USA Today: Obama tops list of worst, Ronald Reagan voted best of presidents since WW 2

Story HERE

Survey says more Americans admire Rush Limbaugh than Hillary Clinton

 Rush Limbaugh laughed off the “shock and dismay” Monday from those who just can’t believe Americans “admire” him more than the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The poll was conducted by YouGov.com, which ranked the top 10 “most admired” people according to the U.S. and twelve other countries. While Clinton just barely made the U.S. list at #10, Limbaugh came in just ahead of her at #9. Pope Francis I was at the top of the list, followed by President Barack Obama, Revered Billy Graham and former president George W. Bush. Besides Limbaugh, the only true media figure on the list was Oprah Winfrey at #6.

More at Mediaite.com

Mitch Wolfe: Rob Ford Is Getting His Groove Back

This has been a good week for Rob Ford's campaign for re-election as Toronto's mayor in 2014.

Say what?

I can just see and hear those from the old media -- the Star, the Globe, the Post and the Sun -- spitting up their gluten-free almond milk all over their granola, down at their local Whole Foods store.

The consensus among the Toronto literati, intelligentsia, and Richard Florida's creative class, (who all apparently live within the Annex or cycling distance to the Annex) is that Ford has made Toronto into an international laughingstock.

...Ironically, a very well-respected CBC reporter Neil Macdonald, has come indirectly to Rob Ford's defence. He wrote in an article:

"But embarrassed? Us? As in 'Oh. My. God. He's turning us into a LAUGHINGSTOCK?'  Spare me.The only Canadians I know who actually think that are the Torontonians who never shut up about how cosmopolitan their city is."

Plus, from England's Daily Mail: Crack-smoking Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is more popular than Obama and U.S. Congress

Rob Ford's support numbers means something his obsessive opponents haven't figured out

The recent Forum Research poll, taken after Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair disclosed the existence of a video in which Toronto Mayor Rob Ford puffs on a glass pipe, shows some pretty good approval ratings for the embattled civic leader.

Particularly noteworthy is that Ford's highest approval rating, 55%, comes from Scarborough, for which Ford successfully managed to get funding for subway expansion from Kathleen Wynne's heel-dragging Provincial government.

Ford opponents in politics and government have been insisting how unnecessary the Scarborough subway is and how the eastern borough would be so much better served by what would have been a fully-funded Light Rail Transit system. Much of that attitude is illustrated by The Toronto Star's Urban Affairs columnist Christopher Hume, when he bravely, and obviously painfully, ventured out of his elitist downtown enclave to Scarborough recently to assess the surroundings and reiterate his preformed conclusion about Scarborough's transit needs.

Here's the funny thing, though. Why is it that the people who actually live in and know the Scarborough area best are the ones most supportive of Rob Ford?

Therein lies a clue to much of Ford's success, and why the media and his obsessive detractors have such little success is swaying support away from him.

It's because Ford actually listens to his constituents and tries to give them what they ask for, rather than condescendingly and paternalistically deciding what is best for them, whether they want it or not.

Weird, isn't it, that the public will loyally support a politician who listens to and seems to care about them, even though their intellectual betters and moral superiors in the media and politics tell them they shouldn't?

That sound you hear is heads exploding at The Toronto Star - Ford approval rating goes up after news breaks of existence of video

The popularity of Toronto’s top politico has risen slightly following the announcement that a video that allegedly shows him smoking crack cocaine exists, according to a new poll.

A Forum Research poll conducted Thursday night puts Mayor Rob Ford’s approval rating at 44 per cent – up 5 points from a poll conducted earlier this week.

This is the best laugh I've had this week!

What was that about The Toronto Star being the Wyle E. Coyote of newspapers?

That popping you hear is the sound of heads exploding at The Toronto Star

Despite, in fact probably because of their relentless, frenzied efforts to malign him, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's polling numbers have gone UP by 10 points in the last two weeks.

TORONTO - Mayor Rob Ford's popularity got a boost from recent controversies, results of a new poll suggested Friday.

The Forum Research poll pegs Ford’s job approval rating at 49% — up almost 10% from two weeks ago.

The boost comes after a week of controversy swirling around whether or not the mayor of Canada’s largest city is battling a drinking problem and was allegedly asked to leave a military gala for being intoxicated.

Ford himself has vehemently denied the original Toronto Star story on the drinking allegations while Councillor Paul Ainslie has stood by his claim he asked the mayor’s chief of staff to remove him from the event.

Almost half ( 49%) of the Forum poll respondents said they approve of the job Ford is doing as mayor while 50% disapprove and 1% said they don’t know.

...Bozinoff said within the 49% who approve of the job Ford is doing there is a “small group” who have said they won’t vote for him again in the 2014 election.   

“It’s a few percentage points but he’s going to start off (in 2014) with 40% of the vote right off the bat,” he said. “If there were two people running, he’d need 50% ... he’s not that far away.”

As the blog Small Dead Animals puts it: "You know that last fight scene in The Matrix? Neo is fighting Agent Smith and is so much faster that he doesn't really have to concentrate? Smith tries to lay a hit, but Neo blocks them all with one hand while looking away. Yeah, The Toronto Star is Agent Smith."

Eye on a Crazy Planet election prediction: Data shows Obama's dismal handling of the economy will lead to a Romney win

I may have to eat crow tomorrow, but after reviewing the data, it looks as if Mitt Romney will win tonight's election. Although most polls have the Republican and Democrat nominees in a dead heat, the basis for this prediction is in some very compelling data.

The most recent George Washington University poll relays that 50% of voters disapprove of the job Obama has done on the economy and a 60% disapprove of his handling of federal spending and the deficit. A full 44% and 48% "strongly" disapprove of his performance in those categories. Only 27% and 18% respectively strongly approve of how Obama has handled those aspects of the economy

The economy is the top concern of voters, followed by jobs and government spending and the deficit. In these critical areas that  matter most to Americans, Obama's ratings are dismal.

Factor that with indications that 50% of all voters disapprove of the overall job Obama has done as president with a huge 46% saying they strongly disapprove.

Americans vote with their pocketbooks. Obama's failure on his handling of the economy will, if my analysis bears out, bring his presidency to an end with the conclusion of his first term.

Hope and Change in America - Romney holds on to lead in polls

According to the Gallup organization, Mitt Romney has maintained his lead over Barack Obama in polls for the week of October 13 to 19.

Among registered voters, Romney leads Obama 48% to 46%. The trend leading up to the final presidential debate on Monday favors Romney with his lead increasing to 6% among likely voters with the Republican candidate leading Obama 51% to 45%.

New poll shows Romney has 4 point lead over Obama among likely voters

From Pew Research:

Fully 66% of registered voters say Romney did the better job in last Wednesday’s debate, compared with just 20% who say Obama did better. A majority (64%) of voters who watched the debate describe it as mostly informative; just 26% say it was mostly confusing.

In turn, Romney has drawn even with Obama in the presidential race among registered voters (46% to 46%) after trailing by nine points (42% to 51%) in September. Among likely voters, Romney holds a slight 49% to 45% edge over Obama. 

Dead Heat! Post election poll shows debate winner Romney tied with Obama

PRINCETON, NJ -- Registered voters' preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday's presidential debate. In the three days prior to the debate, Barack Obama had a five-percentage-point edge among registered voters.

Poll published today says Tories will have majority government - NDP could be Official Opposition

A poll published by Compas research today says the Tories are virtually sure to have a majority.

Some interesting findings - 4 out of 5 voters who say they are leaning to the NDP may change their minds and NDP voters are 50% less likely to know who their local candidate is.

The results are in! George Galloway reminds you most of...

Who does George Galloway remind Eye of a Crazy Planet readers of most?

The choices were:



Sam was 1st runner-up



2nd runner up

Spiro didn't get a single vote! Lucky Spiro!





 3rd runner up, Sir Oswald Mosley
(this would have been my choice)

And the winner is...

But wait! It wasn't Mel on his own!
To remind you of Galloway, it was Mel under the influence of a hell of a lot of..



97.38% of North Americans don't know today is George Gallup's Birthday

Okay, I just made that figure up, but it wouldn't surprise me if the number was even higher.

George Gallup (November 18, 1901 – July 26, 1984) was an American pioneer of survey sampling techniques and inventor of the Gallup poll, a successful statistical method of survey sampling for measuring public opinion.


More info about Gallup here.

There's a neighbour Eye on a Crazy Planet readers would like even less than Omar Khadr

The last Eye on a Crazy Planet poll asked:

Who would you least like to have as your next door neighbour?

The choices were:
 
Karla Homolka, Omar Khadr, Roman Polanski, Kristen Wong-Tam, and Avi Lewis.
 
I thought home-grown convicted and self-confessed terrorist and murderer, Omar Khadr, would be a hands-down winner.
 
But I was wrong. I forgot to take families into account. While the Khadr clan are generally considered to be Canada's most reprehensible family, Omar Khadr's parole conditions are expected to prohibit contact with the rest of Canada's "first family of terrorism."
 
Whereas, with Avi Lewis, you'd also get, in between bouts of camp-following protests, his wife Naomi Klein. All things considered, Khadr's not looking so bad after all.

Eye on a Crazy Planet readers overwhelmingly oppose mandatory voting laws

Some countries have mandatory voting laws and whenever we have an election in North America, someone always brings up the subject of whether we should follow the example of countries such as Australia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and about eight others that actually enforce such laws.

Canadians and Americans have so far shown no significant interest in passing mandatory voting laws. The suggestion is usually an extreme reaction by those who have some inordinate concern about the lack of voter participation.

The most recent Eye on a Crazy Planet poll shows readers are opposed to mandatory voting laws by a 2.5 to 1 ratio.

As the recent municipal election in Toronto has taught us, when the election is interesting, voters will turn out. Although even in a very contentious, controversial election such as that, there was still less than 60% voter turnout.

But the fact remains that while voting is a citizen's right in a free country, so is not voting. It's a statement, and it shouldn't require citizens to be forced by the state to inconvenience themselves by appearing at a polling station to declare their lack of interest in voting in a particular election.

There are elections in which I haven't voted. It was my way of saying "all these candidates are a bunch of jerks and I don't want to participate in any of them getting power."

And frankly, low voter participation never bothered me. Why is it that some people derive some sense of satisfaction knowing that people who have no interest and little knowledge of public affairs or current events have selected those who make the choices that will affect society at large?

We're probably better off that lots of people aren't interested enough in the political system to vote. What would happen if these people who lack either the interest, knowledge, or motivation to exercise their right to their democratic franchise were compelled to use it. Would we have better leaders, or leaders chosen by an even less informed segment of society?

As far as I'm concerned, our system is working fine. I may not agree with the outcome of every election, but I am comfortable in knowing that people are voting out of choice and not compulsion.

Eye on a Crazy Planet Poll Results: It's a tie between Lightfoot and The Guess Who

The most recent Eye on a Crazy Planet poll asked which is the best Canadian Rock/pop group or musician of all time. Included were Anne Murray, Blue Rodeo, Leonard Cohen, Celine Dion and others, but in the finally tally, it was a tie between The Guess Who and Gordon Lightfoot.

So in honor of the winners we proudly present:

Poll results: If the NDP or Green party ever gets into power, buy distillery stocks

Actually, if the NDP gets into power, you might not want to buy shares in anything in Canada, since the stock market might collapse and there is a faction of that party that wants to do away with private ownership.

The most recent (highly unscientific) Eye on a Crazy Planet Poll asked "If the only two parties running in the next Canadian election were the Green Party and the NDP, how would you vote?"

The other two poll options were "don't know" and  "would stay home on election day and get drunk.'

While the Greens narrowly out-polled the NDP, both were dwarfed by the 80% of respondents who said that if those were the only choices, they'd stay home and spend election day getting plastered.

New poll puts Rob Ford back on top in Toronto mayoral race

The poll was conducted on Thursday night, the day after trailing candidate Rocco Rossi withdrew from the race.

The poll shows support for each of the candidates as follows:

•Rob Ford: 44%

•George Smitherman: 38%

•Joe Pantalone: 16%

•Other candidates: 2%

•Undecided: 16%

It’s in contrast to an Ipsos Reid poll completed before Mr. Rossi withdrew and released on Wednesday that showed Mr. Smitherman with a narrow lead of 31%, followed by Rob Ford at 30%, Mr. Pantalone at 11% and Mr. Rossi at 4%.

It looks like enough people remembered that a vote for Smitherman is like an endorsement of Dalton McGuinty's mismanagement of the province and of Smitherman's incompetence as McGuinty's Minister of Health.

Yes, President Bush, America does miss you

From England's The Telegraph:

Several months ago a huge billboard appeared near Wyoming, Minnesota, with a beaming photo of George W. Bush with the caption “Miss me yet?” The answer to that question is clearly yes, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, which shows the former president staging a remarkable political recovery despite having largely disappeared from public life since leaving office:

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.

“Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush’s name while campaigning this year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

This has to be one of the most extraordinary political comebacks in decades.And as this week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll showed, nearly 25 percent of Democrats now believe “a return to Bush’s policies would be good,” a staggeringly high figure

 Read the rest here

Marc Garneau: The Future of the Canadian Liberal Party?

Marc Garneau and his team do not want this story published.

I know that because his media representative explicitly told me so.

Eye on a Crazy Planet recently ran a poll asking readers who they would like to see as the leader of the Canadian Liberal Party. The poll was unscientific and the response was much lower than the previous poll asking about whether the US should bomb Iran (a resounding 'yes' from a big majority of you on that one).

This poll very intentionally listed only 3 candidates by name. That was because there is a dearth of potential leaders who excite the public among the group who have vied for the top position in the Liberal party since Stephane Dion's unsuccessful term which began in 2006.

Two in the poll were the ones most frequently associated with the current Liberal leadership, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, and a third, Quebce MP for the riding of Westmount--Ville-Marie, Quebec, Marc Garneau.

While none polled well, Garneau polled better than either Ignatieff and Rae. And looking to the future, the Liberals need to consider looking past the leadership of Michael Ignatieff.

Ignatieff is an intelligent, honest leader with sound policies. He is also uncharismatic and has failed to excite the Canadian electorate.

Bob Rae is a nice guy. He's a smart guy.His policies are thoughtful and reasonable. Enough time has transpired since his unsuccessful term as Premier of Ontario that a lot of that baggage has been shed, along with his old NDP membership card. But in my assessment, his time to lead the Liberal Party of Canada has passed. That time should have been in 2006 when the Liberals made the incomprehensible choice of Dion. The reactions to Rae nation-wide suggest that he could not win a national election.

So who does the Liberal Party have? None of the leadership contenders from '06 show any real promise. The two strongest of that crop, among those not already mentioned, would be Gerrard Kennedy and Ken Dryden. Kennedy's policy positions have always made him a much better fit for the NDP than the Liberals, but his ambition took him to the party where he felt he could achieve more power. He would be a disastrous Prime Minister.

Ken Dryden's personality as a politician is a lot like that of...well.. a goalie.He is exceptionally bright, but as a speaker is dull and uninspiring. As in his previous life, he's great at preventing the other side from scoring goals against him. But winning a game requires more than just not losing. It requires someone who can score and Ken has never been that guy.

There are some who have mentioned Justin Trudeau. Trudeau the younger has none of his father's adroit political skills. He's basically a name and a good haircut.

Marc Garneau, the Liberals' Critic for Industry, Science and Technology, is someone who may represent the best hope the Liberals have for regaining the national leadership in the foreseeable future.

He has the obvious necessary criteria of intellect, speaking ability and thoughtful policy positions.

But he has a lot more. All the successful Liberal Prime Ministers since Confederation, with the sole exception of William Lyon Mackenzie King, were Quebecois, like Garneau. For the Liberals to be able to get an effective majority, they need to be able to win over a large part of the Quebec electorate and Garneau, who is the chair of the Quebec Liberal Caucus, can do that.

But he also has to be able to win over much of the rest of Canada and as Canada's first astronaut, Garneau is and was a national hero before his entry into politics. He is a popular figure across the country who already has had two schools in Ontario named after him. The Liberals under Garneau would be able to win seats in every province, and could easily take their traditional majorities in both Quebec and Ontario. Something that no Liberal has done since prior to the 1993 election.

It should be clear that Garneau's staff has emphatically denied that they have ambitions or are thinking this way right now. They say they are solely focussed on being part of Michael Ignatieff's team and that they fully support his vision and the way he has put together a team of great parliamentarians who will be able to go out and win the next election.

They also say the think Mr. Ignatieff is doing a "great" job as Liberal Party Leader.

Okay. But for the sake of argument, let's assume the polls are right and the rest of Canada doesn't agree with that assessment of Mr. Ignatieff.

If that's the case, then while Marc Garneau may not be thinking of positioning himself for the Liberal leadership, he should be.