In a recent poll of 345 Kadima voters, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert triumphed over one of his fellow Cabinet members. Asked whom they would prefer to be Kadima’s next candidate for Prime Minister, the voters chose Olmert over the other minister by 8.7% to 5.8%. The only candidates the voters liked better than the current Prime Minister were Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (preferred by only 49.3% of the poll participants); Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz Who Used To Be Something Important In The Army (preferred by 14.5%); None of the Above (11.6%); and Undecided (10.1%).
“This is significant triumph for our Prime Minister over someone whose name, I seem to recall, sounds very much like something used to build interior walls,” said one of Olmert’s remaining unindicted spokesmen. “Who says that Ehud Olmert is the least popular leader in Israel’s history? The numbers show that this simply isn’t quite true.”
An Ehud Olmert political-strategy consultant (who refused to be identified because he was concerned about possible loss of clients) claimed that Olmert’s fifth-place finish was in fact a much better result than it seemed: “Remember that the people who chose ‘None of the Above’ were clearly referring to Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz, since they are the only ones who came out above ‘None of the Above’ in the poll. So these 11.6% of the Kadima electorate obviously prefer Ehud Olmert to Livni and Mofaz; they simply chose a more emphatic way of stating their revulsion to those two, rather than merely stating their obvious preference for Olmert.”
According to the same strategist, those who chose “Undecided” were also in the Olmert camp: “As Prime Minister, Olmert has seen first-hand the results of rash decision-making by earlier Prime Ministers, and has learned that putting off crucial decisions until later – or making Avigdor Lieberman make them and take the blame for them – is the essence of great leadership. Clearly, the Israeli people want an undecided Prime Minister, and Ehud Olmert is their choice for the job.”
Counting all the “Undecided” and “None of the Above” voters as members of the Ehud Olmert camp, the Prime Minister’s popularity among the Kadima electorate is clearly impressive: at over 30%, it is more than double Shaul Mofaz’s support, and well over half the support enjoyed by Tzipi Livni. “Ehud Olmert has shown that he has what the voters want, and momentum is on his side. If elections are held at some point in the future, there is a distinct possibility that he’ll be elected to something,” said Olmert’s spokesman.
Housing Minister Meir Sheetrock® Sheetrit could probably use some cheering up.
That bit about the “undecided prime minister” is the funniest thing I’ve read in quite a while.
Hey, when do we get another post from you? I check and I check and I check, only to be disappointed anew with each click of the mouse. Come on already! 🙂
Olmert has united the left and right in Israel by getting them to agree on the inadequacy of Israel’s current leadership.
🙂
Dry Bones
Israel’s Political Comic Strip Since 1973
While Yaakov K. is absolutely right, one important issue remains unresolved: where the heck is Don R.?
I got an order from a lady I respect that only Don can fulfil…
Hi! Please grab anti-Olmert’s Purim buttons from http://samsonblinded.org/blog/purim_banners.htm
The buttons are free and could be hotlinked. Let’s make some fun of Olmert!
Hi
Please consider writing news pieces or an op-ed for Jewrusalem: Israeli Uncensored News. We strive to present different views and opinions while rejecting political correctness. Ideally, we try to make the news “smart and funny.” Thus, your input is very welcome.
Best,
Alex
http://www.jewrusalem.net/en
what happened to you???? and your cats???
Please don’t scare people like that!
if the choice at the next election is between barak, olmert and netanyahu, will anyone actually leave the comfort of their home to vote?
Well, at least Israeli politics is never boring, right ? I also write about Israel and the Middle East – I would like to invite you to check out my website: http://www.literarycomments.com
Hmm….i don’t know about olmert. But i was here that israeli get bilion dollar from the economy of senjata. is it true?
Demotix- The Citizen Wire
Dear Don,
You’re site is fantastic. We hope you might see a cross over with what we’re launching!
Demotix is a website for user-generated news, and a citizen ‘wire’ service. Think of it like Flickr or YouTube, but only for original photo/video news. You tell us what is going on, we tell the worldwide web and the world’s mainstream media. As of now, http://www.demotix.com is live.
Why are we doing it?
We believe citizen journalism – well-managed – can be a tremendous force in political participation, civil society, and freedom of speech around the world. And we believe the media needs rescuing.
• Only four US newspapers have foreign news desks (the NY Times, LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal), and there are only 141 US foreign correspondents currently working today (in print and broadcast media)
• In the UK, a 2006 study of the broadsheets showed that more than 50% of the news was directly attributable to press releases
• The world’s media (over 90%) relies on the wire services – the Associated Press and Reuters – for their news. But some 80 countries, or 40% of the world’s nations, have no bureau from either agency.
The news is shrinking daily. We hope Demotix can plug that gap, and more.
We hope to be giving a megaphone to the man and woman in the street with a story to tell. We hope to be able to change the news map – bringing real, raw, original information from countries and about issues the mainstream media haven’t touched in years.
Eventually we hope that Demotix will be THE place where anyone in the world can go, in safety, to upload news – major, minor, local, cultural, political, social… We already have agreements with the Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, La Repubblica, Prospect and others – and will now supply them with a daily wire and picture feed of ‘citizen’ news. We have also built partnerships with Amnesty, Reporters Sans Frontieres, Witness and many others.
But we need your help. We want to do in pictures/video what you do for text. If you think there is a cross-over and you like us, please write about us, link to us, spread the news. We’re nothing without contributors, and your readers are exactly whom we want to be reaching out to. We can get their news out to the world, and in the process change what news is reported. And we’ll charge the mainstream media for anything they use, splitting the fees 50:50 with our contributors.
Please be in touch! Are there other ways we might collaborate?
With all thanks
Turi
Turi Munthe
http://www.demotix.com