An op-ed chart in the morning’s New York Times bore sobering news for President Bush: when compared with previous two term presidents, Bush just isn’t very appealing. Of the last three reelected presidents–Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton–only the scandal-ridden Nixon had a more precipitous decline in second-term support, from 67% to 39%. Bush currently stands at just 44% approval.
But the NYT chart contained another juicy piece of information: favorable ratings for Congress have steadily declined over the same 30-year period. They’ve fallen from 79% (in 1973), to 57% (in 1985), to 52% (in 1997), to a current-day low of 49%. In other words, we live in an age where less than half the country approves of the president, and less than half the country approves of congress.
In fact, it’s difficult to know just what Americans do approve of. Only 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, which means that the public disapproves of all three branches of government.
And the media? It turns out that Americans like (and trust) those folks less and less. A Pew Study found that in 1985 84% of Americans could “believe most of what they read in their daily newspaper.” By 2004 that figure had fallen to just 54%
And yet, in a bizarre instance of cognitive dissonance, Americans are still some of the most patriotic people on the planet: a recent Roper poll found that 8 in 10 people think patriotism is “in,” and consider themselves very patriotic.
More: thinkprogress.org
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In a cultural landmark of sorts, a mainstream American theater production will explore the lessons learned in a comic cross-cultural encounter as an American travel writer visits Agra in Tanya Shaffer's play "Baby Taj." The play, produced by TheatreWorks, will run at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Mountain View, California.
"It's an interaction between two cultures, two worlds and hopefully they both all the characters learn something from each other," Shaffer said during an interview. Shaffer, whose previous award-winning solo performance play "Let My Enemy Live Long!"was called "a tour de force of observation and evocation"
A funny thing happened to romance fiction on its way to the bank -- it got more popular and more diverse.
If you doubt it, consider these numbers compiled by Avon Books, one of the world's largest mills of romance titles and an imprint of the giant HarperCollins publishing house:
Romance fiction has annual sales of $1.41 billion worldwide.
Half of all paperback books sold internationally are romance titles, and a third of all popular fiction sales are romance titles.
64.6 million Americans read romance fiction, 22 percent of them men.
Further, a look at a recent New York Times best-sellers list for paperback books
Katrina and Angela offer hope for a better relationship between the United States and Germany. Katrina, who was no lady, nevertheless prompted the German government to open its strategic oil reserves to the United States, and Angela Merkel, a fast friend of Washington, is on course, maybe, to succeed a spoiler of the German friendship with the United States.
William R. Timken Jr., the new American ambassador to Berlin, received a warm welcome when he arrived to take up his duties last week, delivering a letter from President Bush thanking the German people for their assistance in the wake of
At the Stadium/Armory Metro stop a few hours before the Nationals play the Mets on the Fourth of July, "Little Christopher" Howland demonstrates how he's planning to position his glove to catch a foul ball. The 10-year-old from Fairfax, who's played a little outfield himself, plants his feet and turns the glove up, opening it slightly. "I'll be getting under the ball, " he explains. Nearby, 6-year-old Ben, a brother of few words, just grins, opens and shuts his catcher's mitt and stands behind his mother, Cecilia.
It's the family's first Nationals game and it feels like the start of something
David Mamet’s latest play is another courtroom drama – except that it’s like no other. This is the most surreal trial since the one in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and you follow it with bizarrely opposing reactions. On the one hand, you can just laugh – often uproariously – at the escalating madness here. The judge first distracted by his hay fever and then demented by his hay fever tablets; the Jewish defendant at loggerheads with his Christian attorney; the prosecutor beset by his hysterical boyfriend. Mamet pillories every kind of political correctness. And what the hell is