US Government Is Spying On Their Own People
July 22, 2010
WorldNetDaily
By: Nat Hentoff
In May of last year, David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008, co-authored a strategic analysis (“Death From Above, Outrage Down Below,” New York Times, May 17, 2009). He emphasized that the “public outrage” among Pakistan’s civilians caused by our drone attacks “is hardly limited to the region in which they take place.”
Extensively reported by the news media, “the persistence of these attacks on Pakistani territory offends people’s deepest sensibilities, alienates them from their government and contributes to Pakistan’s instability.”
A year later, in Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org, May 19), Conn Hallinan, reporting on the increase in drone strikes in Pakistan, notes that the continuing controversy over the actual number of corollary civilian deaths “is a sharply debated issue.” Neither President Obama, who authorizes them, nor the CIA, which does the actual killing, directly gives us the numbers. As for the Pakistani government’s figures, Hallinan continues:
“The word ‘civilian’ is a slippery one, because no one knows exactly what criteria the United States uses to distinguish a ‘militant’ from a civilian. Is someone with a gun a ‘militant’? Since large numbers of males in the frontier regions of Pakistan carry guns, that definition would target a huge number of people.”
I mentioned this life-ending ambiguity in drone strikes to a person who claims to be concerned with human-rights abuses. Shrugging, she said: “I don’t have to worry about that. The drones aren’t coming here; and since they’re pilotless, there are no American casualties. So I’m all for their use.”
But drones are indeed in our skies.
Constitutionalist John Whitehead – who is also a careful master researcher – points out (“Drones Over America: Tyranny at Home,” Rutherford.org, June 28), that “unbeknownst to most Americans, remote-controlled pilotless aircraft have been employed domestically for years now. They were first used as a national-security tool for patrolling America’s borders, and then as a means of monitoring citizens.”
He cites a 2006 news story, moreover, that “one North Carolina county is using (an unmanned aerial vehicle) equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air – close enough to identify faces.”
As John Whitehead also reports, “Drones (are) a $2 billion cornerstone of the Obama administration’s war efforts.” And Defense Secretary Robert Gates adds, “The more we have used them, the more we have identified their potential in a broader and broader set of circumstances.”
So broad that – and this is Whitehead’s core discovery – “the Federal Aviation Administration is facing mounting pressure from state governments and localities to issue flying rights for a range of (unmanned aerial vehicles) to carry out civilian and law-enforcement activities.”
You think an unmanned aerial vehicle won’t be interested in you, innocent of any conceivable (even by the CIA) terrorist connections? Do not underestimate an all-seeing, suspicious government. “State police,” writes Whitehead, “hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars’ license plates.” And, in 2007, “insect-like drones were seen hovering over political rallies in New York and Washington, seemingly spying on protesters.”
As I was writing about drones watching over us, I found a triumphant breakthrough (“Unmanned Phantom Eye Demonstrator Unveiled,” spacedaily.com, July 13): “The Boeing Company has unveiled the hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system.” Said Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works, at the St. Louis unveiling ceremony:
“Phantom Eye is the first of its kind and could open up a whole new market in collecting data and communications. … The capabilities in Phantom Eye’s design will offer game-changing opportunities for our military, civil and commercial customers.”
Will we citizens have any say in whether we want to be part of this continually omnivorous government game? Whitehead gives you the answer: “Unfortunately, to a drone, everyone is a suspect because drone technology makes no distinction between the law-abiding individual and the suspect. Everyone gets monitored, photographed, tracked and targeted.”
But not terminally targeted like the innocent civilians during Predator and Reaper strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. However, the Obama administration has made it clear that, like its predecessor, it has decided the battlefield against terrorism can be anywhere – including the United States.
And should there be another Sept. 11 or a successful suicide bomber in New York’s Times Square, the government – with its ever-increasing, undeniable evidence of homegrown jihadists (who look just like your neighbors) may use unmanned aerial vehicles not only for surveillance but in the self-defense of us all. Drones have already committed extrajudicial killings outside our borders. Are we immune at home?
Whitehead summons James Madison: “A standing military force with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” Are the drones to remain beyond the American rule of law? It’s past time to begin to find out.
So far, we are told nothing credible of whom we are targeting, and why, in other countries. We should at least be let in on the rules of this grim game as it may affect our own fate. Failing our responsibility as citizens, we have become almost entirely complicit in the extent and depth of our being continually surveilled at home outside the Constitution.
Will drones continue to hover outside the Constitution? Barack Obama knows.
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37 States Join Probe Into Google Wi-Spy Collection
July 22, 2010
Los Angeles Times
By: Kristena Hansen
A multistate investigation is raising more questions about how Google Inc. may have improperly gathered people’s private information through their unsecured wireless networks while collecting data for its Street View feature.
Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, who has been leading the month-old investigation, sent a third letter to Google on Wednesday asking, among other things, whether it had tested the feature’s software before putting it to use. Doing so, he said, should have uncovered any glitches responsible for the unwarranted collection of e-mails, passwords and other personal data of those who failed to protect their networks with passwords.
“Google’s responses continue to generate more questions than they answer,” he said in a statement. “Now the question is how it may have used — and secured — all this private information.”
Blumenthal, who is running for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd’s seat, also said that attorneys general from 37 states and the District of Columbia have officially joined the probe, including those from Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Massachusetts. Eight states would not be identified because their laws bar them from disclosing investigations, he said.
The office of California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has not yet responded to a question about whether the state is a participant.
“As we’ve said before, it was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data, but we believe we did nothing illegal,” a spokesperson for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said in a statement. “We’re continuing to work with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns.”
The investigation, which follows similar probes in Germany and Australia, is also considering whether federal and state laws need to be changed or updated as a preventative measure.
The Street View function was launched in 2007 and since expanded to most major cities in the U.S, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. It uses vehicles to photograph street layouts in every direction to give Web users a 360-degree view of streets and roadways.
But the vehicles were also equipped to detect Wi-Fi access points, which Google hadn’t disclosed until recently, in order to help computers figure out where they are without having to use a GPS system.
At the same time, Google said it mistakenly picked up 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured networks over the last three years.
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Hundreds Of Emails Prove Obama Was Promoted By Press
July 22, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By: Fred Barnes
When I’m talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.
My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn’t be the case.
Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I’m inclined to amend my response. Not to say there’s a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.
My guess is that this and other revelations about JournoList will deepen the distrust of the national press. True, participants in the online clubhouse appear to hail chiefly from the media’s self-identified left wing. But its founder, Ezra Klein, is a prominent writer for the Washington Post. Mr. Klein shut down JournoList last month—a wise decision.
It’s thanks to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website that we know something about JournoList, though the emails among the liberal journalists were meant to be private. (Mr. Carlson hasn’t revealed how he obtained the emails.) In June, the Daily Caller disclosed a series of JournoList musings by David Weigel, then a Washington Post blogger assigned to cover conservatives. His emails showed he loathes conservatives, and he was subsequently fired.
This week, Mr. Carlson produced a series of JournoList emails from April 2008, when Barack Obama’s presidential bid was in serious jeopardy. Videos of the antiwhite, anti-American sermons of his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had surfaced, first on ABC and then other networks.
JournoList contributors discussed strategies to aid Mr. Obama by deflecting the controversy. They went public with a letter criticizing an ABC interview of Mr. Obama that dwelled on his association with Mr. Wright. Then, Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent proposed attacking Mr. Obama’s critics as racists. He wrote:
“If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them—Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares—and call them racists. . . . This makes them ‘sputter’ with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.”
No one on JournoList endorsed the Ackerman plan. But rather than object on ethical grounds, they voiced concern that the strategy would fail or possibly backfire.
Among journalists in general, there’s always been a herd instinct. Eugene McCarthy, the Minnesota senator and Democratic presidential candidate, once described political writers as birds on a telephone wire. When one bird flew to the wire across the street, they all did. In Mr. Ackerman’s case, I’m glad none of the birds joined him across the street.
We’ve often seen media groupthink in campaigns. In 1980, most of the media decided that President Jimmy Carter was being mean-spirited in his re-election effort with his harsh denunciations of Ronald Reagan, his Republican opponent. The media turned the meanness issue into major story. In 1992, journalists treated the economy as if it were dead in the water, though a recovery from a mild recession had begun early the previous year. I could go on.
I think JournoList is—or was—fundamentally different, and not simply because one of its members proposed to make palpably false accusations. As best I can tell, those involved in JournoList considered themselves part of a team. And their goal was to make sure the team won. In 2008, this was Mr. Obama’s team. More recently, the goal seems to have been to defeat the conservative team.
Until JournoList came along, liberal journalists were rarely part of a team. Neither are conservative journalists today, so far as I know. If there’s a team, no one has asked me to join. As a conservative, I normally write more favorably about Republicans than Democrats and I routinely treat conservative ideas as superior to liberal ones. But I’ve never been part of a discussion with conservative writers about how we could most help the Republican or the conservative team.
My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners. One of the most famous conservative columnists of the past half-century, the late Robert Novak, is a good example. I knew him well for 35 years. He didn’t tell me what stories he was working on nor ask what I was planning to write. He never mentioned how we might promote Republicans or aid the conservative cause, nor did I.
What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama’s critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It’s now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.
The first call I got after the Daily Caller unearthed the emails involving me was from Karl Rove. He said he wanted to talk to his “fellow racist.” We laughed about this. But the whole episode was also sad. I didn’t sputter at the thought of being called a racist. But it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.
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Feds Mull Regulating Drugs In Drinking Water
G.E. Attempts To Silence Medical Imaging Critics
Mass Drugging of Society
Psychiatrist Paid To Use Children As Guinea Pigs
Drug Side Effects Silenced
Birth Control Causes Death And Only Gets Warning
Big Brother:
Raw Milk Undercover Operations
FBI Broke Law With Phone Record Searches
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Eating Fish Helps Prevent Eye Disease Later In Life
July 21, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
A study that recently appeared in the journal Ophthalmology has found that people who eat fatty fish at least once a week are less likely to develop age-related macular degeneration (AMD), an eye disease that gradually causes vision impairment and blindness in senior adults. The study findings add to the growing list of health benefits gained by eating fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids.
More than 2,500 senior adults took eye exams and completed questionnaires as part of the study, and researchers evaluated the relationship between fish consumption and eye health. Fifteen percent of the participants already had early-to-intermediate stage AMD, and under three percent already had advanced AMD. However, participants who indicated they ate one or more servings of healthy fish a week were determined to be 60 percent less likely to develop advanced AMD than those who ate less than this amount.
The omega-3 fatty acids present in oily fish like salmon, mackerel and albacore tuna, are generally recognized to be the therapeutic nutrients responsible for helping to prevent macular degeneration. These compounds offer eye protection that, when regularly consumed, can prevent degenerative eye disease.
“Fish oil contains DHA, a substance concentrated in the retina of the eye, and the consumption of fish oils has been shown to reduce the risk of macular degeneration,” explains Marshall Editions in his book 1000 Cures for 200 Ailments: Integrated Alternative and Conventional Treatments for the Most Common Illnesses.
The Reuters report on the fish study also reveals that high doses of the antioxidants vitamins C and E, beta carotene and zinc, are all effective treatments for macular degeneration, and that many doctors already prescribe this mixture to their patients with the disease.
According to Dr. Steve Blake, author of Vitamins and Minerals Demystified, the retina of the eye contains high levels of zinc, but as a person ages, zinc levels decrease. So supplementing with zinc, among other antioxidants, appears to be a viable treatment method for the AMD.
Researchers are also evaluating the efficacy of treating AMD patients with the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, both of which are present in the retina as well.
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Stem Cell Therapy Becoming More Widely Accepted
July 21, 2010
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
Scientists, media pundits, academics and researchers often speak of stem cell therapy as a potentially revolutionary technology in the field of medicine, but according to Professor David Warburton from the Saban Research Institute at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, stem cells are already viable in many different treatment applications.
For years, there has been much controversy over stem cell research. This is due to the fact that the type of stem cell research people often talk about is embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research is not only controversial, but it is also a failure, especially when you consider that other non-controversial stem cells, like the kind obtained from adult organs, are already providing breakthroughs in treatment technology that embryonic stem cells have been unable to accomplish.
Professor Warburton has a particular interest in amniotic fluid-derived stem cells, which come from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. According to him, “there are no ethical objections to using amniotic fluid derived stem cells,” which makes their study an important subject of stem cell research.
Stem cells can be used not only to treat disease, but also to regenerate and grow new organs. A person can literally have his or her own stem cells harvested and used to regenerate needed organ tissue, eliminating the need for taking anti-rejection drugs like one would have to following conventional transplant surgery.
According to a recent BBC report on the subject, there are already many cases of successful stem cell therapies, including the following cases:
-Spanish surgeons recently engineered the world’s first tissue-engineered organ transplant, in which a patient’s own stem cells were applied to the donor organ in order to facilitate a successful transplant.
-A young British boy underwent a stem cell organ transplant, making him the first child in the world to have this type of treatment.
-U.S. scientists successfully created fully-grown and fully-operational liver grafts.
And according to Dr. Sharon Maolem in her book Suvival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease, stem cells are practically immortal and “have the potential to become anything and they never run out of steam.”
So it is no wonder that they have seemingly limitless potential in medicine.
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Newsweek Publishes Major Story Exposing Fraud Of Antidepressant Drugs
July 21, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Newsweek has published a feature article exposing what many psychology researchers refer to as “the dirty little secret”: that antidepressant drugs do not work any better than placebo pills.
Author Sharon Begley notes that while antidepressants do in fact cause improvement in 75 percent of patients, so do placebo pills. In a landmark 1998 study, researchers Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein found that a full 75 percent of antidepressants’ effectiveness could be attributed to the placebo effect.
Upon facing criticism for not including every study in their analysis, Kirsch and Sapirstein used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire data from all corporate-funded antidepressant studies submitted to the FDA. Two interesting facts emerged. First, the researchers found that 40 percent of studies conducted had gone unpublished, significantly higher than the 22 percent for other drugs.
“By and large, the unpublished studies were those that failed to show a significant benefit,” Kirsch said.
Second, when all studies were included, the drugs came out less effective, with placebo accounting for 82 percent of their effectiveness. The non-placebo improvement was only 1.8 points on the 54-point depression diagnostic scale. Sleeping better counts for six points.
The Newsweek article further notes that even those extra 1.8 points can be attributed to placebos: people in drug studies who experience side effects realize they are taking a real drug, which makes their placebo reaction stronger. The placebo effect also explains the increased effectiveness of higher drug doses, and why sometimes a second or third drug is effective when the first failed. It all comes down to belief.
These findings have serious implications for the entire premise on which antidepressant drugs rest: the chemical theory of depression. Other than the presumed effectiveness of antidepressants — a presumption called into question yet again by a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association — there is literally no evidence to support this theory.
“Direct evidence doesn’t exist,” Begley writes. “Lowering people’s serotonin levels does not change their mood.”
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Brazilian Farmers Declare War On Monsanto
July 21, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Farmers from two separate Brazilian associations are preparing to file suit against biotechnology giant Monsanto, in a fight over the royalty fees the company demands for its genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soy.
Roundup Ready crops are engineered for resistance to the Monsanto herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), allowing farmers to apply the chemical liberally without damaging the cash crop. This GM soy variety now occupies half the cultivated soy area in the Brazilian state of Matto Grosso, and GM crops occupy half of all agricultural fields in the northern part of the state.
The Sinop Rural Union of northern Matto Grosso stated recently that after failing to achieve any positive resolutions through meetings with Monstanto, it is preparing to take the company to court. The union objects to the company’s practice of carrying out two separate royalties collections for its patented GM seeds. In part, they object simply to the high prices Monsanto demands upon purchase of its seeds.
“In January they charged R$0.45 (US$0.25) per kilo of seed, which is equivalent to 30 percent of the price of each sack,” said the union’s president, Antonio Galvan.
More fundamentally, however, the union objects to Monsanto’s practice of carrying out a second royalties collection at the time of harvest. The company tests all seeds arriving at warehouses to determine whether they are GM or not, then charges royalties to all farmers who bring in GM seeds and have not paid already. Farmers object that this practice does not account for possible contamination at the warehouse, and penalizes farmers whose seeds have been genetically contaminated through cross-pollination with Monsanto’s product.
“Cross pollination may take place if there’s a field of GM soya next to a non-GM one at flowering time,” Galvan said. “Contamination can also take place if the machines are not well cleaned at harvest time, and some GM beans remain. In this way, they will be considered GM when they are tested.”
A second farmers group, the Association of Soya and Corn Producers of Matto Grosso, is also suing Monsanto over excessive royalties, and objects that the company pressures farmers to buy only GM seeds.
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Resveratrol Boosts Metabolism, Promotes Weight Loss
July 21, 2010
Natural News
By: S.L. Baker
Resveratrol is a type of phytonutrient known as a polyphenol. Found in the skin of grapes, wine, grape juice, peanuts, and berries, it has often been hailed as a life-extending natural compound. After all, research in mice and lab rats has indicated it can protect those animals from obesity and diabetes and has anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and blood-sugar-lowering effects, too. However, rats and mice are rodents — and their physiology is in many ways different from the primate family that includes apes, monkeys and, most importantly, human beings.
But now for the first time a study has shown resveratrol has the ability to rev up metabolism and spark weight loss in primates — and that means the polyphenol might have weight loss and even anti-aging and life-extending benefits in people, too.
Fabienne Aujard, from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, France, worked with a team of scientists to document how a diet supplemented with resveratrol impacted the weight, metabolism and energy intake of six mouse lemurs. (Despite their names, mouse lemurs have nothing to do with rodents. Found only on the African island nation of Madagascar, they are mouse-sized primates — the group that includes apes and humans.)
The study, which was just published in the BMC Physiology journal, showed that after four weeks of resveratrol supplementation there was a significant decrease in the animals’ food intake along with a reduction in the body-mass gain lemurs normally experience in winter. The response to the resveratrol supplementation also involved significant changes in the animals’ body temperatures. The researchers noted that resveratrol appears to reduce weight by increasing satiety (the feeling of being full) and also by increasing the resting metabolic rate (the amount of energy expended while at rest) — so the animals burned up more calories even when not exercising.
“We’ve found that lemurs eating a diet supplemented with the compound (resveratrol) decreased their energy intake by 13 percent and increased their resting metabolic rate by 29 percent,” Dr. Aujard said in a statement to the press. “These results provide novel information on the potential effects of resveratrol on energy metabolism and control of body mass in a primate. The physiological benefits of resveratrol are currently under intensive investigation, with recent work suggesting that it could be a good candidate for the development of obesity therapies.”
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Whites, Independent Give Up On Obama
July 21, 2010 by Duffy
Filed under Government
July 21, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By: Peter A. Brown
It was a year ago this month that President Barack Obama began losing voters. In the 12 months since, he has had legislative victories that appear – especially in the case of health care – to have cost him large amounts of both political capital and political support.
A comparison of the public’s views of him then and now tells us a great deal about the shape of American politics and how difficult it is for any president, even one as politically gifted as Barack Obama, to surmount the nation’s deep political and ideological divisions.
Mr. Obama won a surprisingly easy victory in 2008, carrying 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes – along with Bill Clinton in 1996, the biggest Democratic presidential win since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide.
Candidate Obama promised “change we can believe in,” a post-partisan, problem-solving presidency that would heal the nation’s yawning political divide. By the time he was inaugurated in January 2009, Mr. Obama had stratospheric public approval ratings, heightened by many who had voted against him but decided to give him a chance despite their misgivings.
For the first six months of his presidency, Mr. Obama retained vigorous public support – until he tried to translate into legislation his promise to “reform” health care, which, it turned out, meant different things to different voters. In July 2009, the demonstrations against the Obama health care plan reached critical mass and began to deflate the president’s poll numbers, and that continues today.
Skepticism About the Government’s Role
The U.S. economy has continued to flounder, and surely that is part of the reason for the president’s decreased standing. But the disillusionment with the president’s handling of the economy stems from the same public skepticism about the role of government in economic policy as in health care.
Quinnipiac University today released a national poll of 2,181 registered voters, almost twice the size of most national polls. (It has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.) It showed President Obama’s net job approval rating at its lowest point ever – 44% approve, 48% disapprove.
In July 2009, Quinnipiac’s national poll had the president with 57% approve, 33% disapprove.
The decline in Mr. Obama’s support over the past year has been across the-board, with the largest decreases being among whites, older voters, political independents and men.
Some of it was to be expected. It was unlikely, for instance, that given Mr. Obama’s preference for increased government involvement that he was going to keep the 21% of Republicans who approved of his job performance in July 2009. That figure is now 12% – more than a third lower.
Losing Faith in Obama
So, too, went white, evangelical Christians, perhaps the largest GOP constituency group. In July 2009, 35% said they approved of Mr. Obama’s job performance. Today, that figure has been cut almost in half – to 19%.
If it was just among Republicans and their ideological allies that the president was losing support that would not represent a serious political threat.
What is most problematic for the president is the drop among whites, men and political independents. Those demographic groups gave him greater support in 2008 than they had most Democratic presidential candidates over the past few decades.
Simply put, when Democrats carry or are competitive among whites, independents and men, they win the White House.
When they don’t, they don’t.
Winning the White House
On Election Day 2008, much was made of the increased turnout that Mr. Obama inspired among young voters and African-Americans, and to be sure that fattened his margin. But he won the White House because, the exit polling showed, he got 49% of men, 43% of whites and 52% of independents. Each of these three groups individually makes up a larger share of the electorate than blacks and young people combined.
In July 2009, President Obama had actually grown that support so that he was getting a thumbs-up job approval from 54% of men, 51% of whites and 52% of independents.
But today, the numbers for those three groups show just how far he has fallen. He gets a positive job approval from just 37% of whites, 38% of independents and 39% of men – a roughly 30% drop in all three groups in his support.
And the bleeding has spread to his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill. In July 2009, voters said by 42%-34% that they would back a Democrat for Congress; today, they said they prefer a Republican, 43%-38%. The drop-off among the various demographic groups is similar to that for the president.
All of which suggests the last year has convinced an awful lot of the folks who hadn’t voted Democratic for president in some time before supporting President Obama to rethink their politics with an eye toward returning to their political roots.
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