Glenn Greenberg wrote: I care, Matt! What's Jenna Fischer really like?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Wish I could tell you.  They were divorced by the time production started and I never felt it was my place to ask since it had happened so recently.

I wonder if Obama is interested in staff members who are Native (Indigenous)American?  Having a Cherokee, Sioux or Esquimaux, etc. on staff would certainly add to this historic occasion !

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He could hire Todd Palin.

This is just as odd as what Lars said. An African-American is a term people used for describing a black person in America. It has nothing to do with their ancestors dealing with segregation or slavery.

Well... to be honest, it's kind of a dumb semantic thing to argue, buuuutttt....

We, today, think of African-American (or whatever-American) as a way to describe your heritage.

The term, however, was meant to describe only the descendants of slaves.  It was not meant to describe anyone from Africa or whose roots were in Africa, nor was it meant to be cheapened by having everyone adopt it to be, you know, Italian-American or Greek-American or Irish-American or whatever.

It was popularized by (perhaps invented by, but I can't find a source) Malcolm X and was used to drive home a point already mentioned in this thread - that the descendants of slaves had their cultural history permanantly removed - a black whose ancestors were slaves could not say "My family is from Kenya" or "My family is from Mozambique" or "My people come from Burkina Faso" - BECAUSE of slavery.  Names, customs, languages, culture?  All gone.

And while America should be a melting pot - the rest of us CAN look back, if we want, to our "homelands".  I, being Mexican, Irish and Austrian, can learn to speak spanish or galic or austrian, just as my ancestors did.  Slavery took that away from the majority of blacks in America.  They don't even know their family's name.  (When you as a white, run into a black with the same last name?  Odds are they are not your distant cousin...)

So, Malcolm X theorized that the blacks in America whose family were slaves were not the same as other Americans - they weren't voluntarily participating in this melting pot experiment, but rather were thrust into it against their wills, at a staggering cost of human life and loss of culture and history.  Thus, they were not Americans, but Afro-Americans, or African-Americans.

By those standards, no, Barack Obama is not an Afro-American.  But that is no longer the standard that the term is used by and by it's current terms, he is.

It doesn't matter one way or the other, but I want to make sure we understand the meaning of the term before we dismiss it.

Also, dissapointed to see John Bodin basing his vote on an ill-informed op-ed piece.

The facts of the matter is that Obama's taxes will not hurt businesses.  The reason you are reading op-ed pieces in right-wing newspapers and hearing Rush and Sean and Bill and Ann and Michelle and all the other right wing talking heads on right wing TV and Radio bleating about it is that, in theory, any tax is bad, and Obama's plan to return taxes on the rich to the levels they were 10 years ago (remember 10 years ago?  That time of great economic prosperity where businesses WERE paying that 3 extra percent and not going out of business??) is, after all, not raising taxes to any sort of new undreamed-of level, but rather, to repeat my point for clarity, returning them to what they were under Bill Clinton.

Furthermore, Obama's plan includes a tax credit for small businesses.  So this whole idea of a poor put-upon Joe the Plummer, not being able to stay in business because his tax rate will put him out of business? 

Absolutely not true,

Let's be clear on some points here:  By CLASSIFICATION - a small business makes less than $270,000.  By the very criteria by which we classify a business as "small" - 95% of those businesses make less than that ammount.

So odds are, your "small" business will have nothing to worry about.  But even if you are in that 5%?  Small businesses get a tax credit.  SPECIFICALLY to encourage the growth of small business.

You have to understand - these op-ed pieces are not giving you all the facts. 

Now, will giant corporations have to pay more taxes under Obama than they did under Bush?  Yes.  Yes they will.  How much more will they pay?

3% more.  The same amount they paid under Bill Clinton.  The right wing talking points say Obama is raising taxes on the rich and big business.  It's technically true - but in a half-empty/half-full way of looking at it, what he's really doing is removing the tax break that Bush put in.  And not for all Americans.  Just for those in a certain criteria.

Let us be clear here - if that was the reason you did not vote for Barack Obama, you have been hoodwinked and you have wasted your vote.

I was skimming this, so I missed a few things - No, Matt, it was I who informed Marcio - (In this thread, I believe!) about the history of the term "African-American".

I am not wrong on this.  Or if I am - then the American historical record is wrong - but the term was coined to describe those Africans whose family were slaves.  It's just been neutered (my guess?  Specifically) in the last 60 years to take away it's original meaning.

Now that everyone uses terms like it to describe their backgrounds, the term is rendered meaningless.

Increasing taxes for the largest employers and service providers will lead to two things.....job loss and price increases.

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You're right.  Bill Clinton's gonna ruin us!  There won't even BE a United States by, say, 2008...

Does anyone know: What percentage of eligible voters did not vote this year?

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Around 36%