Arrived at Hyderabad, India for the 1st time and the international hotel where I am staying did not prepare the airport transport I booked. At 2305 hrs, it was not really a great start! Alas, they got me a cab and I got safely into the hotel 45 mins later and I DECIDED to zen it up and just get some rest and get ready for tomorrow 6.30 a.m. wake-up call! :-)
"Obama's Democrats got thumped. How did Republicans do it? - AFP 05 November 2014
WASHINGTON: Intense frustration with President Barack Obama, an abandonment of Democrats by independent voters and failure to convince Americans that the economy was improving propelled Republicans to a game-changing mid-term election victory.
When the smoke cleared early Wednesday (Nov 5), Republicans had seized seven Senate seats, tightened their grip on the House of Representatives and earned stunning wins in governors' races in blue states like Obama's Illinois, leaving whiplashed Democrats to contemplate what went wrong.
Exit polls confirmed what several Republican winners hammered home on Tuesday night: voters are convinced the nation is headed in the wrong direction and are skeptical of the abilities of the president and his Democrats to turn things around.
Seventy per cent of voters rated current economic conditions as not good or poor, with just one percent calling them excellent, according to exit polls conducted by Fox News.
Obama repeatedly asserted that America's economic indicators were cause for hope, especially given the depth of the recession that reached its nadir in early 2009 when he first took office.
Growth hit 3.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2014, and unemployment stands at 5.9 per cent. Yet just 31 per cent said the economy was headed in the right direction, compared to 46 per cent in 2012.
The economy was the top concern for voters, followed by health care and immigration - all issues they said Obama had failed to handle properly.
Obama's foreign policy, including his perceived waffling over how to counter the Islamic extremist threat in the Middle East, also helped fuel voter anger.
An incumbent president traditionally faces the "six-year itch," when American voters tend to sweep his party out of congressional power in the middle of his second term, and Tuesday was no exception.
Democrats have long argued that this year's electoral map heavily favored Republicans - Obama himself described it as the "worst possible" landscape for his party in half a century.
But Republicans advanced another reason for their victory: a surprisingly robust technological effort that closed the gap between them and Obama-generation Democrats."
That's democratic election for you! Yankee-style! A style that Mr Lee Kuan Yew has voiced his misgiving in the past!
Lessons for us are:
1. Americans will take it as 'business as usual'. That is how they like it and want it. Is it appropriate for the rest of the 'free world'? It depends on who you ask!!;
2. this mid-term election STILL shows that in politics, the average voters ONLY care about the bread and butter issue, even in the world ONLY superpower, the USA! The 'exit poll' suggests that most felt the economy is going in the wrong direction! This is staggering as President Obama's FED went on an unprecedented reckless, there-is-no-tomorrow money printing in the last 4-5 years to keep the economy afloat, though a lot of the money went to 'the rest of the world' creating assets bubbles around the globe instead of really creating real jobs in the USA; the voters STILL feel the USA's economy is NOT doing well! Wow! This may tell a bit on the quality of the voters?;
3. will Obama's Presidency be impotent and the typical 'lame duck' presidency? If it does, the worst fear of the type of grid-lock and two-parties-bickering and nothing-get-done politics that Singapore government and some other sceptical democracy watchers becomes a reality! It will lend impetus for them to discard or reject this form of democracy!
Just heard President Obama's 'post-mortem' speech on CNBC. He said there is no reason why he can't work with the Republicans. Hopefully so. For Asia's democracy sake! Or is it so serious? Hmmm.
"Obama's Democrats got thumped. How did Republicans do it? - AFP 05 November 2014
WASHINGTON: Intense frustration with President Barack Obama, an abandonment of Democrats by independent voters and failure to convince Americans that the economy was improving propelled Republicans to a game-changing mid-term election victory.
When the smoke cleared early Wednesday (Nov 5), Republicans had seized seven Senate seats, tightened their grip on the House of Representatives and earned stunning wins in governors' races in blue states like Obama's Illinois, leaving whiplashed Democrats to contemplate what went wrong.
Exit polls confirmed what several Republican winners hammered home on Tuesday night: voters are convinced the nation is headed in the wrong direction and are skeptical of the abilities of the president and his Democrats to turn things around.
Seventy per cent of voters rated current economic conditions as not good or poor, with just one percent calling them excellent, according to exit polls conducted by Fox News.
Obama repeatedly asserted that America's economic indicators were cause for hope, especially given the depth of the recession that reached its nadir in early 2009 when he first took office.
Growth hit 3.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2014, and unemployment stands at 5.9 per cent. Yet just 31 per cent said the economy was headed in the right direction, compared to 46 per cent in 2012.
The economy was the top concern for voters, followed by health care and immigration - all issues they said Obama had failed to handle properly.
Obama's foreign policy, including his perceived waffling over how to counter the Islamic extremist threat in the Middle East, also helped fuel voter anger.
An incumbent president traditionally faces the "six-year itch," when American voters tend to sweep his party out of congressional power in the middle of his second term, and Tuesday was no exception.
Democrats have long argued that this year's electoral map heavily favored Republicans - Obama himself described it as the "worst possible" landscape for his party in half a century.
But Republicans advanced another reason for their victory: a surprisingly robust technological effort that closed the gap between them and Obama-generation Democrats."
That's democratic election for you! Yankee-style! A style that Mr Lee Kuan Yew has voiced his misgiving in the past!
Lessons for us are:
1. Americans will take it as 'business as usual'. That is how they like it and want it. Is it appropriate for the rest of the 'free world'? It depends on who you ask!!;
2. this mid-term election STILL shows that in politics, the average voters ONLY care about the bread and butter issue, even in the world ONLY superpower, the USA! The 'exit poll' suggests that most felt the economy is going in the wrong direction! This is staggering as President Obama's FED went on an unprecedented reckless, there-is-no-tomorrow money printing in the last 4-5 years to keep the economy afloat, though a lot of the money went to 'the rest of the world' creating assets bubbles around the globe instead of really creating real jobs in the USA; the voters STILL feel the USA's economy is NOT doing well! Wow! This may tell a bit on the quality of the voters?;
3. will Obama's Presidency be impotent and the typical 'lame duck' presidency? If it does, the worst fear of the type of grid-lock and two-parties-bickering and nothing-get-done politics that Singapore government and some other sceptical democracy watchers becomes a reality! It will lend impetus for them to discard or reject this form of democracy!
Just heard President Obama's 'post-mortem' speech on CNBC. He said there is no reason why he can't work with the Republicans. Hopefully so. For Asia's democracy sake! Or is it so serious? Hmmm.
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