Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued that “the problem with Washington, they don’t make deals, it’s all gridlock” and “I’ll get everybody together. We’ll make great deals for the country” on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.

s China's "Golden Week," a seven-day public holiday celebrating the country's national day, came to a close on Wednesday, Chinese citizens flocked home -- at the same time. Around 2 p.m. on Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of northbound vehicles got stuck on the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau (Jinggang'ao) expressway, People's Daily China reported. The 1,400-mile-long expressway runs between Beijing and Shenzhen, and connects along the way to other major cities in the Hebei, Henan and Guangdong provinces.

President Obama signed a three-month highway bill Friday while chastising Congress for failing to approve long-term transportation funding and other legislative business before lawmakers’ summer vacation. “We can’t keep on funding transportation by the seat of our pants,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s a bad way for the U.S. government to do business. I guarantee you that’s not how China, Germany and other countries around the world handle their infrastructure.”

Scott Walker, along with Ted Cruz and perhaps a handful of others on the Right, understands the pernicious nature of the kind of “bipartisanship” that has give us the likes of Poppy and W. Bush, and is currently exemplified in the current entitled scion, Jeb. It’s a terrible, undemocratic idea: The town hall attendee asked for the microphone to pose this question to newly announced presidential candidate Scott Walker: Americans are fed up with the partisan gridlock in Washington, so what would he do as president to “end the partisanship and parochialism that is really stifling this great country”? Walker...

The Obama Boom is finally here. Gross domestic product grew by a healthy 5 percent in the third quarter, the strongest growth we’ve seen since 2003. Consumer spending looks as if it’s going to be strong in 2015. Unemployment numbers have looked good. Buying power is up. And the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 18,000 for the first time ever. All good things. So what happened? Here’s David Axelrod on Twitter: “Note: The quarter before Obama took office, the U.S. economy SHRUNK by 8.9 percent, worst since 1930. Last quarter it GREW by 5 percent, best since 2003.” Note:...

The Obama Boom is finally here. Gross domestic product grew by a healthy 5 percent in the third quarter, the strongest growth we’ve seen since 2003. Consumer spending looks like it’s going to be strong in 2015, unemployment numbers have looked good, buying power is up and the stock market closed at 18,000 for the first time ever. All good things. So what happened? Note: The quarter before Obama took office, the U.S. economy SHRUNK by 8.9%, worst since 1930. Last quarter it GREW by 5%, best since 2003.— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) December 24, 2014 Note: Contrasting the most severe...

On election night, TV talking heads watching the Republican wave/surge/tidal flow across the country earnestly looked at each other and asked if the new Republican Senate majority can work with the president and overcome the gridlock that has so turned off voters. Umm...what? Yeah, I know Americans keep telling pollsters that they can't stand "partisan bickering" and really hate Congress for its inability to get things done. But there's a strong hint that they're regurgitating sentiments that all of those right-thinking pundits tell them that they're supposed to mouth. After all, those same Americans just handed control of the Senate...

A cardinal fact of American politics that has emerged during the Obama years is that demographic forces are slowly and inexorably driving the electorate leftward. But the Republican Party has its own corresponding advantages. Its voters turn out for elections reliably, not just in spasms of quadrennial excitement. They are dispersed efficiently in rural and exurban House districts, and reside disproportionately in small states that have more per capita voting power in the Senate... The midterm elections...exposed a grim reality for liberals. The Democratic presidential majority is a fragile asset, and its value as a driver of positive change is...

By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult. Ninety million sounds like a lot, but that means that less than 40 percent of the electorate will bother to vote... The main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president, the only government official (other than the powerless vice president) elected by the entire nation. Since the end of World War II, the president’s party has on average...

I decided to run for the United States Senate to represent Kansas as an Independent because I know that Washington is broken. We’re sending the worst of both parties to Washington and we know it. For too long, we’ve elected politicians who continue this broken system that caters to special interests and the extremists in their own parties rather than solving problems of the people who elect them. Unfortunately all that’s led to is a Congress that can’t get anything done. (SNIP) Finally, our policy must also be fair to taxpayers. The 11 million undocumented individuals in America should be...

Blackburn told TheBlaze that 356 bills made it through the House and are languishing in the Senate. Additionally, according to the congresswoman, 98 percent of those bills were passed with bipartisan support. She also pointed out that 200 of the bills were passed in the House with unanimous support from the entire chamber and more than 100 were passed with 75% support of House Democrats. To make her point that the House is working, but the Senate is where the obstruction exists, Blackburn printed all of the bills that the House has passed and stacked them on a desk with...

resident Obama had a lot of lofty goals in his State of the Union speech earlier this year. He declared it would be a ‘year of action’ - meaning if Congress didn’t get things done, he would. Yet, seven months later, he doesn’t have much to justify his ambitious rhetoric. Minimum Wage Obama had hopes to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour for federal contract workers. January 2014: “Say yes! Give America a raise!” (accompanied by a standing ovation.) July 2014: “But despite his renewed calls for lawmakers to broaden pay talks, the federal minimum wage has remained untouched, at...

Bipartisanship is dead. That's the conventional wisdom, and there's a lot of evidence to support it. But there's evidence to the contrary as well. On two important issues, veterans' health and job training, congressional Republicans and Democrats have, with little notice, reached constructive bipartisan agreements. These are both issues on which everyone agrees government should be involved. The country certainly owes something to veterans. And no one's proposing to eliminate job training programs altogether. But government is also not doing a good job on either. The Veterans Affairs Department scandals have revealed a culture of lying and incompetence that comes...

The Texas Republican gave an interview to NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell the other day, during which he was asked about political dysfunction in Washington. Without a trace of irony, embarrassment or self-awareness, Cruz placed the blame for political dysfunction solely on Democrats. [SNIP] Agreed, the president’s dismissive balking at a border visit — he disdained a mere “photo op” — was dumb, if only because it offered ammunition to Cruz and company.... ....Second is the current crisis on the southwestern border. There is a fair criticism that the administration waited too long to respond to the flood of unaccompanied minors. But...

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has upset some Democratic senators by backtracking on his commitment to put spending bills on the floor this summer. The broken promise is not sitting well with appropriators, but Democratic sources point to the November elections, noting appropriations bills attract a slew of controversial amendments. Keeping the legislation off the floor shields vulnerable Democrats from taking tough votes that could be used in campaign ads this fall. Reid told Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) earlier this year that he would set aside June and July for debating appropriations bills on the floor, but...

The Pew Research Center published its latest survey of partisanship in American politics this past week–and with it issued another of its regular warnings about the consequences of our contemporary political polarization. The report begins with the following finding: The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median...

It's truly an unlucky Friday the 13th if you live in the Orange County/L.A. area. Two great icons of liberalism are fixin' to snarl up traffic and bring great inconveniences to our area as they speak at two graduations. President Barack Obama will be reading from his teleprompter at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. The city of Anaheim has posted their guidelines HERE Jane Fonda will be delivering her performance at UCLA's graduation. The message delivered to the graduates is interesting. You can be a success if you can read lines. Otherwise, good luck!

In the past, those at the political fringe were limited in their ability to communicate beyond their cliques. Now, with social media, the shouters on the left and the right have taken center stage with the largest megaphone in history, the Internet.USA Today proclaimed in a front-page headline last week that Americans are not all that upset the federal government is functioning at a dead slow pace. “More Americans say polarization in Congress is good,” the newspaper proclaimed. There can be no question that there is today, and always has been, a substantial group of folks, mostly conservative, who think...

Brookings Institution scholars, inspired by baseball statistics, conducted an analysis of the 113th Congress that points rather directly at the Democrat-controlled Senate as a the locus of congressional gridlock. The analysis opens with the observation that the House, contrary to expectation, passed twice as many bills as the Senate in 2013. Why? Because of the Senate committee process. "When we look at this category, then, we begin to understand where the problem lies: even in the traditionally collegial Senate, 87 percent of bills die in committee," Molly Jackman and Saul Jackman, of Brookings, and Brian Boessenecker write in Politico. "While...

The start of the year is when many companies, organizations, families and people review their plans and their priorities. This process often includes deciding where they should focus their time, energy and effort, and how to judge, at year's end, whether they have succeeded. Planning is most successful when it is built on the priorities, opportunities and problems that need to be addressed. If the biggest problem one has is health, then health should be the focus. If a person is in good health, but cannot meet his or her financial obligations, then the key priority would be finance --...