Egyptians now feel the Mubarak regime has lost the initiative as momentum shifts back to the streets Omar Suleiman may be starting to deserve the adjective “embattled” that has often been attached to his boss, Hosni Mubarak, since Egypt’s uprising began. Appointed vice-president as a safe and loyal pair of hands, Mubarak’s former intelligence chief has been mandated to run “an inclusive and serious national dialogue with participants from the whole political spectrum to deliver an orderly transition to democracy by September”. But doubts about the regime’s real intentions, present from the start of the crisis, are growing fast. The first talks on Sunday were inconclusive. The impression is strengthening, say analysts in Egypt and abroad, that Suleiman is not serious about a constitutional review, a timetable for change, protecting freedom of expression, allowing peaceful protest, and ending the state of emergency. His remarks on Tuesday, rejecting an immediate departure by Mubarak or any “end to the regime”, did not sit well with his wish to resolve the crisis through dialogue. His warning of a possible “coup” sounded like a threat of more overt military intervention than has been seen so far. The view from Cairo is that the regime, though confused, is taking a hard line, and that the negotiations have essentially come to an end. The regime’s strategy has been to play for time, believing that the protests would fade in the face of a faltering economy and government initiatives such as raising wages for state employees. In a fast-moving situation, the mood changes from day to day. Only last Friday the government seemed to have acted wisely by not sending back its thugs to Tahrir square. That eased pressure from abroad, with the US, Britain and others tacitly accepting that Mubarak was unlikely to leave office before September. Worries about the Muslim Brotherhood taking advantage of the chaos may also have played into western calculations. Now, with protesters showing determination and resilience after Tuesday’s big rally, and another massive turnout planned for Friday, there is a tougher line from Washington. Joe Biden, the US vice-president, urged Suleiman to rescind the emergency laws immediately. Egyptians now feel that the regime has lost the initiative as momentum has shifted away from negotiations and back towards the street. Even if unco-ordinated, strikes involving thousands of workers fuel an atmosphere of confrontation, while sporadic violence and evidence of brutality by the security forces ensure that Egypt’s tense standoff continues. Omar Suleiman does not appear to be able to resolve it. Egypt Protest Middle East Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media [YouTube] Video via The Guardian Thousands of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square gave a hero’s welcome to a Google executive and activist who has become a symbol of the country’s anti-government movement. ================================================ REPORTER: Do you think you’re going to succeed? GHONIM: We don’t care. We’re going to do whatever we’ve got to do. ================================================= Too cool. A tweet from @Ghonim :
Continue reading …
Government refuses transition plan as demonstrations are joined by strikes – and vice-president’s coup ultimatum raises tensions Talks between the Egyptian government and opposition have all but collapsed after the regime balked at surrendering power to a transitional administration in the hope that mass protests would die down this week. Instead, the unrest is spreading as some of the largest demonstrations yet against President Hosni Mubarak were joined by labour strikes across the country, including on the Suez canal, in the city of Alexandria and by public transport workers in Cairo. A prominent member of a key opposition group, the Council of Wise Men, said negotiations had “essentially come to an end”. A western diplomat said Washington was alarmed by the lack of political progress and the Egyptian vice-president Omar Suleiman’s warning of a coup if the opposition refused to accept the government’s terms. Diaa Rashwan, of the Council of Wise Men, said he offered Suleiman a compromise in which Mubarak would have remained president but with his powers transferred to a transitional government. Rashwan said this proposal was rejected at the weekend and there had been no further movement. “The regime is taking a hard line and so negotiations have essentially come to an end,” he said. “Suleiman’s comments about there being a danger of a coup were shocking to all of us – it was a betrayal of the spirit of negotiations, and is unacceptable. “The regime’s strategy has been just to play for time and stall with negotiations. They don’t really want to talk to anyone. At the start of this week they were convinced that the protests were going to fade away.” Instead, the largest anti-Mubarak demonstration so far took place in Cairo on Tuesday. This came on the same day as 25 separate big demonstrations elsewhere in Egypt and the start of a series of strikes as trade unions joined the fray. Some stoppages are mainly about wage demands, but in the present crisis there is little doubt that they are timed to support the pro-democracy movement. Tens of thousands of workers stayed away in Alexandria to demand Mubarak’s resignation. Employees of the state-run Suez Canal company, public transport workers in Cairo and iron and steel workers in other parts of the country have also joined the strikes. At least two people were killed and several wounded in clashes between thousands of protesters and the police in New Province, about 300 miles from Cairo. This takes the estimated number of deaths at the hands of government forces above 300. Rashwan said that the lack of progress in talks and the rise in protests have shifted the initiative back to the street. On Tuesday Suleiman told Egyptian newspaper editors that an escalation of the protests could unleash further repression. “We can’t bear this for a long time,” he said. “We don’t want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.” Suleiman warned of “the dark bats of the night emerging to terrorise the people” and said the alternative to negotiations on the government’s terms was that “a coup happens”. This would mean “uncalculated and hasty steps, including lots of irrationalities”. Suleiman went on to his definition of a coup. “I mean a coup of the regime against itself, or a military coup or an absence of the system. Some force, whether it’s the army or police or the intelligence agency or the [opposition Muslim] Brotherhood or the youth themselves could carry out ‘creative chaos’ to end the regime and take power,” he said. Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, reiterated the threat on Wednesday by saying that the army could step in “to defend the constitution” if “adventurers” tried to take power. Suleiman also said Egypt was not ready for democracy. “The culture of democracy is still far away,” he said. Some opposition activists saw Suleiman’s warning as confirmation that the government was in retreat and may be starting to panic. Abdul-Rahman Samir, spokesman for the coalition of the main youth groups leading the protests, said a military takeover was a “disastrous scenario” that would not end the clamour for democracy. “He is threatening to impose martial law, which means everybody in [Tahrir Square] will be smashed. But what would he do with the rest of the 70 million Egyptians who will follow us afterward?” he said. “We are striking and we will protest and we will not negotiate until Mubarak steps down. Whoever wants to threaten us, then let them do so.” A western diplomat said Washington was concerned about the Egyptian leadership’s failure to deliver on promises of reform. On Tuesday the US vice-president, Joe Biden, phoned Suleiman to tell him immediate action must be taken towards political change, including the lifting of the 30-year state of emergency under which thousands of political prisoners have been detained. The diplomat said there is little confidence in the White House that the Egyptian leadership was prepared to take the necessary steps to defuse the crisis. Meanwhile, opposition activists are considering how to widen the protests. They have already begun a sit-down occupation of the street outside parliament and there is discussion of moving on to the heavily guarded state television building on Friday, the day of the next planned big demonstration, although such a move could set up a confrontation with the military. Egypt Protest Middle East Hosni Mubarak Obama administration United States Jack Shenker Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …At last, GOP Senators Reveal Their Evil Plan to Kill Us and Social Security
February 9, 2011 No CommentThe light has finally gone on. I’ve figured out what the overall GOP plan is to eradicate the poor, the middle class, and leave the rest of the country to the elites. First they de-fund health care for anyone who can’t afford it, which is all of us who are not indentured servants or making a zillion bucks a year already. Eric Cantor promises those de-funding provisions will be in the GOP budget before it passes the House. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Tuesday the bill to fund the government for the rest of the year will have language to withhold funding from the health care law by the time it passes the House next week. It was a message to the party’s conservative base that, no, Republicans haven’t forgotten about defunding the health care law. But Cantor still didn’t promise that the defunding language would be in the bill from the beginning – as tea partiers and other opponents of the law want. Instead, Cantor referred to the likelihood that Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana will offer the defunding amendment on the House floor – noting Rehberg’s “insistence” that the bill should not have any money to implement the law. “I expect to see, one way or the other, the product coming out of the House to speak to that and to preclude any funding to be used for that,” Cantor said. As our overall health declines, reducing life expectancies from what they are today to what they will be in the future without access to affordable health care, they will raise the Social Security Retirement Age in some sort of arbitrary and capricious fashion every few years. [Alabama Senator Richard ]Shelby said he considers deficit reduction to be the top issue on the congressional agenda. “We’re on the road to financial destruction,” he warned. “Can we get our hand around this problem without bringing everything to the table? No.” And Shelby indicated that entitlements are very much on his budget-cutting agenda. He mocked the recommendation of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission, which he said would raise the Social Security retirement age in 2025 (actually, not until 2027). “America will be burned by then — and a lot of us will be dead,” he said. His preferred solution is to “up the age every several years,” he said — the net effect of which would be tantamount to one benefit cut after another. Who needs death panels, anyway? We can just muddle through until the cancer, diabetes or heart disease kills most of us and we die paupers. Well, now we know. Of course, here’s something Shelby and his ilk are forgetting: Disabled, sick people end up on Social Security early , and are also eligible for Medicare early. So in addition to killing and bankrupting us sooner they’ll drive up the deficit even more. Keep those ideas coming, GOP.
Continue reading …Not 1989. Not 1789. But Egyptians can learn from other revolutions | Timothy Garton Ash
February 9, 2011 No CommentEcstatic crowds in Cairo prove there is no clash of civilisations – everyone wants freedom. The question is, how to get it? ‘No one predicted this, but everyone could explain it afterwards.” Said of another revolution, as true of this one. “To be honest, we thought we’d last about five minutes,”one of the organisers of the original 25 January protest which began this Egyptian revolution told the BBC. “We thought we’d get arrested straight away.” If they had been, if Hosni Mubarak’s security forces had once again murdered the foetus in the womb, the world wide web would now be filled with articles by experts explaining why “Egypt is not Tunisia”. Instead, the web is abuzz with instant, confident explanations of what nobody anticipated. Such are the illusions of retrospective determinism. So before we go any further, let us make two deep bows. First and deepest to those who started this, at great personal risk, with no support from the professedly freedom-loving west, and against a regime that habitually uses torture. Honour and respect to you. Second, hats off to Lady Luck, contingency, fortuna – which, as Machiavelli observed , accounts for half of everything that happens in human affairs. No revolution has ever got anywhere without brave individuals and good luck. One leathery old victim of this revolution, at whose death we should rejoice, is the fallacy of cultural determinism – and specifically the notion that Arabs and/or Muslims are not really up for freedom, dignity and human rights. Their “culture”, so we were assured by Samuel Huntington and others, programmed them otherwise. Tell that to the people dancing on Tahrir Square. This is not to deny that the religious-political patterns of both radical and conservative Islam, and specific legacies of modern Arab history, will make a transition to consolidated liberal democracy more difficult than it was in, say, the Czech Republic. They will. Maybe the whole thing will still go horribly wrong. But the profoundly condescending idea that “this could never happen there” has been refuted on the streets of Tunis and Cairo. While we are talking determinisms, let’s dispense with another one. In tags like “Facebook revolution”, “Twitter revolution” and “Al-Jazeera revolution”, we meet again the ghost of technological determinism. Talking to friends in Cairo, I am left in no doubt that these media did play a major role in organising and multiplying the popular protests that began on 25 January. As I have been writing this column, I have been watching the growth of the Facebook page set up by Egyptians to “authorise” Wael Ghonim , the Google executive recently released from prison and newly anointed hero of the revolution, to speak in their name. When I first visited it, at 08:51 on Wednesday morning, it had 213,376 people following it; as this article goes to press (and what a gloriously arcane phrase that is!) it has 236,305. Ghonim had been the pseudonymous organiser of an earlier Facebook page which contributed to the protests, and now has more than 600,000 followers. As in Tunisia, it is the interaction of online and mobile social networks with the older superpower of television that creates the catalytic effect. Al-Jazeera TV has produced a compelling narrative of liberation struggle, drawing on blogposts and blurry footage from mobile phone cameras. Ghonim became a popular hero because soon after his release from prison he appeared on an Egyptian television programme, thus reaching a wider mass audience for the first time. So these old and new technologies of communication matter enormously – but they did not prevent popular protest movements being crushed in Belarus and Iran, they do not determine the outcome, and the medium is not the message. Then we have the historical analogies. I have lost count of how many articles I have seen (including, I hasten to add, one by myself) asking whether or not this is the Arab 1989. “The Arab world’s Berlin Wall moment,” shouts one headline. “This is no 1989 moment,” cries another. The comparison may not, in the end, tell us all that much about what is happening in Egypt, Tunisia or Jordan – but it certainly tells us something about 1989. There is no longer any doubt that 1989 has become the early 21st century’s default model and metaphor for revolution. Forget 1917, 1848 or 1789. A close runner-up, in the analogy stakes, is Iran in 1979 – and the prospect of radical, violent Islamists coming out on top. Roger Cohen of the New York Times, who has produced some splendid reported columns from Tunisia and Egypt, follows the first law of journalism (“first simplify, then exaggerate”) when he writes that the “core issue” in Egypt is “are we witnessing Tehran 1979 or Berlin 1989?” To which one answer is: what we are witnessing in Cairo in 2011 is Cairo 2011. I mean this not in the trivial sense that every event is unique, but in a deeper one. For what characterises a true revolution is the emergence of something genuinely new, on the one hand, and the return of a suppressed human universal on the other. New in Cairo 2011 is that it is now Arabs and Muslims standing up in large numbers, with courage and (for the most part) peaceful discipline, for basic human dignity, against corrupt, oppressive rulers. New in 2011 is the degree of decentered, networked animation of the demonstrations, so that even the best-informed observers there struggle to answer the question “who is organising this?”. New in 2011 is the extraordinary underlying pressure of demography, with half the population in most of these countries being under 25. Old in Cairo 2011 – as old as the pyramids, as old as human civilisation – is the cry of oppressed men and women, overcoming the barrier of fear and feeling, however fleetingly, the sense of freedom and dignity. My heart jumped for joy as I watched the footage of the vast, celebrating crowds in central Cairo on Tuesday. But when we have finished humming the prisoners’ chorus from Beethoven’s Fidelio , we must remind ourselves that these moments are always transient. The hard grind of consolidating liberty is all ahead. This is where historical comparisons come into their own. They are no substitute for firsthand, informed analysis of the unique circumstances on the spot. What they do offer, however, is an extensive toolkit of experience, showing the many ways in which a revolution can go wrong and the rare combination needed for it to keep going right. Neither on the opposition nor on the official side do I yet see a vital ingredient for it going right: the organised, credible partners for a negotiated transition. Some proto-organisation has clearly emerged on Tahrir Square. In Ghonim, the protesters have a symbol who might yet become a leader. But we seem still to be a very long way from any alliance of opposition forces that could funnel popular pressure to the negotiating table. On the official side, Hosni Mubarak and his vice-president must give way to an interim government, headed by someone acceptable to all (or at least, most) sides – someone like the wily old Amr Moussa , secretary-general of the Arab League. Only when those two things happen may we begin to have confidence that the Egyptian revolution is on the right road. Egypt Middle East Protest Hosni Mubarak Tunisia Timothy Garton Ash guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …How hard would it be to back Egyptian democracy, Mr President? | Joshua Treviño
February 9, 2011 No Comment
This is a simple enough choice between liberty and tyranny, yet the White House has done nothing but equivocate and dodge The administration of Barack Obama has reacted to the uprising against Hosni Mubarak with the enthusiasm of a man condemned to consume a gallon of plain yoghurt. The president of the United States is not against Egyptian democracy, exactly – but neither is he especially for it. His administration’s pronouncements on events have reflected his dilatory approach: the day of the revolution’s inception saw his secretary of state affirming the “stability” of the regime; then there was the infamous Robert Gibbs presser in which confusion and uncertainty were clearly communicated; then, there was the White House’s efforts to leak to the press its masterful behind-the-scenes engagement with Egyptian power brokers; and then, there was this past weekend’s jaw-dropping declaration by its envoy Frank Wisner that Mubarak ought to stay . Following that was the secretary of state’s declaration that the American government’s own man in Egypt “does not speak for the American government”. Well. During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton ran an ad asking whom voters trusted to receive the “3am phone call”. At this point, Egyptians and Americans both would be happy if President Obama handled a call at 3pm. The inability of the United States’s foreign policy apparatus to develop a coherent and public response to the Egyptian revolution is not simply a condemnation of the president’s management. Nor is it a stumble with limited consequences. As the UAE journalist Habiba Hamid quipped, “Imagine the tremendous outpouring of US support that 60 million Egyptians [sic] would have shown had the US actually supported democracy in Egypt.” Indeed, imagine that. Now, though, the post-Mubarak era is both imminent and inevitable – it was so on 25 January – and when it comes, over 80 million Egyptians will remember not that Obama was nuanced and deliberate, but that the United States of America stood against its advent. The real tragedy of the president’s epic mishandling of Egypt is not merely the sceptical-at-best Egypt that will emerge. It’s that Egypt is merely the latest episode in a pattern laid down by Barack Obama in the first two years of his presidency. In just two years, he has faced multiple crises of liberty, democracy and the American national interest abroad – and he has failed each test. Even rhetorical support for those seeking freedom, the bare minimum a president can do, is strikingly absent except under duress. The plain and pathetic reality is that Barack Obama chooses the existing regime over any alternative, and/or against the American ally, every time. Ask the Hondurans who ejected their Chavista president. Ask the Falkland islanders sold out by the Secretary of State Clinton intoning on the “Malvinas”. Ask the east European Nato members stripped of a full American deterrent in the name of a Russia “reset”. Ask the Tunisians who received not a word of endorsement as they ejected Ben Ali. Ask the Iranians who fought and died for their freedom in the hot summer of 2009. And now, ask the Egyptians who gather, once again, in Tahrir Square as you read this. None of this is to say that there is no legitimate apprehension over the Egyptian revolution. That apprehension is well-founded in a country where a “supermajority” polls in favour of the most brutal criminal sanctions in Islam’s name, and where the most organised opposition force, the Muslim Brotherhood, has ideological spinoffs including Hamas and al-Qaida to its credit. The rightful fear of the new Egypt cloaks itself in many justifications, ranging from appeals to Edmund Burke’s cautionary doctrine, to insane conspiracy theories of socialism and universal caliphates. President Obama’s lacklustre response to Egypt’s liberation reflects none of these concerns: only his profound apathy towards the aspiration for freedom, and his striking disconnect from America’s best historic role in the world. Even if the president did share those concerns, the conduct of the Egyptian revolutionaries to date has been generally exemplary in the face of attack, murder, deprivation and arduous struggle. America’s own Declaration of Independence asserts that Egyptians deserve liberty by their very nature as men. Their actions since 25 January only underscore that case. Perhaps they do not deserve American support – but they have earned it. The American people understand that, as shown in the latest Gallup poll revealing 82% public support for Egypt ‘s revolution. Americans who just celebrated the centenary of President Ronald Reagan may well recall his 1982 address to the British parliament, in which he famously declared that Marxism-Leninism would end up “on the ash-heap of history”. But he said something else there that bears repeating as we witness millions of Egyptians seizing their liberties: “[D]emocracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.” Reagan knew it then. The American people know it now. The Egyptian people know it now. Why doesn’t Barack Obama know it? Egypt Middle East Obama administration Barack Obama United States US foreign policy US politics Ronald Reagan Hosni Mubarak Joshua Treviño guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau chief Ayman Mohyeldin said Monday that he was blindfolded, handcuffed and taken into custody by Egyptian military police the previous day. He was released after nine hours in detention. Mohyeldin told the network Monday that he and other detainees were treated like “prisoners of war.” “As I was making my way into Liberation Square, I was essentially stopped by the Egyptian military, and there was a young recruit there who asked me for my identification,” he explained. “When I presented him with my identification, he asked me ‘What you are coming to do?’” “I simply said I was a journalist, I didn’t really have any major equipment on me, just a small camera and my cellphones. Immediately it seemed like he was taken aback, surprised perhaps by my identity. At that time they didn’t know who I was working for, and they didn’t ask me, really. It was just the mere fact that I was a journalist who was trying to go into Liberation Square that seemed to be enough for them to take me for further questioning.” Mohyeldin, a US citizen, was then taken to a nearby makeshift holding area. “I was handcuffed with plastic wire. I was blindfolded, and I was made to sit on the pavement for about five hours or so with several other people including journalists who were there.” He was eventually interrogated and asked “intimidating” questions about what he thought of the protests. “They were ultimately saying to me: What I was doing in Egypt? Why don’t I just go back the the United States where I came from and why I was trying to project a negative image of Egypt to the outside world?” Mohyeldin described being held with several other journalists and protesters captured in Liberation Square. “I can tell you from what I saw and from what I heard, a lot of these people were beaten up. They were very — the military was dealing with them in a very aggressive manner. They were slapped, they were kicked,” he said. “I don’t think it was a matter of trying to coerce them for information, but in essence, the military was dealing with these people as prisoners of war,” Mohyeldin continued. “These were individuals who were trying to plead for their safety, for their innocence. Many of them were crying, saying they were simply just caught up in the wrong moment. But the military showed no mercy, and on a few occasions they really roughed them up pretty badly. They kicked them in the back of their heads.” “One of the soldiers that was there had with him a small Taser gun. He was instantly instigating that Taser to try to scare the prisoners, or the detainees, really, into submission and behaving. Many of them had their shirts taken off of them. And many of them were also severely whipped and slapped and essentially pushed around in a way to kind of control them even though they weren’t doing anything that was very disobedient,” he added. Thousands of Egyptians returned to Liberation Square Tuesday in opposition to President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Many said that Tuesday’s demonstrations were the biggest so far .
Continue reading …Obama tells FOX to Stop "Spinning the News" as O’Reilly sez The Factor "isn’t Ideological"
February 8, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media FOX’s pregame interview between Bill and the President was only a small portion of the overall interview and O’Reilly broadcast the rest of it on The Factor Monday night. I didn’t bother to count how many times BillO interrupted him, but Lawrence O’Donnell found he did maybe 42 to 43 interruptions during the SB telecast. Bill gets down to business tonight and asks President Obama what FNC could do better. No, really. O’Reilly: But you’re talking more like a professor. President Obama: No, no, but what I’m saying is that’s an example of just the facts without the spin I think would be good… O’Reilly:I think overall our guys do that but when you get over to the prime time opinion-makers that’s when you… President Obama: But the opinion makers is where you get a lot of where the viewership gravitates. O’Reilly: Absolutely, so you think you’re being treated fairly on FOX News now? President Obama: I would say that the news guys try to do a good job, although let’s face it, I think FOX News has a point of view. There’s nothing wrong with that… O’Reilly: Do you respect it? Absolutely. The Obama administration has heavily criticized FOX News before and so he had another chance to call them out for their propaganda. He chose a much softer approach this time, which is calculated at trying to win over some of their voters, as if that’s possible. Does his team really believe that it is? Because I sure do not. Maybe the Beltway bipartisan fetish that VandeHarris got honest about played a role in his answer. BillO, as usual, got impatient as Obama tried to give a thoughtful answer. He’s not used to a reasoned argument if it’s longer than thirty seconds and he’s not the one doing all the talking. Bill later read some of his emails as is his custom, and one of his viewers complained that Bill was shilling for Obama, painting him as a moderate and giving him free advertising..HAHA. See, Bill inserted that email to justify his non-ideological spin because he knows how to play the game too. Bill responded with his patented answer that “The Factor Is not and never has been, an ideological program.” “I ask the President questions, he responds and you decide. I don’t engineer anything. He asks Dick Morris the questions, Morris smears him and anything progressive for ten minutes and then you decide. He asks the questions, Karl Rove smears him and anything progressive for ten minutes and you decide. He asks Coulter the questions, she smears him and anything progressive … yada yada yada. He then brings on Juan Williams to give a Faux Liberal point of view just for kicks and it pays very well for Juan. I wonder when Bill will ever ask Sarah Palin how she feels about being hated by so many Americans. A) the next time she appears on The Factor. B) 6 months. C) When she announces her candidacy for President in 2012. D) Never I think it’s only fair. After all, Palin has much higher negatives than Obama — which means …? What say you, Bill? National Journal: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin continues to be a highly polarizing figure, with a whopping 57 percent viewing her unfavorably according to a new poll. The Bloomberg survey , released Monday, also found that the negative feelings about Palin are particularly strong. A third — 33 percent — said they view Palin “very unfavorably.” That’s the same percentage that viewed her favorably cumulatively — respondents who either viewed her “somewhat” or “very” favorably (!). The survey results indicate that Palin faces a significant image problem as she decides to run for president. Just look at how Pres. Obama’s numbers compare. Obama scored a net negative job approval rating — 48 percent said they disapprove of his performance as president while 47 percent approved, which is in line with other polls and shows the Bloomberg survey isn’t a particularly good poll for the president. However, 52 percent view Obama favorably while 44 percent view him unfavorably. More troubling for Palin is that it may be tough for her to change that perception. Only 10 percent are unsure of their opinion of her. And in a NBC/WSJ poll, she fares even worse than Pelosi: Sarah Palin rates a couple of points lower than Nancy Pelosi according to an NBC/WSJ pol l (h/t Political Wire ).Palin’s negative rating has climbed to 50%. That’s the highest negative rating for anyone measured in this poll (and it’s two points lower than Nancy Pelosi’s negative rating from last month). And get this: The only major subgroups that Palin wins in a head-to-head match-up with Obama are Republicans, conservatives, and FOX viewers. That’s it, folks. NBC/WSJ co-pollster Bill McInturff (R) says that this is “a sobering starting point” for Palin if she decides to run for president.
Continue reading …
Google executive Wael Ghonim’s emotional interview on the country’s privately owned Dream TV after his release was hailed as a landmark moment in the Egypt revolt. He played a key role in using the internet to spark the uprising against Hosni Mubarak
Continue reading …
A lawyer for Julian Assange and a Swedish legal expert this morning accused prosecutors in Sweden of irregularities and illegality in the way they built a sex crimes case against the WikiLeaks founder. Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, said an initial prosecutor “acted against the laws of confidentiality, telling one of our tabloid newspapers that Julian was suspected of rape.” He said prosecutors and police had leaked details of the case to the media. Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of rape and sexual molestation made by two women. His lawyers argue that the global publicity around the case and the Swedish custom of hearing…
Continue reading …