With less than three weeks until Christmas, just 17% of Americans have finished their holiday shopping. Just three percent (3%) finished their shopping over the past week. Seven percent (7%) had finished shopping before Thanksgiving.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently floated the idea of increasing the federal tax on gasoline as a way to meet Congress’ growing list of transportation projects, but most Americans are cool to the idea.
Despite President Obama’s highly-publicized jobs summit late last week and a slight drop in the national unemployment rate to 10%, Americans remain pessimistic about the jobs situation.
The Senate worked through the weekend on its version of the national health care bill, with President Obama stopping by for a rare Sunday visit, but for the second week in a row, only 41% of U.S. voters favor the health care plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats.
Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.
As soon as President Obama had finished his West Point speech in which he pledged to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, conservative pundits started poking at the president's demeanor and message. Big mistake. If Obama's delivery seemed, well, unenthusiastic, so be it. What is important is that Obama delivered a policy that will keep Afghanistan from devolving into a terror pit. He offered the best plan that conservatives possibly could expect.
Most voters (55%) don’t know enough about Paul Krugman to venture even a soft opinion about him. Those with an opinion are fairly evenly divided—22% favorable and 22% unfavorable. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just one-in-10 voters has a strong opinion about Krugman, with four percent (4%) voicing a Very Favorable opinion and six percent (6%) a Very Unfavorable view.
While most Americans oppose the health care legislation working its way through Congress, most also believe the reform is something the federal government should be dealing with.
President Obama seems to be shifting from one hot potato to the next these days.
With the Mark Sanford scandal still swirling in South Carolina, next year’s race for governor is shaping up to be quite competitive if State Education Superintendent Jim Rex is the Democratic candidate.
People keep asking me whether I agree with the president's troop surge in Afghanistan. I am a lawyer. I know what to do with a hard question: Answer another one that is so similar that even the person asking may not notice you've changed it. So I answer that I absolutely support the president on this one, that I absolutely approve of the process and the decision and the way he's handling his responsibility as commander in chief.
As the most recent Crystal Ball ratings showed, Democrats are benefiting from the equal split of Senate seats up in 2010. Even though Democrats have a large majority of senators, it just so happens that both Democrats and Republicans are defending 19 seats each in the upcoming midterm election, which makes it exceedingly difficult for the GOP to gain enough seats to capture the Senate.
Voters are almost evenly divided over what is the more important goal in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, but most believe President Obama is looking to end the war as quickly as possible.
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday voiced his opposition to legislation calling for regular audits of the Fed’s monetary policies, but 79% of Americans think auditing the Fed is a good idea.
The good news for President Obama is that 53% of voters nationwide support his plan to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Nearly as many (47%) support his plan to begin withdrawing troops from that war-torn country in 18 months.
From now on, the headlines about Afghanistan will be slugged "Obama's War," and perhaps that is fair enough given the president's many endorsements of what he has called a war of necessity. It would be much less fair, however, to ignore the events that led us to this moment, when whatever choice he makes will offer no great guarantee of progress and no small prospect of trouble.
Nearly half (49%) of South Carolina voters say embattled Republican Governor Mark Sanford should not be impeached, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.
"What have you done for me lately?" It's a question that voters implicitly ask politicians, especially ones they have supported and who are seeking their votes again. And it's a question that young voters in particular may be asking Barack Obama, whom they supported by a 66 percent to 32 percent margin 13 months ago.
Fed head Ben Bernanke got hammered today during his reconfirmation hearing in front of the Senate Banking Committee. Jim Bunning was Bernanke’s toughest critic, followed by Richard Shelby, Jim DeMint, and yes, Chris Dodd, the beleaguered committee chair who in all likelihood will be defeated in Connecticut next year.
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is being sharply criticized for his decision as governor of Arkansas to commute the 108-year prison sentence of a man who just last week murdered four police officers.
