We, the delegates of the secession movements represented at the Second North American Secessionist Convention, acknowledging our differences, yet agree on the following truths:

1.    The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead.
2.    The privileges, monopolies, and powers that private corporations have won from government threaten everyone’s health, prosperity, and liberty, and have already killed American self-government by the people.
3.    The power of corporations endangers liberty as much as government power, especially when they are combined as in the American Empire.
4.    Liberty can only survive if political power is returned from faraway and self-interested centers to local communities and states.
5.    The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic, but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.
6.    The states of the American union are and of right ought to be, free and self-governing.
7.    Without secession, liberty and self-government can never be sustained, and diversity among human societies can never survive.
    

     This was the statement that the 2007 Secessionist Convention released, explaining their list of beliefs.  Normally I would not give this a second thought, but I was struck by two things:

1.) I actually agree with most of these statements.  I know, scary. 

2.) The sudden rise in the number of secessionists/ secessionist sympathizers.

     Dan Carlin was discussing this Convention, and the resulting declaration and he started rattling off what many would consider, fairly disturbing statistics.  Zogby International conducted the survey and found that roughly 20% of American's believe that a state has the right to peacefully leave the United States, and that roughly the same amount would support a secessionist movement within their own state.  You can see their findings here.

     I found their study fascinating and wanted to get some feed back, so what do you think?  How would you answer Zogby's Questions (do states have a right to secede, would you support a secessionist movement, etc); then I have a question to add.  Is this idea of Secession a divisive move, or is it a round about way of creating a more community centered mindset?

Here's two major pollsters with conflicts of interest:

Zogby International

Rasmussen Reports

Analysis by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Arkansas and Arizona are moving from the tossup into the red column. South Dakota and, significantly, Florida, are now being looked at as too close to call.

This is the rendering of Zogby International, which has presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama with leads in states that would give him 273 electoral votes in November, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain with leads in states that would give him 146 votes, with the polling in states with the remaining 119 votes, including Virginia, considered too close to call at this time.

Virginia is among those in the too-close-to-call category, even as the latest Zogby poll has Obama with a 44 percent-to-39 percent lead over McCain in the Commonwealth.

North Carolina and South Carolina are also listed as too close to call, with Obama ahead 47 percent-to-38 percent in North Carolina and by a razor-thin 42 percent-to-41 percent margin in South Carolina.

The lead for McCain in tossup Florida is 43 percent-to-39 percent.

"Seniors and whites provide McCain a cushion over Obama. However, no one should count votes here too soon," pollster John Zogby said by way of explanation of the too-close-to-call designation for Florida.

Even as Zogby has Obama with a strong working margin overall, that same warning about counting votes too soon applies across the board as well.

"For the time being, Obama maintains the edge and has the strength of a majority of electoral votes. His triumphant foreign trip allows him to continue to define this race. But too many of these states are close and a sizable number are undecided or choosing a third party candidate. So there is a lot of fluidity," Zogby said.

UTICA, New York — July 23, 2008 — One in five American adults — 22% — believe that any state or region has the right to "peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic," a new Middlebury Institute/Zogby International telephone poll shows.

The level of support for the right of secession was consistent in every region in the country, though the percentage was slightly higher in the South (26%) and the East (24%). The figures were also consistent for every age group, but backing was strongest among younger adults, as 40% among those aged 18 to 24 and 24% among those aged 25 to 34 agreed states and regions have secession rights.

Broken down by race, the highest percentage agreeing with the right to secede was among Hispanics (43%) and African-Americans (40%). Among white respondents, 17% said states or regions should have the right to peaceably secede.

Politically, liberal thinkers were much more likely to favor the right to secession for states and regions, as 32% of mainline liberals agreed with the concept. Among the very liberal the support was only slightly less enthusiastic — 28% said they favored such a right. Meanwhile, just 17% of mainline conservatives thought it should exist as an option for states or regions of the nation.

Asked whether they would support a secessionist movement in their own state, 18% said they would, with those in the South most likely to say they would back such an effort. In the South, 24% said they would support such an effort, while 15% in the West and Midwest said the same. Here, too, younger adults were more likely than older adults to be supportive — 35% of those under age 30 would support secession in their state, compared to just 17% of those over age 65. Among African Americans, 33% said they would support secession, compared to just 15% of white adults. The more education a respondent had, the less likely they were to support secession — as 38% of those with less than a high school diploma would support it, compared to just 10% of those with a college degree.

To gouge the extent to which support for secession comes from a sense that the nation's current system is not working, a separate question was asked about agreement that "the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections." Nearly half of respondents agreed with this statement, with 27% who somewhat agreed and 18% who strongly agreed.

The telephone poll, conducted by Zogby International, included 1,209 American adult respondents. It was conducted July 9-13, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.9 per cent.

The sponsor of the poll was the Middlebury Institute, a think tank for "the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination," based in Cold Spring, NY. Their website address is: http://MiddleburyInstitute.org.

For content, contact: Kirkpatrick Sale, Director, Middlebury Institute, at 845-265-3158 or Director@middleburyinstitute.org.

For methodology, contact: Fritz Wenzel, 315-624-0200 ext. 229 or 419-205-0287 or fritz@zogby.com.

Kirkpatrick Sale
Director, Middlebury Institute
MiddleburyInstitute.org

Naquela época, o resultado apontava que o conteúdo se tornaria mais analítico e os jornais gratuitos. Parece que os 10 anos - tempo que 66% dos entrevistados acharam que será necessário para tornar a internet e celulares a forma mais comum de consumo de notícias - está muito mais próximo. E os grandes jornais antenados à isso.

-- Pollster John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, whose insights apply to corporate marketers as well as to Presidential candidates

Desde o advento da internet comercial, em meados dos anos 90, os futurólogos de plantão discutem sobre o que acontecerá com os jornais. Uma pesquisa recente realizada pela Zogby International para o Fórum Mundial de Editores e para a Reuters indicou a tendência dos jornais se tornarem gratuitos e mais analíticos.

Ao todo foram ouvidos 704 executivos de jornais do mundo inteiro, sendo que a maioria se mostrou otimista com o futuro de suas publicações, embora admita que os modelos de negócio ainda precisam de muitos ajustes para se adequarem à era digital.

Para 56% dos entrevistados, as notícias, tanto no meio papel, quanto em on-lines, serão disponibilizadas para o público gratuitamente no futuro. Há cerca de um ano, em levantamento semelhante, a opinião era compartilhada por 48% dos executivos. Outra informação importante é que cerca de 66% acredita que em 10 anos a forma mais comum de consumir notícias será por meio da internet e celulares.

Entre tantos dados, o que realmente está tirando o sono dos executivos é a diminuição constante, e até agora aparentemente irreversível, do número de leitores jovens. Enquanto não se chega a um consenso sobre como reverter a tendência, Kyle Bean, jovem designer norte-americano já ofereceu sua versão sobre o futuro dos livros... 

"Introducing the Zogby family - James, John, and Joseph."

"James (Jim) Zogby is founder of the Arab American Institute and also writes for Huffington Post."

"Before founding the Arab American Institute, Zogby created the Palestine Human Rights Commission as the propaganda arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a terrorist group responsible for murdering thousands, including 11 Israeli athletes, at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The PLO was created in 1964 with the goal of “destroying the Jewish presence in Palestine.”

Like CAIR, Zogby’s Arab American Institute bills itself as an Arab American civil rights organization that spends a great deal of its time squelching criticism of Arab and Islamic terrorism, and inhibiting our government’s efforts to prevent another attack like Sept. 11, 2001."

"Zogby’s rationalization of Hamas and Hizbollah should also raise eyebrows."

"…In the mid-1990s, Zogby stated that it was important to view Hamas terrorism against Israelis as an understandable part of “a cycle” of violence. He stressed the importance of trying “to understand why the [Hamas] perpetrators acted as they did or why there are people whose anger and despair bring them to support this or that crime.” Also in that decade, Zogby extolled the Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon, referring to them as “the Lebanese armed resistance”…source"

"Zogby’s Arab American Institute election web page (screen shot included in case it disappears) includes the transcript of a 2007 address to AAI by Barack Obama, who begins by stating:

“Hello, everyone. Let me begin by congratulating your president and my good friend, Jim Zogby, for his work in putting together this conference. It’s an honor to have his support.”"

"James Zogby is the brother of John Zogby, President and Chief Executive Officer of Zogby International. Brother Jim is also a senior analyst for the company widely recognized for its Zogby Polls. Did you catch that? The founder of pro-Palestinian organizations is a senior analyst at a leading polling organization in the U.S. Could any of James anti-American, pro-Arab bias be reflected in his poll results?"

"The My DD blog asks: Is there a Zogby-Obama connection?

Clinton 27%, Obama 24%, Edwards 21%
Romney 26%, Huckabee 25%, Giuliani 12%

Likely Iowa caucus–goers interviewed Nov. 29–Dec. 1; margin of error +/– 4.4 percentage points

"What is interesting is that no other campaign has made as many requests for Zogby polling data over the years than Penn has made on behalf of Clinton."

Hmmm... Sounds to me like the Clinton camp is upset that a neutral poll is painting a much different picture than the 360-electoral vote landslide that her internal pollsters predicted only two weeks ago.  And now her campaign is responding in the only way they know how... ATTACK!!!

Clinton is no longer the inevitable nominee for the Democrats, and now she doesn't even look like the best candidate to beat the Republicans, as both Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) win or tie in every matchup with those same five Republicans.

So, she's not inevitable and she doesn't beat Republicans... what else does she have to run on... issues?  Maybe.  But first, she just needs to decide where she stands on them...