Are Republicans too pessimistic about the economy? I put this question to Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., this week, and it would be hard to describe his response as optimistic. The senator trash-talked Vice President Joe Biden's recent defense of the stimulus in The New York Times, and he warned that any economic rebound will be short-lived because of the runaway spending-and-borrowing plans of the Obama administration.
In an effort to defuse a national controversy, President Obama is hosting a black Harvard professor and the policeman who arrested him at the White House today, but just 30% of U.S. voters give the president good or excellent marks for his handling of the situation over the past week.
In his struggle to change the nation's health care system, Barack Obama again faces certain obstacles that almost stopped his amazing march to the presidency. Aside from the Washington chattering class and the right-wing media, which always oppose progressive reform, Mr. Obama is losing his grip on the middle class and working families in swing states. He is losing Democratic senators and members of Congress in places like Florida and Arkansas. He is losing the propaganda war with his professorial style of explanation.
The National Football League on Monday partially reinstated Michael Vick after his 18-month prison term for running a dogfighting ring, but Americans are closely divided over whether it’s a good idea for the league to let the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback play again.
Aura dazzles, but argument gets things done. Consider the debate on the Democrats' health care bill and the increasingly negative response to Barack Obama's performance.
Thirty-four percent (34%) of likely voters now believe the United States is heading in the right direction, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s up three points over the past week and ties the level found during the first week of July.
So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation’s independent central banking system. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public.
Ben Bernanke’s unprecedented appearance at a town hall forum this week is part of the Federal Reserve Board chairman’s increasing public outreach, and 52% of Americans think it’s good for the economy for Bernanke to be speaking out more.
The daily Rasmussen Reports Prediction Challenge for Wednesday focuses on an experimental vaccine for swine flu.
You just have to see the picture of her: a girl on the verge, finding her style, raising her voice, about to embark on a life she could barely yet imagine. This summer she was supposed to volunteer helping homeless drug addicts on Skid Row. Instead, according to police, she was killed by one.
Nearly one-out-of-two U.S. voters (49%) now say the nation’s best days are in the past, a five-point jump from last month and the highest level of pessimism on this question in a year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whatever her other capacities, demonstrated last week that she is a master at the poetic art of haiku -- the Japanese poem form that encapsulates in three or fewer lines of 17 or fewer syllables a larger thought or image.
The daily Rasmussen Reports Prediction Challenge for Tuesday focuses on the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates.
Support for Republican and Democratic congressional candidates changed little this week in the latest edition of the Generic Ballot.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains America’s best-known – and least-liked - congressional leader, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of Americans now say interest rates will be higher a year from now, a 20-point jump from April.
Americans are fairly evenly divided on the health care reform proposals working their way through Congress, but most remain convinced that the plans will raise costs and hurt the quality of the care they receive.
The video features an angry woman in red, armed with a birth certificate and a small American flag, scolding Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., at a town meeting. She is angry, she said, because President Obama "is not an American citizen. He is a citizen of Kenya."
The popular TV series "Weeds" is about a widowed suburban mother who deals pot to preserve her family's cushy California dream. Not a few Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state. California has legalized medical marijuana, its cannabis crop is valued at $17 billion a year, and people there smoke pot openly. But the state can't collect a penny of revenues from the enormous enterprise.
Confidence in the U.S. banking system has fallen again despite billions in federal bailout funds and record profits being declared by two of Wall Street’s top financial firms.
