The 2012 Presidential Election and State Population Densities

Last summer, I examined the relationship between state population densities and the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election.  The blog post is linked below.

State Population Densities and the 2012 Presidential Election

Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach 8 Million

President Barack Obama

On Thursday, April 17, 2014, President Barack Obama announced that there are 8 million sign-ups for purchasing health insurance via healthcare exchanges.

WhiteHouse.gov: 8 Million ACA Sign-Ups Via Exchanges

WhiteHouse.gov: ACA Stats

The New Republic: Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach the 8 Million Milestone

ACASignups.net: Obamacare Attains 8 Million Sign-Ups Via Exchanges

Washington Post: Obama Announces 8 Million ACA Sign-Ups

White House: Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach 7 Million Benchmark

President Barack Obama

CNN coverage is linked below.

Obamacare Sign-Ups HIt 7 Million

Washington Post: 7.04 Million

"The White House announced Tuesday that more than 7 million Americans have signed up for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, marking a sharp turnaround for a federal campaign to sell the nation on new health insurance from disastrous beginnings six months ago."

----Washington Post, April 1, 2014

The New Republic's Anne Applebaum: The Cautionary Lessons From History Regarding Revolutions that, in Part, Played Out in the Streets

Anne Applebaum's article at The New Republic is linked below.

Lessons About Revolutionary Fervor in the Streets

"Yet a successful street revolution, like any revolution, is never guaranteed to leave anything positive in its aftermath—or anything at all. In the West, we often now associate protests with progress, or at least we assume that big crowds—the March on Washington, Paris in 1968—are the benign face of social change. But street revolutions are not always progressive, positive, or even important. Some replace a corrupt tyranny with violence and a political vacuum, which is what happened in Libya. Ukraine’s own Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 produced a new group of leaders who turned out to be just as incompetent as their predecessors. Crowds can be bullying, they can become violent, and they can give rise to extremists: Think Tehran 1979, or indeed Petrograd 1917."

---Anne Applebaum, The New Republic 

The New Republic's Paul Berman: To Understand Putin's Actions in 2014, Look to the Logic Behind Soviet Military Actions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968

Vladimir Putin

Paul Berman's article at The New Republic is linked below.

Soviet Actions in 1956 and 1968 Shed light on Putin's Approach to Ukraine in 2014

"It is always said of Putin that he is a czar, operating on nineteenth-century principles. Or he is a Russian enigma. And he is not a Kremlin general secretary from Soviet times. Even so, he is a Kremlin general secretary. He has invaded Ukraine on the basis of the same logic that led Nikita Khrushchev to invade Hungary in 1956 and that led Leonid Brezhnev to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is the logic of counterrevolution, and it is not inscrutable."

---Paul Berman, The New Republic

NBC News: 21 Percent of Americans Say that Religion Not Particularly Important to Them

The NBC News article is linked below.

NBC News: For a Growing American Demographic, Religion Not Important

"One in five Americans say religion does not play an important role in their lives, a new NBC/WSJ journal poll shows – the highest percentage since the poll began asking participants about their focus on faith in 1997.

Twenty one percent of respondents said that religion is 'not that important' to their lives, compared to 16 percent who said the same in 1999. In 1997, 14 percent of Americans said religion did not play an important role in their lives.

The poll showed that these less religious Americans are more likely to be men, have an income over $75,000, to live in the Northeast or West and to be under the age of 35."

---Carrie Dann, NBC News, March 12, 2014

CNN's David Frum: The Nuanced Liberalism of Millennials

David Frum's CNN column is linked below.

David Frum: Today's Youngest Voters are Trending Liberal

"The generation born since 1981 is the age group most likely to vote Democratic. The eldest of them are in their 30s now, and they continue to be much more liberal than previous-age cohorts at the same point in their lives. A big new survey by the Pew Research Center seeks to understand why. Its report carries political warnings for conservatives -- and some larger warnings for us all.

The warning for conservatives is: Millennial attachment to the Democratic Party is not a phase. Millennials are far less likely to be religiously affiliated than their elders. They are more likely to have children outside marriage (47% of their children are born outside marriage, compared with only 35% of Generation X children in 1996). They are poorer than their predecessor generations at the same point in their life cycles."

---David Frum, CNN, March 11, 2014

David Masciotra: Historian Richard Hofstadter's Warnings About American Anti-Intellectualism are Still Relevant Today

David Masciotra's story at The Daily Beast is linked below.

The Persistence of American Anti-Intellectualism

"Anti-Intellectualism in American Life—one of Hofstadter’s best, among many great books – was a pile of dynamite in 1963, when it was first published and blew a sizable hole in the house of America’s self-comforting delusions of intellectual superiority. In 2014, one can only hope that some of its initial blast still reverberates, as media commentators, university administrators, and even the President, have exposed themselves as adherents to what Hofstadter indicted as the 'lowest common denominator criterion' of thought and 'technician conformity' of lifestyle. Suspicion, and often outright hatred, of ideas is making American culture as riveting as oatmeal. By reading Hofstadter, one learns that the resurgence of a new anti-intellectualism isn’t new, at all. In fact, Hofstadter identified the particularly poisonous strain of the virus that now infects the American mind and kills the imagination."

---David Masciotra, The Daily Beast 

Pew Research Center: Among Recent American High School Graduates, the College Enrollment Rate of Females Significantly Exceeds that of Males

The Pew Research Center article is linked below.

Among Recent High School Graduates, College Enrollment Rates Dominated by Women

"In 1994, 63% of recent female high school graduates and 61% of male recent high school graduates were enrolled in college in the fall following graduation. By 2012, the share of young women enrolled in college immediately after high school had increased to 71%, but it remained unchanged for young men at 61%."

---Pew Research Center, March 6, 2014

The New Republic's Julia Ioffe: Putin is Nutty!

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

Julia Ioffe's article at The New Republic is linked below.

Julia Ioffe: Vladimir Putin is Crazy

"Today's performance, though, put all that speculation to rest. Merkel was absolutely right: Putin has lost it. Unfortunately, it makes him that much harder to deal with."

---Julia Ioffe, The New Republic 

Tom Engelhardt: A World Without Imperialist Power?

Tom Engelhard't column at TomDispatch.com is linked below.

Where Has Imperialistic Power Gone?

"As the new century dawned, a crew led by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ascended to power in Washington.  They were the first administration ever largely born of a think tank (with the ambitious name Project for a New American Century).  Long before 9/11 gave them their opportunity to set the American military loose on the planet, they were already dreaming of an all-American imperium that would outshine the British or Roman empires.

Of course, who doesn’t know what happened next?  Though they imagined organizing a Pax Americana in the Middle East and then on a planetary scale, theirs didn’t turn out to be an organizational vision at all.  They got bogged down in Afghanistan, destabilizing neighboring Pakistan.  They got bogged down in Iraq, having punched a hole through the heart of the planet's oil heartlands and set off a Sunni-Shiite regional civil war, whose casualty lists continue to stagger the imagination.  In the process, they never came close to their dream of bringing Tehran to its knees, no less establishing even the most rudimentary version of that Pax Americana."

---Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com

Robert J. Samuelson: Ignoring Demographic Realities

Robert J. Samuelson's column at the Washington Post is linked below.

Robert J. Samuelson: Demographic Realities are Looming

"Second, family breakdown. In 2011, unmarried women accounted for 41 percent of U.S. births, up from 5 percent in 1960. The trend affects all major groups. The rate is 29 percent for whites, 53 percent among Hispanics and 72 percent among African Americans. Although 60 percent of single mothers have live-in boyfriends, half of these relationships end within five years. Single parenthood’s stigma is gone."

---Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post 

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and his New Book on Hispanics and American History

The article at NBC News is linked below.

NBC News: The Deep Presence of Hispanics in U.S. History

Pew Research Center: Among Married American Couples, Wives who are More Highly Educated than their Husbands now Outnumber those Couples in which Husbands Possess More Education than their Wives

Wendy Wang's article at Pew Research Center is linked below.

Among Married Couples, Wives with More Education than Husbands now a Larger Cohort than the Opposite

"It used to be more common for a husband to have more education than his wife in America. But now, for the first time since Pew Research has tracked this trend over the past 50 years, the share of couples in which the wife is the one “marrying down” educationally is higher than those in which the husband has more education.

Among married women in 2012, 21% had spouses who were less educated than they were—a threefold increase from 1960, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

The share of couples where the husband’s education exceeds his wife’s increased steadily from 1960 to 1990, but has fallen since then to 20% in 2012."

---Wendy Wang, Pew Research Center

New York Times: Obamacare Enrollments Exceed 3 Million

Robert Pear's article at the New York Times is linked below.

Nearly 3.3 Million Enrolled in Obamacare

New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait: Right-Wingers Demonizing Obamacare as the New Welfare

Jonathan Chait's article at New York Magazine is linked below.

Jonathan Chait: Obamacare is not the old "Aid to Families with Dependent Children" Program

"But Ryan is completely wrong about the class of people facing this reduced-work incentive. It’s not workers who are set to “begin working” and “get on the ladder of life” who face the Obamacare phase-out. That hits much higher up the income ladder — $94,000 a year for a family of four. A person facing this subsidy cutoff may work fewer hours, or even quit altogether, but he or she would be living off his or her own savings or a spouse's income. There's no Obamacare "dole," in the sense of income that substitutes for work, unless conservatives imagine Medicaid patients clothing themselves in free hospital gowns and feeding their children all the waiting room lollipops they can eat."

---Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine 

Pew Research Center: In 2012, Modest Uptick in U.S. Marriages Among the College-Educated

The Pew Research Center article is linked below.

Pew Research Center: Some Rebound in New Marriages Among College-Educated

"But a closer look at the demographic patterns reveals some interesting insights about who is getting married. From 2011 to 2012, the total number of newly married adults increased by 113,000 (from 4.21 million to 4.32 million).  Examining the newlyweds by education level, the number of newly married adults with at least a bachelor’s degree increased by 98,000 from 2011 to 2012.  Thus, almost the entire increase in new marriages (87%) from 2011 to 2012 is accounted for by the college-educated."

---Richard Fry, Pew Research Center

Salon's Simon Maloy: Coca-Cola's Multi-Language Super Bowl Ad Drew Out the Nativist Xenophobes

Simon Maloy's column at Salon is linked below.

Simon Maloy: The Backlash Against the Coca-Cola Super Bowl Ad

"Coca-Cola’s ad was a nod to a long-standing truth about America: A country of such broad ethnic diversity is going to have whole communities that speak languages other than English. From the barrios of Los Angeles to the tenement blocks of turn-of-the-century New York to the Gullah region of the antebellum South, there have always been American communities where standard English wasn’t spoken at home. In my own family it’s not uncommon to hear conversations in English, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. This isn’t a threat to American culture. It is American culture.

But for the conservative pundits and 'English first' nativists, the simple act of recognizing other heritages somehow detracts from their own. This is the culture war, and it’s a zero-sum fight. In the eyes of the critics, Coke’s acknowledgment that English does not command 100 percent of the linguistic market was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It’s a blatant and nasty appeal to cultural resentment and xenophobia."

---Simon Maloy, Salon 

Coca-Cola's "America the Beautiful" Super Bowl Commercial Ignites Rightwing Xenophobia

Coverage of the Super Bowl Coca-Cola Controversy is linked below.

New York Daily News: Coverage of the Backlash Against Coca-Cola

Eonline.com: Coverage of the Coca-Cola Super Bowl Controversy

Politico: Coverage of Conservative Reaction to the Coca-Cola Multi-Language Ad

Salon's Joan Walsh: Fox News is the Avant-Garde of White Grievance and Backlash

Joan Walsh's column at Salon is linked below.

Joan Walsh: Fox News, a Channel for White Grievance

"Thanks in large measure to Roger Ailes, we live in a country now where a carnival barker with an ugly comb-over can make the duly elected president show him his papers, and an angry mediocrity like O’Reilly can condescend to an accomplished black man who is in fact his moral and intellectual superior.

Maybe more important, day to day Fox provides a steady infusion of toxic lies into our political bloodstream, from tales about 'victims' of Obamacare who could in fact be helped by it, to fantasies of neglect and incompetence at Benghazi that in fact shame the memory of the men who died there. Politically, we are all the sicker for it.

So if progressives want to believe that Fox is history because its viewers are getting old and its hosts are getting crazier, that’s their choice. I was always told dying animals can be the most dangerous."

---Joan Walsh, Salon