Dwight David Yoakam (born October 23, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter, actor and film director, most famous for his pioneering country music. Popular since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty-one albums and compilations, has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and sold more than 25 million records.
Topic:
This Week in Blackness
Tuesday, Jan 4, 2011 17:30 ET
The N-word belongs in “Huckleberry Finn”
The new censored version of the classic book is a cowardly attempt by Americans to avoid their own tortured history
The Internet is on fire today with the news that the American classic “Huckleberry Finn” is being edited to censor the word “nigger.” In order to make the book more palatable for a wider audience, Twain scholar Alan Gribben spearheaded the project to neuter one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever written. Many have cried censorship in the name of political correctness.
But this isn’t a case of political correctness. This is a case of being racially uncomfortable.
The idea that the book would be used if it didn’t contain the word “nigger” is preposterous. The book, which deals directly with racism, is not better served by erasing the racial slur. The only purpose is to ease the tension that is felt by parents and teachers of students who would read it. To pretend this is for some higher good is to insult the intelligence of the American public. America is a society in which our ugly history is not so far gone as to allow for cold, detached analysis. Because of the mistreatment of everyone who wasn’t/isn’t white, straight and male, America is constantly defending itself instead of dealing head-on with the wrongs that it willingly played a role in.
Our society has a problem speaking truth about our attitudes toward race. When the book “Game Change,” for example, included comments by Harry Reid saying that Obama could win the presidency because he was a “light-skinned Negro with no negro dialect unless he chose to have one,” many people had a conniption because you’re just not allowed to “say” that. Was it true? Absolutely. Scientific studies have proven a bias — among blacks and whites — against dark-skinned people, but for a politician to state a truth about America and race was unacceptable. Because our incredibly immature mind-set can’t acknowledge fact without fear of reprisal.
http://www.salon.com/life/this_week_in_blackness/2011/01/04/huck_finn_n_word/index.html
Let play HARDBALL!
Dartmouth man charged in plot to smuggle drugs
By CURT BROWN
January 03, 2011
DARTMOUTH — Nearly six weeks ago, when federal agents intercepted the 79-foot sailboat Sarah Moira heading to the U.S. from Jamaica, they scored a major international drug bust — seizing the boat’s cargo of 4,497 pounds of marijuana and arresting the captain and his crew.
Local police are now revealing that the trail to this $8.1 million pot bust began some 1,500 miles away, in Dartmouth.
The captain of the vessel and the target of a federal probe is 58-year-old James Ormonde Staveley-O’Carroll, a shipbuilder and self-described firebrand liberal, whose daughter, Sarah, is married to Michael K. Matthews, the son of MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110103/NEWS/101030305/-1/NEWS01
Chris Matthews didn’t say squat yesterday about his daughter’s father-in-law’s drug bust. No, instead he dredged up old Michael Vick-dogfighting shit.
When evil gets to rockin, Karma comes a knockin.
LOL Have you seen Hardball today? I’m still at work. **CRICKETS** from Tweety, I’ll bet.
I didn’t watch but I’ll bet he didn’t breathe a word. Let it had been someone from President Obama’s family and mofos would have been drooling.
Will Chris Matthews demand the in-laws explain about their intent to deliver drugs?
LMBAO HELL NO! He’s after the GOP now. he’s got Ron Christie and David Corn from Mother Jones on discussing HCR bill.
Come on Rep. Elijah Cummings. He cut Chris off from his usual interruptions. Speaking on House oversite commitee.
You remember this one, guys? I loved it when I first heard it.
Bobbie Gentry is one of the first female country artists to write and produce her own material.
Ode to Billie Joe:
The day that Billie Joe McCallister jumped off teh Tallehasse Bridge… See now you’re really bringing back memories now, SG2.
Good stuff, yeah!
These songs were played on the radios in our home.
Ametia, remember this? Enjoy!
LOVE IT! Thanks, SG2! Joaquin Phoenix did helluva job portraying Cash in Walk The Line.
Here you go, Rikyrah!
Deeper Than the Holler
UFC Fighter Wants To Fight Obama: ‘Someone Needs To Knock Some Sense Into That Idiot’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/jacob-volkmann-barack-obama_n_804172.html#comments
After UFC’s Jacob Volkmann beat Antonio McKee in a fight this weekend, Fanhouse’s Ariel Helwani asked him who he would like to fight next.
At first, the 30-year-old said MMA fighter Clay Guida, but then he called out President Barack Obama.
“Actually, Obama. He’s not too bright,” Volkmann said. “Someone’s gotta knock some sense into that idiot.”
Helwani then asked if he was a fan of Sarah Palin. Volkmann said “no” and explained that he didn’t like what Obama was doing.
“I’m a chiropractor,” he said. “So I know the health care situation is not good. But he’s making it worse.”
WTF? This mofo need to be taken behind the woodshed. All those blows to the head fk’d him up!
No comment. I just can’t… THE STOOPID BURNS.
What a bullshit article.
Got a problem with the Constitution?
By Jonah Goldberg
On Wednesday, the 112th Congress will convene with the Republicans running the House for the first time since the dawn of the Obama era. According to many commentators, Speaker-to-Be John Boehner and his crew of zealots have some very scary ideas. Chief among them: They want to make some obscure, inscrutable tract from an ancient civilization the centerpiece of their legislative philosophy. Indeed, in a move generating consternation and exasperation at MSNBC and other bastions of right-thinking, these cultists will read their perversely sacred text at the opening of the legislative session, breaking with more than 200 years of precedent.
It gets even worse. If the ideologues have their way, they will include a reference to their sacred treatise in every piece of legislation, imposing their arcane ideas on the nation.
They call their sacred text: “the U.S. Constitution.” It’s a funny thing. You’d think that the Constitution — the document every elected official, significant government appointee, soldier and naturalized citizen swears to uphold — would be like hot dogs or apple pie in our political system. Who’s against the Constitution? Yet at times, no subject seems to stew the bowels of liberals more than the idea that we should — or even can — be loyal to it.
Last week, Ezra Klein, a famously liberal Washington Post blogger, explained to MSNBC host Norah O’Donnell that the “gimmick” of reading the Constitution on the floor was ultimately silly because the Constitution was written “more than 100 years ago” and is, therefore, too confusing for everyone to understand. By that standard, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare and the Bible are long past their expiration dates and, by implication, impossible to follow accurately. One might also point out that the recently minted phonebook-thick Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is a good deal harder to decipher than the U.S. Constitution.
Meanwhile, the GOP’s promise to require that every legislation contain a clause citing the constitutional authority for it has sparked a riot of incredulity. A writer for U.S. News & World Report says the idea is “just plain wacky.” Last September, Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell declared that “the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation” will be “whether or not it is constitutional.” Dahlia Lithwick, Slate magazine’s legal editor, responded, “How weird is that, I thought. Isn’t it a court’s job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn’t that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?”
Leave aside the fact that it is not solely the job of the courts to determine what is constitutional. Forget that no such thing is provided for in the Constitution. You do have to wonder why senators and representatives bother swearing to “support and defend” the Constitution if that’s not part of their job description. Surely, it would strike most citizens as bizarre to suggest that legislators shouldn’t worry about whether their proposed legislation is constitutional. If on a field trip the Supreme Court goes off a cliff in a horrible bus accident, does that mean the Constitution goes with it?
Ever since the Progressive era, American liberals have been deeply troubled by the idea that the Constitution can prevent the government from doing anything the forces of progress desire. The annoying thing is they used to be honest about this. Woodrow Wilson openly expressed his contempt for fidelity to the Constitution, preferring a “living” Constitution that social planners can rewrite at a glance to fit the changing times. After his sinister court-packing scheme failed, FDR openly said we needed to supplant the “inadequate” Bill of Rights with a “second” or “economic Bill of Rights.”
Audacity of retreat
But in recent years, liberals have retreated from admitting that the Constitution is inconvenient to arguing that it is either simply irrelevant or infinitely malleable.
President Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope that the Constitution is not “static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.” On its face, this is not altogether implausible, but in reality what the living-Constitution crowd means is that when push comes to shove, we’re going to do what we think is best and figure out the constitutional arguments later, if it all.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.
President Barack Obama is a Constitutional Lawer and was the President of the HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-01-04-column04_ST_N.htm
Letterman: Boehner Cries “Like He’s On Drugs” & “Needs Some Sort Of Counseling”
by Matt Schneider | 8:50 am, January 4th, 2011
David Letterman is back and with his first guest of 2011, NBC’s Brian Williams, comedically went after Speaker of the House John Boehner. Letterman suggested Boehner’s frequent crying reminded him of when he was prescribed Valium and sobbed while watching a McDonald’s commercial, thus concluding about Boehner, “the guy will cry like he’s on drugs.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/letterman-boehner-cries-like-hes-on-drugs-and-needs-some-sort-of-counseling/
Of course he’s on drugs; it’s called ALCOHOL.
Return Of The Jedi? Jon Stewart Likens Barack Obama To Luke Skywalker
by Colby Hall | 8:04 am, January 4th, 2011
The Daily Show returned to the airwaves last night after a two week holiday break with little hard news nor media coverage having occurred in the last week to dissect. So host Jon Stewart turned to his not-so-wayback machine, and recapped President Obama’s stunning string of legislative victories that came in the last week of the lame duck session. Stewart compared Obama to a young Jedi known as Luke Skywalker, hero of Star Wars, in a funny, clever and somewhat ham-fisted analogy.
Just like Luke defeated the Evil Empire and blew up the Deathstar, so too did Obama defy outrageous odds in getting elected as The New Hope. But the celebration quickly ended as the “Republic-an Empire” struck back, with a string of political victories that made the young Jedi knight (Obama) look weak and impotent. There’s even the frozen planet of Hoth with the cave Wampa monster (who like Sarah Palin, can see the planet Tatooine from her cave.)
The twisted analogy ends with Jabba the Hutt and his chosen bounty hunter Boba Fett getting defeated as lameduck Return of the Jedi. (The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Celebrated by dancing Ewoks on the planet Endor!)
Even if the metaphor is less than exact, it didn’t make the segment any less entertaining — who doesn’t enjoy an entertainer breaking with laughter a la Harvey Kormon?
Watch the following segment from Comedy Central below:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/return-of-the-jedi-jon-stewart-likens-barack-obama-to-luke-skywalker/
You’ve gotta watch the video.
Ex-CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez Has “Friends,” Would Very Much Like New Gig In 2011
by Mark Joyella | 3:19 pm, January 3rd, 2011
Rick’s friends have had it, and they’re doing something about it. Bottom line: they want Rick Sanchez back on TV, like yesterday.
Sanchez, host of the now-gone CNN daytime show Rick’s List, lost his gig after calling Jon Stewart a “bigot” and suggesting that Jews control the media. Or, as Sanchez summed it all up to Mediaite last October, “I got greedy and I got mad and I got in trouble.”
Indeed. But now a group of “Rick’s friends” have banded together and taken to Sanchez’s turf: social media. They’ve launched a website and Twitter account called “Friends of Rick Sanchez” which urges America to “get the whole story” about what Rick did and didn’t say, and to join the movement to get Rick back where he belongs:
Rick is a good man with a long history of success in the television industry. We created this site because we don’t believe a man’s life should be judged by one misconstrued moment, one interview, one soundbite taken out of context. We believe that runaway headlines shouldn’t malign someone’s reputation, leaving him unemployed and ruined.
Rick doesn’t hate. He doesn’t discriminate. He knows what it’s like to be a minority, an outsider, and what it’s like to work your way up from literally nothing. And he is sympathetic to all groups—Italians, African-Americans, Arabs, Hispanics, Muslims and yes, Jews, because he knows they have also had to overcome similar challenges.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ex-cnn-anchor-rick-sanchez-has-friends-would-very-much-like-new-gig-in-2011/
President Obama signs historic food safety law, but funding is uncertain
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/01/president_obama_signs_historic.html
With the flick of a pen, President Obama signs a bill today that paves the way for the first major overhaul of the food safety system in the United States in nearly a century.
The bill, passed by Congress late last year, gives the Food and Drug Administration new authority to recall tainted food and step-up inspections of food processing facilities.
It exempts farms and producers making $500,000 or year or less but will require larger manufacturers to enact food safety plans and includes measures to increase the safety of food imports, which account for one-sixth of the nation’s food supply.
All this draws cheers from food safety advocates who’ve bemoaned the waves of outbreaks that have touched everything from peanuts to produce, killing 3,000 people every year in the United States.
Obama girls miss two days of school; when is it okay to keep a kid out of school?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/student-life/obama-girls-miss-two-days-of-s.html
While their classmates at Sidwell Friends School returned from the holiday break on Monday, Malia and Sasha Obama were in Hawaii with their parents, the president and the first lady, visiting elephants and other animals at the Honolulu Zoo.
President and Michelle Obama obviously felt that spending time as a family — not an easy accomplishment for the leader of the United States — was more important at this point in their lives than rushing back so their daughters could be in class.
Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9, will miss two days as a result. The trip began the day Sidwell students started their winter break.
Parents make these sorts of decisions all the time, asking themselves when it is acceptable to keep their children out of school.
Obviously, kids are supported to stay home when they are sick, but there are plenty of other times that parents decide not to send their children to school.
What do you think qualifies as an experience worthy of keeping a child out of school? A family trip? Attending the Super Bowl? Spending quality time with parents?
Would you allow your stressed-out child to spend a day at home doing absolutely nothing so he/she can decompress?
I would say yes to all of the above, assuming the child doesn’t have a major assignment or test or class experience. Kids can make up their work, which, in itself is not a bad lesson in how to set priorities, and manage time.
I wonder did she write anything about Palin’s kids being out of school while she dragged them out on the campaign trail in 08?
Of course these fake journalist didn’t write an entire article about Palin’s kids missing school while she made the rounds in 2008. THEY’RE WHITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Translation: WHYCOME Sasha & Malia Obama can miss 2 days of school, and other Sidwell kids can’t, Michelle Obama is a bad mama!
LOL at least they go to school and will finish.
Bitches, Please!
They Call the Thing Rodeo
@ 1:33 watch how high that horse bucks. Dang, that’s something pretty!
http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000H7JT5nO8.2I/s/650/650/Cowboys-boots-spurs-AR620711-123.jpg
;)
The 2 Step
Holy guacamole! Sheesh, that horse was flying!
Has anyone heard MJ’s new album?
Michael Jackson News
Michael Jackson’s New Album, MICHAEL, Available Now
Michael Jackson’s new album, MICHAEL, is available today! The album features hit single “Hold My Hand” (Duet With Akon) and is the first release in nine years of new Michael Jackson material. The album contains ten tracks, produced by an esteemed group of producers along with Michael Jackson. Please visit your favorite local retailer or online store to purchase.
MichaelJackson.com Direct
http://www.michaeljackson.com/us/news/michael-jackson%E2%80%99s-new-album-michael-available-now
Photos of First Family return to White House after vacation.
Malia’s taller than her mom…and inching up on POTUS
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/6wE_6cq_q4M/First+Family+Returns+White+House+After+Hawaiian/JrzM_0Irt9B/Michelle+Obama
Grandfather’s grave
Obama pays his respects
By CAROL LEE | 01/04/11 12:51 AM
President Obama visited his grandfather’s grave in Honolulu Monday evening before returning to Washington after his 11-day vacation.
The president took his daughters, Sasha and Malia, with him to Punchbowl Cemetery, where his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, a World War II veteran, was buried after he died in 1992.
It was the first time Obama had been to the site since 2008.
The cemetery was quiet and empty. Obama spent about 15 minutes there as the sun began to set over Honolulu.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0111/grandfathers_grave_a82ad01f-028a-47ad-9921-11dc37d9f46c.html
RIP, Stanley Dunham.
Tuesday, Jan 4, 2011 09:01 ET
War Room Let’s stop pretending the Constitution is sacred
By Michael Lind
Will conservatives restore America to constitutional government? The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has promised not only to begin the new congressional session by reading the Constitution in its entirety, but also to require that every new piece of legislation cite the passage in the federal Constitution that authorizes it.
These gestures are certain to please the conservatives of the Tea Party movement who are the ascendant force in Republican primary elections. But Tea Party constitutionalism represents a deeply flawed understanding of America’s founding, which ought to be based on the revolutionary idea of the power of the sovereign people to make and unmake constitutions of their design, not on superstitious veneration of particular constitutions handed down by wise demigods.
Tea Party constitutionalism blends several American traditions. One is the tradition of hostility to the federal government chiefly associated with the South, which adopted states’ rights ideology in order to resist federal interference first in Southern slavery and then in Southern racial segregation. Now that the Republican Party, founded as a northern party opposed to the extension of slavery, is disproportionately a party of white Southern reactionaries, dominated by the political heirs of the Confederates and the segregationist Dixiecrats, the denunciation of many exercises of federal authority as illegitimate would have been predictable, even if the president were not a black Yankee from Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois.
But there is more to the constitutional theories of the modern GOP than neo-Confederate ideology. Beginning with the adoption of the federal Constitution, some Americans have sought to promote reverence for this particular Constitution, while others have emphasized the power of the Constitution-making people. Thomas Jefferson thought that laws and constitutions should be updated frequently, while his friend and ally James Madison thought that constitutions and laws should be changed only infrequently in the interest of stability. John Adams thought that the founders of constitutions should be revered, as in ancient Greece and Rome.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/01/04/lind_tea_party_constitution
Health Care Reform Repeal Vote Could Lead To Obama Veto
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/health-care-reform-repeal-vote_n_804084.html#comments
WASHINGTON — Eager to show who’s now in charge, the House’s new Republican majority plans to vote to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark health care overhaul before he even shows up in their chamber to give his State of the Union address.
Dream on, bitches. President Obama has a VETO pen and he will shut this mofo down.
The POTUS will VETO that bitch without blinking. The GOP know the Senate will not vote on their theatrics and the surely they aren’t going to underestimate the VETO power of the POTUS. It’s all political posturing, stalling, repealaing, supoenas, obstruction, wash, rinse, repeat.
Governor Mark Dayton and Lieutenant Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon invite you to join them at the
People’s Inaugural Ball
Saturday January 8, 2011, 6:30 pm to Midnight
All are welcome!
Reception and Dance
Minneapolis Convention Center
1301 Second Avenue South, Minneapolis
$30 per person
$15 for students and low-income
“Blue Jeans to Black Tie!”
I just may roll up in the joint Saturday night!
Mysterious Murder of Bush Official: John P. Wheeler III Found Dead in Delaware Landfill
by Christine Pelisek Info
The murder reads like a spy novel: An ex-Pentagon official is found dead in a landfill, three days after disappearing between Washington and Wilmington. Christine Pelisek and Pat Wingert on what happened.
The murder could be taken from the pages of John le Carré.
A former Pentagon official boards a train from Washington to his home in Delaware just after Christmas.
The man—a West Point cadet, a Yale and Harvard graduate and former general’s aide in Vietnam—disappears without a trace, only to be found dead in a landfill days later.
This is the story of John P. Wheeler III, an adviser to four different administrations, whose body was discovered on New Year’s Eve.
Beyond these sketchy details, police say, not much more is known about the apparent murder of the 66 year old, whose resume read like that of a character in a modern spy novel, and whose body was found dumped in a Wilmington landfill.
An employee at the landfill noticed Wheeler’s body after it was dumped from a Waste Management truck onto a pile of trash at the Cherry Island landfill—miles from his home in the historic district of New Castle where he lived with his wife Katherine Klyce.
Three days earlier, Wheeler had been scheduled to take an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington near his home when he disappeared without a trace. Even this last journey is shrouded in mystery, police say. “He was scheduled to take the train but we don’t know if he actually boarded the train,” said Lt. Mark Farrall of the Newark Police Department. Although it took several days before Wheeler’s body was identified, he was not reported missing by his family because his wife was out of town at the time of his disappearance, investigators say.
Wheeler is best known as one of the main forces behind the Vietnam Memorial.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-04/john-p-wheeler-iii-official-of-george-w-bush-administration-found-murdered-in-delaware-landfill/?om_rid=DRaeQf&om_mid=_BNIx$xB8XAD7I6
Follow the money **looking@ you Dick Cheney**
The People’s Choice Awards 2011 show is almost here! Be sure to join us online for our exclusive red carpet stream at 7:30ET, featuring some of your favorite stars in movies, TV and music! Then tune in to see who wins at 9/8C on CBS.
http://www.peopleschoice.com/pca/
Obama Job Approval Rises To 50 Percent
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/obamas-job-approval-50_n_804049.html#comments
President Barack Obama got more than rest and relaxation while he was on vacation in Hawaii over the holidays: His job approval rating, which had been languishing in the mid-40-percent range for more than six months, rose to 50 percent, according to Gallup Daily tracking.
The results are the average from tracking conducted Dec. 28-29 and Jan. 2, Gallup said.
So Issa can go suck a big bag-o-dicks! His spending millions of our tax payer money to try and bring down our PRESIDENT, WILL.NOT.WORK. And you know this corporate whore is going after AG Holder too. These MOFOs are so transparent.
These mofos have a lot of hate against the black man in office. I loathe these sobs. I can’t wait to see Issa crash & burn! Karma is waiting …
It’s a distraction for teh GOP who don’t have any REAL agenda for leadership in the new congresss.
They know it’s not going any damn where. They’re wasting tax payers money.
LOL LMBAO, HAAAAAAAAAAAAA BWA HA HA
Chris Matthews’ In-Law Arrested In Multimillion Dollar Pot Bust
First Posted: 01- 4-11 03:10 PM | Updated: 01- 4-11 03:27 PM
Chris Matthews’ in-law has been arrested in connection with an $8.1 million pot bust, the Cape Cod Times reports.
Federal agents intercepted a boat coming to the U.S. from Jamaica six weeks ago and seized 4,497 pounds of marijuana, the paper writes. They traced the pot back to Dartmouth, Mass, where the captain and owner of the boat, James Ormonde Staveley-O’Carroll, lives. Staveley-O’Carroll’s daughter, Sarah, is married to Matthews’ son, Michael. Staveley-O’Carroll was targeted as the ringleader of the plan to bring the drugs to America.
He is being held in Mississippi and is awaiting trial along with two co-defendants. They are charged with conspiracy to possess controlled substance with intent to distribute, conspiracy to import controlled substance with intent to distribute, possession of controlled substance with intent to distribute and importation of controlled substance with intent to distribute.
The Times reports that, according to a federal affidavit, the drug bust is “the result of an investigation by Homeland Security agents and stems from information provided by a confidential informant that the Sarah Moira was smuggling taxed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Janis_Alanis_Zingaro/chris-matthews-inlaw-pot-bust_n_804321_72717466.html
Oh! Oh!
Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Breaking News Alert: Navy expected to relieve captain who made lewd videos, official says
January 4, 2011 11:45:23 AM
—————————————-
The Navy is expected to relieve Capt. Owen Honors as commander of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise on Tuesday afternoon, a Defense Department official said, part of an investigation into a series of videos made by Honors that use anti-gay slurs and mimic masturbation.
The videos were shown to sailors on the Enterprise’s closed-circuit television system in 2006 and 2007, when Honors was the ship’s second-in-command. They include skits laden with sexual innuendo and barbs aimed at gays and the politically correct.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/E5QODK/D4KO2L/2VARK4/2ESPBO/4QE6H/ZH/h
President Obama, on his way home from Hawaii, offered an assessment of how Republicans will act in the opening months of 2011, saying he expects they will “play to their base for a certain period of time.” He still retained some optimism, however
My expectation, my hope is that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will realize that there will be plenty of time to campaign for 2012 in 2012.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/04/thinkfast-january-4-2010-2/
Photos of final First Family vacation in Hawaii
When Sasha gets a hold of her dad, she doesn’t let go. :-)
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/RVGeX-AYSEv/President+Obama+Family+Spend+Final+Vacation/HF1NJ_dejMB/Barack+Obama?pa=1&u=qnCWEWf6YrN&tb=C&e=alert&l=title
Obama in the Age of Accommodation
Melissa Harris-Perry | December 22, 2010
Barack Obama’s candidacy inspired comparisons to change agents like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Critics of his presidency have invoked Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to portray him as weak and to decry his rightward shift. In my circle of African-American progressive academics and advocates, the name hissed with particular derision recently is Booker T. Washington, who at the turn of the twentieth century publicly articulated his acceptance of segregation, brokered compromises on racial disenfranchisement and emphasized individual effort over structural justice. To equate President Obama with Booker T. Washington is to suggest that the president is willingly complicit in atrocities of inequality.
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/157285/obama-age-accommodation
Posted at 4:07 AM ET, 01/ 4/2011
Obamas leave Hawaii after vacation
By Perry Bacon Jr.
HONOLULU — The time for shave ice is over.
President Obama and his family departed for Washington late Monday night Hawaii time, concluding a 12-day vacation in which the president remained almost completely out of public view.
On their last day here, the Obamas went to the zoo, the beach and a shave ice place the president always take his daughters when in Hawaii.
They also briefly visited the cemetery where Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, is buried.
After an intense first two years in office, aides who accompanied Obama here described the trip as a welcome respite in which no major news happened.
The president’s flight left around 9:30 p.m. (2:30 a.m. EST). He is scheduled to land in Washington Tuesday morning and meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the afternoon.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/01/obamas-leave-hawaii-after-vaca.html?wprss=44
December 29, 2010, 11:47 am
New Stamps to Honor Musicians, a Lawyer and a Fearless Space Explorer
By DAVE ITZKOFF
United States Postal Service New stamps depicting characters from Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “Up” and “Wall-E.”
A new set of commemorative stamps announced by the United States Postal Service may not send your mail to infinity and beyond (barring any routing errors), but it can send your correspondence to its destination bearing the grinning lantern-jawed countenance of Buzz Lightyear. Characters from the Disney/Pixar features “Toy Story,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Wall-E” will be among the entertainment figures honored on stamps that the Postal Service will begin selling next year. (The Disney/Pixar stamps, which will go on sale Aug. 19, can be seen in their entirety by clicking here or on the image above.)
Other cultural-themed stamps scheduled for next year are a Latin Music Legends series (on sale in March) honoring Selena, Carlos Gardel, Carmen Miranda, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz; Helen Hayes (in April); Gregory Peck, depicted as Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (April 29); Mark Twain (in June); and the art of Romare Bearden (September). A stamp commemorating the life of Ronald Reagan, who went from Hollywood to an even bigger spotlight, is planned for Feb. 10.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/new-stamps-to-honor-musicians-a-lawyer-and-a-fearless-space-explorer/?pagemode=print
— Navy captain at center of scandal over raunchy videos shown on USS Enterprise to be relieved of command, official says.
Loved watching the video explanation of this:
All the President’s Pens
March 24, 2010 | 2:42 | Public Domain
Why do presidents use so many pens to sign legislation? White House Staff Secretary Lisa Brown explains.
Video:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/all-presidents-pens?utm_source=010411&utm_medium=intro&utm_campaign=daily
Good morning all!!
Malia is so cute holding her cousins hand
Mornin’, Dannie. Malia’s going to be just like her mom. She’s a hugger.
A health-care fight Democrats should welcome
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
If the incoming Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is serious about trying to repeal health-care reform, there’s only one appropriate Democratic response: “Make my day.”
Just to be clear, there’s no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health-care overhaul could make it through Congress and be signed into law. Even if Republicans managed to hold together their new majority in the House, they would face the inconvenient fact that Democrats still control the Senate. And even if a repeal measure somehow sneaked through the Senate, President Obama would veto the thing faster than you can say “preexisting conditions.”
So this exercise in tilting at windmills can’t even be described as quixotic, since that would imply some expectation of success, however delusional. The whole thing is purely theatrical – and woefully ill-advised.
Yet Republicans promise to stage a vote on repeal before Obama delivers his State of the Union address, expected late this month. “If we pass this bill with a sizable vote, and I think that we will, it will put enormous pressure on the Senate to do perhaps the same thing,” Rep. Fred Upton, who will be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But then, after that, we’re going to go after this bill piece by piece.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010303442.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
The GOP rethugs are just more of the same, Eugene. You ought to know that by now. Just politcal theater with these jokers.
Good Morning, Everybody! :-)
Good Morning Ametia, Rikyrah, Dannie & 3 Chics!
Morning Graphics – Tumblr Themes
LOL! Mornin’, SG2! Now that’s a cup of java.
Here, I brought enough of these for everyone: http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/donuts-donuts-262758_800_1029.jpg :-)
Yum Yum…get in my belly!
HA HA HA I see you, young lady. Those tight jeans and boots above…. umm hmm…. LOL
;)