To celebrate today’s primaries in Michigan, I hereby present presidential election open thread number two.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
To celebrate today’s primaries in Michigan, I hereby present presidential election open thread number two.
491 Comments
It still looks very open on the Republican side.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/notes_on_michigan.php
Can’t you tell what is happening with the so called “race and gender row” between Hillary and Obama. It’s the conspiracy of the GOP and Lunatic Rights. They know in Hillary and Obama, the Dems have two candidates which are so much better and stronger than any the GOP can dish out.
So they are trying to destroy both by pinning Hillary as the gender candidate and Obama as the race candidate. They are now doing the old “divide and rule” routine and pit Hillary and Obama against each other, hope they would tear each other apart and in the process become damaged candidate.
I think the GOP and Lunatic Rights are hoping and praying that Obama will win. If the Obama camp think it’s a nasty “race race” from the Hillary camp, just wait until the GOP and the Lunatic Rights let loose on Obama. They will destroy Obama physically and mentally with their race campaign for the GOP’s candidate to stroll in during the Prez election. Don’t say I have not warned you.
If Romney doesn’t put in a good showing against McCain in Michigan it is hard to see him going anywhere. It is a must win state for Romney and also for McCain and the latest polls can not pick them apart.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/mi/michigan_republican_primary-237.html
Megan, I think you should re-post your 914 from previous thread, ‘Filipino Monkey’, jeez, what a classic! I am splitting my sides too, what a pack of clowns, they realise that the world has seen through their chicanery so they posit that bulls##t as a cover.
Basil,
As requested:
” Oh, and an update on the Iranian shipping threat…seems it was just a ‘prankster’. Funny that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2240533,00.html “
There seems to be quite a discrepancy between the polls and the betting markets in Michigan.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
http://sports.betfair.com/Index.do?ex=1&ttp=102&rfr=4184&sid=888
Steve @ 6 – On those tied polls, anything better than even money is value on either McCain or Romney. The only worry is the reliability of some of the polls in the list from which the average has been taken – particularly Rasmussen and Zogby. Have you seen this link where they are rated for reliability by the pollsters themselves?:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/poll_of_pollsters_rating_the_i.php
@ 7 Just looking again at the ratings, and you can add American Research Group (ARG) to the flaky pollster list.
JV, reading the Detroit newspapers shows four major events that will probably decide the Primary.
1. The car industry is in a major slump.
2. The unemployment rate is higher than the rest of the US.
3. The sub prime mortgage crisis is biting harder in Michigan than elsewhere.
4. Romney has canceled all his TV ads in Florida and South Carolina to focus on winning this one. If he can’t win this, Romney may as well pack up and go back to his regular dayjob.
steve- I’ve read in several places that Romney will quit if he doesn’t win Michigan, his home state and also the home state of Michael Moore. I wonder which candidate he is endorsing.
Romney better win. I am not sure but if i am correct it is an open primary? If so someone should be telling all loyal democrats to get of their buts and vote for that mormon twit. Not like they have much choice for themselves. hmm Hillary clinton or Hillary Clinton, thats a tuffy.
Steve, Diogenes & Scotty – Here’s an article from the Boston Globe that discusses the different approaches of McCain and Romney, if you haven’t seen it. McCain is saying that the lost manufacturing jobs due to the local slump are not coming back, while Romney is running the line that with the right policies some of the jobs will come back.
McCain is probably correct, but the issue is: what do the voters want to hear? One would assume they would rather hear Romney’s message if they are associated with industry. But how tuned in to that issue are the voters in the Dem primary?
Anyway, the current $2.20 about Romney on Betfair is probably a reasonable price to take, when all is said and done.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/14/same_state_different_message_for_michigans_economy/
@ 12 – Sorry – ‘the voters in the Republican primary’
the finnigans, you’re spot on. there’s no doubt in my mind that the conservatives want Obama as the democrat candidate. i think this explains the over the top reaction to the Iowa result
anyone know when we can start expecting results?
Very funny
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/2713/87225
Objectively, because of Iraq and the economy, this should be a Democratic year. But there is the opinion that the surge is working. Should this view take hold, then McCain will benefit. Further, it appears that the Dems will pick a controversial candidate, Clinton or Obama. The Repug machine will have a lot to work with. Nothing is for certain. As Will Rogers said: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Scotty @ 11.
Yes, the republican primary in Michigan is open, and the democrat primary there is essentially meaningless.
It’s only 7pm MONDAY in Michigan, so you have 24 hours to wait.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_date_line)
Of COURSE the Repubs want Obama to beat Clinton, because they know that Obama will have huge vulnerabilities come November: (a) he has zero experience (b) he is a standard-issue northern liberal (c) his policies are all hot air and (d) he’s black. If the Dems are mad enough to nominate him he will be thrashed by any decent Repub candidate.
Anyhow Obama’s not on the ballot in Michigan so on the Dem side this is a meaningless exercise. Clinton is on the ballot but she has not campaigned there and has spent no money, so even if she is beaten by the “uncommitted” slate she can justly claim that it means nothing. The next test for the Dems is the Nevada caucus on Saturday. That’s why Clinton has been trying out her Spanish doorknocking in Mexican suburbs of Las Vegas.
Clinton, apart from being a president’s wife, actually has had less practical experience of government than Obama, who did good work an an Illinois senator. And although she’s white, she still turns off the South and other conservative areas as much as Obama.
Scotty – left-wing blogs are actually encouraging people to vote for Mitt Romney. It’s gotten quite a lot of steam. It will also mean any Romney victory will be tainted. For example, this is the latest update from Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/14/8506/97823
Post 11:
Scotty, try substituting “Mormon” for “Moslem” next time and let’s see how your cheer-squad reacts. Twit.
edit: “Moslem” for “Mormon”. You get my gist.
Romney getting out a little to $2.24-$2.26 on Betfair, making the bet more attractive – if backing a Mormon can ever be attractive. Still, one should never let emotion get in the way of astute punting.
19 Adam- re the union influence. I read that the croupiers union in Nevada has come out and endorsed Obama for Nevada. Clearly they must hold a lot of votes in the gambling capital of the world. In fact, most of the union endorsements seem to be going to Obama for some reason.
Diogenes – The Nevada croupiers just want a new deal.
Romey and Guiliani have been two clever by half, they both tacked to the right in search of Republican primary voters against their personal inclinations, but then Huckabee came along and won the conservatives they had wooed. Among the broader electorate however Romey and Guiliani have suffered due to their rightward shift. McCain has been left as the only Republican with a cross-over appeal: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/12/poll.matchups/index.html
GR @ 27 – Agree McCain is looking more solid in the long run. Romney winning Michigan won’t cause a surprise, or glitch for McCain, because of Romney’s expected strong showing due to his state connection and concentrated effort. On Betfair currently McCain odds-on at $1.72 for Michigan, Romney $2.22 (a little available at $2.26), Huckabee at $23, Giuliani at $120 (wow!)
McCain in from $2.42 to $2.30 to win Republican nomination since about 10 am this morning. Giuliani at $4.90; Huckabee $6.40; Romney $8.40.
George W can communicate with the dead now. I always knew there was something to that Baptist fundamentalism. I think he’ll be consoling Romney about this time tomorrow.
“One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members who lost their life”.
BTW Who does George W want to win?
It is going to be a big democrat year in the States. The real question is not unlike Australia , youve got the prize and all of the lollies what exactly are you going to do with it?
Seems we will be in recession in the second half of 2009 in Australia and the States sometime this year.
I guess she will make Bill mid-east peace envoy, he can spend his days in some Ramallah rat-hole whilst Hilary gets serenaded by Hail to the Chief.
Hum… where to begin:
1. I doubt that any more than a handful of people posting on this site are any more than mere casual observers of the US Presidential Candidacy process with most info coming from the internet and mainstream news, myself included. (As such, not much point to any of our collective ponderings but, can’t help myself…)
2. I suspect this is, in large part, responsible for the dominance of personality – particularly on the Democrat side of things – in the discussion and this flows on to the fact that most discussion is likewise on Democrats. Apparently most of the news and blogosphere think the Dems have the biggest personalities (or at least Barakc and Hilary do – not sure if Edwards has one at all) It is particularly strange that so much talk in on Dems in a Michigan discussion where the Dems have instituted a punitive approach to Michigan’s scheduling and so are effectively running dead there.
3. I find it worrying that religion is playing a part in these discussions. I can understand a candidate’s religion to be of passing interest to actual voters – not sure how relevant it is to outside observers. Likewise – I’m with A-C, apparently it is ok to bash Mormons, try the same approach with some other religions. Apparently Romney’s JFK religion speech didn’t settle doubts the way it did forty years ago.
4. Last point – I would agree that if Romney can’t win Michigan (the state where his Dad was Governor and where he was born) he’s out of it – largely because his strategy was based around early wins and the momentum that gives. He certainly can’t be hopeful of winning South Carolina (again, in large part because of his religion apparently) and although relatively well organised and financed he will be desperately short on momentum if he can’t get an early win.
ESJ:
I think that McCain is basically the only chance there is for the Republicans. If he gets nominated (a big if considering the American-Right’s propensity to shoot themselves in the foot) he might actually be able to pull it off).
The Democrat contenders (Hillary / Obama) have significant weaknesses, but given the GOP’s problems I think that McCain is the only candidate can properly exploit them.
I’m hoping for a McCain win in the Michigan primary tomorrow – but unfortunately he’s slightly behind. Michigan GOP primary voters seem hell-bent on nominating a candidate (Romney) who’s destined to lose.
A-C The most recent polls suggest you are right with McCain ahead of Clinton by 5% head-to-head and McCain ahead of Obama by 0.5%. Romney is really trying to tug at the Michigan heartstrings by cancelling his other advertising and putting it all in the Michigan basket, which is almost like threatening to commit suicide unless they vote for him.
2
The Finnigans
At least the GOP can’t do to Obama what they did to McCain in 2000.
There’s not much mileage in spreading rumours that Obama has fathered a black child, is there?
Maybe they’ll try a rumour that he’s fathered a ‘white’ one! LOL
They play a dirty game over there.
Apparently there has been something pf a truce between Hillary and Obama. See this at Swampland
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/01/truce.html#comments
33
Diogenes
So much for those who’ve consistently claimed that Clinton stands the best Democrat chance against any Republican. On these national polls she clearly does not. If gender is the issue, and not race, then Obama, just trailing McCain by 3% nationally (Rasmussen), is the best shot they’ve got.
It’s getting very interesting, (and so glad I got McCain at ten to one!).
As for the Republican field in Michigan and elsewhere: If it wasn’t for the writers strike I’d accuse The Daily Show of making the whole thing up to provide material. Unbelievable.
Weather forcast for Romney.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/01/14/weather_forecast_in_michigan.html
I hope Romney wins Michigan, stops McCain’s ‘Mo’ going into SC and FL, if Romney wins Michigan and not McCain i believe Giuliani will win Florida by a solid margin.
Bare in mind McCain has only won one Primary to date and he’s always put in a good show in NH so its hardly surprising he won, but McCain once people actually start analysing his Senate voting record which all the Republicans are fearful of doing because they don’t want to attack an American Hero but McCain wants amnesty for illegals and he is against Tax cuts hardly something that will be popular with the Republican base.
A Giuliani win in Florida which is a very very strong probability will knock McCain out after Feb5 considering how Giuliani should then pick up California, New Jersey and New York plus his win in Florida will mean he’ll be a country mile ahead of Romney and McCain.
There have been reports that some Democrat organisations are getting their members to vote for Mitt Romney so as to continue to muddle the field so as to keep them spending up big on the early contests to reduce their funds for a General Election, so i wouldnt be surprised if Democrats either back Romney or Giuliani to stop McCain.
Article in today’s SMH that puts recent US commitments to sell high tech arms to the Gulf Arab states at $11.5 billion. Which makes sense now that Iran is being built up as the big evil empire of the region.
I guess that’s some recompense for the usual suspects, eh?
Re Florida:
Monday, January 14, 2008
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds four candidates essentially tied for the lead in Florida’s Republican Presidential Primary. It’s McCain 19%, Giuliani 18%, Romney 18%, and Huckabee 17%. Fred Thompson is a few points off the pace at 11% while Ron Paul is a distant sixth with support from 5% of Likely Primary Voters.
The race in Florida is very fluid. Just 45% of Likely Primary Voters say they are “certain” to vote for the candidate they currently support. Another 45% say they could change their mind while 10% do not even have a first choice.
Giuliani is not likely to make it in Florida, not if he keeps getting the same percentage, or thereabouts, of the vote that Ron Paul is pulling. Last year, it was Giuliani’s to lose, and so far he hasn’t disappointed, and his current ‘mo’ has been all negative. (And let’s not forget, he spent $3 million on New Hampshire last year!).
If anyone needs reminding that Christopher Hitchens has an ascerbic wit, a long memory, and penchant for tripping people over their own foibles, then try this latest expose of Hillary Rodham Clinton:
http://www.slate.com/id/2182065/
…ouch!
Kirribilli the reason why Giuliani is going to win Florida is because he has set up 4 major offices around the State and has been exclusively campaigning there since he declared his candidacy not to mention spending the bulk of his cash on hand there regardless of spending cash on NH that was done just to make sure Ron Paul didnt beat him really.
His ‘mo’ is only negative because he’s hardly fought seriously a primary the early states were all for show he never really tried there and because of his low figures he’s getting trashed but the fact is once Giuliani wins Florida and sweeps up on Feb5 the nomination will ultimately be his. McCain’s spent no time in Florida and has no decent sized campaign staff down there.
The ‘Mo’ he’ll get with a Florida win will be enough to bring home the bacon on Feb5 and i believe he’ll do it despite the polls being tight.
#35 – Tq for the link. Exactly my point, Hillary and Obama should present themselves as united not to be “divided and ruled” by their opponents. That is effing common sense.
This may sound like a stupid question but who votes in the nominations- the party members? Anyone? Can you vote for both dem and rep preffered leader?
I don’t know whether its been posted yet, but Spain’s Socialist government has called an election. Two links.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7187820.stm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/14/europe/spain.php
Centaur, not a stupid question at all. Basically, it depends on the jurisdiction (ie state). In some states, only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary and Republicans in the Republican primary. This is called a “closed” primary – New York and California, among many others, do it this way. In other states – New Hampshire, for instance – registered independents can vote in either primary, but only for one of the parties. And in an “open” primary, people can vote for whoever they want – registered Democrats can vote for Republicans and vice versa. Also, it depends on the party organisation in the state, which means that some states have been known to use a mixed system – the Dem primary might be closed and the Republican open, or vice versa.
The Republican primary in Michigan is open, hence the Daily Kos’s call for Michigan Democrats to vote for Mitt Romney in order to muddy the waters in the Republican campaign.
From Crooks and Liars…………….
How far has Rudy Giuliani’s slipped? Put it this way: the former mayor has, all of a sudden, discovered religion.
Rudy Giuliani began his Sunday in an unusual place for him – at church – and with an unusual fellow congregant, the controversial former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
The former mayor, whose second divorce has left him on the outs with his own Catholic Church, started a three-day bus tour through Florida Sunday with a visit to the bilingual El Rey Jesus, a Hispanic evangelical Christian church here. […]
“This is a beautiful church, and I can feel the spirit of God in this room,” Giuliani told the 7,000 or so worshipers.
Is anyone really gullible enough to believe such shameless pandering?
Also note that Giuliani has a standard stump speech he uses every day on the campaign trail. It includes a firm position against illegal immigration, and includes Giuliani’s unwavering belief that those who want to become U.S. citizens must learn “to speak, read and write English.”
Oddly enough, while speaking at this Miami church, Giuliani omitted all of this from his remarks. I’m sure it was just an oversight — and had nothing to do with the large Latino population in South Florida, most of which votes Republican.
Even more disgusting than Giuliani’s expedient attitude to religion is the fact that he went there with Katherine Harris, who is perhaps the most despicable human being in the US. Even the right wing neocons including George W are nauseated by her and Giuliani must be desperate if he will be seen in public with her.
And for evidence of this, I’ll include a statement she made which confirms the above “If you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong.”
46 Centaur
It depends which primary.
In “Open” primaries, you can register as independent and vote in either one (not both) on Primary day.
In “Closed” primaries, you have to register as a party affiliate to be able to vote.
I have also read of “wide-open” primaries where you can both, but that was 10 years ago. And rare.
I haven’t been able to find any recent references to this practice.
Associated Press confirmed the truce between Hillary and Obama. About time.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jld3VILFDbEY6uciu_lp_YgBnGqwD8U61CJG0
Kirribilli Removals, thanks for that link to Hitchens’ article. Highly entertaining, looking forward to his election year comments on Latteline.
Interesting to read so many of you writing off Obama as unelectable. I couldn’t disagree more. He is nowhere as polarising as Clinton and the experience thing is one of the great frauds being peddled by the pro-Clinton camp in the media. Keep in mind the lack of experience of some of the other recent inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:
Bush junior – 5.5 years as Governor
Reagan – 8 years as Governor
Carter – 4 years as Governor
In terms of intellect, he is streets ahead of the current incumbent and Reagan.
If not for her spouse Hillary’s candidacy would be a joke.
I reckon Obama is a huge chance for the nomination and the Dems’ best chance in November
I also reckon McCain would easily beat either of the Dem frontrunner provided his health (as opposed to his age) does not become an issue and he doesn’t install an evangelical like John Thune or Sam Brownback as his running mate
49
red wombat
When Rudy ‘finds religion’ you just know he’s desperate! Excellent insight into another ego maniacal power monger prepared to do or say anything to ressurrect his flagging popularity.
Big Rudy is toast.
Gosh! Guilianni managed to sup with God and the Devil at the same time! Now that’s hutspaht!
Diogenes @ 50 – I’m sure that whatever qualms GWB may have about Harris are well tempered by the knowledge that he owes his presidency to her. She’s the one who ordered thousands of, mostly black – ie. Democrat, voters be struck off Florida’s electoral roll ahead of the 2004 election and supervised the ‘hanging chad’ and other recount nonsense.
50
Diogenes
Rudy and the certifiable religious nutcase…oh, what a bewdiful couple they make!
Unless Rudy suddenly gets the stigmata visited upon him, he’s got buckley’s chance of convincing the religious right he’s their man. Zip, nada, bupkis!
Good lordy, lordy, I’m enjoying this site!
or for the literate: hutspah
Sigh
Thanx steve @ 16and Ben Raue @21, for the updates. Very interesting and much appreciated. And for A-C @ 22 i dont think he is a twit because he is a mormon. I think he is a twit cause he is a spoilt little rich kid that sputs flip flopy crap to try and win. The man clearly has more dollars than cents. You see he is a twit “AND” a mormon.
The people talking about ‘Nothing wrong with Obama, but he’s black and noone will vote for him in the general’ are either cowards or looking for a way to justify supporting Clinton. Do you really think the people who wouldn’t vote for Obama based on race are otherwise dying to vote democrat? The racial voters are hard R anyway. More to the point, if the fear is energizing the republican base, the woman Rush Limbaugh despises above all others will be more than capable of doing that.
Also, the republican race is a hilarious mish mash of evil and incompetence. Who do the rightwingers on this site support? The best of a bad bunch is probably old man McCain, and even he’s desperately keen for another war.
Erytnicam @ 60. While it is very true alot of the openly racist people are hard republican Obama’s race will cost him votes particularly in the South. One fact is the lack of compolsory voting. Many republicans are disenchanted with the party and will most likely just not vote at all. This in itself is a big victory. The other more important group are the closet racists who will use the excuse of inexperience or his voting in the senate(being from the party’s left does not help in the south). I think the rise of one nation is a good example that no “major” party has a monopoly on racist tendencies. Pauline Hanson won the safe Labor seat of Oxley remember?
All that said i do believe Obama can win. Its just he does not have the flexibility of Clinton or Edwards in states like Arkansas North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida or tennessee
Actually Mayoferal – its chutzpah.
Scotty the old confederacy is 138 votes – a nice block but not essential to win – look west young man.
ESJ (from previus thread),
I did not know there were unelected super delegates at the Democrat Convention. In that case, the presidential election will be Hillary Clinton versus John McCain. Barack Obama is young enough to have another go in 2012 or 2016.
63- if Clinton gets the nom it rules out Obama for around 16 years – Incumbents are notoriously hard to defeat and its custom for the VP to have a crack at running afterwards (current VP Darth Cheney excepted) The only way for Obama to have a crack in 4 or 8 years is if you believe Clinton could lose this one, and while she is the only one who could lose for the Dems, its too important for the Supreme Court that some Democrat get in for the Dem and independant base to get out and support her.
Actually the Dems don’t need to win the South or the West, or anything new in the West anyway. As I showed here the other day, all they need to do is win the states that Kerry won in 2004, plus Ohio – surely not hard in the current climate, provided they don’t do anything silly like nominate a someone with no experience and ultra-liberal views. They should forget about the South and nominate an all-Northern ticket, although I think in fact Bill Richardson is the best VP candidate they have.
Edward StJohn @ 62. You are absolutley right. Thats why i said i believed he can win. Thats why i used the word “flexible.”
The democrats have almost twice the college votes the votes they need to win (20 if i am correct). Ohio alone is worth 20. With the booting out of unpopular former governor Bob Taft in a series of scandels including “coingate” and the popularity of his replacement Ted Strickland. The republicans there are for the most part economic concervaties and would be unhappy with the economy. Iowa and Virginia between them have enough to push the democrats over the line. Iowa should have never been lost and the changing of laws to allow former prisoners to vote futher strengthens their position. Virginia has been experiencing very great demographic change in the northern half. A population boom in the suburbs and sattelite towns of Washington D.c and the extremley popular former governor Mark Warner’s presence for the senate tickets provides great mooching opertunities. Missouri is Illinois’s neighbour(however it is also Arkansas). If someone could enlighten me how they even lost West Virginia it would be much appreciated. They would be favourites in New Mexico also. Indianna is abit of a surprise but they have become very unpoupular on a state level. But i feel they may be like the good people of Ryan and North Sydney.
So Ruff estimate that comes to aboot 72. But if Michigan or pennsylvania were lost(somehow) then thats a big dent.
Adam @ 65 [provided they don’t do anything silly like nominate a someone with no experience and ultra-liberal views]
So, if you were with the Democrat’s campaign bosses in the bunker, you would be trying to ensure Obama and Edwards don’t get the nomination over Clinton regardless of what the party members in the various states want? Are you seriously saying those two guys have ‘ultra-liberal’ views? How far out in the purple side of the spectrum are you? Also, don’t you realise you are running exactly the line about ‘those inexperienced radicals’ run by the Howard govt in the campaign here?
It’s not that Obama and Edwards are ultra-liberal, it’s that Clinton is much more conservative. For example, as I’ve asked before, how is Clinton going to make a difference in foreign affairs when she prides herself so loudly on being a great friend of Israel?
I do realise that the party heavies in the Dems will ensure that the most likely to win candidate will end up with the nomination, but I also hope against the odds that Obama or Edwards can strike a chord with the electorate on real change and be that candidate instead of ’safe’ Clinton, even if the difference will in practice be marginal. Don’t you?
Or are you locked into the poll-driven (eg ALP Right & LNP) view of the world – follow, don’t lead?
The Democrats could lose Michigan in the presidential. The state is rust bucket and the governor – Jennifer Granholm (dem) is on the nose.
It is a fallacy to just say – win what you won last time plus Ohio. Just look at how many times the Democrats have won Ohio since 1948 – not many!!
Finally why not go for the big win to be safe – it means you have to win in the West (traditional republican territory) or in the South.
Also states swing – West Virginia (inc+st territory) was reliabily democrat until Al Gore came along with environmental issues – went down a treat in coal miners daughter territory.
Best bets for the Dems to switch:
Arkansas
Virginia
Colorado
New Mexico
Nevada
Arizona (assuming McCain is not the Republican nominee)
Iowa?
Ohio
Having said that it wont even be close (assuming no major stuff ups) Hilary will get 1 or 2 southern states and 1 or 2 in the west as well as Ohio IMHO.
BTW I recommend Mark Penn’s Microtrends.
According to Adam’s archive – the Dems have won Ohio in 3 out of 12 presidential elections.
Adam,
Refer you to KR’s link@ 43 above- a withering but illuminating display of why the Clinton’s should not be returned the the oval office- their actions were the antithesis of liberalism. But will the voters care? Suspect emotional appeal will win out.
(am further intrigued by Hitching’s book “No-one left to lie to”….so many books,so little time… )
The Dems will make gains in the Reps and the Senate. But the presidency is problematical if the Repugs nominate McCain and the Dems go for Clinton or Obama. Edwards would be their best bet in the absence of Gore and Richardson.
Sorry, Apostrophe man,
….Clintons should not…
Mea culpa.
The depth of ignorance about the US at this thread is really a bit depressing. The US is a very conservative country, far more so than Australia. This reflects its great wealth, its religiosity, its complex regional identities and its history. US politics are not class-based, they are identity and history based. Example: Why does east Tennessee vote Republican and west Tennessee vote Democrat?
Comparisons with the Australian election are facile and foolish. There is no real comparison. Rudd was able to run on a basically class issue (WorkChoices) and win depite his relative lack of experience. You can’t do that in the US.
Applying the standard outlook of the Australian left, as most posters here are trying to do, simply does not enable you to have any understanding of the US political process, as the comment about Israel above shows. The US LOVES Israel, because most Americans see it as part of God’s plan. Americans do not want “real change,” they want at most incremental reform, which is in any case all that their legislative process allows.
Yes, by US standards Obama and Edwards are ultra-liberals. Edwards at least wraps his radicalism up in southern populist rhetoric – Obama is a pure Harvard elite leftist: he’s a black John Kerry, though not as dull. The US has not elected a northern liberal since 1960, and since then it has rejected five (Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry).
Clinton is not a northern liberal. She started out as a Mid-West conservative (her first political experience was campaigning for Goldwater in 1964), then became a southern centrist when she married Bill. Now she’s a New York moderate.
Obama’s problem is not just that he is an ultra-liberal, a complete novice, and black, it’s that he has no experience that Americans can identify with. He is an unknown quantity, and what is known is far too exotic for the taste of most Americans, who are a very insular people. Kenya? Indonesia? Harvard? This is not a CV the folks down home can relate to. Clinton, on the other hand, is a known quantity, even to those who don’t like her. There is a strong view, particularly among women, that she has “done her time” (both politically and domestically) and deserves a go.
The Dems have lost West Virginia because it’s a poor, white, religious, gun-toting, flag-saluting type of state that used to vote Dem for economic reasons, but now votes Repub for social-conservative reasons. Like most poor states, it sees military service as an opportunity as well as an honour. If I say “Abu Ghraib” here, everyone thinks “US war crimes.” If I say “Abu Ghraib” in WV, everyone thinks of Lynndie England, the down-home girl who served her country in Iraq and was shamefully scapegoated for Abu Ghraib while her seniors all got off.
I can see it’s going to be a long year
Adam- While I agree with almost everything you’ve said (in a nutshell a country that elected George W TWICE is not going to move far to the left in one hit) how do you explain the polls of head-to-head showing McCain v Clinton being a 5% win to Repugs and Obama v McCain being 50/50?
Adam
thank you for that very enlightening analysis,it helps explain the schizophrenic nature of the usa
have you a feeling that the dems may in fact “grab defeat from the jaws of victory”
and if so who is your republican pick/choice
Cos the polling is soft Diogenes. Look at how much the primary polls move.
Obama and McCain will be crucified in the presidential.
One is not ready for prime time and the other is on reruns.
jaundiced view @ 67 wrote:
But it isn’t just Clinton. This is a requirement for all those wanting the job, both as candidates, and for the winner, as Prez. Whatever they may personally think, they have to give 120% unqualified support for Israel. Its mandatory if you want to win and keep the job.
As much as some have claimed otherwise, no president or American government since 1947 has been a true honest broker when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. So, at least on this, there will be little change no matter who wins.
Nor do I see any great difference between Clinton, Obama and the Repubs on Iraq (or Iran). Only one of the candidates, Edwards, has explicitely promised to not only withdraw combat troops from Iraq, but also close the ‘enduring’ bases. Whether he could actually keep the promise is a moot point.
I know they only need to win Ohio and not loose anything. But what is plan B.
In my View
Plan A. Ohio + watever.
plan B Virginia 13, Iowa 7+
Plan C Virginia 13, Missouri 11+
Plan D Virginia 13, W Virginia 5, New Mexico 5 +
Plan E Virginia 13, New Mexico 5, Nervada5+
Plan F Virginia 13, W Virginia5, Nervada5
plan G Iowa7 Nervada5,W Virginia5, New mexico5
Plan K Missouri 11, iowa7 W Virginia5
Plan I Missouri 11, iowa7 New Mexico 5
Plan J Missouri 11,Iowa7 Nevada 5
Plan K Missouri 11, New Mexico5, West Virginia5
Plan L Iowa7, New Mexico5, Nevada 5, Montana3
Plan M FLorida 27
I disagree with ESJ about McCain. He is the perfect Repub candidate except for his age, and I think voters will be willing to overlook that unless he actually dribbles on stage or something. He’s vastly superior to any of the others on offer.
MayoFeral do you have a “problem” with j.ws?
McCain has a reputation for a nasty temper. Reagan dealt with the age issue with humour.
Who are McCain’s bitter enders, ie who dies in a ditch with him. Its not for nothing that every president has brought his “mafia” to Washington.
This link from RCP http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/01/how_do_you_solve_a_problem_lik.html, basically argues the conservative leadership will sink him.
Finally I agree with most of your post Adam, but even in the States when poor white boys come home in body bags or maimed being a supporter of Iraq is going to hurt in November. He is probably the pick of the Republican litter but he is dead meat regardless come November.
Once again, the assumption is that US politicians only support Israel because they feel obliged to, or because AIPAC forces them to. This is crap. As I said above, most Americans LOVE Israel, which they think of as Brooklyn-on-the-Mediterranean, a small semi-American democracy being attacked by assorted jabbering towel-heads. On top of that, the evangelicals (a very large block of voters) support Israel because they see it as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and part of God’s plan.
Adam said “If I say “Abu Ghraib” here, everyone thinks “US war crimes.” If I say “Abu Ghraib” in WV, everyone thinks of Lynndie England, the down-home girl who served her country in Iraq and was shamefully scapegoated for Abu Ghraib while her seniors all got off.”
Having read a book on the psychology of the Abu Ghraib torture, I actually have to agree with the West Virginians. The soldiers who were in the photos got GROSSLY disproportionately severe punishments compared with many others who weren’t dumb enough to appear in the New Yorker. If you “waterboarded” someone to death, it was a reprimand and maybe drop in rank, but if you were in a photo you got a couple of books thrown at you to try and convince the world that the abuse was case of a couple of “bad apples” rather than the real problem which was the “bad barrel” the apples were in.
Well I have finally gotten to the Right of ESJ. Let loud hosannas ring.
Nah Adam I think it is a unity ticket. Most Israelis are cool people.
I misunderstood – on Clinton v McCain. I think the Clintons are cool too!
ESJ asked MayoFeral if he/she “had a problem with J*ws.” This misses the point. In US political discourse, Israelis are not J*ws, they are Israelis. Even Americans who don’t like J*ws support Israel – they don’t connect their negative image of “the J*ws” with the swashbuckling Israelis they see on TV. This was in fact the whole point of the Zionist project, to create a “new J*w” who could break with old stereotypes of J*wish character and behaviour.
Amnesty for Jonathon Pollard?
About West Virginia. That may be true. But it seems to me there is more to it than that. Their treachery pre dates iraq. They are far less religous than somewhere like South Carlonia and probablly even Tennessee. The north is heavily influential more than east Virginia. Also unlike Texas South Carolina, Alabama ect, like North Carolina they are still extremley compedative on a state level. Which seems to be the main battleground on guns,death penalty ect
Adam @ 73 You sound weary from the relentless stream of ignorance you must put up with! However, the posts here are not ignorant in my view, but rather just a bit hopeful that a sufficient number of Americans might be ready for some ever so small political change.
Yes of course Americans are a lot more conservative, insular and religious than Australians. Yes, all US politicians must go along with these realities to an extent.
It remains true though that until there is some stepping back from current US political and arms support for Israel, a solution in the middle-east is out of reach.
It’s a bit like the Irishman when asked help with directions, ‘ Ooh, I wouldn’t be starting from here’. From where Clinton is starting on the middle-east makes it harder for her to ’step back a little’ than it would be for Obama or Edwards, who don’t proclaim about support for the status quo like Clinton.
It’s all a matter of degree, and there could be slight movements away from the religious extremists, the Isreali zealots and the foreign policy hawks if it isn’t Clinton.
Obama and Edwards are more likely to lead change (that is, actually attempt to take the people with them on policy that may not have majority support at firstl), and not be totally captive of the vested interests, than is Clinton. That distinction between following or leading is applicable here and there – it’s a fairly basic political principle. It doesn’t display a lack of understanding.
And the polls at this stage do not rule out Obama, even head-to head with McCain as Diogenes says. He is also doing better than Clinton at that level.
Edward StJohn @ 80 – No. Do you? Or with the Palestinians?
I do sometimes have a “problem” with what Israel does. But then I have had exactly the same “problem” with things Australia has done, especially in the last decade.
“It remains true though that until there is some stepping back from current US political and arms support for Israel, a solution in the middle-east is out of reach.”
You prove my point, JV. That statement may be objectively true (that’s another debate), but politically it is totally irrelevant. Most Americans don’t want “a solution in the middle-east.” They want Israel to beat the towel-heads, and if they are evangelicals they also want God’s people to prevail.
Israel is a pluralist democratic island in a sea of autocracy. The Israelis or J.ws have done an amazing thing since 1948 in setting up a prosperous democratic state in one of the most backward parts of the world from NOTHING.
The Palestinians are not democratic and are basically run by a corrupt clique. Recommend you read WHAT’s LEFT? Mayoferal.
Basically most Western lefties think sacrificing Israel would solve all of the world’s problems, how convenient hey? Essentially Israel is a strong bulwark for the West which should be defended.
I do realise that the party heavies in the Dems will ensure that the most likely to win candidate will end up with the nomination…
I prefer Edwards way more than either Obama or Clinton. I ended up with him on that web-questionnaire thingy too — even though I didn’t understand about half the questions, let alone the answers, and just randomly guessed. Like – what do I know (or care) about US federal income tax policy? But he doesn’t seem to be having much luck in the popularity stakes over there, which is a pity.
.
Its just my impression, but Obama appears to me as token bland vanilla, a non-entity, without substance, and I personally can’t buy into the hype around him. Clinton carries the baggage of her hub, and it would be electing Bill again – a tad too far to the right of centre for my taste. But at least we probably wouldn’t be subjected to any new versions of Monica Lewinsky’s and their unwashed dresses dominating international news, during another two-year Siege of Sarajevo, and related Crimes Against Humanity. Interesting how little desire there was to interfere in that, as in Rwanda. No oil, no spoils, I guess.
.
Just my own cynicism, but ever since I spent years watching those atrocities happening in a modern industrialised country, and seeing the whole planet basically *shrug*, but especially the USA, bound up in their President’s genital soap-opera, I have NEVER believed *any* US pollie, when they have started on about removing dictators like Saddam, and feeling *morally obligated* to “restore democracy and freedom”, or supporting women’s or any other minority’s rights. It obviously depends solely, and only, on what wealth they happen to be sitting on, geographically and/or economically speaking, before anybody, especially the USA, can rile up any moral outrage in a speech, let alone *doing something* about it.
.
So while others might dislike Hilary Clinton for supporting Iraq – I turned off the Clinton name long before, and it may be unfair and illogical, but to me, Hilary is just Blinky-Bill-with-Boobs. I guess Dems are justifiably no different to Repugs when it comes to US national self-interest, and I can’t see Obama being any different. He will toe the Party Line too. But Dems are still a huge improvement on the alternative, and definitely the lesser of two evils!
.
But, whichever way the Nominations fall, I suspect as jaundiced view @ 67 the Party machine will consider which one is most likely to *win*, and that may also depend heavily on who wins the Repug nomination. Regardless of who ends up winning the beauty contest amongst the Dem Party faithful, and what deals might get struck on VP running mates, they still have to be a “winning team” for the Democrat Party for the Big One in November.
.
So I’m waiting until Feb 5 with some more info, on who is in the running for the Repugs, before I take a punt!
I suggest you stop stop making wild assumption and putting words in my mouth ESJ.
My impression is that Americans like ‘winners’, and often the justice question comes much later,if at all.(One only has to walk their streets to see the disinterest in those who cannot make the grade.)
Israel is also a ‘new’ country, with a similar sense of entitlement as the US. BTW, I am a subscriber to ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’, just in case I am accused of anti-semitism. Why the sensitivity with writing ‘J.w’ when no-one hesitates to write ‘C-tholic’ nor ‘M-slim’? This ’special’ treatment is worrying, creating an exception/elite.
Israel of course also has a very long standing socialist tradition. Interesting that many on the left now treat it as an illegitimate child.
Because Megan I think Williams filter blocks the unexpurgated version.
Megan, they are trying to avoid the filters I have in place so I can moderate sensitive areas of discussion (cue complaint from Adam), which I’m quite happy for trustworthy commenters to do.
Thanks,ESJ.
Adam @ 92 – Well, I remain hopeful that the extreme evangelicals and the less educated racists in the US you describe are not so numerous they hold the result of the election in their hands alone. If not they can be drawn towards accepting a more even-handed approach by the White house if a change agent (Ob or Ed) gets the nod from the Dems. It’s just a matter of convincing the fearful a mid-east solution is in their interests (which it most certainly is).
ESJ @ 93 – [Basically most Western lefties think sacrificing Israel would solve all of the world’s problems, how convenient hey? Essentially Israel is a strong bulwark for the West which should be defended.]
You’ve set up a false dilemma there ESJ -
It isn’t a simple choice between sacrificing Israel or maintaining the status quo. Israel can still be supported, but not at the exclusion of Palestinian interests, which is the current practical reality.
I think its widely optimistic to think the Democrats will win the Presidency regardless of who their opponents are, its excessively arrogant IMHO, personally if the Republicans nominate Giuliani, the Dems are going to have to fight hard to save Pennsylvania and States on the West Coast and the Mid West because he can bring out the independents on his side.
The Democrats dont have this one in the bag, both sides have people who are questionable, i mean lets see for the Democrats we have a 1 term Senator with no foreign policy experience, a has been 2 term Senator who is so divisive that 50% of Americans would not vote for her, and a Southern Senator who’s as radical as the Greens. For the Republican side you have a 71 senior citizen who’s had no executive experience in politics, a catholic who’s had three marriages, a baptist preacher who doesnt believe in evolution, a washed up TV star and to top it off a Morman millionaire.
Let’s face it regardless of who wins the nominations of either party the November Elections is going to be very dirty indeed.
94
Rain is right we’ll be able to see whether its McCain or Giuliani after Feb5 its anybody’s guess but IMHO it comes down to Florida if Rudy wins it he’s the favourite for the nomination.
Ok now for J.ws and Israel/Palestine
Is it just me or does it sound stupid to create a State who is currently divided between a former terrorist organisation Fatah and a current terrorist organisation Hamas who are in a quasi battle for the nation?? The Palestinians are a joke and they don’t deserve to be a nation of itself not when it is a failed State. The Palestinians were greedy in 1948 and if they’d agreed to the terms the UN laid out they’d have their independence and a considerable if not larger portion of Palestine than the Israelis. IMHO before they can be a State, Hamas needs to be eliminated either arm Fatah to the gills and send them in there with Israeli support of flatten Gaza and destroy Hamas their and get Fatah back in power there.
Israel’s socialist tradition is now pretty much dead, and probably just as well since as we know socialism only perpetuates poverty. At the last election Labour polled 15% of the vote.
I think JV about 70% of the Israeli population would grab a VIABLE 2 state solution with open hands. Unfortunately there is no one who could deliver that on the Palestinian side.
MayoFeral @ 77 wrote:
“Nor do I see any great difference between Clinton, Obama and the Repubs on Iraq (or Iran). Only one of the candidates, Edwards, has explicitely promised to not only withdraw combat troops from Iraq, but also close the ‘enduring’ bases. Whether he could actually keep the promise is a moot point”
Adam’s absolute dismissal of Obama as a liberal novelty is par for the course. Misrepresenting Obama on the issues is abit different, the below link may solve any confusion you have over what he stands for in regards to Iraq. It’s pretty explicit in it’s commitments.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
u forget Meretz Adam.
They got 3.8%. The whole left, including the Arab lists, got about 25%. That election was of course dominated by Sharon’s Kadima, which will collapse without him. The left will probably recoup some ground next time, although almost certainly Likud will bounce back and win on a “win the war” platform.
ESJ @ 104 – That level of support in Israel (if real – I didn’t see the question!) would be one of the justifications for the US trying for it isn’t it? Naturally the Palestinians are suspicious at the moment. But if they could see a genuine bilateral approach then they would be on board for an effort to resolve I reckon.
I understand that the Scandinavian countries are the best examples of socialism.
JV,
A deal for Israel would be painful because the 30% are fairly implacable.
Firstly:
What country willingly gives up territory? Not many examples in history
Secondly:
Why destablise your society when the Palestinians are incapable of delivering a deal? Essentially the Palestinian “leadership” cant deliver and wont risk trying because of the irredentism and fanaticism in the Arab speaking world.
Off topic alert. WA Lib leadership spill Thurs.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23058634-12377,00.html
I still think edwards is the most electable. Well off, from the South, born to a poor family, aesthetically pleasing. Native son effect helps for those 15 electoral college votes in North Carolina.
Now is not the time for gambles,risks token politics. The prize is so great the consiquences of loosing infathomable. Imagine Social democratic governments in Austria, Australia, NZ, UK, USA, Spain, Italy, Brazil, chile argentina (and other smaller countries) at the same time. Japs look likeley to jump ship soon too(finally). This in turn could influece the Germans to return to normalcy. U.K Labor would have leverge in the event of minority govt.
Thats once in a lifetime stuff. Why take chances? especially with judge appointments, recession and global warming to consider. A campaign should be judged by the worst case scenario.
Likud will do well and probably win the next election with Olmert and Kadima reduced to an insignificant rump in the Knesset but the Labor Party with Ehud Barak could increase their position in Parliament perhaps in a coalition government as most Israeli governments are.
111
Diogenes – Troy Buswell has the numbers and Omodei is going to be dumped if the Liberals want any chance of beating Carpenter now matter how unpopular his government is with the people of WA unless Omodei is replaced the ALP will win hands down.
#98
Yes – the j*wish thing has been bothering me too.
William?
Adam:
You’re right about the USA – and Australia – a lot of people are very anti-Muslim – for example, a lot of Muslim phrases (such as “All?hu Akbar” and “Jihad”) have become severely tainted and negatively associated for many non-muslims due to their constant use by certain people.
ESJ @ 110 – Yes I agree it wouldn’t be easy. But, are you familiar with the principles of mediation? Possibly not. An early step in resolving a conflict is to identify the genuine obstacles to agreement. Granted, a long list in this case, on both sides of the ledger, but you have to start somewhere.
On your two obstacles:
1. Land. Perhaps giving up some land is easier if you haven’t had it in your possession for very long, and there is an uneasy sense of disentitlement out there, generally unspoken, in the community. And you don’t have to give up all of it. The extremists can be sidelined this way.
2. Palestinian extremism. The Palestinians will come to the table perhaps if they believe they will achieve something tangible from being there. The extremists can again be sidelined this way.
If only the UN could be involved somewhere along the line.
Regardless – there’s no choice anyway – attempts at resolution have to keep being made, and Ob or Ed for the Dems are the best hopes for that.
“The UN could be involved somewhere along the line.”
They are hardly objective JV.
75% of Americans thought Team America: World Police was a documentary.
(Well, I made that up. But it’s probably true. “I’m a wery busy man, Mr Brix.”)
117
jaundiced view – The UN was involved from the beginning but the Palestinians and the Arabs rejected the 1948 partition that would have given the Palestinians more territory and Statehood they were offered a good deal and they gave it the bird and look where its got them. This should have been solved in 1948 but one side (Palestinians) didnt think the other should have any substantial land holding in what was then Palestine.
So long as a territory is used for terrorist actions they should never be legitimised as a sovereign nation and that means unless the Palestinians reject violence and terrorist they do not deserve to be a State.
As far as im concerned the Palestinians were greedy in 1948 and they got their just desserts IMHO!
Oh dear I agree with Glen. Time for dinner I think (I’m home now but I’m still running on a four-hour delay).
Here’s a question JV, name one war the UN has actually stopped?
‘The Real Delegate Count’- Scott Galindez
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011408J.shtml
The Israel is democratic defence is silly. How democratic? Do palestinians in the territories get a vote? Are non ultra orthadox jews considered second class citezens in issues such as conscription? Does isreal have an illegal nuclear program. I dont support any nuclear intentions of iran but think of logically. Pakistan to the east has them and Israel to the west. Have the israelie intelligence agencies gone on killing rampages in europe under the noses of their suppossed allies? DO they have laws that would be considered unconstitutional in most OECD countries?
Israel’s democracy is bannana republic/ West Africa standard. Most of the dictatorships have in the middle east have been supported indirectally and directally by the west. I rember a certain Shah of iran who was supported during calls for democracy? Places like syria popular discontent is surpressed by diverting their attention to the actions of israel. ive heard them say palestine first democracy second.
Israel also uses its lobby groups to directly influence other countries policy. Imagine if the Alp was funding the democrats!!!!!
At least some of their leaders were more admirable R.I.P Yitzhak Rabin
Nothing against hebrew peoples. Infact maybe this can help unite the middle east. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UO6YlkYNJQ
The Great Luxembourg-Paraguay War of 1981. It was prevented by one phone call from the Secretary-General, who explained that a certain phrase in Luxembourgeois, used during a speech by the Grand Duke Alphonse XIII, does not mean “all Paraguayans are venereally-diseased dogs” as was first thought. The Paraguayan battle fleet was turned back just before it reached the coast of Luxembourg.
Of course no one can actually name a war the UN prevented. What has the organisation been doing for 60 years?
120 Glen said –
Well, it isn’t 1948 now. Everything is different. Although it’s true the Security Council dynamics would need to change – another job for the Democrat White House of Ob or Ed after November. The UN involvement is just another hope – a general umbrella over the mediation efforts of some eminent group of individuals perhaps.
This is just another obstacle being thrown in the way, just like it was with the Irish question under Maggie Thatcher et al. It should be done the way the Irish question was eventually resolved – ceasing of hostilities being integral to the deal-making which must be shown to be genuine by the mediators, and once it starts peace is one of the conditions of the mediation process continuing and of further compromise by both sides.
125
Adam
the ‘coast of Luxembourg’?
I think you may be joking!
Adam its nice to know that even those who disagree so much can agree once in awhile for anybody who doesn’t know what the Palestinians would have got were they not so greedy here is a picture of the proposed UN partition of 1947.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.png
“The land allocated to the Arab state (about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[5]) consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one third of the coastline. The Jewish state was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[5] The state included three fertile lowland plains — the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley.”
IMHO if the Palestinians today were offered that deal to have 43% of Palestine they take it in the blink of an eye, they just got greedy i mean the 13% more Israel got was made up of the Negev and they’d be split almost into 3 enclaves in Palestine. They could have had a State with 43% of Palestine and Jerusalem under a UN mandate ala Danzig but they were not willing to make compromises nuff said.
Actually JV, Northern Ireland was “solved” because the IRA realised the British State would never be beaten, the IRA blinked. Your example proves the point about the Palestinians.
It took the IRA 30 odd years to take the deal it was first offered at Sunningdale in 1974. Someone called the Good Friday Agreement “Sunningdale for slow learners”
124
Scotty
It is considered impolite, nay vulgar, to actually point out that Israel is an apartheid state that occupies the land of millions of people and is not in fact a democracy as we define it, and that furthermore, it’s got a long history of acts of terrorism (think, the King David Hotel for starters).
Sorry, you just CANNOT ever say that, or you will be quietly removed by MOSSAD and disposed of.
Take care!
132
Kirribilli Removals the Palestinians could have had 43% of what was Palestine but now what do they have a rump in Gaza and the West Bank spotted with settlements. They could have accepted Israel’s right to exist and to have a stake in the region but they didnt and they were greedy so look at the consequences when people get greedy they’ll end up like the Palestinian Territory.
ESJ @ 122 – I’m not here to defend the record of the UN on stopping wars that have already started – the Security Council structure and the veto have been extremely limiting hobbles there. How many wars have not started because of its resolutions ? I’d say quite a few but how do you establish that?
Geln the arab nations got what they deserved in the first and arguabley the second arab-israeli wars. However the third arab-isralie war was not and it is the consequences of that war that is over 90 percent of the problems in the middle east today.
JV,
Tell that to the 6000 dead Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica who put their faith in the UN’s “resolutions”.
Scotty if the Palestinians had just accepted Israels right to exist taken the 43% of Palestine on offer with Jerusalem as UN territory there would not have been 3 wars want to know why? The Israelis were according to the 47 partition would have their major cities exposed especially on the coast who were only a few km from what would have been Palestine a highly risky move. It is likely then with the UN involved in Jerusalem that there would not have been the 3 wars but the Arabs and Palestinians were greedy and they got what they deserved a rump territory with a people now not fit to enter themselves as a free and sovereign nation of the globe.
IMHO they blew it in 47 by not agreeing to the UN partition and tough!
Glen, let’s just pretend it is your land that was taken…..as decreed by others….wouldn’t you feel a sense of injustice and try and get as much of the land back as possible? In hindsight it is easy to say they should have accepted, but they were understandably aggrieved. I think greedy is a strange term to describe wanting something that was yours…..your heritage, inherited lands…imagine trying to survive in a refugee camp while others are enjoying the fruits of your family’s orchards,etc.
What was the old song…”Walk a mile in my shoes..”?
Adam or to anyone really
Do you believe with hindsight John Kerry was a better choice than Howard Dean?
What policies of Hillary’s do you believe are superior to Obama’s?
Outside of being first lady, what experience of hers are you counting on?
While obviously a vastly different environment (USA vs Aus), can you see parallels between a candidate arguing for change vs one arguing for experience and stability?
Do you approve of Hillary’s campaign tactics so far?
Ta in advance
It’s truly incomprehensible to me why anyone would consider having your land stolen, family members killed, your towns destroyed and your way of life completely obliterated by people from somewhere else not a thing you could just accept!
Especially when it was being foistered upon you by those very Europeans who’d done their darnest to exterminate those people doing the invading.
Ungrateful Arabs! Deserve all they got…ie nothing!
yep, that seems fair, and what do they do? Shoot rockets at the nice people who ‘liberated’ their land!
How ungrateful can you get, eh?
Adam
have you had a chance to perhaps cogitate over my@75
ta
Ah, KR, you hit the nail with such panache!
KR – you keep me sane – thank you – keep it up.
Glen i dont think the great grandchildren should suffering for the stupidy of a couple of inbread monrachs. The first war was before Egypt was even a republic. How long will 1949 be an excuse to do the wrong thing? Imagine if we were suffering for something Henry VIII did!!!!! Really. Infact if anything Israel was probably being treated unfairly in 47.
Adam @ 82:
Yes, but only to a point. For example, Bush has pretty much neglected Israel throughout both his terms. Even this latest effort is about George W Bush and his place in history rather than Israel.
TurningWorm @ 105 – Sorry, but I have not seen Obama unequivacly commit to a complete withdrawal from Iraq within a reasonable timetable – years rather than decades. He’s promises are almost always refer only to “combat troops” which is not the same as a complete withdrawal. Of the 200,000 troops presently there perhaps 95,000 are “combat troops”
His website does state he will not build any bases in Iraq, but then he doesn’t have to, they’ve already build 10 of the biggest in the world at huge expense. Then there’s that embassy.
I do give him credit for wanting a rewrite of the Iraqi constitution given the crap that the US insisted on being in the current one.
Gusface, I’ve said several times that McCain is my Repub choice, both in the sense that he is a superior human being to the rest and in the sense that he is best placed to beat Clinton. Romney is a phony, Giuliani is a sleaze and a crook, Huckabee is a crackpot (although quite a nice man apparently) and Thompson appears to be asleep.
Kirribilli Removals @ 132. In light of Additional infomation that has come to my attention. Israel is the most democratic and law abiding country on the planet. My earlier comment were inappropriate and clearly the work of hamas. Everything was fully the fault of the Palestinians and israel does not immorally influence other countries policy. The mossad is also not real.
Adam:
If the Dems win – won’t the Repubs just fillibuster in Congress?
Almost forgotten,that embassy. How big is it and how much have they spent on it again? Ofcourse the US is not there for the long haul…..
148 – if the Dems win the presidential they will likely be destroyed in the house and senate – note that this election is even more risky for the repubs than the last one in terms of which seats are up for grabs.
Note, i meant the repubs will be likely destroyed. Stupid lack of edit feature *rage*
#147
I can offer you a great deal on a life insurance policy …
(149 refers to Mayo@145 )
Adam
thank you for that ( i must have misssed your earlier republican musings)
what im intrigued about McCain is that in some senses he fits a quite progressive stance in some respects and has a lacklustre field to contend with.
that said who would be VP would be most intriguing-would bloomberg then come in as a possible factor?
is their any other “dark horses” that may appear (both dem and rep)?
McCain is running on the ’surge’, and he may not be able to sustain that argument if the ’surge’ turns out to be, well, how shall we put it? Time out?
If the last two weeks are going to continue, John McCain had better have a Plan B. Juan Cole writes about this in Salon:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/15/mccain/
…and it is, as always, a good read.
From all accounts Juan Cole doesn’t like Israel so no wonder he’s your Hero KR!
The democrats dont have a strategy they have withdrawal, the Republicans are the only Party to have a credible policy on Iraq funny how quiet the liberal media has got about the Surge being a success they hate being wrong and boy were they wrong about the Surge. The democrats are once again using popularism to try and win votes but at the cost of American and Middle Eastern security.
Yeah, those democrats and their popularism…wait, what the hell was the last 8 years again?
Boy, sure would prefer to have a beer with a born again Christian recovering alcoholic…sound like my idea of a blast! At least he’s not a snooty liberal!
Last bit of bed-time reading…
‘Is Religion a Threat to Democracy?’ -Ira Chernus
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174880
Glen
Iraq is not a point scoring competition here,rather lets express a view and then move on (yes i agree to our Occupation -doesnt mean totally agreement with every aspect)
“From all accounts Juan Cole doesn’t like Israel so no wonder he’s your Hero KR!”
Glen actually the art of reasoning/debating is sometimes to accept an alternate view without rubbishing the messenger
BTW
who do you think the dems will elect as their candidate
Probably Clinton but i dont know its either Giuliani or McCain for the Republicans but ill save my final prediction till Jan 30 after the Florida Primary…
glen
do you mean Jeb’s going to throw his hat in the ring
Adam is right regarding Giuliani,and i believe his selection would fatal to the republicans chances
158
Megan
Really good article, about something so important that it’s a pity it gets overlooked by most people.
What puzzles me is why America is still so frightened to let go of the strictures of Christianity. Clearly, Europe has turned its cathedrals into landmarks and museums and even the Italians have one of the lowest birth rates of the continent. America has never had the intellectual tradition that questioned religion, there’s no Nietzsche to proclaim that ‘god is dead’, and instead they hold onto that fearful puritanism that shudders at the thought that humans could ever design their own morality to include everyone.
Of course the entire universe would implode if two people of the same gender could marry, despite the fact that ‘catholic’ Spain allows such unions! In some ways America is still a ‘frontier’ that was once fearful of natives and wild animals, but now seems forever afraid of some dark force that will confront their beliefs and leave them bereft of certainty. Evolution is one such idea, and despite the abundance of evidence for the process on this planet, they refuse to let go of their Genesis myths!
Like children that cannot grow up, they must not let themselves ever doubt Santa or else everything crumbles.
Glen you seem to be under the common misapprehension that the Arabs were the aggressor in 1948. In fact the Haganah and Palmach started attacking towns and villages in the areas assigned to Palestinians in 1947 (Qazaza on 21 Dec), about 5 months before partition and launched the so called Plan D, aka Plan Dalet from April 1st 1948 taking large areas of Palestinian land well before Israel became a state at midnight 14 May 1948.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War was the only one that wasn’t a war of choice for Israel. Something acknowledged by those who started them, but apparently saying so gets some here questioning if you’re an anti semite. If so, I have lots of company, including David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dyan, Yitzhak Rabin and Shlomo Ben-Ami.
I would say the “default position” for this election is that the Dems will win. That’s what you’d expect after a two-term Repub presidency, especially one as bad as GWB’s has been. But the Dems can still blow it if they pick a bad candidate and the Repubs manage to unite behind their best candidate. For the Dems “a bad candidate” means anyone but Clinton as far I’m concerned. Even after GWB, the electorate will not be keen on electing a northern liberal Dem. For the Repubs, they can’t unite behind Romney (a Mormon and a phony), Giuliani (too liberal and a sleaze) or Huckabee (too right-wing). They might be able to unite behind McCain. Clinton will easily beat anyone except McCain. She will probably beat McCain but it would be a fight. Obama or Edwards would struggle against anyone, and would lose to McCain. That’s my view and I’m sticking to it.
KR @ 162 – what makes it even more puzzling is that the founding fathhers were very wary of religion and went to some lengths to keep it and the state separate. I’m sure they’d be horrified to see the 10 commandments given prominence in many government buildings, for example. And even more so if they were aware that the commandments usually quoted aren’t even the right ones.
Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton…..a blue/red reflux?
Surely not even in America…!
Adam! Since you’re still around… Do you think that Hillary being the Democratic candidate will increase the Republican turnout? They seem to *really* hate her, though it seems pretty irrational to me.
Yes, I think this will be a high-turnout election on both sides. For all the leftwing commentariat’s view that there is no difference between the two parties, partisan sentiment is very high. The Dems will be determined to get the Repubs out, and the Repubs will be determined to stop them. The Repubs do indeed loathe Clinton, but no more than the Dems loathe the Repubs. Clinton is a polariser, she is both loved and hated in equal measure. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Those who argue that Clinton will just be the same-old-same-old might ask themselves why the legion of rightwing frothers and scribblers hate her so much.
Interesting article on complex Michigan voting,esp Clinton’s name on ballot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/mittromney/story/0,,2241133,00.html
“Those who argue that Clinton will just be the same-old-same-old might ask themselves why the legion of rightwing frothers and scribblers hate her so much.”
I *have* wondered that. Originally I presumed it was because she was married to Bill, and a) they’re still in a self-righteous rage about Monica, and b) they still can’t understand why their bleating about Monica lead to the Dems doing well in 1998.
Hating Hillary can’t be Bill’s politics (although he did let gays into the military); he cut welfare and balanced the budget. She did try to improve public health, but was ultimately unsuccessful. She’s hardly a screaming liberal.
Eventually I’ve just given up trying to explain it assuming rational thought. American politics is very partisan by Aussie standards, and Hillary-hatred by conservatives smacks of Goldstein and the Two Minutes of Hate.
It’s interesting that you think Hillary will increase blue turnout as well as red; I had thought that Obama and Edwards both appeal more to the more progressive Dem base. That didn’t seem to happen in Iowa, though. Where is Hillary’s support in primaries coming from?
I meant New Hampshire of course. Gah, too many states!
“Those who argue that Clinton will just be the same-old-same-old might ask themselves why the legion of rightwing frothers and scribblers hate her so much.”
It has nothing to do with Bill or anything he did- she comes across as a strong, intelligent woman who thinks for herself and has, at times, expressed some progressive opinions- it’s as simple as that. Nothing else (not even a flaming queen) can cause said frothers to, well, froth- not to mention gibber and flop around on the floor, twitching spasmodically like a beached mackerel, as a woman who fits that description. Something to do, I imagine, with deep-seated fears of emasculation.
Conservative women (by which I mean those who toe the party line) are apparently given provisional exemption (being allowed out of the kitchen and all). The Congresswoman from my own district is Marilyn Musgrave, Republican, hard-as-nails, but she loves guns and sponsored the proposed Constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage. Can’t keep *her* out of the club.
On a completely different subject, I would have to say that the issue of experience doesn’t seem to be playing the role that political observers (and certain campaigns) expect it to. Experience, after all, hasn’t exactly stood us in good stead over the last eight years- the good ole boy elected (or not elected, as the case may be) in 2000 didn’t have much on his own account, but we were going to be in safe hands because his administration would be filled by guys (and they were, almost unanimously) who had *gravitas.* Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, et al. Experience, in these circumstances, is an easily over-rated quality. As Hillary found out in Iowa, when her entire campaign came to revolve around the issue of Obama’s experience, and as Romney and, to a lesser extent, McCain, have discovered on the Republican side.
“A new Post-ABC News poll shows that black Democrats nationwide support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination by nearly 2 to 1. This striking reversal — a month ago, Clinton held a big lead among African Americans — is perhaps why race has suddenly become such a hot issue in a campaign that previously had dodged the subject.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402082.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Which would suggest that South Carolina is out of the question, Clintonians.
And to those still claiming an even money bet between Dems and Republicans, this is the canvas the Republicans are painting on, mavericks or no:
‘Gary Langer writes for ABC News about the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll: “Seventy-nine percent of Americans say the next president should set the nation on a new course rather than following the direction in which Bush has been leading. (And two-thirds feel that way strongly.)
“For the first time this is even more than said so about Bush’s father, 75 percent, the summer before he was voted out of office in 1992. And it’s vastly more than the most who ever wanted a new direction after Reagan (58 percent) or Bill Clinton (48 percent).’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/01/15/BL2008011501561.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Pancho @ 174 – thanks for that link on the mood for change – that directly addresses one of last night’s discussion points – whether or the desire for a new direction is sufficient across thhe board for the ‘black northern liberal’ (Obama) or a ’southern white liberal’ (Edwards) to be a viable candidate for the Dems., with Clinton left behind as representing old politics by comparison.
As the article says, all candidates will attempt to represent a change in direction, but it will be easier for some than for others.
Adam @ 164 doesn’t think so, and reckons Clinton is the Dems only choice, but I’m hoping for better, and that poll is a positive.
This from the Guardian article linked earlier:
(Clinton has not campaigned here, but the fact that her name is on the ballot has angered supporters of the other main contestants. A new web-based movement called Detroit for Uncommitted Voters is urging people to mark ballots with “uncommitted” – the other option on the ballot.)
Does anyone know what are the policies of this new candidate Mr/Ms Uncommitted, is he/she pro Iraq war, anti A*ab, pro I**el, g*y m*rriage? Hey, you gotta love the Yanks, their politics are really a delight to behold.
ps, sorry about all the *, just making sure it gets past all the special interest lobby groups who seem to write the filters these days
163
MayoFeral – the fact is that the Palestinians and the Arabs did not agree to the 1947 UN partition plan had they done so Israel given its position would not have opted for pushed for war in 1948 and neither would the Arabs given the position of a Palestinian State just created. All the Palestinians had to do was accept the deal they didnt and it hasnt brought them much happiness, the argument that some posit about the J*wish people stealing Arab lands is baloney, the j*wish people were around in Palestine for hundreds if not thousands of years they have just a right to land as the Palestinians.
On Michigan
If Romney loses he’s out but he’ll fight it out to the end.
If McCain wins it he could get SC and come close in Florida…based on ‘Mo’ alone.
Immortal words for the day, spoken in Crawford, Texas by their most famous ex-resident
“Home is important. It’s important to have a home.”
BTW Michigan has the highest Arab American population in the US with 500,000 or 5% of the voters. And they are being urged to vote for Ron Paul and Denis Kucinich.
A Supreme Court Reversal:Abandoning the rights of voters- NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/opinion/15tue4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Basil@176, while it is sort of moot, given that Michigan delegates aren’t allowed to the conference, it would be a slap in the face to Hillary if uncommitted got a vote anywhere near hers. It would indicate the bad tactics employed by her in remaining on the ballot, as well as her personal level of divisiness, even within the Dems.
Poll-bludging punters – Betfair – McCain out to $2.44 again this morning for Republican nominee, no doubt on the strength of Romney in Michigan.
Romney is at $1.20 for Michigan, with McCain at $4.30.
Right now and again after the Michigan result is known if Romney wins or it is close, are the obvious times to start backing McCain for the Republican nomination. 6/4 against may not be seen for long.
Intelligent and honest Zionists as distinct from the starry-eyed Israel devotees (strangely like Cuba enthuasiasts) admit that the partition plan was not sustainable even if the Arabs had accepted it:
“if one looks at the 1947 partition map, the Jewish state born from it would have been a cripple, three unconnected limbs of Mandate Palestine separated by Arab corridors and minus Jerusalem and half the Galilee. It is impossible to envision such an Israel having continued to exist for long—nor did it, for in the fighting that broke out after Arab rejection of partition, it enlarged itself by half, joined its severed parts, and carved out a link to Jerusalem, whose Jewish half became its capital…For it is clear today that even had the Arabs accepted partition, Israel would eventually have had to go to war to break out of its straitjacket. Although not discussed openly, this was something understood by most Zionist leaders in agreeing to partition” (in the neo-con journal Commentary http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/The-Peace-Planners-Strike-Again-11022)
First round exit polls in Michigan
Romney 35 McCain 29 Huckabee 15 Ron Paul 10 Rudy 4
More evidence that a new even-handed US and World community approach is desperately needed. It requires first a non-Republican and non-Clinton White House.
“At least 20 killed in Gaza violence
9:17AM | Israeli troops killed 19 Palestinians on Tuesday, including the son of a top Hamas leader, as fighting erupted around the Gaza Strip a day after the start of key Middle East peace talks. ” (SMH)
What a lucky coincidence…
Diogenes @ 183 – Do you have that link? I can’t locate any exit polls myself.
JV Here it is. Evidently, McCain has seen the results and already flown out of Michigan, which has pi##ed off a few people.
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRhZDU2MDNhZDcxNWY3NDBmYTIwYjYzMTBlMTczY2U=
Really you leftoids are kidding yourselves big time if you think that ANY conceivable US President is going to take an anti-Israel position. It just isn’t going to happen.
If that exit poll is an accurate forecast of what will happen tonight, it’s a very bad outcome for the Repubs. Mr Big Phony Romney survives, McCain does well but not well enough to become undisputed front-runner, Huckabee also survives. The longer the Repubs have no candidate, the better for Clinton.
Adam — what’s your opinion on he-who-must-not-be-named (Ron Paul)?
Adam-On this blog, you would not believe the vitriol directed at McCain from the Repugs. Lots are suggesting he bow out gracefully now!
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0108/McCain_camp_tries_to_drive_turnout.html#comments
Thanks Diogenes – If he’s gone off in a huff, McCain probably knows more than just the early exit polls.
McCain still favourite for the nomination. When the Michigan result is conclusive will be the time to back McCain for the Repub nomination at anything better than even money.
Adam @ 188 – That’s right, of course no candidate can adopt ‘an anti-Israel position’ but they can move carefully to a more inclusive position with recognition of Palestinian rights as well. Of course the Israeli hard-liners will kick, but that’s just part of the political management of change. It isn’t an either/or thing, so there’s no value in talking in absolutes like that.
Jaundiced – and I might add, a more nuanced approach than Bush’s of 2000 when he claimed that he wanted to stay out of Palestine/Israel. That worked well. 7 years in now, and he’s gonna solve it within a year.
I have no opinion of Ron Paul other than that he’s a fringe candidate who will soon disappear.
Yes, I would believe the vitriol directed at McCain by the extreme right – they’re a nasty lot who would rather lose the election that endorse a candidate who doesn’t share their views. More power to them, I say.
I don’t see how a (small) loss for McCain in Michigan is a serious problem. If Romney cannot win that state, he won’t win one more significant primary or caucas. Of much, much greater importance are the results in South Carolina (which will give an indication of whether McCain can activate the Republican base) and Florida (which will indicate popular support)
And to those who subscribe to the “Democrats need only Ohio” school of thought, think again. If McCain gets the nomination and has a polarising opponent like Clinton, the following supposedly “blue” and “purple” states that voted for Kerry will come into play:
New Hampshire
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Pennsylvania
And before you scoff at these suggestions, think about the transformation of Iowa and Vermont, among others
There’s about 65 electoral college votes there. More than enough to offset likely Democrat wins in Ohio and perhaps Virginia due to Mark Warner coat-tails
Glen @ 178 says:
“…the argument that some posit about the J*wish people stealing Arab lands is baloney…”
These people had legal title to their land, Glen, and this was torn up with no compensation. Many were forcibly removed from properties that their families had had title to for generations. How is this “baloney”?
McCain out to around $2.80 (still clear favourite) now for the Republican nomination – the Michigan result is helping already – get ready to pounce!
I believe MayoFeral referred to this. Vietnam Vets are allegedly coming out against McCain re his time as a POW. It’s really gonna get dirty by November.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/01/mccain_truth_squad_fights_back.html
Only in the US could there be a politician called Orson Swindle.
There is quite a push to get Democratic voters to use their vote for Romney, apparently, as Romney is seen by Democrats as their dream candidate ie completely beatable.
Flash, surely Huckabee would be the dream candidate?
That’s a fair point Chris but I suspect the thinking is: in the end the Republicans would surely never choose Huck so the real choice is McCain v Romney, and of those 2, Romney is by far preferable, as many Democrats admire McCain and know he could win.
Online results:
http://www.politico.com/miprimaries/mimap-popup.html
Thanks Michael @ 202
-I know it’s very early but with 0.09% counted I’m confidently calling it for Clinton on the Dem side!
“Uncommitted” is polling well for the Dems too.
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#MI
CNN has already called Romney the projected winner.
And 35% of the Democrats who weren’t voting for Romney specifically went out of their way to lodge an anti-Hillary vote. It will be interesting to see what the Dems turnout is.
3 Primaries/caucuses – 3 different Rep winners. There is no clear front-runner. The Dems are in a similar position though Hillary is, in my view, just nudging ahead of the field. Having said that, Michigan is really an irrelevance. McCain will be happy with his strong second place and move on to the important battles over the next couple of weeks. Romney will heave a sigh of relief and enjoy what will probably be his only victory.
If Romney can’t crack 40% in his home state that a pretty poor result even if he’s technically the winner. Leaves the Repubs just as stuck as ever, which is all to the good.
Now $2.84 McCain for the nomination. Gift odds. It might drift out some more, but will come in when the focus moves to the bigger primaries, and then keep shortening, because he must surely emerge from the Republican chaos as the best candidate in the end.
Romney may yet crack 40% (as CNN is showing him at the moment) but it won’t matter. This is as good as it gets for Mitt.
Ferny-Unless he can get the Utah primary brought forwards.
You will notice also that Romney plurality is based entirely on the Detroit area counties. McCain is carrying most of the outstate counties. The small-town conservative Republicans actually prefer the allegedly more liberal McCain. That’s because they know Romney’s a phony.
I thought Rudy’s performance was a cracker never looked like slipping below 3 per cent all night.
He didn’t campaign there. He’s concentrating on Florida.
I noticed that too Adam. McCain may not be as unpopular with the grass roots Reps as some pundits think. A McCain win, of course, will present the biggest threat to the Dems. Current polling shows him leading both Hillary and Obama in head to head contests.
Super Tuesday should be very interesting. Saw a new pole of Oaklahma today showing clinton 45, edwards 25 obama 19. I would expect hillary to do well in Arkansas, Alabama, Colorada,Tennessee, New York, New Jersy. So if Obama wins Nevada and South Carlonia looks like California will be the decider.
Hehe Republican might need to wait till march 4 to find out
214 Indeed Adam and by the looks of the polling so far, he’s got some work to do in Florida too.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/fl/florida_republican_primary-260.html
Anyone else notice the massive gender difference in the exit poll results on the CNN page?
Hillary can still bring out the sisters…
Yes that’s a bad trend for Giuliani, in a state he has put a lot of time into, and which is full of ex-New Yorkers (although most of them are Jewish Democrats).
and the winner of the Republican Primary is… the Democratic Party.
Excellent showing by all concerned. I think a celebratory glass of chardonnay is in order.
I agree.
Half of Romney’s vote comes from the four Detroit counties, which are of course overwhelmingly Democrat. Most of the Repub parts of the state voted for McCain or Huckabee. McCain carried every county on the UP except Chippewa.
That poll does show a bad trend for Giuliani, in a state he has put a lot of time into, and which is full of ex-New Yorkers (although most of them are J*wish Democrats).
Glen @ 163
Glen, there is propaganda and there is history,. What you are regurgitating is the propaganda.
The UN General Assembly only voted on the partition proposal on 29 November 1947, 3 weeks before the first Haganah/Palmach attacks began. Attacks which had been authorised on Nov 30th!
Plan D, which called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from all areas with a J*ewish presence was agreed to on 10th March, 1948. It was a slight modification of Plan C which had been developed by, principally, Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Allon in meetings conducted in the ‘Red House’ in Tel Aviv during the 1930s, some 15 years before partition! (Ilan Pappe’s ” A Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”)
Furthermore, David Ben-Gurion also rejected the partition plan because he believed it didn’t allocate at least the majority of Palestine to the Jewish state, so too had the 20th Zionist Convention by an almost unanimous vote.
Moshe Sharett, the 1st Israeli Foreign Minister, gave the following reasons why the Palestinians should reject partition:
Glen, in 1947 J*ws were 34% of the Palestine population (in the 1914 they were only 2% and most of these had arrived in the previous 20-30 years) and only about 10% were legally citizens of Palestine. Collectively, they had titles for only 7% of the land, not all of which were legitimate.
Partition was to give them, on your admission, 57% of the territory (60% is closer to the mark) and complete political control over it. Why would the 66% Palestinians accept that as a fair deal? Would you? If so, I can come around to make you the same offer on everything you own whenever it suits.
If you believe that the Israelis would have happily remained inside the allocated borders then you must not understand the concept of Greater Israel. The land allocated by partition was only even though of as a launch pad for total conquest by Ben-Gurion et al. To quote him:
The Aboriginals were in Australia for upwards of 60,000 years, which is much, much longer than the totality of the J*ws presence in the area. So when are you going to give whatever land you own back, without compensation, to the descendants of the tribe(s) that inhabited your area, and thereafter allow them to rule over you?
BTW-a bit of trivia: the Kingdom of Israel existed for a total of about 73 years. Not continuous years, but a decade here and a year or two there whenever its true Assyrian rulers were busy elsewhere. The southern Judah-Sameria was only a J*ewish state for about 350 years, although often with real power residing elsewhere.
If you are every ready to objectively look at the history of Palestine from the beginning of the 20th Century, I suggest the following, all by highly regarded Israeli historians:
Benny Morris – Righteous Victims, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948
Ilan Pappe: A Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Simha Flapan: The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Nur Masalha: The Politics Of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Imperial Israel And The Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948
And if you want to discover the true pre history of the area instead of the Biblical fairytales read any of the recents works by Israel’s top archaelogist Israel Finkelstein, particularly The Bible Unearthed.
Romney has already won Wyoming, but nobody cared to notice
that makes michigan the second state to go romney
Adam,
I didn’t realise Jewish was a swear word that needed editing for our youthful ears.
thanks for the tip will remember for the future
The word “Jew” appears 12 times in this thread, unexpurgated. I fail to see why comment moderation is such a trauma. If I had any sense, I’d moderate every comment.
Diogenes @ 198 – The US veterans’ doubts about McCain are of long standing, partly because they feel he hasn’t helped them as much as he could’ve, and partly because of his views on MIAs.
If they actively campaign against him it mostly won’t be about politics in the way the anti Kerry Swiftboaters stuff was, but personal.
72% of precincts reporting, Romney still can’t crack 40%.
I have just been crash reading some of the comments on this thread. I can see that Adam and Glen have agreed on something. I have also agreed with Glen on some things. But let me get this straight, you guys are saying that if someone says you have to give up 53% of your land, and you don’t want to, you are being greedy??? FAIR DINKUM, THAT WILL DO ME – AS WELL AS MOST PEOPLE I’M SURE WITH EVEN A REMOTE SENSE OF FAIRNESS DECENCY AND JUSTICE!
In the USA, you can vote uncommitted LOL, you can vote to harm the chances of the party you don’t like, and you don’t have to vote at all. This is a CIRCUS!
American politics MUST be studied very closely here in Australia and marked
“NEVER TO BE COPIED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES”.
Adam, you seem to be saying that the Democrats gave Romney his margin. However, the cnn exit poll has the plurality of Democrats backing McCain. Have you some other source, or are you just looking at the votes by area, which could be misleading because Romney could be doing well amongst Republicans who live in Democrat areas?
Of course the Democrats could have been lying to the exit poll. Personally I want Romney to win because he’ll be easier to beat, so if I was living in Michigan I might well have voted for him, but I mightn’t admit it to the exit pollsters – worst thing would be for it to look like Democrats gave it to him.
It seems pretty clear to me. The bulk of Romney’s support is coming from the Detroit area, the most Democratic part of the state, while the outstate counties, small-town conservative Republican heartland, are mostly backing McCain or Huckabee. Democrats can choose to vote in the Republican primary if they want, and websites like the Daily Kos have been urging Democrats to vote for Romney in order to stop McCain, whom they see as the most dangerous Republican candidate.
A difficult one – if Dems were voting for Romney to screw the Republicans data and nominating process, they probably wouldn’t admit it to a pollster. But this assumes that the voting and response was so tactical and clever. It could all be conspiracy theorising, which wouldn’t make it any better for the Republicans. Basically Michigan is confusing and means little in abstract.
232 feral sparrowhawk- If I was a Democrat who lived in Michigan I would have voted Romney and lied about to the exit pollsters, as would any blue-blooded Democrat. His 10% margin over McCain looks suspiciously large when compared to the polls which showed Romney 2% ahead of McCain on average.
Oops! GOP congratulates wrong person.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080116/ap_on_el_pr/primary_wrong_release
Centre @ 231 – US politics is even weirder than that.. See, American’s don’t directly vote for a President. They vote the candidates a number of electoral college pledges, its the college – 538 citizens selected by the parties – that actually elects the Prez based on on the number of pledges each candidate gained. This is roughly equivalent to us electing a president by having Senators to do the selecting.
BUT he’s the kicker…if they don’t like the candidate with the most pledges they can choose one of the others! The Constitution gives them this option, though some states have made it illegal for their representatives to do so. So far no President has been elected against the wishes of the voters, but up to and including 2004, 158 members of the college have given their pledges to rival candidates – 71 because of a candidates death the others either by mistake or a deliberate choice.
And these guys want to spread democracy around the world. LOL!
Further compounding the dire straits of the Repugs are the favoured next three winners of Caucuses/Primaries.
Nevada-Romney
South Carolina-Huckabee
Florida-Giuliani
If Thompson could get off his lazy butt and win one they could hold a raffle.
Hillary 55%, Uncommitted 40%. Is there any message for Hillary in this?
And Adam, it doesn’t look like Mitt will make it to 40% after all.
How similar to this craziness was the proposed model in our Republic referendum, MayoFeral?
The message for Hillary is that she can poll 55% of the vote without even showing up. Not a bad message!
The message for the GOP is that they still don’t have a candidate. Maybe Dick Cheney should announce he is running after all. He’s five years younger than McCain.
MF @237,
Yes that’s all well and good in theory. And in theory the ALP members of the House of Reps could support someone else other than Rudd as PM on the floor of the House when it meets in Feb, and he’d have to resign as PM – if this happened all those voters who thought they’d voted him in on 24 November would get a surprise, wouldn’t they?
Like rogue US Electoral College members changing the election “result”, this sort of scenario is more of a curiosity than a real possibility.
A “hung” College, with an independent holding the balance of power, would be interesting though.
And at least our old-fashioned pencil and paper method seems to avoid “hanging chads” and the like.
MayoFeral, Those jews they are just so unreasonable!
Adam @ 241,
I’m not anti-Hillary but I have trouble seeing this as a good result for her.
Agree with you that it’s a horrible result for the Republicans.
Daily Kos cites all polls since July1 2007: Edwards heads McCain 46-41, Obama edges McCain 45-43, Clinton ties with McCain 45-45.
Andos the Great – from memory, the President would have been selected by a vote of the fed parliament and not by popular vote.
Personally, I’m not keen on having a popularly elected President. First, you inevitably end up with a politician instead of eminent persons like Zelman Cowen or Ninian Steven (okay, and the odd turkey), and if both the Prez and PM can claim a mandate then who has the ultimate authority? The fact is we already have a number of parliament selected officials that have some power over governments, auditors-general, be the first that comes to mind.
I should also have noted in 237 that the US Constitution does not in fact require the pledges to be decided by popular vote. Each state’s legislature may choose them if it wishes. The legislature could even delegate the choice to an individual such as the state’s governor.
MF @246,
Agree with you about popular vote for President – I don’t see the point of it here.
Dyno, don’t fall into the media trap of over-analysing everything. This was a non-event for the Dems. No-one campaigned, there were no delegates at stake. 330,000 Dems voted in a state where 2.2 million voted for Kerry in 2004.
Fair enough, Adam.
Yes Mayo F. There is no doubt now that the party must select their leader and present that leader to the people for election. This is madness in the US.
I was originally in favour of the people directly electing a president here in Australia. Not anymore. A committee should be formed to nominate the candidates for our head of state and then parliament only should vote. And our president should purely replace the role of the Govenor General comprising symbolic powers only.
It’s a bit of a movie script for Romney, eh? Home state boy, made good, comes and splashes lots of moola around and gets the unemployed folk from the empty car factories of Detroit to join his chorus line.
Shall we give it a title?
How about: “The Full Mitty”?
On second thoughts,maybe not.
I agree Mayo and Centre. The Head of State in a Westminster system is an apolitical, and largely symbolic office. Nonetheless, it is a position that can wield great moral leadership, as William Deane so ably showed. If we want to elect a President, we might as well roll the Head of Government (the PM) and the Head of State into the one office like the Americans have done. The Republic of Australia’s future head of state (I don’t like the title “President” and would happily stick with Governor-General) should be appointed by a 2/3 majority of both houses of parliament from a list of nominees selected by a nominating body.
More interesting than Mitt’s ‘comeback’, is the news of Citigroup’s humungous $10 billion loss in the last quarter.
Ooooooouch!
But wait, there’s more bad news: credit card, auto and personal loans in the all the states were the housing crisis is really hurting are seeing rising defaults.
As they say, Wall Street woes are migrating to Main Street.
But hey, no prob, just go hat in hand to the Arabs and Asians and sell off more of the farm, coz they’ve got trillions just sitting around waiting to invest. And what’s really incredible is that they can ask for hefty returns for it, around 10%!
When capital is lent to poor, indebted third world countries, lenders demand a risk premium. Ten percent is almost Banana Republic territory.
That’s the big story.
ESJ – if you say so. Apart from being offended, at a former professional level, by the gross illegality of the whole, sad mess, its not a particularly personal concern except as it affects a greater interest which shares some of the same historical circumstances, Tibet.
Plus, coming from a family which not that long ago had very large land holdings and still has an extended family connection to a sizable acreage, there is more than a little naked self interest. For if you accept the precedents established by Israel/Palestine and China/Tibet then you have to also accept that, especially in countries with our history, none of your property is truly yours (unless you can trace a connection over 300,000 generations). The former owners could legally reclaim it at any time without having to pay a cent in compensation.
And where do you draw a line? Rome ruled England for a lot longer than the Israelites ruled Israel, (or non native Australians, Americans, Canadians and New Zealanders have claimed parts of our respective lands). So does Italy have a claim on all the land south of Hadrian’s Wall?
If you believe this is an unlikely scenario then I would remind you that the peoples to our north have also been involved with our northern lands and peoples for a very, very long time. If, as an example, climate change drives people to higher latitudes, which is the prediction, what claims could be made by those peoples based on such precedent, and what would the rest of the world do? To be consistent, about the only help we could expect is in packing!
Mayo
“So does Italy have a claim on all the land south of Hadrian’s Wall?”
Only if they can show us a very old book that says god gave it to them. It’s like a lease in perpetuity, and they’ve got the right to evict and kill anyone who disagrees.
Surely, you can understand that?
Edit:
(unless you can trace a connection over
300,0003,000 generations).Imagine in Australia if we had a political system of some people voting and some people not voting.
Some people being allowed to vote and some people not being allowed to vote.
Labor supporters voting for, say, a Costello because we would think that he’d lose and Liberal voters voting for, say, a Latham because they would think that he’d lose.
Then finally, people may vote for, say, Abbott, only for the party to conclude he’s a dud and replace him with Turnbull.
Only in the good ol’ USA thank you.
#201 – yes, Huckabee would be the dream candidate. I heard on CNN this afternoon that there is a Huckabee ’s speech circulating where he said he would change the US Constitution so that it is conformed to God’s Law. Somebody should tell him there is one already and it is called the Shariah Laws.
KR – seeing as how you asked, such a documents has, very, very recently come into my possession which I’d be willing to sell to the Italians for a small consideration. Um, remind me, did they have ballpoint pens 3,000 years ago?
Seriously, there isn’t a tribal people that doesn’t claim some divine connection to their land. If you believe in such things how can you deny the possibility that the same deity or deities made similar promises to peoples everywhere?
I’m not an expert, but I ‘ve been told the lease claimed by a current party is not quite as permanent as the leassors’ claim. Apparently, some specific terms hasn’t been met for a millennia or two and the lease document states that it’s null and void if these are ignored.
There’s a lesson that 40% of voting, or over 200 thousand people went out of there way to attend a primary in freezing whether not to vote for a candidate, but to register their dislike of Hillary. This isnt candidates who just support Obama or whatever, many of whom would stay home without a candidate on the ballet, this is people going out of their way to say they will not vote for her. She is the only dem who can lose this election for the Dems. She is another Kerry-esqe safety first establishment figure.
Centre: Now imagine a country where tiny cliques of party office holders nominate parliamentary candidates, a little over half of whom get to choose a head of government without reference to either party supporters or the public at large. Imagine also that the victorious party in this winner-takes-all system quite frequently wins power with fewer votes than its opponent. Now top it all off with a de facto head of state who possesses almost dictatorial reserve powers with no democratic mandate of any kind.
261
OMG William . . . I’m glad I live in Australia!!!
ESJ, Glen:
You both seem to agree that McCain at 71 is too old to be POTUS – what is the youngest someone can run and still serve two terms – i would say that even Reagan in hindsight was too old for two terms.
The “Hucks” at work
(I)n Warren, Michigan on Monday, Huckabee declared his personal crusade to amend the Constitution by copying and pasting from the Bible:
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
But Adam,
Isn’t it just as likely that Romney was appealing to the Republican minority amongst the car workers and other heavy industries based in that area. After all, he was running the line that these jobs could be brought back, while McCain was saying Michigan needed to move into new fields. The industrial areas may be heavily Democrat, but there are still plenty of Republicans there, and the exit polls suggest that Romney won these votes, while McCain dominated amongst independents and the small number of Democrats who voted.
Ron Paul gets double Rudy’s vote half as much again as Fred Thompson.
They don’t like Rudy in Michigan, do they?
Clinton has a change of heart…
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=270073
Sorry for the off-topic post, but this headline riveted my attention:
Europe ‘poses threat’ to US security: Chertoff
So what are they going to do about it? Invade Poland perhaps . . .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/16/2140093.htm?section=justin
268,
Nah! That’s been done before.
264
red wombat
Huckster would promise them the Christian Caliphate if he thought he could squeeze more votes out of it!
Shyster, Huckster, shmuckster…same difference. But there’s plenty who are silly enough to buy this holy roller claptrap.
Amazing, isn’t it? Even after Reagan and George both shafted the christian right by calling them in to vote and then not bringing down hellfire and damnation on the ’sinners’ as they’d all probably prayed for.
They fall for it, over and over. Truly, ’tis miraculous!!
Yes William, nice little democracy you have mentioned there. In your opinion how do you rank our system of government relative to the rest of the world? I think we’re not doing to badly IMHO.
Chris from Edgecliff @195,
While in principle I agree with you that under circumstances they could lose states I feel not all of the ones u mentioned were not the best examples.
They will not lose Minnesota for two reasons. 1st I bring your attention to the 1984 election where the Dems only won one state (guess which one). Secondly the bridge collapse that killed those people. When you look into the details of it you can see they wont be voting republican any time soon. Carol Molnau Lieutenant Governor and commissioner for Department of Transportation had previously admitted to not reading bridge inspection reports. This along with other scandals linked to budget cuts and deregulation have tainted Republican ideology.
I also think Wisconsin is pretty safe. They have won it continuously since the 1988 when they only won 9 states. That and alot of bad headline about iraq. In the past couple of months Wisconsin seems very over represented in the body count despite it “apparently” getting so much better.
You are right that New Hampshire and Pennsylvania a vulnerable though.
I’m surprised you missed Michigan which can be vulnerable and abit unpredictable.
Edward StJohn @ 68 I must say I overlooked your comments about the coal miners earlier in West Virginia. That makes a lot of sense and helps complete the picture.
Romney-Huckabee looks a likley ticket to win the Republican nomination, the business conservatives and the evangelicals could unite against the neo-conservatives and the remnant moderates.
Jasmine, you must be 35 yrs of age to be elected President and a native born American citizen.
“and a native born American citizen”
Oh xenophobia – great!
and how many overseas born Australian prime ministers have we had Mrs Pierce?
The provision was put in as a reaction to rule by the British monarch and monarchical sympathisers.
ESJ,
Without checking, I’d say all up to and including Hughes (i.e. prior to Bruce) were foreign born.
For demographic reasons – when migrants became a smaller proportion of the population – it was unlikely that Australia would have a foreign-born Prime Minister in the period between, say, the 1920s and 1980s. Since the migrants of the post-World War II period had restricted possibilities for political engagement, it’s only been realistic to expect those arriving later to have a chance of forcing their way up the greasy pole. Perhaps we will have to wait for Julia Gillard to get the gig.
ESJ: I’m not a little “s” on the end of “Mr”
Peter: I agree – the “natural-born” clause in the USA is a sad xenophobic relic.
Mayo @225
Thanks for that clear and concise explanation re the Israeli/Palestinian situ.
Will add to my archive of “PB”s Top Hits” for future reference.
The “no foreign born” rule in the US presidential elections is a natural reflection of the political situation at the time. No doubt the Australian “fathers” considered the matter for our circumstances and decided that the rule was unnecessary. They would not have considered British or other white, english speaking people to be foreigners. King O’Malley, a member of the first Parliament, was variously claimed to be from the United States(he imposed Prohibition on Canberra), British Canada and even possibly Newfoundland (then a separate Dominion). The white Australia policy and the social impossibility of resident Chinese, Afghan or Aboriginal candidates succeeding would have eased any concerns that such a formality would be required.
Chris Watson, the third Prime Minister of Australia was born in Chile. He has been the only PM not to be born in either Oz or Britain.
Edmund Barton, our first PM, was born in Sydney (Glebe) and Alfred Deakin, the second, in Melbourne (Fitzroy).
Interestingly, the first three Labor PMs were born overseas – Watson in Chile, Fisher in Scotland and Hughes in London (of Welsh parents).
William @ 261
Sounds like the 36 faceless men and the GG?
Watson, Reid, Fisher, Cook and Hughes were born outside Australia, all in the UK except Watson, who was born in Valparaiso. His Austrian father, Johan Christian Tanck, was a sailor. His mother left Johan and moved to NZ, where she married a Mr Watson. The next PM born outside Australia will probably be Penny Wong, born in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.
Just remember that the “native born” clause is all that stands between us and President Schwartzenegger, and be grateful.
oh, I don’t know about that, surely the Terminator can just vapourise the Constitution and declare himself ruler of the world, can’t he? George is doing a pretty good job of trashing the thing.
McCain was NOT born in the US BTW. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone which was partly under US control but was technically in another country ie Panama. If Andrew Robb was a Democrat, this fact would come up about four days before the POTUS election and McCain’s possible ineligibility would be mentioned.
There was also a candidate George Romney who ran in 68 who was born in Mexico.
Dyno @ 242 – But, unless you live in Rudds electorate, his name wasn’t on your ballot paper, so whatever your expectations they had no legal basis. OTOH, the next US Prez’s name will be on the ballot for all American voters.
In the event of a ‘hung’ electoral college the House of Representatives selects the President from the 3 candidates with the most college ‘pledges’ and the Senate decides the VP. The House has twice had to select the President, 1801 (Thomas Jefferson) and 1825 (John Quincy Adams – who had lost on the popular vote).
Interestingly, it took 36 votes of the House before Jefferson finally got the nod. Seems even founding fathers of the nation are no sure thing.
I should point out that George Romney was Mitt’s dad, so it’s unlikely he will challenge McCain’s eligibility.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/junkie/archive/junkie070998.htm
Yes Diogenes, he was actually born George Romero and changed his name when he came to America courtesy of sponsorship by the Mormon Church.
Can someone tell the bookies that xmas is over. If one checks out the price of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Nevada caucus here:
http://sports.betfair.com/
and the polls here:
http://www.pollster.com/08-NV-Dem-Pres-Primary.php
It becomes obvious that it represents great value.
How many homosexual prime ministers have we had Adam?
McMahon?
George Romney was NOT born “George Romero”. His was born in Mexico because his American-born father, Gaskell Romney, went there to escape persecution of Mormons. The “native born” clause doesn’t mean you literally have to be born in the US. Children born abroad of US citizens are eligible to be President.
McMahon’s sexuality is the subject of much rumour but no known facts. Although he married late he fathered three children, not that that necessarily proves anything.
William @261 sarcasm suits you just fine
i wonder how many bludgers realised you were talking about Oz
Nah the “family” in Mexico stuff is just a LDS cover story. Look at the photos he has very “Mexican” looks.
ESJ- George Romero is the legendary horror film director. He created the seminal zombie classics “Dawn of the Dead” and “Night of the Living Dead”. You really are a very bad man.
To get 3% in a State where you’ve barely stepped foot in is pretty darn good IMHO.
This has worked out brilliantly for Rudy, you have three people winning Primaries and no clear favourite, considering the time Rudy has spent in Florida he will come away with the delegates and then have a good chance in Feb5. McCain has hardly campaigned in Florida and is spending time in SC atm so Giuliani should have the edge if the liberal media don’t keep writing stories about him losing to Ron Paul in primaries where he’s hardly campaigned!
Predictions
Nevada-Romney or Giuliani
South Carolina-Huckabee or McCain
Florida-Giuliani
Centre lets face facts while the 47 partition did give more land to Israel it was because the expected immigration into the country and in the end it was more like 50/50 as alot of designated Israeli land was in the Negev desert! Its a fair deal with Jerusalem a UN designated city IMHO its far better than whatever the Palestinians will get now…greed brings bad Karma!
Glad you got the joke Diogenes. A little humour always leavens the mix.
IMHO,Glen, you’ve got as much chance of winning in Florida as Rudy.
But in the words of Gordon Gecko is not greed good Glen?
Didn’t work for Hitler though ESJ, doesnt work for most politicians….
Do you think Glen the Germans would celebrate Hitler as a great man if he had died of a heart attack in January 1942?
Well ESJ it depends if they’d then won the Second World War i suppose, which they may have without such an incompetent military leader as Hitler was…if they won the war of course is my answer. But he was stupid to go south instead of capturing Leningrad and Moscow which would have devastated the Soviet leadership and then turn South…
Nothing like a nice sloping line from top left to lower right to inspire confidence, while everyone else in the field is lifting from lower left to top right is there?
http://www.pollster.com/08-FL-Rep-Pres-Primary.php
Yes I suspect you are right Glen, people dont hate leaders who start wars only leaders who lose them.
Its cynical but indeed correct, most Russians knew how brutal Stalin was but many still loved him for defeating the Nazis. Hence it is highly probably that while Hitler may have been disliked by some of his own people for the extent of the holocaust if he had won the war and defeated the Communists he’d have won just as much praise IMHO.
Clearly in the end to the victor goes the spoils…
Have you ever played Diplomacy Glen?
No but i have looked for the board game and the computer game but to no avail i do have Risk and Axis and Allies which are enjoyable now and again.
Diplomacy would be an interesting game to play especially against people like Centre and Adam oh and who could forget steve or our long departed pollbludger brother STROP lol!
Yes vale STROP, at the going down of the sun we shall remember him!
I’m reluctant to be drawn into the dreaded Middle East debate, but it should be pointed out that although there was indeed a majority of Arabs living in Mandate Palestine in 1947, most of them were not “Palestinians.” This is a made-up nationality which didn’t exist before the 1930s, although I don’t deny that it is a real nationality now. Under the Ottomans all the low-lying coastal areas of Palestine (ie most of what is now Israel) were virtually uninhabited, for the most part malarial swamp and sand dunes. The Arab population mostly lived in Galilee or around Jerulsalem. In 1815 Jaffa (now Tel Aviv) had 5,000 people, only half of them Arabs. If they had been asked to give a nationality they would have said “Ottoman,” “Arab” or maybe “Syrian.” (The Ottomans organised their empire by religion, not nationality.) Zionists began buying up land from absentee Ottoman landowners in the 1890s and settling Jewish colonists. This created farms, towns and industries, and the consequent work opportunities attracted Arab immigration from Syria, Egypt and elsewhere. The Jewish and Arab populations thus grew in tandem. The place name “Palestine” didn’t exist under the Ottomans. The area was part of the Villayet of Syria, divided into the Sanjaks of Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre. When the British and French divided up the area in 1918, the British called their bit of Ottoman Syria “Palestine” because that was the name they remembered from Bible class. The resident Arabs thus became “Palestinians” by decision of the British, and gradually came to adopt this name. Both Arab and Jewish immigration accelerated in the 1920s. Thus by 1947 the population had grown greatly, but almost the whole population, Arab and Jewish, were immigrants or the children or grand-children of immigrants. Since neither community was willing to be subordinated to the other, the Partition Plan was a fair solution. Had the Arabs accepted it, they would have had a Palestinian State for the past 60 years, far larger than enything they are likely to get now.
The biggest surprise out of Michigan was that more people would vote for a Mormon millionaire over a Senior Citizen for President!
If you look at it is their no tainted candidate? I mean seriously not one of them can say they’ve led perfect lives professionally or personally and none are squeaky clean it appears that in the end it could be between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. I actually hope Bloomberg Runs because it will help the moderate Republicans by taking off votes from Hillary or Obama….
Diplomacy is great. (I am referring to the board game).
Yes especially with a bunch of politics junkies like ourselves…
Glen @ 310,
You are right about Bloomberg. I think he would attract a couple of percent (basically people who have to vote against the party of Bush but are anti the Democratic nominee). Could be bad news for the Dems if he runs – a couple of percent hurts in close States.
Pearls before swine Adam.
If anyone’s fondness for strategy games extends beyond the beer-and-pretzels variety a la Diplomacy and Risk, allow me to add the Poll Bludger stamp of approval to the Australian Design Group’s outstanding World in Flames – a colossal global WW2 hex board game which is slowly being turned into a computer game. The beta version can be downloaded for $20 at the ADG website: it’s somewhat buggy at this stage, but more than enough to get you hooked. The long, long, long delayed full release is due in mid-year from the good people at Matrix Games.
Dyno, the thing about Bloomberg is that he has billions to spend on a campaign thus no campaign fund-raising needed and can say he’s beholden to no one. To my knowledge he’s formed an exploratory committee but i dont think he’ll commit until after Feb5 or even later depending on who gets it, if its a Hillary/Huckabee campaign he may indeed run id think. Even if he did get a few percent it could hurt in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and maybe New York if Rudy wins the nomination.
Yes, the mythology of the “oppressed Palestinians” has become so entrenched in the minds of the left that it can’t be erased. Ironically much of this mythology was created by Jews – such as Maxime Rodinson, the French Jewish Marxist (quelle trinité!) who wrote “Israel: A Colonial Settler State,” and Noam Chomsky etc etc who perpetuate this stuff endlessly into the minds of the petty intelligentsia.
Thanks for the link William.
Perhaps I should have said the mythology of the “disposessed Palestinians,” rather than the mythology of the “oppressed Palestinians”. I don’t deny that the current generation of Palestinians is suffering oppression, partly at the hands of the Israelis, but mainly at the hands of the Arab states, their own corrupt rulers and the gangsters of Hamas etc etc.
Funny how initially most of the Israeli j*ws were very ’socialist’ indeed as many migrated from the Soviet Union and many from Eastern Europe who had a deep hatred for right wing nationalist parties but now Israel has a smattering of left wing parties and the Likud…
A solution to the Palestinian Question would not end the deep hatred of Israel by many extreme leftists or the extremist I*lamists its almost like they are born with a hatred of Israel despite the fact that if their ancestors had acted with some humility and decency they’d not only have their own independent State of 43% of the total area and have Jerusalem as a UN free city hmmm talk about a good deal they turned down. It gives me the red ass to say the J*ws stole peoples lands firstly they were there for thousands of years living with the Arabs they took more land after they were attacked in 48 because of the perilous position the 47 Partition plan made Israel into a virtually impossible state to defend against Egypt and Syria not to mention Jordan.
Those three countries were critical into collapsing the partition talks they too were greedy IMHO. As the years go on and on the 47 deal sounds bloody good too bad the best they can get is pre-67 if the Palestinians were smart they’d have taken the deal in 47 and anyway most of the reason the Israelis got more land was because of the Negev!
Wiki’s good for getting the nitty gritty details:
According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,[137] the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.[138]
…and Palestine was the original Roman name, and was used subsequently until the Ottoman Empire when it was replaced. The Brits did a sensible thing to resurrect it.
I can remember reading about Jerusalem in the late 19th century as a place that did not have a lot of live Jews, but was a very popular place to go to die and get buried. Zionism changed all that, and the rest is history.
Yes, the mythology of the “oppressed Palestinians” has become so entrenched in the minds of the left that it can’t be erased.
I’m not sure that ‘mythology’ is the most precise descriptor. Gaza is regarded by many people as the world’s largest open-air prison. Palestinians share almost none of the rights, protections and entitlements of Jewish Israelis, and can find themselves subject to ‘targeted assasination’ and extrajudicial killing or imprisonment at any time.
Interestingly, the Israelis themselves don’t seem to have the same culture war nonsense that we have in Australia, or to an even greater extent in the US. Even the most far-right of Likudniks would not pretend that the brutalities of the Palestinian occupation are mere ‘mythology’ – their press is much more honest than ours.
The Jewish socialist tradition long precedes the Soviet Union. The ideas of the Labour Zionist movement go back to Moses Hess in the 1860s and the Zionist Workers party (ancestor of the Israeli Labour party) was founded by Ber Borochov and others in about 1900. The Bund (a Jewish trade union in Russia and Poland) was also very influential, since a steady stream of Bundists emigrated to Palestine.
Glen, I like to remember Hitler as a charred, severed penis sitting in a jar of formaldehyde on a shelf in some decrepit science lab on the outskirts of Moscow. how do you like to remember him?
Ah, here’s the reference:
In 1920, the League of Nations’ Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were 700,000 people living in Palestine:
Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or–a small number–are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.[158]
By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).
THR, see my #319 in which I modified that expression. I don’t seek to deny the current sufferings of the Palestinians, just to put them in historical context.
If Gaza is a prison, it is the only prison which is run by its inmates, and run so badly that they are probably wishing by now the warders would come back.
True but the interesting thing is that this still is the case today, i mean look at Melbourne Ports case in point they traditionally back the ALP…i know this is stereotyping but i believe the ALP were smart getting Danby in for the seat.
323
TurningWorm
Well if it wasn’t for the Holocaust, subverting democracy, invading Western Europe and bombing Great Britain id say he’s not such a bad guy i must say i believe Stalin and Mao were far worse dictators of the 20thC than one nut Addy. And if you compared how many people they’d killed as a consequence of their actions. Personally we should have rearmed the Germans and liberated Eastern Europe the Baltic States and the Ukraine in 1945 like Patton wanted.
KB, none of that contradicts what I said earlier.
Clearly im glad TurningWorm that Hitler was stopped, i just think there were worse dictators than him but that does not in any way discount the crap he brought to the lives of millions in the 20thC….
KR you don’t quite grasp how much land the Arabs would have got plus Jerusalem as a Free City i mean for crying out loud how much land do you think the Arabs deserved????
Glen I live in Ports as you know and I know the Jewish community fairly well. There’s not much of the old socialist tradition left, but it does linger on here and there. Sholem Aleichem is the only surviving Bundist school in the world. But for Jews under 50 this is all ancient history and doesn’t influence their voting behaviour much. Danby wins Ports mainly because of Red St Kilda, although of course he does better in Caulfield that a non-Jewish Labor candidate would.
Adam, I never said it did. I was just trying to get the demographics in perspective.
Be interesting to know what the strength of the j*wish community is in numbers around the Caulfield area id say it would be substantial. Its like you said St Kilda and Albert Park that bring home the bacon for Labor in the seat.
Still at least our Federal Electorate is an interesting Microcosm considering the diversity of it.
Ports could arguably be the biggest J*wish community in the entire country.
A recent survey in the US suggested that, whilst US J#ws were far more ‘liberal’ than socialist, they were still a far cry from the neocons and Christian Zionist nutters waiting for the rapture:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/12/ajc_poll/index.html
In 1985 or 1986 when I was working in France I went for a few drinks with an expat South African colleague after work one day. After a little while we were joined by two men who were identified to me as Israeli tourists and who were obviously well known to my drinking companion.
After too many drinks, the talk turned to military experiences and I sat there dumbfounded as they all swapped reminiscences of atrocities they had seen and been involved in in the past. The Israelis in particular boasted of cold blooded sniping of passing Palestinians to break the boredom of sentry duty, and other similar acts. I thought they were drunken bulls**t artists, and complete boors to boot, and maybe they were.
The passing years and reading of reports of events in that sad region often make me think of that evening, and question my judgement of their honesty under the influence of drink.
I’m sure William is getting tired of monitoring a debate about the Palestinians. Let’s try to get the debate back within the ambit of a psephological blog, shall we? Most people, including most Israelis, accept that there won’t be a solution until Israel evacuates most of the West Bank and allows the creation of a Palestinian state there – although the collapse of Gaza into anarchy hasn’t been much of an advertisment for Palestinian self-rule. The problem has been that no Israeli government has been able to defy the militant minority of Israelis who want to hang on to the West Bank and create “Greater Israel” there. And why is this?
It’s because the dominant group in the Yishuv (the pre-statehood J*wish community in Palestine) were Germans. So when they came to adopt an electoral law in 1947, what did they do? They copied the system they were most familiar with, that of the Weimar Republic, despite the terrible consequences of that system (pure PR with no threshhold) in Germany. As a result Israel has never had a strong majority government able to make tough decisions. So basically I blame the current mess in the region on PR, which gives disproprtionate power to minorities.
Of the only two recent strong Israeli PMs, Rabin was assassinated and Sharon incapacitated. Eventually, however, an Israeli government will implement the Sharon Plan: finish the security wall, annex everything to the west of it, and withdraw unilaterally from the rest. The J*wish settlers east of the wall can either leave with the army or stay and take their chances with the Palestinians.
However this might:
McCarthy argues that there is no significant Arab immigration into mandatory Palestine:
From analyses of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks, one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after the 1870s was small. Had there been a large group of Muslim immigrants their numbers would have caused an unusual increase in the population and this would have appeared in the calculated rate of increase from one registration list to another… Such an increase would have been easily noticed; it was not there.[168]
The argument that Arab immigration somehow made up a large part of the Palestinian Arab population is thus statistically untenable. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters of Arabs who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.[169]
McCarthy also concludes that there was no significant internal migration to Jewish areas attributable to better economic conditions:
Some areas of Palestine did experience greater population growth than others, but the explanation for this is simple. Radical economic change was occurring all over the Mediterranean Basin at the time. Improved transportation, greater mercantile activity, and greater industry had increased the chances for employment in cities, especially coastal cities… Differential population increase was occurring all over the Eastern Mediterranean, not just in Palestine… The increase in Muslim population had little or nothing to do with Jewish immigration. In fact the province that experienced the greatest Jewish population growth (by .035 annually), Jerusalem Sanjak, was the province with the lowest rate of growth of Muslim population (.009).[170]
So Adam’s claim:
Thus by 1947 the population had grown greatly, but almost the whole population, Arab and Jewish, were immigrants or the children or grand-children of immigrants.
…may be open to academic scrutiny by demographers.
Adam’s right in saying that solutions/greivances re: old Israel-Palestine chestnut has little relevance to a psephological blog.
What’s interesting, however, is that, in a place like the US, for certain demographics and much of the media, this is a major issue.
It would almost be like Australians voting for a political party based on its position on Russia vs. Chechnya, or Croat vs Serb. Frankly, its bizarre.
334
THR Says
It’s the same story everywhere: the nutters out on the fringe get the most press, and in the US, completely misrepresent the majority view. (I think Adam’s argument is the same for Israel too, it’s the radical minority that sets the overall tone). When the neocon nutters in Washington ally with the Zionist fruitcakes, that’s when truly awful sh!t happens!
#306, Edward StJohn
ESJ – In my personal opinion poll your knowledge of Diplomacy (the game) has just given you a positive hit. Congratulations!
The elder Romney’s father went to Mexico, not to escape persecution of Mormons, but to escape persecution of polygamists- he belonged to a sect that refused to accept the Mormon churches’ repudiation of polygamy in the 1880s (a necessary precondition to obtaining statehood for Utah).
I just luv diplomacy
(think the longest game i played was a 3 day marathon)
though ive seen it cause the break-up of a few friendships
but never ever start with germany …..
Introduction of NVP(National Popular Vote) into law as alternative to Electoral College.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3457/dropping_out_of_electoral_college/
Adam @ 309
I have already posted two of Ben-Gurion’s statements that clearly show that any Palestinian state would not have been allowed to survived. There are many more from him and most of the other main actors, Golda Mier, etc. They were not some idle musings, but Zionist policy backed by military planning that began in the late 1920s/early 1930s, long before any Palestinian rejection of partition. Plans that were carried out virtually from the day of the UN partition vote. There is also no dispute that almost all the Arabs/Palestinians inhabitants would have been forced out to ensure complete J*wish control. Again, this was long standing policy backed by detailed planning.
As to the financial state of the two sides before partition. Again, I have already posted the remarks by Moshe Sharrat which show that most of the industry, commerce and farms were “major Arab assets”.
Glen,here’s one to brighten up your day!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/16/despite-open-field-giuli_n_81801.html
“How the Pentagon planted a false story” -re Iranian shipping incident.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA17Ak03.html
344
MayoFeral
Victors get to write the history as well as keep the spoils MF. Clearly there’s been massive revisionism about the Palestinians, even to the common perception that they did not really exist before WWI, so, well, you know, wha’t the big deal?
This is false, but apparently the lie is so well established that it is used by many to overlook the fact that there are a people virtually incarcerated, constatnly having their meagre remaining land encroached upon, treated like animals with daily constant humiliations and deprivations that are unspeakable.
This cannot be denied. So now, the people whose families were herded into ghettos and abused and killed, now do the same to another people. This is still a crime against humanity no matter who is doing it, and whatever the historical ‘excuses’ sprouted by anyone to somehow ‘prove’ the Arabs deserve this treatment, or that cluster bombing Lebanon is somehow ‘moral’.
What cannot be denied is that this conflict is massively one-sided militarily and the overwhelming force applied to the Palestinians produces endless misery and blowback. Each new generation of Palestinians can do little but hate the Israelis and this is not only not humane, but not ever going to bring peace to Israel.
346
Megan
Washington puts out a patently manufactured ‘incident’ with Iranians on the eve of Bush’s junkett to sell billions of dollars worth of missile equipment to the Saudis to protect them from the Iranians?
Nah, they wouldn’t do a thing like that, would they? I mean, come on, they really, truly, believed that Saddam had all those WMD!
It’s appalling that the world’s superpower behaves like a devious child and lies about it’s intentions with make-believe that’s so transparently false. Still, it works. Just look at Glen. Believes anything that Uncle Sam says like it’s the word of god! Such naivety, in a child it would be endearing.
Speaking of superpower, isn’t it ironic that while the US flounders around the ME in a clumsy attempt to shore up its control over this oil region into the future, the Chinese are quietly going around the world and signing up all the other smaller oil producers. One by one, softly softly.
Take ya pick: screamin’ hysterical Phillipino Monkey, or Softly, softly Chinese Monkey.
How many billions have the US sunk into Musharraf’s regime? And we now know that most of it has been siphoned off to purposes other than defeating the Taliban and its supporters along the border with Afghanistan.
Here is the result:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Hundreds of Islamic militants attacked a paramilitary fort in Sararogha, in the restive South Waziristan tribal region in north-west Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 22 soldiers and taking several others hostage in a nearly six-hour battle, government intelligence agency officials and local officials said Wednesday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the attack, said that 600 to 700 militants had attacked the Sararogha fort, firing rockets and mortars in a region where local and foreign militants have battled the Pakistani military.
Fifteen soldiers belonging to the South Waziristan Scouts, an official paramilitary militia, died in the battle, one intelligence official said. Another local official said that the militants later beheaded at least seven other soldiers.
A spokesman for Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, an Islamic group that is sympathetic to the Taliban, said that it had carried out the attack and that it had killed 16 soldiers and captured 24, and that only two militants had been killed.
(NYTimes)
I think the Democrat candidates just might pick up on this blatant display of Musharraf’s duplicity and double dealing with the warlords of the region. It’s coming back to bite him on the bum.
KR, I’ll thank you not to call me a liar when I state historical facts which you find not to your taste. Before World War I the whole Arab world had been under Ottoman rule since the 16th century. Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, did not exist. There was an Egyptian national identity, but the Eastern Arabs variously identified themselves as Arabs, or as Muslims (or Christians), or as Ottoman subjects, but not by national identities which did not exist. “Palestine” did not exist either as an administrative unit or as a national identity. It was no more than a name from the Bible. As I said earlier, the Arabs living in what is now Israel/Palestine lived in the Ottoman Villayet of Damascus, and if they had a national identity beyond that of Arab or Ottoman it would have been Syrian. (To this day Syria has not quite renounced its territorial claim to all of Palestine and Jordan.) The current state system in the Middle East was created by the British and French after they partitioned the Ottoman Empire under the Sykes-Picot agreement. The British got Mesopotamia (where they created Iraq and Kuwait) and southern Syria, which they called Palestine, while the French got northern Syria. Later the British split Transjordan off from Palestine to create a state for their Hashemite clients to rule after they were expelled from Arabia by the Saudis. The French partitioned Syria to create a Christian-majority state in Lebanon. Et voila, the modern Middle East came into existence. Only then did the Arab inhabitants of Jerusalem, Nablus, Galilee etc discover that they were Palestinians. I don’t deny that the Palestinians have now developed a genuine national identity, just as have the Pakistanis, the Nigerians and numerous other nationalities which didn’t exist in 1914. But to say that there has always been a distinct or self-identified “Palestinian people” living in what is now Israel is totally ahistorical.
Megan,
the pentagon is Wagging the Dog- as usual.
What is amazing is how many people are prepared to believe them.
Even on here…
just to throw a thought in
“7 pillars of wisdom” by t.e. lawrence (lawrence of arabia)
quite a good narrative and also explains the Tribal nature of the area plus as a bonus its also a war diary descibing the erosion of ottoman control in the Mid east
also the duplicity of england/france.
personally syria is about the only continous identity that has existed in the area
(nb:persians are not arabs)
350
Adam
Eh? I most certianly did not call you any such thing! Do you have some sort of problem with me? Sorry, I cannot understand what you are saying.
I was trying to ascertain the real demographic facts about the region, and having read at length about this some time ago, needed to refresh myself on it. It is particularily pertinent, not on whether there was a place or people called “Palestinians” before the British named it. There wasn’t, as you rightly said, and I made no attempt to contradict your short history of it.
However, you made this ascertion:
Thus by 1947 the population had grown greatly, but almost the whole population, Arab and Jewish, were immigrants or the children or grand-children of immigrants.
…and I offered one, (note:one) academic source which argued that this is NOT correct.
I then said that your claim may be open to academic debate on the strength of the argument I cited.
Please explain how that in any way calls you a ‘liar’?
Adam, if you have some personal issue with me, please tell me what it is, as I’m at a complete loss to explain why you’ve said this.
Hello?
OK, I’m being ‘moderated’ now!
Well, I have to agree with Glen on two things today:
First I also own Diplomacy and love playing it (haven’t done so in years though – any Adelaide players?) At the risk of teasing from Xanthippe, I also confess to playing various strategy games, including wargames like World in Flames, and have even written a few. Maybe we could convert Diplomacy to Australian politics: States instead of continents, electorates as areas, MHRs as foot soldiers, capture the most seats and become PM! Call it Democracy?
Second, regarding the US, I think the chances of McCain and Clinton are still very good, and they deserve to be favourites. If Romney couldn’t win Michigan then he would have been dead. McCain is still ahead in many other states with more delegates.
Similarly, I think Clinton is still the democrat favourite. Just because other democrat candidates didn’t campaign in Michigan, doesn’t mean they would have won. You can call it a hollow victory but a win is a win.
I have said before that the US is probably already in recession, and economic statistics will just confirm it after the fact in 6 months time. Domestic issues like economic recession trump foreign wars in most people’s voting priorities. In that climate, I think that candidates who are perceived as handling domestic economics well will be advantaged. Experience wise, that must be Clinton and McCain. Overall, it should help the democrats, who could attack the republicans on economic grounds (war debt etc)
lastly, great to see those late Indian wickets fall
my 2 cents
William, any chance of organising an on-line game of Diplomacy through Poll Bludger?
Perhaps we could nominate players for various countries and then everybody sends in orders at a set time to you before they are released.
My personal preference in Diplomacy is Russia with a strong preference for Russia/Turkey steamrollers – of course the perfidious turk must be dispatched at an appropriate moment too!
Observing the sensitivity over the question of Middle Eastern politics, I can only suggest that the best read I have seen on the subject is Robert Fisk’s “The Great War for Civilisation”. To me it is an unbiased book, that chronicles suffering and attrocities by all sides – Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi and even Kuwaiti.
I think many people feel strong allegiances to one side or another (and there are many more than two, as Fisk demonstrates!) which can colour one’s judgement. But one thing I think Fisk does prove – just as there was a cultural group that shared the Jewish religeon who emigrated to what is now Israel over the past century, and their descendants now predominantly control that land area, there is also a distinct arab cultural group called Palestinians, mosttly moslem, who have a legitimate claim to live in some of the same areas, which in most cases their predecessors occupied prior to the arrival of Jewish emigres. Any just settlement must recognise the rights of both groups. That means IMO, that Israel must give up some currently occupied territory.
Did I miss something or are you being a bit precious Adam? How can KR’s comment that your views,
“…may be open to academic scrutiny by demographers”
be construed as calling you a liar? Have you ascended to the dizzy heights of Ponting and now claim to be above scrutiny?
As for “historical facts” you well know that one person’s ‘facts’ are another’s ‘opinions’ and yet another’s ’selective account’. Hence the varied views even among the well-informed academic scrutineers. History is never viewed though a clear lense and throwing the “L” word at those who differ helpful to honest discussion.
oops…”isn’t helpful to honest discussion”
FG 358
Well that was what I was thinking too – I think KR is right to question, but that doesn’t mean anyone is beign called a liar. People can quote conflicting statistics on middle east history without lying. It is hard to get accurate information, and it is an incredibly complex situation. Whole ethnic groups have been shunted from one country to another over the years, and there is an obvious motivation for even “official” or government groups to quote selectively or misquote information that suit their side of any argument (and hide or even destroy damaging information). Many questions we will probably never have a reliable answer on.
ESJ
“just a thought re diplomacy
perhaps you could run a thread whereby people nominate as country eg you could play as britain glen as germany ,adam as russia etc (i dont mind turkey)
then-using comments people could issue commands – and since it will be real-time orders
just a tought
(gusface)”
msg sent at 11.12 to william
great minds think alike
Ferny Grover, I think Adam got a bit confused over my reply to Mayo Feral (344/347) where he was discussing Israeli historical revisionism. I agreed with him, and somehow, I think, Adam has misconstrued this post as being directed at him, which it clearly is not, nor was intended to be.
At the heart of the issue is the question about who lived in the region, both during the 19th century, and then up to 1948. Who they were culturally, and where did they come from? How long had they lived there, and how established were their communities? How did the different groups interact, and what was the basis for their claims to territorial rights?
From the demographic evidence it is pretty clear that about 95% of the inhabitants in the earlier part of the 19th century were Arabic speakers and mosty Muslim. By late in the century there had been a small influx of J#wish settlers, but on one demographic study at least, there had NOT been a big influx of Arabs from elsewhere. By 1914 the J@wish population was still under 10%.
This is a very interesting point of history and demography, and it does throw light on why the “Palestinians” are so intransigently demanding their historical right to live there.
Whether the Palestinians have been their own worst enemy or not, is not the issue I was discussing, and so I’m somewhat flummoxed by Adam’s feeling personally attacked.
KR at 347
This is false, but apparently the lie is so well established that it is used by many to overlook the fact that there are a people virtually incarcerated, constatnly having their meagre remaining land encroached upon, treated like animals with daily constant humiliations and deprivations that are unspeakable.
I think Adam was entirely correct as to intent or purpose of the accusation.
Ah, so the word ‘lie’ is used by KR in 347 and Adam has taken it personally. OK, so now I understand the context, if not the response.
I read KR’s comment as directed at me, but if he says it was not I accept that.
The comment at 347 is ‘the lie’ that there was not a predominently Arabic population in the region, who had lived there continously for centuries.
I sought to demonstrate that there is demographic evidence to support the fact that there was, and in no way was there any inference or intent to call Adam a ‘liar’. I utterly refute that.
The evidence is in the numbers I quoted above, they may be challenged by anyone who can cite the research.
365
Adam, I’m very sorry that you did, as I’ve always enjoyed your posts even when you give us a slap for being deluded lefties without a clue about US politics!
(A criticism that’s quite valid on the whole, but I certainly would not take it personally!)
KR, I’m not aware that anyone has ever denied that before 1947 the majority of the population of Mandate Palestine were Arabs. But even if they have, and even if they are wrong, characterising this as a “lie” is not the way to conduct a historical debate. That was not in any case the point I was seeking to make. My two points were (a) that this population was not very large, and (b) that it did not define itself as “Palestinian” before the arrival of nationalist ideology in the 1930s.
Don’t know what price Hillary Clinton is currently but she wasn’t a prohibitive favourite to win Nevada last night when the bookies were offering $2.46.compared with about $1.50 for Obama. Amazing odds for her really and the opposite of what I’d have expected.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/01/nevada_who_will_win.html
I gather Mr Blibb has replaced Mr Blubb has WA Liberal Leader.
What’s the chances of the WA premier going the polls before Mr Blibb has a chance to settle in as opposition leader?
Yep, Troy “Brastrap” Buswell has indeed replace Paul “Elmer Fudd” Omodei, after Elmer decided not to remnominate for Leader.
And for those Libs trying to compare it to Rudd’s “Scores” episode, there is ONE major difference, the drunken and innappropriate behaviour occoured IN the Parliament.
Perhaps this could be explained to those of us who don’t follow WA politics all that closely.
Full Story here:
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=54861
368
Adam
I think if you refer to Mayo Ferals posts you’ll see that my rather ‘rhetorical’ use of ‘the lie’ is about Zionism’s refusal to allow a Palestinian state, it’s refusal to acknowledge that they even had any historical or socio-economic claims on the territory. In fact it’s almost been a kind of ‘terra nullius’ argument, and although you did not make it, you did infer that the bulk of the Arab population by 1948 were recent arrivals from elsewhere. I tried to show that this detail was not entirely correct, or at least could be academically debated, and that’s a pretty big difference to actually calling you a ‘liar’.
My comments to you on that subject were specific, and to the point, and actually addressed to you personally, whereas the comment to Mayo Feral was clearly about the historical revisionism of Zionism. For example, I’d call the neocon argument about Saddam’s WMD a lie because there is plenty of evidence that they knew their ‘evidence’ was shonkiy and that important CIA refutations were simply ignored. But hey, let’s not go there, eh?
WA Liberal Member Trevor Sprigg is Dead.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=54867
The Day has gotten worse for the WA Libs, and Buswell has his first challenge as leader with a By-election.
He was 13 when he had his first child? OMG
ESJ @ 378
This info seems sourced from his own website! But it also says he was married twice, so maybe stepchildren?
378
Edward StJohn
No doubt he had ‘liberal education’ ! Ta boom!
Kirribilli Removals @ 347 said:
But to be fair, Israeli historians have been publishing what really happened since the 1950s, and much of what they’ve catalogued is only news in the west.
Why? Probably partly because some just don’t like having their prejudices overturned (bad for the conscience apparently) – and the constant refrain, even here, that its all the Palestinians fault for rejecting partition when all the evidence shows it wouldn’t have made a flying fig’s worth of difference is a sobering indicator of this, and probably partly because many have felt, with good cause, that delving into these murky historical depths would only invite immediate accusations of antisemitism.
Yeah, just like the “Abos” aka Homo terra nullius. There weren’t any here either until after “whitey” arrived and had settled all the “empty” land. Then they all just materialised out of thin air. Ain’t magic wonderful?
KR, some things never change and equine excreta never smells any better no matter how many times it gets spread.
“Zionism” (aka the state of Israel) accepted the principle of a Palestinian state in the Oslo Accords of 1993. In 2000 Barak and Clinton offered the Palestinians a state taking in 90% of the West Bank plus Gaza, with co-sovereignty over Jerusalem. Arafat rejected this at Camp David on the spurious issue of the “right of return,” which he knew no Israeli government could concede, but really because he was not willing to be remembered as the leader who conceded Israel’s right to exist. Since then we have had the suicide bombing campaign, the failure of which led to a political breakdown on the Palestinian side, so that there is now no-one with whom an Israeli government can reach an agreement. That was why Sharon decided on unilateral withdrawal. Sadly Olmert has lacked the courage to follow through on the Sharon Plan, and Netanyahu, the next likely Israeli PM, is opposed to it, so it will be a long time before the opportunity for a Palestinian state re-appears. The Palestinians can thank Arafat for that. As to the wall, the roadblocks etc, how did they expect Israel to respond to the suicide bombing campaign which killed 1000 Israeli civilians?
I would say some on this site are implacably anti-Israel and closed to arguments to the contrary so there is no point continuing the debate.
Frank,
I suspect a byelection will result in the Libs giving the ALP a shelacking, and Buswell a boost.
As long as he keeps away from the lingerie
I’ve no dispute with your analysis of Arafat’s intransigence and duplicity, but the fact remains, Israelis kill Palestinians in a ratio of about 10:1, have physically, economically and pyschologically oppressed them while mostly making gestures towards settling the issue. This is pretty tragic for those born into it, and their is no shortage of fault on both sides.
Frank Calabrese @ 373 – Kev07-? may have been drunk when at Scores but the only “innappropriate behaviour” was the BS spread by the Libs and some of Rupert’s rags that Rudd had groped the strippers.
Blacklight,
This will be the first election decided under the new one vote one value boundries, so anything is possible
These are the 2005 results.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/wa2005.htm#murdoch
Plus I believe the seat of Murdoch has been abolished.
http://www.boundarieswa.com/Documents/pdf/2007Final/SouthMetroRegion.pdf
Interesting times indeed.
By-elections are conducted under the same boundries as in the election that elected the member who is retiring/dead.
and in NSW the DPP has decided not to press charges against Koperberg.
Not to be outdone the Queensland tories are as stable as usual.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/nationals-leadership-coup-not-on-the-radar/2008/01/17/1200419949212.html
William,
Can we please have a thread on the latest WA Liberal Leadership and subsequent By-Election – perhaps you can move the comments here to that thread ?
Go India!
Adam, I don’t doubt you believe the Israelis will withdraw from the West Bank just as they did from Gaza, but I very much doubt it for two reasons.
The minor, though still hugely significant, reason is that whereas the number of settlers in Gaza was small, 10,000 or so, there are hundreds of thousands of them in the WB. Thats a lot of votes, and a lot of emotional strings that will be pulled.
The major reason is the water in the aquifers under the West Bank. The important ones do not penetrate into Israel proper so it would loose control of a lot of the water it needs if it simply walked away as you believe it will.
As admitted by then Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, that water was a major deal breaker in the Clinton mediated peace talks. Israel insisted on continued total control of it in perpetuity. No Palestinian would be able to sink a well without getting permission, not from his government, but the Israeli water authority.
In compensation (which was also part of the compensation for WB land retained for settlers), Israel offered a parcel of land in the Negev Desert amounting to about 10% of the land to be retained on the WB. Not only worthless, but some of it is a large former toxic waste dump! Note that no ongoing payments for the water taken was offered, just a one off transfer of partially toxic, waterless desert.
Any Palestinian state stupid enough to accept this would be severely crippled economically because it could not expand its industry and agriculture with the water needed going elsewhere. It would also impose severe population limits.
There were also many other conditions that would have limited Palestinian authority: continued Israeli control of the state’s airspace and borders, including Israeli border police and troops permanently stationed along the Palestinian borders with Egypt and Jordan and control of shipping into Gaza ports, the right for Israeli troops to enter at any time, for any reason, trade restrictions etc., – as Arafat lamented Palestine would be just 3 Bantustans and an outdoor prison, not a state – but water was one of the biggest elephants in the room.
Why do the Palestinians deserve a state mayoferal?
Libs appear to have ignored the wowsers that brought down Brogden in electing Buswell.
The blokey image could be a plus for him, to reject him because of the bra strap joke would have brought the accusations that the party was beholden to fundies.
By the way can any one explain the trick?
Palestinians should plant more trees and throw less rocks.
ESJ – I would say
somemost on this site are implacably anti-IsraelLib/Nat governments and closed to arguments to the contrary so there is no point continuing the debate.!
397 Have I missed a debate?
Didn’t the WA Libs try the “blokey image” thing with Matt Birney? That went well as I recall.
I’m losing track of state Liberal leaders. Perhaps William could have a little box on his front page, headed “Today’s Liberal Leaders.”
Adam @ 392 ‘I’ word door prize: a weekend with Ron & Nessy on teh Game over at teh Poss. Go Sharma.
Mayo @ 397 ESJ chinleading again…ouch
Crumbs, 5/72. A bit of humility is being administered.
Yep, he stuffed up when he asked whether it was appropriate for the pope to take his partner on a taxpayer-funded trip., oh and being Missing in Action when one-vote -one value legislation was beiung voted on.
Good idea
ESJ,
I for one find this discussion on Israel very enlightening, especially as the problems there are the irritating pebble in the Middle Eastern shoe.
If we hope to have peace in our time we need to be able to see it from both sides.
It is possible to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, just as one can be pro- black and pro-white…..it is not a matter of either /or.
Surely you are jesting with your 394 above? Especially after previous posts detailing exactly why.
Nwe Post by william on WA Libs.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/791
William, please delete my duplicate post on the following thread
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/790#comment-119367
403
Megan
Once again we see people divided ideologically and the overwhelming human tragedy is almost a postscript.
I’d criticize one of Adam’s points: Zionism is NOT the state of Isreal, in fact there are many J3ws who do not subscribe to the tenets of what Zionism has become, (even some who actually live there), but I fear we might end up in an argument (LOL!).
What makes the whole thing so frustratingly silly is that these people have many racial connections, cultural connections, and except for adherence to a different god, could assimilate quite easily. In fact much of the Middle East, for much of the last thousand years, has had Arabs and J3ws living in very amicable terms in close proximity. Zionism pretty much put an end to that.
Au contraire codger all 397 shows is that Mayoferal is closed to all and any thought which challenges his world view.
The simple are always content in their platitudes.
Much like you ESimpleJ, its no doubt part of your charm. KR, Mayo et al are merely trying valiantly to open & expand yours.
ESJ @ 394 – Deserve? It’s their right in law, specifically, but not limited to, the right of self determination provisions of the UN Charter, Ch 1, Article 1, para 1 and UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Part 1, Ch 1, para 1. The very provisions the General Assembly breached when it allowed itself to be bribed and bullied by the US into authorising the partition of Palestine.
Contrary to the propaganda we’ve been subjected to, the Palestinians are not required in law to jump through any hoops in order to remove the illegal occupier of their lands, anymore than the Belgiums were after both World Wars.
Now a question for you? Why do the Israelis deserve to retain even a square millimetre of the territory they obtained in the Dec 1947-14th May 1948 terrorist raids/ethnic cleansing attacks and the 1948, 1956, and 1967 Lebensraum wars they began?
#406
Oh gosh ….
And I thought MayoFeral’s post at #397 was elegant in that it nicely repositioning your somewhat whimsical comment at #383 into something a little more rationale.
ESJ @ 406 – On challenges to my world view your contribution has been limited to a questioning of whether I am antisemitic and a couple of posts applauding Israelis, vilifying Palestinians, and justifying Israel’s actions because Israelis have also done good.
On the latter point, Adolph solved German unemployment, got the trains running on time and built the autobahns. All no doubt worthy endevours but they don’t excuse his Lebensraum wars or the ethnic cleansing of European J*wry anymore than the remarkable achievements of Israelis excuse their Lebensraum wars or the ethnic cleansing, admittedly with far, far fewer dead, so far, of Palestinians in 1947/8 and more recently.
It was Mussolini that made the trains run on time, not Hitler. German trains have always run on time.
MayoF , because of some bloke called Balfour, because of a UN vote, because the j.ws are a hardworking and industrious people who have made something of a desert (compared to their corrupt neighbours), because of the Holocaust, because they are democratic, because the Arabs gambled on war and lost and too many other reasons to mention
Well, Michigan, yes, let’s get back to something we won’t kill each other over!
Looks like it IS the economy,stupid.
US inflation has taken off, employment just stopped in its tracks, retail sales took a whack, credit issues abound, defaults on loans continue apace, the US dollar is disappearing down the S-bend, and they’ve got a few wars going on that do not have an end anywhere in sight.
Meanwhile their bank stocks have been slashed to a shadow of their former glory and they are going hat in hand to the Arabs and Asians for ‘hard’ currency, and lots of it. Let’s hope the lenders don’t get sick of being taken for a ride anytime soon or it’s game set and match.
The Fed Reserve, under the sorcerer’s apprentice, (remember Ben? you know, the guy who told us last year that the subprime thingo wasn’t a big deal?) is now in a tizz and trying to work out whether to literally throw cash out of a helicopter, or let the Federal Government just forget about collecting taxes, or maybe both.
In other words, ladies and gentleman, the biggest economic crisis since the depression is brewing like a perfect storm and they’re all engrossed on the ever so scintillating task of holding a presidential candidate’s beauty contest, at vast expence, of course.
A beauty contest on the deck of the Titanic is what it feels like! A little chilly for the bikini section, but the participants and the media are so enthralled they hardly seem to notice that big white thing floating on the horizon.
KR,
Maybe they can divert some of the 1.1trillion dollars that the CIA uses annually for the CIA’s black budget(covert programs).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CIA
Meanwhile,am manning the lifeboats….
414
Megan
Can I say, tongue in cheek: “Render unto Ceasar, or maybe Syria or some other god forsaken hole, and do unto others what you’d not do youself’
This takes money Megan, lots of money, to keep unmarked charted jets circling the globe for the luxrious transportation of certain individuals, some of whom just turn out to be average Mohammeds, so they can be delivered to luxurious accomodation, and have a team of professionals wait hand and foot on them for that snippet of vital information which the CIA so dearly loves to recieve.
Money, lots of it. This is not a kind of luxury tourist outfit that can run on small change! And my god, it’s making America great!
Talk about making flowers bloom in the desert! Yep, every time you look it’s another rip roaring success:
Patrick Cockburn reports that poppy cultivation for opium production is spreading rapidly in Diyala Province, and that the profits are fueling narco-terrorism because the fields are controlled by the Salafi Jihadis. American rule of Iraq is like the four horses of the apocalypse.
(Juan Cole)
Here’s the link to Cockburn’s article:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3345186.ece
Just when Condi Rice has been telling the world how wonderful the new de-Ba’athification law is! (Which it most surely isn’t with most of the Sunni parliamentarians giving it the thumbs down. But hey, Condi can tell the world anything she wants, and the adoring media just lap it up like it’s mother’s milk).
It just gets better, and better.
Adam – [German trains have always run on time.]
Yeah, just like Lufthansa’s planes always depart on time, as its pilots are quick to remind you, except for all the times when they haven’t. Like the ‘memorable’ occasion I, and 400 other fools, had to search, in freezing rain and sleet, through a mountain of luggage dumped on a Frankfurt airport apron because they’d accepted unaccompanied baggage and now didn’t now know which bag might contain the bomb.
But yes, I was wrong, it was Mussolini, not Hitler, though experience suggests that the boast was almost certainly greatly exaggerated.
KR, I’m allowing a lot of latitude in discussion of the Iraq war on the presidential election threads, but I think I draw the line at you rushing to this site every time Juan Cole scratches himself.
KR – the Iraqi opium growing is probably just a clever Yankee scheme to get their Afghan warlord buddies in the same business mad at the Salafi Jihadis in the hope said warlords come and give them what for.
Or perhaps the Turks, the guys who make the big bucks out of selling Afghan opium in Europe, want to reduce the length of the supply line. Wonder if the CIA is getting its usual share?
as a matter of interest could the dreaded M wotd come into play
either to dog hilary or be used by republicans as a smear tactic
any thoughts (it is the 10th anniversary after all)
419
MayoFeral
Every time I read that the ’surge’ is working I know we live in an Orwellian world of double-speak!
Of course this is McCain’s ticket, and he’s now running around saying how he never backed Rumsfeld’s crazy football team concept, and how he was the only guy to back the surge etc etc.
Utterly amazing.
My, my,
things appear to be getting a little heated around here since I last checked in. Perhaps the whole Israel vs Palestine discussion is mirroring the tragic idiocy of what is actually happeniing there – little room for giving on either side and valid grievances and claims on both.
I agree with Megan: an Either/Or approach is counterproductive.
Back to the US (not that they are not involved), but I read a Christopher Hitchens article on Slate about Hillary (sorry: don’t know how to do the link thing and am v. ashamed..), and while I detest the man I almost had to agree with him re: her backflip on Iraq and what this says about her suitability as POTUS. And, do we really want Bill back in the Whitehouse, even as the First Lady??
God help the female staff…
Bubba has a new box of cigars and is itching to get back to the “big house”
Poor Repubs just keep forgetting which side yjey are on……………………
A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday on charges of working for an alleged terrorist fundraising ring that sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.
Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about being hired to lobby senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
“side they are on”
#424 red wombat
Oh, I hate this sort of stuff.
1. we have an individual (who was a former congressman and delegate to the United Nations)
2. we have an organization (which for the moment is an alleged terrorist fundraising ring)
3. that said organization has sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida supporter
Wow – $130,000 is chicken feed.
Perhaps said organization needs a lobby group.
Perhaps said supporter needs to review his/her CV.
Perhaps red wombats should be re-posted when the facts are actually in.
But what do I know…
red wombat – apologies – but when we go off field (irrespective of my own personal opinions) we need to rain in rhetoric
How the caucuses work in Nevada.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/politics/voterguide/2008/caucus101/