people is really an expression of angst about what America is perceived to represent: confidence, cockiness, self-possession, a willingness to take risks (little of which is actually accurate). The post-OBL ‘uncomfortable feeling’ is really a quite craven sentiment, a fear-fuelled desire for self-preservation over anything else, which is dolled up as a principled critique of American militarism.

Look, if you want to have a real debate about Western intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, bring it on.spiked bows to no one in the implacability of our principledopposition to foreign meddling in other states’ affairs. But if you want to tell me that bin Laden was treated badly, and that the allegedly morally unhinged reaction to his death might invite more terror upon us, then I have only one thing to say: ‘Fuck bin Laden.’

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked

A Renewed Crackdown on Redlining

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_20/b4228031594062.htm

In the wake of the subprime implosion, the Obama Administration has stepped up its scrutiny of disadvantaged neighborhoods' credit access

Community activists in St. Louis became concerned a couple of years ago that local banks weren't offering credit to the city's poor and African American residents. So they formed a group called the St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance and began writing complaint letters to federal regulators.

Apparently, someone in Washington took notice. The Federal Reserve has cited one of the group's targets, Midwest BankCentre, a small bank that has been operating in St. Louis's predominantly white, middle-class suburbs for over a century, for failing to issue home mortgages or open branches in disadvantaged areas. Although executives at the bank say they don't discriminate, Midwest BankCentre's latest annual report says it is in the process of negotiating a settlement with the U.S. Justice Dept. over its lending practices.

Lawyers and bank consultants say regulators and the Obama Administration are scrutinizing financial institutions for a practice that last drew attention before the rise of subprime lending: redlining. The term dates from the 1930s, when the Federal Housing Administration drew up maps using red ink to delineate inner-city neighborhoods considered too risky for lending. Congress later passed laws banning lending discrimination on the basis of race and other characteristics. "The agencies have refocused on redlining because, in the wake of the subprime explosion and sudden implosion, they are looking at these disadvantaged neighborhoods and not seeing any credit access," says Jo Ann Barefoot, co-chair at Treliant Risk Advisors in Washington, D.C., which consults with banks on regulatory issues.

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires banks to make loans in all the areas they serve, not just the wealthy ones. A Bloomberg analysis found the percentage of banks earning negative ratings from regulators on CRA exams has risen from 1.45 percent in 2007 to more than 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.

At the Justice Dept., a new 20-person unit dedicated to fair lending issues received a record number of discrimination referrals from regulators in 2010 and has dozens of open cases, according to a recent agency report. Potential penalties can reach into the millions of dollars. "We are using every tool in our arsenal to combat lending discrimination," Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Div., told a conference of community development advocates in Washington in April.

To some banks the crackdown has come as a surprise, say consultants and lawyers representing financial institutions in discussions with regulators. Like Midwest BankCentre, some lenders are being cited for failing to operate in minority and low-income census tracts near their branches, even when they have never done business there before. "If you put your branches only in upper-income areas, the regulators are not accepting that anymore," says Warren W. Traiger, a lawyer at BuckleySandler in New York, which advises banks on fair lending issues.

Mortgage refinancing activity doubled in white neighborhoods but dropped sharply in minority neighborhoods in a sample of major U.S. cities in 2008 and 2009, according to Paying More for the American Dream, an April study by a group of seven community development nonprofits. "The pendulum has swung back too far the other way," says Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition in San Francisco, one of the report's authors.

Bank lobbyists say the stepped-up government scrutiny could backfire if financial institutions decide to shrink their operations rather than yield to pressure to do business in areas that don't make sense for them. "It would do a disservice to communities for a bank to suddenly pull back," says Robert Rowe, vice-president and senior counsel at the American Bankers Assn.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, things are starting to change. Midwest BankCentre Chairman Ronald T. Barnes recently announced the bank would open a branch in Pagedale, a town near St. Louis that is predominantly African American.

Latest AP Poll Sample Skews to Democrats by 17 Points

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/266932/latest-ap-poll-sample-skews-democrats-17-points

Latest AP Poll Sample Skews to Democrats by 17 Points May 11, 2011 8:55 A.M. By Jim Geraghty     Tags: Barack Obama, Polling Wow! The AP poll has Obama’s approval rating hitting 60 percent! And 53 percent say he deserves to be reelected! And on the economy, 52 percent approve of the way Obama’s handling it, and only 47 percent disapprove! He’s up 54–46 on approval of how he’s handling health care! On unemployment, 52 percent approval, 47 percent disapproval! 57 percent approval on handling Libya! Even on the deficit, he’s at 47 percent approval, 52 percent disapproval! It is a poll of adults, which isn’t surprising; as I mentioned yesterday, you don’t have to be a registered or likely voter to have an opinion on the president. But then you get to the party ID: 46 percent identify as Democrat or leaning Democrat, 29 percent identify as Republican or leaning Republican, 4 percent identify as purely independent leaning towards neither party, and 20 percent answered, “I don’t know.” For contrast, the AP’s immediate preceding poll was 45 percent Democrat, 33 percent Republican; the likely-voter pool in October 2010 was 43 percent Democrat, 48 percent Republican. The poll’s total sample in October 2010 split 43 percent Democrat, 40 percent Republican. With a poll sample that has a 17-percentage-point margin in favor of the Democrats, is anyone surprised that these results look like a David Axelrod dream? (Interestingly, George W. Bush is at 50 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval, even in this sample wildly weighted in favor of the Democrats.) UPDATE: Notice that in Gallup’s polling, party ID remains pretty stable. In roughly 40 polls since mid-2009, Democrats and Republicans have both ranged in the 40s with leaners. During that time, the split has never been larger than 7 percentage points. Their most recent split, from late April, is 31 percent Republican, 36 percent Independent, and 32 percent Democrat; with leaners, it’s a 46-46 split. Of course, the OBL kill could have prompted more Americans to self-identify as Democrats. Some pollsters are okay with dramatic shifts in their party ID from poll to poll; they see respondents’ party self-identification as flexible, even fickle, changing from week to week and month to month. I am a skeptic of this notion, and before buying into dramatic changes in the party identification of the voting public, prefer to see the phenomenon confirmed through changes in behavior – i.e., voters changing their party registration.

Mexican flag casts giant shadow on Obama at border

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/10/mexican-flag-casts-giant-shadow-on-obama-at-border/

EL PASO, Texas - It’s usually a reliable rule of thumb that everything is bigger in Texas, and in the U.S. in general - everything, that is, except for flags.

Dominating the southern horizon at Chamizal National Memorial Park, the site on the U.S.-Mexico border where President Obama delivered his major immigration speech Tuesday, was a giant Mexican flag, dedicated by that country’s president in 1997 with the express purpose of reminding Americans that they must pay attention to their neighbors to the south.

The flag literally hung over Mr. Obama’s visit to this border city: It was in the background as he toured a cargo-inspection facility, and could be seen poking out over the top of the backdrop as he spoke to hundreds of supporters, urging them to pressure Congress to legalize illegal immigrants.

Locals said it can be seen throughout much of the rest of town, and is a stark reminder of the city’s location on the border.

“It hits you from every angle,” Rick Melendrez, an El Paso resident who years ago led a campaign to erect an American flag to compete with the Mexican banner, told The Washington Times in a telephone interview.

Mr. Melendrez, a Democratic activist here, said he thought a competing American flag would be a source of pride for El Paso residents. But enthusiasm for his project petered out years ago in the face of the $300,000 price tag.

Still, he said he wishes he could get the campaign going again, and even has a location in mind: one of the Franklin Mountain peaks that jut up north of the city.

One American park ranger said the Mexican flag appears during holidays and major events. Soon after Mr. Obama departed El Paso, the flag came down — suggesting Mexican officials had raised it just to provide a backdrop for the president’s visit.

The Mexican flag, one of a number of “banderas monumentales,” or big flags, that Mexican officials have erected in cities along the border, sits in a park in Juarez, the Mexican city mirroring El Paso.

“This flag will remind everyone across the border that we are a sovereign nation,” then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said in 1997 at a ceremony dedicating the flag. “It is also a reminder that we are an independent nation ready to defend its people wherever they may be.”

The Dallas Morning News said the flag is 164-by-94 feet, or about half the size of a football field. Locals in El Paso said it takes a platoon of dozens of Mexican soldiers to take the flag down and the flag fills an entire pickup truck bed when packed away. Its flagpole rises over 300 feet.

The border itself is a dominant factor for El Paso, and Chamizal Park, where Mr. Obama spoke, exists because of that border. It was established to commemorate a peaceful settlement to a 100-year-long border dispute, born out of the changing path of the Rio Grande, the river which separates the two countries. An 1864 flood changed the river’s course, moving it further south and giving the U.S. extra territory, which was disputed until the 1960s.

Mr. Obama didn’t mention the Mexican flag in his speech, but he did touch on flag imagery, recounting a recent graduation address he delivered at Miami Dade College, which claims students whose families hail from some 181 countries.

“At the ceremony, 181 flags - one for every nation that was represented - was marched across the stage, and each one was applauded by the graduates and the relatives with ties to those countries,” Mr, Obamasaid. “But then the last flag, the American flag, came into view, and everyone in the room erupted in applause. Everybody cheered.”

He added, “So, yes, their parents or grandparents, some of the graduates themselves, had come from every corner of the globe. But it was here that they had found opportunity. It was here that they had a chance to contribute to the nation that is their home.”

http://www.gallup.com/poll/147338/Americans-Blame-Wasteful-Government-Spending-Deficit.aspx

Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit

Prefer cutting spending over raising taxes as way for Congress to reduce deficit

by Frank Newport

PRINCETON, NJ -- The large majority of Americans say spending too much money on unneeded or wasteful federal programs is to blame for the federal budget deficit, while 22% say the deficit is a consequence of not raising enough in taxes to pay for needed programs.

These results are based on an April 20-23 USA Today/Gallup poll. Given a forced choice, Republicans almost uniformly place blame for the deficit on too much federal spending, rather than a shortage of tax revenue. Majorities of independents and Democrats agree, albeit by somewhat smaller margins.

Accordingly, Americans generally favor spending cuts rather than tax increases as the way for Congress to reduce the deficit going forward.

This question asks Americans to choose among five ways of reducing the federal deficit, ranging from a total reliance on spending cuts to a total reliance on tax increases. The responses cluster at the "spending cuts" end of the spectrum. About half (48%) of Americans say reducing the deficit should be done mostly or only with spending cuts. Another 37% say it should be done equally with spending cuts and tax increases. Eleven percent say mostly or only with tax increases.

Thus, overall, 85% of Americans explicitly favor spending cuts as at least part of the solution to reducing the federal deficit, with more than half of these favoring only or mostly using cuts. This compares with 48% who explicitly favor tax increases as at least part of a deficit reduction strategy -- a number consisting mostly of those who want an equal emphasis on spending cuts and tax increases.

The major partisan distinctions in response to this question reflect the choice between mostly/only spending cuts versus the equal use of spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans are most likely to favor the former; Democrats, the latter. Independents' views are between these two extremes. Relatively few Americans of any partisan identification favor mostly or only using tax increases to reduce the deficit.

Implications

Given a choice, Americans of all political persuasions are more likely to say that too much wasteful and unneeded government spending is the cause of the federal budget deficit, rather than too little tax revenue. Americans of all political persuasions also say cutting back on federal spending should be a major focus of efforts to reduce the deficit going forward.

Still, some emphasis on tax increases is part of the solution for almost half of Americans. Thus, it appears Americans would most likely tell their elected representatives to attack the federal deficit primarily using spending cuts, but with a secondary reliance on raising tax revenue.

Survey Methods

Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted April 20-23, 2011, with a random sample of 1,013 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone-only respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2010 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

• BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
• MAY 2, 2011

Viva Guantanamo

The much-maligned interrogators helped dispatch bin Laden.

By JAMES TARANTO

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704569404576297892398935116.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion#printMode

Osama bin Laden never made it to Guantanamo Bay, but his arrival in hell appears to have been hastened by information gathered from the terrorists who are detained there. The Associated Press has the story:

Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden's most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed's successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

A senior administration official told a White House briefing that "for years, we were unable to identify [the courier's] true name or his location":

Four years ago, we uncovered his identity, and for operational reasons, I can't go into details about his name or how we identified him, but about two years ago, after months of persistent effort, we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. Still we were unable to pinpoint exactly where they lived, due to extensive operational security on their part. The fact that they were being so careful reinforced our belief that we were on the right track.

Finally, last August, they found the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ABC News's Jake Tapper reports that in March, President Obama authorized "the development of a plan" to bomb the compound with 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions carried by B2 "stealth" bombers. "But when the president heard the compound would be reduced to rubble he chose not to pursue that option. . . . The president wanted proof" that bin Laden was dead. So he assembled a small death panel, which went to the compound in Pakistan and shot him.

That was surely wise. Perhaps the persistence of "birthers" led the president to anticipate that "deathers" would deny bin Laden is really inanimate. Sure enough, the Jakarta Globe reports that Luthfi Hasan, head of Indonesia's Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, "told journalists on Monday afternoon that there was a 'fifty-fifty' chance that Osama bin Laden had actually been killed by U.S. security forces. He said he needed evidence, including DNA tests, to be completely convinced that it was bin Laden."

Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, reports that NBC cut away from Donald Trump's "The Celebrity Apprentice" for live coverage of Obama's speech announcing the kill. As far as we know, however, Trump has not yet demanded to see the death certificate.

"His death does not mark the end of our effort," Obama noted in his speech. "There's no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must--and we will--remain vigilant at home and abroad."

But there's no question that bin Laden's death is of enormous symbolic importance. As the New York Times notes in a lengthy obituary, bin Laden aimed to fundamentally transform the Muslim world:

Bin Laden . . . saw the retreat of the Soviets [from Afghanistan] as an affirmation of Muslim power and an opportunity to recreate Islamic political power and topple infidel governments through jihad, or holy war.

He declared to an interviewer, "I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America."

In its place, he built his own legend, modeling himself after the Prophet Muhammad, who in the seventh century led the Muslim people to rout the infidels, or nonbelievers, from North Africa and the Middle East. As the Koran had been revealed to Muhammad amid intense persecution, Bin Laden saw his own expulsions during the 1990s--from Saudi Arabia and then Sudan--as affirmation of himself as a chosen one.

In his vision, he would be the "emir," or prince, in a restoration of the khalifa, a political empire extending from Afghanistan across the globe. "These countries belong to Islam," he told the same interviewer in 1998, "not the rulers."

Bin Laden's death was a long time coming--it's been more than 9½ years since the Sept. 11 attacks--but perhaps it is fortuitous that it occurred amid the "Arab spring." Bin Laden was right that these countries don't belong to the rulers, some of whom by now are ex-rulers. But he'll never be emir, now that he's an ex-human.

The killing of bin Laden raises two interesting questions for the U.S. First, what does it mean for our involvement in Afghanistan? Public support for that war has been declining, and it isn't hard to imagine that there will be a push, as blogger Tom Maguire puts it, "to implement . . . the much-discussed but never implemented strategy in Vietnam--declare victory and leave."

Second, how does this affect President Obama's political fortunes? In the short term, there's very little doubt it will be beneficial. The president suddenly looks highly competent, belying the Jimmy Carter comparisons that had become ubiquitous by last week. Here's Glenn Reynolds in yesterday's Washington Examiner:

On foreign policy--another Carter weak point--Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as "reformers") took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.

As it turned out, he was able to do considerably more than wish. On the other hand, those now declaring Obama unbeatable surely are engaged in wishful thinking. A foreign-policy success does not preclude a one-term presidency: Just ask George H.W. Bush. Even Carter had the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

Associated Press

A Gitmo detainee: the agony of defeat.

One thing that does seem unlikely is that Obama will pay a political price for his jejune posturing against Guanantamo Bay. In fact, this may turn out to be a skillful example of triangulation. His promises to shutter the detention facility and bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists to New York for trial made his hard-left base happy; his failure to carry it out satisfied almost everyone else. And the anti-antiterror left is happy to blame others for Obama's broken promise, as evidenced by any New York Times editorial on the subject.

And now that bin Laden is dead, Obama is relieved of the headache of deciding where to put him on trial.

Our Friends the Pakistanis 
Last month the New York Times reported that relations between Washington and Islamabad were near the breaking point:

Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.

But yesterday Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. How involved were the Pakistanis in the successful operation? "It's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding," President Obama said in his speech last night.

The Times reports today that "an American official said the Pakistani government was not informed about the strike in advance." A statement from Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs takes no direct credit for the raid:

In an intelligence driven operation, Osama Bin Ladin was killed in the surroundings of Abbotabad in the early hours of this morning. This operation was conducted by the US forces in accordance with declared US policy that Osama bin Ladin will be eliminated in a direct action by the US forces, wherever found in the world.

The ministry does proclaim that al Qaeda "had declared war on Pakistan," echoing President Obama's statement. Meanwhile, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reports that Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, struck a defensive tone in a phone interview:

"If Whitey Bulger can live undetected by American police for so long, why can't Osama Bin Laden live undetected by Pakistani authorities?" Haqqani asked. Bulger, the former head of Boston's Winter Hill gang, was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List in mid-1999, two months after Bin Laden himself first appeared on the list. Haqqani continued, "The fact is, Mafia figures manage to do this sort of thing in Brooklyn, and Pakistan is a country that does not have the highly-developed law enforcement capabilities that your country possesses."

Haqqani went on to say, "President Obama has answered the question about Pakistan's role. It wouldn't have been possible to get Bin Laden without Pakistan's help. People are piling on this one, but the fact is, it is very plausible for someone to live undetected for long periods of time."

As John Fund notes in today's Political Diary (subscribe here):

The massive compound where bin Laden was hiding was located just 800 yards from Pakistan's Military Academy--its West Point--and was apparently built for the purpose of harboring him in 2005 at a cost of at least $1 million. Abbotabad, the city where bin Laden was killed, is known as a retirement community for Pakistani's military elite. Were elements of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, aware of his presence in Abbotabad? Were other high-level Pakistani officials?

Note that when Obama gave credit to the Pakistanis for having "helped lead" the U.S. to the bin Laden compound, he was completely vague about the timing. The help could have come years ago. It looks to us as though Obama is offering Islamabad a chance to save face--and to judge by Haqqani's comments to Goldberg, they are taking it. In private, though, the Pakistanis may be getting a much sterner message.

Too Good to Be Happy 
In his address last night, President Obama evoked "the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11." It's hard to blame him: A president whose policies have been divisively ideological had accomplished something everyone could celebrate. Well, not everyone. Over at Salon, they're not happy, and they want you to know it's because they're better than you.

David Sirota scolds Americans for not responding with "somber relief":

Instead, the Washington press corps--helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House--insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden's more enduring victory--a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.

For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. . . . But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys.

Sirota has unwittingly done a public service here. He has killed off the worst post-9/11 cliché by reducing it to complete absurdity: If the terrorists lose and we're happy, the terrorists have won. Brilliant!

Also at Salon, Glenn Greenwald preens that he isn't happy:

I personally don't derive joy or an impulse to chant boastfully at the news that someone just got two bullets put in their skull--no matter who that someone is--but that reaction is inevitable: it's the classic case of raucously cheering in a movie theater when the dastardly villain finally gets his due.

Oh well, to each his own. We personally find that Greenwald's colicky mood enhances our elation.

It also reminds us of how terribly wrong Salon has been over the years. Way back in 2001, we made a note of a piece that ran there on Sept. 14 of that year, planning to use it when bin Laden was captured or killed. It's titled "An Afghan-American Speaks" and is written by Tamim Ansary:

Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: That's bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the West. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose; that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong--in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean--but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.

Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

He was right about the need for ground troops, but somehow we managed to do it without conquering Pakistan, going to war with Islam, or wreaking a holocaust. Then there's this piece from 1998, after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania:

Unless the Clinton administration can come up with some hard evidence that bin Laden is in fact calling the shots of a vast new anti-American terrorist network, all the present allegations and faceless intelligence-source leaks claiming facts too secret and explosive to be revealed should be taken with a grain of salt.

Bin Laden may be a dangerous anti-American zealot with a mouth as big as his bankroll. But the evidence so far does not support him being a cerebral Islamic Dr. No moving an army of terrorist troops on a vast world chessboard to checkmate the United States.