Adam Johnson at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting writes—In Nine Democratic Debates, Not a Single Question About Poverty:
Over 45 million Americans live in poverty—but you wouldn’t think potential leaders of the country are expected to know or care anything about this, listening to the questions asked by the elite journalists who moderated the Democratic debates this primary season.
A FAIR analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months shows that not one question was asked about poverty. By contrast, 30 questions were asked about ISIS or terrorism (almost half of them concentrated in the December 19 debate, which took place days after the San Bernardino shootings) and 11 questions were asked Russia. Ten questions were asked about socialism or communism, all of which were directed at Bernie Sanders.
The candidates themselves have brought up poverty, either in their prepared remarks or in response to more abstract questions about the economy. Sanders brought up poverty in all but two debates, broaching the topic 12 times, or approximately 1.3 times per debate. Clinton brought up the issue five times in total, or a little more than once every other debate.
According to the 2014 census, 14.5 percent of Americans, or over 45 million people, live in poverty, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. Child poverty (which Sanders points out consistently) is especially troubling, with an estimated 16 million Americans under the age of 18 living below the poverty line.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Obama! Colbert! Phoenix! We're Calling You Out!
Without a hefty cash advance, nobody with more than a dozen working synapses would want the job of figuring out over a one-year span whether The Weekly Standard or The Corner, National Review Online's group blog, posts the more aromatic tripe. But, Wednesday at least, it's no contest. In his "It Sticks in My Craw," Mark Krikorian explains that "Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English. ...”
Part of our success in assimilation has been to leave whole areas of culture up to the individual, so that newcomers have whatever cuisine or religion or so on they want, limiting the demand for conformity to a smaller field than most other places would. But one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that's not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch. And there are basically two options — the newcomer adapts to us, or we adapt to him. And multiculturalism means there's a lot more of the latter going on than there should be.
Without getting into the whole multiculturalism contretemps in this matter - Andrew Leonard does a good job of that at Salon - most people, out of courtesy and an expectation of reciprocation, defer to the individual's preference when pronouncing a name. Krikorian allows as how that's okay, "but there ought to be limits." Which he proceeds to establish.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The debate that was debatable. Priebusin’ is hard! Turmoil in Trumpland. That alt-right frog thing. Portland’s top cop shows how to flush public trust in gun safety down the toilet. A conservative law firm sells small school systems bathroom panic snake oil.
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