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Gary Edwards

How Obama can be stopped in Electoral College - 0 views

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    The clock is ticking and this idea needs a Web wildfire to suceed. excerpt: "...According to the 12th Amendment, for the Electoral College to be able to select the president, it must have a quorum of two-thirds of the states voting. If enough states refuse to participate, the Electoral College will not have a quorum. If the Electoral College does not have a quorum or otherwise cannot vote or decide, then the responsibility for selecting the president and vice president devolves to the Congress. "...Democrats have actually set this precedent of refusing to  participate to deny Republicans a quorum. They did this in Wisconsin and in Texas. Why can't we do this with the Electoral College? "Mitt Romney carried 24 states. We need to have conservative activists from all over the nation contact the electors, the Republican Party and the secretary of state in all of these states and tell them not to participate in the Electoral College when it meets on Dec. 17. If we can get 17 of those states (just over one-third) to refuse to participate, the Electoral College will have no quorum. Then, as the Constitution directs, the election goes to the House of Representatives. "...We need this concept shared with every tea party, liberty and  patriotic group throughout the country. We have time to act, but we must pressure Republicans to do the right thing." [http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/how-obama-can-be-stopped-in-electoral-college/] http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/how-obama-can-be-stopped-in-electoral-college/
Paul Merrell

Paul Craig Roberts:   Obamneycare Converts Health Care Into Profits    :   In... - 0 views

  •  In the guest section there is a new contribution by Dr. Robert S. Dotson. He points out that Obamneycare is two versions of the same thing. A person has to be gullible and uninformed to believe the claims of Obama and Romney that their replacements for Medicare will save money and improve care. What the schemes do is convert public monies into private profits. The exploding costs described by Dr. Dotson and the rising profits for private corporations are paid for by reducing health care. For example, Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, writing in Investors Business Daily reports that “On Oct. 1, the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients.” The result will be fewer knee and hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery, and cataract operations. These procedures transformed aging by allowing the elderly, who formerly languished in wheelchairs and nursing homes, to lead active lives.
  • This doesn’t mean that Romneycare is any better. Conservatives like to pretend that the private sector is always more efficient and less corrupt than the public sector, and that replacing Medicare with vouchers toward the purchase price of a private insurance company will lower costs and improve care.
  • Some conservatives seem to think that because private policies are involved that health care becomes funded. What Obamneycare does is to steal from Medicare in order to finance Medicaid and private insurance policies. Both plans raise costs, reduce care for the elderly, and divert tax dollars away from health care to private profits. Let’s examine the erroneous conservative belief that if health care is provided privately, without any government subsidies, it is funded, whereas Medicare is not funded.
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  • Obamneycare takes decisions out of the hands of patients and health care providers. It reduces care for the elderly. It imposes intrusive controls and data collecting and reporting. As care providers witness care withheld and the elderly confined to wheelchairs and nursing homes and early graves, health care providers will have to become as hardened as workers in slaughter houses, or the system will implode. Already 59% of US doctors say that they prefer a single-payer national health care system to the corporate form of medicine that has turned them into wage slaves who have to ration the time they spend with patients and the amount of care that they prescribe. If Obama’s subsidies and Romney’s vouchers are not indexed to medical inflation, Obamneycare will provide diminishing care as the years go by. As jobs offshoring has stripped the country of middle class job growth, the incomes earned by waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and Walmart’s part-time workers will not cover shelter, food, transportation, and health care.
  • When Obama sold out his supporters to the insurance companies, Obama supporters lined up with the pretense that diverting Medicare money to private profits was an improvement over the current system. Obama supporters have now invested so much emotional capital in Obama’s assault on Medicare that they pretend there is some meaningful difference between Obamacare’s government subsidized private insurance policies and Romneycare’s government subsidized private medical insurance vouchers. While the two sides yell and scream at one another, the concrete hardens around the new common policy of shorter lives for the elderly and more profits for private corporations.
  • Although no one in either party can define the US mission in the seven countries in which the US is conducting military aggression, wars of choice that according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have already cost US taxpayers $6 trillion in out of pocket and already incurred future costs, there is no discussion of halting the wars and diverting armaments industry profits to the health care of the US population. Thus, we are left with Dr. Dotson’s conclusion that Americans are governed for the benefit of corporate profits. Americans’ lives, health, incomes, careers, prospects, none of this matters. Only corporate profits.
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    Paul Craig Roberts hit the nail on the head once again, this time on the nation's health care system. 
Gary Edwards

A New Solyndra Everywhere You Turn: Obama Using Your Tax dollars backing some "risky" e... - 0 views

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    A CBS News report has discovered 12 Clean Energy Firms that Received $6.5B in Taxpayer Money.  All are in Solyndra bankruptcy lsimilar Financial Trouble.  It gets worse.  The CBS News investigation found a clear pattern of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy projects wretched with crony democratic party political ties.  It's payback time for the Obama campaign finance bundlers.  This isn't clean energy.  This is the taxpayers getting cleaned by Obama and his corporatist supporters.  Awful, disgusting stuff.  At least Mitt Romney and Bain Capital used their own money. excerpt: Solar panel maker Solyndra received a $528 million Energy Department loan in 2009 - and  went bankrupt last year. The government's risky investment strategy didn't stop there, as a CBS News investigation has uncovered a pattern of cases of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy.
Gary Edwards

Secret White House Email Accounts Uncover IRS-Obama Smoking Gun : palookavillepost.com - 0 views

  • During an investigation of President Barack Hussein Obama’s political appointees and White House aides, FBI agents discovered secret government email accounts they say were used as primary means for Obama’s staff to interact with IRS officials for day-to-day business.
  • Investigators became curious about the possibility of such accounts after Congress requested all emails from the White House regarding the Benghazi, IRS and other scandals, and the White House could only produce a handful of emails that discussed those topics.
  • “We had one of our hackers get into a White House intern’s computer, and that’s where we located a slew of private email accounts not associated with Federal government accounts,” said a spokesman for the powerful federal police agency.
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  • Emails sent to people outside of the secret network of White House email accounts were programmed to automatically be deleted five minutes after opening the message, just like on Mission Impossible. This explains the absence of White House emails received by IRS officials.
  • “The content of the emails is still being reviewed, but it is clear that people inside the White House knew about the IRS targeting conservatives, and that somebody with the nickname “Basketball Jones” was the person who told American forces to stand down during the attacks in Benghazi.”
  • “The White House tried to cover their tracks by saying that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House 157 times, and that they never used email to communicate,” said the FBI spokesman.
  • Only a few of the emails have been reviewed, but already several of them indicate that President Obama not only knew about the scheme, but he himself ordered the IRS to flood the Tea Party with paperwork and fees.
  • Here is one transcript of a hidden email from an unknown White House aide in April, 2011:
  • “Hey Shulman… What’s up?… Don’t forget BJ(Basketball Jones) wants you to kick up the fees on anyone with Tea Party or Conservative in their names… try to see if you can make them hire expensive tax attorneys too… bog them down with paperwork so they can’t campaign for milk boy(Mitt Romney) or Ru Paul(Ron Paul)… sorry you missed the Easter Egg Hunt… maybe next year… I’d invite you to stay in the Lincoln bedroom but that costs real money… send me a report on how many Tea Party groups quit because of being jerked around…ASAP… Chow!”
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    Although this article has zero credibility and even less reference checking, everyone in America knows that Obama ordered the IRS hit on Tea Party Patriots, Conservatives and Jewish Homeland organizations.  That the IRS admits to violating the Constitutional civil rights of tens of millions of law abviding Americans, and did so in ways that only benefit the Obama re-election campaign is proof enough for anyone who loves liberty.
Paul Merrell

The Real Blame for Deaths in Libya    :   Information Clearing House: ICH - 0 views

  • However, in this political season, the Republicans want to gain some political advantage by stirring up doubts about President Barack Obama’s toughness on terrorism — and the Obama administration is looking for ways to blunt those rhetorical attacks by launching retaliatory strikes in Libya or elsewhere. Thus, it was small comfort to learn that Teflon-coated John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, had flown to Tripoli, hoping to unearth some interim Libyan government officials to consult with on the Benghazi attack. With the embassy’s help, he no doubt identified Libyan officials with some claim to purview over “terrorism.”
  • But Brennan is not about investigation. Retribution is his bag. It is likely that some Libyan interlocutor was brought forth who would give him carte blanche to retaliate against any and all those “suspected” of having had some role in the Benghazi murders. So, look for “surgical” drone strike or Abbottabad-style special forces attack — possibly before the Nov. 6 election — on whomever is labeled a “suspect.” Sound wild? It is. However, considering Brennan’s penchant for acting-first-thinking-later, plus the entrée and extraordinary influence he enjoys with President Obama, drone and/or special forces attacks are, in my opinion, more likely than not. (This is the same Brennan, after all, who compiles for Obama lists of nominees for assassination by drone.) If in Tuesday’s debate with ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama is pressed, as expected on his supposed weakness in handling Benghazi, attacks on “terrorists,” real or “suspect,” become still more likely. Brennan and other White House functionaries might succeed in persuading the president that such attacks would be just what the doctor ordered for his wheezing poll numbers.
  • It was no surprise, then, that almost completely absent from the discussion at last Tuesday’s hearing was any attempt to figure out why a well-armed, well-organized group of terrorists wanted to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and kill the diplomats there. Were it not for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, impressionable listeners would have been left with the idea that the attack had nothing to do with Washington’s hare-brained, bomb-heavy policies, from which al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups are more beneficiary than victim, as in Libya. Not for the first time, Kucinich rose to the occasion at Tuesday’s hearing:
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  • “You’d think that after ten years in Iraq and after eleven years in Afghanistan that the U.S. would have learned the consequences and the limits of interventionism. … Today we’re engaging in a discussion about the security failures of Benghazi. The security situation did not happen overnight because of a decision made by someone at the State Department. … “We owe it to the diplomatic corps, who serves our nation, to start at the beginning and that’s what I shall do. Security threats in Libya, including the unchecked extremist groups who are armed to the teeth, exist because our nation spurred on a civil war destroying the security and stability of Libya. … We bombed Libya. We destroyed their army. We obliterated their police stations … Al Qaeda expanded its presence. “Weapons are everywhere. Thousands of shoulder-to-air missiles are on the loose. Our military intervention led to greater instability in Libya. … It’s not surprising that the State Department was not able to adequately protect our diplomats from this predictable threat. It’s not surprising and it’s also not acceptable. … “We want to stop attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.”
  • Congressman Kucinich went on to ask the witnesses if they knew how many shoulder-to-air missiles were on the loose in Libya. Nordstrom: “Ten to twenty thousand.”
  • In my view, counterterrorism guru Brennan shares the blame for this and other failures. But he has a strong allergy to acknowledging such responsibility. And he enjoys more Teflon protection from his perch closer to the president in the White House. The back-and-forth bickering over the tragedy in Benghazi has focused on so many trees that the forest never came into view. Not only did the hearing fall far short in establishing genuine accountability, it was bereft of vision. Without vision, the old proverb says, the people perish — and that includes American diplomats. The killings in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, validate that wisdom. If the U.S. does not change the way it relates to the rest of the world, and especially to the Muslim world, more and more people will perish. If we persist on the aggressive path we are on, Americans will in no way be safer. As for our diplomats, in my view it is just a matter of time before our next embassy, consulate or residence is attacked.
  • We are told we should not speak ill of the dead. Dead consciences, though, should be fair game. In my view, the U.S. Secretary of State did herself no credit the morning after the killing of four of her employees, when she said: “I asked myself — how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be. But we have to be clear-eyed, even in our grief.” But some things are confounding only to those suppressing their own responsibility for untold death and misery abroad. Secretary Clinton continues to preen about the U.S. role in the attack on Libya. And, of Gadhafi’s gory death, she exclaimed on camera with a joyous cackle, “We came; we saw; he died.” Can it come as a surprise to Clinton that this kind of attitude and behavior can set a tone, spawning still more violence?
  • At Tuesday’s hearing, Kucinich noted that in Libya “we intervened, absent constitutional authority.” Most of his colleagues reacted with the equivalent of a deep yawn, as though Kucinich had said something “quaint” and “obsolete.” Like most of their colleagues in the House, most Oversight Committee members continue to duck this key issue, which directly involves one of the most important powers/duties given the Congress in Article I of the Constitution. Such was their behavior last Tuesday, with most members preferring to indulge in hypocritical posturing aimed at scoring cheap political points. Palpable in that hearing room was one of the dangers our country’s Founders feared the most — that, for reasons of power, position and money, legislators might eventually be seduced into the kind of cowardice and expediency that would lead them to forfeit their power and their duty to prevent a president from making war at will. Many of those now doing their best to make political hay out of the Benghazi “scandal” are the same legislators who appealed strongly for the U.S. to bomb Libya and remove Gadhafi. This, despite it having been clear from the start that eastern Libya had become a new beachhead for al-Qaeda and other terrorists. From the start, it was highly uncertain who would fill the power vacuums in the east and in Tripoli.
  • As Congress failed to exercise its constitutional duties — to debate and vote on wars — Obama, along with his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton, took a page out of the Bush/Cheney book and jumped into a new war. Just don’t call it war, said the White House. It’s merely a “kinetic humanitarian action.” You see, our friends in Europe covet that pure Libyan oil and Gadhafi had been a problem to the West for a long time. So, it was assumed that there would be enough anti-Gadhafi Libyans that a new “democratic” government could be created and talented diplomats, like Ambassador Christopher Stevens, could explain to “the locals” how missiles and bombs were in the long-term interest of Libyans.
  • On Libya, the Obama administration dissed Congress even more blatantly than Cheney and Bush did on Iraq, where there was at least the charade of a public debate, albeit perverted by false claims about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda. And so Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton stepped off cheerily to strike Libya with the same kind of post-war plan that Cheney, Bush, and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had for Iraq — none. Small wonder chaos reigns in Benghazi and other parts of the country. Can it be that privileged politicians like Clinton and Panetta and the many “one-percenters” in Congress and elsewhere really do not understand that, when the U.S. does what it did to Libya, there will be folks who don’t like it; that they will be armed; that there will be blowback; that U.S. diplomats, given an impossible task, will die?
  • Constitutionally, the craven Congress is a huge part of the problem. Only a few members of the House and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like kings and send off troops drawn largely by a poverty draft to wars not authorized (or simply rubber-stamped) by Congress. Last Tuesday, Kucinich’s voice was alone crying in the wilderness, so to speak. (And, because of redistricting and his loss in a primary that pitted two incumbent Democrats against each other, he will not be a member of the new Congress in January.) This matters — and matters very much. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this key issue with Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. Chafing ex post facto at the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what “legal basis” would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did in Libya. Watching that part of the testimony it seemed to me that Sessions, a conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking when he pronounced himself “almost breathless,” as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made it explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek congressional approval for wars like Libya. At times he seemed to be quoting verses from the Book of Cheney.
  • Sessions: “I am really baffled … The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the president and the law and the Constitution.” Panetta: “Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the president has the authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will, Sir.” (If you care about the Constitution and the rule of law, I strongly recommend that you view the entire 7-minute video clip.)
Gary Edwards

CONSERVATISM IS CALLING - YouTube as good as it gets! - 0 views

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    Really well done video presentation concerning the presidential election, now just four days away.  The first half races through Obama's mess, with excellent graphics and video clips portraying the fiasco.  The second half is focused on Romney and his plan to clean up the mess Obama has left to him. Courtesy of the Bay Area Patriots Group
Paul Merrell

Poll: US Should Help Israel in Attack on Iran - Defense/Security - News - Israel Nation... - 0 views

  • In the daily survey tracking the presidential election, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney remain in a virtual dead heat for the popular vote, but the president has a clear lead in the electoral college vote.
  • The bottom line is that Obama has 247 electoral college votes in his favor, only 23 short of a majority. Romney has 191, and another 100 are uncertain.  
Gary Edwards

Romney Did Not Lose - 0 views

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    excerpt: I'm still formulating how I need to proceed in light of this new understanding, but what I know, and what I need to factor into my future calculations is the fact that we - the people who love our country and favor fiscal sanity and subscribe to the ideals of the Founders - are not outnumbered. We remain in the majority. I can't remember ever having been here. I grew up in the '60s, but served in the military rather than in Haight-Ashbury. I raised my family to be responsible and self-sufficient, just as my parents did. I guess you could say I was more or less aligned with the "establishment" of the day, even though I have for years disagreed with the trend toward more socialism and fascism. Today, the Establishment has crossed a line. They have arrayed themselves against the majority of the American people. I won't be joining them. I won't be agreeing with them. I won't be accepting their "truth." I will, instead, stand for my truth. And I suspect I am not alone. The usurpers (for I can't reasonably refer to them otherwise) are now the "establishment" even though they are really in the minority. So… that makes us… what? Well, what do you call someone who stands against the Establishment? Feels kinda odd to be in those shoes, doesn't it? Welcome to the Resistance. ......................... ...................................... Historical data on 56 previous elections indicate at least 15 to 20 million votes flipped and missing. Data available for everyone right in front of our eyes. Out of 56 presidential elections there were only 7 elections that voter turn out was down from previous elections. The combined total for all 7 elections is 13,428,613 or 0.73% out of all 56 elections generating 1,835,207,811 votes. These 7 elections had events such as war of 1812, civil war, ww2, stock market crash attached to declines in voter turn out. The average growth in all presidential elections is 2,892,573 per election. The
Gary Edwards

Who Believes in Russiagate?-print - 1 views

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    The Obama abuse of our national security agencies actually started with surveillance of Israel and the reelection of Netanyahu. Fear of Israeli opposition to an agreement with Iran was the excuse. During this time, Obama perfected the leaking of national security surveillance information to the Israeli and American press to destroy and discredit opposition to an Iranian deal. From direct interference in an Israeli election, Obama used the same apparatus and leaking methods against the Romney Republican presidential campaign. Short step from there to the Hillary Clinton - Trump campaign. The surveil and leak method is now being used to frame Trump and Russia. Left out of the article are the links between Obama and the Soros funded GPS Fusion muck.
Gary Edwards

HBL - The Harry Binswanger List - 0 views

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    WOW!  Renown Ayn Rand expert, Harry Binswanger, discusses the 2012 election big media accusation that Romney is "short on specifics".  (Not that Obama ever provided anything close to a specific explanation, but there it is.)  In his discussion, Harry describes exactly how to present "principles" that then can be easily connected to "specifics".   Incredible read. excerpt: "Here's a sample of what an ideal candidate would say, first in terms of principles: "The only proper function of government is to protect individual rights, and the only way rights can be violated is by the initiation of physical force. Under my administration, we will return to the original American system in which the government uses its physical force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use in violation of individual rights. The fundamental right is the right to life, and its corollaries include the right to private property, without which no other rights are possible." He could then go on to name policy goals that represent mid-level abstractions: "Entitlement programs are the initiation of force; they seize the property of some to provide unearned benefits to others. This is immoral; it is a legalized equivalent of theft. Thus, I will drastically cut entitlement spending-whether "discretionary" or not. Another area of initiated government force is regulation. Regulation by its nature is preventive law, interfering with the lives of the innocent in order to (supposedly) prevent the guilty from acting. This is force initiated against the innocent, so I will drastically cut the number and scope of regulations over the same 4 years." Now the real fun comes when, having established this context, he gets to specifics: "My first budget will cut funds for all departments, except Defense, to 15% below what they received the previous year. This is an across-the-board cut, not something to become the subject of infighting among departments. Then in my next budget I will cut 15%
Gary Edwards

Kimberley Strassel: A Chronic Case of Obamnesia - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    Good list of Obama quotes, stcked in contrast to display amazing 180 degree flip flopping and straight out lying to get elected. "With 10 days until the election, Barack Obama's latest strategy is to claim that his opponent has developed "stage 3 Romnesia." Mitt Romney, the argument goes, is conveniently forgetting his real agenda, flipping his positions to better appeal to the electorate. Since Mr. Romney's conservative base would surely disagree, this raises the question of whether the president isn't himself suffering from a psychological malady that experts call "projection.""
Gary Edwards

The PJ Tatler » Five Things We Learned from Iowa - 0 views

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    Good Summary.  Very insightful.  Here are the five: ...Negative campaigning works ..... The rules of campaigning have changed - message now more important than money (2nd) or manpower (3rd) ....... We're pretty shallow after all - "Candidates actual records in office mean a whole lot less than how a candidate makes us feel". ............ Iowa's worshiped "undecideds" are probably just low information voters.  "Iowa chose Obama in 2008, with undecideds breaking for him late.  How's that working out?"  Funny stuff. ................. About 75% of the Republican Party still doesn't want to nominate Mitt Romney:  "Romney's weakness is also Gingrich's weakness - neither seem to be reliable men of their word." Santorum and Perry are men of their word.   Funny finish to this gem.  A quote from Davy Crockett: "Y'all can go to hell, i'm going to Texas!"
Gary Edwards

Herman Cain: 21 Things You Don't Know About Him - 0 views

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    Excellent summary of Herman Cain.  Background and brief explanation of Herman's "first 90 days in the White House" plan.  Good stuff.... excerpt:  Herman Cain - or the Hermanator, as he calls himself in his new book - is so confident he'll be elected president on November 6, 2012, he's already sketched out his first 90 days in office. Among the things he says he'll do in the early days of a Cain administration: "Treat our economic system as I would a corporation on the verge of bankruptcy: Step one, make a 10 percent across-the-board cut" in all government departments. Step two, he says, would include "vertical deep dives" in which every department would be asked to justify its cost and directly answer the question, "Is it still in the best interests of the country?" Election 2012 Complete Coverage According to a new CBS News poll, Cain, 65, is now tied with Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, atop the field of Republican presidential candidates. Among GOP primary voters, support for Cain now stands at 17 percent support, compared with 5 percent two weeks ago. (Rick Perry has fallen 11 percentage points in just two weeks.) Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan has attracted voters: He'd replace the current tax code with a nine-percent flat income tax, a nine-percent corporate tax, and a nine-percent national sales tax.
Paul Merrell

NBC/WSJ poll: Americans oppose intervention in Syria - First Read - 0 views

  • The American public is extremely hesitant to intervene directly in Syria's civil war. Asked to pick a response to stop the killing of civilians in Syria, just 15 percent in the poll say they favor U.S. military action, and only 11 percent want to provide arms to the opposition. By comparison, a plurality of respondents -- 42 percent -- prefer to provide only humanitarian assistance, and 24 percent believe the U.S. shouldn't take any action. Perhaps more significantly, those attitudes cut across party lines and almost all demographic groups. "Whether you voted for Romney or Obama, they have the same opinion on Syria," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research.
Paul Merrell

55% Of Americans Want Independent To Run Against Trump, Clinton - 1 views

  • It’s happening! According to a new poll, Americans have finally maxed out their tolerance for “lesser evils” in presidential politics. The survey, published by independent research firm, Data Targeting, found a majority of Americans now want an independent candidate to take on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — two of the most disliked candidates in recent history. Researchers for the poll, conducted among 997 registered voters via both home and mobile phones this month, reported that “58% of respondents are dissatisfied with the current group of Republican and Democratic candidates for President” — and that 55 percent believe there should be an independent ticket (it is unclear why 3 percent apparently dislike the current candidates but puzzlingly do not think there should be another option). In perhaps the most extreme finding of the analysis, “a shocking 91% of voters under the age of 29 favor having an independent candidate on the ballot.” Considering younger generations’ lack of party allegiance and disillusionment with the status quo, their disapproval of Clinton and Trump seems predictable — but 91 percent constitutes near-total rejection. Tellingly, over 68 percent of participants in the poll were over the age of 50. Older generations are more likely to be attached to party identity, making their acceptance of other options a telling indicator of the populace’s distaste for their current options.
  • The United States has notoriously clung to the narrow two-party duopoly for most of its history — even as the crafters of the Constitution, for all their staggering shortcomings, cautioned of the dangers of such myopic political representation and party allegiance. But considering the unpopularity of Trump and Clinton — the former has a 55 percent unfavorability liking, the latter 56 percent — Americans appear to be turning a corner on their perception of who deserves power in politics. In fact, 65 percent of poll respondents said they would be “at least somewhat, pretty or very willing to support a candidate for President who is not Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton” — a stark difference from 2012, when Americans resisted deviation from the norm. A Gallup poll from that year highlighted the nation’s two-party rigidity. “U.S. registered voters show limited support for third-party candidates…with the vast majority preferring Barack Obama or Mitt Romney,” analysts reported just a few months before the 2012 general election. They concluded about 5% of Americans would vote for a third-party candidate that year. Just four years later, however, that figure has exploded. As the Data Testing report explains: “In a ballot test against Clinton and Trump, a truly independent candidate starts off with 21% of the vote,” already far greater than 2012’s 5%. “But this number increases to 29% in the ‘Big Sky’ region, 30% in ‘New England’ and 28% in the ‘West’ region.”
  • Independents were even more willing to break away from the options they’ve been given. “Among voters with an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Clinton, the independent actually wins the ballot test,” researchers reported, noting that of the three options, 7 percent of respondents chose Clinton, 11 percent chose Trump, and a staggering 56 percent chose the unspecified third-party candidate. Though these ballot test findings are lower than the statistic that 65 percent would be open to breaking away from Clinton and Trump, the increase of third-party interest from 2012 remains palpably significant. It should be noted that Data Targeting is a GOP-affiliated political research firm, however, the results indicate little room for bias. In fact, they are paramount in an election where, as the analysis notes, Clinton and Trump provoke more animosity than enthusiasm. Perhaps highlighting lingering attachments to two-party thinking, Clinton’s highest unfavorability rating (78 percent) came from Republicans, while Trump’s highest unfavorability rating (71 percent) came from Democrats. Regardless, it is undeniable Americans are fed up with the system at large. According to another recent poll, just over half believe elections are rigged. Interest in third-party options, like the Libertarian and Green parties, is also steadily growing. As Ron Paul, the outspoken former presidential candidate, whose 2012 campaign wasundermined by the media and Republican establishment, recently said, “I’ve never bought into this idea that the lesser of two evils is a good idea” — and Americans increasingly agree. According to a Gallup poll released last year, 43 percent of Americans identify as independent — the highest number in the history of the poll.
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  • Meanwhile, faith in mainstream media is also dwindling — and it tends to dip even lower in election years, as Americans observe the perpetual circus acts performed by corporate outlets. With contentious power struggles raging both within the major parties and between them, Americans appear to be sobering up to the realities of party dominance and loyalty as they evolve beyond their crumbling political past.
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    Of course the 55% would never agree on a single candidate, so let's not get our hopes up.
Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton's Real Scandal Is Honduras, Not Benghazi - 0 views

  • What beats me is why more Democrats aren’t deeply troubled by the legacy of Clinton’s foreign policy blunder in Honduras. Maybe you’ve forgotten what happened in that small country in the first year of the Obama administration — more on that in a moment. But surely you’ve noticed the ugly wave of xenophobia greeting a growing number of Central American child refugees arriving on our southern border. Some of President Barack Obama’s supporters are trying to blame this immigration crisis on the Bush administration because of an anti-trafficking law George W. signed in 2008 specifically written to protect Central American children that preceded an uptick in their arrivals. But which country is the top source of kids crossing the border? Honduras, home to the world’s highest murder rate, Latin America’s worst economic inequality, and a repressive U.S.-backed government. When Honduran military forces allied with rightist lawmakers ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, then-Secretary of State Clinton sided with the armed forces and fought global pressure to reinstate him.
  • Washington wields great influence over Honduras, thanks to the numerous military bases built with U.S. funds where training and joint military and anti-drug operations take place. Since the coup, nearly $350 million in U.S. assistance, including more than $50 million in military aid has poured into the country. That’s a lot of investment in a nation where the police, the military, and private security forces are killing people with alarming frequency and impunity, according to Human Rights Watch. In short, desperate Honduran children are seeking refuge from a human rights nightmare that would cast a dark cloud over Clinton’s presidential bid right now if the media were paying any attention. That wouldn’t give Republicans a big advantage, of course. Until they stop alienating a majority of female voters and communities of color, I find it hard to see the party of Mitt Romney and John McCain winning the White House.
  • Given the Democratic Party’s demographic edge, progressives have nothing to lose by seizing on the GOP field’s weakness and pressing for a viable alternative to another Clinton administration. Senator Elizabeth Warren could prove a contender. Unfortunately, the consumer-rights firebrand and Massachusetts Democrat lacks any foreign policy experience. And foreign policy is no afterthought these days. Israel — the recipient of $3.1 billion a year in U.S. military aid — is waging a ground war in Gaza, and the stakes in the Russia-Ukraine conflict just grew following the downing of that Malaysia Airlines jet. Plus, Iraq is growing more violent and unstable once more. On all these issues, Clinton is more hawkish than most of the Democratic base. But other Democrats with a wide range of liberal credentials and foreign policy expertise are signaling some interest in running, especially if Clinton ultimately sits out the race. Even if Clinton does win in 2016, a serious progressive primary challenge could help shape her presidency. As more and more Honduran kids cross our border in search of a safe haven, voters should take a good look at her track record at the State Department and reconsider the inevitability of another Clinton administration.
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