Zogby Poll

(excerpt)

Speaking Truth To Power
A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- A year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." Listen:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm


Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?
* 206726 responsesYes,

86% between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.

6% No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."

4% No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.

8% I don't know.

2% http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/


http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/5619907.html

Zogby Poll: Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping By Bob Fertik Created 2006-01-13 23:34 For Immediate Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12. The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement: "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." 43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a ± 2.9% margin of error.

"The American people are not buying Bush's outrageous claim that he has the power to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Americans believe terrorism can be fought without turning our own government into Big Brother," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik. "Next weeks' Senate hearings on White House wiretapping could be as dramatic as the Watergate hearings in 1973. A majority of Americans have already decided Bush committed an impeachable offense, yet we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. If Bush ordered warrantless wiretapping long before the terrorist attack on 9/11 - which was first reported in Truthout on Friday - then Americans will realize that George Bush came into office determined to shred the Constitution and take away our rights," Fertik said. Impeachment Supported by Majorities of Many Groups Responses to the Zogby poll varied by political party affiliation: 76% of Democrats favored impeachment, compared to 50% of Independents and 29% of Republicans. Responses also varied by age, sex, race, and religion. 70% of those 18-29 favored impeachment, 51% of those 31-49, 50% of those 50-64, and 42% of those over 65. 56% of women favored impeachment, compared to
49% of men. Among African Americans, 90% favored impeachment, compared to 67% of Hispanics, and 46% of whites. Majorities of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Others favored impeachment, while 49% of Protestants and 46% of Born Again Christians did so. Majorities favored impeachment in the East (53%), West (56%), and Central states (58%), but not the South (43%). In large cities, 58% support impeachment; in small cities, 56%; in suburbs, 49%; in rural areas, 46%. Support for Impeachment Has Surged Since June The new Zogby poll shows a dramatic transformation in support for Bush's impeachment since late June. (This is only the third poll that has asked Americans about their support for impeaching Bush in 2005, despite his record-low approval ratings.) The Zogby poll conducted June 27-29 of 905 likely voters found that 42% agreed and 50% disagreed with the identical statement asked about in this recent polling. This question was virtually identical to one used in early October by Ipsos Public Affairs, which found that 50% agreed and 44% disagreed that Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he did not tell the truth about his reasons for war.

After the June poll, pollster John Zogby told the Washington Post that support for impeachment "was much higher than I expected." At the time, impeachment supporters trailed opponents by 8%. Now supporters outnumber opponents by 11%, a remarkable shift of 19%. If impeachment support continues to grow by 3% each month, it will reach 60% in January, 65% in March, and 70% in April. Support for Clinton Impeachment Was Much Lower In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President Clinton
(http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only 36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and only 26% supported actual impeachment and removal. Even so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for months, and the Republican Congress impeached Clinton despite overwhelming public opposition. Impeachment Support is Closely Related to Belief that Bush Lied about Iraq The Zogby and Ipsos polls asked about support for impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for war, rather than asking simply about support for impeachment. Pollsters predict that asking simply about impeachment without any context would produce a large number of "I don't know" responses. However, this may understate those who support Bush's impeachment for other reasons, such as his actions before and immediately after Hurricane Katrina, his negligence prior to 9-11, his use of torture, and the CIA outing scandal. Other polls show a majority of U.S. adults believe that Bush did in fact lie about the reasons for war. A June 23-26 ABC/Washington Post poll found 52% of Americans believe the Bush administration "deliberately misled the public before the war," and 57% say the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons." Support for the war has dropped significantly since June, which suggests that the percentage of Americans who believe Bush lied about the war has increased. Passion for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story The strong support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests. The lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment, despite considerable grassroots activism by groups like Democrats.com ( http://democrats.com/impeach ). The passion of impeachment supporters is directly responsible for the new poll commissioned by After Downing Street. After the Zogby poll in June, activists led by Democrats.com urged all of the major polling organizations to include an impeachment question in their upcoming polls. But none of the polling organizations were willing to do so for free, so on September 30, AfterDowningStreet.org posted a request for donations to fund paid polls ( http://afterdowningstreet.org/polling ). People responded with small donations (on average $27) which quickly added up to over $10,000. After Downing Street has spent a portion of that money on the Ipsos Poll and the new Zogby Poll. Footnotes:

1. AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups that was created on May 26, 2005, following the publication of the Downing Street Memo in London's Sunday Times on May 1. The coalition is urging Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.

2. The Ipsos Public Affairs poll and the new Zogby poll results cited above refer to surveys of U.S. adults. The June Zogby results are from a survey of likely voters. The new Zogby poll produced results for both adults and likely voters (see footnote 3).

3. Here are the complete data tables from all three polls. November Zogby: Adults, and Likely Voters. October Ipsos: Adults, and definitions of regions. June Zogby: Likely Voters.
http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-poll-2


Informant: ranger116



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo

New Openings and New Challenges

Revolution #030,
January 15, 2006,
posted at revcom.us

In late December, talk of impeaching Bush suddenly broke into the mainstream media. From the conservative financial paper Barron’s (which said that "willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense") to Newsweek and beyond, the question flared. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer asked constitutional scholars to look into it. John Dean, the former lawyer of Richard Nixon (who was the last president forced out of office), wrote that Bush is "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense"--referring to Bush’s admission that he broke the law in order to spy on U.S. citizens.

The clamor around impeachment opens up an important but complex opportunity for those working to drive out the Bush regime--but only if it is aggressively seized upon. How to do that is a huge and consequential question for the movement. Why Now?

Despite Bush’s wholesale violations of the Constitution, which are all grounds for impeachment, the Democrats have basically given Bush a free hand to implement the main parts of his program. So why has impeachment suddenly become a "legitimate" topic of discussion?

To begin with, the war in Iraq has continued to go badly from the imperialist standpoint. Other forces in the ruling class are worried that the war could develop into a major strategic disaster for imperialism, and they are not that impressed with either the Iraq elections in December or Bush’s recent public relations offensive to "re-sell" the war. They aim to pressure Bush--not to end the war, but to fight it "more effectively."

On top of that comes the current spying scandal, in which the Bush regime broke the rules of how the ruling class of imperialists--whom the top Republicans and Democrats both fundamentally represent--settle conflicts among themselves. Things like spying are supposed to be closely regulated-- not to protect the rights of the people, but to make sure that one section of imperialists doesn’t turn the powerful weapons of state repression against another.

But Bush violated this, and some Democrats then raised impeachment in part to warn Bush to back off. Bush shot right back, attacking his critics for "aiding the enemy." Howard Fineman, the Newsweek and MSNBC correspondent, warned that, "We are entering a dark time in which the central argument advanced by each party is going to involve accusing the other party of committing what amounts to treason. Democrats will accuse the Bush administration of destroying the Constitution; Republicans will accuse the Dems of destroying our security."

Fineman is saying something fairly extreme here; but whether you see such a time as "dark" depends on where you stand in the system and what you do about it. Such conflict at the top can create further openings for revolutionary and progressive political forces: more exposures of what goes on behind the scenes come to light and more people awaken to political life and, potentially, struggle. At its most extreme, the legitimacy of the system itself may be brought into question. So it may not be bad when thieves fall out, not bad at all . . . if their victims seize on it to do something good. Masses Demand "Regime Change"

Which leads to the next point. Besides the conflict at the top, there has also been a movement from below forcing the question of "regime change" into the open. This happened in a significant, if still beginning way, with the demonstrations of thousands on November 2. It took a further step with the publication in the New York Times of the Call to drive out the Bush regime, and specifically to demonstrate on January 31 and February 4, on the occasion of the State of the Union speech, to demand that "Bush Step Down." The organized mass upsurge to drive out the regime, along with the still unorganized but widespread and increasingly intense mass anger against Bush and the yearning to see him go, has been another important factor forcing the hand of Democratic Party leaders.

This upsurge "from below" closely interpenetrates with and influences the struggle "at the top." But the two struggles are NOT one and the same. These are two distinct dynamics. The masses want the Bush regime to go; yesterday is not soon enough for millions of people in this country. The Democratic leaders, on the other hand, want to rein in both Bush . . . and the masses who hate Bush.

In "The Pyramid of Power and the Struggle to Turn This Whole Thing Upside Down," Bob Avakian writes that the social base of the Democratic Party are "the people who stand for progressive kinds of things, all the people who are oppressed in this society. For the Democrats, a big part of their role is to keep all those people confined within the bourgeois, the mainstream, electoral process. . . and to get them back into it when they have drifted away from--or broken out of--that framework . . . The last thing in the world [the Democratic leaders] want to do is to call these masses of people into the streets to protest or to battle against this right-wing force that’s being built up." [Bob Avakian, The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era (Chicago: RCP Publications, 2005), p. 3.]

Once in the streets, so to speak, people may get a sense of their own potential power and come to think more deeply and critically about things they may have taken for granted about society. They may check out and turn to different kinds of leadership, and broaden their horizons--and demands--still further, and in the process attract still greater forces to their banner. They may, if they fight hard enough and conditions come together in the right way, actually win the battle, and in so doing they may change the direction of society and open up the prospect and opportunity for a whole different future.

That may be a very exciting vision for you and me, but it is anathema to the top Democrats, whose interests lie, above all else, in defending the imperialist status quo. So the feelers around impeachment coming from Democratic leaders represent not only "a shot across the bow" to Bush, but also an attempt to rope in the anti-Bush sentiment coming from below and to control and deflect that sentiment.

But again, this is complex. A senator like Boxer who raises the question of impeachment--even though she intends in large part to draw people back into the narrow and killing confines of politics-as-usual--can, despite herself, end up adding to the "legitimacy" of the demand and encouraging people to step into political life. It’s a double-edged sword, one that can ultimately swing against either the ruling class. . . or the people. The question is who grasps it, and from what end. Waiting for November Won’t Do!

One negative tendency in the current mix is an attempt to focus those who want impeachment on "getting out the vote in November" in a way that ignores or downplays the need to act in the streets now. A recent blog entry by a prominent liberal writer surveys the eruption of impeachment controversy into the media, notes the wide range of offenses for which Bush could be impeached, and concludes by . . . calling on people to help "the Democrats regain control of Congress in ’06." Even worse, in an entire essay devoted to the topic of impeachment, the writer does not even mention the November 2 demonstrations; the Times ad and the controversy that resulted from it; other important statements in support of the World Can’t Wait movement from a range of people; or the organizing for the January 31 and February 4 outpourings that is now under way.

Look: there will be no impeachment without mass upsurge. Even if you pin your hopes on the top Democrats for this, you have to recognize that they will not act unless and until they fear that their base is getting beyond their control. By the same token, any strategy that deflects people from taking action NOW in the name of "working (and essentially waiting) for November," will give Bush the time and political space to carry out and consolidate still more outrages, around the world and within the U.S. That would be unconscionable in any circumstance, and all the more so in a time when yesterday’s unprecedented outrages become tomorrow’s new norms.

Part of the danger in this "wait for November" orientation is that the terms on which people have entered the movement will change, imperceptibly but very rapidly: it will go from impeaching Bush, to winning over this or that congressman, to at least electing a Democrat (no matter what their program), and so on. Such an orientation, whatever the intentions of some of those who espouse or take it up, will allow Bush to deflate the opposition to him, both through repression and "spin." On that trajectory, by November Bush would have the apparatus of the right-wing media, the rigged voting districts, his huge Christian fascist "get-out-the-vote" operation, and the whole crooked voting machine thing going for him; people would be playing his game, on his court, with his referees. Far better to be in a position where a mass movement has been raging throughout society demanding that Bush step down, where people from all walks of life are breaking loose in their thinking and actions from the current suffocating atmosphere, or even where the strength of such a movement has already forced Bush out!

And by the way, that can be done--even without a Democratic Congress. After all, who controlled the Congress when the Democrat Lyndon Johnson was forced to essentially step down? The Democrats. And who uttered the famous words "what did the president know and when did he know it"--seen now as the decisive turn in Congress leading to the Republican Richard Nixon’s resignation? A Republican senator, Howard Baker. As these examples illustrate, the imperialists who really rule America do not make critical decisions based on elections, but on whether a particular president has, all in all, become too great a political liability to what they perceive as their overall interests--and that very much includes whether the actions of such a president and their effect on the masses is calling the legitimacy of the whole thing into question.

How the Bush regime gets driven out can't be predicted. But the only way that any of it--impeachment, resignation, whatever-- will happen is if everyone who cannot stand both the terrible outrages the regime has committed and the still more deadly future that it is hammering into place joins together in independent mass action NOW. To those who really want to see Bush impeached, to everyone who wants to see him go: your energy and effort right now needs to go into the push for truly massive actions around the State of the Union.

There is no magic pendulum; there is no savior that will come; there is no check or balance that will, at the eleventh hour, assert itself. There is only the people, and their capacity to act in their own interests and build up their own organizations, with the urgency and determination that this crossroads in history requires. That, and that alone, can change the course of history.

* * * * Polls and Impeachment

Millions of people have wanted the Bush regime to go for some time, and many spontaneously see impeachment as the avenue for that. But the question of impeachment has been stonewalled and suppressed. In an interview with Editor & Publisher, the chief pollster for the Washington Post complained of being constantly bombarded with e-mails and other messages asking why he refused to do a poll on impeachment. The reason, he said, is because no major politician was calling for it. Think about that for a minute: unless a major politician supports some course of action--no matter how great the mass sentiment for it may be--it’s not going to be offered to people broadly as “a serious option or topic of considered discussion,” to quote this pollster.


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545


Informant: C. Clark Kissinger

From ufpj-news



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo

12.01.2006

Der US-Ökonom und Nobelpreisträger Joseph E. Stiglitz schätzt, dass der Irakkrieg der USA zwischen ein und zwei Billionen Dollar kosten wird.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n4409

14.01.2006

Wer erneuerbare Energien und Energieeffizienz so vernachlässigt wie die US-Regierung unter George W. Bush muss an die letzten Öl-Reserven. Auf Kosten der Umwelt. So hat das US-Innenministerium jetzt ein Biotop in Alaska für Rentiere und Wildgänse für Bohrungen nach Gas und Öl frei gegeben.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n4416

Mitte der 80er Jahre findet die Wissenschaft mit der Gentechnologie den Schlüssel, sich die Erde und vor allem ihre Geschöpfe endgültig untertan zu machen. Plötzlich scheint alles möglich! Ein Film von Bertram Verhaag und Gabriele Kröber.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=35&article:oid=a4338

Gefahr Gentechnik - Irrweg und Ausweg

Der Bestseller in Sachen Gentechnik - informativ, fesselnd und schonungslos offen, berichtet über das, was uns alle erwartet: Am
Beginn des 3. Jahrtausends stehen wir, trotz gegenteiliger Prognosen vor immer größer werdenden, gesundheitlichen Problemen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=34&article:oid=a4337

Der neuen Landwirtschaftsminister Horst Seehofer will die bevorzugte Behandlung der Biolandwirtschaft beenden und die grüne Gentechnik befördern: Ist dies das Ende der Wahlfreiheit für die Bürger? Ist dies das Ende für die Biolandwirtschaft? Mir scheint, es besteht ein großes Informationsdefizit über die tatsächlichen Gefahren durch die Grüne Gentechnik. Gastkommentar von Michael Schick.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=17&article:oid=a4336