Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: After over a year of campaigning in one form or another, thousands of speeches, ad campaigns, smear tactics, soundbytes, YouTube mashups, rallies, media appearances, and literally billions of dollars, Americans finally get to go to the polls and make their choice for president for the next four years.

The election has largely been a tiresome affair devoid of substance and filled with so many untruths and distractions that it is amazing the population takes it seriously enough to show up to the voting booths.

Americans have been subjected to what really amounts to brainwashing when you add up the number of advertisements and carefully crafted media appearances they have been exposed to. Most Americans have no idea what Barack Obama or Mitt Romney actually stand for, knowing only that one candidate is for ‘Hope’ and the other for ‘America’ — whatever that means. This lack of understanding is deliberate because those who actually take the time to figure out what both parties are really saying are rightfully appalled by the process and the choice they are presented.

Voter apathy is a well known phenomenon, and America has one of the lowest rates of voter turnout in the world. It also spends the most money on the process, indicating the public has an intrinsic understanding that it is a superficial horse race that has nothing to do with real issues.

From a broad perspective, Obama and Romney differ only slightly on all major topics: The economy, health care, Social Security, civil rights, and foreign policy. Obama wants to raise taxes slightly on the rich and cut them for the middle class, while Romney wants to cut taxes for everyone. Obama wants to mandate the purchase of private health insurance, while Romney wants to keep it optional. Both candidates would put Social Security up for the chopping board, and both men have little interest in maintaining civil rights at home or abroad. Their foreign policy plans, at least on paper, are almost identical, differing mostly in tone rather than substance.  Their campaigns have been designed to emphasize the differences in order to appeal to their respective demographics, and the media has largely repeated campaign claims without any real perspective.

While both men have dramatically different social, cultural and philosophical backgrounds, they have both arrived in the middle of America’s extremely conservative political spectrum. They are offering contrasting ideologies that in actual policy terms are almost exactly the same.

So why bother vote if there are no real differences?

Because America is a very big country, and those minute policy differences have a real and tangible effect when applied to the real world. And given the fragile state of both the economy and global political relationships, those contrasts can literally make the difference between life and death.

Small shifts in the tax code can make a huge difference in the ability of the economy to recover from the giant shock it received in 2008. Obama’s tax plan would increase much needed government revenue and allow it to maintain vital social programs and spend money in order to get the economy back on track. The only reason the economy is growing at all is down to the massive injection of taxpayers money into the financial system, and the limited stimulus funds that bailed out the automobile industry, kept teachers, policemen and nurses in work and restored some confidence to the floundering markets. Romney’s economic plan has been slammed by every serious economist because, 1) it doesn’t add up, and 2) after enacting all the tax cuts for the rich, it means the government will have to slash budgets for vital federal programs (like FEMA, social security, and public education) in order to stay solvent.

Obama’s health care plan covers millions more people and stops insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, while Romney’s would not. The premise is the same — massive inefficient privatized insurance companies continuing to gouge customers – but the difference in outcome is very real and very serious. Romney’s health care plan (or lack thereof) will result in up to 72 million people living without insurance — a catastrophe from both human and economic point of view.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy has been a mixture of hawkish realism, meaning it has followed a pretty nasty doctrine of extra judicial assassinations, drone killings, overt and covert military action in countries it has no business being in, but with far, far more caution than its predecessors. Obama’s global popularity remains high because he has been careful to build international consensus around American action, and pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan — two major symbols of failed American foreign policy. The Obama administration has also carefully managed the Israeli/Iranian conflict, ensuring the Israelis do not attack Iran and denying them guarantees of military assistance. It may not seem like much, but a Romney administration would follow the neoconservative doctrine of hawkish fantasy politics where violence is the first option and power projection the priority regardless of real world outcomes. We saw what happened when neo conservatives took control of foreign policy in America, and it wasn’t pretty. 17 out of Romney’s 24 foreign policy advisers are Bush neocons, so it doesn’t require a huge amount of imagination to envision what could happen over the next four years in Romney gets in (think war with Iran and major conflicts with Russia and China for starters).

There are also issues where there real differences between the candidates: women’s rights, gay rights, the environment, and unions being good examples.

In regards to women’s rights, Romney’s appointment of another conservative to the Supreme Court would make it the most conservative in history, threatening Roe v Wade and potentially rolling back women’s rights by 40 years. Romney is running as pro life candidate and he has explicitly stated that he would de-fund Planned Parenthood should he get into office, making contraception far harder to access and abortion a far less safe prospect for vulnerable women. Obama on the other hand, has been a strong advocate of women’s rights, making women’s issues a centerpiece of his healthcare plan and promoting the enforcement of equal pay for equal work.

As far as gay rights go, the Obama Administration is the most progressive in history. Writes Nicholas Teich in the Huffington Post:

Passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” last September. Support for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Support for a transgender-inclusive Employment Nondiscrimination Act. Secretary Clinton’s speech last December in recognition of International Human Rights Day in which she stated the importance of advancing LGBT rights. Then, last May, on Meet the Press, the sitting vice president of the United States personally endorsed marriage equality. Could this all be real? Could a presidential administration really care about advancing LGBT rights? The evidence was overwhelming, but my disbelief continued. Then President Obama followed the vice president with his own declaration of personal support of same-sex marriage.

Romney on the other hand supports a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution that defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman and has remained typically non-committal on a host of other issues like adoption and hospital visitation rights for gay couples.

On the environment, Romney’s plan for a America would be actively disastrous. Romney plans to slash environmental regulation, boost “clean coal” production, and stop fuel efficiency rules should he get in, rolling back the significant achievements of the Obama administration and operating on the basis that climate change poses no serious threat to our existence.

The Obama Administration should not shy away from its environmental record, despite relentless attacks from Republicans and it being pretty unpopular from a political point of view. Notes the Washington Post:

The day after the November 2010 elections made clear President Obama’s greenhouse-gas legislation was doomed, he vowed to keep trying to curb emissions linked to global warming. There’s more than one way of “skinning the cat,” he told reporters.

Since then, Obama has used his executive powers — including his authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act — to press the most sweeping attack on air pollution in U.S. history. He has imposed the first carbon-dioxide limits on new power plants, tightened fuel-efficiency rules as part of the auto bailout and steered billions of federal dollars to clean-energy projects. He also has proposed slashing mercury emissions from utilities by 91 percent by 2016.

Obama has set out an ambitious plan for the next four years that while not up to the standards of every environmentalist, will make a significant difference if enacted. Romney’s on the other hand, will be actively detrimental to the environment.

The President has a mixed record when it comes to defending of unions, but he has generally supported them and they are overwhelmingly in his camp for reelection. Romney has consistently attacked organized labor in line with his party, targeting teachers and promising cuts for  federal employees under his administration.The preservation of workers rights in America is one of the most important issues confronting the country. Labor rights have been under sustained attack for almost 40 years, making America one of the worst places for workers in the industrialized world.

Romney believes that there should be less regulation in regards to workers rights, and given the US already has one of the least regulated labor markets in the world, it paints a pretty bleak picture for the future.

In short, the choice for the next four years is clear: America can turn the clock back and implement policies further to the right of George W. Bush, or it can continue to progress under the more pragmatic and humane policies of the Obama administration. The hard left believes that the system is broken and neither parties offer a way out of the dysfunctional mess created by Washington and powerful corporate interests. It is true that Obama is not offering a radical plan to revolutionize workers rights, undo decades of imperial foreign policy and dismantle the military industrial complex. But it is also true that no politician or political party could given the structure of government in America. It will take decades of concerted effort to undo the poisonous effects of big business, Wall St and the pentagon system in American politics. There needs to be some sort of basis to move forward, and that means voting strategically to keep the most dangerous politicians out of office and building grassroots pressure to force action from elected officials.

When pushing for health care reform in 2009, Obama echoed FDR and told grass roots activists to “make him do it,” knowing that change comes from below, not from above. Obama is not the change progressives hoped for, but he can be if the electorate pushes him. He is a remarkably intelligent and flexible leader with roots in community organizing and progressive politics. He understands the challenges facing America, and understands he is locked in a system that makes change extremely difficult to enact. Obama will seize opportunity to make positive changes while Romney will seize opportunities to dismantle them.

It’s not a difficult decision to make if you care about the future of America and want it to be a better place to live in for the majority of the population and generations to come. Obama is the only option for President, and you should go out and vote for him.

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This doesn’t look good for the Obama administration, particularly as it pledged to close Guantanamo back in 2008:

Another prisoner has died at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. military said Monday, two days after the man was apparently found unconscious in his cell at the isolated, high-security prison.

Guards administered first aid to the prisoner before he was rushed to a base hospital, where he was declared dead “after extensive lifesaving measures had been performed,” the U.S. military’s Southern Command said in a brief statement…..

The prisoner was the ninth detainee to die at the facility since it was opened in January 2002 to hold men suspected of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. The military has said two of the previous deaths were by natural causes and six were declared suicides.

The existence of Guantanamo is a complete embarrassment to the US – not only is it completely illegal under international law, it is serving only to foster resentment in the Muslim world. The news of the latest suicide is yet more ammunition for disgruntled citizens of the Middle East and there will no doubt be blowback in one form or another. It’s hard to see what purpose Guantanamo now holds for anyone and it’s high time the Obama Administration made good on its word. Perhaps the Democrats made a political calculation that doing it in the President’s first term would have given the Republicans more ammo to hit him with, but it’s hard to see how the benefits of keeping it open outweigh the risks. The longer it is open, the more tragedies like the one above are bound to happen. And that results in more danger to America.

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By Bob Cesca: In a speech filled with misleading statements and nostalgic lines about how wonderful life used to be before President Obama was inaugurated, the single-most ridiculous line from Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech Thursday night was this:

“…Every president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction, ‘You are better off than you were four years ago.’ Except Jimmy Carter. And except this president… This president cannot tell us that you’re better off today than when he took office.”

He absolutely can, and he should!

Yes, I agree that there are still people who are hurting. Unemployment remains unacceptably high, and, ultimately, the depth of the Great Recession is still playing itself out in the difficult task of mitigating it and returning the economy to a place of steady prosperity.

But when it comes to the question of whether we’re better off, there’s no doubt that everyone is better off now than we were when, for example, the economy was collapsing with no end in sight; when we were engaged in two wars with no end in sight; when healthcare was less affordable; when mutual funds, IRAs and 401(k) retirement plans were losing value as the stock market crashed; and so forth. More of this presently.

By the way, this is a risky question for Romney since a Republican president with a strikingly similar economic agenda was in office four years ago, and he was navigating his way around a worsening economic freefall. Why would Romney even dare to bring this up? I’m sure the question the president and the Democrats will be asking this coming week in Charlotte is whether we should continue the policies that ended the disaster and sparked an economic recovery, or whether we should revert back to the policies that were in place prior to the recession — policies that John McCain and Sarah Palin were proposing in 2008 and which Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are proposing today. On one hand we have an administration that’s responsible for policies that have proven to be effective given the dire circumstances, and on the other hand we’re hearing about Republican boilerplate policies that absolutely failed.

So how effective were the policies of the Obama administration?

Insofar as the Republicans have blamed the president for everything that’s bad, it’s only fair then to credit him for the things that have significantly improved, and many of the following things are, in fact, a direct result of the president’s actions.

1. Several weeks after the president was inaugurated and before any of his policies had taken effect, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its bottom: 6,626. This was the low point in a slide that began as far back as October 2007 when the Dow surpassed 14,000. From that day onward, it dropped. Since its low point and under the watch of the Obama administration, however, the Dow has climbed back to 13,090 as of Friday. That’s a massive recovery in just three-and-a-half years, and this resurgence began in earnest just after the president signed the dreaded stimulus, which pumped over $700 billion back into the economy when no one else, from consumers to corporations, were prepared to do the same.

2. When the president took office, the gross domestic product — the pulse of the American economy — was contracting by 8%. In other words, the last time the economy was shrinking to this degree was 1947. In early 2009, no one knew how deep the contraction was, and we’re still discovering the true depth of the crisis. Regardless, by the third quarter of 2009, the economy was growing again. To this day, it continues to grow by around 1-2% per quarter.

3. The economy hemorrhaged 800,000 jobs during the month the president took office. 700,000 the month after. 750,000 in March of 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) was signed in that same month, March, and following the measure, fewer and fewer Americans were fired until November 2009 when the private sector began to add new jobs for the first time since December 2007. In terms of new job creation, we’re actually better off now than we were nearly five years ago. Obviously, more jobs need to be added, but we also have to examine why job creation isn’t more robust. Primarily, corporations are inexplicably sitting on record cash assets. $2 trillion, in fact, according to the Wall Street Journal — the highest level of cash assets since 1959. Furthermore, public/government sector jobs at the federal, state and local level have dropped off for the first time in recent history. Experts assert that this has hurt job growth and the unemployment rate.

These are three of the biggest indicators of economic health in America. But what about the deficit and the debt — the crazy scary numbers the Republicans were screeching about last week?

4. According to the CBO, the president inherited a 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion from President Bush’s final spending request back in 2008. I’m not talking about 2009 spending authorized by President Obama but fiscal year 2009 spending requested by Bush, which somehow President Obama has become responsible for in the eyes of many Republicans. Actually, the Obama administration only added an additional $400 billion to the deficit for the remainder of 2009. That’s still a big chunk of money, but bear in mind the stimulus and other measures that were necessary as a means of breathing life into the economy when no one else would. Add to that a seriously constricted level of tax revenue due to layoffs and reduced incomes. By the end of the president’s first year, the deficit was $1.4 trillion. Huge by ordinary standards, but that economic era and the colossal recession was hardly ordinary. Since then, the deficit has been reduced nearly every year (the deficit increased by $6 billion in 2011 from $1.293 trillion to $1.299 trillion, then dropped to $1.1 trillion for 2012). Fact: the president has reduced the deficit from $1.4 trillion to a projected $977 billion in the last fiscal year of his first term, 2013. $500 billion in total deficit reduction in four years. While I personally would have preferred more spending given the depth of the recession, from the perspective of deficit reduction, this can be considered a considerable achievement and far from the big spending, big government myth the Republicans have created. Meanwhile, the national debt continues to grow, but the year-over-year growth of the debt has slowed from 15% in the president’s first year to 4% in his third year. Likewise, the year-over-year growth in the size of government is the lowest since the 1950s.

What’s next?

One million unemployed Americans found jobs in the first six months of 2012 alone. Inflation is 1.4% — a full point below its all-time average and four points below its 5.6% rate in July, 2008. Home sales are up. Home prices are up. Consumer debt is down. Income tax rates remain at an all-time low. The Medicare prescription donut-hole is closing, with 5.2 million seniors and people with disabilities having saved $4 billion on prescription drug costs because of the evil, evil Affordable Care Act. Preventative medicine is now fully covered by both Medicare and private insurance without deductibles or coinsurance. Millions of Americans in their 20s are now insured under their parents’ health insurance. Medicaid and SCHIP have been expanded, making it easier for struggling families to get healthcare. Women are closer than ever to paycheck equality. The war in Iraq is over. Bin Laden was hunted down and killed.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? From a national perspective — from the perspective of life becoming a little bit easier and the future a lot brighter, the answer again is a resounding yes.

Adding… By way of a post script, I’d like to add that several Obama campaign surrogates turned up on the Sunday shows and actually avoided the obvious answer to this question. Clearly they were worried that answering “yes” would appear insensitive to the Americans who are still struggling. The governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley — a Democratic supporter of the president — actually answered, “No.” What the hell? Astonishingly self-defeating and weak. Perhaps a response to the effect of, “Without a doubt the nation is significantly better off than it was four years ago, and it will continue to get better and stronger when the president is re-elected,” would completely thread the politically sensitive needle without giving Romney a major win on this too-important question. But to run away from the answer undermines the entire basis for the campaign. I suspect Governor O’Malley will end up in numerous Romney ads. Unfortunately and stupidly.

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John Cusack’s article/interview with law professor Jonathan Turley on the Obama administration’s abuses of the constitution is a must read. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with Cusack final point, that he’s not sure he can vote for a President who taught constitutional law and then goes on to authorize the assassination of American citizens, but he makes a good point.

Here’s the key exchange:

Cusack: Yeah. We’re getting into kind of Kafka territory. You know, with Bush I always felt like you were at one of those rides in an amusement park where the floor kept dropping and you kept kind of falling. But I think what Obama’s done is we’ve really hit the bottom as far as civil liberties go.

Turley: Yet people have greeted this erosion of civil liberties with this collective yawn.

Cusack: Yeah, yeah. And so then it gets down to the question, “Well, are you going to vote for Obama?” And I say, “Well, I don’t really know. I couldn’t really vote for Hillary Clinton because of her Iraq War vote.” Because I felt like that was a line, a Rubicon line –

Turley: Right.

Cusack: — a Rubicon line that I couldn’t cross, right? I don’t know how to bring myself to vote for a constitutional law professor, or even a constitutional realist, who throws away due process and claims the authority that the executive branch can assassinate American citizens. I just don’t know if I can bring myself to do it.
If you want to make a protest vote against Romney, go ahead, but I would think we’d be better putting our energies into local and state politics — occupy Wall Street and organizations and movements outside the system, not national politics, not personalities. Not stadium rock politics. Not brands. That’s the only thing I can think of. What would you say?

Turley: Well, the question, I think, that people have got to ask themselves when they get into that booth is not what Obama has become, but what have we become? That is, what’s left of our values if we vote for a person that we believe has shielded war crimes or violated due process or implemented authoritarian powers. It’s not enough to say, “Yeah, he did all those things, but I really like what he did with the National Park System.”

Cusack: Yeah, or that he did a good job with the auto bailout.

Turley: Right. I think that people have to accept that they own this decision, that they can walk away. I realize that this is a tough decision for people but maybe, if enough people walked away, we could finally galvanize people into action to make serious changes. We have to recognize that our political system is fundamentally broken, it’s unresponsive. Only 11 percent of the public supports Congress, and yet nothing is changing — and so the question becomes, how do you jumpstart that system? How do you create an alternative? What we have learned from past elections is that you don’t create an alternative by yielding to this false dichotomy that only reinforces their monopoly on power.

Cusack: I think that even Howard Zinn/Chomsky progressives, would admit that there will be a difference in domestic policy between Obama and a Romney presidency.
But DUE PROCESS….I think about how we own it. We own it. Everybody’s sort of let it slip. There’s no immediacy in the day-to-day on and it’s just one of those things that unless they… when they start pulling kids off the street, like they did in Argentina a few years ago and other places, all of a sudden, it’s like, “How the hell did that happen?” I say, “Look, you’re not helping Obama by enabling him. If you want to help him, hold his feet to the fire.”

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Mitt Romney: Can't stop lying (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As you’ve probably observed already, Mitt Romney is a lie machine. Steve Benen at Maddow Blog has been tracking Romney’s mendacity and the tally is usually 20-30 items per week. That’s a lot, and Benen probably doesn’t hear about all of them. Any normal human being has to work hard to lie that much.

But Mitt Romney is doing it as a matter of campaign strategy, specifically as a way to fire up the gullible and desperate tea party base. By the time a Romney lie is fact-checked, it’s already too late, and, besides, Romney supporters won’t actually read/believe the fact-checkers who are obviously part of the liberal conspiracy to re-elect a communist Muslim. It’s a strategy based on the maxim: “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.”

Meanwhile, as I’ve been reporting here, Republican legislatures have passed laws in 11 states requiring photo IDs in order to cast a ballot. These laws will make it more difficult for lower income registered voters to participate on Election Day even though numerous studies have proved that voter fraud is practically nonexistent. And in Ohio, Republicans tried to significantly cut back the window for early voting from five weeks to three weeks. They failed to keep the law on the books, but the Republicans managed to ban early voting on the weekends, except for military veterans who can continue to vote on Saturday and Sunday.

However, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit against Ohio to restore weekend voting for all registered voters. Soldiers would retain weekend voting privileges, and voters would once again be allowed to vote on those days. Once again, the Democrats are trying to make voting easier and the Republicans are trying to strip people of that fundamental right.

Over the weekend, Mitt Romney, while clearly benefiting from Republican voter purges and Voter ID laws meant to discourage minority and working class voters, accused the Obama administration of somehow trying to disenfranchise military voters. In other words, the Democrats are the ones who are trying to disenfranchise people — and they hate the troops, too! The troops! The Romney Unit on The Facebook:

President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.

In addition to sounding like a Patrick Bateman speech, that’s arguably the biggest Romney lie so far. There’s nothing here that’s even remotely close to the truth. The Obama administration is absolutely not doing what Romney says its doing — in any way. The president is actually trying to extend weekend voting to everyone, including the troops. Romney has used twisted Orwellian Karl Rove style backwards logic to trick his supporters into buying this hooey while reinforcing the myth that the president — the commander in chief of the armed forces — hates the military. At the same time, he’s reversed the Voter ID debate by making it seem as if the Democrats are trying to disenfranchise voters.

And it’s in print. It’s not a Romney gaffe or something he blurted out on a cable news show. He (his advisers) carefully crafted this one and it’s entirely untrue. Politifact declared it to be “False” while entirely debunking the post.

It is simply dishonest for Romney and his backers to claim that Obama’s effort to extend early voting privileges to everyone in Ohio constitutes an attack on military voters’ ability to cast ballots on the weekend before elections.

But none of that matters because it’s out there now. The Facebook post has been “Liked” more than 152,000 times and shared by more than 19,000 Romney Facebook friends. And it’s a lie by every measure. Some choice comments:

“Obama is trying to make it more inconvenient for the military to vote. Obama is a db.”

“suing Ohio for equal voting days between military and civilian voters , is an attack on military voters .common sense something dipshit liberals dnt have …”

“What a hypocrite! He sues to overturn voter ID laws so that no vote is turned away and then sues to prevent servicemen and women from disgusting! He is a disgusting President!”

Everything is taken at face value because Romney’s lies are crafted to be exactly what the base wants to hear. They want to hear that the president is a hypocrite who hates the troops. They want to hear that it’s the president who doesn’t want people to vote — not their state legislatures and governors. So Romney gives them what they want: red meat, irrespective of its veracity.

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Illegal Immigrant rights protest in the US/Mexico border in Tijuana (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the Guardian:

The Obama administration has taken the biggest step towards granting legal status to undocumented immigrants in America in 25 years by ordering the end to deportations of law-abiding young people who came to the US as children.

Announcing the change in the Rose Garden of the White House on Friday, Obama said that it would remove the fear of deportation from young people known as Dreamers. “These are young people who study in our schools, play in our neighbourhoods, pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart and minds, and in every single way but one: paper.”

The dramatic shift gives about 800,000 people the chance of gaining temporary legal status to live and work in the US That makes this the most dramatic shift since Ronald Reagan granted an amnesty to 3 million largely Hispanic undocumented immigrants in 1987.

In a country sharply divided over what to do with the millions of people living illegally in the country, the controversial nature of the announcement was underlined by a heckler, later revealed to be Neil Munro of the the rightwing blog the Daily Caller, who broke into Obama’s address. The president, clearly furious, berated Munro for interrupting him.

The president went on to say: “Put yourselves in [the Dreamers'] shoes. Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life, only to suddenly face deportation to a country you know nothing about with a language that you do not speak.”

Obama added that it made no sense to deport young people who were making an extroardinary contribution to the US economy.

The move was hailed by Latino and civil rights groups across America.

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Seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The U.S. intelligence community will be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines.

Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there were no clear ties to terrorism.

Members of Congress had called for expanding the center’s record-retention authority, saying the intelligence community did not connect strands of intelligence held by multiple agencies that led up to the failed bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009.

“Following the failed terrorist attack in December 2009, representatives of the counter-terrorism community concluded it is vital for NCTC to be provided with a variety of data sets from various agencies that contain terrorism information,” National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper Jr. said in a statement late Thursday. “The ability to search against these data sets for up to five years on a continuing basis as these updated guidelines permit will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively.”

The new rules, which replace guidelines issued in 2008, have privacy advocates concerned about the potential for data-mining information on innocent Americans. Read more at the LATimes….

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Glenn Greenwald asks why the formerly pro negotiating Obama won't negotiate with Iran:

We have now a great irony: America’s increasingly tense and dangerous conflict with Iran is characterized (one could even say caused) by the unwillingness of the Obama administration to engage meaningfully with Iran’s leaders. After a few early, symbolic gestures, it has been the administration’s refusal to pursue the most fruitful path for resolving the various disputes between the two nations — namely, direct negotiations and diplomacy — that is most responsible for the stand-off.

Not opening direct talks with the Iranians is a one way ticket to disaster. Actions taken on either side are open to interpretation and misunderstanding, and any escalation of the current situation could get out of hand extremely quickly. This is another issue on which the Republicans (and some Democrats) have boxed Obama in, limiting his ability to craft an intelligent policy towards the isolated country.

Obama no doubt understands that talking to adversaries is a far more effective way of reaching compromise and avoiding war, but the hawks within the US political spectrum insist that the threat of force is the only way to deal with Iran. The problem is, political calculations at home means following a far more dangerous course abroad – another catch 22 situation the President has yet to think his way out of.

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Bob Cesca hammers home the point:

Everyone with a realistic view of the the Obama administration knows what’s what — for better or worse. At this stage in the proceedings, with another pivotal election around the corner, there’s nothing wrong (and everything right) with making a strong case, without apologies, for re-electing the chief executive who’s responsible for all of those better items on the list. And there are many.

The reasons for distrusting Obama are also many – his administration has fallen way short of its promise and his list of failures in key areas like banking reform and the environment are unforgivable. But there are accomplishments to be proud of (see Bob's link) and the alternative is so horrifying it is not worth contemplating doing anything to undermine his chances at reelection.

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Matt Taibbi believes that had Obama properly dealth with the banking crisis (ie. instituted serious regulation), the Rick Perrys of American politics wouldn't exist:

To me this whole issue encapsulates the basic failure of the Obama administration. It has surrendered to Wall Street interests, and in doing so has allowed lunatics like Rick Perry to step into legitimate roles as critics of corrupt policy.

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