Income Inequality

There's been a significant amount of talk recently about growing income inequality.  Both Pope Francis and President Obama have discussed this problem in the past few weeks.

This video nails the issue on it's head as far as the U.S. is concerned…

Stoked!

No explanation needed.

From CnnMoney...

Not a Waiter

During Obama's remarks on the Zimmerman verdict he cited several examples of humiliations experienced by African-American males on a daily basis and went on to say that two had happened to him.

From the NYT...

Mr. Obama offered three examples of the humiliations borne by young black men in America: being followed while shopping in a department store, hearing the click of car doors locking as they cross a street, or watching as women clutch their purses nervously when they step onto an elevator. The first two experiences, he said, had happened to him.

He missed one though.

From the WSJ...

Standing by myself I noticed, on the periphery of the party, a man looking as awkward and out-of-place as I felt. I approached him and introduced myself. He was an Illinois state senator who was running for the U.S. Senate. He was African American, one of a few black people in attendance. 

We spoke at length about his campaign. He was charismatic in a quiet, solemn way. I told him I wanted to pitch a profile of him to a national magazine. 

The following year I watched as he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, and then won his Senate seat that fall. On Tuesday, Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States. 

But what I will always remember is as I was leaving that party in 2003, I was approached by another guest, an established author. He asked about the man I had been talking to. Sheepishly he told me he didn’t know that Obama was a guest at the party, and had asked him to fetch him a drink.

Such a shame.

Obama on Trayvon

 

I appreciate the President's heartfelt and at times deeply personal comments on the Trayvon Martin verdict.

The back story from TPM...

Obama had been following reactions to the verdict all around the country since it was handed down, "especially in African-American communities," the aide said. 

When he surprised reporters by showing up at the podium Friday at the top of spokesman Jay Carney's press briefing, he brought with him only a couple of hand-written notes on an index card, the aide said. 

"He wanted to speak extemporaneously and from the heart about his views on the case and what he thought we can do moving forward. He didn't want to read off a teleprompter or do anything scripted, and he didn't want to shoehorn his thoughts into a segment with a television reporter." 

The president's extraordinary and deeply personal remarks included references to his own experience as a black man in America.

Losing Our Way

I wish I could pinpoint the precise date and time but at some point in this GWOT we slipped a few notches on the humanity scale and sadly I doubt we'll ever recover.

From Slate...

More than 100 of the 166 detainees being held at Guantánamo are currently participating in a hunger strike that began back in February. More than 40 of those prisoners are being force-fed, according to the latest word from the U.S. Navy. What does that force-feeding look like? Yasiin Bey—the actor, activist, and rapper better known as Mos Def—teamed up with human rights group Reprieve to show us. 

What followed is difficult to watch, but then again it's supposed to be.  It's worth pointing out the obvious here: The video is a transparent work of advocacy. So when Bey begs for the exercise to be called off before it's finished, there is little doubt that at least some degree of acting is going on. Then again, Bey's cries are quickly answered, a luxury not afforded to those Gitmo detainees who refuse to give up their peaceful protest.

According to Reprieve, the feeding measures used on Bey followed the standard operating procedure used by the government, a process that was detailed in official documents leaked earlier this year.

The Election Wasn't Fair

Republicans are correct, the election wasn't fair.

From Political Wire...

A new Hamilton College poll finds that heading into the 2012 election, "both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about the fairness of the election. Only 15% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats were very confident that the election would be decided fairly." 

"After the election, fears about voter fraud abated among Democrats but skyrocketed among Republicans, with 58% of Republicans not confident at all about the fairness of the election."

But just not in the way they think.

From the Washington Post...

Faller, Nathan, and White “contacted every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.” One quarter of the e-mails used a Latino-sounding name, like “Luis Rodriguez,” and asked the voter ID question you see above. Another quarter used a non-Latino-sounding name, like “Greg Walsh”. The other half asked a control question using both sets of names to see if asking about voter ID in particular had any effects. 

[Of] 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states, [a]t least 4,557 officials replied. But the interesting story is in who they did and didn’t reply to. “Responses to Latino names,” the researchers write, “are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.” The bias against Latino e-mailers was about three points greater in voter ID questions. 

The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used. Responses to Latino voters were likelier to be non-informative, less likely to be “absolutely accurate”, and even less likely to take a friendly tone.

Institutional racism at work.

Jedi Mind Meld

There's the Jedi mind trick and the Vulcan mind meld but so such thing as the Jedi mind meld, at least not until Obama dreamed it up yesterday. Let's keep 'em straight Mr. President, there's Star Wars and Star Trek and never the twain shall meet.

The WH embraced the mixed metaphor and put up this...

"To Turkey?"

I've watched this exchange between Rand Paul and Clinton over a half dozen times and it still cracks me up.

The entire segment is worth watching but the Hilarity (ha-ha..get it?) starts at the 5:30 mark...

Another Inaugural Dinner

And I thought the terrapin was just the University of Maryland's mascot.

From the Smithsonian Magazine and NPR...

A recently-published menu for Abraham Lincoln's lavish second inaugural ball in 1865 provides an interesting look at how different the nation celebrated its new president just seven score and eight years ago. 

Smoked tongue en geleé and blancmange (a firm custard) shared room on the buffet table with roast turkey and burnt almond ice cream. As Yale food historian Paul Freedman [staetd], the cuisine could best be described as "French via England, with some American ingredients." 

"Oyster stew and pickled oysters. You wouldn't have found them in France as much," Gambino told NPR's Jacki Lyden. 

She also pointed out the presence of turtles on the menu. "Locavores would be excited about seeing terrapin stew on the menu. Actually, I read in an article from The Washington Post from 1880 that any pretentious affair in Washington had to have Maryland-style terrapin stew."

Inauguration 2.0 Coverage

A few newspaper covers from around the U.S.  Almost 900 more are available at the Newseum.

Obama Inauguration 2.0

A week late but better late than never.

Experiencing the Obama's second inauguration was quite different than the first. This time, we didn't have tickets nor did one of us get caught in the Purple Tunnel of Doom.  Instead my wife and I shared it together on the Mall with wonderful friends visiting from Oakland.

A few images from another historic day...

After logging an almost four mile roundtrip walk we went home, kicked back, cracked open several bottles of vino, and another friend came over and fixed a huge pot of delicious gumbo.

A very good day all around.

Sorry, No Death Star

The White House responds to a "We the People" petition to "secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016."

Classic.

From The White House...

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons: 

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.

• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.

• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

The entire reply is worth a read.

Reality Check

How many people in the U.S. have been killed from guns in the 20 days since Newtown?

As of today, at least 409, including six children under the age of 13.

From Slate...

Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, we at Slate have been wondering how many people are dying from guns in America every day.

That information is surprisingly hard to come by. It seems shocking that when guns are in the headlines every day, there’s no one attempting to create a real-time chronicle of the deaths attributable to guns in the United States.

Well, someone is. Since this summer, the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths has been doing his best to compile those statistics, tweeting every reported death he can find. He was inspired, he told us in a phone interview, by the Aurora, Colo., shootings and simply wanted to call daily attention to the toll that guns take. Now Slate is partnering with @GunDeaths to create this interactive feature, “Gun Deaths in America Since Newtown.”

Off the Charts

Andrew Sullivan does his yearly round-up of the best content on his blog, including charts and graphs.

When there is so much bickering over cuts to programs that support the poor and elderly it's astounding that the most obvious portion of the budget to cut isn't even considered but is instead sacrosanct.

Click here for more of the best charts from the Daily Beast.

The Flip Side

The other side of the hug. (Thx Heather G.)

From Slate...

When Barack Obama won re-election, his campaign tweeted out a photo of him and Michelle hugging, along with the phrase “Four more years.” The image quickly went viral, breaking records on Twitter and Facebook.

Tufankjian wasn’t the only one shooting at that August rally in Iowa. Photographer David Burnett was there too, shooting for People, and when the now-famous hug took place, he was standing on the far edge of the stage, opposite where Tufankjian was located. He snapped a photo that shows us the other side of the first couple’s embrace. 

Burnett said by email that he was surprised when he first saw Tufankjian’s victory photo, because “it didn’t seem, on first blush, to have been shot in November. Then I read the fine print, and saw it was indeed shot in Iowa in August. The light went on in my head, and I looked through my files, finding what I think is the exact moment, from the other side of the podium.”

The backstory on the original photo is here along with a couple other memorable pics.

Obama and Marriage

For the past several days as I digested Tuesday's results I've been mulling over a lengthy - and honestly gloating - post about the vanquishing of the far right and the United States' jump to the left [cue Rocky Horror Picture Show].  It was to be entitled An American Exorcism (a somewhat bizarre title alluding to the fact that more Republicans believe in demonic possession than in global warming...go figure).

Anyway, partly out of laziness and partly out of a desire to move forward I decided to scrap that post and go with something a little lighter and a little happier.

From the Des Moines Register...

Sayli Gibbs made the wedding arrangements for the Urbandale couple about six months ahead of time, and everything was going smoothly until she heard from a Living History Farms employee that “something big” was going to be happening on the same day as her wedding. 

Gibbs learned that Obama would be holding a rally in the exact place her wedding was supposed to be.  

Luckily for them, Obama’s rally kept to its schedule and they were able to set up in time. “The wedding started on time, Obama was gone on time, and everything worked out,” Gibbs said. 

Obama didn’t leave without acknowledging the couples’ happy day, though. He left behind a parting gift with a personal touch.  Inside the bag was a silver tray with the presidential seal and Obama’s engraved signature, as well as a handwritten note reading “Congratulations on the wedding. Michelle and I wish you a great life together. Barack Obama.”

And there's this...

P.S. I'm still gloating though!

Oh Happy Day

Yes We Did. Again!

Now that the hard won election is over and the United States has the President it needs it's time to think about what else this man who we put in office can do for us to make this country and the world a better place to live.

Here are a few things I'd love to see him tackle:

• Immigration reform
• Climate change
• Decriminalization of marijuana possession 
• Israeli/Palestinian conflict
• Repeal DOMA
• Iran's nuclear ambitions
• Normalized relations with Cuba
• Fiscal cliff
• Retroactive release from prison of all non-violent drug offenders
• Tax reform/simplification
• Federalization of the national election voting process (we need to put an end to the GOP's "voter fraud" fraud)

That should be enough to keep him occupied for the next four years.

Congrats Mr. President, now let's get back to work.

My Vote

A lot can change in four years. 

Four years ago I cast my vote for Barack Obama, half of which was for my mother who was ill in a hospital and unable to vote.  I stayed with her late into the evening and we watched the news coverage until Obama was declared the next President of the United States. 

Four years later, I cast my vote four days early on a crisp Fall afternoon.  This time I couldn't share the experience with Mom but strangely I wound up in line almost directly behind a wonderful 94 year-young woman who I hadn't seen in over three years and who also just happened to be a lifelong friend of my mother's -- they met in second grade.  As we patiently waited, we spent the next hour or so reminiscing about Mom but also talking about Obama, her family, and many other things.  Finally, her turn arrived and she asked me to help her over to the voting machine and assist her while she cast her ballot.  

It was an honor to do so and comforting as well.

We both voted for Barack Obama.

In my 2008 election day post I wrote, "In reality, the vote was not cast for either of us. It was cast for my nieces and nephews, for those who have yet to be born, for the environment, for global peace, for the future of our country and ultimately the future of the world."

The same holds true today.

I'm sure Mom would be pleased.

Vote

Vote!

A message from a President...