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Can Black Women Do Better Than Hillary?
(The Root) — It might be appropriate to preface this with the fact that I’m a dude injecting myself into what boils down to a woman’s decision at the polls. But it’s still a peculiar and necessary question that we should keep asking from now through 2016: Why should African-American women support Hillary Clinton for…
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Obama Should Tap His Inner Angry Black Man
(The Root) — Government is shut down. Some 800,000-plus human beings are being furloughed or ordered to work without pay as we speak. And if Washington, D.C., fails to reach a debt-ceiling compromise in two weeks, the globe could be on the verge of an economic meltdown unlike anything history has ever seen. Just…
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Twitter Is Turning Us Into Political Punks
(The Root) — As seminal events take their twists and turns through the zeitgeist, more often than not we’re as likely to tweet about it as we are to act on it. These days, critical issues aren’t marked by mass movements to counteract fire hoses and snapping German shepherds on a bigot’s leash. And you’d…
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SATISFACTION, PRIDE OR DELIRIUM?
In light of the current economic climate – while chewing on recent Republican, populist-tinged victories in New Jersey, Virginia and, most recently, Massachusetts – the question regarding African American support for President Obama is bound to come up. It’s the anniversary of his first full year in office, we prognosticators expecting it. But, it’s an…
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THE GRAND SET UP(?)
One line in that rather somber, passion-lacking dose of realism from the President at West Point carries with it a funky dose of irony: “That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.” The funkiness comes with the chalkboard…
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Getting Gamed on the Public Option
Clear signs of what is being described as impending doom for the “public option” on the various health care bills pending in Congress can best be found in the subtle switch of White House language on the health care debate. What was once known as healthcare reform is now “health insurance reform.” Peep White House…
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Going In-Sanford in South Carolina
Republican South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, infamous stimulus naysayer and presidential aspirant, has been missing since Thursday. Let’s just keep it one hundred and call it what it is: Sanford got “touched in the head,” as the old folks used to say. But is there anything wrong with that? Bob McAlister, chief of staff to…
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The Politics of Obama's "Jump-Start" for the Economy
As the signature Obama legislation, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, gets moving across the country, how much are workers benefiting? Clearly, the government’s maddening, multi-trillion-dollar intravenous shot in the arm will provide some cushion for anxious workers and the unemployed in some areas. We’re already seeing signs of it—stuck in traffic as clogged commuter…
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GM Bankruptcy is Killing Us Softly
Conventional discourse on the state of the economy appears to veer off the crusty core of the issue: We’re undergoing a significant re-configuration, if not a total transformation of the way we make a living, exist, eat, clothe and house ourselves. All these will change in ways unfathomable during the 1990s age of innocence—reflected in…
