Author: Marc Jampole

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Why do “working class whites” continue to vote against their own best interests?

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It’s truly befuddling to me why the group labeled working class whites continue to prefer Republican candidates. The results of the latest Associated Press-GfK survey says that this group favors Republicans 58% to 36% of Democrats, an incredible 22% margin.  The AP story announcing the survey results contrasts that poor showing with the last two […]

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After giving expanded coverage to Beck rally, media puts a same-sized rally of left-centrists on the back burner.

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Many of you probably won’t know that on this past Saturday, labor unions, the NAACP and hundreds of other liberal-centrist and progressive groups rallied in Washington in support of liberal economic policies, President Obama and Democratic candidates in the November election. The reason you may not have heard of this rally is that the news […]

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With one PR blunder, Meg Whitman may have wiped out $120 million in election spending.

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Let’s say one subgroup who represented 18% of all voters all cast their ballot against one candidate, which in the United States would usually mean they cast their vote for the one other candidate.  That means that the candidate against whom that one subgroup voted would have to win about 61% of the rest of […]

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O’Donnell, Paladino and other political candidates behaving badly.

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The news hit earlier today that Christine O’Donnell, queen of the small and shrinking anti-masturbation movement and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware, lied about her academic career—yet again!  A few months back, officials at Oxford University said that O’Donnell did not attend their university, as she had claimed.  Now Claremont Graduate University […]

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Money for Halloween but not for ancient sewers: Is this the 21st century American apocalypse?

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The National Retail Federation told us yesterday that the average American plans to spend $66.28 on decorations, food and costumes for Halloween this year, up almost 18% from the $56.31 per person we spent last year.  I learned about it from the always interesting Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter, Teresa Lindeman.   The same day, the news […]

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More tendencies and trends while fending off some propaganda bends of truth.

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Another blog full of short takes, beginning with a political cartoon I saw a few weeks back that gratuitously communicated a “big lie” through conflation, which is when someone equates two things that aren’t comparable, like comparing Bush II’s national guard record to John Kerry’s Viet Nam combat experience.   The cartoon, by Steve Breen, depicts […]

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Let’s tie up loose ends, examine new tendencies, look at some trends.

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Instead of a long essay today, I want to provide some quick takes on recent news: I’ll start by commending U-Mass professor Robert Pollin for his article on rising inequality in the United States since the mid-70’s in the most recent Nation magazine. Pollin pulls statistics from Larry Bartels’ Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of […]

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Even when discussing families recently made homeless, the emphasis is on buying things as a way of life.

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Michael Luo had a poignant article in this past Sunday’s New York Times about the 40,000 leap in the number of families with children in homeless shelters across the country since the current recession began.  The article has a lot of interesting information about a group that has seen their American Dream dissolve.  But Luo […]

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War helps no one but the wealthy, and yet countries seem to find poor people willing to fight.

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War used to be a great way to make a living for poor males or younger sons with no other prospects.  But in today’s global, technology-driven society, war can help no one but the wealthy and their chosen governments, corporations and factotums. Franz de Waal has an attractive theory that man has two simian ancestors:  […]

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Palin’s “despicable” illiteracy serves as the “inception” of thousands running to the dictionary.

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I subscribe to Merriam-Webster’s online unabridged dictionary, which contains the definition and spelling of more than a million words and also gives me access to a myriad of online resources that are helpful to a writer, including the Collegiate Dictionary, Collegiate Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Atlas, medical dictionary, style guide, French-English dictionary and Spanish-English dictionary.  It’s a […]

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