Tag Archives: Michelle Obama

A Great Little Intro to the Life of James Baldwin

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

___________ James Baldwin was born in August of 1924, so if he were still alive (he died at the age of 63 in 1987), he would have turned 90 this year. And I love this quote of his from chapter … Continue reading →

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“Subhuman Mongrel” and the Two Teds (Nugent and Cruz)

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

Ted Nugent, if you haven’t yet heard, recently called President Obama an outright subhuman mongrel: I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured … Continue reading →

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A $10 Dollar Minimum Wage: Who Would Benefit?

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Democrats want to increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour. Who would benefit from this? Surprisingly, it’s not primarily teenagers. Here are some interesting statistics: According to the Economic Policy Institute, 80 percent of workers affected by a minimum … Continue reading →

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What the Elections of Terry McAuliffe and Chris Christie Mean

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

In an off-year election when the make-up of the electorate is maximally conservative (in terms of turn-out), Terry McAuliffe still won Virginia’s governorship last night. Think about that. He was a deeply, deeply flawed and unattractive candidate running in a … Continue reading →

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Who Are The Tea Partyers, What Are They Achieving, And Do They Have Staying Power?

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

In a recent interview with Josh Eidelson at Salon, Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol characterizes Tea Party membership based on her research: [A]pproximately half of all Republican-identifiers who think of themselves as Tea Partyers are a very conservative-minded old group of … Continue reading →

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Are Obamacare Exchanges Failing?

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

There’s no doubt that the Obamacare exchange websites have had a terrible initial roll-out, but this is different from describing the Obamacare exchanges as a failure, at least based on this portion of an AP story that just came out … Continue reading →

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Invoke the 14th Amendment: Sean Wilentz’s Must-Read Advice to President Obama

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian, has written for the NYT today an absolutely must-read essay on the looming debt default crisis, how it would violate the 14th Amendment to actually let the country go into default, and what President Obama … Continue reading →

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The Lowdown on Tea Party Strategy (and Why It’s Doomed to Fail)

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

If you’re wondering where the Tea Party has gotten the bulk of its political energy, look South. According to a recent academic study, half of all Southern whites are Tea Party supporters. Half. And, as Michael Lind notes in a … Continue reading →

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What’s the End Game to Republican Hostage Taking?

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

The following, from The New York Times, is some stunning “inside baseball” reportage surrounding the Republican shut down of the federal government and John Boehner’s threat to default on the nation’s debt if Obamacare is not dismantled: They [the House … Continue reading →

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Republicans Have a Serious Racism Problem

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

And it’s getting worse. Tom Edsall at The New York Times reviews some of the academic literature on this subject: [R]esearchers have gathered a substantial amount of information on the opinions of white American voters. The political scientists Michael Tesler of Brown … Continue reading →

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Obamacare: You Fund It, You Own It

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

It’s entertaining to watch the Tea Party right send the Republican Party over the cliff, as in this ad pressing Mitch McConnell to defund Obamacare: __________ The Republican leadership clearly recognizes that it cannot defund Obamacare without a stand-off with … Continue reading →

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Contemptible Republicans vs. Obamacare

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

__________ At National Journal, Norm Ornstein offers some brilliant analysis of attempts by the Republican leadership to sabotage the implementation of Obamacare: What is going on now to sabotage Obamacare is […] sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials … Continue reading →

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Race and the Republican Party

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

According to the most recent census figures, the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “white, not Hispanic” is 63.4% of the population. The United States has about 314 million citizens, and therefore about 199 million white citizens. Why do … Continue reading →

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What Gay Marriage Is Really About

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

If we zoom out to a perspective of one hundred years from now, what has the gay marriage debate of the early 21st century really been about? I think that historians of the future will see an underlying issue that … Continue reading →

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Like Gay Marriage, Pot Legalization Appears To Be An Irreversible Trend

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

The momentum for pot legalization is getting an awesome push from an entrepreneur determined to make his company the Starbucks of marijuana. This is at The Stranger: Jamen Shively, CEO of Seattle-based Diego Pellicer, announced plans this afternoon to invest … Continue reading →

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Rush Limbaugh Blames Women for Advertiser Boycott Success

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

This is at Salon this week: Limbaugh, in case you’d forgotten, called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” after the Georgetown University student spoke out in support of insurance mandates for contraceptives. He later apologized – profusely so – but the damage was done. … Continue reading →

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I Saw Dinesh D’Souza’s Documentary, “2016”

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

I finally got around to seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s hatchet job documentary on Barack Obama, 2016 (it’s out on DVD). What I hoped for was a serious and thought-provoking conservative take on the nation’s first black president. D’Souza, after all, is … Continue reading →

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What You Earn Correlates With What Your Children Will Earn

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

On income inequality in America, this comes from Scott Winship: Only 13 percent of children starting in the bottom fifth [of income] will end up in the top two-fifths in adulthood (compared with 63 percent of children who start out … Continue reading →

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My Vote for the Best Sentences in Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

There were a number of soaring passages in President Obama’s second innaugural address. Highlights: For history tells us that while these truths [“… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, … Continue reading →

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President Obama’s Legacy: America at One Gigabit Per Second?

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

In The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman shared his take on the world we live in: It’s a world in which the increasing velocity of globalization and the Information Technology revolution are reshaping every job, workplace and industry. … Continue reading →

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