Raymond Barone (Ray Romano)

Ray Romano plays the role of Raymond Barone, the favorite child of Frank Barone (Peter Boyle) and Marie Barone (Doris Roberts). He is married to Debra Barone (Patricia Heaton) and has three children, Michael and Geoffrey Barone (Sullivan and Sawyer Sweeten) and Alexandra (Ally) Barone (Madylin Sweeten). Ray grew up in a unbalanced household where one parent nourtured, sometimes to an extreme, while the other tried to mess up his wife's work. This may have led to him having psychological weaknesses. Raymond barely helps out his wife (Debra) around the house or with the kids, partially due to the fact that he is a sportswriter and is on the road a lot with professional sports teams covering the games. When he is around, he just watches television. Ray and Debra are constantly being bothered by Frank and Marie, who continuously "barge" into their house uninvited. This leaves him to wonder why he even moved in across the street from them in the first place. But Ray welcomes his father and brother in sometimes to watch the game with him. Ray has a fear of confronting his mother when she does things that annoy him. The psychological hold that his mother has on him puzzles Debra sometimes. Ray has little concern for important material. For example, one episode shows Ray taping over their wedding video with a Super Bowl from the early-90's.

Everybody Loves Raymond

Everybody Loves Raymond, sometimes referred to as Raymond, is a long-running American sitcom broadcast on CBS from 1996 to 2005.

The show revolved around the life of Italian-American Ray Barone, a newspaper sportswriter from Lynbrook, Long Island who lives with his wife, Debra Barone, his daughter, Ally, and his identical twin sons, Geoffrey and Michael. Ray's brash parents and jealous self-doubting brother Robert never give Ray or his family a moment of peace. Ray often finds himself in the middle of someone else's problems. He is usually the one blamed for everyone else's troubles.

Almanac of American Politics

The Almanac of American Politics is a reference work published biennially by the National Journal Group. It aims to provide a detailed look at the politics of the United States through an approach of profiling individual leaders and areas of the country.

The Almanac is broken down alphabetically by state, with each congressional district in each state profiled separately. The Almanac provides a large amount of information, including:

Demographic information on each district, including income, racial distribution, and other statistics
Profiles of the Congressperson from each district, including voting record on key votes, interest group ratings, etc.
Individually written profiles of each district, commissioned for the Almanac
In addition, an overview look at each state is given, including prospects for the upcoming presidential election and demographic trends.

The Almanac is several thousand pages long, and quite hefty, even in paperback. It was first published in 1972. Originally, the three main editors were Michael Barone, now a writer at U.S. News and World Report, Grant Ujifusa and Douglas Matthews. Matthews did not contribute after the 1980 edition. The 2004 and 2006 editions were authored by Barone and Richard E. Cohen, the congressional correspondent for the National Journal and edited by Charles Mahtesian.

Michael Barone (pundit)

Michael Barone is a political analyst and commentator. He is best known for being the principal author of the Almanac of American Politics, a reference work concerning US governors and federal politicians, and published biannually by National Journal. The Almanac contains documentation on the history, demographics, and political culture of each state and congressional district. Mr. Barone is a regular television commentator on U.S. elections and political trends.
Career
Mr. Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and a frequent contributor for the Fox News Channel. He is also a non-regular guest panelist on the NBC TV program The McLaughlin Group. Barone's stated political views are generally conservative. He has said he is not a religious believer, although he is sympathetic to and respectful of socially conservative religious believers.

One of the emphases of his commentary has been immigration. Perhaps partly as a result of his being a descendant of Italian immigrants, Barone takes an optimistic view of contemporary immigration into the US. He says that Hispanic immigration has parallels to the Italian experience and that, given the right circumstances, that current and future Hispanic and other immigrants can become Americanized and assimilated, just as the Italians were.