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Test post
Test post: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. And then he jumped over it again. More after the (har) jump. Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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Save Haiti, Plant Trees
Every hurricane season, Haitians at home and abroad gird themselves for the inevitable loss of life that comes with the torrential rains and winds. But this season has been especially hard, as one storm after another has battered the island, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Tropical Storm Fay struck in mid-August. Hurricane Gustav…
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Crumbling Under Crisis
It’s difficult to remember just how ho-hum the political stakes felt in the 1990s, a time when our country’s prosperity and stability made leadership seem secondary to things like ideology, faith and personality. People who came of age in that era could still debate deep, academic questions like whether history is shaped by the person…
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Set it Off
There’s a drumbeat out there. If you haven’t heard it because of all the political coverage, get ready. It’s going to become more insistent right through to Feb. 17, 2009. That’s the date the government-mandated, digital-television transition, aka, DTV, kicks in. If your television reception comes via rabbit ears or from a rooftop antenna, you…
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Slaughter the Pig
So we wake up this morning to a Web ad from the McCain-Palin campaign accusing Barack Obama of sexism. It is a swift and superb effort and, from what we know about these things and the political climate in which we live, likely to be effective. It is a quick and dirty piece of television…
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The Double Talk Express
“He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it—my Harvard tie? Like, ‘Oh, sure,’ he went to Harvard.” —Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) from Trading Places (1983) All summer long, John McCain has been selling the idea that a guy who graduated at the top of his Harvard Law class, who went from living on food…
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If Obama Loses…
Here is the nightmare scenario: Nov. 1, 2008, Barack Obama is leading in the national polls by a comfortable margin. Nov. 4, 2008, he loses the election, either by a whisker or by a margin large enough to suggest that it was never really close. All indications are that the loss will be blamed on…
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The Sun Does Not Dance on Africa
The Sundance Institute recently embarked upon a five-year commitment toward “developing” East African theatre, in the hopes of doing what they have achieved with American Indie Film. I was among those invited to participate in the initial East African workshops, held last spring. The program, according to Sundance, seeks to expand the scope of American…
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What's So Funny About Africa?
The New York Times ran a story on its front page last Saturday about the king of Swaziland, Mswati III, who leads a life of ostentatious luxury while the people of his small and proud nation struggle with poverty, malnourishment and HIV. The story of a greedy leader bilking his people is a sadly common…
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Food Coloring
Black food is in. And we’re not talking about your grandmother’s fried chicken or Aunt Sadie’s peach cobbler. Instead, it seems that with food, the darker it is, the better it is for you. From forbidden black rice to black tea, black is back…not that it ever really went away. For many cultures, dark-hued foods…