It’s pretty obvious that what set President Obama to a re-election victory begins and ends with a new electorate. Obama won less of the white vote than Michael Dukakis. He still won the election, because America looks different than it did in 1988.

Their slogan is “Never Stop Improving,” but lately, “Never Stop Denying” seems more fitting. Lowe’s has rebuffed a 200,000-signature petition to reinstate ads on the new reality television series All-American Muslim on The Learning Channel.

When I first picked up the book “Rumpus Women,” I had to admit I had a moment of wondering why. In this modern era of blogging, personal essays by women are easy to come by, and in fact, we are absolutely swimming in them. Why go to the effort of cracking a book?

Well, this wonderful book reminded me why.

Depending upon their willingness to demonstrate a straight-up, full on bigotry or a kinder and gentler sort of discrimination, opponents of the Cordoba House project will tell you it’s about Islamists, Muslims, or the victims of 9/11. Their opponents counter that it’s about freedom of religion, the constitutional guarantees of liberty and basic human values of tolerance and diversity.

In what has been billed locally in southeast Michigan as the first Arab-American to win, Michigan’s Rima Fakih won the Miss USA pageant tonight. How come beauty pageants have become the big focus of politics of late?

Brother, can you spare a dime?

If you still have one, look on the back of the coin where it says “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one) and ask yourself this question: Why do many Americans seem to translate the Latin as “be like me or else”?

How will you be celebrating the Christmas holiday today?

I never thought I would have to admit this, but Glenn Beck totally nailed it when he said that Obama is a racist with a deep-seated hatred of white people and/or white culture. He’s done a pretty good job of covering it up so far, but his judicial nominees expose him for what he really is:

How appropriate Michael Moore premiered “Capitalism: A Love Story” in Pittsburgh this week, to coincide with our 26th AFL-CIO Convention. Moore, in an action spearheaded by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), marched with AFL-CIO delegates to the movie theater, and afterward, encouraged all of us to sponsor it in theaters throughout the country, because, as he says at the end of the film, he needs help to spark the populist revolution.

He’ll have a great partner with the new leadership of the AFL-CIO. Late yesterday, delegates elected Richard Trumka president, Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer, and re-elected Arlene Holt Baker executive vice president. The team is a mini-revolution in itself: It’s the first time the top leadership of the AFL-CIO includes two women, and Shuler, 39, is the youngest-ever unionist ever to hold so high a position in the labor movement.

Scott Page is a professor of political science and economics at the University of Michigan, where he’s also the associate director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, and external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. (Disclosure: I worked for Scott when I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center, and I’m also external faculty at SFI, so take my enthusiasm with salt to taste.) Scott’s written lots of academic papers, and co-written a textbook, but The Difference is, well, different. It’s a serious, but also playful, look at the power and virtues of diversity when it comes to solving difficult problems. It draws together many insights from many different academic disciplines, without requiring any special knowledge of its readers, just willingness to stretch their minds a little.