By Tammy Johnson
Cross-posted from RaceWire

This weekend the National Governors Association gathers in Washington to discuss budget cuts, stimulus funds and a litany of state policy proposals. Things have changed dramatically since President Obama’s election. Many observers embraced the moment as the start of a post-racial era. But that same morning 52 percent of voters in Florida chose to cling to the past by refusing to repeal a 1926 constitutional amendment prohibiting property ownership by Asian Americans. The convergence of societal shifts around race and the reality of institutional racism embedded in our laws is an ever-present challenge for elected officials, from the White House to the statehouse.

Clearly, if you talk to any nonpartisan economist, the stimulus did prevent the U.S. recession from turning into a full-blown depression. Moody’s, not exactly partisan, estimates it has added 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, believes that estimate is conservative.

Yet the Obama White House gets no credit. Republicans are winning the war of the words, claiming it was a colossal waste of time. They are dissing it even as their own congressional districts benefit from the investment. And they are getting away with it.
Why?
Added jobs were jobs saved

Written by Kelley Robinson for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
This article was originally published by DesMoinesRegister.com, in response to an earlier editorial. It is republished here with permission from the author, and is part of a series of articles appearing on RH Reality Check, written by reproductive justice advocates responding to recent efforts by the anti-choice movement to use racial and ethnic myths to limit women’s rights and health.
As an African-American woman, I take exception to Tom Quiner’s Feb. 7 column on African-Americans and abortion. Quiner perpetuates many of the myths pro-life groups use to attack family planning and supports misconceptions about the lack of support among members of my community.

Turned out that 9-year-old Noah Cyrus, sister of Miley, is not launching her own lingerie line (SHOCK Perez Hilton got the story wrong SHOCK). But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to hell in a skimpy, midriff-baring handbasket.

The real shonda, as Tablet Magazine’s (and FOBG) Marjorie Ingall points out, is that the Cyrus story, after all, was credible. (”This didn’t seem shocking, since Noah was photographed on Halloween at a children’s AIDS fundraiser in a slinky black dominatrix outfit, sexy makeup, and knee-high, high-heeled, black, shiny PVC boots, then seen in the boots again the next day, along with a super-short ruffly polka-dot mini, black sheer stockings, and a black spaghetti-strapped top. A few weeks later she was filmed performing Akon’s ‘Smack That’ (’Smack that/give me some more/Smack that/Till you get sore’) while smacking her own teeny butt. And then there was that time she played around on the stripper pole.)”

This headline, from Sunday’s Washington Post, is factually inaccurate:
Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda
You could read the entire article that follows and come away with no idea that there have in fact been zero errors identified in the UN climate change panel’s science.
With its 2007 report declaring that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Prize — and a new degree of public trust in the controversial science of global warming.
But recent revelations about flaws in that seminal report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel’s work but also in projections about climate change. Scientists who have pointed out problems in the report say the panel’s methods and mistakes — including admitting Saturday that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands was below sea level — give doubters an opening.
The “doubters,” of course, don’t include any credible climatologists. But the article’s authors include this bit of he said-she said for balance:

Culture wars do nothing to correct social problems and, by distracting from the underlying challenges and focusing on one contentious issue, actually exacerbate social ills and prevent practical solutions from gaining traction.
This should be common knowledge; under the weight of the abortion debate in the U.S., delivery of women’s reproductive services beyond abortion remain uncertain, erratic, and regional.
In the past few decades we’ve witnessed the deafening calls against abortion drown out all discussion of other reproductive health needs.  Contraception, sterilization, condom use, sex education, tubal ligation and other reproductive services like basic testing, check-ups, and pre- and post-natal care have, for women’s choice advocates, had to take a back seat in the defense of abortion rights.  Yes, some improvements have been made but after a disappointing summer of health care reform defeats, women’s rights groups have had to admit that new strategies are necessary.

Hundreds of tiny choices you make every day profoundly affect your physical well-being. In this podcast, Wired's executive editor Thomas Goetz discusses his new book, which maps a healthy route through today's data-driven health care environment.

How much senior executives earn, in cash and stock, is public information. How they make it is public too. Trouble is, the two are barely brought together in reporting. One story’s a business story, the other’s, well, for the “human interest” file.
As all humans have a reason to be interested, let’s pull the pieces of one tale together. Let’s take Wells Fargo, the bank whose CEO just topped the charts — as the top earner in the country for 2009.

According to analysis released by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf was paid a personal best of $18.7 million in cash and stock in 2009. That’s up 64 percent from two years earlier. That means that Mr. Stumpf is making twice as much as Lloyd C. Blankfein, his counterpart at Goldman Sachs — the “great vampire squid” himself. Does that make Stumpf Mr. Super Squid… ?

Make no mistake: Christopher Hitchens is a hater of all things fun, silly and whimsical. His recent targets include Harry Potter (in the New York Times Book Review), as well as John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Al Franken (in the Atlantic). Oh, and lest we forget, he is not a big fan of that thing called ‘God.’

Given that Hitchens pulls no punches, it’s not surprising that he’s now turned his laser sights on the Olympics, an event he deems “the exhibition of the most depressing traits of the human personality.” Ouch.
Still, his evidence is for the most part pretty compelling. He discusses an incident last month in Angola where an armed gang shot up a bus carrying Togo’s national soccer team. He talks about “waves of resentment and disruption that are sweeping through the lovely city of Cape Town as the start of the World Cup draws near.” There’s even time for a little Orwell: