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Tunisia elections: An-Nahda party on course to win

Moderate Islamist party An-Nahda tipped for victory in Tunisia’s first free elections nine months after people’s revolution The moderate Islamist party An-Nahda is tipped for a historic victory in Tunisia’s first free elections, the first vote of the Arab spring. Nine months after a people’s revolution ousted the dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali and sparked the Arab spring, Tunisians turned out in record numbers to vote for a caretaker assembly that has to rewrite the country’s constitution and govern until parliamentary elections in a year’s time. An-Nahda, which was banned for 10 years and brutally repressed under Ben Ali, with activists exiled, tortured and imprisoned,said it had taken the biggest share of the vote based on early predictions before the official results expected . The party campaigned on a moderate, pro-democracy stance that sought to allay secularist fears by vowing to respect Tunisia’s strong secular tradition and the most advanced women’s rights in the Arab world. The party compares itself to Turkey’s Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) – liberal and socially conservative. Said Ferjani, from An-Nahda’s political bureau, said: “We have to be careful about figures until the official results, but there’s a consensus that we’re around the 40% mark. It’s something that we were expecting. “We already have our ideas about the government. We are not dogmatic; we are highly pragmatic. It will be a broad national unity government. The new reality is that we have to do what we do for the Tunisian people – we go beyond old lines of argument or disagreement.” The 217-seat assembly has a specific role: to rewrite the constitution and set the date for parliamentary elections in a year’s time. It will also form a caretaker government. Aproportional representation system meant regardless of the number of votes, no one party could take anan overall majority. An-Nahda is expected to form an alliance with the centrist secularist Ettakatol party, which is forecast to win 15-20% of the vote. The party’s leader, Dr Mustapha Ben Jafaar, was banned from running for president under the old regime. He could now become interim president with an Islamist prime minister and key ministers. The centre-left Congress for the Republic Party, led by human rights campaigner Moncef Marzouki, also did well. The centrist PDP, once the major opposition, suffered by association with the old system and performed poorly. Kais Nigrou, of the the Modernist Democratic Pole, a coalition of the centre-left which ran a secular, feminist campaign to counter An-Nahda, said: “We accept the democratic result and we’ll be in opposition. “The diversity and openness of civil secular society in Tunisia is strong and isn’t going to change. We don’t see a threat from Islamists. If 40% voted for Islamists, 60% of society did not.” An An-Nahda win would be the first Islamist election success in the Arab world since Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian vote. Islamists won a 1991 election in Algeria, Tunisia’s neighbour, but the army annulled the result, provoking years of conflict. Tunisia Africa Tunisian elections 2011 Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk

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Woman Says She Was Wrongly Jailed for 2 Months

An Atlanta television station is reporting that Atlanta police have launched an investigation into the case of a woman who was arrested by mistake and held in jail for nearly two months. (Oct. 24)

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Woman Says She Was Wrongly Jailed for 2 Months

An Atlanta television station is reporting that Atlanta police have launched an investigation into the case of a woman who was arrested by mistake and held in jail for nearly two months. (Oct. 24)

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Obama Announces New Plans to Stem Foreclosures

President Barack Obama is announcing new plans to help stem foreclosures. Thus far, the nation’s housing crisis has played little role in the GOP presidential primary. (Oct. 24)

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Obama Announces New Plans to Stem Foreclosures

President Barack Obama is announcing new plans to help stem foreclosures. Thus far, the nation’s housing crisis has played little role in the GOP presidential primary. (Oct. 24)

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Fox’s Hoenig Supports Ron Paul’s Idea to Wipe Out  Five Government Agencies

Click here to view this media On this Saturday’s Cashin’ In, the topic of Ron Paul wanting to completely eliminate five of our government agencies was brought up during one of their panel segments and apparently their regular Jonathan Hoenig has decided to turn full-blown Libertarian after listening to his support of Paul’s idea during the segment from Fox above. CASONE: Imagine wiping our five government agencies from the map in Washington. That’s what GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to do as part of his $1 trillion spending cut plan. He says it will get the American economy booming again. Okay, will it? Jonathan Hoenig, will it? HOENIG: Cheryl it will, I mean, government spent $3.8 trillion last year. We don’t need a little tweak, we need a slash and burn, and Rep. Paul’s program does just that. We’ve come to think of this bloated government as something normal, but it’s really not. You know, Housing and Urban Development was a product of the 1960′s. The Energy Department which he wants to get rid of was a product of the 1970′s. We should slash and burn, return to the Constitution, put this country back on a course for economic prosperity. After fellow panelist Wayne Rogers pointed out that those agencies employ 235,000 people and have a budget of $175 billion, it’s unrealistic to think that the Congress is just going to dismantle them and that making cuts to those agencies would be a more realistic approach, Casone asked the lonely Fox “liberal” on the panel, Regina Calcaterra to weigh in. As she pointed out, Paul’s plan does a whole lot of damage to everyday working Americans that Hoenig apparently wasn’t that concerned about. CALCATERRA: It also substantially reduces funding for preschool programs for impoverished kids. It reduces funding for food stamps. And it wholeheartedly eliminates the Community Policing Program, which was put in place in the 1990′s, which led to a substantial decrease in crime nationwide. So you look at what programs he’s proposing to cut here, and they’re going to be cut in low community incomes and while he’s doing this, he’s also saying he wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, he wants to repeal all tax income on investment income and on estates and like you said, he wants to repeal wholeheartedly, without even looking at the merits some of the issues relating to Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. And those two laws were put into place because of the bad actors on Wall Street… At which point she got shouted down by the rest of the panel on the show. Tracy Byrnes followed with a little screed, carping about how the politicians in Washington are wasting our money, which I don’t disagree with, but certainly not for the same reasons Byrnes was going ballistic over here. She goes on to say that “no one even knows what the Department of the Interior does, and for all we know, they decorate, which was thankfully rebutted by their lonely “liberal” a bit later in the segment. CALCATERRA: It’s also going to affect the employees nationwide. You’re just looking at the salaries of the administrators sitting behind desks in Washington, but when you cut the Department of Interior, which doesn’t have to do with interior design, it actually has to do with national parks and a controlled oil drilling and federal parks as well, you’ve got park rangers and you’ve got people operating that that don’t make over a hundred thousand dollars… After which Tracy Byrnes started talking over her again and screaming again about how we’d better get rid of all the federal employees working “useless jobs.” To which Calcaterra managed to get a word in edgewise and point out that regulators at the federal level are necessary when you look at what happened with BP and the disaster in the Gulf. After Hoenig got a chance to make one one last comment at the end of the segment, talking about how wonderful Ron Paul’s ideas are for our country, Calcaterra got one last shot in at him as well for “cutting our funding for poor kids.” Which was met by moans and groans from the rest of them as the time for the segment ran out.

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Questionable Polling: GOP Presidential Preference Questions Vary Widely

Herman Cain has been ahead of Mitt Romney in the most recent GOP presidential candidate polling average at Real Clear Politics by a microscopic margin since late last week . Readers might be surprised to know that the wordings of the presidential preference questions at the various polling organizations differ significantly. In my view, the same person might given a different answer depending on which organization's polling question was asked. Here are the examples, with the Cain-Romney split identified in each instance (links are to fairly large PDFs in some instances): AP-GfK (Romney 30%, Cain 26%) — “Which of the following candidates would you MOST like to see win the Republican nomination for president?” CNN/Opinion Research (Romney 26%, Cain 25%) — “Next, I'm going to read a list of people who may be running in the Republican primary for president in 2012. After I read all the names, please tell me which candidate you would be most likely to support for the Republican nomination for President in the year 2012, or if you would support someone else.” (list of candidates then read in random order) Rasmussen (Cain 29%, Romney 29%) — “If the 2012 Republican Primary for President were held today would you vote for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Jon Huntsman?” (half of respondents hear names in order indicated; other half hears them in another order) Public Policy Polling (Cain 30%, Romney 22%) — “If the Republican candidates for President were Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum, who would you vote for?” NBC/WSJ (Cain 27%, Romney 23%) — “Let me read you a list of people who might seek the 2012 Republican nomination for president. If you were voting today in the 2012 Republican primary for president, which one of the following candidates would you favor? (READ LIST. RANDOMIZE. IF “NOT SURE,” ASK:) Well, which way do you lean?” Reuters/Ipsos (Cain 23%, Romney 19%) — “Several commentators have said the Republican presidential field for the 2012 presidential election is becoming clear. If the 2012 Republican presidential primaries were being held today, for whom of the following would you vote?” Gallup (link will probably download to desktop; NOT currently part of the RCP average; last poll showed Romney 20%, Cain 18%) — “Next, I'm going to read a list of people who may be running in the Republican primaries for president in the 2012 election. After I read all the names, please tell me which of those candidates you would be most likely to support for the Republican nomination for President in 2012, or if you would support someone else.” Items 1 and 7 from AP-GfK and Gallup are questionable, because there may be a difference between who someone would personally prefer right now and who they would most prefer for the nomination. I would argue that Mitt Romney currently benefits from this question given his alleged perception (not so coincidentally fostered by the AP ) as the “inevitable” candidate. Geez guys, why not just ask the “if the election were held today” question? Items 2, 5, and 7 from CNN and NBC/WSJ are also weak in the sense that the candidates named at the actual questions are actually running; no one is a “may” or a “might” (i.e., Palin, Christie, and others are NOT mentioned). If a respondent isn't sure that a bottom-tier candidate they might otherwise support is really running, that might skew the answers towards the front-runners, again (since his name recognition is currently the highest) benefitting Romney. Perhaps these pollsters just haven't updated the presentations even though they're getting the questions right in actually polling conversations or robocalls. If that's the case, they're just being sloppy in reporting. Items 3 and 4 are fine, unless you think Rammussen's omission of Gary Johnson is somehow a problem. The introductory statement at Item 6 from Reuters/Ipsos also seems designed to mislead some voters. Some may conclude that “the field is becoming clear” means that lower-tier candidates are close to being winnowed away, again leading to a bias towards the front-runners, and currently to Romney because he has the highest name recognition. Why do that? Unfortunately, the wide variance in the presidential polling question means that — in addition to sampling and other problems often found — how the question was asked has to be considered before reaching a conclusion as to how particular candidates are actually faring — and perhaps “unfairly” benefitting. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Molar Memorabilia: John Lennon’s Tooth Going Up for Auction

The tooth fairy will have to shell out some big bucks if she wants to compete with fans vying to buy John Lennon’s tooth. A molar belonging to the former Beatle is headed to the auction block in England, CNN reports. Back in the ’60s, Lennon reportedly gave his housekeeper, Dorothy Jarlett, the chomper as

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Queen Elizabeth saw more of Australia than she bargained for during her visit to Brisbane today. A construction worker gave the queen and her husband a long look at his rear end—which held an Australian flag between the cheeks—as he reportedly ran beside her motorcade for about 150…

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NBC’s long-struggling ratings are only getting worse as the new television season gets under way. Some 3.3 million 18- to 49-year-olds have been tuning in to the network’s primetime offerings over the past four weeks, a 9.3% drop from the year before, the Wall Street Journal reports. And…

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