Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama has said he is looking forward to working with Republicans and admitted Americans were deeply “frustrated” with the pace of economy recovery.
Mr Obama spoke after Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives. The president now faces legislative gridlock and potentially a roll back of some of his key legislative reforms.
“After what I’m sure was a long night for a time of you and needless to say it was for me, I can tell you that, you know, some election nights are more fun than others. Some are exhilarating. Some are humbling,” Mr Obama said.
“And yesterday’s vote confirmed what I’ve heard from folks all across America. People are frustrated. They’re deeply frustrated with the pace of our economic recovery and the opportunities that they hope for their children and their grandchildren.”
Mr Obama would not concede that the Republican win represented a public rejection of his agenda but he took "direct responsibility" for the slow economy.
Republicans scored the chamber’s biggest party turnover in more than 70 years. Democrats lost ground in the Senate, but kept their majority, vote tallies showed on Wednesday.
John Boehner, the House Republican Leader on Wednesday claimed a voter mandate to roll back the Obama administration’s health care overhaul, calling it is a “monstrosity”.
The presumptive next speaker of the House said that the Republican takeover of the House and its success in narrowing the Democratic Senate majority in Tuesday’s elections was proof that “the Obama-Pelosi agenda” was rejected by the American people. >>> | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Argentina's president has emerged from mourning vowing to honour the memory of her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, as she leads the country.
Cristina Fernandez spoke to the nation for the first time since the death of Kirchner, a popular former president who was her closest ally and confidant in what many people viewed as a virtual joint presidency.
"It's the greatest sadness I've had in my life. It's the loss of the man who was my companion of 35 years, the companion of my life, of fights, of ideals ... a part of me has gone with him," she said, her voice breaking repeatedly.
Recalling her husband's body lying in state at the presidential palace, she thanked "all the men and women who mobilised, who wanted to see him, who wanted to say farewell, who prayed for him, who cried for him."
Ms Fernandez said she would carry on in pursuing the couple's left-of-centre economic and social policies. >>> | Tuesday, November 02, 2010
LE POINT: Le verdict final dans l'affaire Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani n'a pas été prononcé par la justice iranienne, selon le chef de la diplomatie iranienne Manouchehr Mottaki, a affirmé mercredi le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Bernard Kouchner. Lors d'un entretien téléphonique mercredi, "Manouchehr Mottaki m'a affirmé que le verdict final dans l'affaire concernant Sakineh Ashtiani n'avait pas été prononcé par la justice iranienne, et que les informations concernant son éventuelle exécution ne correspondaient pas à la réalité", a déclaré le ministre dans un communiqué. >>> Le Point | Mercredi 03 Novembre 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Organisers use Facebook to form 'queer kissing flashmob' in front of Barcelona's cathedral on Sunday
Spanish gays and lesbians will welcome Pope Benedict XVI to their country at the weekend with a massive homosexual kiss-in to be staged in front of Barcelona's cathedral.
Organisers have invited gays and lesbians from around Spain to congregate in Barcelona during the papal visit on Sunday to form what, on their Facebook page, they call a "queer kissing flashmob".
The plan is for participants to meet at the city's gothic cathedral and start kissing as soon as the pope steps out of the building at 10am.
"No placards, no flags, no shouting and no slogans. Only kissing allowed," the Facebook page reads.
"When Benedict XVI passes in front of us we will kiss, man-to-man and woman-to-woman," Marylene Carole, one of the organisers, told the Spanish news agency EFE.
A whistle or horn will mark the beginning of a two-minute period during which couples are expected to maintain mouth-to-mouth contact. "Once the kiss is over we will go on our way as if nothing had happened," she said. >>> Giles Tremlett in Madrid | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: YouTube has begun removing al-Qaeda videos from its website after the British Government contacted the White House to complain about the material.
A number of clips by Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to have been the mastermind of the cargo bomb plot, were deleted from the video sharing site last night. However scores more, including incendiary calls to wage war on non-Muslims, remain.
A Google search for one of the most provocative videos - entitled 44 Ways to Support Jihad - on Google brings up more than a hundred results from YouTube. Two of the three top results have now been blocked although the bulk of the rest remain available.
Users clicking on the deleted content were confronted with a message saying "This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube's terms of service."
YouTube says its community guidelines "prohibit dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech or incitement to commit specific and serious acts of violence”.
A source at Google, which owns the video sharing site, confirmed that staff had begun to take down al-Awlaki's videos after being alerted by the Telegraph's report. >>> Duncan Gardham, Gordon Rayner and John Bingham | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Marco Rubio, a young Tea Party-backed Republican, was last night elected Senator for Florida - and gave an acceptance speech fuelling speculation that he could one day be US president.
Mr Rubio, the 39-year-old son of Cuban exiles, comfortably beat Charlie Crist, the outgoing Republican state governor, who he forced to run as an independent.
He told hundreds of supporters at a rally in Coral Gables: “Our nation is headed in the wrong direction and both parties are to blame.”
Conceding the night’s results were not an endorsement of his party, Mr Rubio said they offered “a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be.”
Nonetheless he promised the “clear and genuine alternative” he said American voters had shown they wanted over [sic?] the agenda followed by Barack Obama since 2008.
Supporters hailed Mr Rubio’s win as a victory for “common-sense conservatism”. Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, welcomed him to the stage with an impassioned introduction.
“Marco Rubio makes me cry for joy,” Mr Bush said. “We need great leaders who can lift the cloud above us.'' >>> Jon Swaine in Miami | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: William Hague's decision to hold taboo-breaking talks with representatives of three groups at the forefront of the Palestinian civil disobedience movement has set him on collision course with Israel's government.
The Foreign Secretary will meet the leadership of the increasingly assertive Palestinian groups on Wednesday, during his first visit to the Holy Land after taking office, and Israel fears the meetings could confer international legitimacy on the protesters.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the meeting because the identity of the Palestinian leaders involved has not yet been publicly disclosed. Privately, though, some officials voiced misgivings. "All I can say is that I hope he tries to get all opinions at hand from all sides," one said. >>> Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem | Tuesday, November 02, 2010
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Arianna Huffington tells WSJ's Jerry Seib and Alan Murray that the Obama Administration's big flaw was to underestimate the extent of the economic devastation on Main Street. The answer to a solution, she says, is to stop seeing everything as a left/right division.
LE POINT: Les démocrates ont évité l'apocalypse annoncée. Le camp Obama devrait conserver la majorité au Sénat. Mais alors que l'Amérique compte encore ses bulletins de vote, les républicains sont assurés de reprendre le contrôle de la Chambre des représentants en raflant plus de 60 sièges. L'issue de ces élections de mi-mandat, qui se tenaient mardi 2 novembre, est inhabituelle, car, d'habitude, les deux chambres changent de main en même temps.
C'est surtout un vote sanction. Les électeurs, notamment beaucoup de seniors plus nombreux à s'être déplacés d'après les sondages à la sortie des urnes, se disent très inquiets et très mécontents de la situation économique et de la gestion Obama. >>> De correspondante du Point à Washington, Hélène Vissière | Mercredi 03 Novembre 2010
WELT ONLINE: Die Kongresswahlen sind ein Debakel für US-Präsident Obama. Seine Gegner haben die republikanische Antwort auf ihn gefunden.
Auf der Bühne steht ein Mann, der das darstellt, was er verspricht. Davon sind zumindest die rund 1000 Besucher bei der Siegesfeier des am Dienstag furios in den Senat gewählten Republikaners Marco Rubio überzeugt.
Der 39-jährige Sohn kubanischer Flüchtlinge prophezeit die Wiederherstellung des amerikanischen Traumes, und er selbst, Sohn eines Barkeepers und eines Hausmädchens, scheint zu bestätigen, dass in den Vereinigten Staaten jeder alles erreichen kann, wenn er nur an sich glaubt. Marco Rubio, an dessen Wahlsieg im März 2009 nur drei Prozent in Florida glaubten, wird seit dieser Nacht in den USA als die republikanische Antwort auf Barack Obama gehandelt.
Denn den Präsidenten und seine Demokraten haben die Midterm-Elections wie ein Hurrikan gepackt, geschüttelt und gerupft. Die Mehrheit im Abgeordnetenhaus ist bei den Wahlen zur Halbzeit der ersten und möglicherweise letzten Obama-Legislatur an die Republikaner gegangen. Im Senat haben die Demokraten ihre Mehrheit gehalten, aber sie ist geschrumpft.
Der Präsident, angeschlagen durch hohe Arbeitslosigkeit und schlechte Wirtschaftsdaten, ist künftig selbst in der Tagespolitik auf den Kompromiss mit den Republikanern angewiesen. Gegen Mitternacht, so hieß es, rief Obama bereits John Boehner an, der als republikanischer Kongressabgeordneter aus Ohio der nächste Sprecher des „Hauses“ und damit der nach Präsident und Vizepräsident mächtigste US-Politiker werden soll. >>> Von Ansgar Graw | Mittwoch, 03. November 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: America has taken stock of Mr Obama’s presidency – and it doesn’t like what it sees, says Simon Heffer.
The extent of the kicking the Democratic party has received in the mid-term elections will be clear by the time you read this. America has been concentrating in recent days not on who would win – that seemed obvious – but on how big the Republican gains would be among the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, the 36 Senate seats, the 37 governorships and the 6,118 seats in state legislatures being contested. There is a more striking consideration, however: why has the Obama phenomenon imploded with the force it has, just two years after the President’s stunning triumph? For it is so mighty a fall that it is something of an achievement.
In recent days both the President and his rather clumsy Vice-President, Joe Biden, have been touring America trying to get the Democratic vote out. They do not appear to have been very successful. Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of people turned up for great outdoor rallies for candidate Obama. When he went to Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday the indoor sports stadium he spoke in was a little over half-full. The media here are full of former Democratic voters voicing different degrees of disappointment with him. The greatest criticism is about his failure to improve the economy; the second greatest is about his apparent inability to modify foreign policy. In this lies the truth of what the difficulty is: a fundamental failure to manage expectations.
On the morning after Mr Obama’s election two years ago, I watched on television an Illinois woman weeping with relief at the outcome, on the grounds that her house would not now be foreclosed upon. She made it clear where she got this idea from: the Democrats had promised prosperity and, she believed, to protect the homes of those facing foreclosure on their loans. I hope that woman still has the same roof over her head, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The wild economic promises and the failure to damp down some of the inferences drawn from them have proved disastrous for the Democrats’, and the President’s, reputation and credibility.
Many states are going broke. Nevada, home of the Senate leader Harry Reid, is $3 billion in the red. The combined level of their debt is $134 billion. That is a drop in the ocean compared with America’s total debt, which is around $15 trillion, a figure incomprehensible to most people. Unemployment nationally has risen from 7.7 per cent two years ago to 9.6 per cent today. The President’s own economic advisers said it would peak at 8 per cent and Mr Biden recklessly said it would fall month-on-month. Last month, 96,000 more people joined the dole queues. Unemployment has risen disproportionately among young people, black people and the white working class, precisely the groups who supported Mr Obama two years ago. The President has a particular problem in northern rust-belt states where he was supported heavily in 2008 because he represented the last hope. He and Mr Biden have been again and again to the states around the Great Lakes trying to maintain that support. There, as elsewhere, they appear to have failed. There is no real anger against them, though: just a fog of disappointment. Read on and comment >>> Simon Heffer | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE INDEPENDENT: Republicans seize momentum in House of Representatives as voter disillusionment leaves Democrats facing a tough futureA conservative wave roared across the American political landscape last night, humbling President Barack Obama and instantly redrawing the landscape in Washington with a new place on the high perches of power for the flag-bearers of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement.
As night gave away to dawn in America, a huge power-shift had materialised with the Republican Party set to seize control of the House of Representatives with a significant majority. Television networks projected that the Democrats had held on to control of the US Senate.
Thus utter humiliation was averted - but barely.
“Tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave,” declared Rand Paul, the victor of the Senate race in Kentucky and among the most high profile winners backed by the insurgent conservative movement. “They tell me that the Senate is the most deliberative body...deliberate on this: the American people are unhappy with what’s going on in Washington. >>> David Usborne, US Editor | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Republican Party has recaptured the House of Representatives from the Democrats, delivering a stunning rebuke to President Barack Obama just two years after he won the White House.
The party won a slew of Democratic seats in America's eastern time zone such as Indiana and Virginia, and were on course for an overall gain of 52-55 seats by the time votes in the rest of country had been counted.
But Republicans fell short of their ambitious target of the ten seats needed to win the Senate, which would have given them total control of Congress.
The Democrats keep a narrow lead in the Senate, which will give the party considerable leverage against what is expected to be a barrage of Republican legislation from the House designed to unpick President Barack Obama’s achievements in his first two years.
Early in the evening the Republicans celebrated as Tea Party favourites Marco Rubio and Rand Paul won in Florida and Kentucky respectively.
Mr Paul achieved the historic feat of becoming the first member of the anti-tax, small-government Tea Party member to win a Senate seat. The committed libertarian, son of Representative Ron Paul, who was a maverick 2008 presidential candidate, prevailed in Kentucky.
In his victory speech, he proclaimed that "tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave and we are sending a message” He continued: “It's a message of fiscal sanity, limited constitutional government and balanced budgets."
Mr Rubio delivered a warning to the Republican leadership in Washington that the party had to learn from the mistakes made after it last won a majority in 1994, when it abandoned the principles of balanced budgets and small government. >>> Toby Harnden and Alex Spillius in Washington | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: An Iranian woman who faced being stoned to death will hang tomorrow, a human rights group has claimed.The International Committee Against Stoning said that the authorities had given the go-ahead for the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
Her fate has provoked international outcry after she was sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery.
Under huge pressure, Tehran eventually ruled that the 43-year-old mother-of-two would be hanged instead.
Ashtiani has been on death row ever since.
'The authorities in Tehran have given the go-ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution of Iran stoning case Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani,' the human rights group said on its website.
'It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday, 3 November.' >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Tuesday, November 02, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Switzerland is poised to vote on a controversial law that will allow for all immigrants – EU citizens included – to be automatically expelled from the country if they commit a crime.
Even benefit fraudsters and burglars are targeted by the proposed new law, which polls show is likely to be passed in a referendum scheduled for November 28.
The pro-expulsion campaign involves posters featuring a black sheep being kicked out of the country by several white sheep. The referendum will be held almost exactly a year after a previous plebiscite banned minarets on mosques. >>> Allan Hall in Berlin | Tuesday, November 02, 2010
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