Sunday Open Thread [12.8.13]

Eugene Robinson points out where America is near the bottom:

We know from the debt-ceiling fight… that House Republicans can be induced to do the right thing — if the political cost of doing the wrong thing is unacceptably high. And this looks like an issue on which Obama and the Democrats should be able to get real traction.
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is shamefully low compared with minimum-wage levels in other industrialized countries — nearly $13 in France, for example, and around $10 in Britain and Canada.

The highest minimum wage in a major country is Australia’s — in U.S. dollars, about $15 an hour at the current exchange rate. Conservatives would howl if anyone in Washington proposed such a thing. According to Republican dogma, such a high minimum wage would be the ultimate job-killer, a disastrous move that could only choke off the recovery and perhaps send the economy back into recession.

Apparently, nobody told all this to the Australians. Unemployment there is 5.7 percent, versus 7 percent in the United States. The Australian economy escaped the Great Recession of 2007-08 and in fact hasn’t seen any kind of recession in 20 years. (Oh, and Australia has universal health care, too, but perhaps that’s another column.)

President Obama knows how to pick good Secretaries of State. Doyle McManus:

He’s the same windy, stiff Bostonian who ran unsuccessfully for president a decade ago. And he’s taken on a list of assignments that looked distinctly unpromising: nuclear negotiations with Iran, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the civil war in Syria.

But in 10 months, Kerry has embarked on a whirlwind of diplomacy. He helped conclude an interim deal with Iran that puts a ceiling on Tehran’s nuclear enrichment. He launched new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with the goal of producing a deal next year. And he secured a date for negotiations to end the war in Syria, although it’s still not certain who will show up.

…give Kerry credit. He has dared to take big risks — in notable contrast to his revered but risk-averse predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton tended to subcontract out the unpromising assignments to special envoys like the late Richard C. Holbrooke, her deputy for Afghanistan. But Kerry has taken them on himself, personally and visibly. If any of them fail — and they all could — he’ll take the fall himself.

Dear God. The 2004 election was nearly a decade ago? Feels like yesterday. I am getting old.