George Stephanopoulos: Nation’s ‘Gas Gripes’ Are ‘Knocking Down’ Obama’s Polls
April 25, 2011 No Comment
Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Monday described the country's “gas gripes ” over rising fuel costs, spinning, ” Soaring prices lead to new pain for the President as big oil gets ready to report record profits .” The former Democratic operative turned journalist tried to put the best face on Barack Obama's growing problems: “And, Jake, these gas prices are also knocking down President Obama's poll numbers, which is why he's out there nearly every day addressing this problem.” Reporter Jake Tapper, on the other hand, provided a more balanced look, pointing out, “When President Obama was sworn in, gas averaged $1.84 a gallon. Today, it's $3.86. And as prices have spiked since January, the President's approval ratings have sunk.” He even featured an angry motorist who complained, “Maybe President Obama could step down and let somebody else take over.” After noting that four in ten Americans say gas prices are causing an “extreme hardship” for them, Tapper informed, “And those Americans are much more apt to say they won't even consider voting for President Obama's reelection.” Tapper's segment is a change from Friday when the program didn't mention political problems as a result of rising fuel costs. A transcript of the April 25 segment, which aired at 7:08am EDT, follows: 7am tease GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Gas gripes. Soaring prices lead to new pain for the President as big oil gets ready to report record profits.
Continue reading …The average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $3.86 on April 25, more than $1-a-gallon higher than a year earlier and less than 25 cents away from the record high price of gasoline set in July 2008. In fact, per gallon prices are more than $2 higher than when Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. Yet the president has been nearly exempt from criticism on the issue of rising prices, despite a six-month drilling moratorium and more regulatory hurdles for industry. The Business & Media Institute found that out of the 280 oil price stories the network evening shows have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only 1 percent (3 stories) mentioned Obama’s drilling ban or other anti-oil actions in connection with gasoline prices. Instead of asking whether Obama's anti-oil policies could be increasing the cost of gas, the networks blamed other factors such as Mideast turmoil or the “money game” played by speculators. Certainly, the turmoil in Libya, Egypt and surrounding nations has increased worries about oil production and can influence the price. But the networks also should have looked for explanations much closer to home, like Obama’s many regulatory actions taken against the oil industry. First there was the drilling ban, which was later overturned by federal courts as illegal. Seahawk Drilling, a Texas-based shallow-water drilling company cited that moratorium as the cause of its bankruptcy filing saying, they “have been adversely affected by the dramatic slowdown in the issuing of shallow-water permits in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following the Macondo well blowout.” According to The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration moved on to a de facto moratorium after the ban was overturned. Add to that the EPA’s desire to regulate the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions and new environmental regulatory hurdles for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude from Canada to the U.S. and create many American jobs. Despite all of these actions on the part of the Obama administration, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows have barely mentioned them in stories about rising gas prices.
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Roads packed as sunseekers flock to the coast, but cooler weather is predicted this week Beaches, parks, beauty spots and pavement cafes were packed over the Easter weekend as temperatures in parts of Britain approached 30C (86F) and the country remained on course for the hottest April since records began. The warmest spot was in Surrey, but other areas in southern England, south Wales and the Midlands enjoyed unseasonably warm weather. Of course, the downside of the balmy temperatures on Easter Monday was heavy traffic as sunseekers who had flocked to the coast in their hundreds of thousands turned homewards. Routes out of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, north Wales and Kent were packed with hot and bothered families. However, cooler and wetter weather is predicted for the rest of the week and there is a risk that there could be a chilly wind and April showers for the royal wedding on Friday. There are also likely to be more traffic jams as holidaymakers once more head out of towns and cities to enjoy another long bank holiday weekend. The hottest place over the weekend was Wisley in Surrey where the Met Office recorded a high of 27.8C. Many other parts enjoyed temperatures in the low and mid 20s though it was cooler in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some areas saw torrential rain, thunderstorms and even hail. In general, the areas that enjoyed the best weather this weekend may endure the worst next, which could be bad news for the royal couple and for the crowds that will be in London for the wedding. Tom Morgan, a spokesman for the Met Office, said: “In the London area there will be fairly cloudy skies with occasional brighter spells, but also a risk of showery rain at times. A brisk northeasterly wind will make it feel much chillier than of late.” But he said western England, western Wales, the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland could look forward to a “bright” royal wedding day. If it rains, Prince William and Kate Middleton will leave Westminster Abbey in a glass coach, rather than an open-top 1902 state landau. Whatever the weather on the wedding day, this April is still likely to be the hottest on record, beating the warm spring of 2007. AA Roadwatch estimated that 10 million people went away for a weekend break by car over Easter and another eight million piled on to the roads on day trips. It expects there to be a total of 14m cars on the road over the royal wedding weekend as people once again take breaks or set off on day trips. According to AA research, 85% of people are planning to stay in the UK for the royal wedding weekend rather than jetting off for a holiday abroad. Weather Royal wedding Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Tens of thousands of tourists and thousands of members of the media arrive in London ahead of the royal wedding on Friday. (April 25)
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After the iPhone and Android tracking revelations of last week, a researcher finds out how to query Google’s database of home and business router locations Google really does have a very big location map – and that may include where your router is. The results of its giant Street View exercise in which it took pictures of houses and shops but also gathered locations of Wi-Fi networks and – oops! – collected data from open Wi-Fi networks has all been collated. And what’s more, you can query it yourself. Got a Wi-Fi router? Got admin access to its interface? Then you can get its MAC address and plug it into the “android map” interface offered by Samy Kamkar, a hacker and researcher who last week showed that Android phones transmit their location data (as uncovered by another researcher , Magnus Eriksson) The page where you can plug in the details is at http://samy.pl/androidmap/ , and comes with an example MAC address in there, which if you click it shows the details that are held – log/lat, country, country code, region, county, city, street, house number, postal code, and “accuracy” – an interesting idea, though it’s not immediately obvious whether that’s accuracy in metres or some other metric. As Kamkar explains, android map exposes the data that Google has been collecting from virtually all Android devices and street view cars, using them essentially as global wardriving machines. When the phone detects any wireless network, encrypted or otherwise, it sends the BSSID (MAC address) of the router along with signal strength, and most importantly, GPS coordinates up to the mothership. This page allows you to ping that database and find exactly where any wi-fi router in the world is located. Personally, I tried it for the two Wi-Fi routers in my home, and it turned up nothing. It could be that the data for Britain has been wiped, or that my routers weren’t turned on the day Google drove by (it certainly did, because it’s got a pic of the front of the house) or that it somehow didn’t reach the car. Scary? Encouraging? If all this data is somehow open sourced, is that useful or not? Google Data protection Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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After the iPhone and Android tracking revelations of last week, a researcher finds out how to query Google’s database of home and business router locations Google really does have a very big location map – and that may include where your router is. The results of its giant Street View exercise in which it took pictures of houses and shops but also gathered locations of Wi-Fi networks and – oops! – collected data from open Wi-Fi networks has all been collated. And what’s more, you can query it yourself. Got a Wi-Fi router? Got admin access to its interface? Then you can get its MAC address and plug it into the “android map” interface offered by Samy Kamkar, a hacker and researcher who last week showed that Android phones transmit their location data (as uncovered by another researcher , Magnus Eriksson) The page where you can plug in the details is at http://samy.pl/androidmap/ , and comes with an example MAC address in there, which if you click it shows the details that are held – log/lat, country, country code, region, county, city, street, house number, postal code, and “accuracy” – an interesting idea, though it’s not immediately obvious whether that’s accuracy in metres or some other metric. As Kamkar explains, android map exposes the data that Google has been collecting from virtually all Android devices and street view cars, using them essentially as global wardriving machines. When the phone detects any wireless network, encrypted or otherwise, it sends the BSSID (MAC address) of the router along with signal strength, and most importantly, GPS coordinates up to the mothership. This page allows you to ping that database and find exactly where any wi-fi router in the world is located. Personally, I tried it for the two Wi-Fi routers in my home, and it turned up nothing. It could be that the data for Britain has been wiped, or that my routers weren’t turned on the day Google drove by (it certainly did, because it’s got a pic of the front of the house) or that it somehow didn’t reach the car. Scary? Encouraging? If all this data is somehow open sourced, is that useful or not? Google Data protection Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Human rights campaigners report scores of arrests and injuries as crackdown escalates in Damascus and Deraa Syrian security forces and gunmen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are reported to have shot at unarmed civilians and arrested scores more in the escalating crackdown on pro-democracy protests. A dawn attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma was combined with a communications blackout in the area, according to a human rights campaigner in the capital. Syrian troops and tanks also rolled into the southern town of Deraa, according to witnesses, although their accounts could not be independently confirmed. There were also fears of more clashes in nearby Nawa. The campaigner told Reuters: “There are injured people. Scores have been arrested. The security are repeating the same pattern in all the centres of the democratic uprising. They want to put down the revolution using the utmost brutality.” Residents in Deraa said hundreds of troops had moved in. “They were firing. Witnesses have told me that there have been five deaths so far and houses have become hospitals,” a caller named Mohsen told al-Jazeera by telephone. More than 350 people have been killed since the unrest began in Syria five weeks ago. The worst single day for casualties was Friday, with 112 deaths, according to human rights groups. On Sunday, 13 people died in the coastal town of Jabla as security forces moved in to a Sunni quarter after protests, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian state TV said nine members of the security forces had been killed in the violence of recent days, seven in clashes with “armed gangs” in Nawa. On Monday, there were reports of bulldozers and military vehicles heading there. Thousands of people in the town called for the overthrow of Assad on Sunday at a funeral for protesters killed by security forces. Electricity and communications were cut off in parts of the town and residents, some armed, erected barriers in the streets. “Long live Syria. Down with Bashar!” mourners chanted during the funeral. “Leave, leave! The people want the overthrow of the regime.” Meanwhile, Syrian writers issued a declaration denouncing the crackdown. It was signed by 102 writers and journalists, in Syria and in exile, representing all the country’s main sects. It called on Syrian intellectuals “who have not broken the barrier of fear to make a clear stand. “We condemn the violent, oppressive practices of the Syrian regime against the protesters and mourn the martyrs of the uprising,” it said. Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Bashar Al-Assad Middle East guardian.co.uk
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Office building inside Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound was destroyed in air strike An office building inside Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound was destroyed early on Sunday as Nato air strikes hit close to the base from where the Libyan leader is believed to direct government strategy in the civil war. At least two large missiles or bombs struck a multistorey building in Bab al-Aziziya, the sprawling complex in the centre of Tripoli, shortly after midnight. Another building, a ceremonial reception area where Gaddafi hosted a delegation from the African Union two weeks ago, was badly damaged. The roof of the office building, which also housed a library in which Gaddafi liked to read according to an official, had caved under the impact. The ground over a wide area was covered in shattered masonry, broken glass and metal, with pools of water forming between piles of rubble. Three hours after the blast, thick dust was still in the air when the foreign media was taken to the site. Reports of light injuries from the blasts varied from none to 45. The Libyan leader’s location was not known. Gaddafi’s supporters, who gather at Bab al-Aziziya nightly to act as human shields against Nato air strikes, climbed on the shattered building as chunks of masonry still fell. They waved loyalist green flags and chanted pro-Gaddafi and anti-Nato slogans. Inside the second building, furniture, picture frames and chandeliers lay amid rubble and covered with dust. The South African president, Jacob Zuma, along with two other Africa presidents, held talks here with Gaddafi earlier this month on a peace proposal. It was the second time Nato had struck inside the compound since its military campaign started. A missile hit another administrative building in the early days of the strikes, causing extensive damage. In the early hours of Saturday, two missiles hit a site a few hundred metres from Bab al-Aziziya. Nato appeared to have targeted an underground bunker, which was visible from the craters caused by the missiles. Three members of the US Senate armed service committee called on Sunday for more military intervention in Libya. Republican Lindsey Graham told CNN that Gaddafi “needs to wake up every day wondering ‘Will this be my last?’” Monday’s strike on Gaddafi’s compound followed two days of heavy assault on the besieged city of Misrata by government forces. Despite the Libyan government’s claims that troops had pulled back from the city, forces on the ground stepped up shelling and rocket fire following gains made on the ground by rebels. Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Libya Middle East US foreign policy Nato Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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The Guardian, with others, has received access to a cache of more than 700 leaked files on Guantánamo Bay detainees. The files reveal that innocent people were interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts, and that children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held. Follow live coverage here 8.32am: On Comment is free, the Guardian’s Julian Glover writes that “what is given new prominence by these latest Guantánamo files is the cold, incompetent stupidity of the system: a system that tangled up the old and the young, the sick and the innocent. A system in which to say you were not a terrorist might be taken as evidence of your cunning.” “If you could only know what we can know, you would understand that what we are doing is right,” our leaders used to assure us. Well now we really do know – we have the documents, we have the transcripts of interviews with former prisoners, we have everything it takes to understand the nasty story of Guantánamo, exposed today in 759 leaked documents containing the words of the people who ran the place. And it is obvious that we should have seen through the evasions from the start. The clinical idiocy of this dreadful place is the most chilling thing of all, since it strips away even the cynical but persuasive defence: it was harsh but it worked and it kept the world safe. It didn’t work, much of the time. These files show that some of the information collected was garbage and that many of those held knew nothing that could be of use to the people demanding answers from them. Far from securing the fight against terror, the people running the camp faced an absurdist battle to educate a 14-year-old peasant boy kidnapped by an Afghan tribe and treat the dementia, depression and osteoarthritis of an 89-year-old man caught up in a raid on his son’s house. Other cases are just as pathetic. Jamal al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, was imprisoned by the Taliban as a possible spy, after being found wandering through Afghanistan as a Muslim convert. In a movement of Kafkaesque horror the Americans held him in Camp X-Ray simply because he had been a prisoner of its enemy. “He was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics,” the files record. 8am: This morning the Guardian and others have published a cache of files on Guantánamo Bay detainees , which lift the lid on life inside the controversial prison camp in Cuba. The Guantánamo files reveal… • A number of British nationals and residents were held for years despite US authorities being aware they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. • US authorities relied heavily on information obtained from a small number of detainees under torture. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated. • US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups like al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence. Some of the most shocking aspects of the leaked files relate to individuals’ stories. The 89-year-old Afghan villager who was detained at Guantanamo Bay despite suffering from dementia, depression and sickness. The 14-year-old boy , who had been an innocent kidnap victim, but was still imprisoned. Other files reveal that almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantanamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illness. The Guantánamo files are among hundreds of thousands of documents US soldier Bradley Manning is accused of having turned over to the Wikileaks website more than a year ago. They were obtained by the New York Times, who shared them with the Guardian, which is publishing extracts today, having redacted information which might identify informants. The New York Times says the files were made available to it not by Wikileaks, but “by another source on the condition of anonymity”. Separately a different collaboration of European and US newspapers received the cache from Wikileaks, and has also published on the Guantánamo files today. You can browse the files and visit the Guardian’s Today we’ll follow all the latest reaction to the revelations as it happens. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Afghanistan Adam Gabbatt guardian.co.uk
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Survey says the value of money has fallen by 94% over the past 50 years, with nearly £1,800 needed to match the buying power of £100 in 1960 The cost of a pint of beer could reach £8 by 2060 if prices continue to rise at their current rate, a survey by BM Savings has revealed. According to its report, based on data from the Office for National Statistics , the value of money has fallen by 94% over the past 50 years. An 18-fold increase in retail prices means that someone today would need £1,796 to have the equivalent purchasing power of £100 in 1960. By the same calculation, £5.57 50 years ago would be worth about £100 today. The drop in the value of money is reflected in the cost of everyday items such as food and household goods. Calculations show that the price of beer has increased eleven-fold over the past half century, from 11p to around £2.94 today, while a pint of milk cost just 3p in 1960 but will set consumers back around 44p today. The value of the cash in our pockets eroded at the fastest rate in the 1970s when retail prices increased by an average of 13% a year. They rose the least over the past decade, with an average yearly increase of just 3% since 2000, but even with relatively low inflation £131 at the turn of the millennium is worth just £100 today. BM Savings said the next 50 years could see the value of cash decline by a further 63% if retail prices follow the government’s annual inflation target of 2%. This means a loaf of bread at £1.20 could more than double to £3.23 by 2060. Basic rate taxpayers need to find a savings account paying 5.01% if they are to counter the effects of inflation; a higher rate taxpayer needs to find an account paying at least 6.67%; while 50% taxpayers need to find a return of 8.01%. There are no instant access accounts that will match or beat inflation plus tax at the basic rate, but some bonds – especially longer-term fixed products – will match inflation and help prevent the erosion of savers’ capital. A five-year Post Office bond , available until April 27, will pay inflation (as measured by the retail prices index every April – currently 5.3%) plus 1.5 percentage points on top. National Savings and Investments is also to relaunch its popular index-linked savings bonds at the beginning of May. Consumer affairs Family finances Inflation Carri-Ann Taylor guardian.co.uk
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