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As the final Election Day votes are being counted, national attention has focused on the Republicans’ near-sweep of close elections for Senate and governor. But elections for the other congressional branch deserve more scrutiny. Given that Republicans will only win about 52 percent of votes in House races, how are they ending up with 57 percent of seats? Why did Democrats concede control of the House months ago, even when congressional approval is so low?
Democrats had ample reason to fear that this year’s midterm elections would not go well for them, but bad doesn’t begin to describe what happened to them—and the nation—yesterday. Catastrophic is more like it.
Long viewed as an ally by Wall Street, likely 2016 presidential contender Hillary Clinton has increasingly been taking banks and big business to task while on the campaign trail for Democrats across the country. Continue reading #Clinton Sounding More Like #Warren as 2016 Nears→
It’s a chilly, gray, October Sunday, an apt backdrop for a bit of navel gazing. Assuming the midterm elections turn out as predicted, why is it that the arguments you read here and in other similar venues are failing to persuade? Why does it seem like the OTE world view is getting crushed in the midterms?
It is disappointing, to put it mildly, that in the day and age we live in, some people still readily equate racial homogeneity with a societal harmony. If anything, this is yet another sign that our knowledge of relatively recent history is fading and we badly need a refresher.
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
The origins of the phrase “American exceptionalism” are not especially obscure. The French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville, observing this country in the 1830s, said that Americans seemed exceptional in valuing practical attainments almost to the exclusion of the arts and sciences. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, on hearing a report by the American Communist Party that workers in the United States in 1929 were not ready for revolution, denounced “the heresy of American exceptionalism.” In 1996, the political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset took those hints from Tocqueville and Stalin and added some of his own to produce his book American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. The virtues of American society, for Lipset — our individualism, hostility to state action, and propensity for ad hoc problem-solving — themselves stood in the way of a lasting and prudent consensus in the conduct of American politics. Continue reading It’s Time to Rethink American Exceptionalism | David Bromwich ~ The Nation→
Two new studies in the New England Journal of Medicine rocked the world of celiac research, both proving that scientists have a ways to go in their understanding of celiac disease, which affects about 1% of the population, whether they know it or not. Continue reading The Rise of Celiac Disease Still Stumps Scientists | TIME→
As the Editor of AlterNet for 20 years, I have read and seen the entire range of horrendous and growing problems we face as a society and globe virtually every day. It is not just climate change, or ISIL, or Ferguson, or poverty and homelessness, or more misogynistic murdering of women, or the Democrats about to lose the Senate as Obama gets more unpopular. It is much, much more. Every day. It passes by before my eyes. At AlterNet, there are no issue silos—there is just the open faucet of depressing political information coming and going every hour of every day (with the occasional story of success and inspiration).
Police say they have no evidence of foul play in the hanging death of black teenager Lennon Lacy. But in a case with disturbing racial overtones, his family are left with haunting questions. 