Archive for June 6, 2011

Unemployment and Reëlection

228
1 year ago
by Bart DePalma in

Sta­tis­ti­cian Nate Sil­ver crunched the num­bers, and found that there is no par­tic­u­lar cor­re­la­tion between the change in unem­ploy­ment over a President’s entire first term and his chances of reëlec­tion to a sec­ond term. Thus, Pres­i­dent Obama’s reëlec­tion chances do not appear as daunt­ing as today’s 9.1% unem­ploy­ment rate suggest.

The prob­lem with Mr. Silver’s analy­sis is that vot­ers do not sur­vey the net change over an entire term and award their vote accord­ingly. Rather, they con­sider where unem­ploy­ment and the rest of the econ­omy is head­ing at the time they cast their bal­lot. Thus, the bet­ter way of mea­sur­ing the effect of unem­ploy­ment on reëlec­tion is the change from the prior high or low in unem­ploy­ment dur­ing the mid­dle of the President’s term to the unem­ploy­ment on elec­tion day. (more…)

Can Yemeni Become One?

25
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

For­mer? Yemeni Pres­i­dent Ali Abdul­lah Saleh. Image: Khaled Abdullah/​Reuters

Events in Yemen have taken a dra­matic and unex­pected turn as wounded Pres­i­dent Ali Abdul­lah Saleh has stepped down, leav­ing the coun­try in the hands of his for­mer Vice-​​President and cur­rent Act­ing Pres­i­dent Abd al-​​Rab Mansur al-​​Hadi.

The United States and other nations have increas­ingly become frus­trated with Saleh as street protests and the con­stant rot of cor­rup­tion has taken a toll on his coun­try. Yemen has long been known as a train­ing base for al-​​Qaida and threat­ens to become the next “failed state”, if it has not achieved that sta­tus already. As recently as last week, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton expressed frus­tra­tion with Saleh’s erratic intransigence.

Pres­i­dent Saleh needs to fol­low through on his com­mit­ment to trans­fer power. The gov­ern­ment of Yemen must address the legit­i­mate will of the people.

— US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, May 22, 2011.

We can­not expect this con­flict to end unless Pres­i­dent Saleh and his gov­ern­ment move out of the way to per­mit the oppo­si­tion and civil soci­ety to begin a tran­si­tion to polit­i­cal and eco­nomic reform.

— US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, June 1, 2011.

(more…)

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