Gingrich Collapses in Iowa as Ron Paul Surges to the Front
Gingrich Collapses in Iowa as Ron Paul Surges to the Front
A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows that Ron Paul has taken the lead in the Iowa caucus race, while Newt Gingrich's support is fading fast. A different Gallup poll shows Gringrich still holding the lead, but slipping, whileThe New York TimesNate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has Paul in the lead as well.
Gingrich has seen his numbers in the PPP poll drop from 27 percent to 14 percent in just three weeks, while his favorability rating is now split at 46 percent for to 47 percent against, the worst of any candidate not named Jon Huntsman. That's quite a fall for someone who looked to be running away with the state and taking charge on the national level.
Mitt Romney has also seen his numbers tick up slightly (to 20%), putting him just behind Paul (23%) for second place. The poll measured voters who are planning to vote in the Republican caucus.
Perhaps the most telling secondary question was, "Do you think Newt Gingrich has strong principles?" Only 36 percent say that he does, but for Paul that number was 73 percent.
The bad news for Paul, however, is that when asked for their second choice for President, only 9% said they would vote for him after their preferred candidate. That means if supporters of any of the second-tier candidates sense defeat and decided to abandon their choice at the last minute, those votes are more likely to go to Romney. Even if Romney doesn't win, the stronger than expected showing could be the snowball that starts a primary avalanche for him.
One other tidbit from the PPP poll, the first question about Barack Obama asked if the respondents think he was born in the United States. Fifty-two percent either said he was not or they're not sure.
Update: Here's an alternate take on the PPP poll.
CFR: Campaign 2012 Roundup: Gingrich Down and Paul Up
by
James M. Lindsay
Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich during the Republican Party presidential candidates debate in Sioux City, Iowa on December 15, 2011. (Jim Young/courtesy Reuters)
What the polls giveth, the polls taketh away. The fifteen-point lead that Newt Gingrich had over Mitt Romney among Republican voters nationwide just two weeks ago has largely evaporated. At least that’s what Gallup’s polling is showing. As you can see in the chart below, the gap has closed mostly because Gingrich has lost support and not because Romney has gained it. (“Steady as she goes” is a fair description of Romney’s poll numbers.)
Source: Gallup
Meanwhile, the latest Iowa poll shows that Ron Paul leads in the state just two weeks before the Republican caucus. The survey by Public Policy Polling has Paul:
garnering 23 percent support, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 20 percent, and Gingrich with 14. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum are all tied at 10 percent support, according to the poll.
The poll was conducted before last Thursday night’s GOP debate in Sioux City when Paul said that the biggest danger Iran posed to America was the next president “overreacting.” Political pundits were in agreement that Paul hurt his chances with that remark. The polls done this week will tell us whether they were right. (Don’t be surprised if they aren’t.)
The weekend didn’t produce much campaign-related foreign policy news. Mitt Romney made his first appearance on a Sunday TV talk show in more than two years. Fox News host Chris Wallace asked him what a President Romney would have done differently in Iraq. He mostly talked around the question before saying:
I think we’re going to find that this president, by not putting in place a status in forces agreement with the Iraqi leadership has pulled our troops out in a precipitous way and we should have left 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the Iraqis’ own military capabilities.
Consider this an effort to lay the groundwork for a general election issue in the event that things go wrong in Iraq. But if they don’t, and perhaps even if they do, the polls suggest that most Americans won’t care that Obama didn’t leave troops behind in Iraq.
Michele Bachmann went on Mike Huckabee’s Saturday night show on Fox News. Huckabee asked about Ron Paul’s charge that she “hates Muslims…wants to go get ‘em.” Bachmann denied Paul’s claim, and instead shot back with more tough talk on Iran:
However, the question remains: what is the best way to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons? The Wall Street Journal has a story today saying that we can expect tougher sanctions on Tehran—and soon.
CFR President Emeritus Les Gelb interviewed President Joe Biden for Newsweek. The vice president says that the United States won’t be bailing out Europe, that the administration is not letting up the pressure on Tehran, and that “The Taliban per se is not our enemy.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey told reporters that he found it “offensive” when GOP candidates talked about how they would listen to the generals when deciding what to do as president. Why doesn’t General Dempsey like these comments?
One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that’s what it is. Its advice. It’s military judgments, it’s alternatives, it’s options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.”
I doubt that the general’s remark will prompt GOP candidates to change their talking points on the campaign trail.
Read more at blogs.cfr.org
US "Withdrawal" In Iraq Paves Way for US-Israeli Strike on Iran
US "Withdrawal" In Iraq Paves Way for US-Israeli Strike on Iran
Nearly every option described within the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution 2009 "Which Path to Persia?" report in regards to US-initiated regime change in Iran has been carried out to the letter.
From proposals to fund and arm terrorist organizations like the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), to fomenting foreign-backed "color revolutions" in the streets of Tehran, to carrying out covert US-Israeli military operations within Iran itself, it is clear that the Brookings Institution either was writing the playbook on conquering Iran or was reading from it when compiling "Which Path to Persia?"
The only remaining options left are airstrikes and invasion.
The report extensively details using Israel as a US-proxy in attacking Iran in an attempt to cripple its nuclear program as well as destroy much of its security apparatus while maintaining "plausible deniability" for the attack's US architects. It is also hoped that the airstrikes incur a sufficient Iranian retaliation (or at least the opportunity to stage a false flag operation in Iran's name) to allow Israel and the United States to carry out a more extensive follow-up military operation against the Islamic Republic.
The primary hurdle described throughout the report's examination of using a "unilateral" Israeli strike, however, was a US-occupied Iraq and the complications an Israeli airstrike would cause passing through the nation's airspace on its way to bombing Iran.
However with the US' recent rushed "exit" from Iraq, this complication is no longer an issue.
An Israeli air campaign against Iran would have a number of very important differences from an American campaign. First, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has the problem of overflight transit from Israel to Iran. Israel has no aircraft carriers, so its planes must take off from Israeli air bases. It also does not possess long-range bombers like the B-1 or B-2, or huge fleets of refueling tankers, all of which means that unlike the United States, Israel cannot avoid flying through someone’s air space. The most direct route from Israel to Iran’s Natanz facility is roughly 1,750 kilometers across Jordan and Iraq. As the occupying power in Iraq, the United States is responsible for defending Iraqi airspace. Which Path to Persia? -- page 105 (.pdf)
From the American perspective, this negates the whole point of the option—distancing the United States from culpability—and it could jeopardize American efforts in Iraq, thus making it a possible nonstarter for Washington. Finally, Israeli violation of Jordanian airspace would likely create political problems for King Abdullah of Jordan, one of America’s (and Israel’s) closest Arab friends in the region. Thus it is exceedingly unlikely that the United States would allow Israel to overfly Iraq, and because of the problems it would create for Washington and Amman, it is unlikely that Israel would try to fly over Jordan. Which Path to Perisa? -- page 106 (.pdf)
An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly Iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region. Which Path to Persia -- page 106 (.pdf)
The US withdrawal from Iraq is being done in tandem with NATO operations to destabilize Syria and in turn disrupt Hezbollah's capacity to retaliate against Israel in the event of a strike on Iran -- a concern also duly noted within the Brookings report.
...the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus. page 109 (.pdf)
It is quite clear that eliminating Syria entirely as an obstacle has been instead attempted, and with NATO standing by and a continuous influx of foreign fighters being armed and sent across the border to mire Syrian forces in asymmetrical warfare, any coordinated retaliation against Israel by Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah has been at the very least blunted significantly. The significance of Syria's ability to weather this US-backed destabilization and maintain a coherent deterrence against Anglo-American-Israeli forces in the region has been noted by Russia who has thus far blocked attempts to justify further, more overt intervention by NATO in Syria.However, Syria will be taken down, as will Iran, at any cost just as was done with Libya, and only a tactical defeat of Wall Street and London's military forces in the process will prevent this from happening. Attempts to soften Russia's grip on Syria was recently made as US-funded NGOs began attempting to sow "Arab Spring-style" disarray in the streets of Moscow. While some consider it a sign of madness on behalf of Wall Street and London -- it is in reality part of a highly orchestrated global campaign, being executed in sequence, and thus far highly successful in achieving its goals. Throughout each stage, feigned weakness has been exhibited only to result in victory and it would be great folly to underestimate the endurance or will of the West at this juncture.
The Bottom Line
Already, one year into the US-engineered "Arab Spring," a US-funded "activist leader" has been made president of Tunisia, a British Petroleum (BP), Shell, and Total-funded Petroleum Institute representative made PM of Libya, and other Western puppets are now poised to seize power in Egypt. Wall Street and London have also recently announced via the US State Department that an official campaign of frustrating, encircling, and containing China's ambitions throughout Asia will be pursued under the title of "America's Pacific Century." Already Chinese projects in Myanmar have been canceled while Wall Street stooge Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand has been maneuvering politically to return to power at an already terrible cost to the Thai people.
Now more than ever, "we the people" must steel ourselves against this immense corporate-fascist empire as it sprawls death, destruction, and domination, militarily and economically, across the planet. We must (our very survival depends on it) boycott and replace entirely the corporate-financier interests that drive this dark, expansive agenda. It has been literally spawned of our apathy, complicity, and ignorance, fueled by us -- the very source of corporate fascism's power -- and it must be our activism, resistance, and intellect that brings it to an end.
As far fetched as it may sound, every Pepsi we swig, every day we decide to drink beer and tune into our corporate-sponsored bread and circus, be it the modern day chariot races of NASCAR or the gladiatorial contests of the NFL, we bring inescapable eternal servitude to a corporate-fascist scientific dictatorship one step closer. It is now "do or die" -- unlike in the past, mankind now possesses the technology to render the vast majority of the population intellectually inferior through mass medication, food poisoning, GMO crops that rot our bodies and minds from the inside-out, and the martial means of eliminating vast swaths of the population permanently.
Not only is this a possibility, it is a reality that the global elite have conspired over at great length through texts like Ecoscience penned by current White House science adviser John Holdren and former White House science adviser Paul Ehrlich who openly talk about mass, involuntary medication to forcibly sterilize the population, reduce our numbers and confine us within what they literally call a "planetary regime." The End Game approaches.
Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report.
Is it still OK to elect Catholics?
Is it still OK to elect Catholics?
nsteinberg@suntimes.com
December 18, 2011
Anti-Catholic bigotry was once widespread in this country. In 1959, nearly a quarter of Americans — 24 percent — said they would not vote for a Catholic for president, no matter how well-qualified.
John F. Kennedy overcame this prejudice in part by insisting that, if elected, he would not be a tool of the Vatican.
He said he believed in “an America where the separation of church and state is absolute . . . in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair . . . I am not the Catholic candidate for president, I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.”
Pope John XXIII did not contradict him.
Such discretion, alas, is not the style of Cardinal Francis George, who over the weekend decreed that Gov. Pat Quinn isn’t using his own conscience correctly.
Quinn met with Cardinal George and nine other bishops Saturday. This being Christmas week, Quinn put a bright spin on the meeting, telling the Sun-Times that they mainly talked about aiding the poor.
A wiser man might have left it at that. The cardinal chose to respond, challenging Quinn, saying, basically: The hell we did!
“We share the Governor’s concern for the poor,” Cardinal George and his bishops wrote. “From our point of view, however, this was a meeting between pastors and a member of the Church to discuss the principles of faith, not the works of faith. On several occasions, the Governor has referred to his Catholic conscience and faith as the justification for certain political decisions.
“As Catholic pastors, we wanted to remind the Governor that conscience, while always free, is properly formed in harmony with the tradition of the Church, as defined by Scripture and authentic teaching authority. A personal conscience that is not consistent with authentic Catholic teaching is not a Catholic conscience. The Catholic faith cannot be used to justify positions contrary to the faith itself.”
Sure it can. The cardinal might not like it — I’m sure he doesn’t. But plenty of the faithful join the governor in considering themselves good Catholics while conducting parts of their lives in ways “not consistent” with church policy — just last week a survey showed 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control banned by the church. (We’re fortunate that the cardinal has not challenged the governor over which form he uses, at least not yet). Much Catholic doctrine isn’t even followed by Catholics, yet church leaders would dragoon government to force it upon the rest of the state anyway.
What Quinn has done to draw church censure — for those of you not up to date — is present an award to a rape victim at a pro-choice dinner, and lead a state whose laws forbid discrimination against citizens due to their sexual orientation, which means the church had to decide whether to place homeless children with gay couples, or get out of the adoption business. It chose to get out of the adoption business — you can debate among yourselves whether that is a choice a loving God would smile upon.
The church is free to turn its back on orphaned children in the name of faith — I would never tell them what its conscience should dictate. But Pat Quinn also enjoys the right to act as the citizens of Illinois — 70 percent of who are not Catholic — want him to act, even if veering from church writ.
Some readers will complain that I am commenting upon their religion — a Jew bashing Catholics! — and I will observe that their leader is more than commenting, he is pressuring and berating the governor of my state, a state whose voters elected him based on his merits, not upon his faith.
If at election time I were to say, “You can’t vote for Pat Quinn — he’s a Catholic and will be bullied into strictly following church doctrine” — I’d be accused of bias and rightly so. Yet the cardinal is trying to do exactly that, to exercise an authority over public life he does not and should not possess.
Quinn attended 13 years of Catholic school — the church already had its chance to mold him. Now he is 63 and an adult. It is Quinn, and not Cardinal George, who gets to decide how his faith influences his life. I’m sorry to be the one to deliver the news.
Pope Benedict XVI’s health in serious decline as 85th birthday, Christmas approach
Pope Benedict XVI seems worn out.
People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they’d ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying. He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter’s Basilica.
Benedict turns 85 in the new year, so a slowdown is only natural. Expected. And given his age and continued rigorous work schedule, it’s remarkable he does as much as he does and is in such good health overall: Just this past week he confirmed he would travel to Mexico and Cuba next spring.
But a decline has been noted as Benedict prepares for next weekend’s grueling Christmas celebrations, which kick off two weeks of intense public appearances. And that raises questions about the future of the papacy given that Benedict himself has said popes should resign if they can’t do the job.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi has said no medical condition prompted the decision to use the moving platform in St. Peter’s, and that it’s merely designed to spare the pontiff the fatigue of the 100-meter walk to and from the main altar.
And Benedict rallied during his three-day trip to Benin in west Africa last month, braving temperatures of 90 degrees and high humidity to deliver a strong message about the future of the Catholic Church in Africa.
Wiping sweat from his brow, he kissed babies who were handed up to him, delivered a tough speech on the need for Africa’s political leaders to clean up their act, and visited one of the continent’s most important seminaries.
Back at home, however, it seems the daily grind of being pope — the audiences with visiting heads of state, the weekly public catechism lessons, the sessions with visiting bishops — has taken its toll. A spark is gone. He doesn’t elaborate off-the-cuff much anymore, and some days he just seems wiped out.
Take for example his recent visit to Assisi, where he traveled by train with dozens of religious leaders from around the world for a daylong peace pilgrimage. For anyone participating it was a tough, long day; for the aging pope it was even more so.
“Indeed I was struck by what appeared to me as the decline in Benedict’s strength and health over the last half year,” said Rabbi David Rosen, who had a place of honor next to the pope at the Assisi event as head of interfaith relations at the American Jewish Committee.
“He looks thinner and weaker … which made the effort he put into the Assisi shindig with the extraordinary degree of personal attention to the attendees (especially the next day in Rome) all the more remarkable,” Rosen said in an email.
That Benedict is tired would be a perfectly normal diagnosis for an 84-year-old, even someone with no known health ailments and a still-agile mind. He has acknowledged having suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in 1991 that temporarily affected his vision. And his older brother, who has a pacemaker for an irregular heartbeat, has expressed concern about Benedict’s own heart.
But Benedict is not a normal 84-year-old, both in what he is called to do and the implications if he were to stop.
Popes are allowed to resign; church law specifies only that the resignation be “freely made and properly manifested.”
Only a handful have done so, however. The last one was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants.
There’s good reason why others haven’t followed suit: Might the existence of two popes — even when one has stepped down — lead to divisions and instability in the church? Might a new resignation precedent lead to pressures on future popes to quit at the slightest hint of infirmity?
Yet Benedict himself raised the possibility of resigning if he were simply too old or sick to continue on, when he was interviewed for the book “Light of the World,” which was released in November 2010.
“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign,” Benedict said.
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had an intimate view as Pope John Paul II, with whom he had worked closely for nearly a quarter-century, suffered through the debilitating end of his papacy. After John Paul’s death at age 84, it was revealed that he had written a letter of resignation to be invoked if he became terminally ill or incapable of continuing on.
And it should be recalled that at the time Benedict was elected pope at age 78 — already the oldest pope elected in nearly 300 years — he had been planning to retire as the Vatican’s chief orthodoxy watchdog to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.
It is there that his elder brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, still lives. Ratzinger, who turns 88 next month, is nearly blind. Benedict has said his brother has helped him accept old age with courage.
Benedict said in “Light of the World” that he knew his own strength was diminishing — steps are difficult for him and his aides regularly hold his elbows as he climbs up or down. But at the same time Benedict insisted that he had no intention of resigning to avoid dealing with the problems of the church, such as the sex abuse scandal.
“One can resign at a peaceful moment or when one simply cannot go on. But one must not run away from danger and say that someone else should do it,” he said.
As a result, a papal resignation anytime soon seems unlikely.
And Benedict is maintaining a hectic agenda. His planned trip to Cuba and Mexico next spring will fall shortly before he turns 85 on April 16. He has also said he’d like to make it to Rio de Janeiro in 2013 for the next World Youth Day.
Sometime in the New Year he will presumably preside over a new consistory to name the new cardinals who will elect his successor. And he has lots of unfinished business close to his heart: Bringing back breakaway traditionalists under Rome’s wing, the fate of the sex abuse-scarred Irish church, tensions with China.
And he still cuts a robust figure in public given his age, walking briskly, speaking clearly and emphasizing key points. But his public engagements have been trimmed back; he had far fewer speeches in Benin than during his September visit to his native Germany or the United Kingdom last fall.
And behind closed doors, during audiences without the glare of TV cameras or throngs of the faithful encouraging him on, he has begun to show his age, acquaintances say.
The Rev. Joseph Fessio, Benedict’s U.S. publisher and onetime student, sees the pope every so often, including during the summer when Benedict gathers his former theology students for an informal academic seminar at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo.
Fessio recalled a day in the 2010 edition that remains with him: “In the Saturday morning session, the pope looked older and weaker than I had ever seen him before. In fact I remarked to someone that it’s the first time I’ve seen him look like the old man that he is. He was speaking in softer tones than even his normally soft speaking voice. His head was bowed. He was pale. He just looked frail.”
But then, after lunch and an apparent rest, Benedict returned for the afternoon session. “It was a complete transformation. He was lively, vigorous, attentive, and with his usual good humor,” Fessio said.
Clearly, at his age Benedict has good days and bad, even good half-days and bad.
Yet he’s never called in sick. In fact as pope, he has only had one significant known medical incident: He broke his right wrist when he tripped on the leg of his bed and fell while on vacation in the Alps in 2009.
Lombardi says the pope realizes the limitations of his strength, and that’s why the recent trip to Benin was a one-stop-only affair.
“I think it’s an example of the great willingness and wisdom of the Holy Father to continue doing these trips, even those that are difficult or far away,” Lombardi said. He said the pope “measures well what his strengths are, and the possibility of doing the trips well.”
“When I’m 84 I think I’ll have been buried for many years,” he added.
But he refused to give any kind of medical updates on the pope.
“I’m not a doctor. I don’t give medical bulletins,” Lombardi said. He paused, then added quietly: “In this phase. At this moment.”
Read more at www.thetotalcollapse.com