Max Alfred “Maxi” Priest (born 10 June 1961) is a British reggae vocalist of Jamaican descent. He is best known for singing reggae music with a R&B influence, otherwise known as reggae fusion, and became one of the first international successes who regularly dabbled in the genre as well as being one of the most successful reggae fusion acts of all-time.
Maxi Priest was born in Lewisham, London. His parents moved to England from Jamaica to provide more opportunity for their family and he grew up listening to gospel, reggae, R&B, and pop music. His music is sometimes closer to R&B, and pop, than to reggae music itself. His uncle, Jacob Miller, a reggae icon, was the frontman in the popular reggae group Inner Circle and his son, Ryan Elliott, was a member of the boy band Ultimate Kaos.
On Veterans Day, State Rep. Rick Womick (R-TN) Calls For Purging Muslims From The Military
By Eli Clifton and Lee Fang on Nov 11, 2011 at 6:48 pm
State representative Rick Womick (R-TN) has made no secret of his anti-Muslim views. A New York Times article from July described Womick on the statehouse floor, warning his constuents that Islamic law was the most urgent threat to their way of life. But in an interview on the sidelines of the “Preserving Freedom Conference” at the Cornerstone Church in Madison, TN, Womick went to new extremes to paint Muslim Americans as dangerous and seditious.
In the interview, which took place on Veterans Day, Womick told ThinkProgress that “I don’t trust one Muslim in our military” and “if they truly are a devout Muslims, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.” When asked if Muslims should be forced out of the military, Womick responded “Absolutely, yeah.” Read the exchange:
FANG: What about the thousands of Muslims that are still in the military that are veterans, that are translators, that are active personnel. Is there some sort of policy solution that you’re advocating? […]
WOMICK: Personally, I don’t trust one Muslim in our military because they’re commanded to lie to us through the term called Taqiyya. And if they truly are a devout Muslim, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.
CLIFTON: You believe they should be forced out?
WOMICK: Absolutely, yeah.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/11/11/367055/on-veterans-day-state-rep-rick-womick-r-tn-calls-for-purging-muslims-from-the-military/
On Day Before Veterans Day, Mitt Romney Said He Wants To Prepare America For War Against Iran
November 11, 2011
As we honor our military veterans throughout the day today, Mitt Romney is preparing for war against Iran. In a Thursday commentary in the Wall Street Journal, Romney accused President Obama of being too weak against Iran and said he would prepare America to go to war with the Islamic nation.
Romney said he would increase military aid to Israel and send carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf in order to back up diplomacy “with a very real and very credible military option. These actions will send an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, acting in concert with allies, will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum.’ That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war.”
America has fought two costly and bloody wars for a decade now. Trillions of dollars have been spent, resulting in a defense budget that is by far the largest in the world. America has also lost the lives of thousands of young men and women. And just as America begins to draw down towards an end to both wars, The Republican Party and Mitt Romney want to prepare for another. War with Iran would be far costlier and bloodier. Romney made these comments as tensions rise between Israel and Iran. America is not ready for another war. Americans are war weary and our domestic programs are being weakened because of the debt the wars have left us.
If Romney were to become President, it would only be a matter of time before the Republican Party and their corporate masters take this country into yet another war. And that is something that America just cannot afford to do. It is outrageous that Romney calls for war, especially the day before we honor the veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for peace.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/11/on-day-before-veterans-day-mitt-romney-said-he-wants-to-prepare-america-for-war-against-iran/
Conservative attack ad pulled amid concerns it falsely accuses Tester over EPA farm dust rules
A conservative group’s Television advertisement has been pulled from a cable network amid complaints from U.S. Sen. Jon Tester that it falsely accuses him of supporting tougher rules for farm dust.
The ad from Crossroads GPS claims that Tester “voted against preventing Obama’s EPA from being able to regulate Montana farmers’ dust.”
The Washington D.C.-based group says Cablevision’s Optimum cable service did pull the advertisement, although other networks have not.
Tester’s campaign argues the grain farmer has long record of opposition to the scuttled EPA proposal.
The ad bases its claim on a procedural vote to stop amendments on an unrelated bill, which Republicans later wanted to amend with a ban on farm dust regulations.
Tester is being challenged by Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/19478e87c8b44b2ea0f5e7e3ddbb8776/MT–Tester-Attack-Ad/
Colo. judge rules for Dems’ map
By ALEX ISENSTADT | 11/11/11 8:33 AM EST
Updated: 11/11/11 11:51 AM EST
A Colorado judge has ruled in favor of implementing a Democratic-crafted redistricting map, dealing a blow to Republicans and imperiling the party’s hold on a House seat.
In the ruling, which came down Thursday evening, District Court Judge Robert Hyatt argued that the Democratic-drafted map more closely reflected the state’s population than the GOP-drawn plan. The competing maps wound up in court after the two parties were unable to pass a plan in the state Legislature earlier this year, leaving Hyatt to choose between the proposals.
Under the approved plan, GOP Rep. Mike Coffman, who is serving his second term, would find his once Republican-friendly seat turn dramatically more competitive. The eastern Colorado-based 6th District would shed much of GOP-leaning Douglas County, leaving Coffman, who has skated to two easy general election victories, vulnerable to a Democratic challenge.
Joe Mikoski, a state representative, has launched a campaign against Coffman, though Democratic leaders could instigate a renewed recruiting push with the approval of the new map.
Democrats would also be expected to compete for the seat of freshman GOP Rep. Scott Tipton, whose Western Slope-area seat saw only minor changes in the new map. Tipton has already drawn a serious Democratic opponent in state House Minority Leader Sal Pace.
There is one positive development for Republicans. The new map would add a batch of GOP voters to the 4th District seat of freshman Rep. Cory Gardner, who had been expected to face a competitive race against Colorado state Senate President Brandon Shaffer.
Republicans, who hold a commanding 4-to-3 advantage in the delegation, acknowledged that the new map would largely force them to focus their 2012 efforts on defending the two seats. But party strategists say they expect officials to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68142.html#ixzz1dSJtuaIS
Coburn Doesn’t Think He Has To Offer Coverage Alternatives To Seniors He Kicks Out Of Medicare
By Igor Volsky on Nov 9, 2011 at 10:30 am
Politico’s David Nather pressed Tom Coburn on his proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age and wondered if the senator was at all concerned that younger seniors (those between the ages of 65 and 67) would go uninsured if the exchanges in the Affordable Care Act were also repealed. Coburn notes that his latest proposal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) assumed that the law remains enact, but said he wouldn’t mind increasing eligibility even if seniors had no clear alternative for obtaining coverage:
NATHER: You say you made a choice to assume that the Affordable Care Act survives in your legislation with Sen. Lieberman, but you don’t have to. What is your feeling if the eligibly age becomes a point of compromise on the deficit, is it necessary for Republicans to assume that at least the exchanges and guarantee issue survive?
COBURN: It doesn’t have to. The fact is we have a difficulty right now with people who are retiring — if they’re retiring before 65 or they’re retiring before 67 which we would propose eventually getting to — they have a difficulty buying an insurance product. But again, our big problem in health care is that a third of the dollars we spend in health care doesn’t help anybody.
ky on Nov 9, 2011 at 10:30 am
Politico’s David Nather pressed Tom Coburn on his proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age and wondered if the senator was at all concerned that younger seniors (those between the ages of 65 and 67) would go uninsured if the exchanges in the Affordable Care Act were also repealed. Coburn notes that his latest proposal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) assumed that the law remains enact, but said he wouldn’t mind increasing eligibility even if seniors had no clear alternative for obtaining coverage:
NATHER: You say you made a choice to assume that the Affordable Care Act survives in your legislation with Sen. Lieberman, but you don’t have to. What is your feeling if the eligibly age becomes a point of compromise on the deficit, is it necessary for Republicans to assume that at least the exchanges and guarantee issue survive?
COBURN: It doesn’t have to. The fact is we have a difficulty right now with people who are retiring — if they’re retiring before 65 or they’re retiring before 67 which we would propose eventually getting to — they have a difficulty buying an insurance product. But again, our big problem in health care is that a third of the dollars we spend in health care doesn’t help anybody.
Watch it:
Note that rather than discussing strategies for expanding coverage to those he would literally push out of Medicare, Coburn embarks on a rant about identifying waste in the system and reducing spending. One wonders if Romney — who also repeals the health law while increasing the Medicare age — would agree with this answer.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/11/09/364858/coburn-doesnt-think-he-has-to-offer-coverage-alternatives-to-seniors-he-kicks-out-of-medicare/
Romney Medicare Plan Will Leave Some Seniors Uninsured
By Igor Volsky on Nov 9, 2011 at 9:00 am
Family USA’s Ron Pollack makes an important point at the very bottom of this Kaiser Health News article about Mitt Romney’s Medicare “premium support” proposal. The former Massachusetts governor is seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, while gradually increasing the Medicare eligibility age. That means that younger seniors won’t have the option of enrolling in the ACA’s state-based exchanges and will likely end up uninsured:
In addition to transforming Medicare into a premium support program, Romney would raise the program’s eligibility age to reflect the fact that Americans are living longer. But he has premised all of his changes on first repealing the 2010 health law.
That could leave some retirees without health coverage, because older people are more likely than younger ones to have chronic, pre-existing medical conditions. Without the health law’s requirement that insurers cover most people, many could not obtain affordable coverage.
“If you eliminate the Affordable Care Act, it means that 65 and 66 year olds won’t have that resource. The result will be a substantial number of people joining the ranks of the uninsured. Many of these folks are retired and have moderate incomes, so this is going to be a huge setback for a large number of 65 and 66 year olds who would lose coverage,” Pollack said.
Now, Romney will likely offer some kind of high-risk pool alternative, but that coverage will likely be too expensive for most. And so what we’ll see is uninsured 65 to 67 year olds entering the Medicare program sicker than they otherwise would have been, thus increasing costs in the program. In fact, one study found that “chronically ill people turning age 65 who were previously uninsured had lower spending than insured people prior to Medicare. Yet once on Medicare, these uninsured Americans spent 50 percent more than previously insured Medicare beneficiaries who also had chronic disease.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/11/09/364704/romney-medicare-plan-will-leave-some-seniors-uninsured/
Florida GOP Turns Down Federal Money For Life-Saving Cancer Programs
By Marie Diamond on Nov 10, 2011 at 12:05 pm
In their relentless ideological crusade against President Obama’s health care reform law, Florida’s GOP lawmakers have repeatedly proven willing to throw the state’s most vulnerable citizens under the bus to make a statement. Gov. Rick Scott (R) has rejected millions of federal dollars to provide health care for retirees, seniors, children, and people with disabilities. Florida Republicans have even turned down money to fight child abuse and neglect.
Now the Florida Independent reports that cancer patients are the latest group to suffer from Republicans’ political games and unwillingness to accept federal grants:
Among the long list of federal health grants the state has shunned in the past year was a small award that would have “reduced the burden of cancer.”
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health tells The Florida Independent that budget authority was denied for a competitive grant “awarded to Florida beginning October 2010 for $175,000 yearly.” […]
The grant did not require any contributions from the state. […]
According to a recent report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Florida is among many states that have “missed opportunities to enact laws and policies that could not only save money and generate revenue, but also save lives.”
State advisory councils working on the Florida Cancer Plan noted that the rejected grant would have “accelerated prevention and risk reduction policies and efforts.” The grant money would have been used for several important plans, including creating a forum to improve continuing care for cancer patients, initiatives to reduce tobacco use, and programs to reduce obesity in school-aged children.
Local officials throughout the state have voiced their frustration at Scott for turning away money they desperately need simply to grandstand against health care reform.
Scott is a former private health industry executive who made his fortune downsizing hospitals for profit. His partisan demagoguery on health reform and other issues has helped make him the least popular governor in America.
Scott’s claim to be standing on principle by vetoing health care money is especially disingenuous given that this year he signed a budget that uses $370 million of federal stimulus money after he vowed to “fight all stimulus money.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/11/10/366230/florida-gop-turns-down-federal-money-for-life-saving-cancer-programs/
found this goody from TOWN:
Town
Funny story:
Eric Cantor is from Henrico County, which borders the city of Richmond on three sides.
Eric Cantor, as you know, is a CONGRESSMAN.
The Henrico Republicans were disenchanted with their nominee for Commonwealth’s Attorney, who had admitted to extramarital affairs.
So Eric Cantor (UNITED STATES CONGRESSPERSON) recruited one of his buddies to run against this guy. He had to run as an Independent but all the campaign literature indicated dude was a Republican.
So this lady runs as a Democrat, gets on the ballot on the last possible day, and because of infighting with the Republicans AND the eastern part of Henrico County being Democratic leaning and giving her huge vote totals, wins.
Remember, Eric Cantor, UNITED STATES CONGRESSPERSON, meddled in this race.
Let me tell you about Henrico County:
Bordering Richmond on 3 sides, most of the black people live in the East, while the white people live in the West. The West gets all of the new schools, newly paved roads, new libraries, spanking new facilities, shopping centers etc.
The East hasn’t had a new high school in 50 years. The West has had 2 new high schools open up in the past 5-6 years, as well as a new middle school. In fact, they were trying to take away some of the renovation money from a school in the east and give it to a school in the west so they could have a new field house. The school in the east was broken down, for real.
Whenever the East (black) questions why the West always gets the new stuff, they are told the West needs it more, the West has more people so that’s why they get new schools, we just don’t have any money to build you anything, etc. Whenever the east does get something, there are whines and complaints about “taxpayer money” blah blah blah.
One of the districts in the East has been represented by a Republican for 20+ years. Now remember, most of the black people in Henrico live in the EAST. This supervisor’s district has been revealed to be now majority black from the census results. Well as you know, black people tend to vote Democratic.
Black people have also been noticing they are taxpayers too and their taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize brand new facilities in the West with nothing to show for it in the east.
So a young black pastor decided to run against this Republican supervisor. He had Gov. Kaine, Sen. Warner & other state officials doing robo-calls and ads for him.
Young black pastor got 53% of the vote in a 3 way race (edited).
Republican former-supervisor is now salty, whining that Young Black Future Supervisor had NO RIGHT to bring in Kaine, Warner etc. to help out with “a local campaign”.
Yet said NOTHING when Eric Cantor, UNITED STATES CONGRESSPERSON, meddled in “a local campaign.”
Good bye and good riddance! It’s about time the black taxpayers of the East have some decent representation.
ETA: Naw, it couldn’t be that the district now has more Democratic leaning voters and that’s why the Republican lost…no, it was those evil state Democrats meddling in affairs they shouldn’t have been meddling in.
Activists start effort to make Ohio right-to-work state
Group hopes to pass constitutional amendment
By Joe Vardon
The Columbus Dispatch Thursday
November 10, 2011 3:58 PM
Although Senate Bill 5 is still smoldering after going down in flames on Tuesday, tea party activists announced their intentions today to place a constitutional amendment before voters next year that would make Ohio a right-to-work state.
The amendment, to be titled the “Workplace Freedom Amendment,” comes from individuals who crafted and placed Ohio’s health-care amendment that passed overwhelmingly through Issue 3. But Ohioans just held a referendum on public employee collective bargaining and union rules, and the state’s current system was upheld when Issue 2 was crushed 61 percent to 39 percent.
Chris Littleton, president of the tea party affiliated Liberty Council who spearheaded the effort to put the health-care amendment on the ballot, and Maurice Thompson, executive director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law who authored the health-care law, said in a news conference today that now is the time to end “forced unionization” in Ohio.
“The bottom line is if any Ohio worker wants to join a union, they should be free to do so,” Littleton said. “But, if any Ohioan does not want to join a union, they should be free to make that decision as well.”
Littleton and Thompson are two charter members of the Ohioans for Workplace Freedom coalition, a group that also includes former state Rep. Bryan Williams of Akron, director of government affairs for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Ohio. If successful, the workplace freedom group would make Ohio the 23rd “right to work” state in the U.S.
The constitutional amendment would prevent any Ohio worker from being forced to join a union or pay union-fees as a condition of employment. There were provisions in Senate Bill 5 that would’ve enacted similar rules for public employees by eliminating “fair share” payments for those with bargaining-unit jobs that did not want to be union members and cancelling automatic paycheck deductions for political causes unless the employee gave written permission.
“Unions obviously are powerful political machines,” Thompson said. “One of the reasons for that is they have the ability to reach into the pocket of each of their workers through work and fair share fees and use them for political purposes.”
Passage of Issue 2 would’ve changed that — and greatly limited collective bargaining for public labor unions — but more than 2.1 million voters squashed those provisions on Tuesday.
Those pushing the new right-to-work amendment are betting on the public’s support for Issue 3 — it passed with 66 percent of the vote — as a sign of the electorate’s support for individual rights instead of the Issue 2 results as an indicator of the public’s views on union membership.
“Whether it’s the right to be free of government-based mandates which compel behavior, or the freedom to choose whether they will join a union just to have a job, Ohioans, and, I believe, Americans, merely want to guarantee to ourselves freedom of choice,” Littleton said.
Labor unions and Democrats who successfully led the repeal of Senate Bill 5 immediately pounced.
“Just two days ago, Ohioans spoke with one clear and emphatic voice, and voted by an overwhelming margin to support our everyday heroes and their right to collectively bargain,” said Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for We Are Ohio, the labor coalition that raised more than $30 million to defeat Issue 2. “Yet, today their voices are already being ignored, even after Governor Kasich and legislative leaders have promised to listen and reflect on Tuesday’s vote.
“Statistics show that right to work states have lower wages and that right to work endangers the safety and health standards that protect workers on the job. Now is the time to respect Ohio voter’s wishes, stop attacking hardworking Ohioans and focus on much needed job creation. Ohio’s leaders, including the governor and all legislators who supported Issue 2/Senate Bill 5 should go on the record now denouncing any attempt to circumvent the will of the people.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/11/10/right-to-work-amendment-planned-ohio-activists.html
Bound by Love and Disability, and Keeping a Vow Until the End
By JIM DWYER
Published: November 10, 2011
At age 7, Edwin Morales met Noemi Rivera. Three decades later, sitting in a Szechuan restaurant on the Upper West Side, he slipped a ring on her finger. Both families opposed a marriage, and nature itself seemed lined up against them. They used wheelchairs because of cerebral palsy and needed help taking care of themselves. Still, Mr. Morales said, “We made a promise we weren’t going to leave each other again.”
They eloped and were married in the city clerk’s office on a Tuesday afternoon in 1996. Their honeymoon was a day at Coney Island. His family got over being upset; hers remained estranged.
The other night, Mr. Morales, now 53, sat near his wife’s coffin at a funeral home on St. Nicholas Avenue and discussed the days of a life that people around them had found amazing — the cooing and the squabbling, the midnight changes of adult diapers, the audacious rocking and rolling through the streets of New York.
“We used to race each other,” Mr. Morales said.
“She was real fast,” said Margie Laracuente, one of his sisters.
“Eddie would crash into the wall,” said Jackie Morales, a nephew.
Such emancipation was unthinkable when the couple were children. The youngest of eight, Edwin Morales was put around age 4 into Willowbrook, an infamous dungeon for the disabled on Staten Island. He almost never was moved from his bed. Older children were tied into chairs. By the time Senator Robert F. Kennedy visited in 1965 and publicly deplored the place, the Morales family had liberated Edwin.
“My parents kidnapped —” Ms. Laracuente began, then stopped to steal a quick glance around the funeral parlor. She continued in a whisper: “My mother had a friend with a van. We signed him out for a picnic on the grounds, and when we got there, pulled the van over, threw him in and never looked back. We were so scared the whole way.”
Mr. Morales’s problems fell under the broad description of cerebral palsy, which includes impairment to the nerves and muscles, and in his case, the withering of his right arm and both legs. It was during a long hospital stay for surgery that he met Noemi, who had similar conditions.
“She had straight black hair, like a Chinese doll,” he said. Over the next few years, they rode the same bus to the same school. Then their paths diverged.
“About five years later, she asked someone in the school for my number,” Mr. Morales said, “and she called to see how I was doing.”
They visited, had meals out, took in movies. “Little by little,” he said, “we fell in love.”
His sister Margie found an apartment for him. “My parents took great care of him, but they babied him,” she said. “He wanted to be on his own.”
After they were married, he and Ms. Morales got by on monthly Social Security checks. They had a home aide during the day but were on their own for the night. Noemi’s health problems made her dependent on her husband for the most basic things.
“Any woman would like to have a man like Edwin,” said Edith Henriquez, the family’s social worker. “He always made sure her lips were wet, that her hands were clean, that she got a drink.”
Dr. Gabrielle Goldberg, who took care of Ms. Morales at Mount Sinai Hospital, said: “Edwin is like a 10-year-old who tries to act like what he thinks a man should be. But he was doing it better than any man could.”
They went to the circus every year and had a memorable outing to a salsa concert at Madison Square Garden, and Mr. Morales ventured as far as Flushing, Queens, to cheer on the Mets. They watched videos of “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella,” and never missed a televised wrestling match. “Two hours before it came on, it was, ‘Hon, we got to get the snacks,’ ” Mr. Morales said. “She’d curse me out for something, and then, ‘Oh, hon?’ ”
As her health declined, Noemi announced that she wanted to be married in the Roman Catholic Church. By then, they were being seen by Dr. Ana T. Blohm of a visiting doctors program at Mount Sinai, a team that included a nurse, Colleen Buckshaw, and the social worker, Ms. Henriquez. They made actual house calls and solved problems. Ms. Henriquez set up a baptism, communion and confirmation for Edwin and then the wedding. Their home health aide, Mercedes Hernandez, stood as his godparent. A priest came to their apartment, in a housing project on the Upper West Side, and married them in a religious service in May 2008.
In the funeral parlor, Mr. Morales gave instructions. “Write this down: how much I thank and love them,” and he reeled off enough names to map a constellation.
On Thursday afternoon, at a cemetery in Hackensack, N.J., Mr. Morales sat in the warm autumn sunshine, surrounded by generations of the family that spirited him out of Willowbrook half a century ago. He wept.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/nyregion/bonded-in-love-and-disability-a-couple-keeps-a-promise-till-death.html?_r=2
The Guy Who Actually Saw It
A reader writes:
I hate how the media keeps referring to the guy who witnessed Sandusky raping the 10-year-old boy as a “grad student,” as if he was some meek academic. He is Mike McQueary, a former starting Penn State QB for two years. At the time he heard “slapping flesh that sounded sexual” in the locker room and witnessed a 10-year-old child being raped, McQueary was 28 years old and fit as hell, having only recently tried out for NFL teams. Yet he walked away from a 58-year-old naked man raping a child. To do what? To call his father to ask what to do because he was presumably more concerned about his career as a coach than saving a child.
Paterno is supposed to be this great builder of character in young men. McQueary’s conduct when faced with something real (versus simply football) and morally repugnant was to run away. An object lesson in the “greatness” of Paterno as a builder of character.
Another writes:
According to CNN, Mike McQueary “will be with the team on Saturday.” What??
Let me get this straight. The guy who actually WITNESSED THE ATTACK, and did nothing besides tell his boss, keeps his job. But his boss, Paterno, gets fired for … doing nothing besides tell his boss? What is the moral logic here? How on earth is McQueary still working there??
Another:
ESPN hosts were outraged that Assistant Coach McQueary is still on staff. My husband had an interesting take. Although he could have done more, he was the whistleblower that the Grand Jury report used as the basis for their indictments. Sacking the only staff member willing to say anything, even if it was just to Coach Paterno, in the first round of firings would send a chilling message to any future whistleblowers.
Posted on PSU’s website last night:
Due to multiple threats made against Assistant Coach Mike McQueary, the University has decided it would be in the best interest of all for Assistant Coach McQueary not to be in attendance at Saturday’s Nebraska game.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/the-guy-who-actually-saw-it.html
What Cain Says About Race, Ctd
A reader continues the conversation with Ross and another reader:
I think it has more to do with what Obama says about race. Or what Republicans are afraid he says about them and race. Every time he runs, they grab the nearest black conservative and throw him in front of the cameras as their proof that they aren’t racist. Think Alan Keyes in ’04, Michael Steele in ’08 (they didn’t have a black presidential candidate, so they settled for a black leader of their party), and now Herman Cain. None of these men were the best candidate for the jobs, but they were black and conservative, so they were called to duty.
Basically, without their realizing it, Barack Obama seems to have sold the GOP on affirmative action.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/what-cain-says-about-race-ctd.html
National Review: Cain Is More “Authentically Black” Than Obama
—By Adam Serwer
| Wed Nov. 9, 2011 9:00 AM PST
National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson has written the dumbest column of the year in defense of Herman Cain, marching out every possible cliché of right-wing victimhood, infantile racial identity politics, and gender stereotypes.
Beginning from the premise that Republicans suffer from sex scandals but Democrats don’t, Hanson mentions one Democrat who was impeached (Bill Clinton), another who resigned in disgrace (Eliot Spitzer), and another who is facing criminal charges over allegedly spending campaign funds to help hide his mistress (John Edwards).
Hanson would have you believe that Republicans George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, John McCain, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are supposed to envy these men for avoiding any real consequences for their transgressions. “Both supporters and detractors agree that Cain should know by now that alleged misdemeanors by Republican frontrunners are always more serious than known transgressions by Democratic rivals,” Hanson writes, having disproved his own argument. Presumably with a straight face, Hanson glibly mentions former segregationist Republican Strom Thurmond’s “wandering hands,” which is a euphemism for “former white supremacist who fathered a black child out of wedlock and managed to keep it a secret until after his death.”
Hanson goes on to suggest that sexual harassment is basically just casual tool for ambitious women who can’t get ahead by other means (“In my time as a student and a professor, I saw four or five ‘asymmetrical’ relationships in which much younger attractive graduate students made fools of aging nerdish professors, always to their own career advantage”). He reminds his readers that this may be another case of oversensitive women who can’t take a joke, like back in the good old Don Draper days (“The office coffee break with colleagues was now more explicit and yet more prudish than its 1950s counterpart—in the sense that almost no topic was taboo, and yet any careless flippant sexual remark could boomerang as a career-ending offense”). Then, assuming the alleged victims couldn’t be more excited to be reliving this experience, Hanson describes the allegations against Cain as comparable to a second bout of cancer (“For Cain, who at first seemed blindsided and defensive, the hysteria must seem like yet another round of toxic chemotherapy”).
But that’s not quite enough. No, Hanson, who like other Republicans has spent the last three years complaining that “the bigot card…is now not much more than a political ploy to win an argument through calumny when logic and persuasion have failed,” just goes ahead and says the whole thing is due to liberal racism. “Black authenticity, as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism, earns liberal unease,” reads an op-ed in National Review, the magazine that endorsed white supremacist terrorism as a means to stop Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. The real problem is that Herman Cain is really black, while Barack Obama is the kind of black that white people like:
Again, the comparison with Obama is volatile: Cain is authentically African-American and of an age to remember the Jim Crow South; Obama, the son of an elite Kenyan and a white graduate student, came of age as a Hawaiian prep-schooler, whose civil-rights credentials are academic. Cain’s lack of experience and seemingly embarrassing ignorance about the right of return or nuclear China are amplified by his unaffected style, whereas Obama’s similar gaffes (57 states) and buffoonery (inflating tires to preclude drilling for oil) are mitigated by metrosexual cool. After all, we live in an age when Herman Cain, with his black hat, his deep Southern cadences, and his ease among tea-party crowds, is suspect, whereas Barack Obama booms on about “millionaires and billionaires” while golfing, jetting to Martha’s Vineyard, and shaking down demonized corporate-jet owners at $35,000 a pop.
After attacking the Affordable Care Act as “reparations,” Wall Street Reform as “racial quotas,” higher marginal tax rates as the stuff of Zimbabwe tyrant Robert Mugabe, and watching the president forced to literally show the country his papers, it’s a little late for conservatives to start arguing the president isn’t “authentically black.” Of course, the assumption that it’s within Hanson’s authority to police whom black people accept as a member of the community is itself a noxious form of paternalism. His argument doesn’t actually work if white people don’t get to decide for black people what being black means. It is, perhaps, the first time ever that someone has argued that being “at ease” with white conservatives is proof of how authentically black you are, but you work with what you got.
The comparison between Cain and Obama isn’t so much “volatile” as it is flattering to conservatives who, having latched onto Cain as a racial alibi and an explanation for the fact that the party of Lincoln hasn’t broken 20 percent of the black vote since Richard Nixon, desperately need a symbolic figure of racial absolution. The only time conservatives aren’t using trite arguments about black authenticity as an explanation for ongoing racial disparities is when they’re relying on them to show everyone how well they understand the soul of the Negro. Hanson doesn’t bother to explain how it is that the overwhelming majority of black people haven’t discerned that Barack Obama is a fraud and that Herman Cain is the second coming of Marcus Garvey, but that’s because their “brainwashed” opinions don’t actually matter. The sole purpose of establishing Cain’s racial authenticity, premised as it is on Hanson’s rather limited view of what constitutes “the black experience,” is for Hanson to flatter himself and his ideological allies as racially enlightened.
Back in 2009, conservatives, including Hanson, accused Obama of offering a kind of racial absolution he could not provide. Now they’re demanding the same thing out of Herman Cain’s faltering candidacy, and they’re determined to get it even if the sexual assault and harassment allegations do what Cain’s complete lack of knowledge on public policy did not. As long as Cain can be portrayed as a martyr to librul racism, his candidacy can’t really be seen as a failure.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/national-review-cain-more-authentically-black-obama
11 Nov 2011 02:50 PM
What Is Authentic Blackness?
Victor Davis Hanson claims Cain is blacker than Obama:
Cain is authentically African-American and of an age to remember the Jim Crow South; Obama, the son of an elite Kenyan and a white graduate student, came of age as a Hawaiian prep-schooler, whose civil-rights credentials are academic. Cain’s lack of experience and seemingly embarrassing ignorance about the right of return or nuclear China are amplified by his unaffected style, whereas Obama’s similar gaffes (57 states) and buffoonery (inflating tires to preclude drilling for oil) are mitigated by metrosexual cool.
Seriously, what is it about this calm and reasonable man in the White House that prompts this unbounded contempt from so many on the right? Adam Serwer is furious:
Hanson doesn’t bother to explain how it is that the overwhelming majority of black people haven’t discerned that Barack Obama is a fraud and that Herman Cain is the second coming of Marcus Garvey, but that’s because their “brainwashed” opinions don’t actually matter. The sole purpose of establishing Cain’s racial authenticity, premised as it is on Hanson’s rather limited view of what constitutes “the black experience,” is for Hanson to flatter himself and his ideological allies as racially enlightened.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/what-is-authentic-blackness.html
Get the KLEENEX.
sob sob sob
I watched about 10 of those videos, and they get me everytime
November 11, 2011 3:35 PM
Romney eyes vouchers for veterans
By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney spent part of his Veterans’ Day in Maudlin, South Carolina, visiting with a dozen vets, and wandering into some dangerous policy waters.
Talking with the veterans about the challenge of navigating the Veterans Affairs bureaucracy to get their health care benefits after they leave active duty, Romney suggested a way to improve the system would be to privatize it.
“Sometimes you wonder, would there be some way to introduce some private sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose whether they want to go on the government system or the private system and then it follows them, like what happens with schools in Florida where they have a voucher that follows them, who knows.”
Even the most conservative Republicans rarely venture into privatizing veterans’ health care benefits. Last year, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado went there, but it was problematic enough that his campaign quickly walked it back.
And I wouldn’t be too surprised if Romney’s team does the same today.
In the meantime, Romney’s willingness to voucherize veterans’ care should be a pretty big deal. For the Washington Monthly, this has been a long-time area of interest — in 2005, we published a Philip Longman piece on V.A. hospitals called, “The Best Care Anywhere.”
As Longman explained at the time, “Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be ‘significantly better.’ … The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.”
Yes, the taxpayer-financed, government-run V.A. hospitals are some of the finest medical facilities in the country. That is, by the way, as it should be — men and women in uniform put their lives on the line for us, and providing them with world-class medical care and facilities is the least the country can do in return. In this case, it just so happens that world-class care comes in government-run facilities.
Romney, the Republican frontrunner, prefers to change this, and would apparently rather hand vets a voucher. Perhaps the inexperienced former one-term governor with no background on military policy hasn’t fully thought this through. For him to go this far on Veterans’ Day, of all days, seems remarkably tone deaf, even for him.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/romney_eyes_vouchers_for_veter033445.php
November 11, 2011 10:35 AM
Explaining to Mitch McConnell why better isn’t worse
By Steve Benen
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said something the other day that got me thinking. As part of a larger condemnation of President Obama’s handling of the economy, McConnell presented the Republican vision as best as he could:
“There’s no denying the fact that the policies of the past two and a half years have made a bad situation worse. For two and a half years the Democrats completely dominated this town. They got everything they wanted.
“And what happened? Unemployment has hovered around 8 percent for 32 months, the so-called Misery Index is worse than it’s been in 25 years, actually unemployment’s hovered around 9 percent, consumer confidence is at levels last seen during the height of the financial crisis, but if there’s one number that really stands out it’s this: 1.5 million. That’s the number of fewer jobs we now have in this country since the day President Obama signed his signature jobs bill into law.”
Anyone with even passing familiarity with the facts knows McConnell is either wrong or being deliberately misleading. Indeed, it’s hard to even know where to start.
We could mention that Democrats certainly didn’t “got everything they wanted.” We could point out that after President Obama “signed his signature jobs bill into law,” the job market immediately started getting better and the recession, as a technical matter, ended.
We could also try to help McConnell explain that a net decrease in jobs is unavoidable when one starts with an economy that’s fallen off a cliff. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. economy lost a combined, jaw-dropping total of 8.6 million jobs. If McConnell thinks that number can be replaced over the course of a couple of years, he’s a fool.
But the more I thought about this, the more I tried to think of the best way to help the confused Senate Minority Leader understand the larger circumstances. With that in mind, here’s a homemade chart I put together, showing private-sector job growth — Republicans say public-sector jobs don’t count, so for now, I’ll play by their rules — by year over the last two decades. The blue columns show annual totals under Democratic presidents; red columns show annual totals under Republican presidents.
Keep in mind, that column on the right shows 2011 to date, but there are still two months to go in the calendar year. If recent trends continue, we can expect to add more than 200,000 private-sector jobs to the total thus far. But even without the November and December totals, private-sector job growth in 2011 is already the strongest the U.S. economy has seen in five years. It will very likely be even stronger than the growth seen in the final year of the Clinton presidency.
(In case anyone’s curious, the overall annual totals are less impressive — spending cuts have led to massive public-sector layoffs — but 2011 is still the best year for jobs since 2006, even combining the public and private sectors.)
This is not to say it’s a great year to be celebrated; it’s not. Jobs are being added far too slowly, and this year’s totals only look encouraging because they’re compared to the previous Republican administration, which had a horrendous jobs record.
But the trend is pretty obvious. The economy had fallen off a cliff, and now it’s better than it was.
Now look again at the McConnell quote: “There’s no denying the fact that the policies of the past two and a half years have made a bad situation worse.”
In what universe does this claim make sense?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/explaining_to_mitch_mcconnell033431.php
November 11, 2011 12:35 PM
‘Personhood’ campaign planning next steps
By Steve Benen
In one of the week’s key highlights, voters in Mississippi soundly rejected a proposed “Personhood” amendment that would have banned abortions, birth control, in-vitro fertilization, stem-cell research, and treatment of ectopic pregnancies. To the surprise of nearly everyone, the results weren’t even close — opponents of the right-wing effort won 58% of the vote.
But those who thought the lopsided outcome in one of the nation’s most far-right states would dissuade related “Personhood” efforts were, alas, mistaken.
In Montana, Nevada and Florida, anti-abortion rights activists are still trying to get their measures on the 2012 ballot. In all three states, activists told their local newspapers they weren’t deterred by the Mississippi loss.
Florida activists will try to gather the 676,000 signatures they need to get an amendment on the ballot in 2014, but they’re woefully short; they have just 20,000 signatures so far. Montana activists need 48,674 signatures to get on the ballot in 2012, and Nevada’s anti-abortion group will begin collecting the 72,352 signatures they need by June 19 after a December court hearing on the language of the proposed amendment.
As of yesterday, a fourth “Personhood” measure was in the works in Alabama.
The prospect of one of these amendments actually passing is rather scary, though if proponents couldn’t get near a majority in Mississippi, in an off-year election cycle in which the Republican gubernatorial candidate — who supported the measure — cruised to an easy victory, then chances are, it’s going to fail just about everywhere.
But looking over the list of states where anti-abortion rights activists still hope to get this on the ballot, I can’t help but wonder if some Democrats might actually hope they succeed. After all, Montana, Nevada, and Florida will all hold key U.S. Senate races next year, and two of the three will be battleground states for the presidential race. I would imagine plenty of Democratic leaders would be delighted to give center-left voters some added incentive to show up at the polls on Election Day 2012.
If “Personhood” campaigns start collecting a lot more signatures all of sudden, don’t be too surprised if some of those petitions are filled with folks on the other side of the issue.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/personhood_campaign_planning_n033438.php
November 11, 2011 1:35 PM
A Crossroads GPS pattern emerges
By Steve Benen
It’s ironic that Karl Rove has been whining for months about President Obama’s re-election strategy. To hear Rove tell it, Obama won’t highlight his accomplishments, but rather, will run a relentlessly negative campaign, built on smears and distortions.
I believe there’s a field of study that refers to this as “projection.”
Rove’s attack operation, Crossroads GPS, has invested quite a bit of money of late in several new ads. The first spot blatantly lied to make it seem as if former President Bill Clinton disagrees with President Obama on tax policy. The second featured obviously bogus claims to smear Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts.
And the third, as Greg Sargent reports today, targets former Gov. Tim Kaine (D), running in a very competitive U.S. Senate race in Virginia.
The thrust of the ad — which is backed by a $600,000 buy — is that Kaine can’t be trusted to manage fiscal affairs. To buttress that case, the spot makes a series of claims about his tenure as Governor of Virginia and about his support for Obama’s stimulus.
For instance, the ad suggests that the stimulus spent $39 million on “office upgrades for politicians.” That sounds terribly wasteful! But this claim has already been thoroughly debunked — the last time Crossroads made it, in an ad in 2010. PolitiFact looked at the assertion and noted it was based on a project to renovate the Kansas State Capital, but concluded the money is not direct funding; instead it comes from a stimulus bond program to help local governments save money on capital projects. Politifact pronounced the claim “mostly false” — nearly a year ago. Crossroads is now airing it again anyway.
The new ad also claims that under Governor Kaine, Virginia ran “a big deficit.” But the Associated Press politely pointed out that the ad made this assertion “erroneously,” noting that the state constitution forbids finishing a “fiscal year with insufficient funds.”
Taken together, Crossroads has clearly put together a deliberately deceptive ad. Rove’s outfit hopes to fool voters with garbage, assuming they won’t know the difference.
It comes a year after Crossroads raised millions in secret donations to blanket the airwaves with other dishonest attack ads.
Now, I can appreciate why this seems like the ultimate in dog-bites-man stories. “Karl Rove’s loathsome operation? Lying in attack ads? You don’t say.”
But as Greg put it, “At risk of sounding terribly earnest, I’m going to continue to insist that it kind of matters that Crossroads GPS … is again blanketing airwaves across the country with millions of dollars in ads containing demonstrable falsehoods and distortions.”
And I’m going to join him in insisting the same thing. Crossroads GPS is lying. They’re getting caught, which only seems to encourage them to lie some more. Rove and his cohorts are going to raise an enormous amount of money from secret sources, and will use that money to try to buy an election cycle for Republicans, based on nothing but deception.
Mark Kleiman wrote a line several years ago that always stuck with me: “In politics, lying is cheating.”
That’s true, and it speaks to the character of those behind the Crossroads operation. The next question is what the political world will do about it. Will stations stop airing ads proven to be wrong? Will the political world start to consider “Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS” and “professional liars” to be synonyms?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/a_crossroads_gps_pattern_emerg033440.php
November 11, 2011 2:40 PM
Quote of the Day
By Steve Benen
For three decades, the gap between America’s rich and poor has been growing to Gilded Age extremes. It’s an unhealthy development when wealth is concentrated this heavily.
But in Michigan, Clark Durant, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, believes the wealth gap should be … even worse.
In regards to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Durant said the protesters should “go find a job.” In regards to the wealth gap the movement decries, Durant said, “I think it should be wider.”
Keep in mind, Michigan hasn’t exactly had it easy in recent years. Indeed, few states have been hit harder by the economy.
But there’s a GOP candidate, not only declaring his disinterest in class inequality, but actually stating his desire out loud to see the wealth gap widen.
If Durant wins is on the ballot in 2012, expect to see this quote again.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/quote_of_the_day_20033442.php
Why #4MoreYears Should Be #OccupyWallStreet’s Top Goal
I have been asked why I haven’t written praiseworthy articles about the Occupy Wall Street movement in this country. It’s certainly a phenomenon that seems to have captured a lot of minds and attention, and focused their grievances on the financial sector that brought our country to the verge of calamity. So in that sense, protesting them is a good thing, and that’s what the OWS people are doing, right? Yes, and that’s a good thing. I, however, am someone more interested in solutions – to be specific, public policy solutions. I’m all for making the lives of bankers difficult, but I am more for making the tricks they used to ruin our economy impossible in the future.
OWS’ website sports the “We Are the 99 Percent” blog, where people participating in this movement are telling their stories. So I decided to take a look and see how their grievances have been addressed (or not addressed) by President Obama, given OWS’ aversion to the president and his party in general too. Usually, I wouldn’t give away the conclusion before presenting the case, but in this case it is pretty clear: people seem to be unaware of the things that a Democratic administration has done to address their specific issues, and equally ambivalent about what the Republican party has done to make their lives worse.
Let’s look at a few of these. (All images taken from OWS/We are the 99 percent.)
This is a great example of expressing grievances without acknowledging solutions. This man is 25, on his parents’ insurance, and so if he were a year older, he would not be able to have that. But what made it possible for him to be on his parents’ health insurance plan right now? Oh, right. Obamacare. And President Obama’s health reform will ensure that by 2014, he is eligible for Medicaid even as a single adult, if his income remains low, or for another plan through his state’s exchange with subsidies and at an affordable rate. There is no apparent knowledge of that fact here – let alone any willingness to acknowledge it. Before making the blanket statement statement that “our health care system is irreparably damaged”, perhaps one ought to look at what has been done to repair it.
Here is another heartbreaking health care story:
Whose heart wouldn’t go out to a daughter’s cry for her mother – a mom who raised her kids and lost her battle to a disease, thanks to our broken health care system? It reminds me of someone else who saw his mom die struggling and fighting with her insurance company while suffering from an incurable disease. This mom’s name was Ann Stanley Dunham, the single mom who raised a man named Barack Obama. And her son made a pledge – that if he had the chance, he would make sure no one again has to go through what his mom had to go through. To answer this daughter’s cry cannot be just to demonstrate. It has to be to act, to legislate. What would happen to this person’s mom if she were able to get insurance through health reform under president Obama?
It truly is sad to see a veteran – who has given our country so much – be in such dire stress. But once again, let’s see where leadership on this is coming from. President Obama signed into law last year the Veterans Benefits Act, which:
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/11/why-4moreyears-should-be.html
ESPNU’s ‘The Battle’ a Real-Life ‘Drumline’ on TV
Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 6:40 am
By: Tonya Pendleton, BlackAmericaWeb.com
We love our black marching bands. What would black college football be without those high-stepping majorettes and the rhythmic drumlines and horn sections that make such glorious spectacles of the HBCU experience?
Well, if you didn’t attend a black college and have never been to a black college football game, you have your chance to check it out starting tonight on ESPN’s five-part series “The Battle,” which starts at 6:30 p.m. on ESPNU. Think of it as a real-life version of “Drumline.” The show follows the famed Grambling State University Tiger marching band from training camp to the Bayou Classic, where the band and its football team take on rival Southern University.
“A large majority of HBCU football fans take as much pride in the marching band halftime performance as the other four quarters of play that surround it,” said ESPNU vice president Rosalyn Durant. “As the home for college sports, we take pride in providing the content that our sports fans crave, and ‘The Battle’ is a continuation of that commitment.”
Director/producer Roger Bobb, who started his film career as Tyler Perry’s top executive at Tyler Perry studios, has since ventured out on his own with Bobbcat Films. This is one of the company’s first projects.
Bobb says he’s very gratified to bring the story of life on an HBCU campus to television, especially when it highlights the commitment of the students who play in a competitive band like the one at Grambling. (Some of you may remember that in 2006, BET did a short-lived reality show, “Season of the Tiger,” on the Grambling Tigers drumline as well.)
“We show what life is like going to an HBCU and, two, what life is really like in an HBCU marching band: The blood, sweat and tears and dedication that it takes. Some of them are on scholarships, and some are not, but they all still have to perform,” Bobb told RollingOut.com.
Bobb had to perform during his years with Perry, producing 11 movies and over 300 TV episodes in six years. He has nothing but good things to say about his former boss, telling RollingOut.com that working with Perry was like a “film school,” for him, although he did also attend an actual film school. Bobb is currently shooting an urban comedy and has a few reality shows on tap, including a cooking show with David and Tamela Mann of “Meet the Browns.”
He told the AJC.com’s film and TV blogger Rodney Ho that working with Perry prepared him for success.
“I learned several things from just watching him,” Bobb said. “Have faith and confidence in yourself. Work hard. And know your audience. He’s the hardest working person I’ve ever encountered – besides myself.”
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/entertainment/gossip/34395
USNS Medgar Evers to be christened
Widow says ship’s naming ended worry over his recognition
When the Navy ship named after Medgar Evers made a test launch last week in San Diego, his widow wept.
“When that ship hit that water, I just boohooed,” said Myrlie Evers-Williams. “I just cried.”
On Saturday, she will christen the 689-foot dry cargo ship, smashing a bottle of champagne against the hull. It is the first Navy ship in history named after a leader from the modern civil rights movement.
The entire Evers family is expected to attend, including Evers’ brother, Charles, who took over as the Mississippi NAACP’s top leader after his brother’s June 12, 1963, assassination.
I think it’s one of the greatest things,” he said. “I’m proud of our former governor, Ray Mabus.”
Mabus, now the nation’s Navy secretary, named the ship. He served as Mississippi’s governor from 1988 to 1992.
“Medgar Evers sacrificed his life to help America redeem the promise of our Declaration of Independence,” he said. “This class of ships is named for pioneers and explorers, those who have pushed past boundaries, and Medgar Evers was just such a civil rights pioneer. His life and this ship stand as a testament to our commitment to freedom and full democratic rights for all.”
Myrlie Evers-Williams thanked Mabus for keeping his promise more than 20 years ago to honor her husband in some way.
“When he was governor, little did I know he would carry this out,” she said. “I am so grateful to him making this possible.”
By naming a ship after her late husband, Mabus “has set me free,” she said. “It set me free in terms of worrying about Medgar being recognized.”
The USNS Medgar Evers is the 13th of the 14 Navy dry cargo ships built by General Dynamics NASSCO.
As soon as the ship hit the water, Evers-Williams said she thought, “You go, baby,” she said. “It was so powerful and dignified. All these words describe Medgar, and no one can take it away. God, his spirit’s got to be smiling.
“It was like a beautiful eagle that had been caged up all this time, and this bird had not forgotten how to fly. It was huge, strong and beautiful. It was like Medgar’s spirit had been released,” she said.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20111110/NEWS/111100349/1001/RSS01
Newt Gingrich overtakes Herman Cain, McClatchy-Marist poll say
Another data point to show that Newt Gingrich really is on the upswing, this time from the McClatchy-Marist poll:
— Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, 23 percent;
Continue Reading
—Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, 19 percent;
—Cain, the former restaurant executive, 17 percent;
—Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, 10 percent;
—Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, 8 percent;
—Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, 5 percent;
—Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, 1 percent;
—Former Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah, 1 percent
It’s too soon to say that Gingrich is experiencing a Cain-like surge, or that Cain is experiencing a Perry-like collapse, but there’s clearly movement in progress and Gingrich is the candidate who looks like he’s trending up.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68152.html#ixzz1dQSV49vp
good morning
Morning, Dannie!
How U B?
Judist Priest is a glorious way to start the day at 3CHICS. Thank you, SG2.
Coffee: http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/files/5005/4324331/coffee-cup-01.jpg
MMMM…Thank you much! I can use a good cup of coffee!
Good Morning, Chicas, Friends & Visitors!
Happy FRY-day! :)
11/11/11
Happy FRY-day, SG2 & Everyone! :-)
Inspiration for today
hi everyone :)