Poverty

From her years at Yale Law School until early in her Senate career, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s liberal credentials rarely were questioned. Since then, many on the left have come to doubt that Hillary is one of them, for reasons that include her support for the Iraq war and her alleged coziness with Wall Street. Rebecca Traister believes that it’s been twenty-five, not fifteen, years since Clinton…

In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…

Demography may not always be destiny, but according to Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, the “best bet” is that over the next decade-plus, the Republican party as a whole will move towards the center-right as young, relatively moderate voters join and elderly right-wingers shuffle off this mortal coil. In a Monday article, Bouie predicted that “eventually, the GOP will find a working national majority,…

During the Thursday afternoon edition of Your World With Neil Cavuto, the Fox News Channel business host responded to the accusation from Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show that the people at Fox “hate poor people.” “I think he's very fast on his feet even if he sometimes gives me a few good kicks,” Cavuto said about Stewart. “That's fine. I can take it and take him. What I can't…

On Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, FNC’s Charles Krauthammer slammed President Obama for attacking Fox News’ at an event on poverty at Georgetown University.

New York Times White House correspondent Michael Shear specializes in one-sided fawn-a-thons over President Obama, and Wednesday's report on a panel discussion at Georgetown University featuring Obama talking race and poverty, was the work of a master of the craft: "Obama Urges Unity in Poverty Fight." Shear, who carried Obama's water over the President's anti-business "you didn't build that"…

What a shame: if only the economy had been better, the rioters would have had more name-brand stores to burn. Seriously, this had to be one of the strangest statements to come out of the Baltimore riots. On this evening's Ed Show, Baltimore Pastor Jamal Bryant complained that because of economic "disenfranchisement," the rioters "could only find one anchor store in that neighborhood" to destroy.

With Camden Yards set to hold its first fan-attended Baltimore Orioles game in over two weeks tonight, it's a good time to go back to a May 2 item by Meredith Shiner at Yahoo Politics. Readers may remember the Duke-"educated" Shiner as the person who was flabbergasted that GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz cited "God-given rights" when he announced his candidacy on March 23, tweeting in part…

On Mother’s Day, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and NBC contributor Maria Shriver, former First Lady of California, bemoaned that the United States ranked far behind Norway in government mandated services, such as paid maternity leave, for all women. Todd: "Among 193 member states of the United Nations, the United States and seven other countries have no paid maternity leave. Five of those…

Some pundits have speculated that the Baltimore riots may benefit Republicans in next year’s elections. On the other hand, Walsh, of Salon and MSNBC, thinks that the unrest has yielded an opportunity for liberalism. In a two-part series, Walsh argued that one lesson of Baltimore is that Democrats' Bill Clintonesque center-left “approach to race, crime and inequality” has proved inadequate, and…

All week, liberals and conservatives have accused each other of causing the longstanding socioeconomic woes of Baltimore. TNR's Rebecca Leber had a subtler take in a Friday piece: she put part of the blame on liberals, but only because they went along with conservative ideas. “Democrats exacerbated these problems [in Baltimore] not by embracing the policies of the left. Rather, they dug the hole…

Professional race explainer Michael Eric Dyson said a lot of stupid things on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes Monday. (Yes, it’s still on the air.) And really, that’s understandable, given that his job was to find excuses for the inexcusable violence and looting in Baltimore. But mixed in with his litany of exculpatory urban dysfunction (“… the slow terror of expulsions from schools, rising…

During the 9:00 hour of MSNBC’s live coverage of the ongoing Baltimore riots on Monday night, Rachel Maddow accused the city’s police of being “a little out of control” for returning items being thrown at them by protestors: "But if they're picking up things that are being thrown at them and throwing things back, that implies to me just as a lay observer that the police feel -- that the police…

Readers who have seen my previous posts on actress Gwyneth Paltrow's recent "failed" attempt to complete the deceptively designed "Food Stamp Challenge" know far more than people who rely on Eonline.com ever will. Although it's far from encouraging when contemplating our nation's future, what we have here is an object lesson in how the entertainment press airbrushes the truth to polish the image…