O come, O come, Emmanuel is a translation of the Latin text (“Veni, veni, Emmanuel“) by John Mason Neale and Henry Sloane Coffin[1][2] in the mid-19th century. It is a metrical version of a collation of various Advent Antiphons (the acrostic O Antiphons), which now serves as a popular Advent and Christmas hymn. Its origins are unclear, it is thought that the antiphons are from at least the 8th Century, but “Veni, veni Emmanuel” may well be 12th Century in origin.[3][4] The text is based on the biblical prophecy from Isaiah 7:14 that states that God will give Israel a sign that will be called Immanuel (Lit.: God with us). Matthew 1:23 states fulfillment of this prophecy in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth
This song is so beautiful, so holy. I bow down before his presence.
In a Sunday roundtable discussion on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Norquist issued a warning to President Barack Obama.
“Tea party two is going to dwarf tea party one if Obama pushes us off the cliff,” Norquist said. “Let’s not pretend who’s pushing us over the cliff.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/02/grover-norquist-tea-party_n_2228610.html?ref=topbar
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A Power Lunch
Posted on 12/02/2012 at 2:21 pm by Mr. Brink
When Mitt Romney met with President Obama last Thursday, I couldn’t help but wonder what they could possibly talk about. After all, they have nothing in common, really. Mitt Romney is busy overseeing the construction of his La Jolla beach house’s car elevator, and President Obama is overseeing the entire world and all that it entails. Even having to sit down and listen to Mitt Romney’s great ideas again for repealing Obamacare, or cutting Mitt Romney’s taxes so he can afford some decent hair jelly.
But something else began to emerge in just this one photograph:
The symbolism is everywhere. From the binder on the empty desk that may or may not be full of women– to the red boxing gloves hanging in the room where the two men lunched on “White Turkey Chili and Southwestern grilled chicken salad.”
Mitt Romney’s whole campaign was filled with racist dog whistles and appeals to fear and ignorance. They still show no signs of introspect, with Mitt Romney repeating the line that “gifts” and “goodies” were the reason the American people re-elected Barack Obama.
So, if president Obama asked Mitt Romney, “how do you like your White turkey chili?” I hope Mitt Romney replied, “needs pepper, Mr. President.”
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/12/a-power-lunch.html
David! David! The charmer!
Republicans Go To Obama School
At Harvard, GOP staffers sit at Axelrod’s feet. “We weren’t even running in the same race.”
Demoralized Republicans arrived in Boston Wednesday night for a rare moment in American politics: They came to learn from Democrats.
Barack Obama’s campaign schooled Mitt Romney’s in November, something of which the Republicans who gathered at the quadrennial, off-the-record Harvard Institute of Politics Campaign Managers Conference were intensely aware. And while the proceedings of the event are under embargo until the institute releases audio transcripts of the proceedings, some participants shared their reactions.
“We got our butts kicked, so I’m going to school,” said the manager of one 2012 Republican presidential campaign on his way into the sessions on Thursday morning, held in a cozy university conference space.
………………………………………………………………
When it was the Obama team’s turn to discuss their strategy, the room was packed with Republicans.
Rarely has it been as obvious as it was in 2012 that one side has fallen badly behind on the technology and techniques of politics. From the basic communications tool of mass email to the vital new frontier of big political data, the Obama campaign’s strategy and tactics have drawn a level of excitement that is, among political professionals at least, notably greater than the excitement around the candidate’s message or his hard-won victory.
Romney’s entire team gathered for the early morning session at Harvard, even those who weren’t on the panel, in what appeared to be a deliberate effort to keep poisonous post-mortem finger-pointing to a minimum. Romney’s campaign chairman and frequent campaign trail sidekick Bob White, and Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser and the campaign’s mascot, sat opposite to the other Romney aides away from the tables arranged in a rectangle.
But the hot ticket at Harvard was the late-morning session in the same — now packed-to-the-brim — conference room, to hear seven top Obama aides to revisit their winning efforts.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/republicans-go-to-obama-school
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275404525425287168/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275391312059060224/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275386106948767744/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275388435987054592/photo/1
A GOLDEN couple…
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275384711738712064/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275382711051505664/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275381371768303616/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275380500263231488/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/275378568207421441/photo/1
Web extra: Thomas Jefferson and slavery
December 1, 2012 12:16 PM
Jon Meacham, author of “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” discusses in this extended interview clip for “Sunday Morning” how the Founding Father fought against the practice of slavery even as he himself owned slaves.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136220n&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CbsNewsTheEarlyShowParenting+(CBS+News%3A+The+Early+Show%3A+Parenting)
No matter how these white men write about the gestures of the FOUNDING FATHERS, if you owned slaves, you owned slaves, if you slept with and had sex with the slaves, you were a RAPIST. You took these women knowing that you had power over them. If they laid there and let you take them, it was to save their lives or the lives of their families.
Love this dress! Oh yeah!
Loving this ensem., especailly the blouse and skirt.
the heel on the boot kills…outside of that….this is fierce.
Isn’t it tho? The heels on the black shoes is much too much.
Just saw the movie, “Life of Pi.” Deep. Must see.
I must check it out.
President Obama Speaks at the Kennedy Center Honors Reception
Now Streaming…
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/president-obama-speaks-kennedy-center-honors-reception
Goodie! Just in time to watch. Thanks for the link.
In Lew of Rahm
by BooMan
Sun Dec 2nd, 2012 at 10:33:16 AM EST
While there are some surface similarities, it seems like Rahm Emanuel and Jake Lew could hardly be more different in their personalities. I have never been a fan of Rahm, but I never thought he was the devil, either. As a general matter, I am more comfortable with Lew as the president’s chief of staff because I think he and I are closer politically than I ever was to Emanuel. And, while I appreciate Emanuel’s salty style and willingness to pound his desk, I prefer the “no drama” style of the president and Mr. Lew.
There is one part of this article that really irritated me. Here it is:
An agreement by year’s end could lead to a long-term deficit reduction plan, helping Mr. Obama live up to his promise to bring both parties together and sealing Mr. Lew’s reputation as the master of the Washington budget deal. But if the talks fail, Mr. Obama might be remembered as the president who could not break partisan gridlock in Washington, and Mr. Lew could wind up with a blot on his nearly impeccable record.
Barack Obama is not going to be remembered as the president who brought both parties together. He is going to be remembered as the president who took the Republicans’ best shots and then kicked their asses up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. This isn’t because he didn’t try to change the tone in Washington. It’s because his efforts to reach out were met with calls for his birth certificate and because his Heritage Foundation-inspired health care plan was called socialism and demonized. The president moved into the White House and discovered that the Republican Party had gone stark-raving mad. It took him a while to come to terms with that, but he now treats the GOP the same way any sane person treats a rabid dog.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/12/2/103316/116
Sun Dec 02, 2012 at 07:02 AM PST.
Geithner Draws line in sand: No Rate hikes for 2% = No Fiscal Deal. Also, SS off table! (**Video)
by zizi
If there was any doubt that the Obama administration means business about the Bush Tax cuts expiring on incomes over $250,000, here’s news: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner just drew a distinct line in the sand: No rate hikes no Deal. Period.
Treasury Department✔
@USTreasury
Sec Geithner on @meetthepress: “Only thing standing in the way” of a deal is R refusal to accept rates have to go up on the wealthiest
Geithner made the Sunday-coddle-Repubs shows (ABC, FOX, NBC, CNN) and said explicitly that the Obama administration’s recent offer to Congress was balanced and the fiscally responsible thing to do. He insisted that there HAD to be rate hikes (not some fancy accounting gimmick) on the top 2% before the WH would consider any deal.
Here’s the video from CNN State of the Union (N.B. there’s an ad preceding the actual interview)
http://youtu.be/FJ-ODb7Hz-c
In the interview with Candy Crowley, Giethner reiterated the Administration’s position that any adverse consequence of the fiscal deal falling through would land squarely on the heads of the Republicans
If they are going to force higher rates on virtually all Americans because they’re unwilling to let tax rates go up on 2 percent of Americans, then, I mean that’s the choice they’re going to have to make
Money quote:
Candy Crowley…They’ve (Republicans) said no to increasing rates
Geithner: But they know this…there’s not gonna be an agreement without rates going up
Crowley: You’ll go off the fiscal cliff if the republicans say sorry there’s no way we’re gonna raise rates on the wealthy, you guys are gonna go off the cliff?
Geithner: If Republicans are not willing to let rates go back up (on the 2%) and we think they should go back to the Clinton levels when the American economy did exceptionally well, then there will NOT be an agreement
Geithner also rejected Boehner’s & McConnells spurious charge that the WH did not put forward any “serious” offer. He said the $600 billion in new spending cuts plus the substantial cuts negotiated in the 2011 debt ceiling deal, plus automatic cuts kicking in at the end of this year added up to “a very substantial packet of reforms”
He also defended the $50 billion mini-stimulus for infrastructure spending as affordable and a “modest investment in making this country stronger.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/02/1166592/-Geithner-Draws-line-in-sand-No-Rate-hikes-for-2-No-Deal
The Monster of Monticello
THOMAS JEFFERSON is in the news again, nearly 200 years after his death — alongside a high-profile biography by the journalist Jon Meacham comes a damning portrait of the third president by the independent scholar Henry Wiencek. We are endlessly fascinated with Jefferson, in part because we seem unable to reconcile the rhetoric of liberty in his writing with the reality of his slave owning and his lifetime support for slavery. Time and again, we play down the latter in favor of the former, or write off the paradox as somehow indicative of his complex depths. Neither Mr. Meacham, who mostly ignores Jefferson’s slave ownership, nor Mr. Wiencek, who sees him as a sort of fallen angel who comes to slavery only after discovering how profitable it could be, seem willing to confront the ugly truth: the third president was a creepy, brutal hypocrite. Contrary to Mr. Wiencek’s depiction, Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery, and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of blacks, slave or free. His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience.
There is, it is true, a compelling paradox about Jefferson: when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, announcing the “self-evident” truth that all men are “created equal,” he owned some 175 slaves. Too often, scholars and readers use those facts as a crutch, to write off Jefferson’s inconvenient views as products of the time and the complexities of the human condition. But while many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution — inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration — Jefferson did not. Over the subsequent 50 years, a period of extraordinary public service, Jefferson remained the master of Monticello, and a buyer and seller of human beings. Rather than encouraging his countrymen to liberate their slaves, he opposed both private manumission and public emancipation. Even at his death, Jefferson failed to fulfill the promise of his rhetoric: his will emancipated only five slaves, all relatives of his mistress Sally Hemings, and condemned nearly 200 others to the auction block. Even Hemings remained a slave, though her children by Jefferson went free.
Nor was Jefferson a particularly kind master. He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even at the time. A proponent of humane criminal codes for whites, he advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free blacks. Known for expansive views of citizenship, he proposed legislation to make emancipated blacks “outlaws” in America, the land of their birth. Opposed to the idea of royal or noble blood, he proposed expelling from Virginia the children of white women and black men.Jefferson did worry about the future of slavery, but not out of moral qualms. After reading about the slave revolts in Haiti, Jefferson wrote to a friend that “if something is not done and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children.” But he never said what that “something” should be. In 1820 Jefferson was shocked by the heated arguments over slavery during the debate over the Missouri Compromise. He believed that by opposing the spread of slavery in the West, the children of the revolution were about to “perpetrate” an “act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.html?smid=tw-share
That title is so apropos. Jefferson was a filthy RAPIST.
John Meechum and Henry Wiencek wereon CBS this morning. One of Jefferson’s many offspring with Sally Hemings.
http://youtu.be/FJ-ODb7Hz-c
http://twitter.com/Creoleleo/status/275243507189424128/photo/1
NYT: When President Obama was locked in painful spending negotiations with House Republicans last spring, his exceedingly meticulous budget director, Jacob J. Lew, went to the Oval Office to propose some complex budget changes. As Mr. Lew delved deeper and deeper into the numbers, Mr. Obama put up his hand, signaling him to stop.
“Jack, it’s fine,” the president said, according to Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s economics adviser, who witnessed the exchange. “I trust your values. I trust your judgment on this.”
Today Mr. Lew is the White House chief of staff (and on the shortlist to become the next Treasury secretary), and Mr. Obama has entrusted him with an even bigger task: guiding the White House through potentially treacherous negotiations with Congressional Republicans to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts on Jan. 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/politics/obamas-aide-jacob-lew-is-a-low-key-power-broker.html?ref=politics&_r=0
http://youtu.be/hCXpWcNT5bo
Love this.
http://youtu.be/RPYMaF2vAmg
http://youtu.be/AOrZZvKIpGk
Private jets line up at Logan as Romney backers arrive in Boston for election night party
Private jets were streaming into Boston’s Logan International Airport Tuesday afternoon, officials said, as Mitt Romney’s well-heeled supporters arrived for his post-election party in the Seaport District.
Edward Freni, director of aviation for Logan, said an unusually large number of Gulfstream corporate jets were looking to park at the airport by late afternoon on election day. Logan had accommodated 80 of them by 4:30 p.m., roughly double the 40 to 50 it sees on a typical day, he said.
Freni said the staff was trying to “shoehorn these planes in,” making room for them to park after filling up the usual spaces for about 60 of the luxury, long-range 12-seaters. Once they hit 85, he said, any other arrivals will have to drop off their passengers and head to Hanscom Field in Bedford.
http://www.boston.com/businessupdates/2012/11/06/private-jets-line-logan-romney-backers-arrive-boston/2Ol3ROMXhLU5Ppd2NOPDMN/story.html
A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House bid
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-detached-romney-tends-wounds-in-seclusion-after-failed-white-house-bid/2012/12/01/4305079a-38a9-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html
SAN DIEGO — The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning now without a plan.
Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla, a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending out regular updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and wondering what if.
BYE BOY!
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, everyone!
Good Afternoon, Everyone at 3CHICS!