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Calling a Stall a Stall in Health Reform
It was a busy weekend in the intensifying political brawl over health care reform. Most notably, Obama’s budget guru (and health care secret weapon) Peter Orszag caused a stir by pointing out just how naked some “centrist” Senators are in their effort to kill reform. The administration is cajoling lawmakers to vote on a bill…
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The Obama Doctrine: Racism’s Real; Deal With It
Everybody wants to know how, if at all, we should think about race in the Obama era. Well, President Barack Obama himself offered an answer in his speech to the NAACP last night. The address—his first explicitly on race as president—put a coda on his remarkable Philadelphia campaign speech, in which he addressed questions raised…
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Health Reform Rises from the Dead
For those of us who questioned how hard the White House and its congressional allies would fight for health care reform, the answer is here. The devil remains in the details, of course, but in the last couple of days Barack Obama has put Republicans and conservative Democrats alike “on notice”: Get on board or…
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(Traditional) Fathers Don’t Always Know Best
Who’s your daddy? Barack Obama, that’s who. We haven’t seen black family role modeling like this since the Huxtables. Actually, Cliff and Clair couldn’t touch the Obamas—they didn’t have Bo. Still, the president’s not content with his own nuclear family bliss. He really, really wants you to have a great dad, too. But the problem…
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The People, Again, Outpace Congress on Health Reform
It’s another pivotal week for your chances to get affordable health care in the near future. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to roll out its plan for a system-wide overhaul this week. That’s key because Finance has been the central battleground for getting a bipartisan bill—and things don’t look good for getting one. The…
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Raising the Child of Your Rapist
The 1994 massacre in Rwanda remains unimaginable 15 years later. And those 100 days of violence continue to echo through time, with equally unimaginable ramifications. Photographer Jonathan Torgovnik has documented one of them in a terribly affecting project on the mother-daughter relationships that grew up out of systemic rape. In 2006, he began a three-year…
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Femi Kuti Live!
It’s hard to imagine the pressure Femi Kuti must feel, taking the stage as the son of one of the world’s most legendary performers, charged with carrying forward the Afrobeat music his father, Fela Kuti, created decades ago. “It’s true,” Femi offers. “I do stand in big shoes—because my feet are bigger than his. Ha!…
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Speak Now, Or Forever Hold Your Crappy Health Coverage
Ok, y’all, this is it. This is the moment of truth for determining whether we’ll have access to affordable health care for the foreseeable future. At Talking Points Memo, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich does a great job articulating why this is such a crucial moment: The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have begun their congressional…
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Ted Kennedy to the Health Reform Rescue
Sen. Ted Kennedy has fight in him still. He began circulating an outline for his own health reform legislation late last week, which he’s expected to flesh out today or tomorrow. It’s an important step, because Kennedy’s legislation rejoins the fight for a creating a public plan to compete with existing private plans. Sen. Max…
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Black Cop Gunned Down—By His Colleague
Here we go again. Last night, an off-duty, black NYPD cop, 25-year-old Omar Edwards, was shot and killed by his white colleague, Officer Andrew Dunton. Edwards, a rookie who worked in a Housing Unit in Harlem, left work and walked up to his car to find a robber breaking in. Edwards tried to grab the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
