Brazil’s First Female President Celebrates Victory

SAO PAULO: A former Marxist guerrilla who was tortured and imprisoned during Brazil’s long dictatorship was elected Sunday as president of Latin America’s biggest nation, a country on an economic and political rise.

A statement from the Supreme Electoral Court, which oversees elections, said governing party candidate Dilma Rousseff won the election. When she takes office Jan. 1, she will be Brazil’s first female leader.

With nearly 95 percent of the ballots counted, Rousseff had 55.6 percent compared to 44.4 percent for her centrist rival, Jose Serra, the electoral court said.

Rousseff, the hand-chosen candidate of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, won by cementing her image to Silva’s, whose policies she promised to continue.

She will lead a nation on the rise, a country that will host the 2014 World Cup and that is expected to be the globe’s fifth-largest economy by the time it hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics. It has also recently discovered huge oil reserves off its coast.

Rousseff was already speaking like a president-elect when she cast her vote Sunday morning.

”Starting tomorrow we begin a new stage of democracy,” Rousseff, 62, said in the southern city of Porto Alegre, where she cast her vote. ”I will rule for everyone, speak with all Brazilians, without exception.”

Silva used his 80 percent approval ratings to campaign incessantly for Rousseff, his former chief of staff and political protege. She never has held elected office and lacks the charisma that transformed Silva from a one-time shoeshine boy into one of the globe’s most popular leaders.

Silva was barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive four-year term. He has batted down chatter in Brazil’s press that he is setting himself up for a new run at the presidency in 2014, which would be legal.

Despite Rousseff’s win, many voters don’t want ”Lula,” as he is popularly known, to go away.

“If Lula ran for president 10 times, I would vote for him 10 times,” said Marisa Santos, a 43-year-old selling her homemade jewelry on a Sao Paulo street. “I’m voting for Dilma, of course, but the truth is it will still be Lula who will lead us.”

Polling ends, vote count continues at PP-160

LAHORE: Polling at PP-160 Lahore has been concluded while the vote count is being underway at 145 polling stations setup in the constituency for Thursdays by-election, ARY NEWS reported.

Read more from the original source:
Polling ends, vote count continues at PP-160

nikki haley for governor of sc

The race for the GOP nomination for South Carolina governor has gotten nastier and nastier. Since Nikki Haley showed a significant lead in the polls opponents have gone out of their way to drag her name through the mud. Most recently, state senator John Knotts Jr. took a racial stab at Haley while appearing on a political talk show called “Pub Politics”.

While on the show Knotts said, “We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need another one in the Governor’s mansion.”

Haley is of Indian Sikh decent, although a Christian convert according to reports. Knotts later apologized, although, he followed up his apology by continuing to attack Haley saying she is pretending to be someone she is not.
The poll shows Haley drawing 43% of the vote in the four-way field. The next most popular Republican, Rep. Gresham Barrett, drew 23% of the vote. The poll, taken Saturday and Sunday among 998 likely primary voters, comes amidst multiple accusations of infidelity from men who claimed to have extra-marital affairs with Haley.

The poll suggests South Carolina Republicans are unmoved by the allegations, and have decided to take Haley at he word that nothing happened with either of the men who have claimed inappropriate relationships with her.

Heading into tomorrow’s primary, the TPM Poll Average for the full GOP field shows Haley with 31.1% of the vote, state Attorney General Henry McMaster with 17.6%, Barrett with 16.8% and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer with 14.9%.

Haley is a prime example of this new, more genuine crop of grassroots conservative candidates, who in trying to cut through the BS has found even more of it lobbed her way and by her own party—and yet she still keeps coming out on top. The Republican establishment, whether at the national or state level, has never taken conservatism seriously and now that so many grassroots candidates and voters are, the old guard is desperate to play catch up. Too late. It’s time to mow down the old guard and let conservatism, finally, take root.

Joseph Cao, Joseph Cao Louisiana

Joseph Cao,  Joseph Cao Louisiana :One Republican lawmaker out of 177 crossed party lines to support the health care reform legislation offered by Democrats. Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, the Louisiana Republican who hails from a decidedly Democratic New Orleans district, voted yea on the final passage of legislation.

Joseph Cao,  Joseph Cao Louisiana:One Republican lawmaker out of 177 crossed party lines to support the health care reform legislation offered by Democrats.

Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, the Louisiana Republican who hails from a decidedly Democratic New Orleans district, voted yea on the final passage of legislation. He joined 219 Democrats to make the final margin 220 to 215 in favor of reform’s passage.

Cao was a major (and possibly the lone) target for Democrats hoping to get even a semblance of bipartisan support for the bill. He said after the vote that he had obtained a “commitment from President Obama that he and I will work together to address the critical health care issues of Louisiana.”

In the past, Cao has been touted by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) as “the future” of the GOP. Republicans clearly went the distance to keep him in the fold for the health care vote. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who promised protesters at a Tea Party rally this week that “not one Republican will vote for this bill,” was standing beside Cao as the historic vote unfolded.

Here’s video of the moment the bill passed:

After the vote, Cao put out a long statement explaining his vote and emphasizing the fact that he also voted in favor of a key anti-abortion amendment, presumably to try to stave off the heavy incoming attacks from conservative activists.

Of his vote, Cao said: “Tonight, I voted to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion and to deliver access to affordable health care to the people of Louisiana.

Cao said: “I read the versions of the House [health reform] bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding – if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children. [...]

Cao said: “Today, I obtained a commitment from President Obama that he and I will work together to address the critical health care issues of Louisiana including the FMAP crisis and community disaster loan forgiveness, as well as issues related to Charity and Methodist Hospitals. And, I call on my constituents to support me as I work with him on these issues.

Cao said: “I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people. My vote tonight was based on my priority of doing what is best for my constituents.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/08/joseph-cao-health-cares-l_n_349779.html&cp

Disarray In Pak Taliban: Holbrooke

WASHINGTON: US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke has said that the apparent death of Mehsud appears to have thrown Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal regions into disarray.

Speaking at the liberal Center for American Progress, the U.S. envoy said: “Everyone is thrashing around. There are unconfirmed reports of a shootout during a leadership meeting.”

Holbrooke said the reported killing of Pakistan-based Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud by a CIA drone was a major victory for the U.S., Pakistani and Afghan governments.

“The end of Baitullah Mehsud, as we all know, is a very big deal,” Holbrooke said. “Baitullah Mehsud was sort of like an independent subsidiary of Al Qaeda.”

Regarding upcoming elections in Afghanistan, he warned that Afghanistan’s closely watched presidential election may have a muddled result.

“There’ll be disputes, as there are in American elections. We only picked a senator from Minnesota just a few weeks ago after rather lengthy delay,” Richard Holbrooke said.

If neither Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who’s seeking re-election, nor any of the other candidates gets 50 percent of the vote, the Afghan constitution requires a run-off. But it could take days or weeks just for the first count of the first round of votes in the largely undeveloped country, which Holbrooke noted is the world’s poorest outside of Africa.

The U.S. envoy said that thousands of outside observers will be in Afghanistan to assess the vote, but that some level of disagreement about the results is still likely.

“Will there be challenge to the elections there are in every other democracy? I think we should assume those,” he said.

Asked who’ll ultimately assess the legitimacy of the election, Holbrooke said, “It ends up being the media…All of what happens in any distant places is, in the end, reduced to the simple headlines of media.”

Holbrooke declined to comment on reports that U.S. commanders in the region are on the verge of requesting more troops. A “vast array” of civilian programs to boost economic development, agriculture and the police are waiting for the election to be settled, he said.

On the subject of timelines, Holbrooke seemed to take a different tack than a British military official who recently suggested NATO troops might remain in Afghanistan for decades.

“The military part of this struggle with American troops is not an open-ended event,” Holbrooke said. “But our assistance – our civilian assistance is going to continue for a long time.”

The Obama administration is about to announce formal benchmarks to assess progress in Afghanistan, but Holbrooke suggested that the focus on so-called “metrics” had gotten a bit excessive.

“I would say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said: “We’ll know it when we see it.”

The effort to strengthen the central and regional governments in Afghanistan against the Taliban insurgency would be aided by the Obama administration’s decision to lift some security rules that made it difficult for U.S. diplomats and development personnel to leave the fortified U.S. embassy compound in Kabul, Holbrooke said.

“You no longer need 72-hour prior permission to leave the compound,” Holbrooke said. “You don’t need any permission at all – you just notify people where you’re going.”

“It made no sense to any of us when we came in,” he explained. “We send people over there, and we put them under restraints—they can’t work…We have to protect them, but we are doing it to give them much more discretion.”