President Obama is really in a pickle in many respects to his presidency. He went on Charlie Rose last night to defend the surveillance tactics that Edward Snowden has revealed to the world. While the country appears to be split on whether they think it's okay, some of his previous supporters are disturbed by the rhetoric he displayed on the subject in 2007, and what he's saying now.
And what to make of the announcement late last week that the U.S., after two years of bloodshed, will begin arming Syrian rebels opposing Bashar al-Assad? Well, the public needs a lot more selling, because 70 percent oppose doing it according to a new Pew Poll.
The poll shows that Americans believe the moral thing to do is stop authoritarian regimes, but they are almost evenly divided on whether we should do anything for the Syrian people.
Moving on, the GOP-led House of Representatives plan on voting for two measures this week, one being the Farm Bill, which will substantially reduce the number of people who receive food stamps.
They'll also be voting on an abortion bill as early as today that would make it illegal to have an abortion after 20 weeks. That bill, of course, is going nowhere, as the U.S. Senate will never pass it. Sort of like a lot of bills in Congress, sadly.
New Yorker journalist George Packer is getting rave reviews for his look at America through a collection of individual portraits in his new book, The Great Unwinding. There's certainly a lot of interest in the book here in the Tampa Bay area, as the region is one of the main characters in story of America over the past three decades, and much of it ain't pretty. Our conversation can be read here.
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2013.