Anecdotique me direz-vous. Un peu, mais ça explique partiellement la difficulté de Mitt Romney à bien gérer son image pendant une période d'austérité économique.
mardi 31 janvier 2012
Mitt Romney: plus de revenus et moins d'impôts que les derniers candidats à la Présidence
Anecdotique me direz-vous. Un peu, mais ça explique partiellement la difficulté de Mitt Romney à bien gérer son image pendant une période d'austérité économique.
Caricature Google et le jour de la marmotte
Victoire nette pour Romney en Floride
Victoire significative de Romney en Floride, un état qui rapporte bon nombre de délégués (50). La population de cet état étant représentative des caractéristiques de la population des États-Unis, le résultat est également un bon indicateur de ses chances réelles lors d'une élection nationale.
Romney s'est imposé dans toutes les régions les plus peuplées ainsi que dans la région où on retrouve le plus d'indécis (d'Orlando à l'Atlantique). Le seul fief qui lui échappe est celui du Tea party plus au nord. C'est d'ailleurs la seule déception dans cette victoire, les plus conservateurs des républicains lui ont préféré Gingrich. Un moindre mal à mon avis si on considère que cet électorat est peu susceptible de se tourner vers les démocrates.
Newt Gingrich peut toujours s'accrocher et faire durer la course jusqu'en mars, mais ses chances de renverser la vapeur sont minces. La campagne Romney est bien lancée et elle est riche... Dans son discours de ce soir Mitt Romney parlait comme le candidat républicain à la présidentielle, saluant son rival et défiant le Président.
Attaque terroriste iranienne contre les États-Unis?
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States in response to perceived threats from America and its allies, the U.S. spy chief said Tuesday.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said in prepared testimony that an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington that was uncovered last year reflects an aggressive new willingness within the upper ranks of the Islamist republic to authorize attacks against the United States.
That plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper said in the testimony, which was submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee in advance of a threat assessment hearing Tuesday. “We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas.”
The assessment signals a potentially dire new direction in the adversarial relationship between the United States and Iran, at a time when there are indications that a covert campaign is already underway to thwart Iran’s alleged ambition to develop a nuclear weapon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-is-prepared-to-launch-terrorist-attacks-in-us-intelligence-report-finds/2012/01/30/gIQACwGweQ_story.html?tid=pm_pop
iPhone: acheter sans culpabiliser?
"Let's start with why people keep snapping up Apple's iPhones and iPads by the millions each week in the first place.
When it comes to smartphones and tablets, Apple still makes the best there are. With the iPhone and the iPad, the company set a new standard that other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are still struggling to imitate. Apple can't make them fast enough. On launch days, people queue up in massive lines so they can be one of the first to get a new iPhone or iPad.
Even if consumers do know about what it took to make their new gadget, as many likely do thanks to the widespread reports on working conditions overseas, it's obviously not enough to keep them from getting caught up in the fervor of an Apple product launch.
I can't see that ending just because of a new story in The New York Times or a proposed boycott.
But it's not just about the massive popularity of Apple's gadgets that keep people buying. It's the price.
The latest and greatest iPhone model, the 4S, costs $199. iPads start at $499. One of the biggest reasons Apple can sell its stuff at such low prices is because they're produced on the cheap in China, sometimes by sacrificing good working conditions to make it happen. (If you believe the reports.)
Those cheap production costs are why a lot of the anger comes from the fact that Apple is a massively profitable company. Right now it has almost $100 billion sitting in the bank. It could use some of that cash to put more pressure on Foxconn and others to improve working conditions overseas."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/31/tech/gaming-gadgets/apple-boycott-commentary/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Plafond de la dette: pas encore?
CBO predicts that on January 1, 2013, the debt subject to the overall limit will be just shy of $16.8 trillion. But the debt limit itself stands at $16.4 trillion. The Treasury Department can create some breathing space for itself using a series of extraordinary measures — but those only go so far.
“There is a risk that the treasury will hit its $16.4 trillion debt limit before the next presidential inauguration,” emails Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi. “It will be close. I suspect the Treasury will have enough accounting wiggle room to get there, but much depends on whether the economy sticks close to script.”
One plausible scenario, then, is that Congress will have to address the debt ceiling issue in its November-December lame-duck session. But that’s exactly when it’s expected to address huge issues, like the expiring Bush tax cuts and the automatic spending cuts locked in by the last debt limit deal. The outcomes of all those debates will hang heavily on the results of the election — a clean win for Obama portends a much different resolution than an Obama victory in which the GOP takes the Senate, let alone a GOP sweep."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/cbo-well-hit-the-debt-limit-this-year.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Assassinat de John F. Kennedy: nouvel enregistrement
Pourquoi avoir changé la destination de la dépouille du Président?
Floride et primaires républicaines: à surveiller ce soir
1. La marge de Mitt Romney dans la victoire
2. LA capacité de Newt Gingrich à prendre le vote des femmes
3. Qui gagnera le vote des hispanophones
4. L'importance du vote dans certaines régions dont le vote pourrait ressembler à celui de la Caroline du sud le nord-est par exemple)
5. La performance de Rick Santorum
Lien pour l'article incluant l'argumentation:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72191_Page2.html
Newt Gingrich, le Hillary Clinton de 2012?
"Assuming Tuesday’s primary vote here goes the way the polls say it will, Newt Gingrich will have to figure out a way to make good on his promise to take the primary fight all the way to the GOP convention. And he’s going to have to do it quick.
Gingrich seems intent on playing this year’s Hillary Clinton, refusing to let defeats and polls stop him and pushing on until the bitter end. Some conservatives have already begun to ponder the ramifications of that scenario. But they probably don’t need to. Virtually nothing about Gingrich’s campaign resembles Clinton’s, which was able to hold on for months thanks to a huge well of money and well-built national infrastructure.
So while Gingrich backers say he can stay in due to the strength of his support among conservatives if nothing else — and Democrats would certainly like to see the brutal primary continue — it’s difficult to see how Gingrich can make good on his promise to plague Mitt Romney until the bitter end.
“If he wants to continue, great, good for him,” said Hessy Fernandez, a Republican strategist and member of John McCain’s team in 2008. “But I just don’t see how he can do it without the organization. And the funds. And the campaign. And the…you know.”"
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/why-newt-gingrich-cant-play-the-hillary-clinton-of-2012.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Mitch McConnell: le Congrès a donné à Obama tout ce qu'il demandait! Hein?
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has embraced the argument that President Obama was able to pass every bit of his legislative agenda in his first two years thanks to large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. It’s intended as a counterpoint to the President’s re-election strategy of attacking the congressional GOP as do-nothing obstructionists. But it’s also a revisionist history of the 111th Congress, during which McConnell more than any other Republican in Washington stood athwart Obama’s agenda to great effect.
The White House has “been trying to pretend like the President just showed up yesterday, just got sworn in and started fresh,” McConnell declared Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “In fact, he’s been in office for three years. He got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years… We are living in the Obama economy.”
This isn’t a new claim for McConnell, but it’s audacious even by Washington’s lax standards. It was McConnell, after all, who led Senate Republicans in serial filibusters — a record-setting number — successfully thwarting large chunks of Obama’s agenda."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/mcconnells-revisionist-history-congress-gave-obama-everything-he-wanted.php?ref=fpa
Tunisie: entre démocratie et religion?
"The challenges before Tunisia’s year-old revolution are immense — righting an ailing economy, drafting a new constitution and recovering from decades of dictatorship that cauterized civic life. But in the first months of a coalition government led by the Ennahda Party, seen as one of the most pragmatic of the region’s Islamist movements, the most emotional of struggles has surged to the forefront: a fight over the identity of an Arab and Muslim society that its authoritarian leaders had always cast as adamantly secular.
The popular revolts that began to sweep across the Middle East one year ago have forced societies like Tunisia’s, removed from the grip of authoritarian leaders and celebrating an imagined unity, to confront their own complexity. The aftermath has brought elections in Egypt and Tunisia as well as more decisive Islamist influence in Morocco, Libya and, perhaps, Syria. The upheaval has given competing Islamist movements a chance to exert influence and define themselves locally and on the world stage. It has also given rise to fears, where people in places like Tunis, a seaside metropolis proud of its cosmopolitanism, worry about what a revolution they embraced might unleash.
An opposition newspaper has warned darkly of puritanical Islamists declaring their own fief in some backwater town. Protests convulsed a university in Tunis over its refusal to let female students take examinations while wearing veils that concealed their faces. Then there is the trial Mr. Redissi attended on Jan. 23, of a television director who faces as many as five years in prison for broadcasting the French animated movie “Persepolis,” which contains a brief scene depicting God that many here have deemed blasphemous."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/world/africa/tunisia-navigates-a-democratic-path-tinged-with-religion.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
lundi 30 janvier 2012
Ritalin: de véritables effets à long terme?
On discute souvent du recours au ritalin pour aider certains enfants. Aux États-Unis, trois millions de jeunes américains en consomment pour surmonter leur déficit d'attention. Un article sur les résultats et les effets à long terme de ce médicament.
"But are these drugs really helping children? Should we really keep expanding the number of prescriptions filled?
In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder.
As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.
Attention-deficit drugs increase concentration in the short term, which is why they work so well for college students cramming for exams. But when given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth.
Sadly, few physicians and parents seem to be aware of what we have been learning about the lack of effectiveness of these drugs.
What gets publicized are short-term results and studies on brain differences among children. Indeed, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that seem at first glance to support medication. It is because of this partial foundation in reality that the problem with the current approach to treating children has been so difficult to see."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/childrens-add-drugs-dont-work-long-term.html
Contraception: une décision juste d'Obama?
"It was good news that the Obama administration withstood pressure from Roman Catholic bishops and social conservatives to deny contraceptive coverage for millions of American women who work for religiously affiliated employers. Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, rejected broad exemptions from a new rule requiring all health plans to cover birth control, without a deductible or co-payment.
The requirement, announced last August, contains an exemption for employees of churches and other houses of worship. But it properly covers employees of hospitals, universities, charitable groups and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and employ people of different faiths. The final version of the rule gives certain nonprofit employers an extra year to comply. The administration’s commitment to affordable birth control is welcome at a moment when women’s access to reproductive health care, including contraceptives, cancer screenings and abortion services, is under assault in the courts, state legislatures and Congress, as well as on the Republican campaign trail.
Earlier this month, for example, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of a new Texas law requiring doctors to show women seeking an abortion a fetal sonogram. It forces doctors to describe the image and play the sound of the fetal heartbeat, despite a woman’s wishes or a doctor’s ethical objections.
This outrageous intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship tramples on the First Amendment rights of physicians and their patients. The opinion, written by the court’s chief judge, Edith Jones, a vocal opponent of abortion rights, brushes aside the free-speech violation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/birth-control-and-reproductive-rights.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Caricature combat républicain: Obama le spectateur
The Obamas: plus pour les anecdotes que pour la controverse
Voici un article du NY Times qui présente le livre et l'auteure:
"Jodi Kantor has covered the world of Barack and Michelle Obama since the beginning of 2007, also writing about Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Richard Holbrooke, Eric H. Holder Jr., Mitt Romney and many others along the way.
She is the author of The Obamas, about the first couple’s time in the White House, published by Little, Brown in January, 2012.
Ms. Kantor graduated from Columbia and attended Harvard Law School. But soon after she arrived, she caught the journalism bug, took time off to work at Slate.com, and never looked back. She joined The New York Times in 2003 as Arts & Leisure editor, revamping the section and helping lead a makeover of the culture report.
The recipient of a Columbia Young Alumni Achievement Award, Ms. Kantor has also been named by Crain’s New York Business magazine as one of “40 Under 40.” She appears regularly on television, including The Today Show and Charlie Rose. Though she is a Washington correspondent, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/k/jodi_kantor/index.html
Drones américains au-dessus de l'Irak
Réaction de colère chez les irakiens...
"The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.
American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.
The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles."
L'article au complet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
Caricature armée et coupures: ce ne sont pas des profs tout de même...
Caricature Gingrich et les matières toxiques: il peut aider (selon le GOP)!
dimanche 29 janvier 2012
Israël: une attaque contre l'Iran? (NY Times)
1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?
2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?
3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?
L'article au complet: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran.html?ref=world
Sarah Palin à la rescousse!
"Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, straining to inject herself into the 2012 Republican primary, accused Newt Gingrich's critics of imitating the former communist dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. Palin, in a post on her Facebook page that was emailed to reporters by an aide, defended Gingrich against those who said this week that he criticized Ronald Reagan, siding decisively with Gingrich against Romney in the debate this week over who was a Reagan supporter. "Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration 'from the right' to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future," Palin wrote, seeking to explain comments by Gingrich in the 1980s that were critical of Reagan's foreign policy, particularly his approach to the Soviet Union. Gingrich's comments were highlighted in a much-cited article by Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan, in the National Review. Gingrich was also hit with critical columns from a number of other conservatives."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/29/sarah-palin-calls-gingrich-criticism-stalin-esque_n_1239746.html?ref=politics
Blood money: charge contre Mitt Romney!
Le document est fait par Winning our future, un super pac qui supporte Newt Gingrich.
Procès Shafia: une couverture américaine
La situation d'ensemble n'est pas facile pour les musulmans américains, surtout depuis le 11 septembre 2001. Je me demande quel effet aura la nouvelle de la condamnation des trois membres de la famille Shafia.
"I say to myself, you did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, you should so the same again," he says. And in another played in court and translated from the Afghan language Dari, he says, "May the devil defecate on their graves! This is what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?" Shafia and his lawyers tried to explain that his shocking words are traditional expressions in Dari that should not be translated literally. But the jury also heard from an expert witness on honor murders -- a term CNN is using in the interest of clarity rather than the more common "honor killings" because the latter phrase does not properly describe the alleged crime. That witness, University of Toronto professor Shahrzad Mojab, said that in some families, honor is worth more than life. In an interview with CNN, Mojab said that many times, honor crimes are calculated acts that involve more than one family member. "There is a very important difference between honor killing and violence against women in the form of domestic violence. It is plotted, it is premeditated." Mojab said. "What we need to understand is that the male power and the male desire for the control of the woman's body and the woman's sexuality -- the honor resides in that sort of understanding and the ownership of women's body and sexuality," he said. "So when that is being presented in a way that is not acceptable to the social norm, then the only way the honor can be restored is by purifying that. And the purification is through blood." http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/29/world/americas/canada-honor-murder/index.html?iref=allsearch
Ma dernière chronique à "Ça me dit de prendre le temps": les primaires
Toujours aussi agréable et chaque fois une opportunité de belles rencontres avec d'autres invités.
Fly me to the moon ou Dark side of the moon? Newt le visionnaire: il défend sa base lunaire.
"Newt Gingrich defended his proposal for a permanent base on the moon in a speech to Republicans in West Palm Beach Saturday night, calling it a "bold, visionary, dramatic opportunity for America." "We will not turn to our grandchildren and say, 'We are the generation that let the Chinese dominate space," Gingrich said, calling the moon-shot plan a challenge worthy of "a big country." "We've always had dreams. We've gone west. We invented the airplane. We invented the mass-produced car. We built the Panama Canal," Gingrich said. Gingrich told the audience here at the Palm Beach County Lincoln Day Dinner that he wanted to run a campaign on ideas at the level of building a transcontinental railroad or landing a man on the moon. "I want to say something about the party we should be - not the party we are, but the party we should be," Gingrich said, as he launched into the big-ideas section of his speech. He closed in similarly grand terms, pledging to give "my life, my fortune and my sacred honor" in the cause of leading the country."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/01/newt-says-lunar-base-challenge-for-a-big-country-112676.html
Pourquoi pas terminer avec Pink Floyd et un extrait de Dark side of the moon!
Floride: Romney creuse l'écart! (sondage NBC)
http://maristpoll.marist.edu/129-romney-with-wide-lead-in-florida/
Irak: abandonner ceux qui ont aidé les États-Unis?
"The Special Immigrant Visa program was enacted by Congress in 2007 for Iraqis who helped the military, other parts of the American government and military contractors. It authorized 5,000 special visas annually — but only 3,317 were granted through 2011. Iraqis who aided American non-governmental organizations and media outlets can apply under the refugee program and are also having a hard time. But the special visa program has the worst delays.
Because of security vetting, processing has always been slow. The programs came to a near halt last year when two Iraqis living in Kentucky were charged with providing arms and money to Al Qaeda. The Obama administration then imposed additional security checks on all applicants. Approval in the Special Immigrant Visa program is now taking at least a year.$$ The American government never kept track of how many Iraqis it employed, so no one knows how many thousands of Iraqis are potentially eligible for admission. It is unclear exactly how many thousands of those Iraqis have visa applications pending. The administration refused to disclose a number last week.
Last July, the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, a nonprofit, put the estimate at 62,000 Iraqis, including 29,000 who worked for the Americans, plus their family members. The group now says it has been told that 19,000 cases were dropped from the process, perhaps because people went into hiding, or they were just lost track of. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently used a figure of 15,000 Special Immigrant Visa applicants.
The United States has a responsibility to rigorously screen visa applicants and ensure they pose no threat to this country. The process needs to be transparent and accountable — and it needs to work expeditiously."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/unfinished-business-in-iraq.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211
samedi 28 janvier 2012
Nuclear Newt!
Le style corrosif de Gingrich pourrait-il le mener au "sommet"?
"For better or worse, Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy revolves around his personality, as evidenced by the disappointed reviews after a debate on Thursday in which his fires were uncharacteristically banked.
Supporters say what they love is the bombastic, take-no-prisoners candidate, the man whose signature moments were debates last week in South Carolina when he turned his cold fury on the news media.
“I got up out of my couch when he did what he did in South Carolina,” said Stephanie Garlin, 49, a real estate agent in Fort Lauderdale, recalling a standing ovation for Mr. Gingrich. “There’s something I feel about that man — that he has the strength and the ability and the forcefulness to win this election.”
Across Florida this week, Mr. Gingrich’s rallies drew thousands of chanting, vociferous supporters eager to embrace his insurgency against what he calls the party establishment, promising to unite the Tea Party and the conservative base. And while he does not regularly live up to the caricature of “Nuclear Newt,” erratic and prone to temper tantrums, he is sufficiently unscripted and blunt to provide a sharp contrast to Mitt Romney’s caution."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/politics/no-more-nice-guys-fans-love-nuclear-newt.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24
vendredi 27 janvier 2012
Ex-Président: un métier payant
When a president leaves the White House he's still on the government payroll, receiving an annual pension of about $200,000, health care, paid official travel and an office.
Rent for President Jimmy Carter's Atlanta office is $102,000 per year, according to 2010 figures compiled by the Congressional Research Service. President George H. W. Bush's Houston office costs $175,000 per year. President Bill Clinton's office in the pricey real estate market of New York City is $516,000.
Not too bad, huh?%% But these taxpayer-funded benefits are nothing compared to the big bucks presidents rake in writing books.
"My Life" netted Bill Clinton a $15 million advance. George W. Bush earned $7 million for the first 1.5 million copies of "Decision Points."
Jimmy Carter has written 14 books. "He was broke when he came out of the White House," presidential historian James Thurber said. "If you can write or you can write with someone else, you can write a book and make a great deal of money. Jimmy Carter did that."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/27/politics/pays-to-be-president/index.html
Caricature Brewer vs Obama: le véritable enjeu de la confrontation
Caricature Mitt Romney et ses impôts: ça intéresse qui?
Primaires républicains en Floride: Romney en avance dans les derniers sondages
Lien pour les derniers sondages sur le site de Real Clear Politics: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/fl/florida_republican_presidential_primary-1597.html#polls
Jan Brewer et Obama
"Out of the three officials who met President Obama on an airport tarmac near Phoenix earlier this week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is now the only one who has characterized the president as anything other than cordial.
In numerous TV and radio interviews since the meeting, Brewer has said the president was “tense to say the least” and took issue with a book she wrote last year. She said Obama walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence and even told one Phoenix television station she felt “a little bit threatened” by the encounter.
But Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, who was standing just feet away from the president and the governor on Wednesday during their now-infamous encounter, told TPM that Obama seemed calm the whole time.
“He wasn’t tense at all,” Stanton said on Friday. “The guy’s a pro.”
Though Stanton declined to discuss exactly what the governor and president said to each other, he said Obama’s classic coolness was evident.%% “He doesn’t get animated, but he looks you in the eye and tells you what he thinks,” Stanton said. “And I think that’s honestly what he did is he looked the governor in the eye and spoke and told her what he was really feeling.”"
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/2nd_mayor_says_obama_wasnt_tense_at_all_during_bre.php?ref=fpa
Caricature Gingrich, un homme qui a du "bagage"
Je référais justement à ce lourd bagage dans une autre entrée aujourd'hui...
Vote et discrimination raciale: toujours une question d'actualité?
Le voting rights act de 1965 devait régler le problème...
"Instead of ensuring that voting rights are extended to all Americans, many state legislatures are engaged in efforts to shut out voters in this election year, taking aim at young people, immigrants and minorities.
Last week, a panel of judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard a case that could eviscerate the ability of the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The issue in Shelby County v. Holder involves Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires that jurisdictions with flagrant histories of racial discrimination in voting must get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes in their voting rules or laws.
Shelby County, Ala., one of those jurisdictions, contends that Section 5 intrudes unconstitutionally on the sovereign authority of states. It argues that while the preclearance rule was justified when the country, especially the South, was ending legal segregation, it is no longer needed. That argument was properly dismissed in a 151-page opinion by Judge John Bates of Federal District Court, who ruled that the discrimination that led to passage and extensions of the Voting Rights Act endures. The appeals court should uphold his decision.
The case is important because in 2009, by a 8-to-1 vote, the Supreme Court said there are “serious constitutional questions” about whether Section 5 meets a current need, although the justices did not answer those questions at that time. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, left some legal experts with the impression that the court had come close to striking down Section 5. Fortunately, it did not do so.
L'article au complet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/opinion/voting-and-racial-history.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211
Ascension de Newt Gingrich: les républicains de la Chambre sont nerveux
"To some of them, he’s a disaster in the making, a potentially combustible nominee who could, in a worst case scenario, cost the GOP its newly minted majority. The concern is serious enough, one freshman Republican told POLITICO, that on the bus ride back from the House GOP retreat in Baltimore last week, Gingrich’s electability was the prime subject of discussion among nearly a dozen members — many of them first-termers.
Several conservative female lawmakers “recoiled” at the thought of Gingrich at the top of the ticket, according to the Republican. A key concern expressed in the conversation was whether Gingrich would appeal to suburbanites — a demographic critical to the reelection hopes of many GOP House members. “When I saw the reaction from conservative women, it scared me,” said the freshman who, like several other members interviewed for this story, spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “He needs to let us know how he’s going to appeal to suburban independents if he’s the nominee.”"
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72063.html
Obama le colérique: traduction!
Sur Comedy central!
On se moque allègement ici de ceux qui croient que le Président est incapable de hausser le ton. Un appui à l'étiquette de "No drama Obama"?
jeudi 26 janvier 2012
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