New poll shows US right falling off deep end
A new poll by the US polling company Research 2000 illustrates how the mainstream of the Republican party base is falling off the deep end.
Conducted among 2,000 self-identified Republican respondents nationwide, it will pose deep headaches for the minority party which will have to build a wide base of voters if it is to govern again.
And yet the views of most Republicans will make this very difficult. Polling shows that:
• 39% of Republicans want President Obama to be impeached.
• 63% think Obama is a socialist.
• Only 42% believe Obama was born in the United States.
• 21% think ACORN stole the 2008 election — that is, that Obama didn’t actually win it, and isn’t legitimately the president, with 55% saying they are “not sure.” This number is actually significantly lower than it was in a similar question from Public Policy Polling (D) back in November, which said that 52% of Republicans thought ACORN stole it. So does this mean Obama is gaining ground among Republicans? As it is, only just over 20% of Republicans will say that Obama actually won the election.
• 53% think Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be president.
• 23% want to secede from the United States.
• 73% think gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools. This position puts the GOP base well to the right of none other than Ronald Reagan, who helped defeat the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 referendum in California that would have forbidden gays or people who advocated gay rights from teaching in public schools.
• 31% want contraception to be outlawed.
Posted on Talking Points Memo. The poll was commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos.
Will Brown’s speech today save New Labour?
Bill Clinton famously said: “When people are insecure, they’d rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who’s weak and right.”
And he was right too. Similar statements have been made in the past of the Labour party: that it was as it’s best when it was boldest, and stuck up its finger at Middle England hysterics by forcing through a National Minimum Wage, the Human Rights Act, civil rights for gays and more. Not, of course, when it came to Iraq, 42 days, ID cards etc.
Anyway, today Gordon Brown is giving a speech at ippr, and it’s widely anticipated he’ll say something more solid about electoral reform. The impact of that on the electorate is likely to be minimal – I’ve said for ages the electorate has switched off from what ministers have to say. The further narrowing of polls is down to voters getting a closer look at Tory policies, especially those on the economy, and not liking what they see, not due to Labour policy itself.
continue reading… »
Tories to collide with deniers over Lord Stern
Conservative party high command is set on a direct collision course with Tory grassroots when George Osborne makes a speech today on the issue of “green jobs”.
It is expected that the shadow chancellor will emphasise his party’s commitment to “green growth”.
More controversially for climate change deniers that dominate Tory grassroots, he will also announce that Lord Stern of Brentford, author of a landmark study on climate change, will advise a Tory working group on the creation of Britain’s first Green Investment Bank.
Last year Lord Stern said this:
Those who say that climate change doesn’t exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
Rather coincidentally, Spectator magazine recently planned to host a film denying the link between HIV and AIDS and published other AIDS denialism content in the magazine.
Since it has also championed climate change denialism, Stern’s appointment is likely to come as a double-blow to editor Fraser Nelson, who has long been a supporter of George Osborne.
The shadow chancellor will argue that the UK is lagging far behind other countries in the £1 trillion market for green goods and services.
Tories show why women don’t vote for them
Speak Your Branes Conservative Home reports on the latest opinion poll, which shows Conservatives leading amongst men, but Labour ahead with women voters.
Some grassroots Conservatives responded to make the excellent point that these results demonstrate that the Tories need to spend more time talking about how much they hate foreigners, e.g. the EU and immigrants.
Others urged that the Conservatives hold their nerve in these difficult times:
well thank goodness I had a port before I read those numbers.
But I think the Conservative vote will be out there on election day and Labours will be collecting benefit or in some pub. I am not worrying, But Cameron has to seal the deal and talk about other policy areas, I think that will be a vote winner, giving power to people and being more pro-small business.
Best of all were those who chose to speculate about why it was that women were more likely to support Labour:
It’s hard not to be sexist when trying to explain that result, but whilst not saying all who belong to a specified gender act in a certain way, you can generalise from observations.
I guess it may be that women are more likely to see the best in people and so not think of the reasoning behind the labour lies and corruption (which they don’t see as that either) but also are less interested in the details so don’t see the smart plans from the tory benches (look what happens when too much policy detail enters a womans brain: http://ua.am/8nKM)
not that they are given much airtime as it’s all cameron-centric.I would say that it could be that it’s too Cameron-centric, but then that would suggest they are chosing brown over him, and I can’t see anyone doing that.
and n.b. that’s him trying not to be sexist.
You should heard him down the golf club after a couple of ports with his friend who thinks that all Labour voters are on benefits.
Tony Blair: a man simply of belief
Tony Blair’s appearance at the Chilcot inquiry reminded us of the guy’s exceptionally slippery eel-like qualities.
Also, like Andrew Rawnsley remarked in Sunday’s Observer, the former PM’s job was made a lot easier by the “feeble” nature of the panel:
“Time and again, they approached an interesting subject area, stumbled around like people in the dark trying to find the light switch and then abandoned the quest without leaving themselves or anyone watching much the wiser about the most divisive war in the last century of our history”.
I don’t normally agree with Peter Hitchens, but he nailed it right on the head when he wrote:
“Mr Blair, questioned in a feeble and disorganised way, talked himself out of trouble by answering questions he hadn’t been asked and not answering the ones he was asked. His interrogators mostly didn’t notice this simple trick, which dishonest people instinctively use”.
All we learnt is that, after years of reasons for going to war mutating faster than the Sars virus (in succession, WMDs, violation of UN resolutions, Al Quaeda, human rights and ‘regime change’), we are now told that 9/11 was what really did it.
The former PM said: “The crucial thing after 9/11 is that the calculus of risk changed… After September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), you had to stop.”
Yet, even if you agreed with this line of thought, it would only make sense if they’d held accountable each and every regime that was suspected of engaging in WMDs. You do it only with one and it’s like trying to contain a bursting dam with a brolly.
And, in any case, hadn’t the slippery christian said in the infamous Fern Britton interview that he’d have gone to war anyway regardless of WMDs?
Not to mention that no-one raised the simple straightforward objection that Iraq had jack to do with 9/11. If anything, a number of countries were far higher in the list of potential involvement. The hijiackers, for instance, were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. No evidence whatsoever existed of any link between Iraq and Al Quaeda.
The panel also failed when Blair was asked why he had insisted on a second UN resolution if he now thinks that the first one was enough to legally justify the war. They allowed him to slip out of that contradiction without further prodding.
Fair enough suspicion. Fair enough emotions running high. Fair enough the desire to appear tough before so-called rogue states. But can you raise raze an entire country to the ground purely on that basis – in the 21st century? Can you be so geo-politically inept and blind to the extra oil you’re going to pour on the flames? Can you play with so many people’s lives just like that, when the motivations are so hit and miss?
It has been years now that Tony Blair has been getting away with lame justifications such as “God will be my judge on Iraq“, “I did what I thought was right for the country“, or ” I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now“.
But you ask any prime minister, president, führer or member of a junta and they’d probably say, through history, that they too believed in what they thought was right. And that is just shit.
Watch: Obama slams Bush “waste” in new budget
US President Obama unveiled his new budget today, costed at $3.8 trillion, and sent it to Congress for approval.
In introducing the budget he made a speech to the press that slammed Republicans for a decade of waste and “profligacy” that squandered a budget surplus and turned it into a huge budget deficit and financial collapse.
Watch
He said:
The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon. Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it -– all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs. As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.
If we had taken office during ordinary times, we would have started bringing down these deficits immediately. But one year ago, our country was in crisis: We were losing nearly 700,000 jobs each month, the economy was in a free fall, and the financial system was near collapse. Many feared another Great Depression. So we initiated a rescue, and that rescue was not without significant cost; it added to the deficit as well.
One year later, because of the steps we’ve taken, we’re in a very different place. But we can’t simply move beyond this crisis; we have to address the irresponsibility that led to it. And that includes the failure to rein in spending, as well a reliance on borrowing –- from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street –- to fuel our growth.
Where is that compassionate Conservatism now?
David Cameron is walking a tight rope between shedding the “nasty party” image while still holding on to the nasty bastards who only vote Tory for that reason.
So it shouldn’t be too surprising that lovely wuverly fluffy compassionate Conservative David Cameron said something so boneheaded on burglary in the wake of the jailing and subsequent release of Munir Hussein.
The moment a burglar steps over your threshold, and invades your property, with all the threat that gives to you, your family and your livelihood, I think they leave their human rights outside
At the time Sunny argued that he thought the law stood fine as it was but sympathised with Conservative attempts to strengthen it in favour of householders who have their house broken into. Ultimately he supported his friend’s mantra ‘If you don’t want your ass kicked then don’t break into my house.’
Luckily for Mr Hundal, his friend and all of us there is no human right which prevents your arse getting kicked if you break into someone’s house.
continue reading… »
Tories waste money on ‘cuts’ ads that don’t work
Worried about the narrative that the Conservatives were in chaos over their commitments to cutting spending, they have launched a web campaign to hit back.
But the campaign doesn’t work properly and may have wasted thousands of pounds already.
CCHQ has launched a website called ‘Labour Chaos on Cuts‘, which highlights conflicting quotes by Cabinet ministers on spending commitments.
Curiously they failed to clarify their own position on how much they planned to cut spending and wreck Britain’s nascent economic recovery.
Along with a website and a quick video filmed with Boy George (which has had a massive 247 views), they also launched a Google Adwords campaign.
Anyone searching Google for “spending cuts” will see a Google ad leading to the website.
Except, when you click on the link, the page comes up blank.
Ooops! Who’s going to pay for the hundreds, possibly thousands of pounds wasted?
Snap! Left Foot Forward also notice Tory web failure.
Update By about 5:30pm the Tories had sorted out their technical error.
Libdems have joined the fray with a statement by Vince Cable:
Labour and the Tories are accusing each other of being confused and contradictory on the economy, and they’re both right. The fact that they insist on this political bun fight shows they have failed to understand that the British public and the markets want a clear picture of what the next Government will do.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party that has had a consistent approach.
We’ve been very open about the scale of cuts required and setting out where our priorities would be, while recognising that the timing must be decided by the strength of the economy. That is why we have set out five tests for when and how we start to cut.
via LibdemVoice
40 Labour MPs call for radical campaign policies
From a press release today
In order to mobilise the maximum number of Labour voters in preparation for the next election, we believe that Labour should now focus its campaigning around the following key principles:
A. The recession should be tackled not with cuts in essential public spending, but by massive public investment in house-building, infrastructure and the de-carbonisation of the economy.
B. Banks should be split up with their casino investment arms hived off. Publicly-owned retail banks should be required to meet new social and community objectives and support manufacturing, with lending to businesses and homeowners restored to 2007 levels. Pay and bonuses should be tightly regulated.
C. A clean break must be made with market fundamentalism – deregulation and privatisation. Public provision should be expanded – in health care, education, housing, pensions, energy and transport. Royal Mail must remain wholly in the public sector.
D. In the face of huge and unacceptable growth of inequality, a big redistribution programme must swing resources away from the rich to provide sizeable increases in pensions, the minimum wage, the lowest benefit levels, and to fund job creation and improved public services. Union rights must be restored – it is in economic crisis that workers are most in need of that protection.
E. To achieve the 80% carbon emission reduction target by 2050, renewable sources of energy should be promoted on a far bigger scale, industry (including airlines) should be required to reduce its climate change emissions by at least 3% per year, household carbon allowances should be introduced, and the UK targets should be fully met by domestic action and not by carbon offsetting abroad.
We also believe that if Labour is to revive its membership in numbers and activity, it must fully restore its internal democratic procedures so that the voice of its individual and affiliated members is listened to and taken account of. This process has begun with the adoption of all-member voting rights for the National Policy Forum.
But we believe that several further reforms are needed, in particular to restore to the elected NEC full supervision and control over the party’s operation and finances, to introduce a charter of members’ rights and a Party Ombudsman to enforce them, and to renew for all party employees the core civil service values of impartiality, integrity, honesty and objectivity in the development of party policy and selection of party candidates.
MP Signatories
Diane Abbott
John Austin
Colin Burgon
Ronnie Campbell
Colin Challen
Michael Clapham
Katy Clark
Harry Cohen
Michael Connarty
Frank Cook
Jeremy Corbyn
Jim Cousins
Jon Cruddas
Ann Cryer
Ian Davidson
David Drew
Bill Etherington
Mark Fisher
Paul Flynn
Neil Gerrard
Fabian Hamilton
Dai Havard
David Heyes
Kelvin Hopkins
Lindsay Hoyle
Brian Iddon
Lynne Jones
Andrew Mackinlay
John McDonnell
Michael Meacher
Alan Meale
Austin Mitchell
Chris Mullin
Gordon Prentice
Ken Purchase
Linda Riordan
Alan Simpson
Marsha Singh
Graham Stringer
Paul Truswell
Joan Walley
David Winnick
Mike Wood
#kerryout Tory PPC’s £325,000 CCJ
What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to the idiotic #kerryout campaign?
How about this story from today’s Daily Mirror…
Tory star Adeela Shafi has £325,000 CCJ ‘debt’
A key member of David Cameron’s new generation of women MPs has had three county court judgments against her since 2007 – including one for almost £325,000.
And her husband Ijaz Shafi was declared bankrupt in 2000.
Muslim lecturer Adeela Shafi was hand-picked by Cameron to open for him at the 2008 Tory Conference.
He then endorsed her as a Parliamentary candidate and campaigned in her Bristol East constituency along with his shadow cabinet team.
CCJs of £400 and £1,048 have been settled but £324,272 is outstanding – despite her being ordered to repay it nearly three years ago in July 2007 – five months before she became a prospective Tory MP.
Hat Tip – Political Scrapbook
As Political Scrapbook correctly notes, an undischarged bankrupt cannot stand for election to Westminster, and an MP who goes bankrupt while at Westminster is out of a job, a fate that Jeffrey Archer narrowly avoided in 1974 by standing down at the October election before the shit really hit the fan.
Strangely enough, this seems to have been a minor detail that self-styled campaigner for political transparency Harry Cole/Tory Bear neglected to mention when setting up the #kerryout campaign to raise money for Shafi’s election campaign in Bristol East.
Still, we shouldn’t be too hard on young Harry.
Mistakes like this are bound to happen when you’re the unfortunate outcome of a failed cloning experiment involving Susan Boyle and Archie the Inventor, as demonstrated by his weekly appearances on ‘Guy TV News’.
FFS, Guido, can’t you do everyone a favour and put Harry in a burqa…
…every week.
UPDATE
A quick check has revealed that, to date, the #kerryout campaign has raised the princely sum of £1,681 for Shafi’s campaign.
Using the same fundraising system, Boris Johnson’s brother, Jo, has raised £11,956.
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» What do we want from the BBC?
» The coming crisis of Conservatism
» Others should follow the Cooperative in boycotting Israeli settlement goods
» What’s the point of these justifications for the ongoing war in Afghanistan?
» The alternative: why Greece should NOT abandon the Euro
» For Cameron, looking weak is a bigger problem than being unpopular
» Most women don’t need counselling before abortion, shows study
» With Caroline Lucas stepping down, how the Greens need to change
» Advertising Standards Authority vs Archbishop Cranmer
» The far left versus the far right: French election part deux
» Our mental health services are a mess; can Labour change it?
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