Source: AP

A couple of days ago, we told you about Desiline Victor, the 102-year-old woman who received a standing ovation during President Obama’s State of the Union address for her admirable decision to wait in line three long hours so that she could vote in the 2012 election. Most considered her deed to be admirable, as such an extended wait-time would’ve deterred many. Most except Fox News Radio anchors, Brian Kilmeade, Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer, who expressed that they couldn’t understand what the “big deal” was during an episode of Kilmeade & Friends.

“How long was she on line?” Hemmer questioned.

“What’s the big deal? She was happy. She waited on line, she was happy that she voted. This is such a non-issue.” MacCallum interjected.

“They held her up as a victim!” Hemmer joked. “What was she the victim of? Rashes on the bottom of her feet?”

Jason Linkins, reporter for HuffPost Politics spoke out against the inappropriate statements made by the hosts during an interview with HuffPost Live.

“It’s weird to mock an 102-year-old woman for the long line she had to wait in. I think generally it’s ideal for 102-year-old women to not have to stand outside in the elements voting. The fact of the matter is this, lines were very much longer in districts where there were a higher percentage of Black and/or Hispanic voters. That is a fact. Another thing is that something on the order of a few hundred thousand voters in Florida just gave up on voting because the lines were so long. “

I hate to be the one who throws race into everything, but I wonder if those same jokes would’ve been thrown around by Kilmeade and his pals if Desiline was of another race.

You can listen to the comments made by the Fox hosts on the following page. Were their jokes inappropriate or are people being sensitive?

Following his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama will be hosting a Google+ Hangout this afternoon to take questions from ordinary Americans.

The event will take place at 4:50 p.m. ET and will be live on WhiteHouse.gov, YouTube.com/WhiteHouse, and the White House Google+ page. The White House webpage has a link for submitting questions to this latest “Fireside Hangout.”

This hangout will take place after the President’s visit to Decatur, GA to talk about education issues. This is the second of three SOTU follow-up trips Obama has scheduled to discuss issues brought up during the speech. He’ll be speaking today at a preschool center; he’s proposing a Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership program.

“Some Republicans called Obama’s plans too expensive and ill-conceived in an era of high debt,” USA Today writes.

Universal preschool was one of many areas that President Obama discussed the other day. We round up nine of them here. He was in Asheville, NC yesterday to talk about jobs.

Separately but related, Deadline Hollywood reports that the ratings for the State of the Union address were down 11.3 percent from 2012 to 37.3 million viewers. The all-time low was President Clinton’s 1993 address, which had about 31.5 million viewers.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool

Last night, President Obama gave the first State of the Union address of his second term (we live tweeted it here) and he raced through a number of big issues that he’d like to see Congress act on in the coming months. One of those issues, and possibly most unexpected, was a higher minimum wage.

But there were others that will be up for debate — among Congresspeople and voters alike. Here, we outline nine of the big ones. And in the comments, feel free to chime in with your thoughts and debate. That’s democracy at work!

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

In a proposal that broadcasters said was a surprise, President Obama called for a raise in the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour, up from the current $7.25. He justified the proposal by calling out the disgrace that it truly is when a person works all week and still makes less than a living wage. Of course, many workers and worker’s advocates support the move.

“But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year,” he said (transcript courtesy of PolicyMic). Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher.”

The proposal would increase the minimum wage in stages through 2015. The last time there was a raise in the minimum wage was 2007, says CNN. The outlet quotes Bureau of Labor stats that put the number of people earning the minimum wage at 5.8 million, or about 5.2 percent, not counting workers like maids, who get a fixed weekly wage.

No sooner had the words left his mouth did economists and others begin the debate about whether this is a good idea. On its face, of course we want hard-working people to be in a more stable financial position. But some say that there are other considerations that could end up making the higher wage a negative.

“[E]mployer groups say that raising the federal minimum wage would cost jobs, and hiking state rates doesn’t help reduce poverty,” writes CNN. “Studies have projected a loss of at least 467,500 positions were the hourly rate to go up to $9.80, according to the Employment Policies Institute, which advocates for employers. The most recent boost meant that 114,000 fewer teens had jobs.” A previous bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.80 by 2014 stalled. The article says that if the minimum wage kept up with the cost of living, it would actually be $10.56 per hour.

That sentiment is seconded by The Wall Street Journal, which says that Republicans and business groups will oppose the pay hike. There are some who say that raising the minimum wage will increase spending by those earning more money. Others say it will lead to job cuts as employers lay off workers they can no longer afford. Still others say that if you’re trying to alleviate poverty, this will have a very limited impact, and will benefit higher-income earners in a kind of trickle-up effect.

“The White House wants to force wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes by eliminating tax breaks, and it is now calling for wage increases for poorer Americans,” writes the Journal. “Many Republicans oppose raising taxes and oppose raising the minimum wage, but they could face a test in their new public campaign to appeal to middle-class and low-income Americans.” The President was quick to point out that a minimum wage increase was also supported by Mitt Romney.

The effort to raise the minimum wage comes at a time when there are some signs of economic recovery — stock market highs and employers hiring — and there is a need to offer support to lift people out of poverty. The Journal says that the poverty rate in this country is at 15.9 percent, or 48.5 million in 2011. Reuters quotes some business owners and experts who say that it’ll actually put teenagers, immigrants, and those lacking skill out of work.

Those arguments in opposition bring up the bigger problem of education and creating a skilled workforce that can earn a living in this modern marketplace. That’s where other issues like universal pre-school, beefing up jobs in the energy sector, and making college more affordable become critical pieces of the entire puzzle.

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

House Speaker John Boehner has invited President Obama to deliver the first State of the Union address of his second term on February 12, which also happens to be President Lincoln’s birthday.

The invitation came with a short note saying, in part, “Our nation continues to face immense challenges, and the American people expect us to work together in the new year to find meaningful solutions… For that reason, the Congress and the Nation would welcome an opportunity to hear your plan and specific solutions for addressing America’s great challenges.”

As Marketwatch reporter Polya Lesova notes, the address will be delivered amid continued fiscal cliff discussion about entitlements and spending. Though the fiscal cliff fight was only resolved a couple of weeks ago, there are still lots to disagree about, and we’ll be touching the debt ceiling again in a few short weeks.

The inauguration is happening on January 21. Beyonce, Usher, Stevie Wonder, and John Legend are among those scheduled to perform.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I am infatuated by race and identity in this country, particularly how we as black folks relate to both race and identity.

My general belief is that our inability to reconcile with or even denounce one or the other is the main causation for why our community struggles to progress in this country. In short, we are serving two masters: We are trying to buy/work our way into the American dream while also trying to fix and build the community. I have found that those two concepts are often in opposition to each other, which is often demonstrated by our reluctance at times to unify and work together. And sometimes I wonder if Abraham Lincoln had followed through on his plans to resettle recently freed blacks back in Africa, where would be now?  However, the way in which some of us refuse to act in our own self-interest, especially politically, I wonder if emancipation and self-determination is what we really want?

Those questions are very important to answer if we are ever going to properly educate children, build economic infrastructures and generally move the community ahead. However, those questions are as old as our history in this country itself. And many great leaders, from the likes of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and both Malcolm and Martin, have all been debating for hundreds of years and yet have failed to reach a consensus. So in an effort to once and for all settle this debate, let’s put our thinking caps on and consider this hypothetical situation. Keyword: hypothetical.

Before I get to the actual theoretical situation, let me tell you first about the inspiration. Last week, I was re-watching “Cosmic Slop,” an early 90s television special, which originally aired on HBO. The series is like Twilight Zone but with an anthology of stories about race relations. One such story is called Space Traders, a 30-minute short about a U.S. President faced with the dilemma of having a clean environment, and living in world peace and prosperity in exchange for giving all the black people on the planet away to bartering aliens, who offer no assurance of their intention with them.  The story first appeared in Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, a book written by scholar and Critical Race Theorist Professor Derrick Bell.  And while I won’t give away the story, I’ll just say that people shouldn’t be surprised how that story ended.

But in that situation, the black community didn’t have a choice.  SO in the spirit of the late great scholar Professor Derrick Bell, mixed with a little John Quinones of the “20/20″’ show “What Would You Do?” fame, I’ll give us one.

Let’s pretend that it is the year 2013. President Obama has won his second term as President of the United States. He is standing at the podium, in front of a live audience, giving the first State of the Union Address of his second term. He spells out his goal for fixing the economy, he talks about immigration, he gives his plan for gay, lesbian and transgendered equality and now, for the first time in his presidency, he speaks about a black agenda.

Of course last night was about President Obama and the words he had for the nation; but honestly, we couldn’t help but notice how stunning Mrs. Obama looked.

She was on point from head to…mid torso (I didn’t get a clear shot of her shoes.) Her hair was luscious and full of body, her makeup was flawless and she just had an overall glow about her.

The sapphire dress she wore that evening was from Barbara Tfank’s spring collection.

And we were feeling the brooch as well.

Did you think Michelle looked particularly dazzling last night?

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(Fast Company) — Dambisa Moyo is out with a new book, titled How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly–and the Stark Choices Ahead, following her bestselling Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa. In the earlier effort, the economist critiqued a well-intentioned but inefficient aid system, and called for celebrities like Bono to quickly remove themselves from the charity ballgame, generally, and to specifically get out of Africa before they do more damage.  Moyo’s new book takes the same tone of calling into question well-meaning intentions and pushing us to think about better implementation of policies; she also spends significant real estate detailing how some of America’s most pressing challenges–in education, energy, and health care, for example–are structural issues that need long-term foresight, instead of a quick fix.

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(New York Times) — President Obama challenged Americans on Tuesday night to unleash their creative spirit, set aside their partisan differences and come together around a common goal of outcompeting other nations in a rapidly shifting global economy.  In a State of the Union address to a newly divided Congress, Mr. Obama outlined what he called a plan to “win the future” — a blueprint for spending in critical areas like education, high-speed rail, clean-energy technology and high-speed Internet to help the United States weather the unsettling impact of globalization and the challenge from emerging powers like China and India.

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