Happy HUMP Day! Thanks for stopping by. Drop us a link of your favorite music, story, or share a word of inspiration. 3 Chics welcomes and appreciates your contributions.
From the Wiki: Natalie Maria Cole (born February 6, 1950), better known as Natalie Cole is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)”, “Inseparable” and “Our Love“. After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole reemerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album, Everlasting, and her cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s “Pink Cadillac“. In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable… with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole numerous Grammy Awards.
Obama Bypasses Senate, Announces Recess Appointments
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/obama-recess-appointments_n_802472.html
HONOLULU — President Barack Obama bypassed the Senate Wednesday to make six recess appointments, including a deputy attorney general whose links to the insurance giant American International Group had stalled his confirmation.
Obama first nominated James Cole to the No. 2 Justice Department post in May. But Republican lawmakers blocked his confirmation in part because of questions about his role as an independent consultant for AIG before its near collapse and government bailout in 2008. Senate Republicans complained that confidentiality agreements prevented them from receiving answers about his work for the company.
Cole is a close friend of Attorney General Eric Holder and a partner at a private Washington law firm. His appointment is one of six Obama announced from his vacation in Hawaii, including ambassadors to Turkey and Syria.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made recess appointments, which circumvents the Senate’s authority to confirm nominees, when they could not overcome delays in the Senate. President George W. Bush made more than 170 such appointments in his two-term presidency. President Bill Clinton made nearly 140.
MAKE IT DO, WHAT IT DO, MR. PRESIDENT.
Christine O’Donnell Allegedly Under Federal Investigation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/christine-odonnell-investigation_n_802368.html
BALTIMORE — Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to protect the identity of a client who has been questioned as part of the probe. The case, which has been assigned to two federal prosecutors and two FBI agents in Delaware, has not been brought before a grand jury.
Matt Moran, O’Donnell’s former campaign manager, did not immediately respond Wednesday to questions from The AP. He said earlier this month that the campaign had not been contacted about any investigation and criticized what he called “lies and false-attack rumors.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office has confirmed that it is reviewing a complaint about O’Donnell’s campaign spending filed by a watchdog group, but officials in the office and the FBI declined to say whether a criminal investigation was underway.
Nothing but a THIEF…..
Elizabeth Warren starts shaping consumer protection agency
By Christine Dugas, USA TODAY
Elizabeth Warren, special adviser to the president, is trying to help shake things up as she puts together the nation’s first federal consumer protection agency.
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will not officially start until July 21. And its final shape is uncertain as Warren faces many challenges and a host of criticism.
But the Harvard University bankruptcy professor, who first proposed the idea of a consumer financial regulator in 2007, isn’t daunted by the task and says she is off to a good start as she scrambles to hire staffers, initiate policies and meet with consumer advocates, bankers and many others.
DUTIES: What the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will do
PROTECT YOURSELF: How to be your own consumer protection agency
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: Consumer protection laws
“This new agency did not come into being because special interests demanded it or lobbyists spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen,” Warren said in an interview. “But ordinary Americans pushed hard for this agency. They said loud and clear that they wanted an agency in Washington to level the playing field with big banks.”
Warren has long been a voice for the consumer. But she had little power when, as a professor, she opposed what she saw as costly bank fees and predatory lending in testimony before Congress and her writings on the subjects. She now spends her time and energy starting an agency that she says has been born of optimism.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2010-12-29-cfpb29_ST_N.htm
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
It’s been not quite two months since Republicans won a sweeping midterm victory, and already they seem divided, embattled and – not to mince words – freaked out. For good reason, I might add.
Sen. Lindsey Graham captured the mood with his mordant assessment of the lame-duck Congress: “Harry Reid has eaten our lunch.” Graham’s complaint was that the GOP acquiesced to a host of Democratic initiatives – giving President Obama a better-than-expected deal on taxes, eliminating “don’t ask, don’t tell,” ratifying the New START treaty – rather than wait for the new, more conservative Congress to arrive.
It was a “capitulation . . . of dramatic proportions,” Graham said in a radio interview last week. “I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans. I can’t understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans.”
Oh, but there’s reason to be very afraid.
I don’t want to overstate the Republicans’ predicament. They did, after all, take control of the House and win six more seats in the Senate. But during the lame-duck session, it seemed to dawn on GOP leaders that they begin the new Congress burdened with great expectations – but lacking commensurate power. It’s going to be a challenge for Republicans just to maintain party unity, much less to enact the kind of conservative agenda they promised to their enthusiastic, impatient voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/27/AR2010122702976.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions
December 28, 2010, 5:22 pm No Shirtless Photos of Obama This Trip
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
HONOLULU — To all those Obama fans eager for another round of pictures of the presidential pectorals, forget it.
President Obama and his Hawaiian beach party — the first lady, Michelle Obama; their daughters, Malia and Sasha, and an assortment of friends — went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve here on Tuesday. Photographers were kept at a safe distance. The White House gave the press pool traveling with the president strict instructions that there would be no long lenses or other sneaky attempts to take pictures of a shirtless leader of the free world.
The entire preserve was closed to the public, as it is every Tuesday, for maintenance and as part of the broader effort to preserve the coral reef by keeping the number of visitors down.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/no-shirtless-photos-of-obama-this-trip/?partner=rss&emc=rss
President Obama almost get hit by golf ball
Witness the near-miss at the very beginning of the clip, then for any golf enthusiasts, enjoy seeing Obama’s swing as he continues to play.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/fore-obama-almost-hit-by-golf-ball-12499214
Chris Matthews Demands Obama’s Birth Certificate Now
MSNBC talkmeister asks: Is 43% of the country stupid?
Newser) – Add MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews to the ranks of people who are demanding to see President Obama’s long-form birth certificate—not because he doesn’t believe the president is American, but to quiet the “birthers” who don’t believe it. “I am not a birther, I am an enemy of the birthers,” Matthews said. Matthews referenced a poll that shows that less than 58% of Americans believe Obama was born in the US. “Are you saying 43% of the country is incorrigibly stupid, or resistant to truth?” he asks. To watch the Matthews video, click here
http://www.newser.com/story/108524/chris-matthews-demands-obamas-birth-certificate-now.html
Chris Spittle can go phuck himself. CAC!
This shyt is getting outrageous. We should be calling on all past POTUS’ for their birth certificates. Matthews ain’t slick.
How the HELL do these folks think Barack Obama became POTUS, he was scanned with a fucking microscope, otherwise, he’d never have his black ass up in the White House.
Matthews knows it too, he’s worked in politics, he knows the rules. why is he continuing to perpetuate this nonsense. The folks in Hawaii are getting mighty tired of this bullshit too.
Stop the maddness MSNBC and Chris Matthews. STOP giving this nonsense any legitmacy
STOP tying to paint our president as the “OTHER.”
Woman held for faking kidnap to see if husband would pay £20k ransom and then using money to go shopping
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:13 PM on 28th December 2010
woman who faked her own kidnap to see if her husband would pay a £20,000 ransom has been arrested after police caught her preparing to spend the money in High Street sales.
Her husband had been sent a photo on his mobile phone showing his wife’s bound hands and feet, police said yesterday.
A separate text message also demanded 20,000 euros (about £20,000) for her release as well as a warning not to go to the police.
But the man ignored the warning and police launched a search for the missing woman. They put a tracking device in the bag containing the money.
They spotted her car, which they followed to a shopping mall in the town of Gandia, on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, where they discovered her.
At first, she told officers she had been released by her captors that morning, but later confessed she had staged the abduction ‘to find out what her husband would be willing to do for her’.
A police statement said: ‘The woman, who was travelling alone and was in perfect health, was the supposed victim of the kidnapping.’
One officer said, ‘It’s the New Year holidays, the sales are on and she had a suitcase full of cash with her.’
In 2008, a Spanish court jailed a woman for three-and-a-half years after she was found guilty of extortion by faking her children’s kidnapping seven times.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342195/Spanish-woman-arrested-faking-kidnapping-test-husband-pay-ransom.html?ITO=1490
Rochester Hills man charged with crime for checking then-wife’s e-mail WITH VIDEO
Published: Thursday, December 23, 2010
By ANN ZANIEWSKI
Of The Oakland Press
Leon Walker said when he read his now ex-wife’s e-mails last year, it was out of concern for the well-being of their young daughter.
Now, the 33-year-old Rochester Hills resident is facing a felony charge that he says is an inappropriate misapplication of the law. Prosecutors disagree.
“I feel very strongly that I’ll be exonerated,” Walker said.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/12/23/news/local_news/doc4d1418f9ed80b014342424.txt
Brain thickness determines political leaning: study
December 29, 2010 – 9:46AM
Neuroscientists are examining whether political allegiances are hard-wired into people after finding evidence that the brains of conservatives are a different shape to those of left-wingers.
Scans of 90 students’ brains at University College London (UCL) uncovered a “strong correlation” between the thickness of two particular areas of grey matter and an individual’s views.
Self-proclaimed right-wingers had a more pronounced amygdala – a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion while their political opponents from the opposite end of the spectrum had thicker anterior cingulates.
Advertisement: Story continues below The research was carried out by Geraint Rees director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience who said he was “very surprised” by the finding, which is being peer reviewed before publication next year.
It was commissioned as a light-hearted experiment by actor Colin Firth as part of his turn guest editing BBC Radio’s Today program but has now developed into a serious effort to discover whether we are programmed with a particular political view.
Professor Rees said that although it was not precise enough to be able to predict someone’s stance simply from a scan, there was “a strong correlation that reaches all our scientific tests of significance”.
“The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that is on the middle surface of the brain at the front and we found that the thickness of the grey matter, where the nerve cells of neurons are, was thicker the more people described themselves as liberal or left wing and thinner the more they described themselves as conservative or right wing,” he told the program.
“The amygdala is a part of the brain which is very old and very ancient and thought to be very primitive and to do with the detection of emotions. The right amygdala was larger in those people who described themselves as conservative.
“It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes.”
Mr Firth – who recently declared he had ended public support for the Liberal Democrats – said he would like to have party leader and now Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg subjected to the tests.
“I think we should have him scanned,” he said.
He said the coalition made him “extremely uneasy” but would not rule out voting Lib Dem in future.
“I would have to see what identity they took on because I don’t recognise them at the moment. I think all three parties are in a state of re-evaluation.”
Talking about the experiment, he said: “I took this on as a fairly frivolous exercise: I just decided to find out what was biologically wrong with people who don’t agree with me and see what scientists had to say about it and they actually came up with something.”
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/brain-thickness-determines-political-leaning-study-20101229-199hk.html
Tucker Carlson: Michael Vick ‘Should’ve Been Executed’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/tucker-carlson-michael-vi_n_802192.html
Tucker Carlson filled in for Sean Hannity Tuesday night on Fox News and made a shocking claim: Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick should be executed.
Carlson led a panel discussion pegged to President Obama’s recent phone call with the Eagles owner, in which he applauded the Eagles for giving Vick a second chance following his time in jail over his dogfighting scandal.
But Carlson is not as forgiving as Obama or the Eagles.
“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”
Tucker Carlson is such a failure at everything he does, it’s not surprising he’d be angry at the successful black Michael Vick who can’t be held down..although YT tried. Tucker can go phuck himself….irrelevant bitchass!
The very fact that Carlson has to preface his hateful intolerant statements with “I’m a Christian” tells me all I need to know. TRANSLATION: I can hide behind my whiteness and Christianity to make these remarks about the black guy. Weak, racist, envious turd.
Never, EVER take a grown ass man seriouly who wears a phucking bow tie. THE.END.
Tucker is advocating violence against the black man but gives Bush & Cheney a pass for the illegal wars and mass murders they committed for an unjust war. I could slap the taste out his mouth. Punk ass bitch.
I’ma Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances
….But no second chances for the nigga! /snark
SG2, Tucker & other white folks have made it quite clear from day one that animals of any kind matter more to them than any black man. The animal doesn’t talk back and ask for equal treatment, rights, and abiding by the rules of law.
The animals are not threatening to their white supremacy mentalities, BLACK men are!
Strong, black men like the POUTUS and Vick give these weak white men nightmares. GOOD! Of course their mentality is dispose of the negroes, make them disappear. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN.
Let them sit behind their desk and keep that smug, whitebred attitude…. Life goes on, mofos
REAL ESTATEDECEMBER 29, 2010.Housing Recovery Stalls
Fresh Fall in Home Prices Is Headwind for Economy; Other Signs Still Strong.
By S. MITRA KALITA
And SUDEEP REDDY
A new bout of declining home prices is threatening to hamper the U.S. recovery, just as consumers and the overall economy have been showing signs of healing.
Home prices across 20 major metropolitan areas fell 1.3% in October from September, the third straight month-over-month drop, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday. Many economists expect the declines to continue into at least next spring, erasing most of the gains made since prices bottomed out in early 2009.
The housing market, which appeared poised for a recovery earlier in the year, now could be heading for a second downward drift.
“This looks like a double-dip [in housing] is pretty much on the way, if not already here,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the Standard & Poor’s index committee. “Somebody who thought last year that it’s going to be straight up from here was wrong.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047491075731426.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5&om_rid=DRaeQf&om_mid=_BNGzNzB8W1OBe1
Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds
By Kevin Sieff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2010; 12:06 AM
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, “Our America: To 1865.” A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation’s most stringent.
“I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes – wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?” said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed “Our Virginia: Past and Present.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122804332.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Parents really need to be up on their history, ask for copies of their children’s text books and reveiw them. We know the chicnanery, shenanigans, and all out distortion and lies of African American history in US text books.
Good Morning, 3 Chcis, Friends, and LURKERS:-)
Morning, everyone!
Ametia, I’m loving Natalie this morning.
Happy Wednesday!
http://topnews.in/health/files/cup-of-coffee11.jpg
:-) :-) :-)
I like you so much! :)
Thank you!
Natalie’s a trooper. She’s got a new kidney and a new attitude. Love her.
Look at this nonsense. Now the only thing PBO’s go going for him is his popularity? CNN is just pure shit, and of course we all know who their poll was comprised of.
CNN Poll: Growing Number Now Believe Obama’s Policies “Will Fail”
by Mark Joyella | 11:13 am, December 29th, 2010
As President Obama heads into 2011, the number of Americans who believe his policies will fail is rising. A just-released CNN poll also finds the number of people actively “rooting for” the president’s agenda to fail is also on the rise.
Still, there’s hope for the president in the poll, as more than 60 percent of Americans polled still support Obama’s policies–and on a personal level, people like him:
The survey suggests that Obama’s ace-in-the-hole remains his personal popularity. CNN poll numbers released last week indicate that 48 percent of all Americans approve of how Obama is handling his job as president, but the new survey puts his approval as a person at 73 percent.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/cnn-poll-growing-number-now-believe-obamas-policies-will-fail/
CNN’S POLL=FAIL1
CO-SIGN!
These mofos can’t help themselves. The election of the black man broke their brain. They’ll do anything in their power to discredit him. Wicked bitches!
Yep, according to CNN’s poll folks think PBO’s policies will fail. Ain’t that a load of shit! He’s good looking, and popular, but now the policies are going to fail .. because, what? He’s not clever, smart or white enough for them to succeed?
We see these mofos….. pathetic.
Merle Haggard: Obama ‘Very Different’ Than Media’s Portrayal
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/merle-haggard-obama-very-different-than-medias-portrayal.php
County music legend Merle Haggard — a 2010 Kennedy Center honoree — told Rolling Stone he finds President Barack Obama to be “very different” than his depiction in the media.
“It’s really almost criminal what they do with our president,” Haggard said. “There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he’s doing certain things that he’s not. It’s just a big old political game that I don’t want to be part of.”
Mad props, Merle!
Merle Haggard’s been around the block a few times and back, and calls it straight, no chaser.
He sees and knows the media for what they are. Lying sacks of shit without a Soul.