SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Australia is the rare major economic power that, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, avoided a recession in 2009. The unemployment rate here is 5.1 percent. Yet the reigning Labor government is as fearful as Washington Democrats -- with a national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent -- of losing big in the next election.
With a bad-blood, confidence-destroying battle royale going on between Team Obama and business, you would think a highly publicized White House jobs summit would have produced some kind of positive announcement that gives a nod to the business point of view.
West Virginia Senate—It is looking very likely that we’ll have a 37th Senate election to noodle about, the extra being held in the Mountain State to choose the successor to the late Senator Robert C. Byrd (D), the longest serving member of Congress in history who passed away on June 28. At first, all indications were that a gubernatorial appointee would fill the seat until November 2012, when Sen. Byrd would have come up for his tenth Senate term. The Secretary of State in West Virginia tentatively ruled so, though West Virginia law is somewhat ambiguous on the point.
With a dozen weeks to go before the 2010 midterm elections, speculation is rising about the possibility of the Republicans retaking the House. On Sunday, that speculation rose to a fevered pitch when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs conceded during a Meet The Press appearance that there are enough House seats “in play” this November to put control of the chamber at risk.
One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.
When the pollster calls and asks whether I think the country is going in the right direction, I will say "no." When she asks if I approve of the job Congress is doing, I will say "no." And when she follows up with a question on President Obama's performance, I will answer: "Sometimes good, sometimes bad. The guy drives me nuts at times."
The headline for the latest poll says that public confidence in President Obama has sunk to a new low, with a majority of Americans saying they don't trust him to make the best policy choices, especially on the ailing economy. These same voters, surveyed by The Washington Post and ABC News, are even more disdainful of Congress, split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Those numbers may portend a shift in partisan control of the House and a loss of Democratic seats in the Senate if citizens express their anger by punishing incumbents.
When Julia Gillard, 48, orchestrated the ouster of Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whom she replaced, she made history as Australia's first female prime minister. But Gillard is much more than that. Gillard is the rare national leader of a modern country -- in fact, I cannot think of another, male or female -- who is not married and has never been married. Moreover, Gillard has not been a parent, and she's an atheist.
Abraham Lincoln: "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." Lincoln address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Feb. 22, 1861:
The likely (and much deserved) confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court creates an opening for one of the "Top 4" positions in the Justice Department. While there are many qualified candidates, the fact is that Kagan was the only woman in the top ranks at Justice. Even below that, men substantially outnumber women.
HOBART, AUSTRALIA -- California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has been taking a lot of heat for her voting record. Or non-voting record. The former eBay CEO didn't register to vote in California until 2002. She failed to vote in the 2003 recall election. She didn't register as a Republican until 2007. Too bad Whitman didn't spend her business-big-shot years Down Under. In Australia, it's against the law for citizens age 18 or older not to vote.
The United States has shed 2 million factory jobs since 2007, yet many American companies can't find qualified workers to fill their available openings. That's a shocking problem, given the numbers looking for work. But it could also be a break for blue-collar Americans willing to engage their brains. For them, there is a road from unemployment to a good living, and it may go through a local community college.
Home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in history, but house sales are plunging. Banks can make money easily because of the Federal Reserve's low interest rates, but they're not making many loans. Major corporations are sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash, but they're not investing.
In a column published last week in The New York Times, Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman condemns recent attempts to inject some common sense into what has become an epidemic of mindless government growth in America and around the world.
While many people spent the July 4th weekend cooling off at the beach, the summer heat is still being felt in a number of marquee House matchups. As a result a few ratings changes are in order, as we explain below. As always you can visit the Crystal Ball website anytime for a complete chart of all competitive House races.
With just four months to go before the voting in November, many races have settled in—falling into the D or R column as Solid, Likely, or Lean. But then, there are those stubborn toss-ups. Some are unmovable since the primaries haven’t yet been held and the nominees in one or both parties are unknown. Still others haven’t gelled because candidates aren’t spending money or voters stubbornly refusing to focus on politics in the middle of a hot summer. (How dare they?)
In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell wrote an opinion in the Bakke case asserting that the need for diversity could justify racial preferences in university admissions. No other justice joined this opinion, but because the other justices were split 4-4, Powell's opinion decided the case, and in time his argument has been embraced by a majority of the court. A regrettable result, in my view, but a consequential one.
The Obama administration is challenging Arizona's tough new immigration law, and that's too bad. It's not that the Arizona law is good policy, because it isn't. And it's not that President Obama doesn't have a better idea on immigration reform, because he does. Democrats should know that they play with fire by going after a law that reflects the public's utter frustration with illegal immigration.
So often are the certitudes and pronouncements of the chattering class simply mistaken that they must always be treated with deep skepticism. That is especially true when anything important is at stake -- from the arguments for invading Iraq several years ago to today's economic stagnation. Whatever the conventional wisdom tells you must be true is almost certainly false.
The Afghan War may be the first one we lose primarily because our civilian leadership did not understand the effect of its public words on our government, our allies and our enemy. Throughout the summer and fall of 2009, as experts were getting more pessimistic about success in Afghanistan, President Obama began having second thoughts. He was conflicted between his campaign statement that Afghanistan was the good and necessary war and his supporters' concerns that America not get bogged down in another unwinnable Vietnam.
