An example of the dumb-ass futility of it all: An American soldier shot and killed an Afghan guard at a base in the country’s north, apparently because the American thought the guard was about to attack him, Afghan police said on Sunday.

This war is so messed up, allies are shooting each other — the US GI’s trigger finger was in response to the Afghan military/police people killing NATO troops.

(Illustration found here).

Last month, an Afghan soldier shot and killed four unarmed French troops  at a base in eastern Afghanistan, and the whole war operation is worse than deadly.
Civilian deaths increased again in 2011 — up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.
From McClatchy on Saturday:

Mir Ahmad Joyenda, deputy director of the Kabul-based Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, and a former member of Parliament, said the rise in civilian deaths reported by the U.N. was a reminder that ordinary Afghans were at risk of violence “from morning to night.”
“Nobody’s safe, nobody’s secure,” said Joyenda. “Everyone is suffering.”

The country’s f*ucked.

And now one US solider has opened up something closer to the truth.
Lt. Col Daniel L. Davis has described a reality on the ground considerably inconsistent with the official statements the military presents to political leadership or the American public (via antiwar.com).
Davis posted a document with Armed Forces Journal on his observations on the reality of the other side of the Afghan war.
A few snips:

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.
I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people.
Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.
From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.
…
On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.
Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.
“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked.
“Do you form up a squad and go after them?
Do you periodically send out harassing patrols?
What do you do?”
As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression.
Then he laughed.
“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”
According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints.
In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.
…
To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.
In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.
Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier.
One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful?
How do I do that?”
One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’
Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’
They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”
…
If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable.
Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public.
But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress.
I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

Read the whole post — might piss you off.
Also read the New York Times story on Davis.

And this reader’s comment from another NYT piece on Davis highlights the historical significance of the US military’s continued amnesia:

Those of us who are old enough remember General Westmoreland’s glowing reports on progress in Vietnam right up until we airlifted people out of Saigon by helicopter.

Reality ain’t no bowl game.

Ground acquisition.
And that’s what football is, football’s a ground acquisition game.
You knock the crap out of eleven guys and take their land away from them.
Of course, we only do it ten yards at a time.
That’s the way we did it with the Indians — we won it little by little.
First down in Ohio — Midwest to go!
– George Carlin

(Illustration found here).

Genocide of US native peoples was/is no game.
And today, the accumulation of such a media frenzy creates a shame there’s no real merit or even worth in the entire enterprise — this has got to be one of the most-dumbest days of the year, created for a way-low common denominator amongst dumb-ass Americans.
Of course, for my liquor store Superbowl Sunday is a financial way-uptick in the down-days of winter — in fact, this weekend will be the best we’ll see until Spring Break, or until the weather gets warmer, which ever comes first — plus the event comes on the heels of ‘the first,’ when not-only poor peoples, but all financial/situational peoples get ‘checks,’ either from state/federal governments, or insurance companies, pension funds, a dozen other institutions.
If the 49ers had made the game, sales would really have gone out the roof, but…

And, of course, when I express my total disregard for the “Big Game,” and don’t even know the teams involved, I’m viewed as a freak — people are put on a momentary pause, and you can actually see confusion wash across their faces as they cannot comprehend such crazy talk.
A ‘secular high holy day‘ as the ABC news guy says this morning — freaks, dude, nothing but freaks.
And I ain’t the only one — this from Gawker for other things to do on Stupid Bowl Sunday:

The great thing about the Super Bowl is that 100 million heathens are placed on their fat asses on their couches with a beer in one hand, the remote in the other, tortilla chip crumbs all over their shirt, and a stain from some taco dip on their upper lip.
Yes, everyone I hate is watching the Stupid Bowl, that means it’s my time to play.

One would surely hope that’s a cultural caricature, a TV sit-com image of the Super Bowl watcher, not reality, but alas, most-likely not far off the mark — as shown by store patrons before, during and after the game.
Not a pretty sight.

The Gawker post also listed other shit to do during the big game, especially like going to the movies and or taking in a popular restaurant, where there’d be almost no lines or other patrons (100-million fat-ass heathens on the couch at home, remember), or read a book.
Or maybe just take time to be alone — a way-shitload of people have a lot of trouble spending time alone with themselves — and what better time to do it when millions of other people will be joined at the ass for one giant bowel movement.

Newt Gingrich, however, does appear even worse after a couple of tokes — some changes require way more.

Pot is the weaker sister — the big headline in this story was marijuana, but alas…

A Rhode Island lawmaker is due in court following his second arrest on marijuana possession charges.
…
Police say they found marijuana and a smoking pipe in Watson’s vehicle, along with an opened beer can and two unopened beer bottles.

Smoke gets blamed for shit that just ain’t so.

(Illustration found here).

Living in the very midst of the pot-growing center of the universe makes a discussion about marijuana as dumb as a stump — pack that in your pipe and draw hard.
The discovery of weed in the mid-1970s was the second greatest single event in my life, changing attitudes, outlooks and how life actually works — no, this ain’t Kansas no more.
Marijuana is not the evil, the bad guys are those who not only don’t smoke, but hate those who do and wish horrible things upon smokers are the culprit — marijuana needs legalization.
And a good chunk of US peoples feel the same.
From CBS:

President Obama’s live, online chat slated for Monday afternoon is intended to focus on issues raised during last week’s State of the Union address — but his online audience seems to be much more interested in marijuana policy.
…
Sorting the questions by popularity reveals that 18 of the 20 most popular questions, according to YouTube, have something to do with marijuana policy, including the legalization of marijuana use, the cost of the war on drugs and other related issues.
Questions about marijuana policy have dominated multiple online engagement efforts from the Obama White House.
In fact, the second-most popular question for today’s “hangout” comes from a retired police officer with the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) — just as it did in Mr. Obama’s 2011 YouTube chat.

And from Slate: In 1969, 12 percent of Americans thought pot should be legal. That percentage grew to the mid-20s by the late 1970s, passed 30 percent in 2000, and hit 40 percent in 2009, according to Gallup. A surprising October poll showed support at 50 percent, with just 46 percent against.
Lawmakers and other nefarious types are not paying attention, however.

Here in California, a ballot-box vote is on tap this November.
And about time:

A recent poll reveals that California voters, by a 62% to 35% margin, with 3% unsure, support a ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like wine.
…
Voters in California will have an opportunity to take that new approach this November with the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act of 2012 (RMLW), which will allow the state to regulate and tax marijuana and hemp.
The California Attorney General has projected “savings of potentially several tens of millions of dollars annually to state and local governments of the costs of incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders,” as well as potentially generating “hundreds of millions of dollars in net additional tax revenues related to the production and sale of marijuana products.”

Law enforcement buys it, too.
And why don’t you?

On this amazing time to be alive motif, one can also include the weather, which in reality covers a lot of shit, and one in particular, ‘energy,’  a build-in, self-generating climate-change-creating piece of literal machinery.
We couldn’t have one without the other — the influence of ‘energy‘ has been the fatal factor on the weather.
The most-likely-insurmountable problem facing mankind right now is what I call the ‘Double-Bitch-Bang‘ — climate change and “peak oil,” or its overall equivalent, “resource depletion” — and the rub of the matter is there’s no real big scream to do something.
Ironic humanity: Civilization requires more and more energy, and with that comes more and more climate change, and thusly, bad weather.

In reality, the weather is indeed a throwback, but not from any known time frame.
The brainiacs pose it better — from NASA:

The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time.
Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.
When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather.

And that’s the entire point of climate change — it’s not about some far off place, but right outside everybody’s front door.

Odd how some folks have known for some time about global warming.
From USATODAY last week on a new government map and the abrupt-subtly of a warming planet:

“It is a good thing the government has updated the map,” says Woodrow Nelson, director of marketing communications for the Arbor Day Foundation.
“Our members have been noticing these climate changes for years and have been successfully growing new kinds of trees in places they wouldn’t grow before.”

And the people who deny climate change are just dumb, or belong to the Republican party, or in most denier cases, are both — from LiveScience: Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
So not only does humanity have this enormous problem with actual survival, but there’s this entire cross-section of society that’s hindering any solutions — we be f*cked.
And in an age of a long-list of bad shit happening all at once, humanity is in for a rough ride.

And all this bubbling shit is intertwined — from the abstract of ‘Oil supply limits and the continuing financial crisis‘ (pdf):

Since 2005, (1) world oil supply has not increased, and (2) the world has undergone its most severe economic crisis since the Depression…
The expected impact of reduced oil supply combined with this reduced leverage is similar to the actual impact of the 2008–2009 recession in OECD countries…
If this should happen, based on these findings we can expect a continuing financial crisis similar to the 2008–2009 recession including significant debt defaults. The financial crisis may eventually worsen, to resemble a collapse situation as described by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990) or an adverse decline situation similar to adverse scenarios foreseen by Donella Meadows in Limits to Growth (1972).

And how are people going to respond when the time comes.
What to do? — RT took to the streets of New York to find out:

Global warming is not only wearing out our planet’s environment, but also the minds of global leaders trying to find solutions.
Legislators are introducing more and more bills to help curb the effects of climate change.
RT’s Lori Harfenist found out on the streets of the Big Apple that ordinary Americans are ready to give up something to fight global warming — but certainly not everything.
Things like quitting hairdryers and walking distances less than two miles instead of driving actually meet no resistance, but as for drying clothes on the line instead of using a spin-dryer and taking a shower for less than a minute — these things met with much less understanding.
One woman even told Lori that people “are cold and selfish”.
She said “they do not care about the planet unless it affects them personally”.
“Unfortunately that is the world we are living in”, the woman said.
Changing personal habits of energy consumption can clearly seem depressing — but might become obligatory, if global warming really does continue to affect our planet.

We all have our thoughts on those in the playground.

(Illustration found here).

Obama even had the flag carried by the US Navy SEAL team that assassinated Osama last year: “Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation room…All that mattered that day was the mission. No-one thought about politics…”

And he pounded it home:

“Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes.
No-one built this country on their own,” Obama said.
“This nation is great because we built it together.
This nation is great because we worked as a team.
This nation is great because we get each others’ backs.
And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great, no mission too hard.”

In this he laid the groundwork for the next eleven months — the real man-up ruler of the US can only be the guy that got Osama bin Laden, and it will surely not work if anyone else takes the reins of power, so vote for me!
And boxed in between the warmongering, Obama slapped at income inequality and the Republicans who have produced the situation — the president proposed big shifts with the US tax system, like for instance, a minimum 30 per cent effective rate on millionaires.
Which prompted Mitch Daniels in response to whine: “No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favour with some Americans by castigating others,” Daniels said, according to excerpts of his speech.
In other words — leave the rich alone.

And this tweet via Aljazeera English: “RT @theonlyadult: Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. #obama2012 #sotu”

And as if on cue, early this morning U.S. Navy SEALs popped into Somalia to grab two kidnapped aid workers — an American and a Dane — in a daring helicopter raid reminiscent of the Osama attack.

Before news broke of the rescue, Obama told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “Leon, good job tonight. Good job tonight,” at the State of the Union address.

Election 2012 is gonna be a dandy, action-packed pile of hollerin’ bullshit.

Take last Thursday’s Republican debate in South Carolina.
Hundreds of G.O.P. voters applauded as Newt Gingrich blasted CNN’s John King for raising an accusation about marriage and sex in presidential politics.
These same voters, I have no doubt, would have cheered Gingrich for doing just that in 1998 when he led the charge to impeach President Clinton for his dalliance with a younger woman who worked in his office — or technically, for lying about it, but you see the point.
When Clinton did it, Republican voters called for his impeachment; when Gingrich does it and defends himself, they cheer for him.

A lie is the truth until its not.

And tonight, President Obama will go on TV with his third state of the union message, reportedly carrying a theme of a “a fair shake for all,” but in the actual state of the country, the shaking is from the bottom up.
Supposedly, all kinds of diverse shit will be included in the message, especially any and all important points to consider in his re-election bid — Obama’s scheduled for a three-state campaign trip starting Wednesday.
Here we go…

Accordingly, the prez should do some bullshitting himself — via The Daily Beast:

Obama should—without mentioning them by name—take a couple of whacks at Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
This is a time, with Romney on the ropes and the leading GOP candidate (Gingrich) “enjoying” a roughly -35 point approval-to-disapproval rating, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Play some head games.
Have some fun.
Do—if I may—some dozens.
Not “your mama is so fat” dozens, obviously.
But talk some smack.
Drop in one or two that the Republicans will attack as undignified to the occasion.
Put them on the defensive, make them sound whiny.
Trust me, David Plouffe: independents will like it.
They sure didn’t like what you wanted to do last summer (capitulate).
…
If those things aren’t happening, the speech was a political failure.

And the Brits say no laughing.
From the Telegraph:

But any attempt at levity might come off badly.
There’s a reason why over 600,000 people participated in the South Carolina primary: the state’s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent and folks are angry.
Many are suffering in a recession that has run so long it must now be called Obama’s.
Gallup gives him a job approval rating of 44 percent but CBS reports that only 29 percent of the country thinks America is headed in the right direction.
As cold winds blow over the Northeast and hurricanes hit the South, attitudes are likely to harden.
I’ve been travelling across America for nearly a decade and I’ve never known such pessimism.
Gas price increases are making it harder to numb the pain with consumer spending.
And what can be bought is made by child labour in China – a country that now owns roughly $1.16 trillion of America’s spiralling debt.

The big thing, though, Mr. President, is try and not to bullshit with bullshit.

The chaotic mess of the GOP primary is finally over and Newt Gingrich urinated on everything.
In shame of Republicans, half-crazed Steven Colbert humiliated the entire process by shoving the way-ugly of current US politics back in every straight-face that chimes democracy.

(Illustration found here).

In a land where up is really down, US peoples are laced up the asshole and remain income-challenged, wealth-challenged, and debt-constrained with nowhere to go — and no one to lead them there.
The GOP has no face and no real policies, and they’re tracking nobody — even across the aisle, President Obama is not leading, but just continuing to follow.

A bit of 2012 insight from the LA Times:

The pertinent question raised by Colbert’s attention grab on the day before South Carolina’s primary vote is why the four remaining Republican candidates are not drawing crowds as big and adoring as Colbert’s.
Yes, Colbert is a celebrity.
He’s an expert entertainer.
And it’s not too hard to get a few thousand college kids to skip class on any day of the week.
But four years ago at this point in the campaign, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were pulling in crowds as big or bigger.
John McCain was packing the gymnasiums pretty well too.
And, later in the campaign, Sarah Palin proved she could rock an arena.
This year’s candidates are avoiding big events because they do not want to be photographed in half-empty halls.
Gingrich actually refused to speak to the GOP leadership conference because so few Republicans showed up.
Instead, voters have most often been invited to meet the candidates in the cramped confines of restaurants where a few hundred or even a few dozen people can look like a lot on TV.
An example of this small-scale café campaign is Newt Gingrich’s schedule for voting day: 8 a.m. at the Grapevine Restaurant in Spartanburg, 10:45 at Tommy’s Ham House in Greenville, 3:30 at the Chik-Fil-A in Anderson and 5:45 at Whiteford’s Restaurant in Laurens.

One wishes Colbert/Stewart would actually be on the ballot in November — Obama would then have to actually lead, really talk the talk, or get punk’d.

Last year, despite all kinds of horrible weather/climate shit, the news media has way-down-played climate change as anything more than a storm in passing — coverage for the common folk has just “fell off the map.”

(Illustration found here).

Up here along California’s northern coast this early Thursday rain is beating down, bolstered by a pretty-good wind — most likely an off-shoot from that big storm blasting the northwest (via Wunderblog): Field reports late Tuesday already indicated lots of natural and human triggered slides ranging from about 1 to 3 feet deep. Avalanche warnings already in effect for high danger…and with warming…further winds and additional heavy to very heavy snow…some quite dense…avalanche activity should become larger and more severe on Wednesday.
And what about that white stuff in Algeria, as …an unusual sight in the North African country, with scenes of palm trees surrounded by snow.
What, me worry?

You betcha.

One terrible aspect with the science on climate change is the re-occurring situation of shit being worse than originally proposed, as this little snippet from two years ago: We now know that, without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought.
And now, a new one, bringing extreme weather events into focus with climate and the speed of change, all done by math nerds.
From PhysOrg.com (h/t The Oil Drum):

Swiss mathematicians have shown that the risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated.
They are developing a model for better understanding the impact of climate change.
…
For several years now, the scientists have noted that the increase in extreme events associated with climate change appears to be having much more of an impact on society than the increase in mean temperatures.
Natural disasters are accompanied by a significant human and economic cost.
In the case of exceptional heat waves, the mathematicians found that, based on global warming predictions, the probability of an event at least as severe as the 2003 heat wave will be six times greater in 2050 than it was in 2003.

This doesn’t seem to matter, however, if the MSM keeps pushing climate change away from A1 and onto the society pages without much ado, leaving people to fend for their mental selves — a horror story in itself.
The standard thought from the standard brain: ‘Somebody will figure out something, they always do.’
This line I’ve heard from countless folks, some more intelligent than others, but all have some kind of gray matter stored in their skull caps.
Since climate change is such a huge, way-out-there subject, a thing one “believes” (like it’s a religion or something), and not like a ball-bat up-side the head, people tend to skip away from really getting down and dirty with our one and only environment.

People seem to have a need to feel better than the reality — one has to have hope in order to work through tomorrow, right?
In view of this, a lot of problems that don’t literally face us each minute/hour/day are pushed aside and placed in a giant petri dish called the “optimism bias” — also known  as the “positivity” illusion.
A paradox of that ain’t gonna happen to me.

From a discussion at CNN Health:

“It is a natural human inclination to see our situation and our future through rose-colored glasses,” says David Ropeik, author of “How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts.”
“We tend to see our prospects as being far better than they may actually be — and particularly when compared to the next guy.
This optimism lets us deal with hardship and take chances in life.”
…
Most people are mildly optimistic and that’s a good thing, observes Dr. Tali Sharot, author of “The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Mind.”
“The 20 percent or so of people who do not have an optimism bias are clinically depressed.
In fact, when things go really bad, people become more optimistic, not less, because that’s when we need it most.”
According to Sharot, there is even more reason to celebrate our inclination toward hope.
“Optimism is better for your mental health – it eases your mind and actually lowers your stress.”
…
At the end of the day, “the bias toward optimism is helping you cope to some degree, but it can also be deceiving you into ignoring a danger,” notes Ropeik.
“To the extent we are less worried about something than we should be, that clearly raises our risk.
If optimism bias is letting us deny that our stressed lives are bad for our health, that harm far outweighs the measure of relief optimism can bring.
“Two things to keep in mind: you want to be aware of the risk and you want to be clear about the psychology behind the way you read and assess the risk.
When you know both, you will be better equipped to take action.”

Unless it’s done too late — optimism without reality won’t travel far.

Today is a kind of watershed moment when the Internets respond to attempts to censor shit by banging down the back door, but a load of ‘Net peoples have chosen instead to go black.

Daily Kos  has an action line to protest the twin online-control orbs SOPA ‘Stop Online Piracy Act,’ (US House) and PIPA ‘Protect Intellectual Property Act” (US Senate), which reportedly are designed to shut down access to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods, but like a lot of other surveillance-state-of-affairs, there’s more than just bullshit flying.
Copyright law can be a step away from censorship: “Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.

And today (Wednesday) Google has a black band over its name on its search site, and Wikipedia leads to a Gothic-looking spot which proclaims “Imagine A World Without Free Knowledge,” in protest of the upcoming Congressional bills.
Along with Wiki, Reddit and Boing Boing, among others were also going black for awhile to protest.
Even HuffPost had a huge, black box at the top of his home page (where a photo/headline usually appears) early Wednesday, and supplies a factoid page here.

All authority hates freedom — one wonders how the popular uprisings in the Middle East, even the Occupy movement here in the US would fare under these laws, and how would freedom really be effected because as it is now, the real freedom is in the ability to get the truth out there.
Even in the most totalitarian regimes on earth, a little iPhone camera can change the outlook of the whole, entire world — in a real sense, currently there can’t be a total news black out and we need to keep it that way.

An understanding via the LA Times:

Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, said the bills set “a horrendous precedent globally” and that much of the content users put online — such as open publishing, crowd-sourced information gathering or comments sections — could all become “incredibly dangerous” if the bills passed.
“We would end up in a situation where we’re trying to do needlepoint with harpoons,” he said.
“You can’t target only pirated information, content or media without getting tons of collateral damage that removes entirely legal content.”
As a screenwriter, East Hollywood resident Steven Darancette, 40, uses Wikipedia often for background information. But he isn’t too concerned about the website going dark Wednesday, saying he supports the protest.
“If I need to get research, I’ll just Google,” he said.
“There are also these things called books.”

The way-big problem, though, is once that door is opened, then locked back again by SOPA/PIPA there’s no going back, the freedom of pure communication will be lost in an Orwellian influenced society, and that ain’t good at all.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a new high — 84 percent of Americans — disapproving of the job Congress is doing, with almost two-thirds saying they “disapprove strongly.”
Just 13 percent of Americans approve of how things are going after the 112th Congress’s first year of action, solidifying an unprecedented level of public disgust that has both sides worried about their positions less than 10 months before voters decide their fates.

(Illustration found here).

And what has President Obama now have somewhat/maybe in common with Dick Nixon?
From ABC News:

Congress’ rating is a broad 35 points below Obama’s 48 percent approval, the biggest gap between approval of the president and Congress since 1990.
Obama, though, still has plenty of challenges of his own: In polling since 1940, just four previous presidents have started their re-election year with less than 50 percent approval.
Only one of them won, Richard Nixon in 1972.

This year is going to be really interesting, but so full of bullshit.

All this is a normal attitude for US peoples who have been ass-kicked by the assholes in Congress — and the White House — and ended 2011 with low wages in a losing job market, a bad housing operation and an economy that just won’t pick-up any kind of steam.
Not helping is the ugly, approaching fact the US market is shrinking — valuations are so low that executives would rather buy back shares than spend the cash to expand — and this will only bleed down to the guy on main street.

Hence, a change, an occupation is coming.
Instead of Wall Street, maybe Congress, and today is the day when a huge protest is expected in DC to highlight the bullshit on Capital Hill.

“Often the complaint that I hear is that, ‘you guys are targeting the wrong people.’ And so we have that discussion about you know whether or not Wall Street is the source of the problem or really Congress is,” said Aaron Bornstein, a 31-year-old neuroscientist and member of the Occupy Wall Street Think Tank, which will hold discussions at the event.
“They’re really two sides of the same coin,” he continued.
“You can’t have the corruptive influence without both the people who are doing the corrupting and the people who are corrupted.”

And never the twain…