Kiwiblog

For those interested in US politics.

In New Zealand, the PM has a formal press conference every week, and often several standups on top of that.

How many weeks do people think have gone by, since President Obama held a full press conference at the White House?

The NZ Herald has advice for the Catholic Church:

A Vatican newspaper claims the hailstorm of allegations of priestly sexual abuse is a conspiracy aimed at the present Pope and the Catholic Church.

Ironically, it targets the “media” as leading or cheerleading this conspiracy, the New York Times being the latest to publish a historical claim, from up to 70 young, deaf boys who allege abuse by an American priest now dead.

It is unfortunate the messenger is being criticised rather than the message heeded. There is much still to be done for the church to put this sin behind it. …

Some calculate the total number of priests and the relatively small number of offenders over many years and then compare that to percentages for the secular world.

Their argument is that church-linked offending is no greater than the sad reality of society’s norm. But it is a forlorn and defensive mindset.

As the Economist magazine has argued, if you preach absolute moral values you will be judged against absolute moral standards.

The church cannot accept relative failure or relative consequences, particularly under this Pope who argues forcefully for an end to relativism.

If it is true to itself, the Catholic Church cannot be satisfied with being as good as, or not as bad as, other parts of society.

If any conspiracy exists, it is the one in which sexual offenders were protected and victims abandoned by those in authority.

A new conspiracy is needed, one which confirms in deeds the Pope’s words to the Irish. Responsibility must be taken by those who hid wrong.

I’m just glad I was raised Anglican!

The Dom Post focuses on the Mary-Anne Thompson affair:

The most alarming aspect of the Mary Anne Thompson affair is not that a senior public servant falsified her CV, but that the former head of the public service halted inquiries into her falsehood years before it was exposed.

This is the point I made a couple of days ago.

But within minutes of Mrs Bell questioning her about the doctorate she claimed to have obtained from the London School of Economics, Thompson withdrew her application for the post.

Mrs Bell undertook further investigations on her own initiative and advised Mr Wintringham that there was no record of Thompson gaining a doctorate. But, instead of initiating a formal investigation, Mr Wintringham told Mrs Bell to stop her inquiries.

He was, he subsequently said, concerned that further inquiries could “damage both the defendant’s considerable professional reputation and the reputation of the commission as well”.

He was right about the first. He was wrong about the second. What has damaged the commission’s reputation is not Thompson’s fraud, but Mr Wintringham’s failure to properly investigate a matter of obvious concern.

Really it was a disgraceful decision – and one made worse by his failure to even leave a file note on the issue for his successor. You’d expect better from the most junior HR manager, let alone the State Services Commissioner.

The Press hails a triumph for Obama:

The United States health reform controversy continues to swirl with such intensity that it is difficult to decipher the dispositions of the antagonists. However, one thing is sure – President Barack Obama has won his place in history, if only because of the health bill’s emergence into law.

No other president has pushed through such important reform in this field and most have not dared to try. Obama’s handling of the process was less than stellar and it has united his opponents, but the result is legislation that will transform a fundamental foundation of American society.

Hmmn. I wonder if they have read the law change. It isn’t that dramatic.

And the ODT takes issue with Pita Sharples:

The thrust of his speech clearly implied that for tribal Maori, democracy does not work and does not sit comfortably with Maori cultural concepts.

Historical fact suggests this argument does not wash in national politics, since Maori candidates have long been elected to general seats and the specific provision of Maori electorates has ensured at least a foothold in Parliament.

The notable absence of Maori at local body level has been regrettable, but why that is so cannot merely be attributed to “prejudice, cultural arrogance, and institutional racism”.

Relatively few people are aware that in Parliament, Maori are over-represented in relation to their proportion of the adult population.

So I find it hard to see how the democratic system is failing Maori.

The Herald reports:

President Barack Obama has told American forces during his surprise visit to Afghanistan that US lives would be at risk if the Taleban retake control of the country.

Not just US lives.

Karzai promised that his country “would move forward into the future” to eventually take over its own security, and he thanked Obama for the American intervention in his country.

He told Obama he has begun to establish more credible national institutions on corruption and made clear he intends to make ministerial appointments more representative of the multiple ethnic and geographic regions of the country, according to a US account of the meeting.

Obama’s trip was intended to emphasise US demands that Karzai deal with corruption and cut the flow of money from poppy production and drug trafficking that is sustaining the insurgency. The US also wants Karzai to create an effective, credible judicial system and to halt cronyism and rewards for warlords in government hiring.

I think Iraq is on track to be a relatively successful country by 2020. Afghanistan, I am not so sure about – but I agree with Obama this is no time to quit.

One of the things that many may not realise around Obama’s Healthcare Reform, is that it does not in fact create a public health system. To increase health insurance coverage, it has made it illegal not to have health insurance, with limited exceptions such as hardship or religious belief.

If a Republican President had tried to make private health insurance compulsory, I suspect the left would have decried the reform, instead of supported it. And i guess the right would have supported it, instead of opposed it.

13 states have filed lawsuits claiming it is unconstitutional to force people to take our private health insurance. I suspect this issue will get to the Supreme Court, and you do have to think there is a reasonable chance that may breach the Bill of Rights.

What I find ironic, is that Obama’s reforms have now made the US system almost the polar opposite of the Canadian system.

You see in Canada, it is illegal in some provinces to even have private health insurance. And federally there are laws that forbid hospitals from charging private rates (even if a private clinic).

So effectively in Canada it is illegal to have private health insurance, and now in the US it will effectively be illegal NOT to have private health insurance.

The Australian reports:

THE codename chosen for a secret policing operation to protect US President Barack Obama during his visit to Australia sounds innocuous enough.

But calling it Operation Blue Gum, after Australia’s iconic native trees, almost caused an international embarrassment.

US consular officials were aghast when briefed by their counterparts in the NSW Police Force about the title, Blue Gum. In America, a “bluegum” is offensive slang for a lazy African-American who refuses to work. …

Australian officials have been at pains to stress that most NSW Police Force operation names are generated by a computer.

Now that would have been really embarrassing if no one had noticed in time.

Real Clear Politics publish polls of polls, averaging all the different polls out there.

They report today, that for the very first time Obama’s negatives are greater than his positives in their average of the polls.

47.3% say they approve of the job he is doing and 47.8% disapprove.

If healthcare passes, I expect he will get a lift from that, even though it is controversial. Being ineffectual is worse than being unpopular, when you hold the most powerful job in the world.

Chris Trotter writes:

Labour has become electorally implausible because it no longer projects itself as either psychologically, or morally, convincing.

Mr Goff, in last week’s “State of the Nation” speech, spoke of a Labour Party dedicated to serving the needs of “the many, not the few”.

He lambasted those who avoided paying their fair share of tax and he vowed to cap the salaries of state sector chief executives at the level of the prime minister’s annual income.

A traditional Labour message, and by all accounts powerfully delivered.

But was it real?

No, not really. It took the redoubtable Right-wing blogger, Cactus Kate, less than a day to uncover the fact that a significant number of Labour MPs belonged to one or more family trusts, the very same tax avoidance device that Mr Goff was railing against.

Rhetoric without substance doesn’t do well in the blogosphere.

And what about all those state sector CEOs on excessive salaries? Well, Mr Goff is to be congratulated for wanting to share the “pain” of economic recession more equitably.

But, in order to restore a measure of equity to the pay scales of the public service, surely Mr Goff would have to renounce his own, and Labour’s, continuing support for the State Sector Act?

After all, Mr Goff was a cabinet minister in the fourth Labour government, which introduced the State Sector Act. Its purpose?

To bring the private sector’s market- driven discipline into the public service: to give the heads of government agencies the same powers and responsibilities as corporate chief executives and pay them accordingly.

If Mr Goff is now acknowledging that the ideology underpinning the State Sector Act is flawed, then I, for one, will cheer him to the echo.

But if he still adheres to the neoliberal ethos which gave it birth, then he should let the market in CEO salaries find its own level, and like the original author of the State Sector Act, Stan Rodger, remain steadfastly on the sidelines and keep his mouth firmly shut.

And if Goff does suddenly declare the State Sector Act is wrong, the question will arise why has it taken 30 years to realise it. Longevity in Parliament is not always helpful for an opposition leader.

To win back the love Labour’s lost, the leader of the Opposition must learn how to channel not only the hopes and aspirations of Labour’s educated middle-class minority, but also the fear and antagonism of its sullen working-class majority.

A genuine political leader will gladly and gloriously reflect the idealistic light of his best followers but, when pressed, he must also be capable of tapping into the darkest impulses of his worst.

True leaders are feared as much as they are loved.

Think of Helen Clark in the midst of the “Corngate” scandal: chilling. Think of Rob Muldoon ordering Tom Scott out of the Beehive theatrette: terrifying.

Watching TVNZ’s Guyon Espiner interviewing Mr Goff on the Q+A programme, I was struck by how keen the leader of the Opposition was to please.

I don’t think it is a bad thing, that Phil Goff does not have a streak of Clark or Muldoon in him. While I disagree with his policies, I think Phil Goff is a pretty decent person, who achieved many good things as a Minister. I don’t think he will become Prime Minister, but if he did I think he would do an okay job (again I probably would disagree with a lot of his policies).

Democracy, it is said, substitutes ballots for bullets. And that’s fine so long as, like the metal projectiles they replace, ballots also have the capacity to inflict real damage.

Labour needs policies that not only help but hurt.

Out there in the electorate, some groups need to understand that they will be paying for Mr Goff’s promises. Sweet reason and bipartisanship, as President Barack

Obama has discovered, make for poor politics. There’s nothing the voter enjoys more than the whiff of fear and panic – especially in high places.

No politician gets elected purely on the strength of being everyone’s friend. At least symbolically, and preferably in reality, a party leader must also be somebody’s enemy.

Actually Obama has not been at all bipartisan. I think problem has been his moving to the left, instead of the centre. And by doing so he seems to have positioned himself as the enemy of fiscal hawks. The trouble is they are winning the war.

Too early to know if he will follow the rhetoric up with substance, but it is pleasing to see this language from Obama:

Mr Obama said he welcomed all suggestions on cutting spending.

“It’s time to hold Washington to the same standards families and businesses hold themselves,” he said.

“It’s time to save what we can, spend what we must, and live within our means once again.”

He added that spending could not continue “as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money”.

This is in great contrast to NZ Labour which seems to think borrowing $240 million a week is not enough, and constantly calls for more spending.

It would be great to hear Phil Goff or David Cunliffe talk about protecting the hard-earned tax dollars of New Zealanders.

Politico report:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up Wednesday’s State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama’s $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits — and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate election — is projected to save $250 billion, the Democrats said.

This is a massive move to the centre, if true. It would also be a very good thing economically.

So in the UK Labour are talking spending cuts. In the US, Obama is talking a spending freeze. But in NZ, Labour’s only response to every issue is to demand more spending and more borrowing.

I’ve been saying for months and months that NZ Labour do not realise the world has changed. People understand that with huge deficits, there can’t be massive spending increases, big pay increases for public servants etc.

The first quote is:

A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee

The second quote is:

a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

So was this Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin? Dick Cheney and Bill O’Reilly?

No, according to a new book called Game Change, the first quote was made by Bill Clinton to Ted Kennedy, and the second by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Clinton’s quote is of course incorrect. If it involved serving himself and Ted Kennedy, there is no way they would have been getting served coffee – whiskey is far more likely.

An article in the Herald:

When the Nobel peace prize committee awarded President Barack Obama the ultimate accolade, its members can never have imagined that his acceptance speech would set out an eloquent defence of war.

His speech in Oslo could have been delivered by George W. Bush, when Obama spoke of “evil” in the world and of reserving “the right to act unilaterally”.

I bet you they still cheered wildly though.

He offered an outstretched hand to Iran and North Korea, instead of the fist of his predecessor, Bush. But now the talk is of “crippling sanctions” as the Iranian authorities continue to ratchet up their nuclear defiance.

Welcome to the real world.

He disappointed human rights advocates by not standing up to China and for hesitating too long before expressing support for the demonstrators in Iran.

Gay rights campaigners point out he has not yet fulfilled his campaign promise to welcome gay men and women into the military.

His pledge to close Guantanamo by the end of the year is proving complicated to implement.

Rhetoric vs reality

Obama’s approval rating in the polls now stands at 47 per cent.

It is the worst poll rating for any American President since Truman at this stage in the presidency.

Is this the case? Let’s check.

1. George W Bush 86%
2. John Kennedy 77%
3. George H W Bush 71%
4. Lyndon Johnson 70%
5. Dwight Eisenhower 69%
6. Richard Nixon 59%
7. Jimmy Carter 57%
8. Bill Clinton 54%
9. Gerald Ford 52%
10. Ronald Reagan 49%
11. Harry Truman 49%

So in fact at 47% it would be below every modern President.

Now again there is a long way to go before the election, and Reagan, Truman and Clinton all won second terms. But this presidency is certainly no JFK and Camelot.

But the 2010 mid-terms are looking to be fascinating. The Republicans now lead on the generic congressional poll by 43% to 41%. However they have large internal rifts and many of their more electable candidates may not win the primaries.

Public Policy Polling blogs:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor.

That is a startling figure, considering how unpopular Bush was on both the left and the right.

Barack Obama has said the US will wim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020, but this is 17% on their 2005 levels, not 1990 levels.

The growth from 1990 to 2005 has been around 17%, so in fact their target is to be around the same as in 1990 – a 0% change.

Now bear in mind the Greens have got hysterical because NZ has *only* pledged a 10% to 20% reduction on 1990 levels. Obama’s target makes NZ’s target seem wildly ambitious, not bottom of the pack.

Vernon Small reports on the conclusion of a free trade agreement with Hong Kong. So it got me thinking what are the countries we have an FTA wth, or are negotiating. The answers are:

1. Australia, since 1983
2. Singapore since 2001
3. Thailand since 2005
4. Trans-Pacific (Brunei/Chile/Singapore) since 2005
5. China since 2008
6. ASEAN (Brunei/Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam)
7. Malaysia
8. Gulf Co-operation Council (Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar)
9. Hong Kong
10. Korea

Now who are our biggest trading partners:

1. Australia $18.7b – in force
2. USA $9.0b – zip
3. China $8.9b – in force
4. Japan $7.6b – some momentum
5. Singapore – $3.1b – in force
6. Germany – $3.0b – zip
7. Malaysia $2.9b – finalised
8. UK $2.8b – zip
9. Korea $2.7b – under negotiation

Also the total value of trade with ASEAN is $12.2b and GCC $4.3b.

So while progress on Doha remains stalled, we’re doing pretty well. The big gaps are USA, Japan and the EU. The EU are hopeless. Japan is showing some signs of life and in a very welcome move, President Obama a few minutes ago said the United States would seek to join the Trans-Pac agreement.

I’m delighted his protectionist election rhetoric, may have been just that – rhetoric. I started writing this blog post unaware of Obama’s announcement – how is that for good timing!

Nine months into his term, I thought I’d take another look at Obama’s ratings compared to other US Presidents. Gallup has polling data back to WWII. At Day 270 the approval ratings were:

1. George W Bush 89% (post 9/11)
2. John Kennedy 77%
3. Lyndon Johnson 74%
4. George H W Bush 68%
5. Dwight Eisenhower 65%
6. Harry Truman 63%
7. Ronald Reagan 56%
8. Richard Nixon 56%
9. Jimmy Carter 54%
10. Barack Obama 50%
11. Bill Clinton 47%
12. Gerald Ford 40%

Clinton of course won a second term, but Carter did not. Clinton abandoned healthcare reform and moved to the centre. Will Obama?

The Weekly Standard reports on the difference one person can make:

Pamela Key does not work for the Republican National Committee. She has no formal training in journalism. An illustrator of children’s books, she never finished college. And yet, her oppositional research, her investigative journalism, and her philosophical convictions have all come together to shape the national mood, receiving even the attention of the White House. On August 4 of this year, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House, released a video where she instructed the public, “My job is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this,” she reads the Drudge Report from her computer screen, “‘Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate PRIVATE Insurance.’”

What most don’t know is that Douglass was targeting a video unearthed by Key, first released on her video news website, Naked Emperor News, and then picked up by the Drudge Report. The video, which pieces together various Obama statements, damningly quotes the president at an SEIU forum in 2007 saying, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out.”

That is a truly damning quote, and this is why so many people wonder just how left wing is Obama.

Looking through the archives of Chicago’s public radio stations, of C-Span, of YouTube, and various other forums, Key uncovered clips of Obama saying cap and trade will bankrupt coal plants, of Van Jones calling for a revolution against “suicidal, gray capitalism,” and of congressional democrats refusing to regulate and audit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004. In one of her most viewed videos, which received nearly three million hits, Obama advocates for redistribution of wealth. In that 2001 Chicago public radio interview, Obama tells a radio talk show host, “One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was [the] tendency to lose track of political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” To this effect, he criticizes the radical Warren court (1953-1969) as not being radical enough: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution generally, the constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what states can’t do to you, says what federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

Again, this is superb research from one person. Who knew Obama thought the Warren court was not radical enough.

Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire

From The Onion of course. It’s superb.

Hat Tip: Trevor Loudon

The Herald reports:

The United States Senate is expected to confirm an openly gay lawyer – David Huebner – will be its next ambassador to New Zealand.

The appointment has generated some publicity in the United States because it is the Obama administration’s first appointment of an openly gay ambassador.

Mr Huebner is currently a lawyer based in Shanghai for a United States law firm where he specialises in international arbitration and mediation. He also acts as general counsel for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

People may be unaware that both Presidents Clinton and Bush appointed gay Ambassadors. Bush appointed Michael Guest as Ambassador to Romania.

As the US has around 150 Ambassadors, I’d expect around half a dozen of them to be gay, all other things equal.

His law firm bio is here. He currently works in Shanghai, and before that worked as an assistant to a Japanese Diet member. His legal career seems pretty distinguished. His law firm represents 56 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Often Ambassadors are major donors, but as far as I can tell he gave only $3,000 in 2008 – $2,000 to Obama and $1,000 to the DNC.

Readers recall my satirical post about the Green Party advocating compulsory abortions, to fight climate change.

Well again sometimes fiction gets close to truth.

John Holdren is President Obama’s Science Czar. In 1977 he co-authored a textbook which has some views which are, well … read for yourself. Now to be fair to him he says today he does not advocate compulsory population control, but it shows that such extremism is not as far away as we like to think.

So what did he say:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

That compulsory abortions could be constitutional to save the planet!

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

1977 was not that long ago. Now again to be fair to Hodren he doesn’t quite endorse forcing solo mothers to marry or abort, but he describes the possibility without disapproval.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Mass sterilisation so long as it doesn’t affect pets ro livestock. Today the Greens might argue it is a bonus if it sterilises the cows also!

Involuntary fertility control
…
A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
…
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Maybe he once consulted to China? Who need toasters when you can use a sterilizing capsule.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

This could be a private members bill for ACT – the reproductive responsibility act

In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

Well if you have too many wives, you are forced to divorce all but one of them. So what do you do if you have too many children?

Toward a Planetary Regime
…
Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

Now from my reading of this he wants the UNEP, now probably part of the UNDP, to control planetary population and resources. I’d say Helen Clark is liking her new job more and more.

Thank God this fruitcake doesn’t have any influence, such as being chief science advisor to the President of the United States of America. Oh wait a second ….

Around 125,000 have watched on You Tube the clip of John Key on David Letterman.

That’s a huge amount. As a comparison Barack Obama earlier in the week has had around 335,000 views. And that is for the President of the United States – a country with around 80 times our population.

Bill Clinton got 12,000 views in the same week, and most Top Tens seem to get around 10,000 views.

Around 1,400 people have commented on the video also.

I might be wrong, but I suspect Helen Clark hated that her first meeting with Barack Obama was having John Key introduce her as his predecessor, after Obama goes out of his way to say hi to Key.

We sometimes forget what a great reputation our country has overseas as a place to live:

Mr Obama had a friend living in New Zealand who had raved about the country praising its golf courses, skiing and lifestyle for families.

If Obama does visit at some stage, he’ll be a lot more popular than he is back home. UMR released a poll yesterday on NZers views of world leaders. The net positive ratings were:

1. Barack Obama +82% (88% favourable, 6% unfavourable)
2. Kevin Rudd +45%
3. Angela Merkel +15%
4. Nicolas Sarkozy +2%
5. Gordon Brown -1%
6. Silvio Berlusconi -16%
7. Vladimir Putin -19%

The Herald reports:

NEW YORK – Prime Minister John Key had a surprise meeting with United States President Barack Obama at a lunch at the United Nations here this afternoon (New York time).

The pair were scheduled to meet for the first time at a US Presidential reception this evening but Mr Obama approached the Prime Minister unexpectedly at a lunch hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

The pair chatted for two or three minutes.

Mr Obama asked Mr Key how he was enjoying the UN. The pair exchanged pleasantries before the US president moved on.

Mr Key will have another chance to meet the US leader at tonight’s reception.

What I find amusing is that the PM is meeting the UN Secretary-General, US President, NATO Secretary-General etc etc, yet the average Kiwi is only interested in his appearance on Letterman!

The Letterman episode will screen Friday night NZ time.

I first heard about this widely reported poll on Twitter, from Public Address:

Poll: A third of conservatives believe Obama could be the Antichrist. 18% are certain he is: http://bit.ly/2WY48F

My tweet back was:

lunacy but you forgot to mention in same poll a third of dems think gwb knew of 911 attacks in advance.

And PA:

Yes, that’s in the link. But IMO, believing Obama to be the Antichrist is orders of magnitude more weird.

And my response:

have to agree. In fact thinking anyone is the antichrist is pretty far gone.

Anyway I’ve thought a lot more about the poll. It has been widely reported as proof that a large segment of the US right are deranged. So it got me interested in finding the full poll results.

The first thing I notice, in the poll of 500 New Jersey residents, is that it is an automated telephone poll. This means the respondents push buttons on their phone, they are not speaking to an actual person.

So immediately I am suspicious that many of those responses may be in jest. Hell, if I received a recorded voice saying

“Do you think Murray McCully is the Anti-Christ? If yes, press 1, If no, press 2. If you’re not sure, press 3″

well once I’d stopped laughing I’d be pretty tempted to press 1 or 3

Now is there any proof for my theory many voters may have been taking the piss.  Let us look at the crosstabs. Overall 8% said yes he is, and 13% were not sure. And the shock figure was 18% of conservatives said yes he is, and 17% were not sure

• 5% of those who voted for Obama in 2008 said he is the Anti-Christ and a further 5% said they were not sure
• 6% of moderates said Obama was the Anti-Christ and 13% were unsure
• 6% of Democrats said Obama was the Anti-Christ and 7% were unsure
• 24% of Hispanics said Obama was the Anti-Christ and 18% were unsure
• 11% of African-Americans were unsure if Obama is the Anti-Christ
• 24% of those aged under 30 said Obama was the Anti-Christ and a further 18% were not sure

The last stat especially reinforces my suspicion many were taking the piss. Does anyone really think over 40% of under 30s do not know if Obama is the Anti-Christ?

So more under 30s and more Hispanics said Obama was the Anti-Christ, than conservatives did. But that is not such a sexy headline.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am sure there are some conservatives who think Obama is the Anti-Christ. And they are scary. But is it a very small minority of the conservative movement, or as much as one in three as the poll headline suggested? I say the former.

And some other unusual results:

• 31% of 2008 Obama voters think Bush knew of the 911 attacks in advance
• 4% of 2008 Obama voters want to eliminate the Federal Government, as do 6% of McCain voters
• 21% of Democrats do not think or are not sure if Obama was born in the US
• 11% of Republicans think Bush knew of the 911 attacks in advance
• 6% of Democrats want to eliminate the Federal Government, and only 5% of Republicans
• 50% of African-Americans think Bush knew of the 911 attacks in advance
• More Hispanics and African-Americans said they want to eliminate the Federal Government than Whites

My conclusion would be that one should be wary of using automated phone polling for controversial statements. People are far more willing to push a digit on a phone for something they do not believe, than actually tell an actual human being the same thing.