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Does 2011 Start a New Decade?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 31, 2010 Comment (23)When the clock flips tonight will 2011 start a new decade or merely be the second year of the ’10s? As I wrote here and here, I maintain the former: “since our calendar goes from 1BC to 1AD, without a year zero, this is not technically the last year of the decade.”
When I made that argument a year ago, a reader responded with an interesting argument. Kevin S. of Ohio wrote:
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Is Health Reform One of the 5 Biggest Stories of the Decade?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 31, 2010 Comment (5)A year ago I posted my top stories and trends for the decade. Given that the decade is actually coming to an end today (more on that in a second) it seems like a good time to revisit and revise the list.
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U.S. Population, 2011: 310 Million and Growing
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2010 Comment (28)The United States enters 2011 with a population of more than 310.5 million people, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate. Note that that’s an estimate (taken from their neat U.S. “population clock”); according to their official, enumerated count, the U.S. population as of April 1, 2010 was 308,745,538 people. (The difference is presumably population growth over the last nine months of the year.)
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Under Investigation, Christine O'Donnell Goes Delusional
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2010 Comment (20)Tea Party flash in the pan Christine O’Donnell is back, in classic form: under investigation and spouting delusional, self-aggrandizing nonsense.
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Majority Either Like Healthcare Law Or Want It More Liberal
Tweet Share on Facebook December 29, 2010 Comment (11)You may have noticed the CNN/Opinion Research poll released earlier this week, which had this all too familiar top-line: 54 percent of voters oppose President Obama’s healthcare reform law. But drill down a bit and you’ll find another number familiar to those who have paid attention--but one generally lost amid the noise of the conservative healthcare narrative of backlash against government overreach. Only a relatively small minority of Americans dislike the new law because it’s too liberal.
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Poll: Sarah Palin Really Unpopular in Alaska
Tweet Share on Facebook December 28, 2010 Comment (17)It’s not good news for Sarah Palin that the people who know her best are among those who like her least. And according to polling data released by Public Policy Polling, Palin’s fellow Alaskans have an especially dim view of their former half-term governor.
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Republicans Admire Obama More Than Glenn Beck
Tweet Share on Facebook December 27, 2010 Comment (22)Maybe Republicans are more perceptive than I have given them credit for. Even with the Tea Party-fication of the GOP, Gallup’s year-end survey of the “most admired” people found that more GOPers list Obama (6 percent) than do talk media blowhard Glenn Beck (4 percent). There must be a conspiracy!
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Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus
Tweet Share on Facebook December 24, 2010 Comment (5)At some point in the hypothetical future, I have become morbidly convinced, I will have a conversation that starts with a (at this point) very hypothetical grandchild asking me what a newspaper is. Then s/he’ll say: Let me get this straight. You used to print out the news on pieces of very thin paper which were then bundled together and delivered around the city either to peoples’ homes or lots of places where these bundles could be purchased? And this was done every day of the year?
But well after the newspaper has gone the way of the telegraph its most iconic contributions will live on. And there are few more iconic than the famous exchange printed in the New York Sun in September, 1897. According to the Newseum it is history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial. A young woman named Virginia O’Hanlon sent the following letter to the Sun:
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John McCain’s Policy Temper Tantrums
Tweet Share on Facebook December 20, 2010 Comment (20)An operating theory of John McCain went like this: His veer to the right in recent years was all about the politics of necessity. He needed to demonstrate his conservative bona fides to the GOP base first to overcome Mitt Romney et al in the 2008 primaries. Then more recently he had to keep burnishing his right wing credentials so that in a year when Bob Bennett and others were found to be insufficiently conservative McCain would be able to repel J.D. Hayworth’s siege from the right.
This theory of McCain seems to have crashed to oblivion during the lame duck session of Congress.
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Senate Passes Historic 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal
Tweet Share on Facebook December 18, 2010 Comment (26)The Senate voted overwhelmingly—65-to-31—Saturday to repeal the 17-year old ban on gays serving openly in the military. Eight Republicans joined 57 Democrats on the right side of history. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law some time before Christmas.
