The Republic of T.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 21st through April 28th:

• So Much for a ‘Post-racial’ America – We might not be in the back of the bus, and we might not drink from separate water fountains, but racial discrimination is very much alive in 2014. Anyone who ever doubted that reality can look at these three incidents alone. A national, federal government was designed to protect the rights of minorities against the state's individual wishes. We must not allow that protection to be stripped away.
• A Gay Dad Recognizes His Real Life In Nabisco’s Inclusive Honey Maid Ad – Dignity is a funny thing however. It is like the indelible ink my sons love so much to scrawl on the walls of their bedroom. It does not wipe off. It often does not scrub off. Once applied, you get to keep it.
• Modern racists just repeat conservative talking points: Donald Sterling, Cliven Bundy and the ugly face of GOP policies – Sterling and Bundy aren't vestiges of another time. They are the embodiment of Paul Ryan & Michele Bachmann's ideas
• Anti-Obamacare Hysteria Almost Killed Dean Angstadt – Robert Calandra of the Philadelphia Inquirer tells the story today of Dean Angstadt, a guy who listened to Republican hysteria about Obamacare and almost paid for it with his life:
• Sterling and Bundy Are a History Lesson in Racism – You can walk along Main Street of any southern town during lunch hour and find blacks and whites sharing a meal, a joke, an embrace. You can watch any NBA playoff game and watch African-American players in a glorious variety of pigments, including a rising minority who are clearly biracial. Those trends will continue; there will be ugliness and misunderstanding as we inch along toward the ideal of a fully Mongrelized, and thereby strengthened, America. But they are unstoppable.
• More Rough News for “Not Racist” Community – Looks like desperate right-wing efforts to make Sterling into the "Democrat Bundy" have taken a bit of a hit.
• American Abu Ghraib Prisoner “Disappears” – Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American-Jordanian prisoner, held without due process in Iraq for almost 10 years, "disappeared" around the time 2,400 other inmates of Abu Ghraib were reported to have been transferred to other prisons.
• For gay and lesbian parents, equality is a myth when it comes to custody cases | Steven W Thrasher – Despite studies showing that having a gay or lesbian parent doesn't affect kids negatively, the courts haven't caught up
• Leonard Pitts Jr.: Race and Obama news coverage – I have a question for George Will.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 21st from 13:33 to 14:19:

• The Real Money-Making Methods of the Super-Rich Are Far From Praiseworthy – The effects of inheritance come first and merit second, not the other way around.
• 5 Ways American Policies and Attitudes Make Us Lonely, Anxious, and Antisocial – With mountains of knowledge, why aren’t we better at setting up our society in a way that helps us to prosper? Isn’t that the point of having a society in the first place? Unfortunately, ours is increasingly designed by politicians indebted to the 1 percent for the express purpose of enhancing and maintaining the power of the very top rung. The rest of us are left to cope with a rocky, competitive life path that leaves us isolated and exhausted. Inequality is stunting our growth as human beings.
• The Terrible Fear of Paying the Poor Too Much – Republicans in America suffer a crippling anxiety. It’s the terrible fear of corporations paying poor workers too much.
• How to behave – In the confusing world of modern manners, an etiquette guide would be a great help
• Obama and David Brooks’s Manhood Problem – You know who had a “manhood” problem? George W. Bush. He acted childishly, wantonly invading Iraq without a shred of international legality, because Saddam “tried to kill my daddy.” He even adopted the diction of a 4-year-old as he initiated the mass slaughter of several hundred thousand people and the displacement of millions. You see, the opposite of “manly” is not, as Brooks imagines, “cautious.” It is childish petulance.
• Counting the votes of African Americans and Latinos is the real vote suppression – Once you let those illegitimate votes count, Real Americans are denied their franchise. In fact, counting the votes of African Americans and Latinos is the real vote suppression.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 17th from 14:11 to 14:16:

• Why Do Christian Right-Wingers Pretend America’s Laws Don’t Apply to Them? – Conservatives are demanding special rights to disobey universally applicable federal laws.
• Regret, denial, lies: How Republicans deal with the newly insured back home – Republicans are back home now, trying to keep their constituents whipped up against Obamacare to carry them through November. That's a much bigger problem for them, now that many of their constituents are actually benefiting from the law.
• Ken Blackwell Falsely Claims African Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Marriage Equality – Blackwell may want to check an ABC/Washington Post poll taken shortly after Obama’s announcement that he backs gay marriage, which found that 59 percent of African Americans favor marriage equality.
• In Red States, the Uninsured Are Up the Creek – States that embraced Obamacare—which presumably were more committed to public health in the first place—had lower uninsurance rates to start with and saw bigger declines. The states that resisted were the ones with the biggest uninsurance problems to start with and saw only token declines. In fact, the decline in states that embraced Obamacare was more than triple that in the other states, 2.8 percent vs. 0.8 percent.
• Bigots Will Learn: You’re Not Going to Scare Henry Aaron – Baseball Hall of Famer Henry Aaron spoke his mind and is receiving racist death threats, thereby proving his point.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 9th through April 17th:

• Reuters: ‘Americans increasingly prefer Democrats on health care’ – Nearly one-third of respondents in the online survey released on Tuesday said they prefer Democrats' plan, policy or approach to healthcare, compared to just 18 percent for Republicans. This marks both an uptick in support for Democrats and a slide for Republicans since a similar poll in February.
• The 1% Wants to Ban Sleeping in Cars Because It Hurts Their ‘Quality of Life’ – Depriving homeless people of their last shelter in life is Silicon Valley at its worst.
• Bacon Is Not a Vegetable – As a vegetarian, I have to walk a fine line.

  Really, I’m not judging you. But I often find it necessary to establish myself as “not a threat” to meat eaters. I also occasionally bump up against militant vegans.

• Death by Stalling – Compassion for the dying is gaining traction. It’s about time.

  In 1948, 37 percent of Americans supported the idea behind the “death with dignity” movement. Last year, 70 percent of us did. While that number leveled off two decades back, how big a majority does an issue need to be worthy of some attention?

• Prop 8 Lawyer’s Views On Gay Marriage Evolving – The lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court in favor of upholding California's ban on gay marriage learned while he was handling the case that one of his children is gay and now is helping her plan her wedding with another woman.
• Latest Gallup Result: 12 Million Newly Insured Under Obamacare – Speaking of the uninsured, I inexplicably failed to blog about the latest Gallup results yesterday. Based on polling that goes through mid-April, Gallup now estimates that about 12 million people have gained insurance since Obamacare rolled out last year.
• Blindsided by Dental Bills? What You Can Do – The ABC News Fixer fills a cavity in a reader’s wallet, has tips for you.
• Start saving now: Day care costs more than college in 31 states – College costs loom large in the parental mind. According to a 2013 report by Sallie Mae, half of parents are putting away money for their kids' education. Those who aren't are fretting about it, saying that they feel "frustrated," "overwhelmed" and "annoyed" when they think about college savings. But most parents will deal with an even larger kid-related expense long before college, and it's a cost that very few of them are as prepared for. That expense is day care.
• Blunder Reveals GOP’s Dark Heart – It’s not Kirsten Kukowski’s fault she only had gibberish to spout about workplace gender fairness. It’s the fault of her party and its culture—and the GOP will pay for it with women.
• More Blacks Have Health Insurance Because of ACA – The number of African Americans who lacked health insurance dropped dramatically in 2014's first quarter compared to 2013's fourth quarter thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Republicans threaten to repeal if they win control of both houses of Congress in November's national elections.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 8th through April 9th:

• Three High-Profile Right-Wing Publications Could Be Forced to Shut Down – The National Review, Glenn Beck and New York Post are finally being taken to task in court.
• Just Talking About Same-Sex Marriage With Anti-Gay Voters Can Shift Opinions, Study Shows – Having persuasive face-to-face conversations with someone who supports same-sex marriage can lead opponents to have significant and long-lasting shifts in their views about marriage equality, especially when the person they're talking to is gay, according to a new study by two political science professors.
• Millions More People Are Getting Health Insurance Because Of Obamacare, Survey Finds – Nearly one week after White House enrollment numbers showed Obamacare surpassing the seven-million mark, an economist-driven survey is projecting more good news for the Affordable Care Act.
• Where’s the Black Rage on McCutcheon? – When the McCutcheon ruling came down I was sitting in a room with several young African American men and women East Harlem talking about their struggles with employment in a world they said was stacked against them. They constantly talked about race, class, and power—but ultimately believed they couldn’t do much about it. All too often in fact, they shrugged off the notion that they any agency to change the system, with one guy noting, “we’ve just gotten the short end of the stick.”
• Christie, Not a Big Fan of Criticism – Eeesh. Not sure I've ever seen anyone react this badly at a roast. But then it's Chris Christie.
• UMass’ Derrick Gordon Is First Openly Gay Man In Major College Basketball – University of Massachusetts shooting guard Derrick Gordon came out as gay to the rest of his team last week, making him the first openly gay player in Division 1 men's college basketball, according to OutSports and ESPN.
• Rekha Basu: While America moves forward, Iowa Republicans step backward – As stealthily as it reared its ugly head, the power to harness prejudice against gay people to win national elections is shriveling up and dying a well-deserved death.
• Leonard Pitts Jr.: Wake up, people, and see the danger we’re in | Opinion | McClatchy DC – This is a column about campaign finance reform. And your eyes glazed over just then, didn't they? That's the problem with this problem. Americans know that government truly of, by and for the people is unlikely if not impossible so long as the system is polluted by billions of dollars in contributions from corporations and individual billionaires. Half of us, according to Gallup, would like to see public financing of campaigns; nearly 80 percent want to limit campaign fund-raising.
• Pulled Over for Driving While Black and Brown . . . and LGBTQ? – The officer gave us a flimsy pretext then ticketed us for a feather. Yes, a feather.
• Mozilla And The Right-Wing Media’s Persecution Complex – To hear conservative media tell it, the resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich following an outcry over Eich's support for the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California is merely the latest sign that a new era of anti-conservative persecution has arrived. That narrative undergirds the right's campaign against LGBT equality and is essential to understanding conservative support for measures that would enshrine anti-LGBT discrimination into law.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 8th from 13:37 to 13:58:

• Why Race Has Been The Real Story Of Obama’s Presidency All Along – A few weeks ago, the liberal comedian Bill Maher and conservative strategist and pundit Bill Kristol had a brief spat on Maher’s HBO show, putatively over what instigated the tea party but ultimately over the psychic wound that has divided red America and blue America in the Obama years.
• Gallup: The uninsured rate is lowest since 2008 – So now will Republicans say Gallup is cooking their books to show millions more people have gained health insurance because of Obamacare?
• The Ryan Budget: How I Spent My Weekend – Hypothetically, if you wanted to distill every form of right-wing economic lunacy into a 100-page document, then hypothetically, it would be the Ryan Budget. It's all in there, and I had to cuddle up with it this weekend.
• Cosmos Shows How to Do Equity – No, I’m not just talking about the fact that the new host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, is Black—although it is hugely important to have visible Black scientists as role models for people of all colors. I also love a line in the first episode, describing the initial encounter between Europeans and Native Americans: “For better or worse, the two halves of the world discovered each other.”
• WATCH: Melissa Harris-Perry Rebukes Mississippi Gov. – This Saturday, in the regular "Open Letter" segment of her MSNBC show Melissa Harris-Perry, MHP addressed Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, rebuking him for signing a "right to discriminate" bill targeting the LGBT community.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for April 1st from 11:09 to 16:52:

• Just Look At This Couple And Then Tell Me That Marriage Equality Should Be Banned – Jack and Ted were together for 25 years, and they couldn't get married in their home state.
• Why Atheists Making Up .07% of America’s Prison Population Is Threatening to Christian Fundamentalists – Religious fundamentalists often proclaim that if atheists don’t like their Christian America they can leave. It's worth reminding them that if every atheist left, America would lose 85 percent of its scientists — not that the fundamentalists love science exactly — and less than one percent of its prison population. That's a tricky one for the self-proclaimed righteous ones, because godlessness supposedly leads to sinful behavior. But the facts are the facts.
• Meet The Obamacare Enrollment Truthers – On the final day of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, right-wing media have resorted to echoing Republicans and accusing the White House of "cooking the books" on the latest enrollment figures.
• Best defense a child rapist can have is a silver spoon – In case you wondered if there were two different justice systems in this country, consider this.

  Start with Robert H. Richards IV, an unemployed man who nevertheless has two million-dollar homes. He can do that sort of thing because he's a du Pont heir, and despite the horrors of the "death tax," he's still mooching his entire life without doing anything productive because of his family lineage.

• Big Gains for Obamacare – New poll shows big gains in public support for Obamacare.
• Take heart Republicans. You’ve kept millions of kids from getting health coverage – Republicans can take heart on this sad Obamacare enrollment good news day because they've achieved something in their relentless war on health insurance: They've kept millions of children off of the health care coverage rolls.
• The School-to-Prison Pipeline Starts in Preschool – A study conducted by US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights shows that black preschoolers (yes, four and five year olds) make up almost half of all out-of-school suspensions for preschoolers. What any preschool student has to do in order to be suspended is beyond me. That said, black students are receiving the message — at younger and younger ages — that their behavior will be regarded differently, as inherently more disruptive and therefore more deserving of punishment. They are being denied the right to their formative years of education and socialization. And then we wonder why there is an “education gap.”
• Celebrating Bigotry in Uganda – If for some reason you need a buzzkill today, BuzzFeed has one in a report on a "five-hour celebration" in Kampala of Uganda's new Anti-Homosexuality Law, apparently a joint production by President Yoweri Museveni and (a special buzzkill for me) the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for March 19th through March 26th:

• Wal-Mart Manager Speaks out About His Store’s Ugly Reality – From no time off, to working multiple roles at once, here's what's really going on at the mega-chain.
• Inherited wealth is an injustice. Let’s end it – Inheritance, which rewards the wealthy for doing nothing, is once again becoming a key route to riches just as it was in the Victorian era
• Obamacare and the Self-Made Man – "Every American regardless of his means must have access to reasonable health care. In the absence of a single-payer system, every American regardless of his means must purchase health insurance in the marketplace to guarantee such access."

  What in these words (and their equivalents) raises such ire in decent folk? Americans on the whole are decent folk and selfishness or other immoral motives therefore do not likely underly their anger. Instead, I believe much of their anger turns on the myth of the self-made man. Let me explain.

• The Sad Death of One Penniless Adjunct Professor Is Still Making a Surprising Difference – If one obscure college professor dies, does it make any difference? If you're Margaret Mary Vojtko, yes.

  Margaret Mary died last summer at age 83 — and her death has turned her name into an emotional rallying cry for adjunct college teachers who're seeking justice from their schools.

• The Minimum Wage Fight Is A Fight For Women – The states with elected officials most likely to espouse anti-taker sentiments — i.e., Republican-dominated states — are the most dependent on federal spending, while returning the least to Washington in the way of tax dollars.
• GOP States Are The Most Dependent On Government – The states with elected officials most likely to espouse anti-taker sentiments — i.e., Republican-dominated states — are the most dependent on federal spending, while returning the least to Washington in the way of tax dollars.
• Insane New Gun Law in Georgia Will Allow Guns in Bars, Schools, Churches—Just About Anywhere – The NRA calls it "a historic victory for the Second Amendment.” Everyone else: Not so much.
• Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s ‘conscious uncoupling’ – what deluded tosh – Among the many distinctive attributes of celebrity it has always seemed likely that the most important is the capacity to alter reality, to create a force field in which the normal rules by which the rest of us live are suspended. Something beyond access to an unlimited supply of dazzling white jeans.
• 8 Laws To Keep Women In Line That Are Somehow Still On The Books – Sometimes, however, the law moves at a glacial pace, and we find ourselves staring at ordinances that are either relics of a different social and political era, or perhaps some attempt to reclaim that past. While every state has undoubtedly passed its share of controversial laws, we've rounded up some of the ones that really don't seem to have a place in 2014.