Public Policy Polling: Palin trails Sheen with independents

via publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com

We've found a lot of brutal poll numbers for Sarah Palin so far in 2011: down in South Dakota, down in South Carolina, down in Arizona, only up by 1 point in Texas, only up by 1 point in Nebraska to name a few. But this has to be the worst- independent voters say they would support Charlie Sheen over Palin for President by a 41/36 margin. Seriously.
Despite her deficit with independents Palin does lead Sheen 49-29 overall. We also tested Barack Obama against Sheen and the President leads 57-24.
Sheen is one of the most unpopular figures we've ever polled on. 10% of Americans rate him favorably to 67% with a negative opinion of him. The only people we've ever found worse numbers for are Rod Blagojevich in Illinois (an 8/83 favorability spread), Jesse Jackson Jr. in Illinois (a 10/73 favorability), and Levi Johnston in Alaska (a 6/72 favorability). Sheen's -57 spread ties what we found for John Edwards in North Carolina the last time we polled him (15/72).
Sheen's unpopularity is pretty universal across party lines so it says something about the level of polarization in the country right now that Democrats would support him by a 44-24 margin for President over Palin and that Republicans would support him 37-28 over Obama. People may not have any respect for Sheen but they still think he'd be a better alternative than their opposing party's leading figure.
Obviously Charlie Sheen's not going to run for the White House but the Palin numbers are one of the more interesting benchmarks yet pointing to just how minuscule her chance at the Presidency would be even if she did decide to get into the race.

Posted via email from poobumwee's posterous

Coca to be Traded Freely in the US?

Yesterday I learned that Condi was in Columbia spruiking a Free Trade Deal between Yanqui Agribusiness and the Columbian Government Dictatorship. WTF I thought. Why would the US, the largest market for the the biggest cash export from Columbia want to do a deal with them. I didn't know that there were any duties on cocaine?

Seems it is the same old thing. America developing agreements with countries to benefit their agribusiness sector and for the good old boys who run things in Columbia to get richer.

Foreign investor rights--a typical pro-corporate, so-called "free trade," measure--would tighten the grip that large corporations have on the country's natural resources and launch a large-scale plundering of those resources such as timber and minerals. Without a government willing to nationalize such resources or, at the very least, make sure that the benefits of the commercial exploitation are widely spread, you can be sure that huge riches will flow to a handful of people, while most of the population is left with pennies.

Well who would have thought.

The plans would seem to encourage poorer farmers to grow coca rather than to get into other crops.

The FTA's grant of duty-free U.S. access for flowers and certain other commercial-scale agri-export crops will certainly put pressure on Colombia to expand agribusiness plantations for such exports. These plantations have been a disaster for the regular farmer. Indeed, under pressure in the 1990s from international lending organizations, Colombia implemented a program of "economic openness," which unleashed a tide of traditional cereals, rice and oats pouring into the country. As a result, 1.1 million hectares of cultivated land were lost. Arenas says that 300,000 farmers, then, turned to cultivating coca. "So, now, with FTA, they want to lower every tariff to zero which will devastate every farmer and make them grow coca,

So much of Americas foreign policy seems to be counter intuitive. What drugs were they on when this was all pulled together?