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Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/23/buried-provision-food-stamps/
All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking middle class Americans to pay for budget deficits caused mainly by a recession caused by Wall Street; they are attacking workers’ collective bargaining rights, which has provoked a huge Main Street Movement to fight back.
Now, a group of House Republicans is launching a new stealth attack against union workers. GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to “provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”
Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:
These EVIL MOFOs are at it again
Westboro Baptist Church Plans to Protest Elizabeth Taylor’s Funeral
Friends and family of Elizabeth Taylor may get unexpected visitors at her funeral — picketers from the Westboro Baptist Church.
Margie Phelps, daughter of the hate group’s leader Fred Phelps, tweeted Wednesday that they would picket Taylor’s funeral, most likely because of Taylor’s gay friends and humanitarian work against AIDS. Phelps also tweeted several attacks on Taylor, including “RIP Elizabeth Taylor is in hell as sure as you’re reading this & getting mad as a wet hen. She should’ve obeyed God. Too late!”
Taylor was a prominent AIDS activist, starting the American Foundation for AIDS Research after the 1985 death of Rock Hudson. In 25 years, the foundation raised over $100 million. (via TMZ)
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/23/westboro-baptist-ch… /
Juan Williams: ‘I Get Nervous Walking Past Young Black Men’
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/juan_williams_i_get_nervous_walking_past_young_black_men.html
Juan Williams, the former NPR employee who was fired for saying Muslims on planes make him nervous, is at it again. This time he’s admitted that young black men make him nervous, too.
“Let me just tell you, with the amount of black on black crime in America, I get nervous and I’m a black man,” said Williams, who was guest hosting “The O’Reilly Factor.” He was debating with guest Caroline Helmand, a political science professor at Occidental College, about using federal funds for NPR.
The House voted on March 17 to bar NPR from receiving federal funding. NPR does not receive any direct funding from the federal government, but rather competes for grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies; those grants accounts for roughly 2 percent of NPR’s funding, according to the network. Member stations, however, rely more heavily on Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants.
The discussion about funding NPR at one point moved to Williams’ dismissal and then the coversation really got heated. Helmand compared his statement about Muslims to someone like herself, a white woman, saying she clutches her purse every time she walks by a black man. That set Williams off.
“If you saw a couple of young guys walking around looking like thugs out in the street late at night, you’re saying you’re not going to think it through?” Willliams asked Helmand.
Then they just went at it.
Helmand: “There we go again, Juan. I would find that to be racial profiling, that’s a bigoted comment.”
Williams: “That’s a bigoted comment?”
Helmand: “Yes it is. Just like your comment about Muslims.”
Williams: “I’m the father of black young men and I’m saying that if you saw a couple guys walking around looking like thugs down the street late at night, you’re saying, ‘Oh, I’m not going to think it through.’ Caroline, I think you are way off base.”
Read more at Business Insider. On Monday, Williams published an op-ed in The Hill calling for the feds to defund NPR. Adam Serwer probably tweeted it best: Is there anyone Juan Williams isn’t scared of?
WTFF is wrong with Juan Williams? If this isn’t a stepinfetchit negro? I’ll just be damned! Juan need his ass kicked to the moon.
THIS: http://www.postersultan.com/posters/buckwheat_otay_littlerascals.jpg
JUAN WILLIAMS – ’cause NEGROES like him, LOVES being on de PLANTATION!
Ummm Karma for Regan’s debacle with the Air traffic controllers back in the early 90s
Breaking News Alert: Tower at Reagan National went silent as planes tried to land
March 23, 2011 6:19:15 PM
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The control tower at Reagan National Airport went silent early Wednesday, forcing two airliners carrying a total of 165 passengers and crew to land on their own.
The tower did not respond to pilot requests for landing assistance or to phone calls from controllers elsewhere in the region, who also used a “shout line” which pipes into a loudspeaker in the tower, internal records show.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, agency spokeswoman Laura J. Brown said in a statement.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/F490YD/5C71P5/HQS013/9P9UJZ/ETVNQ/JY/h
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama wave prior to boarding Air Force prior to departing San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 23, 2011.
US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha (2nd L) and Malia, walk to Air Force One in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 23, 2011. The Obamas are returning to Washington following a 5-day, 3-country trip that took the First Family to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.
The First Family looks relaxed. Glad they got to spend some time together.
3/23/2011
A Tale for the One-Year Anniversary of the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Affordable Care Act:
So Dallas Wiens was working when it happened in 2008. He was standing in a cherry picker, painting a Fort Worth church. That detail seems kind of important, considering. His head hit a high-voltage power line, and it pretty much incinerated his entire face off. A series of miraculous operations got Wiens to a point where he had skin on his face, but no nose or lips. He went blind in one eye, and a skin graft covered the other eye. He pretty quickly started seeking out how to go about getting a face transplant just so, as he says, he could smile and feel his now 4 year-old daughter’s touch on his face. Also, so he doesn’t look so godawfully disfigured (let’s be brutally honest here).
Now here’s where we veer into the lesson: Medicaid paid for his hospital care and other expenses until his disability payments got too high for him to qualify. His parents set up a fund to take contributions for the incredibly expensive operation and recovery (not to mention the six months of being in Boston for treatment). But in two years, the guy who had his face burned off while painting a church did not collect enough money for the operation from people who might, you know, follow the teachings of one church or another (or, truly, from any of us).
And that might be the end of the story, except for one thing. See, the president when Wiens got injured was George W. Bush, and George W. Bush couldn’t have given a jolly rat fuck about anyone’s medical care unless it involved bizarre pharmaceutical donuts. However, Barack Obama became president, and that situation changed.
Now, you can say what you want about the Affordable Care Act on its one-year anniversary, which happens to be today, and virtually all of your criticism from the left would be correct. It is a massive giveaway to private insurance companies. It doesn’t do enough to rein in costs. It doesn’t guarantee 100% of Americans will be covered. And on and on, in so very many ways a massive disappointment (and not, as the nutzoid conservatives would have you believe, a government takeover of anything or a violation of the Constitution).
But here’s the deal: Dallas Wiens got a face transplant because of it, not because good, conservative, church-going folk stepped up and had cookie sales, not because the myriad organizations that have “family” in their name gave a goddamn. No, Wiens received the first full face transplant in U.S. history because of the government. The operation itself was paid for by a grant from the Defense Department, which is looking for ways to help soldiers who get horrible scars from combat. And the $1300-$2000 a month in drugs that he will need to take for the rest of his life to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant will be paid for by his father’s insurance. That’s because Wiens is 25. And that inhuman law mockingly called “Obamacare” raised the age that a child can stay on a parent’s insurance to 26. Wiens will turn 26 in May. In June, again, because of changes in the law, he will qualify for Medicare as a disabled person.
Yeah, the left should be trying to improve the act, constantly, until we actually get universal health care (or “single payer,” if you want). And, of course, the douchebag right, led by d-bag kings John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, will continue their Neanderthal drumbeat of repeal because, really, they have nothing else to talk about except how to harm and repress people (how’s that jobs bill coming, eh, motherfuckers?).
But at the end of the day, there’s a fuck of a lot of people, in cases not nearly as extreme as Dallas Wiens, who have been helped. It’s at least a baby step on the road to a compassionate, sane future. Would that we take more instead of veering off the path as quickly as possible.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Round 2
Watchdog groups pressure ethics panel to move forward with Waters probe
By Jordy Yager – 03/23/11 01:01 PM ET
Public interest groups on Wednesday asked that the House Ethics Committee resume the ethics investigation of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).
The coalition said that the extended delays in the Waters case are “unfair to all parties involved” and call into question whether the panel is effectively doing its job.
These delays, followed by uncertainty whether any action is forthcoming, are unfair to all parties involved in the case and reflect poorly on the ability of the House Committee on Ethics to fulfill its mission,” the groups wrote in a letter sent on Wednesday.
The groups called on the Ethics Committee heads, Chairman Jo Bonner (Ala.) and ranking Democrat Linda Sanchez (Calif.), to publicly announce their plan for moving forward with the case.
The Waters investigation has been dormant for more than three months, and the lawyers have remained on official leave.
The committee — formerly known as the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct — was looking into allegations that Waters helped secure federal funding for a bank in which her husband owned stock.
Waters has maintained her innocence and pointed to the committee’s suspension of her case last year as evidence that the case had no merit.
Neither Bonner nor Sanchez have indicated which direction the committee plans to move with the case.
Shortly after the case was halted, two of the committee’s lawyers — Morgan Kim, the former deputy chief counsel and director of investigations and enforcement, and Stacy Sovereign — were placed on administrative leave. Charges surfaced that they improperly handled the probe into Waters’s case.
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) hired Kim earlier this month for the newly established Office of Oversight and Investigations.
The public interest groups signing the letter included the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and Public Citizen.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/151499-watchdogs-tell-ethics-panel-waters-case-must-be-dealt-with
Harvey Weinstein: Elizabeth Taylor Was AIDS’ Greatest Fighter
by Harvey Weinstein Info
Elizabeth Taylor was more than a Hollywood legend—she was one of the earliest champions against the AIDS epidemic. Film producer Harvey Weinstein remembers her tireless passion for the cause.
Elizabeth Taylor is known around the world as an Academy Award-winning actress and screen legend, but I am privileged to have known her in one of her most incredible roles: as a fierce advocate in the fight against AIDS. This was a role she played for 25 years and she brought to it every ounce of her considerable passion, intelligence, and will. She selflessly let her star power be used for the cause. She was a cheerleader, a globetrotter and an advocate.
I first met her when she and Dr. Mathilde Krim formed Cinema Against AIDS, the amfAR charity event held every year in Cannes. Being in the movie industry, I always attend the Cannes Film Festival, and when they asked me to join them on their crusade, I heartily agreed. Elizabeth and Dr. Krim first came up with the idea that the movie community, the fashion industry and the wealthy could all be brought together to have a party and an auction, raising money to fight AIDS. It started in a small restaurant, Moulin de Mougins, whose proprietor was a fan of Elizabeth’s. We gathered a couple hundred people together, and Elizabeth got up to talk to everyone about the disease and its effects. Dr. Krim was the medical expert who spoke eloquently about how everyone could stem the tide and halt the progress of the epidemic.
Elizabeth came every year that she could, and used her own money for both expenses and donations. She was the event’s quarterback and chief fundraiser. I did my best to cajole as many movie stars as I could. Carine Roitfeld brought the models, and the fancy designers of the couture houses. Champagne would flow and a bidding war would break out over the funniest and most magical things. Someone paid $30,000 for Paul Sorvino to sing an aria. Another person paid $50,000 for Johnny Depp and Sean Penn to look into each other’s eyes and whisper sweet nothings to each other. A kiss on the cheek from a movie star would easily raise $50,000. Years later George Clooney would set the record when two women paid $350,000 each for a kiss on the cheek from him. I tried to keep him there all night but he had another engagement. Naomi Campbell did a striptease in a closet for $20,000. Dr. Krim, Elizabeth and my team just made it all up as we went along. And we all saw this event grow from a night of raising a couple hundred thousand to finally on one night, where an amazing collection of billionaires, movie stars, models and designers ended up raising $10 million in a single evening.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-23/elizabeth-taylors-aids-crusade-harvey-weinstein-remembers?om_rid=DRaeQf&om_mid=_BNiktsB8Z1ng-y
Allies Pressuring Qaddafi Forces Around Rebel Cities
By MARK LANDLER, STEVEN ERLANGER and ALAN COWELL
Published: March 23, 2011
WASHINGTON — Having all but destroyed the Libyan air force and air defenses, the allies turned their firepower Wednesday on the military units loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi that are besieging rebel-held cities.
“We are interdicting and putting pressure on Qaddafi’s forces that are attacking population centers,” said Rear Adm. Gerard Hueber, the chief of staff for the operational command, speaking by audio link to reporters at the Pentagon. The targets included armor, artillery and missile launchers, he said.
Loyalist forces have surrounded two rebel-held cities in the west, Zintan and Misurata, and the strategic eastern city of Ajdabiya, and cut off telecommunications, electricity and water. They typically send soldiers backed by tanks and missile launchers into the cities by day and withdraw at night, while posting snipers on the rooftops.
News reports from Misurata on Wednesday said allied airstrikes had forced Colonel Qaddafi’s armor and artillery to pull back but snipers continued to spread fear among civilians. A doctor at the central Misurata hospital said that 13 residents had died on Tuesday, bringing the total casualty count to 90 over the previous nine days.
In Ajdabiya, which has changed hands several times, residents said relentless shelling by loyalist troops had forced them to flee.
One report called the city a “ghost town.”
“It’s an extremely complex and difficult environment,” Admiral Hueber acknowledged. “Our primary focus is to interdict those forces before the enter the city, cut of their lines of communication and cut off their command and control.” In military terms, “lines of communication” include supply lines.
As long as the regime’s forces are fighting in and around cities where the allies have ordered them to back off, he said, coalition attacks would continue. He said the allies are in communication with the Libyan units about what they need to do, where to go and how to arrange their forces to avoid attack, but that there was “no indication” that the regime’s ground forces were following the instructions.
A senior British commander said Wednesday that the allies had effectively destroyed the Libyan air force and air defenses and were now able to operate “with near impunity” across the country, Reuters reported. “We are now applying sustained and unrelenting pressure on the Libyan armed forces,” the commander, Air Vice Marshal Greg Bagwell, said at an airbase in southern Italy where British warplanes are based.
At sea, news reports said six NATO warships had started patrolling off Libya’s coast Wednesday to enforce a United Nations arms embargo, but Germany, which has opposed military intervention in the Libya crisis, said it was withdrawing four of its ships in the Mediterranean from NATO command. To offset the impact of its action on other NATO allies, Germany said it would send 300 more troops to Afghanistan to help operate surveillance aircraft, German officials said.
Colonel Qaddafi himself made a brief but defiant appearance on Libyan television on Tuesday night, appearing at what reporters were told was his Tripoli residence to denounce the bombing raids and pledge victory. “I am here!” he shouted from a balcony to supporters waving green flags. “I am here! I am here!” It was his first known public appearance since the allied bombing began on Saturday.
“We will not surrender,” he told supporters. “We will defeat them by any means. We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one. We will be victorious in the end,” he said. “This assault is by a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.” The speech was followed by fireworks in the Libyan capital as crowds cheered and supporters fired guns into the air.
Colonel Qaddafi spoke after at least three bomb blasts were heard in Tripoli Tuesday evening as tracers from Libyan antiaircraft guns arced across the sky. On Wednesday, a loud blast and a barrage of antiaircraft fire boomed across the capital at around 5 a.m., but the location of the apparent airstrike was not clear.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, during an official visit to Cairo, said Wednesday that while the American-led coalition was not specifically seeking to attack Mr. Qaddafi, the Libyan leader nonetheless might be ousted from power by his own inner circle or family.
“I think there are any number of possible outcomes here, and no one is in a position to predict them,” Mr. Gates said. “Whether there are further major defections within his own ruling circle; whether there are divisions within his family — there are a variety of possibilities, it seems to me.”
Read on
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/africa/24libya.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1300884853-QuBCTcJ8qu1ymlO8L++Kvg&om_rid=DRaeQf&om_mid=_BNiktsB8Z1ng-y
This might explain why the crackers are downplaying the role of the PRESIDENCY
Posted at 01:44 PM ET, 03/23/2011
2012: Obama runs ahead in generic Pew poll
By Peyton M. Craighill
President Barack Obama runs ahead of an unnamed Republican opponent by 47 to 37 percent among registered voters in a new poll from the Pew Research Center. The poll also finds former governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee as the most likely candidates to fill that Republican slot.
Before rolling out the data too far, a few caveats. The election is more than a year and a half away. And without a named opponent in a horserace question, the true electoral choice is obscured — hence a large 16 percent report being undecided.
But some clues emerge. Obama’s advantage is similar to former president George W. Bush’s and better than former president Bill Clinton’s at comparable times in their presidency. In April 2003, Bush ran ahead of a generic Democrat by 48 to 35 percent. In March 1995 Clinton was in a more tenuous position at 29 percent to 33 percent for a generic Republican, with 20 percent preferring an independent candidate.
GENERAL ELECTION: Parsing the presidential choice finds Obama in good shape in many of the key groups he won in 2008. But he does look comparatively weaker among young voters. In the 2008 election, McCain won 32 percent of voters under age 30. That compares closely with the 34 percent of young voters who pick a generic Republican now. But there has been slippage for Obama in this group, going from 66 percent support in the 2008 exit polls to 53 percent in this poll among young voters.
Among independent voters, perhaps the most closely watched swing group, the race is relatively narrow at 40 for Obama to 34 percent for a generic Republican. More than a quarter of independents, 26 percent, are undecided. The six-point margin for Obama among independents is similar to his performance against John McCain in the 2008 election, in which he won independents by 52 to 44 percent, according to exit polls.
In April 2003 independents went 40 to 34 percent for Bush over a generic Democrat, exactly matching the vote choice for Obama now. But in 1995, independents split 23 to 16 percent for Clinton and a generic Republican with a 37 percent plurality preferring an unnamed independent candidate.
GOP PRIMARY: As we’ve seen in other polls, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee rise to top of a crowded Republican primary field winning 21 and 20 percent of the vote among Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and former House speaker Newt Gingrich comprise the second tier at 13 and 11 percent support, followed by a host of other candidates in the single digits.
Romney and Huckabee’s bases of support are distinct in a few areas. Romney appeals more clearly to upper income and older Republicans while Huckabee appeals to white evangelical Protestants and Republicans who attend church at least weekly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/2012-the-general-election-and-gop-primaries/2011/03/23/ABNlnfJB_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
GOP Presidential Hopeful Claims Divine Support
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/03/23/gop-presidential-hopeful-claims-divine-support/
Politico reports today, that presidential hopeful Herman Cain recently suggested in an interview that his presidential campaign is not only in the hands of god, but is the work of god. He is quoted as saying
“I know God kept me here to do something that I never envisioned,” Cain, who is also an associate pastor at an Atlanta Baptist Church, told CBN’s David Brody.
Cain added, “I firmly believe that God kept me for a reason much bigger than I ever would have dreamed or imagined. Whether that is ultimately to become the President of the United States or not I don’t know. I just know at this point I am following God’s plan.”
As you can see, Cain says he doesn’t know if he is meant to run for president, but also says God wants him here for “bigger” things. Leaving this writer weary of the what will be credited, and blamed, on god in the next 18 month-long campaign as we learn more about the GOP’s very vocal, but hardly unveiled candidates. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think god is telling me to make some coffee…
“Now, if youll excuse me, I think god is telling me to make some coffee”
_______________________FLATLINES—————————————
Herman Cain looks like one of those GREEDY church deacons from back in the day.
***dead too***
Excuse me, de white folks is asking for dey coffee.
Fixed it
HA HA HA HA HA
***hollaring***
http://www.postersultan.com/posters/buckwheat_otay_littlerascals.jpg
No Andrew Brain-fart, THERE IS TREMENDOUS POWER in being POTUS, even more so with a BLACK PRESIDENT. Now it’s irrelevant, because white folks aren’t president huh.
And this fact could not be more EVIDENT in you, Ann Coultergiest, and the rest of the crackers trying to DIMINISH the OFFICE of the President of the United States of AMERICA, now that the black man’s president occupying the White House.
some more BWA HA HA HA HA HA AH AHHHA HA for you:
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Quote For The Day II
23 Mar 2011 02:02 pm
“I think the presidency is beneath her. There’s more power in being Oprah Winfrey than in being Barack Obama. It would be my goal for Palin to become Oprah and be the ultimate kingmaker for twenty-odd years,” – Andrew Breitbart.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/
LOL BLACK Oprah’s not as threatning to the crackers as Black Barack, mighty beholder of the big, black, d….K!
***screams***
Somebody come get this woman….
I know, right. Their whiteness is on display. But wait, when was ever not on display.. LMAO
Reality TV: Where’s the Black Love?
Disgruntled women and absent men dominate popular reality shows that focus on black people and love. They’re just TV shows, but what statement do they make about our reality?
By: Patrice J. Williams | Posted: March 21, 2011 at 12:46 AM
Last week marked the end of Season 2 of VH1’s catty Basketball Wives, and just when we thought the foolishness was over, the network debuted Love and Hip Hop, a “docu-soap” series on women who are connected to hip-hop, through either their men or their careers. The presence of the words “love” and “wives” in the titles of these shows is misleading — the programs are almost totally devoid of both.
It’s no secret that in recent years, VH1 reality shows have started to skew more toward attracting (exploiting?) the black viewer. From women with nicknames such as Deelishis, Bunz and Thing competing for five minutes of fame on Flavor of Love to the mile-long list of high expectations of former TLC member Chili on What Chili Wants, black love and relationships are front and center on the network.
With all of the doom-and-gloom media coverage of black women and marriage statistics in recent years, do shows like this reinforce stereotypes of commitment-phobic black men and desperate black women who settle for unfulfilling relationships?
On this past season of Basketball Wives, only one featured married cast member, Jennifer Williams, was actually married. And surprise, surprise — much of her storyline revolved around the dissolution of her dysfunctional union. By the time the end-of-season cast reunion rolled around, Williams announced that she had plans to finally divorce her estranged husband, former ball player Eric Williams.
As for the other women, they’re former girlfriends, one-time fiancées and ex-wives. Besides Williams, they all have one thing in common: They had children with their ballers. Is this really enough to warrant “wife” status?
Just as Basketball “Wives” was ending, Love and Hip Hop kept the train rolling. It’s only one episode in, and we’ve been given a window into the relationships of Chrissy, the girlfriend of rapper Jim Jones; and Emily, rapper Fabolous’ longtime love. Both women have been with their lyricists for several years. Despite the fact that their men aren’t interested in marriage, the cast mates stress over when they’ll get a ring.
Chrissy makes it clear that she wants to get married and have children with Jones. Describing her role on the show, VH1.com states, “Her time is running out. She’ll be the Bonnie to another Clyde if it’s not going to be Jim. Jim better wake up soon because Chrissy will get hers one way or another.”
The most troubling relationship is that of Emily and Fabolous. They have been together for eight years, live together and have a son, but she says he never “claims” her to the outside world. “He’s a rapper. There’s women, there’s this, there’s that, but he’ll never leave me,” Emily confidently proclaims. “I’m his family; I know that … He’ll say, ‘I’m single as a dollar bill.’ ”
Excuse me? If your man isn’t willing to admit that he’s with you or that you even exist, he may not be your man. The one-sided relationship is painful to watch. After a tear-filled lunch with Mashonda (ex-wife of Swizz Beatz, who caused a minor scandal when he left her for Alicia Keys), during which Emily debated whether she should stay or go, she drove off in a Bentley, presumably purchased by the beau who won’t even acknowledge her role in his life.
Reality shows aren’t an overall representation of any race or sex, but it’s questionable, interesting and baffling that all of the characters seem to fit the same mold. Black women are continually seen as the ride-or-die, hold-your-man-down-no-matter-what chicks. Loyalty is certainly needed in all relationships, but when it’s unbalanced or comes at the cost of happiness, that’s a no-go.
Maybe healthy relationships don’t make good TV. We all know that catfights and conflicts equal good ratings, but can we at least see a little love? Just one happy, stable, real-life couple? They don’t have to be married, since that’s not the goal for everyone, but what about a union in which both people actually want to be with each other?
If VH1 producers can find gaggles of women ready to publicly battle for Flavor Flav, of all people, they can surely find a happy black couple who are ready for prime time.
http://www.theroot.com/views/reality-tv-wheres-black-love
C’mon, rikyrah. When it comes to true love for black couples on tee vee, WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
It’s skinnin’ grinnin’ thugging and whoring. We know that BLACK LOVE intimidates YT
Boris Kodjoe Cast in Television Pilot
By: Nsenga Burton | Posted: March 22, 2011
BV Newswire is reporting that Boris Kodjoe may get another crack at network television. Kodjoe has been cast in the ABC pilot “Georgetown,” as a “fiercely intelligent senior adviser.” The hour-long project, written by Will Fetters, is described as a sexy soap centered around the young people behind the power brokers of Washington, D.C. It centers on Andrew Pierce (played by Jimmy Wolk), an effortlessly charming and brilliant Yale graduate and the youngest presidential speech writer on record who was once idealistic but is now cynical as he sees how compromise has eroded the administration’s promise. Kodjoe’s last TV series, the J.J. Abrams NBC spy drama ‘Undercovers,’ which paired him with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, was canceled in 2010 after low ratings.
‘Soul Food,’ ‘Undercovers’ and now possibly ‘Georgetown.’ Hopefully, the third time is the charm. If not, it may be a wrap for Kodjoe’s network television career.
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/boris-kodjoe-cast-television-pilot
Yeah! I’ll be watching for Mr. Kodjoe.
Ummm the plot of this series and characters sounds awful familiar…
Jonathan “Jon” Favreau (born June 2, 1981) is Director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama.[1] Favreau attended the College of the Holy Cross, graduating as valedictorian. In college, he accumulated a variety of scholastic honors, and took part in and directed numerous community and civic programs. After graduation, he went to work for the John Kerry Presidential campaign in 2004, working to collect talk radio news for the campaign, and eventually was promoted to the role of Deputy Speechwriter. While working for the Kerry campaign, he first met Barack Obama.
In 2005, Robert Gibbs recommended Favreau to Obama as an excellent speechwriter. Favreau was hired as Obama’s speechwriter shortly after Obama’s election to the United States Senate. Obama and Favreau grew close, and Obama has referred to him as his “mind reader.” He went on the campaign trail with Obama during his successful Presidential election campaign. In 2009, he was named as a White House staff member,[2] as Director of Speechwriting, becoming the second youngest person ever to take that post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau_(speechwriter)
Racism’s Ugly Face in Wisconsin
http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2011/03/23/racisms-ugly-face-in-wisconsin/
Courthouse News Service
– Housing developers say the mayor of New Berlin buckled to racist pressure and shut down an affordable housing project. To “save his political career,” the builders say, the mayor, who is not racist himself, truckled to community fears that affordable housing would draw minorities to the city, which is 93.3 percent white.
MSP Real Estate and Deer Creek Homes sued the City of New Berlin and Mayor Jack Chiovatero in a Fair Housing Act complaint in Federal Court.
Chiovatero initially supported the project, the Minnesota-based developers say, but was worn down after being called a “nigger lover.”
“Mayor Chiovatero was fully aware that opposition from members of the public to MSP’s development had a very substantial racial component and was, accordingly, unlawful,” the complaint states. “He was berated and vilified both publicly and privately for having supported the development. The racial underpinnings of much of the opposition was indicated by, among other things, a sign left facing his home, calling the mayor a ‘nigger lover.’ Opponents of the development, knowing that Mayor Chiovatero had been adopted as a child, even took the step of sending someone to check public records to see if he had any ‘African-American blood.’”
THIS: “To �save his political career,� the builders say, the mayor, who is not racist himself, truckled to community fears that affordable housing would draw minorities to the city, which is 93.3 percent white.”
EQUALS= RACISM
This is a racist ass country!
RACISM
Opponents of the development, knowing that Mayor Chiovatero had been adopted as a child, even took the step of sending someone to check public records to see if he had any ‘African-American blood.’”
now THAT is some RACIST ASS SHYT.
As J.Anthony Brown would say….
Damn, White People….DAMN……….
Ya know if there was a LAW to check the DNA of these crackers, we’d surely find that one drop rule would apply to the majority of them. Let them keep up the clowning. The truth will come bubbling forth that they got that BLACK BLOOD TOO!
LOL That should make them real proud. Because we know BLACK is anything but WHACK.
As J.Anthony Brown would say….
Damn, White People….DAMN……….
For real!
IBM In All-Out War With Mitch Daniels Over Indiana Legal Dispute
The toughest rhetoric against potential presidential candidate Mitch Daniels so far isn’t coming from his rivals. Computer giant IBM is launching a scathing attack on the Indiana governor over a pair of high-stakes lawsuits concerning a contract with the state that he cut short in 2009.
Daniels canceled a 10-year $1.37 billion contract with IBM to update the state’s social services system three years in after numerous complaints and critical articles about its effectiveness. Indiana then sued IBM to recover over $400 million it had already paid.
IBM responded with its own suit demanding the state pay about $100 million for equipment already provided to Indiana. Now the company is demanding Daniels and his chief of staff give sworn depositions in the case and claiming that Daniels is betraying his campaign promises about transparency in government by refusing to comply.
“It’s been hypocrisy from the beginning,” IBM spokesman Clint Roswell told TPM.
Roswell added that Daniels’ “refusal to be deposed and his attempt to hide public documents casts doubt on his credibility” and that he “expects transparency and openness from everybody but himself.”
According to Roswell, IBM is concerned that Daniels will push the legal fight into 2012 and if he’s running for President then it will be even harder to secure his testimony.
IBM claims that Daniels’ testimony is necessary because he was the central figure behind signing and then terminating the contract, citing press conferences he delivered announcing both events. A lawyer defending the state, Peter Rusthoven, told TPM that Indiana statutes and federal law shield the governor and key staff from testifying in most suits and that the Daniels and his chief of staff have no unique knowledge that makes their deposition necessary.
“People make these efforts a lot, they just don’t go anywhere,” he said. “If we start letting people subpoena the governor for testimony he’ll end up spending his life testifying anytime anyone sues the state.”
Daniels’ political opponents within the state are all too happy in the meantime to follow IBM’s lead to criticize his handling of the failed contract.
“Mitch Daniels has no right — absolutely no right — to hide behind immunity when he came up with the privatization idea, awarded the contract to his buddies and then watched them drive the bus off a cliff at a tremendous cost to our neediest citizens,” Indiana Democratic Party Chair Dan Parker said in a statement this week. “The court needs to understand that there’s a huge difference between a Governor being dragged into every lawsuit and a Governor single-handedly creating the basis for the lawsuit through his reckless actions.”
A spokeswoman for Daniels’ office declined to comment for this article.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/ibm-in-all-out-war-with-mitch-daniels-over-indiana-legal-dispute.php
WUH, Big BIzzness at WAR with a RE-THUG?!
Even the anti-union Stanley Fish
by Comrade DougJ
I dislike Stanley Fish’s blogging. For the most part, he comes across as a ridiculous Liebercrat blowhard, a more pedantic, less offensive version of Marty Peretz. But I’m genuinely impressed with what he wrote about Wisconsin, because not many people are willing to admit that they are embarrassed by their earlier beliefs:
In over 35 years of friendship and conversation, Walter Michaels and I have disagreed on only two things, and one of them was faculty and graduate student unionization. He has always been for and I had always been against. I say “had” because I recently flipped and what flipped me, pure and simple, was Wisconsin.
When I think about the reasons (too honorific a word) for my previous posture I become embarrassed. They are by and large the reasons rehearsed and apparently approved by Naomi Schaefer Riley in her recent op-ed piece “Why unions hurt higher education” (USA Today). The big reason was the feeling — hardly thought through sufficiently to be called a conviction — that someone with an advanced degree and scholarly publications should not be in the same category as factory workers with lunch boxes and hard hats. As Riley points out, even the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) used to be opposed to unionization because of “the commonly held belief that universities were not corporations and faculty were not employees.”
[….]
If “universities are not corporations” ever was a good argument, it isn’t anymore because universities, always corporations in financial fact, become increasingly corporate in spirit every day; and if I and my colleagues are not employees, from whom do we receive salaries, promotions, equipment, offices, etc., and to whom are we responsible in the carrying out of our duties?
I have always been a supporter of unions in education, but Wisconsin had a similar effect on me. I went from being a passive supporter of these unions to being an active supporter. I’ve come to believe that if you’re in education, you should be aware that someday the conservatives will come for you. The only way you can hope to fight is by being part of something organized.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/03/22/even-the-anti-union-stanley-fish/
“I’ve come to believe that if you’re in education, you should be aware that someday the conservatives will come for you.”
I wonder how may teachers who voted a straight GOP ticket last November KNEW this before they voted for these thugs.
Arizona Passes Anti-Abortion Bill To Send Doctors, Clinicians To Jail For Abortions Based On Race Or Gender
In the race to secure the most destructive state anti-abortion law, Arizona may leap ahead of South Dakota by seeking to tackle a problem that doesn’t exist. In a 41-18 vote last month, the House passed a bill to prohibit abortions sought because of the race or sex of the fetus or the race of the parent. Seeking to prevent “race- or sex-based discrimination against the unborn,” the bill would allow lawsuits and civil fines against “abortion providers who knowingly provide such abortions.”
On Monday, the Arizona Senate passed bill on a 21-5 vote. But unsatisfied with civil fines, the Senate upped the ante by “adding provisions which could send doctors and others involved in these acts to prison.” Now, the bill, which is headed to Gov. Jan Brewer (R), will ensure that any doctor or employees of clinics like Planned Parenthood that terminates a pregnancy based on race or gender would face 3.5 years in jail:
HB 2443 does more than make criminals out of doctors who terminate a pregnancy knowing the woman’s reason is to select the race or gender of the child. It also imposes criminal penalties on anyone who solicits or accepts funds to finance abortions based on race or sex.
Violators would face a presumptive prison term of 3.5 years.
That latter provision is aimed at Planned Parenthood. Proponents of the measure, citing undercover videos, say organization representatives have taken money from individuals interested in limiting births to African American women.
Arizona’s bill is modeled after U.S. Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-AZ) Susan B. Anthony Frederick Douglass Prenatal Discrimination Act, or “Predna” Act, which would insert criminal penalties for race- or sex-based abortions into the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Hoping to “blow a fatal hole in Roe v. Wade,” Franks said that his bill “establishes that unborn children are persons, too.” But Arizona may succeed before Franks gets the chance. The bill is headed to Brewer’s desk possibly by the end of the month and Brewer “has signed every measure restricting abortion that has been sent to her.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/23/arizona-race-gender-abortion/#
When will the MADNESS END?
Whatever will the rethug women do when they want to abort their babies? Considering this means no gender or race bias.
This is full blown derangement!
3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn’t Believe in Science — When Did Republicans Go Completely Off the Deep End?
You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925
March 22, 2011
You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling “yokels” and “morons.”
Turns out the yokels and morons won, at least for a generation. Scopes was found guilty of violating the Tennessee law that prohibited teaching evolution, and his conviction (though later overturned on a technicality) galvanized the anti-evolution movement for years. Politicians came pouring in. Scores of resolutions were introduced in state legislatures and school boards all over the country, setting back the teaching of evolution for decades until logic and reason and the scientific method gradually reasserted themselves in the culture.
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150340/3_4ths_of_senate_gop_doesn%27t_believe_in_science_–_when_did_republicans_go_completely_off_the_deep_end/
This explains it.. The GOP CANNOT e…v…o…l…v…e…
LOVEING THIS!! Thanks, SG2. It’s a print and frame for me.
Women Seeking Abortions in South Dakota Will Have to Visit ‘Pregnancy Help Centers’Posted Mar 23, 2011 7:00 AM CDT
A first-of-its-kind law signed Tuesday by South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard requires women seeking abortions to get counseling first.
Women will have to go to “pregnancy help centers” where they will learn about assistance available should they decide to give birth, the New York Times reports. The law also requires a three-day waiting period for abortions, except in cases of emergencies.
“What makes the new South Dakota law different,” the Times says, “is that the mandated counseling will come from people whose central qualification is that they are opposed to abortion.” The required three-day wait is also the longest in the nation.
Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union plan a legal challenge, the Argus Leader reports.
The South Dakota bill was among anti-abortion legislation introduced in more than half the states after Republican successes in mid-term elections, the Times says. Other bills restrict health insurance coverage for abortions, require ultrasounds and ban abortions after 20 weeks.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/women_seeking_abortions_in_south_dakota_will_have_to_visit_pregnancy_help_c/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email
Ginni is just showing that ass
U.S. Supreme Court
Clarence Thomas’ Wife Has a New Job as a Special Correspondent
Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, will stay busy despite giving up control of Liberty Central, a website and group for “citizen activists.”
She has a new job as a special correspondent for the Daily Caller, a news website run by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. She will interview community and political leaders, “with a focus on listening to those outside the Beltway,” according to a press release. TPMDC, the Huffington Post and the New York Times Caucus blog have stories.
Andrew Cohen, the chief legal analyst at the Atlantic, suggests some possible topics for Virginia Thomas in a tongue-in-cheek column.
Cohen would like to see her interview “a legal ethicist or two who disagrees with Justice Thomas’ cramped view of his obligations to recuse himself” based on perceived conflicts of interest. He also suggests she could interview the president of Common Cause, the group that disclosed Justice Thomas’ failure to note all of his wife’s income on financial disclosure forms.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/22/virginia-thomas-joins-daily-caller_n_838937.html
Clarence won’t give her none! She gotta have something to do lol
EWWWWWWWWWWWW! Clarence must be givin’ it up to a SISTA, and Ginni is showing her ass. Is she looking to get Unca Clarence debenched?
You know Ametia,
she really is ‘ showing her ass’. if I didn’t know any better, it’s like she’s setting his ass up to be IMPEACHED. she knows his ass is incompetent; the nondisclosure of her income should have already put him on the fast track to impeachment, and then, there’s the little matter of WHO GAVE YOU THE MONEY FOR YOUR TEA BAGGING GROUP, GINNI. nobody has forgotten it. but, she won’t sit down and shut up. she’s straight up clowning, bringing as much attention to the Court Mute as she can.
Yes, Miss Ginni is not a HAPPY camper. I sincerely believe she’s out to destroy Clarence, because she just does not measure up like a SISTA . She’s straight up hatin because he messed with BLACK WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, I SAID IT.
she really is ‘ showing her ass’.
real bitchassness!
Explosion Rocks Jerusalem
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/jerusalem-explosion-israel-bus-blast_n_839455.html
JERUSALEM — Israeli police are blaming Palestinian militants for a bomb attack at a crowded bus stop in central Jerusalem.
Yitzhak Aharonovich, Israel’s minister of public security, says militants planted the one-kilogram (2-pound) device in a bag on the sidewalk.
Authorities say about 25 people were wounded, several critically, in Wednesday’s attack.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, the first bombing in Jerusalem in years.
Is Palin still there? Just asking…
You’re in my head, Ametia!
The timing of this bombing reort is SUSPICIOUS to me.
Effort Begins To Have Obama Stripped Of Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/obama-nobel-peace-prize-revoked_n_839310.html#comments
The Bolivian president and a Russian political leader have launched a joint effort to have President Barack Obama stripped of the Nobel Peace Prize.
As Forbes is reporting, Russian Liberal Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement Monday saying that the prize, awarded to Obama in 2009 for his work on nuclear non-proliferation, was hypocritical in light of recent missile attacks in Libya.
“These developments in Libya are another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States,” Zhirinovksy’s statement, which appeared in Russian, is quoted by Forbes as saying. He went on to call the strikes part of a “colonial policy” with the goal to control Libyan oil.
Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed those sentiments. “How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defense of human rights or self-determination,” Morales, who is among of number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the Libya attacks, is quoted by Digital Journal as saying.
The Nobel committee has been criticized both in the U.S. and abroad for its 2009 decision to award the prize to Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” only a few months after his inauguration. “The prize is coming a little bit early,” Guenther Oettinger, leader of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, is quoted by Bloomberg as saying. “He’s at the beginning of his work, not the end.”
Get over it losers!! Haters hate. I don’t see nobody taking kissingers Nobel away.
Jealous haters everywhere!
They cannot HIDE their contempt and HATE for the BLACK PRESIDENT. The POTUS has donated the million dollars he received for the NP. I suppose these HATERS will collect the $$ from the recipients too.
Good luck with this nonsense MOFOs. Because, IT.AIN’T.HAPPENING.
PETTY PETTY MOFOS
………………..
March 22, 2011
Labor mural being removed from Maine Department of Labor
THIS is positively astounding.
In 2007, Judy Taylor, an artist based on Mount Desert, won a competition to create a mural for the lobby of the Department of Labor (MDOL). The work was to depict the “History of Labor in the State of Maine,” and was commissioned by the Maine Arts Commission. Taylor’s work is of 11 panels which you can find here; here are what panels 7-9 look like
Today staff of the MDOL learned that this mural would be removed. In an email, Acting Commissioner Laura Boyett made the announcement, along with news that some of the names of the meeting rooms would be changed, names like the “Perkins Room.”
Here’s a snippet from the perky letter written by the Acting Commissioner, letting her staff know that, well, some businessmen and women don’t feel “welcomed” when they are forced to stare at the evil depictions of labor and its history in the state of Maine:
We have received feedback that the administration building is not perceived as equally receptive to both businesses and workers – primarily because of the nature of the mural in the lobby and the names of our conference rooms. Whether or not the perception is valid is not really at issue and therefore, not open to debate. If either of our two constituencies perceives that they are not welcome in our administration building and this translates to a belief that their needs will not be heard or met by this department, then it presents a barrier to achieving our mission.
I will be seeking a new home for the mural and we will be renaming the conference rooms in our administrative office at Commerce Drive in Augusta. However, I’d like your help in coming up with new names for the conference rooms. I’m holding a ‘renaming contest’ and will select from your suggestions. The names can be places, concepts or things but should not reflect a bias toward either business or workers – the names should feel welcoming to both. Although arguments can be made that some of the existing names do not reflect any bias, to keep things simple, we are going to make a clean sweep across the board and change all. Therefore, we need naming suggestions for 8 conference rooms.
An absolutely, unbelievably, painfully anti-union obscenity
http://www.eclectablog.com/2011/03/labor-mural-being-removed-from-maine.html#
If this act of pure pettiness of removing murals and name plaques doesn’t speak of the disdain and attack on the working class…. Petty muthafuckas.
GOP offers bill cutting pensions for new federal employees
By Sahil Kapur
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 — 2:30 pm
New legislation introduced in the Senate would slash pensions for all federal employees hired starting 2013, invoking the argument that benefits for government workers are too generous and are a large contributor to budget deficits.
The “Public-Private Employee Retirement Parity Act,” offered Thursday by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), would eliminate all pensions under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) but keep the Thrift Savings Plan in tact. The bill would also apply to members of Congress.
“Right now, federal government workers receive far more generous retirement benefits than private sector employees,” Burr said. “The cost to taxpayers of these benefits is unsustainable and we simply cannot afford it. We cannot ask taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for public employee benefits that are far more generous than their own.”
Coburn added in a statement that the FERS pensions program “serves to foster political careerism and should have been frozen years ago,” and fretted that “federal workers generally earn up to 20 percent more than their private sector counterparts.”
Critics fear that eliminating the security that comes with pensions — a major perk of relatively low-paying federal jobs — could conceivably sway bright workers away from working for the government.
“Sen. Burr is wrong on the facts and wrong on morals,” John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told Government Executive, calling the legislation “cruel and useless.”
“Eliminating pensions for future employees would do absolutely nothing for the fictional unfunded liabilities that the fact-challenged senator imagines he is resolving. Worse, Sen. Burr’s bill is a mean-spirited attempt to deprive future employees of any hope of a dignified retirement after they have spent a lifetime in public service.”
Burr’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/22/gop-offers-bill-cutting-pensions-for-new-federal-employees/#
““Right now, federal government workers receive far more generous retirement benefits than private sector employees,” Burr said. “The cost to taxpayers of these benefits is unsustainable and we simply cannot afford it. We cannot ask taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for public employee benefits that are far more generous than their own.”
Are these assclowsns Burr and Coburn going to cut their government benefits?
HELL NO! Sen Burr and Sen Coburn are going to CONTINUE advocating for TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, and CONTINUE ROBBING the COFFERS of the Working class AMERICANS- WHITE, BLACK, HISPANIC, ASIAN, doesn’t matter.
Good. Start with the house and the senate.
THERE YOU GO!
I second that!
and all their staffers.
100% staffers
I spoke with my former college roommate last night. She and her husband moved to South America because his mother has Alzheimers, and he was the only child who could do the move. She and her family are from Syria – they’re Arab Christians. We got to the point of talking about politics, and she was like, ‘ I do NOT miss the American media, who are truly a bunch of idiots.’ She said to me – ‘ these White people have lost their mind over a Black President, haven’t they?’, and you know I had to laugh and agree. When she started her sentence with, ‘ So, what about this President’, I thought she was about to launch into a whining left diatribe about all POTUS had not done, and I went off, and she was like, ‘ um, why are you yelling at me…I totally agree with you.’ She was like, ‘ I knew that the GOP machine would be upset with a Democratic win, but they have gone insane. They don’t give him any credit for anything.’
She was like, ‘ I knew they were insane when they attacked the First Lady and what she’s trying to do. ‘ My friend is very into health conscious stuff; buying organic (her food bill was the biggest bill she had when she lived here in the States), growing her own veggies, recycling, yoga – you know the type. It boggles her mind that folks have a problem with FLOTUS and Let’s Move …she was like, ‘ those crazies had a problem with the First Lady bringing up BREAST FEEDING? –insane’.
Then, we got into the Middle East, and I thought she was going to go crazy about Libya, and she was like, ‘ are you kidding? He’s been there too long, and the Arab League stepped into it’. She agreed with me about my thoughts about the Arab League, and she has been too happy with POTUS’ approach to foreign policy. Outside of Afghanistan, she has no complaints. She’s so excited about what’s happening in the Middle East and was like , ‘ Syria is next!’ Her family overseas is also impressed with POTUS.
She said that the First Family’s trip is all over the news down in South America, and people are totally in love with FLOTUS and the WeeMichelles. She said it saddened her that it seemed other people appreciated OUR First Family, and there were so many here who didn’t.
It was good to talk to her to get an outside perspective. She said living outside of the States, you really can see how much POTUS has done for this country.
Amen!
Great sharing, rikyrah, and thank you. Yes, living outside of the US gives you a clearer perspective. And your friend’s sharing further exposes the American media for the SHAM that it is.
Of course they will not air the accomplishments of the Black President, nor show how well admired he is outside of the USA. The circus, lies, spinning, and manipulation of the facts is what the feeble-minded Americans are fed now.
It’s wonderful to ssee the REVOLUTION in the middle East.
…..And it’s being televised!!!!!!!!!!
Yes! and that’s why they’re MAD!!!!
Union Busters Say Gov. Mitch Daniels Doesn’t Know How To Bust
As he struggles to get his legislative year back on track after state House Democrats shut it down five weeks ago, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) is facing a harsh assault from the anti-union right, which is accusing him of “running scared” from organized labor advocates.
It’s a strange position for the virulently anti-union Daniels to be in.
“Big Labor Democrats may have fled to Illinois,” a newspaper ad from the National Right To Work Committee that ran yesterday in Indiana reads. “But it’s you who have been selling out.”
(View the ad here.)
NRTW says the newspaper ad is just the first salvo in an ad campaign aimed at Daniels and Indiana state House Speaker Brian Bosma (R) that will also reach TV and radio. Meanwhile, Republican state leaders are already under attack from a week-long ad campaign run by national Democrats.
NRTW is about as anti-union as they come. The group’s motto, from their website, reads: “No one should be forced to pay tribute to a union in order to get or keep a job.” Normally, it might be reasonable to assume Daniels and the Republicans in Indiana would be among the NRTW’s favorite elected officials. Daniels eliminated the right of state workers to collectively bargain on his first day in office, and Bosma is a leading figure in a state legislature hell-bent on changing Indiana into a right-to-work state.
But the NRTW says Daniels and Bosma have fallen down on the job, after pressure from unions and their allies in the Democratic party. Five weeks ago, 39 of the 40 Democrats in the state House fled to Illinois, denying the majority Republicans the quorum they need to pass any legislation and shutting down the right to work bill. Daniels called on Republicans to drop the right to work bill, in order to bring the Democrats home, and they obliged.
But Democrats stayed away anyway, saying that the Daniels agenda (including an aggressive school reform program that will grant private school vouchers to public school students across the state) needs to be changed before they’ll come back to Indiana and let the legislative calendar roll on.
The NRTW is fed up, and is calling on Daniels and Bosma to call in the big guns.
“To force the Democrats to come back to work, you should impose a $10,000 per day fine on each missing legislator until they return to Indianapolis,” the group says in the ad. “If they still don’t return, you should take out liens on their property to force them to do the job they were elected to do.”
Republicans recently instituted daily fines against the AWOL Democrats, but they’re currently at $350 per day.
In a statement distributed to reporters yesterday, NRTW president Mark Mix said Daniels may as well be a labor organizer with the way he’s behaving.
“If Speaker Bosma and Governor Daniels continue their policy of appeasement, they will
be as much to blame as the Democrats for killing Right to Work by their refusal to stand up and fight,” he said in the statement. “Time is past due for Governor Daniels and Speaker Bosma to show leadership and pass Right to Work instead of sabotaging it.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/union-busters-say-gov-mitch-daniels-doesnt-know-how-to-bust.php
Will these two clowns be recalled?
Elizabeth Warren & the Power of Rhetoric
by Anne Laurie
Kay’s post on sloganeering for the media made me take another look at a couple recent articles about Elizabeth Warren’s latest appearance before the House. Paul Krugman summarizes the War on Warren:
Last week, at a House hearing on financial institutions and consumer credit, Republicans lined up to grill and attack Elizabeth Warren, the law professor and bankruptcy expert who is in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ostensibly, they believed that Ms. Warren had overstepped her legal authority by helping state attorneys general put together a proposed settlement with mortgage servicers, which are charged with a number of abuses.
But the accusations made no sense. Since when is it illegal for a federal official to talk with state officials, giving them the benefit of her expertise? Anyway, everyone knew that the real purpose of the attack on Ms. Warren was to ensure that neither she nor anyone with similar views ends up actually protecting consumers.
And Republicans were clearly also hoping that if they threw enough mud, some of it would stick. For people like Ms. Warren — people who warned that we were heading for a debt crisis before it happened — threaten, by their very existence, attempts by conservatives to sustain their antiregulation dogma. Such people must therefore be demonized, using whatever tools are at hand…
Andy Kroll at Mother Jones points out that Warren has all the right enemies in the business world as well—the Wall Street Journal’s slogan-intensive attacks on Warren are being written by a former Goldman Sachs banker.
But it was Dana Milbank, semi-reformed Media Village Insider, who picked up the Useful Catchphrase:
It seems everybody is afraid of Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor charged by President Obama with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page called her “President Warren” and a “czar” in command of an “empire.” Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, thinks she’s orchestrating a “regulatory shakedown” of mortgage companies. And Spencer Bachus, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told Warren on Wednesday that she is “probably directing the most powerful agency that’s ever been created in Washington.” That will come as news to the Pentagon.
But in the tradition of Chief Justice John Roberts, who described himself to lawmakers as a lowly “umpire,” Warren declared herself to be a mere sheriff’s deputy.
“If there had been a cop on the beat with the authority to hold mortgage services accountable a half-dozen years ago,” she announced, “the problems in mortgage servicing would have been exposed . . . long before they became a national scandal.”
Warren added: “We need a cop on the beat that American families can count on. It is critical that we get this right – a real cop on the beat.”
“You kept saying ‘cop on the beat, cop on the beat,’ ” complained Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who chaired the day’s hearing.
Warren could not dispute this. In reply, she said that banks must know “there will be a cop on the beat” and that her agency will need “enough money to put enough cops on the beat.” Before completing her testimony, Officer Warren made four more references to cops-on-beats – possibly putting her in violation of public-nuisance statutes.
But it was a useful metaphor: If she’s the cop, then banks are the robbers, and members of the Republican majority on the committee sounded like lawyers for the accused.
I’ve been on Team Warren for quite some time, and the fact that she’s driving the Repubs (even more) bonkers using their favorite rhetorical weapons is just one more vindication, yes?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/03/22/elizabeth-warren-the-power-of-rhetoric/
Buyer’s Remorse: Polls Show 3 New GOP Gov’s Losing In Do Overs
Jon Terbush | March 23, 2011, 8:33AM
Last year’s midterms elections swept incumbents from office nationwide, as voters turned to newcomers — often Republican newcomers — for change.
But just months after election day, three new Midwestern governors — Wisconsin’s Scott Walker (R), Ohio’s John Kasich (R), and Michigan’s Rick Snyder (R) — have seen their approval ratings fall to the point that polls show them losing hypothetical do-over elections with the candidates they beat last year.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker promised to make tough decisions on state spending, and beat Democrat Tom Barret 52% to 46% on election day. But when PPP polled the state in late February, they found that Walker would lose a do-over election by a seven-point margin.
After taking office, Walker, citing a budget shortfall, began to push a measure to strip most state employees of the right to collectively bargain on non-pay related issues, a proposal that deadlocked the state legislature as Democratic lawmakers fled to Illinois to stall the bill.
As the stalemate played out, Walker’s approval rating took a nose dive. By late Feburary, PPP found that nearly six in ten voters in the state disapproved of his job performance.
In Ohio, a similar story has played out for Gov. Kasich, who also ran on a platform of reining in government spending. In November, Kasich defeated incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland (D) 49% to 47%.
By mid-March, PPP found Kasich’s approval rating deep underwater, with just 35% of voters approving of his job performance, compared to 54% who disapproved. Furthermore, in a proposed do-over election, PPP found Kasich losing to Strickland by 15 points.
Kasich began his short tenure with a mini scandal when he called a state trooper an idiot, on camera, three times. He also pushed to strip state union’s of their collective bargaining rights through a bill called SB 5. That bill would actually go further than the one in Wisconsin by not exempting fire and law enforcement unions from the changes.
In his first budget proposal released earlier this month, Kasich aimed to close an $8 billion budget gap largely through cuts to government services, such as a tightening of the eligibility requirements for government-subsidized health care for children in low income families. That has some Ohioans grousing that Kasich’s budget cuts will most hurt the state’s poor.
In Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder (R) is facing a backlash of his own.
Last November, Snyder beat Democrat Virg Bernero by a huge 18-point margin. But in a PPP poll released yesterday, registered voters suggested they wish they’d elected Bernero — who won a hypothetical do over, 47% to 45%.
Since taking office, Snyder has pursued a number of controversial proposals, such as one that would grant him the power to declare a financial emergency in a given city and appoint an emergency manager to modify or void union contracts, and even dissolve a city government — a proposal one supporter likened to “financial martial law.”
In PPP’s latest poll, 50% of respondents said they opposed that proposal, versus 32% who said they supported it.
The also poll found that a majority of registered voters in Michigan disapprove of Snyder’s job performance. Fifty percent of respondents said they disapproved of the job Snyder was doing, while just 33% said they approved.
In November, citizens voted for change in all three states. But now that they’ve got it, they may be starting to have second thoughts.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/buyers-remorse-polls-show-3-new-gop-govs-losing-in-do-overs.php
BWA HA HA HA HA
Hi Dannie. Yes, they can all go straight to HELL.
DO NOT PASS HEAVEN, AND DO NOT COLLECT ICE WATER.
We’re stuck with kkkasich for 4 years. These mofos who voted for him who have now buyers remorse can go to HELL!
you know, with all the smack she’s been talking in the last few months, I am so not feeling sympathy for McCaskill
……………………………………………….
‘Claire Air’: How Bad Is It For McCaskill?
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) attempted to bring an end to the series of bad stories about her air travel on a conference call with reporters yesterday.
“I have convinced my husband to sell the damn plane,” she said. “He has hired a broker, and I can tell you I will never set foot on the plane again.”
It’s not a bad plan. The private twin-engine plane, which McCaskill owns along with her husband and several investors, was meant, McCaskill has said, to provide a convenient (and, she says, cheaper) way to get around Missouri on official business. But in addition to hastening her trips to constituent meetings, the plane has given her opponents plenty of runway to launch attacks as her 2012 reelection campaign begins.
Though the ethical questions are murky, and McCaskill has opened her checkbook to repay the real expense of the flights and the unpaid taxes she owed on the plane, there’s no denying that the optics surrounding the private flights are about as bad as optics can get.
A quick backgrounder of the scandal so far:
On March 9, Politico reported McCaskill had charged taxpayers for 89 flights she took on the plane she owns. Though it’s not rare for senators to charter flights for official business, and it’s a common and accepted practice for senators to charge the government for those flights, McCaskill sent the Treasury $88,000 to cover the cost of the flights after Politico asked about them.
Then it was discovered that at least one of the flights was a political trip and definitely should not have been paid for with taxpayer money. McCaskill said she was “embarrassed.” Which is also what she said yesterday when she revealed that she failed to pay close to $287,000 in personal property taxes on the plane.
McCaskill also said she has attorneys looking for more political travel on the official flight list. So far, they’ve found some.
Adding to the political peril for McCaskill: Her very public record of taking others to task for transgressions with strikingly similar overtones.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/claire-air-how-bad-is-it-for-mccaskill.php
These pols are being exposed. the shit always finds its way back to the slinger of said shit. Do as we say, and not as we do, is not in the Constitution or job descriptions of our elected officials.
You owe, Claire, YOU PAY!~
I concur, Rikyrah. I feel no sympathy for McCaskill.
ok, you gotta admit…this shyt is hilarious.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH A HA
…………………………………………….
The New Spin: The White House Would Be A Step Down For Sarah Palin
Pop quiz: you’re a right-wing commentator looking at a string of polls showing Sarah Palin’s poll numbers sinking to new lows even as the weak field of GOP presidential contenders continues to thin out. But a large chunk of your audience would sooner eat glass than hear Palin’s chances maligned by one of their own. What do you do?
Here’s one answer: claim that Palin is even more powerful outside the White House and that the presidency would be a step down for her.
It’s a line gaining some traction among pundits on the right. Take conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart, who suggested in GQ this month that Palin would be truly unstoppable if she only didn’t get bogged down by, say, being President.
“I think the presidency is beneath her,” Breitbart told GQ. “There’s more power in being Oprah Winfrey than in being Barack Obama. It would be my goal for Palin to become Oprah and be the ultimate kingmaker for twenty-odd years. Oprah anointed Barack Obama.”
Then there’s Ann Coulter, who has offered similar arguments in multiple interviews.
“I think it would be a step down for her,” she said in an MNSBC appearance last month. “It’s like saying Rush Limbaugh should run for President. She’s huge, she has enormous power. She sends out a Twitter on death panels and everyone’s talking about it. I think it would be crazy for her to run for president.”
Coulter offered a similar assessment last year to CBS, saying that Palin “has more influence than a President does.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/the-new-spin-sarah-palin-is-more-powerful-outside-the-white-house.php?ref=fpa
Ass clowns!
LOL They need that GWH Great White Hope aka “Grifting White HO'”
****hollaring****
__________________FLATLINIES________________
***coughing…choking…i.can’t.”breeve”…… BWA HA HA HA HA
*******************DEAD******************
Egypt’s First Steps, Ctd
22 Mar 2011 06:41 pm Issandr El Amrani analyzes Egypt’s referendum:
The majority of the 77.2% that voted yes probably did so because they understood it as a vote for stability, a return to normalcy after the biggest political upheaval in decades. A no result would have been a challenge to the military now ruling the country, which could have either imposed the amendments anyway by decree or entered into protracted negotiations with a political landscape still in gestation. For others, including radical activists, a yes vote meant pushing the military back into its barracks as quickly as possible.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
May she RIP – Elizabeth Taylor has died.
I’m just hearing this. God rest her SOUL.
I just heard the news. Sympathy to the family. Rest In Peace, Liz Taylor!
As health-care law turns 1, supporters using occasion to shape its image
By Amy Goldstein and N.C. Aizenman, Tuesday, March 22, 8:27 PM
This week, a loose federation of left-leaning groups is convening nearly 200 gatherings to peddle the virtues of health-care reform. A women’s speak-out in Philadelphia. A small-business round-table discussion in Albuquerque. A fish fry for seniors in Columbia, S.C. From the Obama administration alone, 42 officials are fanning out to events in 22 states.
The choreography coast to coast is a birthday party, of sorts, to mark the year that has elapsed since President Obama signed into law the broadest changes to the nation’s health-care system in nearly half a century. But the commemoration is as much a strategy for image-shaping as a reflection of the new reality on the ground.
A year after a titanic partisan battle in Congress yielded a 2,073-page statute, the law exists in what one seasoned health-care lobbyist called “a very weird place. It’s like we have two worlds.”
In one, federal officials are working at a fevered pace, writing regulations, planning innovations for the delivery of care, and giving states grants and guidance. That complex work is “even a little ahead” of expectations, said Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, an authority on health-care policy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-health-care-law-turns-1-supporters-using-occasion-to-shape-its-image/2011/03/21/AB2Pk3EB_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
Cross-burning in prosperous US town
An 11-foot (3.3-meter) cross was stolen from a church and set on fire next to the home of a black family, igniting anger and disbelief in a prosperous, mostly white Central California community that hasn’t seen a hate crime in nearly a decade.
6:22AM GMT 23 Mar 2011
Police assigned extra patrols to the neighbourhood in Arroyo Grande and rewards were offered for information leading to an arrest. Church leaders were urged to mention the family in their prayers.
“I was horrified,” said the Rev. Stephanie Raphael, president of the San Luis Obispo Ministerial Association. “We live in a paradise, and I think the first thought was, this can’t really be real.”
The cross was stolen from a garden at Saint John’s Lutheran Church weeks ago and set ablaze on Friday in a lot behind the house where the family lived, police Cmdr. John Hough said.
A 19-year-old woman awoke about 12:30am and saw the flaming cross from her bedroom window. Arriving officers doused burning pieces of wood with a garden hose.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/…
hateful people everywhere
Obama says control of Libya operation can be turned over soon, as initial objectives are met
By Associated Press, Wednesday, March 23, 3:13 AM
WASHINGTON — As the air war in Libya achieves some of its early objectives, such as grounding Moammar Gadhafi’s air force, the Obama administration is looking for a quick exit — at least from a front-line role in an international operation that has yet to gain the robust participation of Arab nations that Washington wanted.
Civilians in major cities like Misrata are still bearing the burden of clashes with pro-Gadhafi forces that are showing little sign of heeding international demands that they retreat for peace. That is raising the prospect of stalemate and doubt about whether the Libyan leader can be defeated outright.
Obama was returning to Washington on Wednesday a few hours earlier than planned. In El Salvador on Tuesday he painted an optimistic picture of the international military operation and said he had “absolutely no doubt” that control could be shifted from the U.S. to other coalition members within days.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/obama-says-control-of-libya-operation-can-be-turned-over-soon-as-initial-objectives-are-met/2011/03/23/AB86GzGB_story.html
Supreme Court sides with investors, workers in two business-related cases
By Robert Barnes, Tuesday, March 22, 12:59 PM
Ruling Tuesday on a pair of cases that had drawn the strong interest of the business community, the Supreme Court made it easier for stockholders and employees to sue companies.
In one, the court ruled unanimously that a group of investors may proceed with its lawsuit against the makers of the cold remedy Zicam, saying the manufacturer should have disclosed that some who used the nasal spray lost their sense of smell.
In the other, the justices said that an oral complaint against an employer was enough to protect a worker against retaliatory action, such as firing.
Both decisions were narrow in scope, and in each case the ruling only allows the investors and the fired worker to proceed with their respective lawsuits. But decisions of the court of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that concern business interests are closely scrutinized, especially by liberals who charge that the court has a pro-corporate bias.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-sides-with-investors-workers-in-two-business-related-cases/2011/03/22/ABbxzBDB_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
interesting cases.
yes they are
Inspiration for today…
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Happy Hump day, SG2, Rikyrah, friends &
….LURKERS! You know who you are. Come out and join us :-))
Good morning, rikyrah. Were are our mannners?
Here’s a cup of chamomile tea for you; enjoy :-)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2xr2hV83Cxo/TKJZWjbipdI/AAAAAAAAANg/UhiyakaGlcw/s1600/cup-of-tea.jpg
Drink up! http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ax87_piQCOo/TVcBIqiusiI/AAAAAAAAAV4/eK6qYTvgipY/s320/cup-of-coffee.jpg
I’m enjoying this delicious coffee. You’re so thoughtful!