Overview for News

Obama's Surprisingly Big Base

The downgrade of the national debt, sagging approval ratings and better poll numbers for Mitt Romney are giving many Republicans hope for a victory in the 2012 elections. Given the inherent differences between elections, I wouldn’t count on current polls or anything else (including what I’m about …

Written by Eli Lehrer on Monday August 8, 2011

Medicare's Disastrous Bidding Process

In the Weekly Standard , Eli Lehrer discusses a little understood but deeply flawed process that Medicare is using to bid on certain medical equipment. The consequences of the flawed system may lead to higher healthcare costs and lower life expectancies: In the trial areas, problems have …

Written by FrumForum Editors on Monday August 8, 2011

Why Companies Won't Hire

In my column for CNN, I discuss some of the reasons why very few companies are currently hiring: Even if we avoid a second recessionary dip, we're stuck on a very, very disappointing path. Call it the 1936 parallel. From 1933 to 1936, the U.S. economy grew strongly, almost 10% a year. When …

Written by David Frum on Monday August 8, 2011

Obama's Self-Destructive Optimism

A simple theory of why Obama didn't come out fighting in 2009: he expected an economic turnaround in four years. My co-bloggers John Sides and Josh Tucker responded yesterday to a recent newspaper article in which psychologist Drew Westen argues that Barack Obama made a mistake by making …

Written by Andrew Gelman on Monday August 8, 2011

What the Voters Want

Do Americans want more money from Big Government? Mickey Kaus insists no , citing a column by Michael Barone, who in turn relies on research by Stanley Greenberg . But as the evidence passes from Greenberg to Barone to Kaus, a fascinating game of broken-telephone is played. Greenberg …

Written by David Frum on Monday August 8, 2011

Res Judicata: Americans Will Do the Jobs

“On lesser days, unmentionable objects block the huge grates in the sewer channels. The workers descend knee deep into the muck and scrape at the dripping clogs. The gunk drips to their shoulders and splashes on their faces, working its way into pores and psyches.” This is how the New York …

Written by Howard Foster on Monday August 8, 2011

Inside Bachmann's Brain

Where is Michele Bachman coming from? What does the latest Tea Party champion really stand for? Ryan Lizza attempts an answer in a em> New Yorker profile.

Written by David Frum on Monday August 8, 2011

Bachmann's Shameless Response to the Downgrade

Michele Bachmann seems to be competing for the heavily contested title of Most Shameless Politician. As the leader of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, she may bear more responsibility for the unprecedented downgrade of the US credit rating than any other individual. So what …

Written by Andrew Pavelyev on Saturday August 6, 2011

Canada's Uneasy Quiet

My column in today's National Post expresses worry whether Canada's relative prosperity can continue to survive global economic turbulence: Canada increased its exports by $26.7-billion in 2010 over 2009. Almost 80% of that increase was driven by sales of automotive products into the U.S. …

Written by David Frum on Saturday August 6, 2011

My Life at the Bottom of the Food Chain

I have a friend who has recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in History. I've been living with him this past summer, and he has been unemployed for most of it. About a month ago, he came home happy. He had found a job at an upscale restaurant in the city. After a bit of …

Written by Daniel Alexandre Portoraro on Saturday August 6, 2011

Dysfunctional Politics Have a Price

S&P has now downgraded the US government from AAA to AA+, a historic downgrade. The effects of this downgrade will no doubt echo throughout the US and global economy. Zero Hedge posts the full text of the S&P statement. Contrary to what you might read in some quarters of the media , …

Written by Fred Bauer on Friday August 5, 2011

Rob Lowe: Talking ’Bout My Generation

I am a keen consumer of gossip magazines, the trashier and more lurid the better, but I don’t usually bother with celebrity memoirs. Too many of them fall into over-familiar categories: “I Rose, I Flamed Out, Now I’m Back”; “Dropping Names Nobody Remembers”; or the most worthless of them all, …

Written by Danielle Crittenden on Friday August 5, 2011

How Politics Imitates Television

This month, Frum Forum is celebrating the 40th and 10th anniversaries of two TV events that were, in their wide-ranging effect, as big a "game change" in what we watch as Obama vs. Palin was in politics. Forty years ago, CBS redefined the TV landscape with its notorious 1971 "Rural Purge." …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday August 5, 2011

The Prowl: Can I Lobby a Guy I Rejected?

So once again, despite my best efforts, my personal life has unduly complicated my professional life. My ongoing efforts to keep these two spheres of my being from overlapping are truly failing in a spectacular way - so much that I am no longer quite convinced that this can even be done. A few …

Written by Vivian Darkbloom on Friday August 5, 2011

The Fat Diaries: Can Kids Resist the Sugar Temptation?

I was in Wal*Mart the other day when I caught a glimpse of a loud group of kids behind me. They were tweens. They wore sports jerseys and I was surprised to see their pants were worn at “regulation” height. Apart from the one kid with the “Predator” dreadlocks, they all looked like clean-cut nice …

Written by Monica Marier on Friday August 5, 2011

Summer Romance: How to Fail 'The Check Dance'

Thank you to everyone who offered much-appreciated advice and responses to my last article . Unfortunately, there are no updates to report involving a budding romance between me and my dreamy trainer, C. Even more unfortunately, my obsessive crush still rages on. Thus far, the only positive …

Written by Vanessa Rodriguez on Friday August 5, 2011

Baseball: The Quirkiest Sport

Since I’m the coauthor of a recent book revolving around baseball’s quirky side, I was delighted to read last month that a minor league pitcher struck out five batters in one inning. Believe it or not, it wasn’t the first time this had happened. The trick had been performed in the very same …

Written by Alan Hirsch on Friday August 5, 2011

Another Conservative Economist Goes Rogue

Carmen Reinhart is the co-author with Kenneth Rogoff of the immensely important history of financial crises, This Time It's Different . (Read it!) She's married to AEI Senior Fellow Vince Reinhart, the former senior Fed official cited in this space yesterday . If the words "free-market …

Written by David Frum on Friday August 5, 2011

Bogus Election Predictions

Like most other systems for predicting the winner of the presidential election using income growth to guess who will win (as Noah Kristula-Green does here ) probably isn’t all that valuable. In fact, no far-in-advance predictor of reelection—not the 13 Keys to the Presidency (which is pretty …

Written by Eli Lehrer on Friday August 5, 2011

Russia's Ugly Spy Tactics

So much for the famed "reset." Eli Lake in The Washington Times reports Russia's campaign of intimidation against American officials, including mysterious break-ins and concocted sex scandals: One example of such intimidation occurred in 2009 against a senior U.S. official in the …

Written by Frum Forum Editors on Friday August 5, 2011