So, according to Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Senator Harry Reid said (quote via): that Obama’s political advantages included his light skin tone and his ability to speak “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Based on this quote, he stands accused of racism by numerous critics, including Jonah [...]
So, this happened: Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world’s leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United [...]
It can be challenging to pick out individual threads from the tapestry of jaw-dropping nuttiness that constitutes the right-wing of the current Republican base. Watching the incoherent, but violent, tempest that was the teabag protest inspired feelings of despair. Here, it seemed, were a mass of people wholly uninterested in fact, in dialogue, who were [...]
In his column today, Frank Rich pointed something out that I think us liberals would do well to remember. President Obama’s inauguration speech was not only a statement of his intent to make some changes, to rectify some of the mistakes that his predecessor made, but Obama wasn’t just rebuking the outgoing administration. He was [...]
It’s the best of times. It’s the worst of times.
As was reported earlier this month (for instance, in this New York Times story), Exxon Mobil made humongous profits in 2007, amounting to $40.6 billion. Higher prices for oil led to the increase, although Exxon has been making tons of money for a while. Two divergent responses to such news are possible. On the one [...]
Another element in the developing debate over Bill Clinton’s behavior and Hillary’s campaign is the posture of transcendence that the Obama campaign has been adopting. Obama, the message goes, prefers not to get involved in politics-as-usual mudslinging. He would rather bring us together than divide us. This narrative is rhetorically effective, but it’s worth looking [...]
I love Frank Rich’s columns in the New York Times. I look forward to them. But this week I was a little surprised by his thoughts on the role of Bill Clinton in Hillary’s campaign for president. As I have written about, it seems weird to me how every time Bill disagrees with a reporter, [...]
In anticipation of the coming general elections, in which debate about abortion will no doubt figure prominently, I wanted to highlight and discuss two developing debates on that topic. In both cases, we see groups who do not believe that a woman should have the right to decide what happens to her body willfully distorting [...]