US presidential Elections: In new shock poll, Sanders has landslides over both Trump and Bush

In a new McClatchy-Marist poll, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide margin of 12 percentage points, 53 to 41. In the McClatchy poll, Sanders also leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) by a landslide margin of 10 points, 51 to 41.

Sanders's strength in general election polling gives credence to the argument I have been making in recent years, that American voters favor progressive populist positions which, if taken by Democrats in the general election, would lead to a progressive populist Democratic president and far greater Democratic strength in Congress.

It is a fallacy argued by conservatives and, in my view, inaccurately parroted by the mainstream media, that Sanders and other liberals take positions that are far too "left." The polling shows, issue by issue, and increasingly in general election match-ups of Republicans running against Sanders, that it is the left, not the right, which has the upper hand with American voters.

Read moreL In new shock poll, Sanders has landslides over both Trump and Bush | TheHill

US Political Radicalism: "Tea Party Victory, Global Defeat"- by Gareth Evans

You wouldn’t expect much interest beyond the United States, or even beyond his own state, when an 80-year-old conservative legislator, who has already served six terms, loses his party’s endorsement to run yet again. But the crushing defeat of Senator Richard Lugar in the recent Indiana Republican primary, in a Tea Party-supported campaign of shocking mindlessness, has reverberated in capitals around the world, including my own.

With the defeat of Lugar, and the simultaneous exit of the last Republican moderates, like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who were prepared to put national interests ahead of partisanship, the Senate is unlikely to produce the 60 votes needed to ratify further US-Russia arms-control treaties, should they be negotiated. Moreover, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would replace a fragile international moratorium, cannot come into force without US Senate ratification.

At a personal level, I am also afraid that Lugar’s defeat may be the end of an era of enormously attractive and distinctive civility in the way that America’s most senior legislators conducted themselves. As Australia’s foreign minister, and a global NGO head, I met Lugar many times, and, whether or not we agreed on issues, he was always a model of gentle courtesy.

In the past, anguish at home and abroad about the quality of US governance – its apparent arrogance, mindless parochialism, and incapacity to deliver coherent, credible, and decent policy outcomes – has for the most part proved short-lived. Maybe that will be the case again. But the passing from the national stage of Richard Lugar has properly rung new alarm bells not only among concerned Americans, but also among policymakers far removed from the US and its partisan battles.

Read more: "Tea Party Victory, Global Defeat" by Gareth Evans | Project Syndicate

"Politics at the Neanderthal level "- Will U.S. Election Madness Ever End?- by Ben Cohen

Watching the presidential election take shape in modern times is a painful process. I have been following U.S. elections closely for 12 years and each time have been astonished at the spectacle.

While half the country lives with chronic food insecurity, billions of dollars are poured into strategists, analysts, makeup specialists, advertisers, planners, managers, advisers and hangers on, all in the name of electing a faceless politician who sounds and looks exactly the same as their predecessors (the only exception being Obama's election in '08).

Gore, Kerry, Bush, McCain, Romney, Gingrich, etc. all blend into one grey mass of old white people with almost identical policies and identical rhetoric. While there is still a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans (one party is sane and the other isn't), their platforms vary only slightly in the scheme of things. Right now, those variations are important, particularly when the economy is so vulnerable. Electing a free market, deficit hawk into the White House this year could literally tank the economy completely. Having a vaguely Keynesian president has been the only thing propping the economy up for the past 3 1/2 years, and it would be a very wise choice to keep him in office.

But in the long term, a two-party duopoly funded by exactly the same financial institutions and beholden to the same corporate interests cannot be sustained. The public knows the election is a gigantic clown show, and that's why voter participation has declined year after year for decades. The scripted events, sound byte debating points and relentless image based advertising has an effect on the public -- they know that nothing will change, that no politician is telling the truth, and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

Note EU-Digest: this is politics at the Neanderthal level...
 
For more: Ben Cohen: Will U.S. Election Madness Ever End?

US Presidential Elections and the Republican Agenda: Mean-spirited Republican agenda polarizes America - by Stephen L. Goldstein

Racist, militaristic, theocratic, anti-immigrant, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-intellectual, greedy, anti-consumer, pro-gun — these 10 sorry, regressive, mean-spirited adjectives best brand the elements of the tea party/GOP's benighted platform. Again and again, during their 19 pathetic excuses for debates, Republican prez wannabes promised to pursue and pass it. Elect a Republican president and give his party control of one or both houses of Congress and you'll endure their real agenda and a country no one — not even right-wing extremists — would want to live in. Consider the details and implications of "the 10," individually and collectively — and recoil in horror.

For more: Stephen L.Goldsrein Republican agenda: Mean-spirited Republican agenda polarizes America - Sun Sentinel

US elections: no matter who you vote for, money always wins - by Gary Younge

Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".

Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

For more: US elections: no matter who you vote for, money always wins | Gary Younge | Comment is free | The Guardian

US Politics: Gingrich says he is not running to represent Goldman Sachs - by Julie Bykowiczchs

Newt Gingrich took aim at Wall Street and by extension Republican presidential opponent Mitt Romney yesterday as the former U.S. House speaker said he isn’t running for president to “represent Goldman Sachs.”

Yet the investment firm Gingrich derided and the banking industry as a whole stand to gain from his proposals to eliminate the capital gains tax and repeal two financial-sector measures, four analysts said in separate phone interviews.

Gingrich’s tax package, which also calls for a reduction of the personal income and corporate tax rates, would be beneficial to many on Wall Street, including those at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., an investment banking firm based in New York, the analysts said.

For more: Gingrich takes a swing at Goldman Sachs - The Washington Post

German foreign minister refutes US Republicans

Centre-right Republican hopefuls for the White House in 2012 repeatedly paint US President Barack Obama as an ideologue determined to lead the nation down a destructive road to European-style socialism.

But German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, of conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet, on Friday criticized the harsh tone of their rhetoric and attacks on Europe.

'We finished socialism with the support of the United States of America 20 years ago,' Westerwelle said, referring to the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet rule.

In a speech at the private Brookings Institute, Westerwelle also warned against the return to nationalistic isolation in Europe.

For more: German foreign minister refutes US Republicans - Monsters and Critics

The Republicans on China: 'Who Knows What’s Up and Who Doesn't’ - by Elizabeth C.

Truth be told, I don’t think that foreign policy—other than matters related to war—is likely to play a significant role in this year’s presidential election. Moreover, as decades of U.S. electoral politics have demonstrated, whatever candidates say about China is likely to bear little resemblance to what they actually do once they are in the Oval Office. Nonetheless, as a matter of character and competence, it is fascinating to look at what each of the Republican candidates has to say about China. Even though I have followed the Republican race fairly closely, I was surprised—both pleasantly and not—by what I found.

For more: Asia Unbound » The Republicans on China: Who Knows What’s Up and Who Doesn’t

US Presidential Elections: Prepare Yourself for Obama's Second Term

For some time now, many conservatives have thought that President Obama is the Second Coming of Jimmy Carter. They think that chronic 9% unemployment, creeping inflation, and a foreign policy of self-abasement and weakness will doom Obama to a single term, and that he'll slink off with his tail between his legs in disgrace, just like Carter did after the election of 1980.

Maybe they should be thinking about the election of 1996 instead.Does anyone remember the disaster that was Bill Clinton's first term? The first attempt to put gays in the military, the first attack on the World Trade Center by Muslim fanatics, and the "Assault Weapons" Ban? The proposal to raise taxes, increase spending, and downsize the military? Hillary arrogantly proclaiming that she was no little Tammy Wynette by her man and baking cookies? That she would revamp the entire health care system, by herself, in secret, without congressional input? Does anyone remember the Waco debacle, which led directly to the Oklahoma City bombing, and Clinton's allegation that it was the fault of talk radio? Does anyone remember the landslide Republican victory in the House in 1994, breaking forty straight years of Democratic control -- a massive rebuke of the Clinton administration?

And yet...Clinton got re-elected in 1996. He didn't just squeak by, either -- he won a crushing 379-159 victory in the Electoral College and beat the Republican ticket by eight and a half percent in the popular vote.Conservatives were in shock. How could this happen.

For more: Articles: Prepare Yourself for Obama's Second Term

Libya: Secret files show how US officials during Bush Presidency aided Gaddafi - by Jamal Elshayyal

Documents were found a few days ago of a Libyan Government building destroyed by NATO warplanes of minutes of a meeting between senior Libyan officials – Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail – and David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush. Welch was the man who brokered the deal to restore diplomatic relations between the US and Libya in 2008.

Welch now works for Bechtel, a multinational American company with billion-dollar construction deals across the Middle East. The documents record that, on August 2, 2011, David Welch met with Gaddafi's officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, just a few blocks from the US embassy.

During that meeting Welch advised Gaddafi's team on how to win the propaganda war, suggesting several "confidence-building measures", according to the documents. The documents appear to indicate that an influential US political personality was advising Gaddafi on how to beat the US and NATO.

Minutes of this meeting record his advice on how to undermine Libya's rebel movement, with the potential assistance of foreign intelligence agencies, including Israel.

For more: Secret files: US officials during Bush Presidency aided Gaddafi - Features - Al Jazeera English

USA: Whose Economy Is This, Obama's or the Republicans'? - by David Shorr

A question. Who bears the blame for a depressed economy when the government's actions are shaped more by the views of the opposition party than the president's own policy preferences? It seems to me that as the 2012 election gets nearer, the 2009 stimulus bill gets farther back in our rear view mirror. And as the country goes down the austerity (read Republican) path and away from sensible Keynesian (read Democratic) policies, then surely the burden of proof must shift.

The heart of the Republican argument is the claim that government spending and taxation is "job-destroying" and otherwise harmful to the economy. Well, this view among Republicans (and sympathetic deficit-hawk Dems) put limits on the 2009 stimulus package and ruled out the possibility of a subsequent injection of stimulus. So if the economic disaster brought about by Bush policies wasn't proof enough, we are tragically getting another demonstration of what happens when free market fundamentalist policies win out over J.M. Keynes' time-tested, Great Depression-taming approach.

The real problem with Republican obstructionism isn't its rigid refusal to compromise or cynicism in wishing for the president's failure. What we have here is a grand experiment for our grand debate over government expenditure, regulation and the provision of public goods, i.e. whether they are necessities or threats for the economy. We should take the GOP at Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand's word; cuts in budgets and the public sector is the job- and prosperity-creating tonic for what ails our economy. Republicans have succeeded in sidelining the government and preventing it from propping up weak demand. It's not a stretch, therefore, to say this is the Republicans' economy -- not because of George Bush, but because of Paul Ryan, Michele Bachman, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, the Koch Brothers, Richard Viguerie...

For more: Whose Economy Is This, Obama's or the Republicans'? | TPMCafe: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

US debt deal: a victory for the Tea Party - by Alex Spillius

They would have liked to see greater cuts and a constitutional requirement to balance the budget in the future. They are fundamentalists, so nothing short of total triumph will do.

But make no mistake, they have proved beyond all doubt that the Tea Party calls the shots in the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.


The president was unable to fight back convincingly, and resorted to scare tactics about benefits to the sick and elderly not being paid if the ceiling wasn't raised. He did not sound like a man in control.

The episode has damaged his authority and dimmed his prospects of re-election in 2012. The Tea Party has succeeded in making spending the dominant issue in Washington, even over job creation and the immediate recovery. But the movement played a large part in dragging the country to the brink of disaster, and many voters in the middle ground may not forgive them for that.

For more: US debt deal: a victory for the Tea Party - Telegraph

US Debt Crises: President Obama Calls on the American People to Make their Voices Heard - by Nikki Sutton

This morning, President Obama spoke on the status of the debt ceiling negotiations from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. The President urged Republicans and Democrats in Congress to find a bipartisan solution to avoid default that he can sign by Tuesday. Though we are almost out of time, the President made it clear that there are multiple ways to resolve this problem.

For the complete speech click here: : President Obama Calls on the American People to Make their Voices Heard | The White House

US Politics: Tea-Party shows its teeth - Unable To Cement Enough Votes, Boehner Postpones Vote On His Budget Bill

In the end, the Republican Majority leader Boehner was unable gather the 217 votes he needed — especially from the Tea-Party-backed freshmen — to get his budget bill through the House, which casts serious doubts on Boehner's ability to lead the chamber. Now, the door opens for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to advance his own plan, which he can present as the only solution still viable and passable before the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury.

On the House floor, Democrats attacked the Boehner plan saying it "kicked the can down the road," and that it was a solution that disproportionately affected the working class and poor. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the plan did not provide the longer-term stability that Reid's competing plan in the Senate provides.

For more: Unable To Cement Enough Votes, Boehner Postpones Vote On His Budget Bill : The Two-Way : NPR

USA Politics: Republicans - The Party of Fiscal Irresponsibility - by Janine Balekdjian

A complete reversal of all known ideas of logic and common sense is the only explanation for the sort of shenanigans going on in Congress right now. From an outside perspective, watching the debt limit negotiations is like watching a car slowly drive towards the edge of the cliff at 25 miles per hour. Everyone can see the cliff is there, and while the people in the car can't agree which way to go, it seems obvious that they'll choose something before the car goes over.

For more: Janine Balekdjian: The Party of Fiscal Irresponsibility

Is the US Still a Democracy ? Corporate Influence Increases in Politics and Secret Donors Multiply in U.S. Election Spending

Bloomberg.com correspondents J. Crewdson, A. Fitzgerald, and J. Salant reported: "that in the weeks before last November’s US congressional election, television viewers in South Carolina were treated to an animated caricature of Representative John Spratt high- kicking in a chorus line with President Barack Obama and then- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."

“It’s the worst economy in decades,” the ad intoned, “and the folks in Washington are living it up, spending our tax dollars like there’s no tomorrow.” That ad and a second one mocking Spratt appeared at least 723 times between Sept. 25 and Election Day and were paid for by a group called the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity, according to ad trackers at Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit of WPP Plc. Spratt, a 14-term Democrat, saw a seven-point lead in an early poll vanish and lost the election.

Commission on Hope and four other Republican-leaning groups spent at least $4.05 million attacking candidates in the run-up to the November voting, according to Campaign Media estimates and TV station records obtained by Bloomberg News. None of that spending can be found searching the public database of the Federal Election Commission, and FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said the commission has no record of it.

US Federal law requires FEC disclosure of money spent on ads mentioning or depicting a candidate in the 60 days before a general election. The five groups whose spending wasn’t reported either declined to comment, were unreachable, or said they deemed the spending not reportable under the law. Federal law requires FEC disclosure of money spent on ads mentioning or depicting a candidate in the 60 days before a general election. The five groups whose spending wasn’t reported either declined to comment, were unreachable, or said they deemed the spending not reportable under the law.

The organizations face little scrutiny from the FEC, where split votes between Republican and Democratic commissioners have stymied enforcement in case after case for almost three years.

As a result, voters may find themselves choosing the next U.S. president knowing less about those trying to shape their views of the candidates than they have since secret money helped finance the Watergate burglary and re-elect President Richard Nixon in 1972. Watergate led to his resignation and ushered in the law that created the FEC. Investigators found more than $20 million had been given behind the scenes to Nixon’s campaign."

Several political analysts now believe that the strategically planned and well orchestrated political moves by the US conservative corporate establishment  to increase their grip on the US political process has eroded the democratic pillars on which the nation was founded. 

Italy's second world war dictator Benito Mussolini described this development as fascism when he said::  “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

   

EU-Digest

Libya: US Republican Speaker of the House Boehner who has achieved nothing since he became speaker should be the last to critique Obama over Libya

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, on Wednesday pressed President Obama to clarify what the administration hoped to achieve through military intervention in Libya, as top Senate Democrats defended the president’s handling of the crisis.

Mr. Boehner who had earlier struck a more neutral tone, saying America had a “moral obligation” to help opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi while urging the White House to define its intent. But on Wednesday in his letter to the President he supposedly illustrated mounting Congressional wariness over the use of force without fuller participation by the House and Senate as well as uncertainty over how long American military units would lead the military action.

With Congress out of town, three Senate allies of Mr. Obama came to his defense, predicting the president would win bipartisan backing for the country’s role in Libya if it came to a vote when Congress returns from a one-week break next week. In a conference call with reporters, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, also said he expected United States military forces to hand off responsibility for enforcing the no-fly zone in a matter of days, not weeks.

Given the urgency of stopping the Gaddafi onslaught from entering Benghazi most political observers and European allies have applauded Mr. Obama for rising to the occasion by throwing his support behind the UN resolution based on humanitarian and moral grounds rather than staying out of the conflict for economic reasons.

EU-Digest

The American Union Movement: "We're Broke," Say the Rich, and the Poor Must Pay - by Glen Ford

"The American union movement may be headed for its Waterloo, a final debacle that could occur in Republican-ruled Wisconsin, but might just as easily happen at some later date in Democrat-governed New York. The social compact that unionists must forge in order to survive the desperate struggle with capital has always been skin-thin, ever vulnerable to shredding by issues of race, or issues that can be made to appear to be racial. This fatal U.S. labor weakness is capital's great American asset -- the source of the GOP's popular base -- second only to money, itself. In 2011, the union movement has been successfully niggerized, the ultimate American form of demonization.

Racism is the salvation of late-stage American capitalism. For hundreds of years, real facts of human existence have been routinely turned on their heads, and non-facts accepted as ultimate truths, all to justify white supremacy. A society so afflicted can believe literally anything. Thus, the Republicans achieve wondrous success by planting the words "We're broke" in the mouths of men and women who are transparently rich, and who in turn serve the interests of the super-rich.

"We're broke" seems to be the universal Republican talking point, spoken everywhere the rich and their minions gather. It's how House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) justifies his party's draconian cuts that could lead to a federal shutdown before spring. This governmental brokenness coexists with December's Obama-GOP two-year, $850 billion tax giveaway, 40 percent of which goes to the top five percent of income earners, while 25 percent will go to the top one percent, according to the United for a Fair Economy."

For more: OpEdNews - Article: "We're Broke," Say the Rich, and the Poor Must Pay

Trans Atlantic Conservative Alliance: Accept the unacceptable, and keep soaking the poor - by Ian Bell

On both sides of the Atlantic, while Conservatives and Republicans have returned to power, a myth has begun to spread like a fog. At its clammy heart is the notion, actually fantastic, that banks and bankers carry no real, important responsibility for the worlds present woes. To hear it told they were merely dupes, all but innocent, of reckless politicians.

The miasma is well-timed. Main Street USA is suffering grievously, but Wall Street’s life is a cabaret once more. The blows rain down on Britain’s public realm, but there was a merry Christmas in the City, and a happy new year lies ahead. Which is to say: they’re making money again, hand over fist.

With new European rules governing remuneration having just been agreed, they also allow the banks to claim that they are putting their houses in order by moving away – inching away? – from the bonus culture. Should anyone believe it? Billions in bonuses will be paid, and those vaunted new rules are unlikely to inaugurate the often-threatened exodus from the City.

Unfortunately the politicians remain in thrall to the movers of money.

For more: Accept the unacceptable, and keep soaking the poor - Herald Scotland | Comment | Ian Bell

US Economy already $14 trillion in Debt: Both Congress and the President begin the battle over the debt ceiling - by Kenneth Schortgen Jr

As the new 112th Congress begins its session under Republican control in the House, one of the first things they will need to address is the debt ceiling that is closing fast on the current legal limit.

The Democratic Congress of the last two years passed several measures to raise the debt ceiling to $14.2 Trillion dollars, but according to the US Debt Clock, is going going to pass $14 Trillion within weeks. Without the ceiling being raised, the government may actually shut down since by law, the Treasury would not be able to borrow money to pay for programs or expenditures.

This debate is so important early in 2011, that both the President and the incoming Congressional leaders have spoken out on the issue over the Christmas holiday.

For more: Both Congress and the President begin the battle over the debt ceiling - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com