Wednesday, July 2, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Who is the worst president since WWII?
By STEVE CHAGGARIS CBS NEWS July 2, 2014

As if President Obama doesn't have enough to worry about running the country day-to-day, now his legacy can be added to his laundry list of concerns.

Mr. Obama edges out former President George W. Bush as the worst president since World War II, American voters say, according to a new Quinnipiac Pollreleased Wednesday.

Thirty-three percent chose Mr. Obama as the worst among the 12 presidents since Harry Truman, with 28 percent choosing George W. Bush and Richard Nixon tallying 13 percent. In 2006, Mr. Bush led the pack with 34 percent over Richard Nixon at 17 percent and Bill Clinton at 16 percent, much higher than the scant 3 percent who currently think Clinton is the worst.

When asked who the best president is since World War II, 35 percent of American voters chose Ronald Reagan, 18 percent picked Clinton and 15 percent selected John F. Kennedy. Only 8 percent said Mr. Obama was the best since World War II and George W. Bush barely registered on the "best" list with 1 percent.

To add insult to injury for Mr. Obama, more voters say the country would be better off if 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won the election. Forty-five percent feel America would be better off with a President Romney; 38 percent said the country would be worse off.

"Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"Would Mitt have been a better fit? More voters in hindsight say yes."

Mr. Obama's negative numbers echo his recent approval ratings, which have been below 50 percent for over a year. In Wednesday's Quinnipiac poll, his approval rating stands at 40 percent, mirroring a CBS News/New York Times poll released last week.

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,446 registered voters nationwide from June 24-30 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percentage points.





Polls are only useful to politicians, as they may be a guide to future voting, but within 6 months the poll will reflect new numbers. I always look at polls, but I never worry about them. The current president got the lowest scores in both 2014 and 2006, with Clinton now getting higher approval scores than in 2006, 18% actually voting him as the best since WWII. Interestingly, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, who were very unpopular while in office, were not even mentioned.

Personally, I think the public's tendency to blame absolutely everything bad that happens on the president is unfair and not very logical. You have to watch politics more closely than that to see what Congress and the Senate are doing at the time, and the occasional catastrophic event even affects public opinion, when any president would be tried severely by those circumstances. I thought that public opinion against Bush when he flew over the drowned city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and didn't do “enough” about it was unfair, because sending in troops during the massive flooding wouldn't have helped. He gave the city emergency funding. FEMA and the Red Cross were the only people who could help at that time. The fact is that Katrina was an overwhelming event. The public is, after all, a fickle lover.






Israeli retribution killing for teens' murder?
CBS NEWS July 2, 2014

JERUSALEM -- Violent clashes broke out Wednesday between Israeli police and Palestinians in Jerusalem after reports that a young Palestinian had been abducted and murdered overnight in an apparent retribution attack for the killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CBS News that his department received a call at 4 a.m. local time saying a young boy had been forced into a vehicle in East Jerusalem, a predominantly Palestinian area.

"The police started searching for the vehicle connected to the incident," said Rosenfeld, and "an hour later police found a body in the area of Jerusalem forest."

He would not confirm that the body was that of a young boy, but said police were investigating all "possibilities -- criminal and nationalistic." Rosenfeld also said police had increased security around Jerusalem and "mobilized extra units."

Hours earlier, CBS News' Alex Ortiz says hundreds of thousands of Israelis gathered to mourn and bid farewell to the three teenagers whose bodies were found earlier this week, not far from where they disappeared almost three weeks ago.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the funeral, where the flag-shrouded bodies of Gilad Shaar, 16, Eyal Yifrah, 19, and Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old with dual Israeli-American citizenship, were put on display.

"This day has turned into a national day of mourning," he told those gathered at the memorial.

Earlier Tuesday, police released a recording of the emergency phone call made by one of the teens at the moment they were kidnapped.

"We're being kidnapped," Shaar is heard telling the operator. Then one of the apparent kidnappers is heard shouting, "keep your head down," before the line goes dead.

Suspecting a hoax, Israeli forces initially delayed their search for the boys for several hours. Two weeks later, they found them dead beneath a pile of rocks in a field near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Israel has blamed the killings on the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, and has cracked down hard on its members in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

The security operation is ongoing, but already more than 400 Palestinians have been arrested and at least six killed -- including children.




“He would not confirm that the body was that of a young boy, but said police were investigating all "possibilities -- criminal and nationalistic." Rosenfeld also said police had increased security around Jerusalem and "mobilized extra units.” “Violent clashes” occurred in Jerusalem between Palestinians and the Israeli police. The Israeli public should refrain from citizen to citizen violence against the Palestinians, as the Israeli government is already “punishing” the Palestinian community for the three teenagers' kidnapping and murder. They have arrested 400 Palestinians and killed six, “including children.” Killing children is hard to justify – it's like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. War is one thing, but killing a whole village is evil.







New concerns arise over fracking's safety – CBS
By BRUCE KENNEDY MONEYWATCH July 2, 2014

The ongoing controversy over the method for removing oil and gas from unconventional, hard-to-reach underground deposits that's known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has some new data to chew on.

It seems a large percentage of oil and gas wells tapping the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania are leaking methane gas, either into the air or into underground sources of drinking water.

That's the finding of an analysis conducted by a Cornell University-led research team and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team looked at compliance reports for more than 41,000 conventional and unconventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. It determined that unconventional gas wells in northeastern Pennsylvania had a nearly three-fold higher risk of leaking, compared to conventional wells in the same region.

One possible factor for this so-called "methane migration," according to the study, could be "compromised structural integrity" in the casings and cement used in the unconventional oil and gas wells.

"These results, particularly in light of numerous contamination complaints and explosions nationally in areas with high concentrations of unconventional oil and gas development and the increased awareness of the role of methane in anthropogenic [man-made] climate change, should be cause for concern," it concluded.

"In a typical well, hundreds of bags of cement are mixed and injected," Anthony Ingraffea, one of the study's lead authors and a Cornell professor of civil and environmental engineering, told the University's Cornell Chronicle news site.

"If the water-to-cement mixture ratio isn't right, you have problems," he said. "With too much water, the cement shrinks. With too little water, the mixture dries too fast."

Fracking has helped bring about an historic oil and gas production boom in the U.S., creating energy supplies that are moving the U.S. closer to energy independence. On Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that American crude oil production for April was 8.4 million barrels per day. Texas and North Dakota, two states where fracking is in wide use, accounted for nearly half the total.

However, opponents have been pointing to fracking's potential health dangers, such as possible wide-scale pollution of essential drinking water supplies, as reasons to limit or even completely ban the process.

But Mark Zoback, a Stanford University geophysicist, member of the National Academy of Engineering's Deepwater Horizon investigation committee and a fracking expert, says this technology has a place, as long as the states and federal government set up rigorous standards to oversee its use and protect both the public and the environment.

"The oil and gas industry is a large-scale industrial process, [like] food preparation, aviation, transportation, chemical plants," Zoback recently told theLos Angeles Times.

"We live in a highly technological and complex society," he said, "and the only way we can survive is through the marriage between technology and regulation."




The National Academy Of Sciences has found that “unconventional gas wells in northeastern Pennsylvania had a nearly three-fold higher risk of leaking, compared to conventional wells in the same region.” This leakage is possibly due to “'compromised structural integrity' in the casings and cement used in the unconventional oil and gas wells.... 'These results, particularly in light of numerous contamination complaints and explosions nationally in areas with high concentrations of unconventional oil and gas development and the increased awareness of the role of methane in anthropogenic [man-made] climate change, should be cause for concern,' it concluded.” The water to cement ratio has to be perfect.

Fracking's “potential health hazards,” particularly the pollution of water wells, has been cited in the movement to ban its use. Also in the news there has been a large increase in the number of earthquakes in the state of Oklahoma in recent years, thought to be due to fracking. Mark Zoback, a fracking expert “says this technology has a place, as long as the states and federal government set up rigorous standards to oversee its use and protect both the public and the environment.” It seems to be that oversight of the actual drilling sites hasn't been very effective, since there are so many problems occurring.

Zoback says, “'We live in a highly technological and complex society," he said, "and the only way we can survive is through the marriage between technology and regulation.'" I must say, though, I think fracking is one technological process that shouldn't be allowed. I would hate to live in the area of one of those wells and find that my well was unusable. Sometimes making money isn't the real “bottom line.” Methane is the most potent of the greenhouse gases.






Civil Rights Act: A proud memory for W.H. aide
By JAMES BROWN, ALVIN PATRICK CBS NEWS July 1, 2014

Wednesday marks 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights bill into law, a dream that became a reality with the help of White House aide Clifford Alexander.

The eighty year old Alexander is still very proud of his time as an aide in Johnson's administration. After graduating from Harvard and Yale Law School, he served as civil rights adviser to the president.

"The only African American, on the staff, at the time," Alexander told CBS News. "It was, like, many things in this life, where black people were not included as much as they should've been. But in the case of Lyndon Johnson, he made me as comfortable as he made his white aides. He was a man who was forward-looking and a man who cared about the issues of civil rights and cared about people."

At his home, Alexander proudly displays the pen Johnson gave him after using it to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was the president's passion, he says, that produced the historic legislation.

"First of all, his own righteousness; secondly, his skill in dealing with the legislature; thirdly, getting the civil rights leadership to come forward, and to put pressure on him, on members of Congress to do something about civil rights," Alexander said.

On the day of the signing, Alexander was seated in the packed East Room.

When asked if there was a lot of chatter or frivolity in the room, Alexander said no.

"We had nothing to celebrate. Remember what we were getting was the act, not the execution of the act. Nobody had gotten hired. Nobody was able to sit at the lunch counter yet," Alexander said. "What we now had was protection for those who would keep that away from us as a right. And that was extraordinarily important."

A major part of the act established the equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And LBJ would tap Alexander as the first African American to head the agency.

Alexander worked behind the scenes to put the first African American, Thurgood Marshall, on the Supreme Court and also helped to push through the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

"You have to, in this society, you have to push," Alexander said. "And if you don't push, you're not gonna get it."

And on July 2nd, 1964 that push began to pay off.




"'The only African American, on the staff, at the time,' Alexander told CBS News. 'It was, like, many things in this life, where black people were not included as much as they should've been. But in the case of Lyndon Johnson, he made me as comfortable as he made his white aides. He was a man who was forward-looking and a man who cared about the issues of civil rights and cared about people.'"

1964 was the year I graduated from high school and went to college as a Freshman. Needless to say, I didn't go to school with any black kids, but the Civil Rights Movement was in the news and everyone was conscious of it as an issue. I had no animus against black people, but I also had no familiarity with them. When I went to college at Greensboro College there were no black students yet, nor do I remember encountering them at UNC-Chapel Hill the next year. During my time at UNC, though, there were some, including from foreign countries, and I got to know a black woman at a library where I worked during a break from college. She was so much like me that I found her a good companion. In later work sites I met more blacks and have always found them sensible and polite.

I am glad, therefore, that we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. I want our society to be fair to all and give each person the opportunity to advance in work and social situations. I'm glad to have lived during this period of social growth in the US and the world. The conflicts we have had in our society are worth the stress. We are a better people than in the Jim Crow generations. I am concerned now mainly with rising poverty and problems in the schools, with some worry about the ultra-conservative bent that our society seems to be taking. Those people who are racists and completely pro-business over the social safety net that we have built up are a concern, but they are probably always going to be present. I will continue to vote Democratic and work for the underprivileged, whoever they are.







Navy gets its first female four-star admiral – CBS
AP  July 1, 2014

WASHINGTON - The Navy has its first female four-star admiral.

She is Michelle Janine Howard, promoted on Tuesday to the service's highest rank. The ceremony was held at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery, near the Pentagon.

She will serve as the vice chief of naval operations, which makes her the No. 2 admiral in the Navy behind Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations.

Howard has served 32 years in the Navy. She is a 1978 graduate of Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1982.

Among her many distinctions, Howard in 1999 became the first African-American woman to command a Navy ship.




“Howard in 1999 became the first African-American woman to command a Navy ship,” and now she is second from the top in the whole navy. She must have had an exemplary career, and given the way women are sometimes treated in the military, she must be a very strong person. Congratulations to another woman making history.





More than 500 arrested at Hong Kong pro-democracy sit-in
CBS/AP July 1, 2014

HONG KONG -- Police here arrested more than 500 people holding a sit-in a day after tens of thousands in the former British colony joined a massive march to push for democracy.

Anger at mainland China has never been greater after Beijing warned recently it holds the ultimate authority over the freewheeling capitalist enclave.

That's despite a mini-constitution that gives the city a high degree of autonomy until 2047.

Police said 511 people were arrested Wednesday for unlawful assembly and preventing police from carrying out their duties. They were holding an overnight sit-in after the rally.

Police said 98,600 people joined Tuesday's rally at its peak, while organizers said 510,000 turned out, the highest estimates in a decade. Hong Kong University researchers put the number at between 154,000 and 172,000.

The Reuters news agency says, "Hundreds of police forcibly removed kicking and screaming protesters" in what it says "could be the biggest challenge yet to China which resumed control over the former British colony in 1997."

Reuters adds that, "Many of the more than 1,000 protesters linked arms in a bid to resist efforts to remove them but they were taken away one at a time, in some cases by three or four police, as activists kicked, screamed and punched before being bundled on to buses."

The arrests came after the rally, when two student groups held a sit-in overnight to "occupy" a street in the city's financial district, vowing to remain until 8 a.m.

On Tuesday, peaceful crowds carried banners and posters urging democracy and filled half of a broad boulevard as they marched in sweltering heat and occasional rain through skyscraper-lined streets to the financial district. Thousands of police kept watch and ordered the city's iconic trolleys to shut down along the boulevard to reduce overcrowding.

Some protesters chanted, "Our own government, our own choice," while others called for Leung to step down.

Some groups along the protest route sang a Cantonese song based on "Can you hear the people sing?" from the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel "Les Miserables." The song, with rewritten lyrics referring to universal suffrage, has become an anthem for Hong Kong protesters.

July 1, a public holiday marking the handover of Hong Kong from London to Beijing, has become an annual day of protest. This year a focal point for demonstrators' anger was a policy document, or "white paper," released last month by China's Cabinet that said Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy is not inherent but is authorized by the central government.

"After seeing the white paper's content, we should be worried," said Jeff Kwok, 28, an export firm employee waiting at the rally's starting point in Victoria Park, where six soccer fields and surrounding areas were jammed with people. "The central government, they're trying to tell the Hong Kong people that they are the host country and Hong Kong is just one of their regions. They're trying to tell us they have absolute power to rule us."

Kwok complained that Beijing doesn't respect the principle of "one country, two systems" under which Hong Kong is allowed to retain control over much of its own affairs.

Another protester, Kennie Chan, lamented that Beijing was less restrained now in exerting its influence over Hong Kong.

"In the past, it seemed like they were doing it step by step, but now, it's obvious that they cannot stand Hong Kong people. We are not obedient anymore, and are resisting more and more," said the 30-year-old, who works as a stage manager.

Ahead of the rally, one group of protesters burned a copy of the white paper outside a ceremony attended by officials to mark the handover.

The protest comes days after nearly 800,000 residents voted in an informal referendum aimed at bolstering support for full democracy. Beijing denounced the referendum as a political farce.

China's Communist leaders have pledged to allow Hong Kongers to vote for the city's leader by 2017. However, they've rejected calls to allow the public to name candidates, insisting instead that they be vetted by a Beijing-friendly committee like the one that has hand-picked all leaders since the handover.

Leung, Hong Kong's leader, tried to soothe tensions, saying in a speech that he'll do his "utmost to forge a consensus" on implementing universal suffrage on schedule. But the government later released a statement saying it is unlikely that public nominations will be allowed because it's legally "highly controversial."




“Anger at mainland China has never been greater after Beijing warned recently it holds the ultimate authority over the freewheeling capitalist enclave. That's despite a mini-constitution that gives the city a high degree of autonomy until 2047....Some protesters chanted, "Our own government, our own choice," while others called for Leung to step down....July 1, a public holiday marking the handover of Hong Kong from London to Beijing, has become an annual day of protest. This year a focal point for demonstrators' anger was a policy document, or "white paper," released last month by China's Cabinet that said Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy is not inherent but is authorized by the central government.”

Hong Kong citizens cannot vote until 2017 for its leaders, and even then they won't be allowed to pick their own candidates. A Beijing-friendly committee chooses them. Democracy is probably not in their future, unfortunately. Beijing's control is rigid, even over how many children they are allowed to have. I understand the reasons for that rule, because the economy is more controlled under a strict population limit, but I would hate to live under such a system. For all its flaws, I wouldn't want to live anywhere other than the US.