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Blacks, Gays and Obama: Changing Racial Politics In America

Several years back, minorities became the majority of births in Texas. That trend has gone nationwide as America as a whole has reflected what occurred in Texas:

America hit a demographic milestone last year, with new census figures showing for the first time more than half the children born in the U.S. were minorities. 

That percentage just barely eked over the halfway mark, with minorities making up 50.4 percent of U.S. births in the 12-month period ending July 2011. But it marks a steady trend -- minorities represented 37 percent of births in 1990. 

As a whole, the nation's minority population continues to rise, following a higher-than-expected Hispanic count in the 2010 census. Minorities increased 1.9 percent to 114.1 million, or 36.6 percent of the total U.S. population, lifted by prior waves of immigration that brought in young families and boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. 

Believe it or not, this big demographic news reflects President Obama's decision to endorse same-sex marriage. Alex Knepper, a freelance writer who I have mentioned in previous articles here, took to his Facebook page and noted "urban callers" who took to the phones and said some horrible stuff about Obama and his affront on traditional marriage. Knepper noted that "urban callers" obviously meant "black" and that gay couples are often fearful of stepping foot in black neighborhoods, which are hostile to their lifestyle choice.

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White Supremacists Train Near Disney World?

Over half a year ago, before life got a bit bizarre (if you're curious about it and haven't heard me rub off about it yet, just ask in a comment), I was obsessed with white supremacists. They seemed to be making more and more of a presence, showing up at events for Rand Paul and coming out with television programs featuring four year old ubermenschen.

I may have overdone it; at the time, an editor for a newspaper I worked for told me I was pushing the white supremacist angle well beyond what was reasonable and that they were simply not as much of a presence as I was touting.

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USA Today: Number of painkiller-addicted newborns triples in 10 years

A couple years ago, it became a bit of an issue of personal hypocrisy when talk show host Rush Limbaugh was found to have been an active OxyContin user and addict. The drug messed up his health, giving him heart attacks and blindness. Limbaugh had actively mocked and degraded drug addicts, despite being one himself.

Well, perhaps OxyContin should be considered as a political issue once again, only in a much more brutal manner than the personal lifestyle of a talk show host:

Disturbing new research says the number of U.S. babies born with signs of opiate drug withdrawal has tripled in a decade because of a surge in pregnant women’s use of legal and illegal narcotics, including Vicodin, OxyContin, and heroin, researchers say. It is the first national study of the problem.

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Learning From Insanity

Looking back at the sort of thing I posted on Dagblog while abroad, I was a bit disturbed. The few comments I got (I imagine most people were too uncomfortable to touch it and just went on to other fair) were pretty terse.

I'm alive and well but I've been through hell. I accidentally detoxed from a hardcore antidepressant - Effexor - and resultingly behaved like a madman. There wasn't anything I really did that could have harmed me but I feel really fortunate to be alive after something like that.

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From Okinawa To Guam

I got an e-mail from Michael Wolraich about how awful my Guam stories sound. I don't want to make the island sound all bad. I have been intimate with it in a way that I didn't tend to be with most places I lived. The rates of injury or death are actually not nearly as bad in Guam as they are in - say - California or New York.

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Mapping The Lineage

I've been getting to know my genetic uncle a lot lately. The association is enlightening and he has quite a bit to teach me.

Among these is, to be blunt, the very real history in my family of mental illness. It's something I'm fully conscious of and most people in my family are fully conscious of. People in our family tend to live a long time, they tend to become extremely difficult people to be around and they tend to have difficulties with their minds - epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, Asperger's, dementia - as opposed to suffering from physical or psychological afflictions.

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Poverty Is Worse In America Than In Half A Century

There is something really, really wrong here. Imperial decline doesn't account in full for this sort of steep and fast decline, and it really seems impossible to imagine a Barack Obama as president in 2013 with this kind of numbers.

From Russia Today:

 

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Reading Stedman In Guam

There aren't alot of books in Guam. There is a public library that, from its appearance, clearly does not merit the top ranking in tax collections on the island. I haven't been on the military bases yet but I assume there are more books there. Computer shops, car shops, grocery stores and banks abound (oh boy, do banks abound here, most likely frequented by someone who just made off with someone else's money).

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Dealing With Culture Shock

During my first period in Guam, I didn't feel much culture shock at all. In fact, a lot of the differences I found I thought were cute, funny and enduring. 

Things began to pile up, however, and the culture shock really started to settle in. First was nearly being violently knocked out of bed in the middle of the night as a child tortured a small dog into unconsciousness. That is literally what happened. Another was getting robbed. Despite a great deal of hospitality that many people were showing me, these two events scared the crap out of me. I wrote about them, I told people back home about them and they told me that it was my anxiety talking.

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Hugo Chavez, 'Cured' of Cancer by Castro and Jesus, Seeks More Help From Shamans

Now that is quite a headline! I also must admit that Hugo Chavez looks considerably different now that his head has been shaved and he has taken on glasses. He is beginning to resemble a Buddhist monk, of all things.

 

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