Happy HUMP day, Everyone! Clasic Rock is in my blood. It’s just that plain and simple. And Fleetwood Mac is one of theose bands that brings the goods. Mick Fleetwood is the Consummate DRUMMER.
“BIG LOVE”
AND “DREAMS”
And speaking of DREAMS…
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Black Girls Rock!
Flickr Photos
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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The American Case Against a Black Middle Class
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jan 22 2013, 10:19 AM ET
I went on a Twitter rant yesterday because I’d finished Isabel Wilkerson’s phenomenal The Warmth Of Other Suns. The book is a narrative history of the Great Migration through the eyes of actual migrants. Several points stick out for me.
1) The Great Migration was not an influx of illiterate, bedraggled, lazy have-nots. Wilkerson marshalls a wealth of social science data showing that the migrants were generally better educated than their Northern brethren, more likely to stay married, and more likely to stay employed. In fact, in some cases, black migrants were better educated than their Northern white neighbors.
2) In this sense, the migrants to Northern cities resembled immigrant classes to whom black people in these same cities are often unfavorably compared to. There’s a quote in Wilkerson’s book which I can’t find where a supervisor basically says that blacks are the favored workers because they will work hard at the worst jobs for relatively little money. You would have thought the guy was talking about Hispanic farm-hands today.
3) The black migrants were not immigrants. They were citizens of this country who did not enjoy its full protection. Unlike other immigrant classes, blacks were never able to cash in on their hard work and middle-class values. For all of their work-ethic, education-valuing, and long-term marriages, they received the worst wages in the worst jobs, were limited to the worst housing, and stuffed in the worst schools.
4) What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson’s book is that America’s response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, “Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete.” The black migrants did play by the rules, but they did not enjoy the right to compete. Black people have been repeatedly been victimized by the half-assed social contract. It goes back, at least, to Reconstruction.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-american-case-against-a-black-middle-class/267385/
Coates is 100% correct in his assessment. I read the book last year. it took me several weeks, but it was worth it. White America continues moving the GOALPOST. And It’s never been more evident when it comes to our President BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration reverses planned elimination of Medicaid hospice program
By Associated Press,
Jan 23, 2013 11:50 PM EST
AP Updated: Wednesday, January 23, 5:50 PM
BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration scrapped plans Wednesday to shutter the state’s Medicaid hospice program in February, meaning the state will continue to provide end-of-life care to people on their death beds who can’t afford private insurance.
Jindal’s health secretary Bruce Greenstein made the announcement as hospice program supporters were gathering for a candlelight vigil on the state capitol steps to protest the cut. Greenstein said his department will use grant funding to cover the hospice costs this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/candlelight-vigil-set-to-protest-gov-bobby-jindals-elimination-of-medicaid-hospice-program/2013/01/23/b0f445ec-6598-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html
PBS Untouchables is unbelievably naive on the financial crisis
The producers of the PBS “expose” on the Financial Crisis are at their most hapless when they allow GOP Senator Chuck Grassley to pretend to be outraged by the lack of prosecutions after the financial crisis. Grassley has spent 30 years in the Senate, he was the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 2003 until 2006 (during the peak of the mortgage abuses), and tried his best to prevent Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection bill from even coming up for a vote. If anyone is complicit in the dysfunction in Wall Street, it’s Chuck Grassley. Grassley even filibustered the appointment of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) so that the President had to make a recess appointment of a director. And one of the first things that the CPFB did when it started up, over Grassley’s obstruction, was to issue rules that made it harder to issue deceptive mortgages and mortgages beyond the ability of purchasers to repay. When Grassley sputtered his outrage that nobody had been prosecuted for mortgage abuses, the PBS interviewer nodded along in shared outrage, without even a single question about why Grassley opposes clear laws forbidding dishonest mortgage policies.
Frontline also didn’t ask Grassley about the huge contributions he got from K-Street lobbying superstars The DCI Group when he was chair of the Finance Committee. Among DCI clients were FreddieMac who paid DCI to lobby successfully against tighter regulations. What about the $30K Grassley got from AIG during that period or similar amounts from Wells-Fargo or the Security Industries Association? Not a peep. Instead the Frontline producers gullibly nodded along as Grassley served up his authentic cornpone prairie populist act.
http://krebscycle.tumblr.com/post/41317519417/pbs-untouchables-is-unbelievably-naive-on-the-financial
Obama Likes to Socialize, Just Not With Congress
By Margaret Carlson Jan 22, 2013 5:30 PM CT
One criticism of the president that permeated the nonstop socializing around the inauguration was that a lack of socializing by Barack Obama is to blame for much of the partisan rancor crippling Washington.
If the president would have more parties with members of Congress, the argument goes, the appetite for going over a fiscal cliff just for the fun of it would be replaced by a lofty spirit of cooperation.
It isn’t going to happen, and maybe it shouldn’t. We exaggerate the value of such social events. And, by the way, Obama early on did a lot of having people over to watch sporting events or picnic on the South Lawn. As he said at a recent news conference in answer to a question about the growing criticism of his isolation: He builds it, they come, but the next day they trash him anyway.
Watching the Obamas during the inaugural parade made clear why he has chosen evenings with his wife and daughters over evenings with Congress. A more comfortable foursome you’re unlikely to find.
The president recently lamented that his 14-year-old already doesn’t have time for the card games they used to play, the cry of parents everywhere about teenagers soon to be driving, dating and dreaming of college. In the hours they sat together on Inauguration Day, the girls were fully engaged with their parents — they giggled, got their parents to kiss for photos and boogied to the passing bands. There’s a lot you can fake in politics, but it would be hard to get your kids to rock to parade music with mom and dad.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-22/obama-likes-to-socialize-just-not-with-congress.html
THE FAMILY THAT PLAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER.
First Family Inaugural Cam
did you see this?
The TJMS Reacts to Tavis Smiley’s Obama Comments
Jan 21, 2013
By Blackamericaweb.com
The TJMS reacts to commentator Tavis Smiley’s comments about President Obama not being the fulfillment of MLK’s dream
http://blackamericaweb.com/92852/the-tjms-reacts-to-tavis-smileys-obama-comments/
Spot on. Tavis has become a small, petty, bitter man.
Rikyrah, where are you?!!!
http://www.etsy.com/listing/119309738/obama?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
January 23, 2013
Obama Urged to Resign Over Beyoncé Scandal
Posted by Andy Borowitz
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – A rising chorus of congressional Republicans are calling on President Obama to acknowledge that the pop singer Beyoncé lip-synched during his inaugural festivities on Monday and resign from office, effective immediately.
“By lip-synching the national anthem, Beyoncé has cast a dark cloud over the President’s second term,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “The only way President Obama can remove that cloud is by resigning from office at once.”
read on
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/01/obama-urged-to-resign-over-beyonc-scandal.html?mbid=nl_Borowitz%20(73)
For Immediate Release January 23, 2013
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 1/23/2013
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
12:57 P.M. EST-TRANSCRIPT
Worth a read
MR. CARNEY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here on day two — (laughter) — of the second term. I have no announcements to make so we’ll go straight to the Associated Press.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/23/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-1232013
The U.S. military will end its policy of excluding women from combat, officials said.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce Thursday plans to open combat jobs and direct combat units to female troops, multiple officials confirmed to CNN.
Panetta to lift rule banning women from combat roles, an official says
Pentagon chief Leon Panetta will announce plans to lift the direct combat exclusion rule for women in the military, a senior defense official says.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/panetta-removes-military-ban-on-women-serving-in-combat/2013/01/23/d2ad4d40-6599-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QNMXFrpulZY
Could the president’s PRESIDING have anything to do with this, huh, MITCH the TURTLE?
Fox News Gets Used to the Sidelines
By Tom Junod
at 10:10PM
I watched the inauguration on Fox News. I admit there was some perversity involved — I wanted both to tremble with outrage and to gloat. I also wanted to remember why I liked Barack Obama, and there is no better way of liking Barack Obama than watching him on a network that pays people to hate him. His first term was questionable in many ways, but one thing was certain — he wasn’t them. He wasn’t Brit and Megyn and Brett and Chris, with their grievances and their grudges and their hurt feelings, and he wasn’t the man they were still half-heartedly defending, Mitt Romney.
Has anybody else besides Ann Romney mentioned Mitt Romney’s name since November 6? Has anyone watched Fox? The network once thought to be integral to Karl Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” now has to live down the election-night memory of Rove standing in the schoolhouse door between Megyn Kelly and the announcement that Barack Obama had won a second term. Roger Ailes created a news network designed to elect presidents, but he built it upon his own immortal and immortalized sense of injury, and now that he “lost” the election, the sense of injury is all that’s left.… Roger Ailes does one thing very well: white-guy disgruntlement. It’s a potent force, when there are enough disgruntled white guys. But now that the demographics are turning against him, all Ailes can offer is a fulfillment of his own paranoia…
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/fox-news-obama-inuaguration-15010420
Obama 1; Netanyahu 0
Peter Beinart explains what the Israeli election results may mean for the US:
A weaker Israeli government does Obama little good right away. For the past four years, Israel has boasted a prime minister strong enough to move boldly toward a two-state deal, but uninterested in doing so. Now it has a prime minister who lacks not only the ideological desire, but perhaps also the political strength. But Netanyahu’s weakness also means he’ll be less able to fend Obama off if the White House unveils a peace initiative. To the contrary, the more actively engaged Obama’s new foreign policy team becomes on the Palestinian issue, the shorter Netanyahu’s political life span will be. Right-leaning commentators sometimes claim that public disagreements between America and Israel stiffen Israeli spines and push them to the right. But in truth, such intervention helped topple Yitzhak Shamir in 1992 and Netanyahu himself in 1999. And while it’s unlikely it was the key factor, Obama’s recent dissing of Netanyahu probably played some role in his last minute drop in support
The results do make Remnick look a little excitable and by inference, me too. But the story is complicated. It’s not that the hard right did not do well. Jewish Home got eleven seats, just shy of Labor’s. What trumped that was a new party, “There Is A Future” (which Goldblog drily notes is “such a Jewish name … Optimistic, but threaded with melancholy”). It focused on domestic bread-and-butter issues, and widespread resentment of the fecund but largely molly-coddled haredim. Goldblog – surprise! – doubts much progress will be made on the peace process or the settlements:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2013/01/israels-balance-of-power-shifts.html
Rig the Vote: Republicans Push for Soviet Style Elections Where the Loser Wins
By: Sarah JonesJan. 23rd, 2013
Bob Shrum, Professor of Public Policy at NYU and Daily Beast contributor, was on the Ed Show discussing how Republicans are trying to gerrymander the Presidency when he announced that Republicans want to “Institutionalize a system where the loser wins… Soviet style election.”
Ed Schultz started the segment off explaining that Republicans are trying to rig the next election, “Republicans in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan want to change the way they award electoral votes. They aren’t trying to improve the system, they only want to change the electoral process for some people….”
Republicans aren’t trying to change red states like Kansas. Oh, no. Kansas is fine, thank you very much. Republicans want to change the rules in these blue states currently controlled by Republicans:Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Under their new rules,Republicans would have gotten an extra 45 electoral votes for Mitt Romney.
Bob Shrum summed it up as a felonious assault on elections, “What’s going on here is a felonious assault on free elections. It’s an attempt to gerrymander the presidency. If you think about it, you could argue that the Republicans haven’t won the presidency on the up and up since 1988.”
Yes, he went there. He continued, “They stole 2000, when they stole Florida with the complicity of the Supreme Court. In 2004, they engaged in massive voter suppression. People in Ohio had to wait 8-10 hours to vote and tens of thousands of them couldn’t wait 8-10 hours. They tried it again in 2012 and they lost. They can’t win the presidency so what they want to do is institutionalize a system where the loser wins… This is a kind of Soviet style elections.
http://www.politicususa.com/bob-shrum-republicans-soviet-style-elections-loser-wins.html
‘The era of liberalism is back’
By Steve Benen
Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:39 AM EST.
The initial response from many Republicans to President Obama’s second inaugural address was faux disappointment — they told reporters they hoped Obama would be “conciliatory” to the right and do “outreach” to the GOP in his speech, and the president did neither.
But yesterday, the message shifted a bit. As media coverage of the address focused on Obama’s unapologetic defense of progressive ideals, the Republican talking points moved to take advantage of the analysis.
http://youtu.be/k_d2kuejGF4
This video was released yesterday by Karl Rove’s attack operation, Crossroad GPS. If you turned the 44-second clip into a drinking game, and took a shot with every reference to the word “liberal,” you might find yourself in the hospital.
Soon after, we heard arguments like these from GOP leaders.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded to President Obama’s “disappointing” second inaugural address by declaring, “The era of liberalism is back.”
Senate Republicans bashed the president’s remarks one day after he delivered them, calling them far-left remarks that are out of touch with the American people.
McConnell added that the president’s address was “unabashedly far left of center,” presenting a “liberal agenda” to a country that Republicans “still believe is center-right.”
I don’t imagine this was the point McConnell intended to make, but his declaration that the “era of liberalism is back” may have been more appropriate than he realized.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/23/16661448-the-era-of-liberalism-is-back?lite
Maine, you’re kind of a mess right now
By Laura Conaway
Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:15 PM EST.
I used to live and work as a reporter in Maine, at a time when the state Republican Party considered itself to be a true big tent. Generally, that held true for the Democrats as well. Governing in Maine was all about moderation and competence. You may not have agreed with governors like John McKernan (R) or Angus King (I) or John Baldacci (D), but you knew they weren’t going to tank the state.
Then, in 2010, Republican Paul LePage won a three-way race for governor with less than 40 percent of the vote. Life under the Tea Party favorite has not gone so great. Today the New York Times — far from the capital of Augusta — homes in on Governor LePage’s difficulty dealing with the new Democratic majority in the legislature. LePage has refused to meet with Democratic leaders since December. The NYT reports:
The rising tensions over the budget were evident last week when the governor met with three independent House members who do not caucus with either the Democrats or Republicans. When they told Mr. LePage that municipalities could be forced to raise property taxes by hundreds of dollars, the governor grew angry, pounded the table, called them “idiots” and later swore at them, according to The Bangor Daily News.
“He went right through the roof when I asked him the question,” Representative Jeff Evangelos told the newspaper. “He flew up like a jack-in-the-box and ran out of the room and slammed the door.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/23/16662793-maine-youre-kind-of-a-mess-right-now?lite
House GOP cave complete, debt-ceiling suspension passes
By Steve Benen
Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:56 PM EST
Just a few weeks ago, congressional Republicans had a vague-but-consistent position on the debt ceiling. They knew it would have to be raised by mid-February, but before GOP members honored their obligations, they would demand that President Obama and Democrats accept over $1 trillion in spending cuts. Under the Republican plan, no ransom meant no deal.
It’s hard to overstate how quickly this strategy fell apart. Under pressure from the business community, and with President Obama holding firm, House GOP leaders caved on Friday, announcing they would let the hostage go for practically nothing. And today, Republicans suspended the debt ceiling in exchange for no spending cuts at all.
The House passed legislation Wednesday to suspend the limit on the nation’s borrowing authority for nearly four months, a move that would eliminate the threat of a government default and give lawmakers more time to address other looming budget deadlines.
House lawmakers voted 285-144 to pass the bill (HR 325) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday morning that his chamber would clear the measure for the president’s signature. And although the White House would prefer a long-term extension of borrowing authority, President Barack Obama has said he would not oppose the legislation.
The bill would suspend the debt limit through May 18, then automatically increase the current $16.4 trillion ceiling to accommodate additional debt accumulated before that date.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/23/16663554-house-gop-cave-complete-debt-ceiling-suspension-passes?lite
GOP exchanges debt limit fantasy for budget fantasy
Posted by Greg Sargent on January 23, 2013 at 2:07 pm
The House just passed the GOP’s plan for a temporary debt limit extension, 285-144. The threat of default has been averted — in exchange for no concessions whatsoever by Dems. This confirms what some of us knew from the start: Republicans were never — ever — going to allow default. Those who played along with the fantasy that the threat of default gave Republicans leverage got snookered. They got taken.
Today’s vote, in effect, removes the threat of default from the conversation permanently, which is good news for the country. There is very little chance that the coming battle won’t be resolved before the next debt limit deadline of May 18th. In any case, if Republicans try to tie any more conditions to the next debt limit hike, Dems will simply laugh in their faces, since they confirmed today that they are not willing to allow default, no matter what. So now the GOP will try to use the expiring sequester and the threat of a government shutdown to extract the spending cuts it says it wants.
But all this means is that Republicans are simply trading one charade for another one. GOP leaders mollified House conservatives angry about today’s vote by vowing to stick to a souped up version of the Paul Ryan fiscal blueprint, one that will make deficits disappear in a mere 10 years, with no new revenues. This is a fantasy. Jonathan Chait does some back of the envelope calculations and estimates it could mean Republicans “will have to cut domestic discretionary programs and spending for the poor by about half.” As Chait concludes: “Boehner has committed now to voting on something that would require even more draconian cuts to social spending than the Ryan budget.” Needless to say, no deal will be possible if the GOP sticks to anything close to this blueprint.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/23/gop-exchanges-debt-limit-fantasy-for-budget-fantasy/
Nancy Pelosi to Dems: Hold out for clean debt limit hike
Posted by Greg Sargent on January 23, 2013 at 11:47 am
Nancy Pelosi privately urged House Democrats this morning to vote against the House GOP’s plan for a temporary suspension of the debt ceiling, a House Dem aide says. The Dem game plan: Dems are still holding out for the possibility that they can force Republicans to agree to a clean debt limit hike, possibly even one that lasts a year.
The GOP temporary debt limit extension is not clean. It contains a provision that would put the pay of Senators in escrow if the Senate doesn’t pass a budget. The plan is being sold to House conservatives with the offer that if they support it, the House GOP will pass its own budget supposedly wiping out the deficit in 10 years.
According to a Dem aide, Pelosi privately told House Dems this morning that this will set a bad precedent for more GOP debt ceiling game playing. The mere fact that any conditions are attached to it will open the door to the possibility that the GOP could try to attach more conditions to the next extension of the debt limit, which will come up soon, because this one is temporary.
More to the point, Dems believe that if Boehner can’t pass the GOP debt limit bill with Republican support, it will give Dems still more leverage to push for a clean debt limit hike, perhaps a long term one. The idea is simple: The debt limit must be raised one way or the other. And so, if Republicans can’t pass their own solution, that will force Republicans to agree to a vote on a clean hike. Aides say that if the GOP proposal goes down, Pelosi and Harry Reid could come together behind a clean, three month hike or even a year-long one. The ideas is that Senate Republicans might have to support such a move, since the only other alternative at that point would literally be default. After that, Boehner would have to hold a vote on it, for the same reason, at which point it could pass largely with support for House Dems.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/23/nancy-pelosi-to-dems-hold-out-for-clean-debt-limit-hike/
Republican Gov Jindal Cuts Hospice for Medicaid Patients
By: Sarah JonesJan. 23rd, 2013
Republican Governor Bobby Jindal announced Tuesday that he was cutting Medicaid services for Louisiana’s dying poor, among other services getting the ax. No more hospice, starting February 1st. The terminally ill will no longer have hospice assistance.
Ironically, the only other state to try this was Arizona, and they found it too expensive in the end. Arizona ended up reinstating hospice. KPLCTV reported:
Louisiana will become one of only two states to eliminate Medicaid hospice. Arizona was in that mix, but has already reinstituted it because it costs more. “You’re going to pick them up and bring them to the emergency room, to the hospital, which costs considerably more than the $140/day paid for by the state for the Medicaid program,” said Phelps.
State Senator Dan “Blade” Morrish says state cuts were a must to balance the budget, but the Medicaid hospice plan needs to be looked at again. “There comes a time in budget cuts when there is a line that you just can’t cross anymore,” he said, “and I think we’ve reached that with the hospice issue.”
Perhaps facing such a budget problem, it might have been wise for Jindal to rehink his plan of killing revenue by getting rid of both personal and corporate state income taxes. Not to worry, he’s going to offset the lost revenue with sales taxes, which hit the poor and middle class far more than they do the wealthy.
http://www.politicususa.com/republican-gov-jindal-cuts-hospice-medicaid-patients.html
Cuccinelli claims King legacy in fight against contraception
By Steve Benen
Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:00 AM EST.
You know we’ve reached a strange point in the political discourse when the right wants to compare President Obama to Hitler, while Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) wanted to compare himself to Martin Luther King.
Two weeks ago, Cuccinelli urged his allies to be willing to “go to jail” to resist the Affordable Care Act’s provision that treats contraception as preventive medical care. As Evan Mcmorris-Santoro reported, this week, the state A.G. took this argument to the next level.
http://youtu.be/Drm6e4DWAec
In a radio interview, Cuccinelli, Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate this year, explained his belief that opposition to contraception coverage is effectively the same thing as the fight for civil rights. He argued:
“Whenever I talk about religious liberty, you know they turn it around. All they talk about — they don’t talk about denying religious liberty. They talk about contraception. And I’m not talking about contraception. Government doesn’t have a role in contraception. Government does have a role in protecting your civil rights especially today on MLK Day. The man who really came up with the American non-violent protest theory of civil disobedience. It’s pretty egregious that they can’t get any higher than contraception when we’re talking about protecting people’s religious liberty.”
Cuccinelli has also begun citing King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail for support.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/23/16659648-cuccinelli-claims-king-legacy-in-fight-against-contraception?lite
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/21/these-four-historians-have-some-thoughts-about-todays-inauguration?utm_source=012313&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=daily
Hope For the Future
by BooMan
Wed Jan 23rd, 2013 at 01:10:42 PM EST
I am not surprised that Fox News watchers were not much in the mood to watch the inaugural festivities but I am shocked that only 22% of their audience was in the 25-54 age range. I think it is safe to say that they didn’t do very well with views 24 and younger, so it appears that nearly 80% of their audience was 55 and older. Since advertising rates are tied to the prime 25-54 demographic, this is not good news for Fox’s revenues. It is also an ominous sign for the future. Every day that someone dies of old age is a day that Fox will lose audience share.
I still remember the 2010 midterms, so I don’t want to predict that the conservative movement is dead, but I think that 2010 was their high water mark. The future will be about managing their decline.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/1/23/131042/257
Netanyahu Gets Shellacking
by BooMan
Tue Jan 22nd, 2013 at 09:44:55 PM EST
It’s the middle of the night in Israel and election results are still being tallied but it appears than Benjamin Netanyahu has collapsed as much as he could collapse and still survive. Right now, it looks like the center-right has won 61 seats and the center-left has won 59 seats in the Knesset. Yet, even expert Israeli observers are unable to make solid predictions about what it means. I will not attempt to predict which parties will join the governing coalition and which parties will be cut out. I haven’t followed the campaign and I have only a cursory familiarity with the minor parties in Israel.
What seems clear, however, is that Netanyahu has been badly weakened. He should be able to form a government with a bigger majority than one, but his power has ebbed. I do not doubt that he paid a price for listening to Arthur Finkelstein and openly campaigning for Mitt Romney. Most Israelis know that their country needs a strong relationship with the American president and that it is insane for an Israeli prime minister to campaign for one American candidate over the other. It is especially insane to bet on the loser.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/1/22/214455/199
FLOTUS & POTUS at staff ball
Will.I.am
Photos of Obama staff inaugural ball
John Mayer & katy Perry
Lady Gaga
JayZ
Jindal stops Hospice Care for Medicaid patients
Effective February 1, 2013. Apparently, if you are on Medicaid, Fuck dying with dignity, with care and in no pain. (My interpretation of the article). By the way, I got the same letter in my mailbox today. He has also cut physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, no dental for pregnant woman or special services for HIV patients.
Oh yea, he just bought up a new charity hospital in the state and is privatizing it (in Lake Charles).
Is there ANY National Journalists out there interested in whats happening in deep red Louisiana? Rachel, Ed, Lawrence, Melissa, anybody????
Additional Information from the article
“Louisiana will become one of only two states to eliminate Medicaid hospice. Arizona was in that mix, but has already reinstituted it because it costs more. “You’re going to pick them up and bring them to the emergency room, to the hospital, which costs considerably more than the $140/day paid for by the state for the Medicaid program,” said Phelps.” .
There will be a candlelight vigil at the State Capitol steps Wednesday from 4:00 to 6:30 P.M. to protest the elimination of Medicaid hospice.
[link:http://www.kplctv.com/story/20646130/terminally-ill-patients-bracing-for-medicaid-hospice-cuts|
evil muthafuckas
Why the new House GOP budget plan will be even worse
By Steve Benen
Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:45 AM EST.
Remember House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan? In 2011, nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress threw their support to the radical proposal, perhaps best known for ending Medicare and replacing it with a voucher scheme. Ryan’s blueprint slashed public investments, gutted assistance to the most vulnerable Americans, and relied on magical assumptions that crumbled under mild scrutiny.
And in 2013, the House Republicans’ budget plan will be much worse.
The budget battle took new shape Tuesday when House Republicans disclosed plans to design a tax and spending proposal that would lead to a balanced budget in 10 years, something leaders from neither party have tackled in recent decades. […]
If Mr. Ryan plans to design a budget plan in the coming weeks that would balance the budget by 2024, he’ll have to deal with the tricky balance between taxes (which Republicans want to keep low) and spending.
……………………………
Ryan’s notorious budget plan was lauded by establishment media types who didn’t read it, and had no idea how fiscally insane it was. For all the hype about the Wisconsin Republican being a “deficit hawk,” Ryan’s budget plan actually proved the opposite — he cut spending to the bone in all kinds of critical areas, but instead of applying those savings to debt reduction, Ryan’s blueprint applied the money to more tax breaks for the wealthy. Ryan’s plan — the one celebrated by pundits for being “serious” — didn’t balance the budget until 2040, nearly three decades away, and even then, the figures relied on rosy assumptions that most found unrealistic.
Now, however, Ryan intends to unveil a plan to balance the budget in one decade instead of three. Take a wild guess what that means.
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It means, of course, that Ryan will either present a budget plan so absurd that it will be literally laughable, filled with outrageous magic asterisks, or it will be the most brutal and regressive plan ever seriously considered by a major American political party.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/23/16660201-why-the-new-house-gop-budget-plan-will-be-even-worse?lite
Danny Glover: ‘The Second Amendment Was Created to Protect Slavery’
http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/01/news/danny-glover-the-second-amendment-was-created-to-protect-slavery/
During an event on Thursday to honor Martin Luther King Jr, award winning actor and humanitarian Danny Glover told Texas A&M students that the second amendment was created to protect slavery.
“I don’t know if you know the genesis of the right to bear arms,” he said. “The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans.
“A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that’s what the genesis of the second amendment is,” he continued.
Glover is certainly not the first person to make the point that the second amendment was crafted to protect slavery. Liberal talk show host Thom Hartmann made the point on his show this week that the main point of the second amendment wasn’t to protect Americans from a tyrannical government, but to put down slave rebellions.
Hence the white man’s facination with guns, stand your ground, etc. It’s driving them absolutely crazy that AMERICA’S demographic HAS CHANGED. They can’t KILL us all, although I’m sure it hasn’t skipped their thinking it.
Keep letting Boehner twist in the wind
Posted by Greg Sargent on January 22, 2013 at 5:45 pm
So the latest scheme advanced by House Republicans is to suspend the debt limit, rather than raise it, until May 18th. This will get a vote tomorrow, on the theory that this will be easier for House conservatives to support than an actual debt ceiling hike, even though they will functionally have the same effect.
Ezra Klein and Steve Benen make the crucial substantive point that if we can suspend the debt ceiling temporarily, we should suspend it permanently, to prevent this kind of brinksmanship from going wrong and wreaking economic havoc in the future.
The question now is how House Democrats react. My bet is that they will adopt a wait-and-see attitude, designed to force John Boehner to prove he can come up with the votes for it himself. It turns out this is anything but assured: John Harwood quotes one Republican member saying it’s far from certain that he has the votes, which would mean another “Plan B” fiasco and another blow to Boehner’s leadership.
It’s hard to imagine House Republicans won’t be able to get the votes to pass this extension, but really, at this point, it’s impossible to be prepared for what they’ll do. This could be seen by House conservatives as yet another cave — one coming after the fiscal cliff surrender — and this time, Republicans get absolutely nothing in exchange for backing down. So who knows.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/22/keep-letting-boehner-twist-in-the-wind/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iohPgyPK0WE
TRANSCRIPT here:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june13/roevwade_01-22.html
Larry O’s first segment last night with the Tea Party Republican discussing the debt ceiling was to me hilarious.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/ns/msnbc-the_last_word/#50556358
MSNBC Team Rips Republican Senator’s Immigration Reform Logic
Al Sharpton: “To tell people that, ‘You have the right to be my maid,’ is not exactly a liberation struggle.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/msnbc-team-rips-republican-senators-immigration-r
The Benghazi hearing are being televised today. SoS Clinton testifies.
Watching now.
Post is up!
McCain: Waterboard Kerry (just kidding)
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joked that he’s going to get the truth out of Sen. John Kerry during confirmation hearings this week, even if he has to resort to enhanced interrogation methods. Kerry has been nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
“We will look forward to interrogating him at his hearing next week, mercilessly,” McCain joked at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. “We will bring back for the only time waterboarding to get the truth out of him.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2013/01/mccain-waterboard-kerry-just-kidding-154934.html
he’s so bitter and pitiful
Cindy and Meghan need to put that old coot down in the old folks’s home.
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)))
Good morning, everyone!
Good Morning, Ametia, SG2 and Everyone :)