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Source: blogs.reuters.com --- 9 days ago
Did the Irish reject the European Union’s Lisbon treaty last June because they are “losing their Christian memory?” Cardinal Seán Brady, the top Catholic cleric in the once staunchly Catholic country, thinks that can partially explain the vote. The cardinal told a conference in County Mayo on Sunday that many Christians in Europe think the EU [...] ... Source: www.moreover.com --- 11 days ago
Irish Times Aug 25 2008 1:23AM GMT ... Source: www.teameurope.info --- 26 days ago
A new Red C poll commissioned by the think tank Open Europe finds that Irish Voters are strongly opposed to being made to vote again on the Lisbon Treaty. The poll also finds that nearly two thirds say they would vote “no” in a second referendum. The poll of 1,000 Irish Voters was carried out between 21 and 23 July - shortly after Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to the country. It is the first poll to look at a second referendum. Key findings: 71% oppose a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Only 24% are in favour. Of those who expressed an opinion, 62% said they would vote “no” in a second referendum, compared to 38% who would vote “yes”. That would mean the “no” lead would increase from 6 points in the recent referendum to a commanding 24 point lead in a second vote. 17% of those who voted “yes” in the recent referendum would vote “no” in a second referendum, while only 6% of those who voted “no” would now vote “yes”. Perhaps most significantly of all, those who did not vote last time would vote more than two-to-one against in a second referendum: 57% would vote “no” and 26% would vote “yes”. 67% agreed with the statement that “politicians in Europe do not respect Ireland’s no vote”. Only 28% disagreed. 61% disagreed with the statement that “If all of the other 26 EU countries ratify the Treaty in their parliaments then Ireland has to change its mind and support the Treaty.” Only 32% agreed. 53% said they would be less likely to vote for ... Source: news.aol.com --- 10 days ago
Filed under: Democrats , Joe Biden , 2008 President , Humor , Democratic Convention Yes, I'm here at the Democratic National Convention ... in Englewood, CO. Any advice? (More after the video.) I'm headed to the Pepsi Center in a bit to get my credentials. My thoughts on Biden: He's a serious, tenacious guy with a stirring biography. And he's charismatic. He had the funniest line in all the debates when he was forced to name his favorite thing about the opponent standing to his left - in this case, Kucinich: "Dennis, the thing I like best about you is your wife." He's good looking, too. Most people don't have HD, so they can't see his hair plugs. (Not being snarky, just realistic.) The focus on his status as the "poorest" member of the Senate is, of course, totally misguided. The press and many Democrats still haven't figured out that most Americans want to be rich. That Biden is $300,000 in debt is hardly inspiring. Also his Catholicism, another press obsession, is pretty irrelevant. The constant blather about working-class Catholic Voters needing someone like Biden on the ticket is both condescending and just plain off-the-mark. That's because Catholicism isn't really a cultural identity like Judaism. (Filipino-Catholics have as much in common culturally with Irish-Catholics as Aleuts and Aussies.) Most Catholics who self-identify as Catholic are practicing Catholics -- i.e., their Catholicism is defined doctrinally, not cultura ... Source: www.moreover.com --- 45 days ago
French president Nicolas Sarkozy tonight denied he was bullying Irish Voters into holding a second vote on the Lisbon Treaty. Mr Sarkozy, who is the current EU Council president, angered Irish politicians and campaigners with the controversial comments ... Source: www.boston.com --- 12 days ago
By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff As he prepared last year to make his second run for president, Joe Biden met with advisers in the family room of his home in Wilmington, Del., when someone recommended he take a nuanced position on a tough issue. "Joe stopped the guy right in his tracks," said Larry Rasky, a Boston-based consultant who worked for both Biden presidential campaigns. He told the group how much he appreciated and needed their help and advice, Rasky recalled, but quickly added: "'I don't need you to tell me my opinion. I know what I think about these issues; I've been doing this for 35 years, and nothing in this campaign will be new to me.''' In Biden, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has chosen a running mate with strengths in areas where Obama is perceived to have deficits. Biden's experience -- six terms in the Senate -- and his deep knowledge of foreign policy and the ways of Washington head the list. Moreover, as an Irish-Catholic, lunch-bucket Democrat, Biden may also help Obama appeal to a bloc of white, blue-collar Voters who resisted him during the nomination fight. If Obama intends to ride in and clean up the political culture of Washington, he's chosen a gray eminence, instead of a fresh face, to ride shotgun. Compared to Obama, who is often characterized as cool and cerebral, Biden is direct and earthy. In May, when President Bush, addressing the Israeli Knesset, suggested Obama was willing to appea ... Source: www.chron.com --- 3 days ago
Sen. Joe Biden, campaigning Monday in his boyhood town of Scranton with his mother, gave Voters a short course on the political climate as he grew up, saying that "to be Irish was to be Catholic was to be Democrat." ... Source: ww3.startribune.com --- 1 day ago
It’s Electorate Fetus Week at the Electric Fetus, Minneapolis most famous indie record store, and, fresh from the Labor Day rally at Harriet Island, outpsoken Irish bard Billy Bragg will sing at the Fetus at 5 p.m. today (Wednesday Sept. 3). In addition, the Fetus is working with Rock the Vote to register Voters as well as [...] ... Source: www.voanews.com --- 65 days ago
Irish Voters rejected the latest treaty aimed at streamlining the work of the European Union. What are the ramifications for Europe of the Irish 'No' vote? ... Source: www.rte.ie --- 11 days ago
Cardinal Séan Brady has suggested that EU hostility to religion may have prompted some Irish Voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty. ... Source: www.politics.ie --- 31 days ago
by sofia_b (Posted 2 hours ago) I tried to make this post under Lisbon, but it would not let me. In anycase my point is a general issue. As a prologue I thought the Irish No vote was really terrible and done completely only with regard to Irish interests, just like the French and Dutch. That is what happens by allowing the common people to vote. The Irish constitution seems me to be wrong to oblige the referendum. Why do we have indirect democracy in all the civilized states? Easy answer: as otherwise not any unpopular decision (particular, if it's about sharing, i.e. taxes) would go through. The general idea is therefore that common folks vote for people who are sufficiently educated and informed in order to be ables to see the whole picture, and not only their own small interests. After all, nobody can doubt that the new EU Treaty would be an important and urgently needed step for making the EU of 27 (which is already fact) manageable. The Irish guys who celebrate their victory (impressive 800.000, less than Cologne, 0.2% of the EU...) are as little informed as no-Voters beforehand in France and the Netherlands, where many people thought that they vote on the accession of Turkey etc, or even just used it as a chance to make a welcome statement upon the national government. I think to progress we have to leave behind this form of direct democracy. Otherwise the best thing is for the Irish to finally leave. href="http://www.politic ... Source: www.star-telegram.com --- 3 days ago
Sen. Joe Biden, campaigning in his boyhood town of Scranton with his 91-year-old mother Monday, gave Voters a short course on the political climate as he grew up, saying that "to be Irish was to be Catholic was to be Democrat." ... Source: www.politics.ie --- 27 days ago
by Defeated Romanticist (Posted 3 hours ago) I would like to posit the hypothesis that Sinn Féin fill the space in the Irish political party system of the BNP or Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National in France. The strain of politics represented by those types of parties most successfully in countries like Denmark, Austria and France tend to combine economic leftism with a staunch authoritarian nationalism and an opposition to the EU. Now clearly Sinn Féin are different in one important respect in that opposition to immigration does not feature heavily in their platform. The origins of the electoral appeal of those types of parties also lends credence to my theory. They tended to draw Voters from the "lower orders" who voted for socialist parties before socialism was discedited and the left jettisoned socialism for an "acid, amnesty and abortion" platform, the clearest representation of which is New Labour in the UK. In Ireland, Sinn Féin Voters tend to come from those working class Voters for the then Keynesian Fianna Fáil and the socialist Labour. The rise in Sinn Fein co-incided with Fianna Fáil's embrace of neo-liberalism and Labour's election of "Mr angry from Sandymount" as leader which signaled the end of socialism for word games in the Irish Times Letters page. Is it then just a matter of time before Sinn Féin embrase the final part of the puzzle and embrace anti-immigrationism as part of their platform or will a new pa ...
Source: www.politics.ie --- 34 days ago
by eurosceptic (Posted 5 hours ago) Finally got to read william hague's demolition of the yes scare tactics. An excellent well argued piece. In order of sequence he dismantles the following. 1) Ireland will be alone in opposing lisbon - A new tory government will call a referendum on lisbon which is certain to be defeated. & "It is equally true that the majority of Irish Voters are not alone in rejecting a more federal future for Europe. In Lisbon's earlier guise as the EU constitution it was rejected by the French and the Dutch. Polls showed that Voters in up to 16 EU member states would have rejected Lisbon had they been given the chance to vote." 2) There is a international perception that we rejected europe by voting no - "First, it is clear that Ireland's No was not a No to Europe, any more than the French and Dutch rejections were; it was a pro-European No. There is no evidence that this vote represented a rejection of the EU or its ideals: a continent united in peace and co-operation." 3) The people are wrong to say no in referendums - " When Voters reject a cherished proposal it is wiser for politicians to ask, not "why have the people got it so wrong", but "how have we got it wrong ". 4) The complexity of the treaty put yes Voters off so referendum not justified - "How good can a treaty be if, after months of national debate, its merits cannot be comprehensibly explained?" & "one might as well argue against elections on th ...
Source: www.kentucky.com --- 8 days ago
Joe Biden left blue-collar, bare-knuckles Scranton for the greener pastures of Delaware when he was only 10 years old. But Scranton, it turns out, left an indelible impression on him. Barack Obama's running mate has returned again and again to the city of his youth, where he attended grammar school at St. Paul's, learned politics at his Irish-Catholic grandfather's knee, and made friendships that have lasted 60 years. He's such a familiar presence here and in the Philadelphia media market - which includes Delaware, his political base for more than 35 years - that he's known as Pennsylvania's third senator. That may be one reason Biden's on the Democratic ticket. In choosing a lunch-bucket Democrat, Obama hopes to capitalize on Biden's appeal to the socially conservative, working-class Voters who populate Scranton and many other regions of Pennsylvania. Named for the late governor from Scranton, so-called "Casey Democrats" are a critical voting bloc - and they largely spurned Obama in the primary, handing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a 10-point victory. Like Biden, Clinton emphasized her ties to Scranton, where her grandfather worked in a lace mill and her father was born and buried. In an ad, she told of spending summers at a rustic cottage on nearby Lake Winola. Biden's Scranton roots run deeper, and Obama hopes that enough Voters in battleground Pennsylvania see themselves in the silver-haired senator to make the difference in t ...
Source: www.lenconnect.com --- 29 days ago
Republican Voters endorsed Stephen May for another term as Lenawee County Drain Commissioner in Tuesday’s GOP primary. But May said he is interpreting the 36 percent vote for his opponent as a message that he has to do better. May overwhelmed challenger Eric Anderson by a vote of 3,660-2,100. May faces no Democratic opposition in the November election. Anderson, owner of a used car dealership near Adrian, was a relatively unknown candidate who declined publicity before the vote. His candidacy, however, was backed in advertisements paid for by Irish Hills business owner Fred Bahlau that attacked May’s record as drain commissioner. “I certainly do appreciate everyone who voted for me,” said May after his first contested election since replacing former drain commissioner Donald Mitchell, who retired in 1996. “I’m glad that it’s over and I’m looking forward to the next four years,” May said. The fact that more than a third of Republican Voters did not support him means he must work harder in the coming term, he added. “We’ll try to get better and do better and be sensitive to what people are saying,” May said. “It’s loud and clear to me that we need to do something better.” May will have an opportunity to make an impression on Voters through a number of upcoming major drain projects including a near $1 million upgrade to drains in a special assessment district near Blissfield. “We’ve got many, many projects that are on the books and we ... Find more results for Irish Voters on RSSMicro.com |
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by FutureTaoiseach (Posted Yesterday, 11:59 pm) Now it seems that the EU Commission may have been economical with the truth about its own poll findings, specifically in terms of what percentage of no Voters cited not understanding the Treaty's contents, as Open Europe have discovered: Looking at the official results of the Eurobarometer 'snap poll' of Irish Voters following the No vote (released today), there's a striking contrast between the figures in it and the figures that were leaked out to journalists before the summit. The Times story on 18 June ran with the headline âIrish Voters failed to understand the Lisbon Treatyâ, citing a figure from the EU Commission stating that, amongst No Voters, â40 per cent blamed the fact that they did not understand the treaty.â Below is the extract from the briefing note pushed around by the Commission â the basis for the story in the Times, and other papers: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/commissionpoll.pdf However, when we compare this with the official Eurobarometer poll, published today (20 June) â after the Summit had concluded â we see a very different picture: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_245_en.pdf Just 22% of No Voters said their vote was informed by a lack of knowledge/ familiarity with the Treaty. The EU Commissionâs unofficial briefing seems to have arbitrarily doubled the proportion of Voters falling into this category â presumably if this had not ...
Biden: best teeth in American politics and he knows how to flash, no gnash I’m an American who’s lived most of my adult life outside the U.S. and I have a vote and intend to vote Democrat,. but I wanted to hear from Joe Biden his “measure of the man” (McCain). I didn’t. Here’s what a I witnessed: a six-minute Steven Spielberg tribute to the military. (I thought I was watching the Republican National Convention). Frankly, it brands the Dems as caring but McCain is the Super-Veteran of super-vets. The anticipatory bounce that VP nominee Joe Biden’s speech was supposed to deliver was that he knew OBAMA and McCain and was going to differentiate the two in terms of the character, and positive characteristics, so people like me could determine who would be the better CEO and Commander in Chief. Didn’t happen. Biden dropped the ball. He didn’t tell potential Voters why Obama was a SUPERIOR CHOICE OVER MC CAIN. He didn’t tell is why McCain was flawed. He did NOT tell us why Obama was the better leader. He did not spoon-feed to us Democratic believers why McCain was the WRONG guy to live in the White House. Instead, we heard Biden-speak about his Irish rags-to-riches narrative and his support of Obama that was strictly agenda-driven, self-interested and partisan. JOE BIDEN DID NOT EXPLAIN why he proposed McCain as a good running-mate for John Kerry in 2004 and why he disagrees now. Why McCain isn’t appropriate now and why, apar ...
Residents who want to vote in the Sept. 16 state primary have until Wednesday to register. Voter offices across the Fall River area are extending hours to accept last-minute registrations. In Fall River, the Board of Elections office will be open until 8 p.m. Wednesday. On Sunday, the city hosted Fall River Rocks the Vote, a registration drive with members of the city’s elections office on hand. The first 25 to register at the event and the person who brought the most people to register were to receive prizes. Wednesday is also the deadline for changing voter information such as party affiliation. During a primary election, Voters may only cast a ballot for candidates of the party listed on their registration. In Westport, the Board of Registrars office will hold a special registration session Wednesday in Town Hall from 4 to 8 p.m. Residents can also register during normal office hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Swansea Town Hall will stay open until 8 p.m. on Wednesday, too, though an employee said very few residents stop by to register on the last day. Somerset Town Hall will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, but clerk Pat Hart said she, too, sees little extra traffic. “Unfortunately not,” she said. “People have been coming in off and on in the last month or so, but not usually the last day.” Sunday’s Rock the Vote, outside the St. James Irish Pub on Purchase Street, didn’t attract the turnout hoped for, said Adam Cha ...
Obama's acceptance speech gets all the adjectives -- historic, tough, soaring -- here and here and here . What stood out was the aggressive confrontation of McCain -- the " thread woven throughout the speech." The spectacle seemed to work, at least for the faithful who were there. Others saw fake grandeur , and little substance, but a NYPost panel of undecided Voters gave the speech a big-time thumbs up. Harlem loved it. McCain's v-p pick is today , but it seems like it WON'T be Tim Pawlenty, who plans to be at the Minnesota State Fair today. Halperin says Romney out, too. Obama plans to go after Hillary Voters by focusing hard on McCain's anti-abortion record, but that effort could be complicated if McCain picks a pro-choicer -- Lieberman, or Ridge. Janison looks at Obama's need to move from a corporate-sponsored convention to aggressive pursuit of working people, and reports that Tom Suozzi has a new name for Sen. Joe Biden: Mr. Irish Catholic Family. Gustav has become a political event, as evacuations seem lik ely on the cusp of the GOP convention. Bloomberg may be toying with an effort to pursue a third term, but his top aides are highly skeptical. The AKC conducts a poll on what kind of dog Obama should get for his daughters (he promised them one). The winner: A poodle. ...