Fantasy Politics USA

According to the latest Gallup Poll Congressional approval ratings have hit another record low. Their approval ratings have dropped 5% over the last month from 19% to a new low of 14% for the month of July. Over the last 34 years that Gallup has been doing this poll Congressional approval ratings have only dropped below 20% 6 times. The current Congress managed to do this 4 of those 6 times, this month, June, May, and in August 2007. Most of this dip came from Democrats who report only an 11% approval of this Congress. Republicans are more supportive of this Democratic controlled Congress with a 19% approval rating. But it doesn’t matter since they are guaranteed pay raises under federal employees cost-of-living allowance raise COLA program. This year, while attaining such record breaking approval ratings, they received salaries of $169,300, a boost of $4,100 over the pay they have lived with since January 2006. The newly elected Democrats forgo last years pay raise until the minimum wage increase to $5.15 was passed. The sad part is we will re-elect most of the incumbents that face an election this year.
Alan Cosgrove

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) used some of Hillary Clinton’s talking points from the primary to point out that Barack Obama has not called a single oversight hearing on the Subcommittee for European Affairs that he chairs. That committee oversees NATO, which means Obama has some power over the war in Afghanistan that employs mainly NATO troops. According to a Clinton memo released last February, “Given the opportunity to take the reins of leadership and shape two critical areas of U.S. foreign policy — Afghanistan and our alliances in Europe — Senator Obama has done next to nothing. But by his own admission, he was too busy running for President to conduct a single substantive hearing of the committee he chairs” DeMint, who is also on the Subcommittee for European Affairs, wants to hold a meeting and has written a letter to the chairman, Obama, requesting a meeting after Obama returns from his foreign travels. Here is the letter from Senator Demint to Obama;

Subcommittee on European Affairs

Committee on Foreign Relations

U.S. Senate

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Obama,

In the coming days, I understand you will travel to Afghanistan for the first time and visit with a few of our European partners. Like my travels to these regions, I trust this trip will afford you a unique opportunity to see the facts on the ground firsthand and witness the work of our brave men and women who sacrifice so much to secure our freedom.

In February, I had the privilege of visiting and talking with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. These brave Americans serve their country with incredible passion, pride and courage. As you know, NATO’s International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) plays an integral part in the current operations and reconstruction of Afghanistan.

There are concerns about the imbalance between some European nations, their level of commitment to the fight in Afghanistan, and caveats these nations place on their forces in theater. I trust you will become well acquainted with these issues. The Bush Administration has worked hard to maintain and increase the level of forces our European allies have committed to the fight.

However, despite these successes, I am concerned our Subcommittee has not held any hearings on these issues over the last two years. With oversight of NATO relations and its role in Afghanistan, I believe it is time for us to focus closely on these issues. As Ranking Member of your Subcommittee on European Affairs, I would welcome a chance to hold a hearing on NATO’s mission in Afghanistan upon your return.

The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban. As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there. I look forward to working with you to schedule this hearing.

Sincerely,

Jim DeMint

Several anti-Obama bloggers were shut down, and unable to update their websites for a few days this past week. All the web sites affected used Google’s Blogger service, and were identified as potential “spam” blogs by Google. They all received emails from Google that read, “This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog.” Most of the web sites were affiliated with JustSayNoDeal.com a web site that opposes Obama. Some of the affected web sites have said they believe this is part of a campaign by Obama supporters to shut them down. They feel the Obama supporters have been clicking on the “flag” feature on anti-Obama web sites which alerts Google that the site is potentially a spam site. On Googles web site they claim “The Flag button isn’t censorship and it can’t be manipulated by angry mobs. Political dissent? Incendiary opinions?” Apparently they didn’t take into account the passion of the current election, or the cleverness of the electorate. Most the affected web sites are back up, or have changed to a rival blogging service like WordPress. On Monday Google issued the following statement; “It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts. While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.” Here is a short list of the affected bloggers who all seem to have something to say about this incident; Blue Lyon, Come a Long Way, Hillary or Bust, McCain Democrats, and NoBama. Reporter Simon Owens interviews some of the bloggers in an article in Bloggasm, and tries to explain how it was done.
Alan Cosgrove