Jay Cost has some thoughts on the President's falling job approval numbers and some advice on how to properly read a poll.

Bill Kristol struggles not to gloat as the Democrats continue their meltdown.

It looks like the Bush tax cuts will expire on January 1 as scheduled, since the Democrats who run Congress can't even get a bill together that would limit the increases to the "rich", much less a bill that would extend the tax cuts for everyone, which is what the Republicans want.

Robert J. Samuelson is beginning to believe that a trade war with China would be preferable to letting them continue their predatory, mercantilist policies. I am beginning to think he is right.

Of course, there are some economists and other intellectuals out there who are enamored with the Chinese way of doing things, and believe this will be China's century. Of course, those who remember history will recall that quite a few Western intellectuals were attracted to Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. This is why William F. Buckley famously asserted that he would rather be governed by the first one hundred names in the Boston phonebook than the faculty of Harvard.

Ross Douthat wonders if the Tea Party folks will be seduced by the establishment GOP. I think that is the great domestic political question of our time. Will the Tea Party be absorbed by the Republican Party? How will that change the GOP? Or will the Tea Party folks, disillusioned by Republican failures and hypocrisy, form their own party that can be a viable alternative, gaining real political power? Stay tuned.