background preloader

U.S.

Facebook Twitter

U.S. Healthcare

John McCain remembered: defending Obama from racist questions. Trump Says White Supremacist Terror Is Fake News. These Chilling Cases Prove Otherwise. Conservative Christianity and White Supremacy's Scary Kinship. There are times when you realize how far Humanity has drifted, days when you see how sick we’ve become, moments when you notice how badly Christians have lost the plot.

Conservative Christianity and White Supremacy's Scary Kinship

It often comes when you see strange alliances form; agreement where there should not be agreement, affinity that should not exist. Once while reflecting on the disheartening Evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, I tweeted out these words: Equality means believing that a child living 5,000 miles away is a precious as the one sleeping in your nursery right now.

The Trump Watch

Direction of US democracy. U.S. & the world. The Collapse Of Evangelical Leadership Was Inevitable, But Its Resurrection Isn't. The Value of Shepard Smith. Beth Moore: The Evangelical Superstar Taking on Trump. For decades, Moore never broke stride.

Beth Moore: The Evangelical Superstar Taking on Trump

We Need a Dignity Revolution (faithful Christians) People Aren’t Having Babies Because The Rent Is Too Damn High. It’s something millennials hear again, and again, and again: Their delay in starting families, and their inability to afford a home, represent their collective failures as a generation.

People Aren’t Having Babies Because The Rent Is Too Damn High

We’re slowly starting to understand that this may not be their fault (it might be capitalism’s). And a team of economists have now crunched the data proving that zoning and restrictive land-use regulations–forces that contribute to making housing so expensive in cities like San Francisco and New York–are actually driving fertility rates downward. In a recent paper co-authored with Harvard Kennedy School PhD candidate Lauren Russell, Daniel Shoag, a Kennedy School and Case Western Reserve professor, found “a significant relationship between land-use restrictions and fertility rates across all measures and geographies.” We know this instinctively. Stories abound about young tech workers in major cities living in tiny apartments that could never accommodate a family. The Difference Between George Washington and Robert E. Lee – Foreign Policy. In his third — and most appalling — set of remarks on a violent white supremacist rally, Donald Trump not only engaged in moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and anti-racist counter-protesters, he went so far as to defend the grudge that brought the white supremacists to Charlottesville in the first place.

The Difference Between George Washington and Robert E. Lee – Foreign Policy

“Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” the president said. “So this week, it is Robert E.

Closing the door

Study: Mortgage Deduction Doesn’t Increase Homeownership. The mortgage-interest deduction is just one of those things: Just about everyone who’s studied it thinks it’s a horrible policy, but it’s probably not going anywhere because so many upper-middle-class families benefit from it.

Study: Mortgage Deduction Doesn’t Increase Homeownership

Why is it a bad policy? Trump Now Thinks the American Health Care Act Is ‘Mean’ Last month, President Trump held a big Rose Garden celebration marking the House’s passage of the profoundly unpopular American Health Care Act.

Trump Now Thinks the American Health Care Act Is ‘Mean’

As Paul Ryan smiled ghoulishly behind him, Trump called the bill, which would take insurance away from at least 23 million people, a “great” and “very incredibly well-crafted” plan, expressing confidence that “we’re going to get this passed through the Senate.” Since then, Senate Republicans have been working on the legislation in almost total secrecy — a clear indication that their version won’t be significantly less vicious than the House’s.

(Recently asked why the GOP refused to release a draft of the bill, an aide explained, “We aren’t stupid.”) We Could Have Been Canada. And what if it was a mistake from the start?

We Could Have Been Canada

The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them? The Revolution, this argument might run, was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders’ panic mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and demagogy. Here's Why Trump Is Having a Cow Over Canadian Milk. Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP; mihtiander/iStock.

Here's Why Trump Is Having a Cow Over Canadian Milk

What Canada Can Teach Trump About Milk. Trump's Not Wrong About Canadian Dairy. US Trade Policy on Dairy Is Simple: We Basically Allow No Imports at All. Looking for news you can trust?

US Trade Policy on Dairy Is Simple: We Basically Allow No Imports at All

Subscribe to our free newsletters. America's Cult of Ignorance. Why Has the Country Gone Crazy? {* #userInformationForm *} {* traditionalSignIn_emailAddress *} {* traditionalSignIn_password *} {* traditionalSignIn_signInButton*} {* /userInformationForm *} {* #socialRegistrationForm *} {* socialRegistration_firstName *} {* socialRegistration_lastName *}

Why Has the Country Gone Crazy?

Education

Gun culture. Social justice. Justice & Police. Energy. The Despair of Poor White Americans. Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means. Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting.

Rural America confronts a new class divide. HAWKINSVILLE, Ga. — The rows of low-slung plants under the hot Georgia sun are deceptive: It’s what grows underground that counts. “I love this dirt more than anything – except my son,” says farmhand Franklin “Spanky” Laidler, jumping off his red tractor onto a field where peanuts burrow in the ground. For many, that love of this sandy Southern soil is more than just a way of life, it’s a wealth generator. Mr. Why Men Are Disappearing From the Workforce. Better design could solve the debate about gendered bathrooms. Confederate Monuments and Their Complicated Legacy. Why Is America So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries? Businessinsider. A more inclusive military won't matter if young people won't include themselves.

The Geography of Well-Being. Economic growth has long been the basic metric through which we evaluate economic and social progress.