Ezra Klein, a liberal blogger at the Washington Post suggests that Democrats not pounce on Mitt Romney for the joke he made Thursday at a Florida campaign event featuring unemployed workers.

"I'm also unemployed," Romney joked, after which Democrats accused him of insensitivity, among other things.

In 2000, the U.S. government — for the first time — gave census takers the option to identify themselves with more than one race. That year, 6.8 million Americans selected two or more races. In 2010, 9 million did.

These numbers paint a portrait of an increasingly diverse America — and of Americans who are becoming more comfortable identifying themselves as multicultural and mixed race. And it's no surprise that this shift has been reflected in the country's literature as well.

"YOU A LIE!" someone shouted from the alleyway near where I walked downtown, where homeless men had congregated, and it sent me directly to my childhood. "You a damn lie!"

That was how people accused each other back in Rio Seco. Not "That's a lie," or "You're a liar."

You were the lie.

"I ain't no lie, you drunk-ass — "

Always thought if I didn't get tenure I would shoot myself or strap a bomb to my chest and walk into the faculty cafeteria, but when it happened I just got bourbon drunk and cried a lot and rolled into a ball on my office floor. A couple days of this and I couldn't take it so I ended classes a week early and checked into the Akwaaba Bed and Breakfast in Harlem to be among my own race and party away the pain. But mostly I just found myself back in that same ball some more, still on the floor, just at a more historically resonant address.

The jeering male voice came from somewhere behind me, waking me up from a heatstroke-induced doze.

"Hey, check it out — Asha's a towel-head."

I'm a WHAT? My neck got even warmer, and not just because it was sweltering at Ashmont Community Park.

Whoever it was, was he kidding me? Nobody used that phrase anymore unless they were hopelessly ignorant about headwear, or still carrying around a post-9/11 grudge. I knew I really should be offended.

Mostly, though, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Even if I did have a towel on my head.

What's the Matter with Helga and Dave?

When I married Hewitt, I didn't realize — among other things — that I would become a member of that mewl­ing and defensive group of people known as Interracial Cou­ples. And who could fault them their mewling? Everywhere I went with Hewitt, strangers commented — in subtle and not so subtle ways — on the fact of our unlikely union: me, a white woman, married to him, a black man.

It seems like anyone who wants to be taken seriously in Washington these days has to have his or her own proposal for reducing the nation's deficits and debt. I better get to work on mine.

To help make sense of the mushrooming number of proposals, the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget has a new interactive tool that allows users to compare the growing crop of deficit-reduction plans out there.

Joseph Arthur began singing at age 21, although his fondness for music and the guitar began earlier than that. Having grown up in Akron, Ohio, Arthur relocated to Atlanta for its thriving music scene, and eventually made his way to Brooklyn. Peter Gabriel discovered Arthur in the late 1990s, and the songwriter's career began to take off.

Obama administration officials unveiled a plan to improve our nation's prosperity. No, not with more jobs, but by helping Americans stay healthy at every stage of life.

But first, they got a workout congratulating each other on a job well done with the National Prevention Strategy, a plan required by the federal law overhauling health care, during a Thursday media briefing.

When Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project was announced some seven years ago, its boosters — who included Mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and Borough President Marty Markowitz — touted the scheme's extraordinary potential. But there was nothing unusual about the developer-politician alliance recounted by Battle for Brooklyn. The way this deal went down exemplifies how urban redevelopment is done all over the United States.