0 What We're Reading Today (10-31-12)

Chicago Passes Last Year's Homicide Total of 435 - The Grio Ugonna Okpalaoka Oct. 30: What State Polls Suggest About the National Popular Vote - FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver Slate's Electoral Map Challenge - Slate Chris Kirk Change Newspapers Can Believe In - Slate David Weigel Getting Iran to Say, "Uncle," Might not be Smart - Foreign Policy Stephen M. Walt Romney's Window in Ohio is Closing - The New Republic Nate Cohn ...

0 Barack Obama, the White House, and Black America

I am an ardent defender of Barack Obama and barring some sort of calamitous event in his Presidency, I will most likely continue to be defender of his.  More than that, though, I am an Obama apologist.  I will make a case in his defense whenever possible and rationalize his decision-making.  Perhaps it is because I identify so heavily with the Obama narrative or, maybe, I've developed a sort of motherly instinct toward the nation's first black President -- whatever the case, I'm of the mindset that Barack, if given a more cooperative Congress and a second term, would be every ounce the President I (we) had hoped for. That said,...

0 Why Obama? Why Now?

A great video from one of the animators of The Simpsons. ...

0 What We're Reading: Brussels Edition (10-26-12)

MORNING MINDMELD: If you're a political junkie, enjoy it, soak it in: In our lifetimes, there may never be another race that looks this close for the final two weekends. Yesterday, two of the most widely followed polling analysts drew opposite conclusions about who has Big Mo: --Nate Silver, who gives Obama a 73% chance of winning, argued in the morning that the move to Romney had "stopped": "What isn't very likely ... is for one candidate to lose ground in five of six polls if the race is still moving toward him. ... [W]e can debate whether Mr. Obama has a pinch of momentum or whether the race is instead flat, but it's improbable that Mr....

0 What We're Reading Today (10-25-12)

Why the GOP Should Fear a Romney Presidency - The Atlantic Jack M. Balkin Infographic: The Enormous Racial Gap in Political Reporting - The Atlantic David A. Graham Dignity Beyond Voting: Undocumented Immigrants Cast their Hopes - Colorlines Aura Bogado A New Way to Measure Afghan Security: Beef and Tomatoes - The Atlantic Brian Fung Why Khamenei Will Compromise - Al-Monitor Meir Javefander Is Europe About to Crack-Up? - Real Clear World Tomas Valasek Obama says Ayn Rand is for Teens - Buzzfeed Politics Buzzfeed Staff Ladies, Don't Fall for Moderate Mitt! - The Nation Katha Pollitt ...

0 What We're Reading Today: Brussels Edition Pt. 2 (10-24-12)

Republicans Struggle to Contain Mourdock Comments  - The New York Times Jonathan Weisman How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign - The New York Times Matt Bai Poll: Elizabeth Warren Opens-Up 6-Point Lead - Politico Kevin Robillard President Obama's 11th-Hour Strategy Shift - Politico Glenn Thrush Romney Says He's Winning -- It's a Bluff - New York Magazine Jonathan Chait From Belgium with love. ...

0 What We're Reading Today: Brussels Edition Pt. 1 (10-24-12)

MORNING MINDMELD : As an antidote to the (perhaps) irrational Republican exuberance that seems to have seized D.C., we pause for the following public-service announcement. To be President, you have to win states, not debates. And Mitt Romney has a problem. Despite a great debate and what The Wall Street Journal's Neil King Jr. on Sunday called a polling "surge," Romney has not put away a single one of the must-have states. President Obama remains the favorite because he only needs to win a couple of the toss-ups. Mitt needs to win most of them. A cold shower for the GOP: Most polling shows Romney trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, New...

0 Parodies and Politics

Living in a democracy means that every four years we not only get to voice our say in who runs our country, we have endless opportunities to turn their every word, campaign and factual gaffe into an excuse to churn out political parody videos, cartoons and twitter accounts. (If only Abraham Lincoln were alive today for us to meme.)  Not to mention SNL and Comedy Centrals impact on how our generation views politics. SNL’s take on the last eight elections have affected many of the candidates — and the performers who have played them. Getting to be a Bush (Dana Carvey and Will Ferrell) or a Clinton (Phil Hartman, Darrell Hammond, Amy Poehler),...

0 What We're Reading Today (10-24-12) Pt. 2

Becoming Obama: A Young Barack Obama in Love - Vanity Fair David Maraniss I, You, and 'the Embrace': Tango as Relationship Therapy - The Atlantic Amelia Rachel Hokule’a Borofsky Nearly 30% of Veterans by V.A. have PTSD - The Daily Beast Jamie Reno Netroots Bloggers Mark 10th Birthday in Decline and Struggling for Survival - The Daily Beast David Freedlander Election 2012 and the Missing Millennials - The Nation Zoe Carpenter Photos of Teen Mitt Romney Pulling Pranks, Bullying - Vanity Fair ...

0 What We're Reading Today (10-24-12) Pt. 1

The Campaign to Steal Ohio - The New Republic Alec MacGillis Ranking the Battleground States - The New Republic Nate Cohn Survey: Most Israeli Jews Would Support Apartheid Regime in Israel - Haaretz Gideon Levy For President Obama, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics - NY Times Jodi Kantor The Economics of Magazines and Diversity - The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates Our Vision for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at Tufts - Tufts Observer Elaine Kim ...

0 13 Days and the State of Massachusetts

Now that the final debate has ended we have 13 days of mass chaos in front of us. In the next two weeks every door in New Hampshire will be canvassed an average of four times and we will receive no less than 100 emails from Obama's campaign asking us to give money. It is this now or never mentality that will shape the rest of the rhetoric surrounding the election. Before we embark on that craziness here are some important stories to look at: - 41 Minutes, 24 Myths, how Romnesia is affecting our nation. -More people are being told the wrong place and time to vote by election officials. -The latest “you...

0 NY Times Votes Predictor Tool and my Prediction as of Today

NY Times has this nifty tool that lets you try to predict the way the election will go this year.  You can see my distribution of states here.  I was even more pessimistic than Nate Silver when he did his most recent electoral map for FiveThirtyEight.com which, for me, bodes well for Obama because he wins in both of our scenarios -- only by a larger margin in Nate Silver's as Silver thinks that Obama will carry Nevada and New Hampshire while I give those two states to Romney. That decision was based on two very shallow considerations: 1. that high unemployment in Nevada will make voters sympathetic to Romney's, "All that matters is...

0 Mickey Desruisseaux: On Affirmative Action, African-Americanism, and Anger

Mickey was one of my advisees in high school.  He is at the University of Chicago now and continues to develop into a prolific thinker and excellent writer.  His blog post, linked below, captures many of the emotions that I tried to convey in my earlier post (Justice, not Diversity) but Mickey does so with much more sophisticated flair and rhetorical flourishes.  We are both high-achieving black kids from the South Side of Chicago who graduated from the school of one Greg Wright so, of course, there is a natural affinity between us and a certain tendency to reaffirm one another's thoughts. Mickey, you just keep making me proud. Read...

0 Justice, not Diversity, when Considering Affirmative Action

The rub, for me, in conversations about Affirmative Action, is that we often talk about Affirmative Action in terms of the value of diversity as opposed to fairness. Diversity for diversity's sake is foolishness. It's like asking for a people safari or a face bouquet between classes.  People of color aren't decorations to be available for the perusing of their peers because it makes the peers feel better.  People of color have experiences and identities and it is unfair, if not offensive, to speak about their presence in institutions of higher learning like they are around for decorative flair. When President Johnson spoke about affirmative...

0 President Lyndon Johnson's Commencement Address at Howard University (1965)

Full text  But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.  You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.  Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.  This is the next and the more profound stage of the...

0 Ta-Nehisi Coates on Why the SCOTUS Can't Kill Affirmative Action

In his piece for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates echoes the argument that various scholars have been making since Abigail Fisher brought her case against Affirmative Action to the Supreme Court. Coates points out that since there is no metric to measure the value of an individual's experience with prejudice, discrimination, etc., (for malevolent or beneficent ends), it will be incredibly difficult to disentangle racial experience and/or identity from other "soft factors" in a candidate's portfolio.  That is to say, that if the university is allowed to examine a student's character, their life experience, and their "leadership" as  a...

0 Wright and Left: "On Affirmative Action/Why Abigail Fisher is the New Veruca Salt"

Luke Sharrett for the NY Times Read the story Words from Mr. Wright at Wright and Left (full post here): It takes but a quick look at our charts to see just how sick we still are.  If we lived in a post-racial society, our percentages would align.  The ills and successes available to Americans would be doled out equitably, with little regard for race or ethnicity.  In a post-racial society, we would have a senate that replicates our demographics, with thirteen black senators, seventeen Hispanics, five Asian-Americans, an American Indian, and two multiracial representatives.  Certainly these numbers may not play out...

0 Fact Check's Beautiful Graphical Summary of Obama's Numbers

Check out what Fact Check has to say about these numbers here. ...

0 Why Snoop Dogg (Lion) is voting for Obama and not Romney

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0 What We're Reading Today (10-4-12)

At Last Night's Debate, Romney Told 27 Myths in 38 Minutes - Think Progress Igor Volsky The Search for the Most Racist City in America - Gawker Drew Magary University of Texas Students are 'Bleach-Bombing' their Black Peers - Gawker Robert Kessler Mac Owens on the forgotten dimensions of American civil-military relations - Foreign Policy Thomas E. Ricks Snippy Obama, Whose Heart's Not in It - The Atlantic Garnece Franke-Ruta Unseen for Months, but Running in Illinois - The New York Times Monica Davey Coal Miner's Donor - The New Republic Alec MacGillis American Colleges are Failing Low-Income Students - The Atlantic Jordan Weiss...

0 What Obama's and Romney's Gestures Say to Voters

Head on over to the New York Times for this one. Click h...

0 Romney Wins Debate 1 -- Voters, like Honey Badger, Don't Care

The internet, the prevailing source of all human knowledge, seems to have ruled that Mitt Romney dominated President Obama in the debate tonight.  It is being called a "knock-out," a "game changer," a "rebirth."  President Obama certainly failed to deliver his normal charisma and energy and Mitt Romney certainly did steal the President's thunder.  Sadly for Mitt Romney, it seems that the debates don't matter all too much. By this point in the election cycle, it seems, that voters -- much like the famous honey badger of The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger (original narration by Randall) YouTube sensation -- have made up their...

0 Romney/Ryan Ticket Hurting GOP Hopes with Latinos

With black support virtually non-existent for the GOP in this year's Presidential race, much attention has shifted toward the allegiances of the US' many Latino voters.  Much less monolithic and homogeneous than the title suggests, Latino voters have various experiences and distinct interests.  With that, there continues to be an opportunity for Republicans to cut into Democrats' long-standing hold on the Latino vote.  Courting Latinos, however, is a much different game than courting blacks or even Asian voters due, in large part, to cultural and linguistic factors. A ready example of this is where Latino voters turn for information...

0 What We're Reading Today (10-2-12)

The Anchor - The Washington Monthly Laura Colarusso Kill the Indians, then Copy Them - The New York Times David Treuer Women Hurting Women - The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof How Massachusetts Became 2012's Nastiest Race - The New Republic Ben Jacobs The Uneven Geography of US Economic Growth - The Atlantic Cities Richard Florida ...