Posts tagged with "Poll"

President Donald Trump (right) refuses to implicate MBS (center) in Khashoggi murder. (Photo source: Middle East Eye)

Trump parries with press on CIA report that MBS ordered Khashoggi murder

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November 26, 2018

On Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump took time out from thanking himself for doing a wonderful job to say that the CIA did not reach a conclusion about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi—adding during a teleconference with U.S. military troops that Salman “regretted the death more than I do,” Politico reported.

The president previously had declined to listen to Turkey’s tape of the actual murder—or to confirm or deny reports that the CIA had concluded that the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.

When asked who should be blamed instead, Trump said on the conference call from his residence and private club Mar-a-Lago, “maybe the world” because it’s a “vicious, vicious place,” and referenced oil prices as a reason not to punish Saudi Arabia further, according to pool reports.

Asked by a reporter if the CIA had a recording implicating Salman, Politico noted that the president responded: “I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll have to ask them.”

Later, he answered a question on the crown prince’s possible involvement by saying: “Whether he did or whether he didn’t, he denies it vehemently. His father denies, the king, vehemently. The CIA doesn’t say they did it. They do point out certain things, and in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didn’t.”

Comments from both the press and the public were, on the whole, critical of Trump’s refusal to denounce the Saudis during the holiday and the preceding week.

“He’s actually publicly lying about whether or not the US government and its intelligence agencies have concluded … that Khashoggi was murdered and by whom, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow tweeted on 1 p.m. on November 23.

According to a November 23 report by The Hill, Turkey’s top ranking diplomat scorched President Trump on Friday, accusing him of turning a ‘blind eye’ to the killing of Washington Post journalist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi.”

“Trump’s statements amount to him saying ‘I’ll turn a blind eye no matter what,'” Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said in an interview.

“Money isn’t everything. We must not move away from human values,” Çavuşoğlu added.

David Axelrod, director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, tweeted, “For all his bravado @real Donald Trump has proven himself pathetically weak in the eyes of the world, heeling like a Chihuahua on the end of a gilded Saudi leash,” at 8:42 a.m. on November 22.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, commented, “The president’s failure to hold Saudi Arabia responsible in any meaningful way for the death of Jamal Khashoggi is just one more example of this White Houe’s retreat from American leadership on issues like human rights and protecting the free press.”

Finally, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) tweeted, “ … [It] is not in our national security interests to look the other way when it comes to the brutal murder of Mr. Jamal #Khashoggi.”

A poll conducted at the end of October by Axios/SurveyMonkey found that most Americans think President Trump hasn’t been tough enough on Saudi Arabia in response to the  Khashoggi by Saudi agents—with just one-third saying his response had been “about right” and only 5% thinking he had been too tough.

Research contact: @LilyStephens13

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Photo source: NVE Media)

Mitch McConnell: GOP intends to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid after midterms

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October 26, 2018

It’s the talk of the Beltway, according to the Los Angeles Times: Did Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) just admit that the GOP intends to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid after the midterm elections?

The scuttlebutt started, the Times reported on October 19, after the Senate majority leader gave an interview to Bloomberg  on October 16, in which he singled out “entitlements”—that’s political code for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—as “the real drivers of the debt” and called for them to be adjusted “to the demographics of the future.”

To make it short and sweet, McConnell intends to cut benefits.

Indeed, Bloomberg said, the Senate Majority Leader blamed rising federal deficits and debt on “a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.”

What’s more, although Republican legislators spent most of last winter trying to gut the Affordable Care Act, McConnell also telegraphed a plan to try again to repeal healthcare coverage after the midterm elections.

That’s despite indications that the ACA is becoming more popular with the public, not less, and voters’ concerns about preserving its protections for those with preexisting conditions may be driving them to the polls — and not to vote Republican. A poll released on October 18 by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, found that fully 71% of U.S. voters say healthcare is the most important issue driving them to the polls in the midterm elections.

In an October 17 interview with Reuters, McConnell commented that the GOP’s failure to repeal the ACA was “the one disappointment of this Congress from a Republican point of view.”  He said Republicans could try again to repeal Obamacare if they win enough seats in U.S. elections next month.

The CBO projects the current fiscal year deficit at $973 billion, and says it expects annual deficits to exceed $1 trillion into the next decade. The CBO attributed much of the deficit to “recently enacted legislative changes. … In particular, provisions of the 2017 tax act.”

The Congressional Budget office sees things differently. The CBO projects the current fiscal year deficit at $973 billion, and says it expects annual deficits to exceed $1 trillion into the next decade. The CBO attributed much of the deficit to “recently enacted legislative changes. … In particular, provisions of the 2017 tax act.”

Research contact: @hitzikm

Photo source: Miami Archives

Latin American natives are more sociable than folks born in USA

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September 18, 2018

People born in Latin America are more likely to be “social butterflies,” while those who started life in North America are more likely to “cocoon” with just a few friends and family members, based on the findings of a poll conducted by YouGov Profiles and released on September 17.

Based on the YouGov data, people who are born in Latin American and now live in the United States generally have a wider social circle and prefer teamwork to working alone.

When asked about their social circle, 27% of people born in Latin America—defined here as people born in Mexico, Central America, South America, or Latin Caribbean countries— say “I have a wide social circle, and I enjoy it.” Only 16% of the total population chose this same response.

A large number of people in both groups (43% of Latin American-born and 41% of the total population) say that socializing is a part of their life, but not a main focus. While almost one-third (31%) of the total population said they “don’t mind socializing occasionally, but try to avoid it,” only 22% of Latin American-born people said the same.

About half (49%) of Latin American-born people say they prefer working in a team to working by themselves, compared to only 38% of the general population who say this. People born in Latin American countries are almost evenly split between working alone and working in a team—51% vs. 49%.

People who are born in Latin America also tend to have bigger social circles: Eleven percent say they have more than 20 “great” friends, while only 5% of the total population chose the same answer. Another 4% say they have between 15 and 20 great friends, and another 6% say they have between 10 and 15 great friends.

The most common answer for both Latin American-natives and the overall population was between two and three friends.

Reearch contact: Jamie.Ballard@yougov.com

Senator Chuck Schumer (left) and President Donald Trump agree on embassy move. (Photo source: Daily Express UK)

U.S. public balks, but Schumer lauds ‘exodus’ of embassy to Jerusalem

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May 15, 2018

In a rare moment of agreement, President Donald Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) seemed to be walking in lockstep on Monday, May 14 when the Majority Leader praised the administration for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, The Hill reported.

“In a long overdue move, we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Every nation should have the right to choose its capital,” Schumer said in a statement. “I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.”

But Schumer was not representing the views of many constituents, based on findings of a University of Maryland/Nielsen Scarborough poll of 2,000 American adults conducted late last year. Asked whether they supported or opposed the move of the U.S. embassy out of Tel Aviv, 63% of respondents said they were against it, including 44% of Republicans.

What’s more, a Monmouth University poll found that the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is not all that popular with the American public. Just 23% told the pollsters that it was a good idea; versus 39%, who said it was a bad idea, (with 38% registering no opinion).

A majority (51%) of respondents told Monmouth that they thought the move would destabilize the Middle East region; while only 10% said that relocating the embassy would make the region more stable (and 28% say it will have no effect on the region’s stability).

The embassy’s official opening was marked by a bloody day on Israel’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, The Hill reported. And The New York Times reported that at least 41 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,700 injured at the border’s barrier.

Research contact: @malshelbourne

Photo source: HBVL.be

Workplace equality stalls for women

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March 27, 2018

More than half of Americans (52%) say that men still do not accept and treat women as equals in the workplace—a plurality that remains virtually unchanged since the poll asked the same question in 1999, based on findings of an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on March 22.

Women are particularly pessimistic, with 61% of  the 1,100 respondents saying that their male counterparts fail to treat them as equals—again, exactly the same share as 19 years ago. What’s more, the same percentage (44%) say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their gender.

The stagnancy of how women view their treatment in the workplace comes as more of them have taken on a role as their household’s primary wage earner. Nearly half of employed women (49%) say that they work primarily because they are their family’s main breadwinner, up from 37% in 2000. That includes 42% of working women with children.

“While Americans have become less judgmental about working mothers, this is a story about taking one step forward and one step back,” says Corrie Hunt of Hart Research, which conducted the poll along with Public Opinion Strategies. “As Americans, we’ve become more willing to say the right things about women in the workplace, but we haven’t put the supports in place to back it up. Our words have not yet been put into actions.”

Perceptions of working women who also are raising children have, indeed, become far more positive in the last two decades. In 2000, just 46% of Americans called it a positive development that more women are working while raising children, while 38%  called it a negative development. Now? An overwhelming majority, nearly eight in 10 (78%) call it positive, and just 14 percent disagree.

However, the pollsters state, there also is a lingering partisan difference in views of how women overall are accepted in the workplace. While only 28% of Democrats say that women are treated as equals in the workplace and 68% disagree, Republicans say that women are treated equally by almost a 20-point margin. Nearly six in 10 Republicans (58 percent) say women are treated as equals by their male counterparts, while 36% disagree.

And there’s also a notable gender gap when it comes to ways that women experience workplace inequality. Majorities of employed men don’t believe that there’s a significant gap in how women are paid, promoted and valued at their workplaces, while employed women are a bit more divided. Only about one in seven men say male workers get promoted more readily than women and get paid more for doing the same work, while about one in three women say the same.

Research contact: contact.nbcnews@nbcuni.com