The fact that Obama is getting criticism from the left and the right might reflect his understanding of the underlying political dynamics.
Since declaring that she would not serve in a second Obama administration, Clinton has dismissed suggestions that she will run in 2016.
Most Tea Party activists consider Obama a big-spending liberal. Some even question his eligibility to be president.
The question is whether voters, particularly independents, believe that Obama truly values personal liberty and responsibility as much as the government-bought safety net.
You can usually tell how healthy a ballet company is by the degree of your interest in the middle ranks of the dancers - the not-yet stars, the up-and-comers.
Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them.
For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me.
Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets.
We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically.
We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others.
As for the once-revolutionary 'Agon,' after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language of ballet that it now seems almost conventional.
'River of Light,' to a dense but powerful score commissioned from Charles Wuorinen and with ravishing lighting by Mark Stanley, has depth and resonance.
Sending a container from Shanghai to Le Havre emits fewer greenhouse gases than the truck that takes the container on to Lyon.
The biggest container ship can carry fifteen thousand boxes. It can hold 746 million bananas, one for every European, on one ship.
Half of the hospital beds in sub-Saharan Africa are filled with people suffering from what are generally known as water-related diseases.
Ninety percent of what we wear, we eat, we consume is carried by ships... Container ships carry a vast amount of stuff.
Sewage works that serve big cities run into trouble when the cities grow up around them.
It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.
If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.
Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control.
The journalistic code of ethics governing the broadcasts requires that opposing views be presented, and that journalists' personal opinions or judgments be left out of factual reporting.
