Wiki: Adele Laurie Blue Adkins[1] (born 5 May 1988), known professionally as Adele (pronounced /əˈdɛl/),[2] is an English singer-songwriter. She was the first recipient of the BRIT Awards Critics’ Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008. In 2009, Adele won two Grammy Awards, Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, at the 51st Grammy Awards.[3][4]
Adele attracted the attention of XL Recordings with a three-song demo posted on MySpace and subsequently signed with the label. Since her debut, 19, Adele has received much recognition both commercially and critically. The album debuted at number one, and has been certified 3x platinum in the UK.[5] Her career in the US was boosted by a viewer record breaking Saturday Night Live episode in late 2008. Adele released her second album 21 on 24 January 2011 in the UK, and 22 February in the US.[6][7] The album was a critical and commercial success,[8] selling 208,000 copies in its first week in the UK and debuting at number one on the UK Album Chart, and also charted in the same position in nine other countries.[9] The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in the US, selling 352,000 copies in its first week.[7][10]
After an acclaimed performance at the 2011 BRIT Awards, the album track “Someone Like You” went straight to number one in the United Kingdom, while the album also remained at number one.[11][12] The Official Charts Company announced that Adele is the first living artist to achieve the feat of two top five hits in both the Official Singles Chart and the Official Albums Chart simultaneously since The Beatles in 1964.[11][12][13]
Have a great day, Everybody!
Now Special Ed is on The Last Word acting like he’s an expert on labor law. What. A. Joke.
WUH?!!! LOL He’s on the last word, talking smack, because folks have turned off the tv before his 10 pm show.
He’s trying to increase his ratings. Look forward to the day he is booted out the door.
Bye, bye, Special Ed!
Scott Walker Seeks Compromise With Wisconsin Dems
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/08/scott-walker-proposes-uni_n_833189.html
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has offered to keep certain collective bargaining rights in place for state workers in a proposed compromise aimed at ending a nearly three-week standoff with absent Senate Democrats, according to e-mails released Tuesday by his office.
The e-mails, some dated as recently as Sunday, show a softened stance in Walker’s talks with the 14 Democrats who fled to Illinois to block a vote on his original proposal that would strip nearly all collective bargaining rights for public workers and force concessions amounting to an average 8 percent pay cut.
Under the compromise floated by Walker and detailed in the e-mails, workers would be able to continue bargaining over their salaries with no limit, a change from his original plan that banned negotiated salary increases beyond inflation. He also proposed compromises allowing collective bargaining to stay in place on mandatory overtime, performance bonuses, hazardous duty pay and classroom size for teachers.
Dems need to watch this MOFO. The Republicans must be putting the pressure on Walker’s ass.
***dead***
James O’Keefe Versus NPR
Posted Tuesday, March 08, 2011 9:01 AM | By David Weigel
The video sting artiste publishes the latest work from his shop — a covertly taped interview with then-NPR Foundation senior VP for development Ron Schiller and current senior director of institutional giving Betsy Liley. Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar posed as members of a wealthy Muslim education foundation “founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood,” and taped the NPR representatives — largely Schiller — answering them with exactly what they wanted to hear. Unfortunately for the stingers, Schiller just left NPR for the Aspen Institute.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/03/08/james-o-keefe-versus-npr.aspx
President Obama visits Boston today
March 8th, 2011 12:12 am ET
President Obama will visit Boston on Tuesday with stops at a Democratic fund raiser and a Boston public school. The fund raiser will be held at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). Obama will also visit TechBoston Academy in Dorchester where he will be accompanied by Melinda Gates of The Gates Foundation and Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education.
TechBoston Academy was founded in 2002 with a grant from the foundation headed by Bill and Melinda Gates, according to WCVB-TV Boston. The Dorchester school is a pilot school that “teaches nearly 800 students in grades 6 through 12, most of them from low-income families, and has drawn praise for its striking success in boosting their skills and preparing them for college,” according to Boston.com.
The president plans to discuss the “shared responsibility that government, businesses, philanthropists, and communities have to promote innovative education strategies that will prepare American students to compete in a 21st-century economy,’’ an Obama administration official told the Globe.
Meanwhile, a group of present and former Democratic lawmakers to hold a press conference at 10:30 AM, just a few hours before the preosident’ plane touched down to address against Obama’s proposed cuts to the LIHEAP program.a home heating oil assistance program, according to a Boston Globe report.
The Globe is reporting that Former Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, current Representatives Edward J. Markey, Michael Capuano, and James McGovern, have called a news conference to protest the proposed cut.
Continue reading on Examiner.com: President Obama visits Boston today – Boston City Buzz | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/city-buzz-in-boston/president-obama-visits-boston-today#ixzz1G20Uuh5C
Wisconsin Dems File Ethics Complaint Against Walker Over Remarks On Prank Call
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/08/scott-walker-ethics-compl_n_832722.html#comments
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Democratic Party has filed an ethics complaint against Republican Gov. Scott Walker over statements he made during a recorded prank call.
In their complaint filed Monday with the Government Accountability Board, the Democrats claim Walker violated campaign finance laws by apparently asking for support for politically vulnerable Wisconsin Republican lawmakers from a caller who he thought was a wealthy campaign donor.
Walker’s spokesman, Cullen Werwie, calls the allegations baseless.
The call to Walker was made by a left-leaning website. The caller claimed to be David Koch, one of two billionaire brothers who donate heavily to conservative causes.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said last week that he found nothing about Walker’s statements to merit a criminal investigation. He says he hasn’t examined allegations of campaign finance violations.
Keep after Walker, Wisconsinites!
Female federal judiciary candidates are treated differently than their male counterparts, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told a group of law students yesterday, and women jurists need a thick skin.
“There are expectations about how women and men should behave,” she said. “I am probably a bit more aggressive, but to hear people describe me as brash, and rude, the language used suggests a difference in expectations about what’s OK for people’s behavior.”
Sotomayor made these remarks March 7 at Northwestern University School of Law, at the annual Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar Program. The event is named in honor of a 1949 Northwestern law school graduate, who is a partner and former chairman of Chicago’s Sidley & Austin.
The third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sotomayor also discussed what the nomination process was like. Divorced since 1983, Sotomayor seemed to suggest that unmarried female federal judiciary candidates are judged more harshly about their private lives.
During the nomination process she was asked for the names of everyone she ever dated, Sotomayor told the audience.
“There were (questions) I was offended by, because I was convinced they were not asking those questions of male applicants,” Sotomayor said. “One day, after I had been questioned for weeks at a time, I was so frustrated I looked at my assistant and said ‘I think they already know the color of my underwear.'”
She noted that her federal court male colleagues who are also single, and date often, frequently bring their dates to public affairs.
“No one ever talks about it to them,” she said. “I knew if I did the same thing, my morals would be questioned.
“I was very careful, and I still am very careful, about who I date,” Sotomayor added. “I do it very privately.”
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/female_judicial_candidates_are_held_to_different_standards_sotomayor_tells_?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email
Keep keeping it real Justice Sotomayor.
Latinas DO IT WITH SYTLE!
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is now “America’s privacy cop,” a law professor asserts.
Writing for the Washington Post, George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen notes that Alito was the lone dissenter supporting community standards of decency in two First Amendment cases. In the most recent case, Snyder v. Phelps, Alito sided with the grieving father of a slain Marine rather than protesters who assert that military deaths are part of God’s punishment for tolerance of gays. In the video case, United States v. Stevens, Alito said he would have upheld a law banning video depictions of animal cruelty rather than protect the rights of those who want to make “depraved entertainment.”
Alito doesn’t always side with privacy interests, but he has emerged as a privacy champion, Rosen says. “More than any other justice, Alito is emerging as a stalwart defender of privacy, particularly in cases with strong free speech interests on the other side,” Rosen writes. “He cares more about the government’s ability to protect a range of privacy values—including dignity, anonymity and community standards of decency—than anyone else on the court.”
Rosen says Alito’s defense of privacy over free speech goes too far for his taste, but his stance should not come as a surprise. In 1971 as a Princeton student, Alito chaired a student conference on data gathering and privacy, which concluded in a report that privacy is too often sacrificed to other values.
Rosen notes two pending cases that pit privacy and community standards of decency against free speech. One concerns a California ban on the sale of violent video games to minors. Another concerns a Vermont consumer privacy law challenged by pharmaceutical companies seeking data from prescription records. Alito appeared sympathetic to the California law, and at least one observer—Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center—thinks he will vote to uphold the Vermont law, too.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/justice_alito_emerges_as_americas_privacy_cop_law_prof_says?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email
Happy Mardi Gras, Everyone :)
Mardi Gras Graphics
HAPPY Fat Tuesday, rikyrah $ Evrybody!!!
Mardi Gras Graphics
LOL! Let’s get some party music up in here!
ZYDECO
Alright now!!!!!!!!!!
Hat tip JJP via Only Adult in the room PBO’s reminder about giving the Republicans the keys back.
Just a reminder about that November 2, 2010 vote from SPECILA ED
Hope you’re happy, Ed!
Ed has been relegated to the 10 pm slot on MSNBC. That must be his reward for his rants and calls for folks NOT TO VOTE, eh?
Now his ass wants to be front and center with the unions & how he stands w/ them. He should have kept his big mouth shut about advising Democrats to stay home in order to get back at the President. Dumb ass clown!
Isn’t he SPE-SHUL!
Some of his followers want to remain willfully ignorant about what dumb ass Ed did. Ugh!
Truthfully if someone posts a video of Ed yelling don’t vote, that means he told folks not to vote. I don’t give a rat’s ass why or why not vote.
He told them NOT TO VOTE. And good for ED being front and center with the Unions in WI.
He’s putting his fat ass where he can effect real changes. Instead of using his mouth, and issuing ultimatums.I wasn’t in the voting booth with Special Ed last November, but from all his rantings, I highly doubt that he voted Dem. The POTUS wasn’t on the ballot,so as far as him getting back at him, remains to be seen.
Ed is setting himself up to be a hero, after he told his viewers not to vote. Way to go Ed!!! Your just SPECIAL!!!
Dannie, you’re all over it. I said from the beginning Ed was trying to be a hero after he helped drive Wisconsin voters in the damn ditch by advising them not to vote!
Big loud mouth ass clown!
Maybe Ed should run for POTUS, ya know PRIMARY OBAMA. If it makes him feel better about himself to get out amongst the little people, I say go for it. It’s way better than him sitting in a studio with his big fat behind in a chair ranting about what POTUS had better do!
Who the fk tells their own party not to vote? Now that is some asinine bullshit!
Wasn’t Ed a republican once or am I mistaken?
OWN reboots
Oprah tries ending slump with fresh reality TV
By MICHAEL SHAIN
Last Updated: 12:58 AM, March 8, 2011
Oprah’s new cable network — which has not been able to get much traction since its blockbuster opening week — is getting the “reboot.”
Network officials have quietly been telling worried advertisers that OWN, Oprah’s new channel, will begin reshuffling its lineup in the next weeks and investing millions in advertising to win back faithful viewers.
The network’s only bona fide hit — “Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes” — is about to become the “anchor show” for the fledgling network, according to media execs who have heard the new pitch.
“We’re doing a lot of changes to the schedule,” a spokesman for OWN confirmed yesterday.
The “reboot” — the term OWN is using with potential advertisers — will start later this month when “Behind the Scenes” is shifted to Sunday night.
The Oprah channel spent more than $10 million in advertising to get OWN started. The new ad push — most of it spent on other cable networks like TNT and TBS — will be about half that, according to reports.
“Ever since the launch, they’ve been kind of dark,” said one media exec close to OWN. “The intention is to get back out there and let people know.” Moving “Behind the Scenes” — which chronicles the final season of Winfrey’s daytime talk show — from Friday to Sunday night is the first step.
Sunday is the biggest TV-watching night of the week. Bigger numbers for Oprah’s show — the only one on OWN she appears on right now — will raise the network’s weak, weekly ratings average — and perhaps end the flood of bad publicity about its rating woes.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/own_reboots_ojy5v10EYfr00kSnrB9LLJ#ixzz1G124KuS4
Maybe if O had some actual shows, instead of retreads, the ratings wouldn’t be so low. Hopefully she’ll get it together.
Oh and maybe one ninja could have a show. Just one?
BWA HA HA @ ninja. Honestly, I haven’t watched OWN yet. I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading and DVD collection. I’m reading “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabelle Wilkerson. it’s about the great BLACK migration from the south.
I’m reading a biography of Lena Horne. Fascinating woman.
Cool. Lena’s life was amazingly well lived, despite the racial barriers.
Josephine Baker is another story that you might enjoy reading too.
I’ve read many biographies of Josephine Baker. She had an interesting life.
Opposition: Gadhafi working on deal to step downBy the CNN Wire StaffMarch 8, 2011 8:31 a.m. EST
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Moammar Gadhafi is trying to strike a deal with opposition leaders, saying he will step down as Libya’s leader if they can guarantee him safe passage out of the country and promise that neither he nor his family will face prosecution, an official with the opposition said Tuesday.
Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, vehemently disputed the claim saying reports of negotiations with the opposition are “lies.”
Despite government denials, a member of the opposition says it has submitted counter-offers with several demands. Among them is a stipulation that Gadhafi has to immediately concede he is not the ruler of Libya, said Amal Bugaigis, a member of the opposition group called the February 17 Coalition.
The development comes as Libya enters its fourth week of bloody clashes Tuesday and there was little doubt that the situation had turned into all-out civil war.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/08/libya.civil.war/index.html?hpt=T2&om_rid=DRaeQf&om_mid=_BNdinDB8ZhXVa4
Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Islamic radicalization: Fuel for the bigots
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Unlike Moses Herzog, the eponymous character of the Saul Bellow novel “Herzog,” I do not feverishly compose mad letters to public figures and sinister government agencies (the IRS, for instance). But I often yell back at the TV set. This happened Sunday when CNN’s Candy Crowley asked Rep. Peter King what his hearings into Muslim radicalism are really about. “Good luck, Candy,” I yelled, having asked the same question of King’s staff just the day before. Here, I am sure, is the answer: The hearings are about Pete King.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/07/AR2011030703896.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Stoking irrational fears about Islam
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is about to convene hearings whose premise offends our nation’s founding ideals and whose targets are law-abiding members of a religious minority. King has decided to investigate Islam.
A Republican from Long Island in his 10th term, King seems untroubled that the freedoms of religion and association are guaranteed by the Constitution. His public exercise in Islamophobia, scheduled to begin Thursday, can do no good – and much harm.
The legitimate-sounding goal of this exercise, King explained Sunday on CNN, is to investigate “self-radicalization going on within the Muslim community” and the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism. Who doesn’t want to uncover al-Qaeda sleeper cells? Who doesn’t want to do everything that is possible – and legal – to prevent terrorist attacks?
But King further alleges that Muslim Americans have failed to demonstrate “sufficient cooperation” with law enforcement in uncovering potential terrorist plots. With this libel, King casts doubt on the loyalties of millions of Americans solely because of their faith. This is religious persecution – and it’s un-American and wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/07/AR2011030703197.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Good morning all !!
Good Morning, Dannie & Everybody! :-)
Morning Graphics
Join me: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ax87_piQCOo/TVcBIqiusiI/AAAAAAAAAV4/eK6qYTvgipY/s320/cup-of-coffee.jpg
delicious! …mmm mmm good!