Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44
Rappel du premier message :
Bonjour Biloulou
Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait!
Auteur
Message
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1799 - 17/1/2010, 21:12
Pas exactement, ce que Nelson "la soixieme voix" esperant sans doute!
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published Sunday January 17, 2010
Ratings drops below 50% for Nelson
By Robynn Tysver Copyright 2010 OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
The battle over health care legislation has taken its toll on U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson's political well-being, despite the Democrat's efforts to sell Nebraskans on his vote.
Spoiler:
Nelson, who once enjoyed some of the highest job performance marks in the U.S. Senate, has now seen his approval rating dip below 50 percent in Nebraska, according to The World-Herald Poll. Nelson said the poll results come as no surprise, especially since Nebraskans have been “bombarded” with millions of dollars in “misleading advertisements.”
He said he expects that people will come to appreciate the health care bill.
“I believe that, over time, as the special interest ads subside, Nebraskans will understand the bill I support will improve their health care, because it ends the denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, it reduces spiraling costs and it provides new access to coverage for 220,000 Nebraskans without health care today,” Nelson said in a written statement.
In the survey, Nelson's job approval rating was 42 percent and his disapproval rating was 48 percent. By comparison, Republican Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who voted against the bill, had a 63 percent job-approval rating.
Nelson has been under fire since he supplied the 60th vote to win approval for President Barack Obama's principal domestic policy initiative in the Senate. He was called a “sellout” at a political rally.
Critics say a controversial provision — dubbed the “Cornhusker kickback,” which would save Nebraska on Medicaid costs — was inserted in the bill to win Nelson's vote.
Nelson on Friday asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to scratch Nebraska's exemption and instead extend the Medicaid provision to all states.
In the past few weeks, Nelson and his allies have pushed back against the criticism.
Nelson has been aggressively arguing his case on radio shows and in meetings with newspaper editorial boards. The Nebraska Democratic Party has spent more than $350,000 on a media campaign in support of Nelson.
“It's pretty clear he's taken a hit,” said Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Adkins said any time a politician's disapproval rating is higher than his approval rating, he's in trouble. He predicted that Nelson would have a tough time trying to change people's minds on the issue, saying his research shows that most people stop listening to a political debate after forming an opinion.
“The survey is a snapshot (in time),'' Adkins said. “Public opinion changes and can often be very volatile. And it is possible for politicians to go out there and sell themselves. It's possible, but it's very difficult to do that.''
The World Herald Poll was conducted Jan. 8-12 by Wiese Research Associates of Omaha. It's based on telephone interviews with 500 registered voters. The statistical margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
It's clear the bulk of Nebraskans' dissatisfaction with Nelson rests with his health care vote. More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they opposed the Senate health care bill. A majority said they opposed Nelson's vote for the bill. About one-third favored his vote.
Not surprisingly, the poll results broke along party lines. Three-fourths of Republicans opposed Nelson's vote, as did only 22 percent of Democrats.
The hit to Nelson's political standing is something new for the veteran politician, whose career was launched in 1990 with his election as governor.
For the most part, Nelson has enjoyed the goodwill of voters, including Republicans. The two-term governor left office in 1999 with one poll showing 80 percent of Nebraskans supporting the job he had done.
He continued to keep his constituents happy during his time in the U.S. Senate. In his re-election bid in 2006, Nelson won 64 percent of the vote. That was after his opponent spent millions of dollars on television advertisements, with many of them attacking Nelson's record.
In April 2006, Nelson was named one of the Senate's most popular members after national pollster SurveyUSA reported that 73 percent of Nebraskans approved of his performance.
That appears to have changed — at least for the time being — in the aftermath of the health care vote. Nelson has been called the “most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in 2012” by the respected Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C.
It is nearly three years until the next Senate election in Nebraska. If Nelson decides to run, it's debatable whether the health care vote will be a key factor.
No one knows who Nelson's opponent will be at that time, or what the top issues of the day will be.
Also unknown is whether Nebraskans will have becomemore comfortable with the health care legislation by then.
But at this point, the bill could haunt Nelson. A plurality of voters (44 percent) in The World-Herald Poll said his vote on health care would be counted against him if he ran again.
It gets worse for Nelson when considering the impact his vote has had on Republicans who have supported him in the past.
Nelson's political success can be attributed in large part to his ability to woo Republican and independent voters. With only 34 percent of the state'sregistered voters, Democrats in Nebraska must go outside their party's base to win a statewide election.
According to the poll, Nelson took a big hit among Republicans who had supported him. Nearly half of the Republicans who said they voted for Nelson in 2006 said they did not approve of his job performance.
Andrew Liebman is one of them. Liebman said it was “unlikely” he'd vote for the Democrat again if Nelson continues to support the Senate's health care bill as it currently stands.
Liebman, a 31-year-old Omaha tech writer, opposes the bill because he fears it will ultimately chip away at his private insurance plan. He believes it is going to cost too much.
“I like Ben Nelson. I have liked him for a really long time,” he said. “But the problem is, I like my health insurance. A lot of Nebraskans like what they have, and they're really afraid this is going to make it so that things will change in their current health insurance.”
Liebman also has not been happy with the way Nelson has defended his vote.
Nelson has argued, among other points, that most people he talks to in Nebraska are supportive of his vote. Liebman said that whenever he hears Nelson say that, he questions whether the senator is actually listening.
“I don't believe I'm living under a rock, and it doesn't feel that way to me,” he said.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1800 - 18/1/2010, 12:47
Bien evidemment, c'est le jour de l'election qui compte mais bon, le POTUS devrait peut-etre se rendre compte que le passage au bulldozer d'Obamacare n'est pas du gout de beaucoup d'Americains et qu'ils risquent de lui faire comprendre.
Bleu: Democrates - Rouge: Republicains
Election 2010 Polls
Election 2010 Polls
State of the Union
Health Care
All Latest Polls
Sunday, January 17
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
PPP (D)
Brown 51, Coakley 46
Brown +5
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
InsideMedford/MRG
Brown 51, Coakley 41
Brown +10
Saturday, January 16
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
ARG
Brown 48, Coakley 45
Brown +3
Friday, January 15
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
PJM/CrossTarget (R)
Brown 54, Coakley 39
Brown +15
California Senate - Boxer vs. Fiorina
Rasmussen Reports
Boxer 46, Fiorina 43
Boxer +3
California Senate - Boxer vs. DeVore
Rasmussen Reports
Boxer 46, DeVore 40
Boxer +6
California Senate - Boxer vs. Campbell
Rasmussen Reports
Boxer 46, Campbell 42
Boxer +4
Ohio Governor - Kasich vs. Strickland
Rasmussen Reports
Kasich 47, Strickland 40
Kasich +7
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
Suffolk/7News
Brown 50, Coakley 46
Brown +4
North Dakota Senate - Hoeven vs. Schultz
Daily Kos/R2000
Hoeven 56, Schultz 32
Hoeven +24
North Dakota Senate - Hoeven vs. Heitkamp
Daily Kos/R2000
Hoeven 55, Heitkamp 34
Hoeven +21
North Dakota Senate - Hoeven vs. Schneider
Daily Kos/R2000
Hoeven 56, Schneider 32
Hoeven +24
Generic Congressional Vote
CNN/Opinion Research
Republicans 48, Democrats 45
Republicans +3
Thursday, January 14
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Ohio Senate - Portman vs. Brunner
Rasmussen Reports
Portman 43, Brunner 40
Portman +3
Ohio Senate - Portman vs. Fisher
Rasmussen Reports
Portman 44, Fisher 37
Portman +7
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
Blue Mass Group/R2000 (D)
Brown 41, Coakley 49
Coakley +8
Nevada Senate - Tarkanian vs. Reid
PPP (D)
Tarkanian 50, Reid 42
Tarkanian +8
Nevada Senate - Lowden vs. Reid
PPP (D)
Lowden 51, Reid 41
Lowden +10
Connecticut Senate - McMahon vs. Blumenthal
Quinnipiac
Blumenthal 64, McMahon 23
Blumenthal +41
Connecticut Senate - Simmons vs. Blumenthal
Quinnipiac
Blumenthal 62, Simmons 27
Blumenthal +35
Connecticut Senate - Republican Primary
Quinnipiac
Simmons 37, McMahon 27
Simmons +10
Generic Congressional Vote
Pew Research
Republicans 44, Democrats 46
Democrats +2
Wednesday, January 13
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
New Hampshire Senate - Ayotte vs. Hodes
Rasmussen Reports
Ayotte 49, Hodes 40
Ayotte +9
Nevada Senate - Tarkanian vs. Reid
Rasmussen Reports
Tarkanian 50, Reid 36
Tarkanian +14
Nevada Senate - Lowden vs. Reid
Rasmussen Reports
Lowden 48, Reid 36
Lowden +12
Tuesday, January 12
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
Rasmussen Reports
Brown 47, Coakley 49
Coakley +2
Generic Congressional Vote
Rasmussen Reports
Republicans 45, Democrats 36
Republicans +9
Sunday, January 10
Race/Topic (Click to Sort)PollResultsSpread
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
PPP (D)
Brown 48, Coakley 47
Brown +1
Massachusetts Senate - Special Election
Boston Globe
Brown 36, Coakley 53
Coakley +17
Saturday, January 09
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1801 - 18/1/2010, 13:57
JANUARY 18, 2010, 5:33 A.M. ET
"Chemical Ali" Again Sentenced to Death
Associated Press BAGHDAD--Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" was convicted Sunday of crimes against humanity and received his fourth death sentence, this time for involvement in one of the worst poison-gas attacks ever against civilians.
Chemical Ali Gets Burned, Again
1:18
The man known as Chemical Ali has already been given three death sentences by the Iraqi courts but now he chalks up his fourth for his role in the 1988 deadly gas attack on the Kurds. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Spoiler:
Ali Hassan al-Majid is among the last of Saddam's closest confidants still on trial for crimes committed by the former regime. The verdict met with jubilation across Iraq, highlighting the deep-rooted hatred many Iraqis feel toward the former regime and to Chemical Ali, one of the chief architects of Saddam's repression.
Families of victims in court cheered when the judge handed down the guilty verdict in a trial for the poison-gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,600 people.
"I am so happy today," said Nazik Tawfiq, 45 years old, a Kurdish woman who said she lost six of her relatives in the attack. She came to court alone to hear the sentence, and fell to her knees and began to pray upon hearing the verdict. "Now the souls of our victims will rest in peace." Mr. al-Majid, whose nickname comes from his role in that attack, has already received three previous death sentences for atrocities committed during Saddam's rule, particularly in the government's campaigns against the Shiites and Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s.
Other officials in Saddam's regime received jail terms for their roles in the 1988 attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja near the Iranian border.
European Pressphoto Agency
Former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie faces 15 years in prison, as does Iraq's former director of military intelligence, Sabir Azizi al-Douri. Farhan Mutlaq al-Jubouri, the former head of military intelligence's eastern regional office, was sentenced to 10 years. The jail terms were handed down following guilty verdicts on charges that included crimes against humanity.
The killings are a particularly sore point for Iraq's Kurds. Many people in Halabja still suffer physically from the effects of the nerve and mustard gas that were unleashed on the village at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Some survivors feel it was unfair that Saddam was hanged for the killings of Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt, but didn't live to face justice for the Halabja attack.
An estimated 5,600 people were killed in the gassing of the town. The attack was widely seen as the biggest use of chemical weapons on civilians in history.
Mr. al-Majid was previously sentenced to hang for his role in a brutal crackdown against the Kurds in the late 1980s, known as the Anfal that killed hundreds of thousands. Courts later issued separate death sentences for his role in the 1991 suppression of a Shiite uprising and for a 1999 crackdown that sought to quell a Shiite backlash to the slaying of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr.
The earlier death sentences against Mr. al-Majid haven't been carried out because they are tied to a political dispute involving Mr. al-Taie, who was also sentenced to death along with Mr. al-Majid in the Anfal trial.
Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, have both refused to sign the execution order against Mr. al-Taie, who signed the cease-fire with U.S.-led forces that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Mr. al-Taie is a Sunni Arab viewed by many as a respected career soldier who was forced to follow Saddam's orders in the purges against Kurds.
The three-member presidency council must approve all death sentences, and the failure to find agreement on Mr. al-Taie delayed the execution of Mr. al-Majid as well.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has pushed the presidency council to approve the death sentences pending against Messrs. al-Majid and al-Taie.
Mr. al-Taie surrendered to U.S. forces in September 2003 after weeks of negotiations. His defense has claimed the Americans had promised Mr. al-Taie "protection and good treatment" before he turned himself in.
Many Sunni Arabs saw his sentence as evidence that Shiite and Kurdish officials are persecuting their once-dominant minority, using their influence over the judiciary. Another reason for the delay is that the Kurds from Halabja have also been pushing to have their day in court with Mr. al-Majid.
Mohammed Saeed Ali, a Kurdish city official in Halabja, said Mr. al-Majid ought to be hanged in Halabja to bring closure to victims' relatives. "Chemical Ali massacred us and we want to see him getting what he deserves," he said.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 18/1/2010, 14:09
Quelle tristesse pour le pays ce chavez!
JANUARY 17, 2010, 10:08 P.M. ET
Venezuela Nationalizes French Retail Chain
By DARCY CROWE
CARACAS -- President Hugo Chavez ordered Sunday the seizure of a French-owned retail chain on accusations that it raised prices after Venezuela devalued the currency by half.
Spoiler:
"Until when are we going to allow this to happen?" Mr. Chavez asked during his Sunday television program in reference to the alleged price hike by Almacenes Exito SA, headquartered in Colombia and controlled by French retailer Casino Guichard-Perrachon S.A.
The Venezuelan leader said that new law may need to be approved to carry out the nationalization. "I'm waiting for the new law to begin the expropriation process," he said. "There's no going back," he added.
Almacenes Exito saw some of its stores closed this week by government authorities on accusations that it was increasing prices regardless of Mr. Chavez's orders that retailers were not to adjust prices after he devalued the currency to 4.3 bolivars per dollar from the previous rate of 2.15 bolivars.
Almacenes Exito, which also runs Colombia's largest retail chain, controls six hypermarkets and around 32 supermarkets in Venezuela.
Gonzalo Velasquez, Exito's director of communications, said his company won't comment. He added France's Casino owns a majority stake in the Venezuelan supermarket chain.
In the past Gonzalo Restrepo, Exito's Chief Executive, had said Exito had set apart 45 billion Colombian pesos ($23 million) for its minority stake in the Venezuelan retailer to write off the assets if needed.
Separately, Mr. Chavez also ordered the nationalization of a large shopping-mall recently built in a downtown district in Caracas. The stores controlled by Exito and the shopping mall will be used to build up Comerso, a new government-run retail chain which seeks to sell its products at "socialist" prices, according to the president.
During his 11 years in power Mr. Chavez has nationalized large swaths of the Venezuelan economy, including a Spanish-owned bank and an Argentine-controlled steel-mill.
In some cases the government has reached a compensation agreement with the owners, while other companies, including Cemex SA and Exxon Mobil, are mired in international arbitration proceedings to secure payment for their nationalized assets.
Write to Darcy Crowe at darcy.crowe@dowjones.com
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1803 - 18/1/2010, 14:30
The Huffington Post, no less... Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American ProspectPosted: January 17, 2010 11:09 PM
A Wake Up Call
How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more. Polls show that the public now opposes it by margins averaging ten to fifteen points, and widening. It is hard to know which will be the worse political defeat -- losing the bill and looking weak, or passing it and leaving it as a piñata for Republicans to attack between now and November.
Spoiler:
The measure is so unpopular that Republican State Senator Scott Brown has built his entire surge against Coakley around his promise to be the 41st senator to block the bill -- this in Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts. He must be pretty confident that the bill has become politically radioactive, and he's right.
It has already brought down Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a fighter for health care and other reforms far more progressive than President Obama's. Dorgan championed Americans' right to re-import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, a popular provision that the White House blocked. Dorgan, who is one of the Senate's great populists, began the year more than twenty points ahead in the polls of his most likely challenger, North Dakota Governor John Hoeven.
By the time he decided to call it a day, Dorgan was running more than twenty points behind. The difference was the health bill, which North Dakotans oppose by nearly two to one. The fact that Dorgan's own views were much better than the Administration's cut little ice. He was fatally associated with an unpopular bill.
So, how did Democrats get saddled with this bill? Begin with Rahm Emanuel. The White House chief of staff, who was once Bill Clinton's political director, drew three lessons from the defeat of Clinton-care. All three were wrong. First, get it done early (Clinton's task force had dithered.) Second, leave the details to Congress (Clinton had presented Congress with a fully-baked cake.) Third, don't get on the wrong side of the insurance and drug industries (The insurers' fictitious couple, Harry and Louise, had cleaned Clinton's clock.)
But as I wrote in Obama's Challenge, in August 2008, it would be a huge mistake to try to get health care done right out of the box. Obama first needed to get his sea-legs, and focus like a laser on economic recovery. If he got the economy back on track, he would then have earned the chops to undertake more difficult structural reforms like health care.
Deferring to the House and Senate was fine up to a point, but this was an issue where the president needed to lead as only presidents can -- in order to frame the debate and define the stakes.
Cutting a deal with the insurers and drug companies, who are not exactly candidates to win popularity contests, associated Obama with profoundly resented interest groups. This was exactly the wrong framing. This battle should have been the president and the people versus the interests. Instead more and more voters concluded that it was the president and the interests versus the people.
As policy, the interest-group strategy made it impossible to put on the table more fundamental and popular reforms, such as using Federal bargaining power to negotiate cheaper drug prices, or having a true public option like Medicare-for-all. Instead, a bill that served the drug and insurance industries was almost guaranteed to have unpopular core elements.
The politics got horribly muddled. By embracing a deal that required the government to come up with a trillion dollars of subsidy for the insurance industry, Obama was forced to pursue policies that were justifiably unpopular -- such as taxing premiums of people with decent insurance; or compelling people to buy policies that they often couldn't afford, or diverting money from Medicare. He managed to scare silly the single most satisfied clientele of our one island of efficient single-payer health insurance -- senior citizens -- and to alienate one of his most loyal constituencies, trade unionists.
The bill helped about two-thirds of America's uninsured, but did almost nothing for the 85 percent of Americans with insurance that is becoming more costly and unreliable by the day -- except frighten them into believing that what little they have is at increased risk of being taken away.
All of this made things easier for the right, and left people to take seriously even preposterous allegations such as the nonsense about death panels. It got so ass-backwards that the other day Ben Nelson, who successfully held out for anti-abortion language and a sweetheart deal for Nebraska's Medicaid as the price of his vote, found himself facing a wholesale voter backlash.
Nelson began running TV spots assuring Nebraska voters that the Obama health plan is "not run by the government." That's one hell of a slogan for a party that relies on democratically elected government to offset the insecurity, inequality and insanity generated by private commercial forces. If not-run-by-government is the Democrats' credo, why bother?
So we went from a politics in which government is necessary to provide secure health insurance -- because the private insurance industry skims off outrageous middlemen fees and discriminates against sick people -- to a politics in which Democrats, as a matter of survival, feel they have to apologize for government. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel.
The budget-obsessives around Obama also insisted that most of the bill not take effect until 2013, so that all of the scary stuff gets three years to fester before most people see any benefit. Call it political malpractice.
Finally, the health insurance battle sucked out all the oxygen. When Obama made time to work the phones personally, it wasn't to enact serious financial reform (this was left to the tender mercies of Tim Geithner) or to fight for a real jobs program (deficit hawks Peter Orszag and Larry Summers got to blunt that one). No -- Obama got on the phone and met with legislators to round up the last vote or two for a sketchy health reform that crowded out far more urgent issues.
As a resident of Massachusetts, in the last two days I've gotten robo calls from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Martha Coakley, and Angela Menino, the wife of Boston's mayor -- everyone but the sainted Ted Kennedy. In Obama's call, he advised me that he needed Martha Coakley in the Senate, "because I'm fighting to curb the abuses of a health insurance industry that routinely denies care." Let's see, would that be the same insurance industry that Rahm was cutting inside deals with all spring and summer? The same insurance industry that spent tens of millions on TV spots backing Obama's bill as sensible reform?
If voters are wondering which side this guy is on, he has given them good reason.
Looking forward, one can imagine several possibilities. Suppose Coakley loses. Obama and the House leadership may then decide that their one shot to salvage health reform after all this effort is for the House to just pass the Senate-approved bill and send it to the president's desk. They can fix its deficiencies later. This is an easy parliamentary move. But the bill passed the House by only five votes; many House members are dead set against some of the more objectionable provisions of the Senate bill; a Coakley loss would make the bill that much more politically toxic; there will be Republican catcalls that Congress is using dubious means to pass a bill that has just been politically repudiated; and the House votes just may not be there this time.
Alternatively, let's say Coakley narrowly wins, the Democrats have a near death experience, and the House and Senate stop squabbling and pass the damned bill.
Either way, the Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind.
Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos, and author of Obama's Challenge.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1804 - 18/1/2010, 14:44
Heat of the race shows Martha's true character
By Joe Fitzgerald Monday, January 18, 2010 - Updated 10h ago
If the old saw is true, that a clear conscience is the softest pillow, Scott Brown ought to sleep well tonight, content he took the high road in his bid to succeed Ted Kennedy.
Spoiler:
He proved you don’t have to go to every fight you’re invited to, no matter how much you’re provoked by a desperate opponent willing to win by any means necessary. If Martha Coakley was accurately portrayed by her campaign, shame on her; if the portrayal that emerged was the handiwork of her handlers, shame on them.
When Raymond Berry coached the Patriots [team stats] he was fond of pointing out, “Heat not only builds character; it reveals character.”
And what the heat of this campaign revealed was that Coakley, who started out presenting herself as a woman of grace and dignity, is, in fact, the personification of the old boys’ network.
She almost had us fooled, but then she began to feel the heat.
She ignored a reporter’s uncomfortable question, then looked the other way while one of her toadies knocked him to the ground. And she’s our top law enforcement officer? Please.
She asked us to believe that Brown, who has two daughters, is totally callous to the trauma of rape. How scurrilous.
She told us to look at Brown and see George W. Bush. Really? Should we then look at her, a product of the entrenched Beacon Hill establishment, and see Dianne Wilkerson, Marian Walsh or Sal DiMasi? Would that not be just as reasonable?
And speaking of associations, why does she need Barack Obama when Deval Patrick’s already here? OK, that’s rhetorical.
The national implications of this campaign are obvious; the returns will be seen by many as a referendum on the president, for a Brown victory would suggest Americans are not happy with the way the country’s going.
But the local implications are enormous, too, because in Massachusetts we’re not used to having our opinions matter.
Referenda? We told the Beacon Hill crowd how we felt about term limits, capital punishment and legislative pay raises. No one listened. And then that same crowd made very sure no one knew how we felt about gay marriage.
So what’s beautiful about tomorrow is that they are finally going to have to listen to us as one of their own asks for our support.
And that makes this a certainty: When the totals are announced, we will have gotten exactly what we deserved.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1805 - 18/1/2010, 16:21
C'est original!
CNN: White House Predicts Martha Coakley Will Lose Election
Spoiler:
Ed Henry, the White House correspondent for CNN, reports that the Obama Administration thinks Martha Coakley will lose Tuesday's election.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 18/1/2010, 19:29
Bof, comme le disait John Kerry vendredi, voilà tout ce qu'on peut dire des répubs, les sponsors de Mme la baronne:
The party of «No».
Kerry argued that while Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration focused on governing for the past year, “the Republicans did nothing but say no.” After ticking off a list of items the Republicans have opposed, Kerry concluded:
They made a calculated political decision that they would say no to governance, create anger, and then let the anger fall on those who are struggling to make the choices and these tough decisions. And now, they have the gall to want to receive a bonus for doing it.
Well my friends, the only things the Republicans say yes to are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, tea partiers, and Fox News.
Combien vrai!
Pitoyables...
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 18/1/2010, 20:24
Tiens le canard est venu deposer?
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1808 - 18/1/2010, 20:27
Le probleme des Democrates n'est pas les Republicains et en particulier pas au MA (ou ils ne sont que 12%) ni en ce qui concerne Health Care (puisqu'ils sont exclus de tout debat) ce sont les independants et ceux qui, parmi eux, font face a une election en novembre. Parce qu'en realite le probleme des Democrates d'extreme gauche, comme le POTUS, Nancy , Reid , Frank etc... c'est la majorite des Americains qui est contre le projet de loi qu'ils cogitent depuis 1 an de toute evidence sans grand succes, si avec beaucoup de cachoteries et des accords au caractere pernicieux!
et en attendant
Date .................... Presidential Approval Index - Strongly Appr - Strongly Disappr - Total Appr - Total Disappr
01/17/2010
-12
27%
39%
48%
51%
01/16/2010
-13
27%
40%
49%
51%
01/15/2010
-14
26%
40%
47%
52%
01/14/2010
-15
25%
40%
46%
53%
01/13/2010
-15
24%
39%
46%
53%
======
01/21/2009
+28
44%
16%
65%
30%
Dernière édition par Sylvette le 18/1/2010, 22:47, édité 2 fois
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1809 - 18/1/2010, 21:27
January 17, 2010
PPP: Brown up 5
Public Policy Polling's final survey finds Scott Brown up 51% to 46%, a result that's within the margin for error of the poll but which mirrors most other recent polls in giving the Republican a lead in the race.
The quick summary:
Over the last week Brown has continued his dominance with independents and increased his ability to win over Obama voters as Coakley's favorability numbers have declined into negative territory. At the same time Democratic leaning voters have started to take more interest in the election, a trend that if it continues in the final 36 hours of the campaign could put her over the finish line. Striking numbers:
-Brown is up 64-32 with independents and is winning 20% of the vote from people who supported Barack Obama in 2008 while Coakley is getting just 4% of the McCain vote.
-Those planning to turn out continue to be skeptical of the Democratic health care plan, saying they oppose it by a 48/40 margin.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 18/1/2010, 23:04
Voila quelqu'un qui ne partage pas le point de vue d'Eddie quant a l'avantage d'avoir a la Maison Blanche une personne inexperimentee.
The Political Blunders of the Obama White House by Jay Cost January 18, 2010
If Scott Brown should defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election tomorrow, it will be a fitting metaphor for the political trajectory of President Obama's first year in office. A year ago Democrats were talking about Obama as the next Franklin Roosevelt, and suggesting that they were on the cusp of an enduring majority. Today, they are struggling to hold Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.
Spoiler:
Coakley will rightly get most of the blame should Brown actually pull off what once seemed to be an impossible victory. Yet much of the responsibility will have to rest with Barack Obama, who has guided his party so poorly that it is having trouble making an appeal to voters in Massachusetts. To put it bluntly, the Obama White House has been politically inept in the last year. It has made serious miscalculations, and today it is paying a price.
Ultimately, the reason for these errors goes back to the greenness of the Commander-in-Chief himself, who lacked executive experience and had little first-hand knowledge of the way Washington functions. He put together a team too full of Chicago strongmen, campaign hacks, and sympathetic "Friends of Barack." Accordingly, he and his executive staff were ill prepared for managing the government. This led to three significant political blunders. *** #1. A Lack of Bipartisanship. Nobody (except perhaps Obama's spinmeisters in the White House) would deny that the President has not been post-partisan. The typical response from the left has been: (a) the Republicans are too crassly political to compromise with; and/or (b) the two parties are now so far apart that there is no middle ground. The problem with this argument is that it fails to account for the near total absence of bipartisanship. Granted that polarization has reduced the number of gettable Republican votes - it surely has not reduced it to zero. Republican legislators like Mike Castle and Susan Collins are fewer in number now than in years past - but such members are still there, and Obama has been hard-pressed to win them over on anything of significance.
An absence of bipartisanship has created two serious problems for the Obama White House. First, it has left the Democratic Party solely responsible for all major legislation - which in turn means that the Democrats have taken on a greater share of the political responsibility for the state of the union. Bipartisanship would have brought Republicans into the governing process, and thus given Obama and his Democratic allies some cover.
Second, it has led to a predictable rise in partisan bickering, which Independent voters hate. If public opinion polling on the Massachusetts Senate race is correct, it will be Independents who swing to Brown in big numbers, which means they'll join Independents in Virginia and New Jersey in voting Republican. If Democrats cannot win back at least some of them, they will suffer major losses in November, 2010.
#2. Installing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as de facto prime ministers. A common hobby of political commentators over the last year has been to compare Barack Obama to past presidents. At this point, it's pretty clear who he isn't like - and that's Woodrow Wilson (ironic, considering his background is so similar to Wilson's). During his first year in office, Wilson took an active role in managing the government. He reinstated the practice of delivering the State of the Union in person. He also was a frequent visitor on Capitol Hill, especially when he fought to keep the Senate from gutting his tariff reform.
Obama, on the other hand, has been content to let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid handle the difficult task of legislating while he hangs back. His lack of involvement in the process has prompted many cries from Democratic legislators that he engage more fully.
His congressional allies are right. Obama has not been involved enough. Congress is not well suited to the task that Obama gave it. It is not a national legislature. Instead, it's a legislature where representatives from the various parts of the country convene. That's a crucial distinction, for it means that there is nobody in Congress who is ultimately responsible to the whole people.
Congress has governed in a predictable way - handing out far too many special favors to wavering legislators and privileged interest groups. Congress often resorts to this tactic to stitch together a winnable coalition, but the process makes a mockery of the national interest.
Only the President can claim to represent the national interest, and it's his responsibility to guide Congress in a way that reflects it. Obama has failed to do that. He's let Congress legislate by its own lights, and the process has not been pretty. We talk about legislative "sausage making," but this has been sausage making akin to The Jungle. Accordingly, the public has lost confidence in the government to handle the many problems facing the country.
#3 Pursuing an agenda that doesn't fit the times. I'm talking about health care reform here. For decades, Democratic Presidents have dreamed of comprehensive reform of the nation's health care system. So, it's no surprise that President Obama wanted to try his hand at this, especially considering the outsized majorities his party has in Congress. In itself, this was not a mistake.
The mistake comes when we view this pursuit in context. Namely, 2009 was not a good year to focus the government so intently on health care reform. The public wanted a greater focus on the recession, but it didn't really get one. All it got was a hastily constructed, wasteful stimulus bill that was built on the assumption that unemployment would top out at 8%. As unemployment skyrocketed and the recession dragged on, watching the Senate Finance Committee debate insurance co-operatives and Cadillac taxes made it appear that the government was out of touch.
Additionally, the pursuit of health care reform was difficult to square with a public that has become increasingly deficit conscious. Very few people believe that these reforms will be "deficit neutral," and for good reason. This is a massive new entitlement program the Democrats are proposing, and our existing entitlements cost way more than initial projections, and more than we can today afford. One need not be a policy wonk to suspect that the Democrats' math is more than a little "fuzzy." This would likely not be a concern if the government were running a surplus or just a small deficit. But the 2009 deficit topped out in the trillions. That is bound to make voters wary of new, expensive entitlement programs.
***
These mistakes are all problematic by themselves, but take them together and they become much more powerful: the White House has pursued a partisan agenda and condoned congressional cronyism while ignoring the demands of the public. Martha Coakley's lousy campaign is a big reason why Ted Kennedy's seat is in peril. So is the high unemployment rate. But so also is this. Combined, these mistakes have created a very bad impression.
White Houses make mistakes. Presidents are often inexperienced when they come into the job.
They often appoint high-level staffers who are ill prepared to guide the President to success.
Corresponding political failures like these are fairly common.
The important questions moving forward are: how will the President respond? Will he acknowledge that his team has made mistakes? Will he correct the way his White House does business? Or will he continue to plunge ahead without recognizing his own faults?
It's inevitable that Presidents run into political trouble - and the kind Obama faces today is not terribly unique in the history of the executive branch. The real test of a President's mettle is not whether he encounters problems, but how reacts to them. As we move forward, I will be watching the President's response to political setbacks just as closely as I'll be watching the unemployment numbers. I think both will determine the course of our politics for the next several years.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1811 - 19/1/2010, 07:31
Ce serait presque drole vu la hargne avec laquelle la gauche s'en prenait a Bush 43 qui tentait de nous oter nos libertes sous couvert de nous proteger d'une attaque exterieure, si ce n'etait qu'ici elle trouvait normal de le faire pour nous proteger de nous-memes! Decidement ce socialisme au pouvoir!
January 18, 2010 10:34 AM EST by John Stossel
Stealth Propaganda
An obscure 2008 academic article gained traction with bloggers over the weekend. The article was written by the head of Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. He’s a good friend of the president and the promoter the contradictory idea: "libertarian paternalism". In the article, he muses about what government can do to combat "conspiracy" theories:
Spoiler:
...we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies ... will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.
That's right. Obama's Regulation Czar is so concerned about citizens thinking the wrong way that he proposed sending government agents to "infiltrate" these groups and manipulate them. This reads like an Onion article: Powerful government official proposes to combat paranoid conspiracy groups that believe the government is out to get them...by proving that they really are out to get them. Did nothing of what Sunstein was writing strike him as...I don't know...crazy? "Cognitive infiltration" of extremist groups by government agents? "Stylized facts"? Was "truthiness" too pedantic?
Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald explains why this you should be disturbed by this:
This was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.
... What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.
It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.
It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
Biloulou
Nombre de messages : 54566 Localisation : Jardins suspendus sur la Woluwe - Belgique Date d'inscription : 27/10/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 07:45
Petard1 a écrit:
Bof, comme le disait John Kerry vendredi, voilà tout ce qu'on peut dire des répubs, les sponsors de Mme la baronne...
Ah, Pétard, tu nous manquais avec ton style si particulier, souvenir de notre jeunesse...
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 07:55
manquais, manquais .... Biloulou, Bon allez, c'est vrai, il nous fait sourire...
De plus, je croyais que Madame la Baronne residait a Marbella?
Biloulou
Nombre de messages : 54566 Localisation : Jardins suspendus sur la Woluwe - Belgique Date d'inscription : 27/10/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 07:58
Sylvette a écrit:
manquais, manquais .... Biloulou, Bon allez, c'est vrai, il nous fait sourire... De plus, je croyais que Madame la Baronne residait a Marbella?
La noblesse de coeur ne connaît pas de frontières...
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1815 - 19/1/2010, 08:18
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1816 - 19/1/2010, 09:17
C'est vrai les sondages sont une chose, la realite du jour de l'election en est une autre. Tout depend de la participation.
Si l'on considere l'article poste en 1811, on peut se demander si ce genre d'actions genereusement octroye aux Republicains, ne seraient pas plutot le fait de Democrates et puis ici nulle mention du journaliste pousse a terre sous les yeux de madame Oakley (n'oublions tout de meme qu'elle est procureur general de l'etat... ) mais bon...
Que le meilleur gagne, le choix est facile d'un cote les demons de l'autre les anges et selon cet article, les Republicains ne sont evidemment pas les anges.
Voyons si la rhetorique de demonisation des Republicains (la encore ca nous rappelle notre jeunesse... ) et les boulets de canons tires ces derniers jours, obtiendront le resultat escompte pour le parti au pouvoir, c'est possible... Evidemment j'espere que non!
It's not over yet
Remember: Pollsters had Martha 10 points ahead of Congressman Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary. She beat him by 20.
Spoiler:
Nearly every pollster had Obama trouncing Hillary in the New Hampshire presidential primary. But Hillary trounced Obama. Lynda Tocci, the same operative who did Hillary’s field organization then is doing Martha’s now.
Meanwhile, there’s more creepiness in the Brown ranks.
“Shove a curling iron up her . . .” Somebody actually shouted this to Brown during a rally Sunday. Nauseating rape scenarios have appeared all over Coakley’s Facebook page. Yesterday, as Coakley arrived at a Pittsfield rally, dozens of angry people surrounded her car, according to her campaign. One lay underneath it, temporarily blocking it, Coakley supporters said.
I’m not blaming all this on Brown. He insists he never heard the “curling iron” remark. But any candidate who inspires such bile makes me nervous.
Then there’s the bully boy brigade. With reasonable respect to my newspaper and radio colleagues - Howie Carr, Gerry Callahan, Michael Graham and Jay Severin - Martha’s driven the boys bananas, sometimes into flights of fact-free fancy. She’s become their talk-radio pinata. The brigade, however, remains thoroughly infatuated with triathlon-man Scott and his big ol’ pick-up truck.
The other day Howie called Coakley the “wrinkly” attorney general.
Let me tell you, Howie, women of a certain age - including yours truly - don’t like hearing women who look as good as Martha called “wrinkly.” If she’s wrinkly, what are the rest of us?
More reasons to hope Martha won’t become the Bill Buckner of Massachusetts politics.
Everybody loves Doug Flutie and [url=http://www.bostonherald.com/search/index.bg?topic=Curt Schilling]Curt Schilling[/url] [stats], big Brown supporters. But they’re millionaire recipients of the Bush tax cuts Brown likes, not middle-class working stiffs getting hammered by them.
Obama’s visit Sunday should get out more black voters. Maybe they, Hispanics, gays, all us wrinkly women and independents who’ve regained their senses can put Coakley over the top.
If not, we’ll elect a nice guy who is, alas, beloved by the NRA and anti-choicers, who thinks he knows more about torture than John McCain and who believes Wall Street thieves and liars should get away with it.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1817 - 19/1/2010, 09:45
Democrats have already begun blaming one another for putting Kennedy's Senate seat at risk. | AP Photo Close
President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.
Spoiler:
“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”
A defeat by Martha Coakley for the seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy would be embarrassing for the party — and potentially debilitating, since Democrats will lose their filibuster-proof, 60-vote hold on the Senate.
A potential casualty: the health care bill that was to be the crowning achievement of the president’s first year in office.
The health care backdrop has given the White House a strong incentive to strike a defiant posture, at least rhetorically, in response to what would be an undeniable embarrassment for the president and his party.
There won’t be any grand proclamation that “the era of Big Government is over” — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.
“The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall,” a presidential adviser said. “The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’”
Whatever words Obama chooses, however, will have trouble masking the substantive reality: A Massachusetts embarrassment would strongly increase the pressure Obama was already facing to retreat or slow down the “big bang” agenda he laid out a year ago.
Democratic operatives on Capitol Hill have made clear that enthusiasm is cooling for tackling controversial cap-and-trade legislation to curb carbon emissions as the party heads into an election year. The same is true for the always-sensitive issue of immigration reform. On the fiscal front, massive deficits were already pushing Obama toward more austerity on spending.
Perceptions among the pundit class would also be brutal. An upset by Republican Scott Brown would be covered in many quarters as a repudiation of Obama, especially after Obama’s last-ditch campaign appearance with Coakley 36 hours before the polls opened.
But the president’s advisers plan to spin it as a validation of the underdog arguments that fueled Obama’s insurgent candidacy.
“The painstaking campaign for change over two years in 2007 and 2008 has become a painstaking effort in the White House, too,” the official said. “The old habits of Washington aren’t going away easy.”
The White House rallying cry, according to one Obama confidant, will be, “Buckle up — let’s get some stuff done.”
The kind of stuff, however, will be different than what Obama emphasized when he roared into office a year ago Wednesday. White House strategists will be looking for modest victories that can be pulled off at a time when endangered Democrats will be even more gun-shy of tough votes than they were last year.
Dernière édition par Sylvette le 19/1/2010, 11:37, édité 1 fois
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1819 - 19/1/2010, 11:21
L'ethique et la mentalite de ceux qui demonisent la droite!
Les grands defenseurs de la democratie.
Ed Schultz: "I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts I'd try to vote 10 times. I don't know if they'd let me or not, but I'd try to. Yeah, that's right. I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. 'Cause that's exactly what they are." ----- et encore:
January 18, 2010 White House's Pfeiffer: "Fox Is Not A Traditional News Organization"
Video
"We don't feel the obligation to treat them like we would treat a CNN, or an ABC, or an NBC, or a traditional news organization, but there are times when we believe it makes sense to communicate with them."
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1820 - 19/1/2010, 12:07
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 13:48
GOP rep.: Ft. Hood report 'sanitized' By JAKE SHERMAN | 1/18/10 4:23 PM EST
Republican Rep. John Carter represents Texas's 31st Congressional District, which includes Fort The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday.
Spoiler:
Hood. Photo: AP
The report, released last week, says that the Army’s middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting.
But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a “crisis” with Islamic terrorism. Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted “God is great” in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base — facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future.
A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam.
“People are afraid to speak out and label someone because they’ll be accused of being a racist or accused of profiling or being prejudiced against a certain religion or race of people,” Carter told POLITICO. “But in a time of national crisis, which I believe we are in, all identifiers must be discussed.”
Carter’s complaint fits into a larger narrative that Republican lawmakers have been driving in the past few months. The Obama administration, GOP legislators have said, has been irresponsible in its handling of terrorists, from their decision to close down Guantanamo Bay to the planned adjudicating of a 9/11 mastermind in New York City.
In an election year that is already shaping up to be rough for Democrats, Republicans are sure to use such decisions to paint President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies as weak on homeland security.
“We want the world to know that we are not prejudiced, even to the people that hate us,” Carter said. “That’s craziness.”
emma
Nombre de messages : 3845 Date d'inscription : 08/12/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 14:15
Danger grows for Haitian girls amid chaos
Already at high risk of sexual violence, vulnerable lose their safe havens
WASHINGTON -- President Obama begins his second year in the White House with such anemic approval ratings, you'd think he was another Ronald Reagan: Among recent presidents, only the Gipper had fallen so low in the esteem of voters at this stage of his presidency.
Spoiler:
In the end, things worked out rather well for Reagan -- a landslide re-election victory, success in changing the course of the nation and the world, canonization by the Republican Party. In this context, the serenity of Obama's political advisers is understandable. It has been a tough year, and the president has had to make a host of decisions that he knew would be politically unpopular. If history is any guide, these early approval numbers say little about where Obama will stand politically in 2012, much less how he will rate at the end of his presidency. The White House is right not to panic.
But serenity isn't the same as complacency. There are important lessons from the past year that Obama and his team had better learn if he is to achieve his goal of being a "transformational" president like Reagan.
The first is that the "enthusiasm gap" matters, and it matters a lot. There is no way that a Democratic candidate for the Senate from Massachusetts, running to fill the seat that the late Ted Kennedy held for decades, should have anything but a cakewalk to victory. It's true that Martha Coakley ran a mediocre campaign and that Republican Scott Brown ran a very good one, but still, this is Massachusetts we're talking about. That Obama would have to fly in two days before the vote and stump for Coakley and the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority was absurd.
But the Brown-Coakley race was just the most stunning manifestation of a phenomenon that we've been seeing for at least the past six months. Vocal opponents of the president and the Democratic congressional leadership are eager, motivated and so excited that they can't wait to grab their "tea party" signs and march around the neighborhood. Vocal supporters of the president are ... well, at the moment they aren't even particularly vocal.
There are several reasons for the enthusiasm gap. Some are beyond the president's control -- the decision by Republicans, for example, to take a purely obstructionist stance toward Obama's domestic initiatives. "No to Washington" is a powerful message at a time when so many Americans are anxious about the future. But the president has ways to counteract such as message, and the fact is that Obama has not given the Democratic Party's liberal, activist base much to rally around.
The health care reform legislation that the administration and Congress have worked so hard to achieve is ending up being perceived as "the best we could hope for." The Senate bill is in many ways a breakthrough, especially in covering 31 million uninsured Americans and ensuring that no one can be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions. But progressives had to give up the idea of a public insurance option, and organized labor had to compromise on taxing "Cadillac" health plans. When all is said and done, these activist constituencies may applaud the final result, but they won't be jumping for joy.
On the economy, there is probably not much more that the administration could have done to ameliorate the pain so many Americans are feeling. But only recently has the White House been trying to demonstrate that jobs are a top administration priority, and there still is no sense of great urgency about mortgage foreclosures. By contrast, bailing out Wall Street was seen as an emergency. It is galling -- and, to many supporters of the administration, dispiriting -- that the big banks are now reporting huge profits and have resumed paying enormous bonuses, just like in the bad old days.
The takeaway, I would suggest, is that Obama has to be seen as fighting for more than "the best we could hope for." And there are indications he may have learned this lesson: The new tax that he has proposed slapping on the big financial firms is not only good policy but good politics as well.
The other major reason for the enthusiasm gap is that Republicans have been winning far too many battles in the "message" war -- for example, turning "affordable health care for all" into "big government takeover." The administration's opponents are defining the issues in the minds of voters. That's something the Great Communicator never would have allowed.
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/1/2010, 17:13
Désolé les filles pour ne pas m'exprimer en anglais, je le comprends mieux que je l'exprime
Étrangement l'un des chefs de l'attantat raté dans l'avion le 25 décembre, serait un libéré de Guatalamo.
J'ai n'ai pas encore tout les renseignements, mais j'y travaille
N'oublions pas que pour Obama, c'était pas du terrorisme, mais un INCIDENT
.gif)
Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
2010 OMAHA WORLD-HERALD 
By Joe Fitzgerald
Tiens le canard est venu deposer?
, Reid 
etc... c'est la majorite des Americains qui est contre le projet de loi qu'ils cogitent depuis 1 an de toute evidence sans grand succes, si avec beaucoup de cachoteries et des accords au caractere pernicieux!
