Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree is a Christmas song written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958 on Decca9-30776.
Although Decca released it in both 1958 and again in 1959, it did not sell well until Lee became a popular star in 1960; that Christmas season, it hit #14 on the Billboard pop chart and turned into a perennial holiday favorite. It continued to sell well during the holiday season, hitting #5 on the Christmas chart as late as 1984. Brenda Lee’s recording still receives a great deal of airplay. Despite the song’s title, its instrumentation also fits the Country genre which Brenda Lee more fully embraced as her career evolved. Despite her mature-sounding voice, she recorded this song when she was only 14 years old. The recording featured Hank Garland’s ringing guitar. For decades, Brenda Lee’s recording was the only notable version of the song. Radio stations ranging from Top 40 to Adult Contemporary to Country Music to Oldies to even Adult Standards played this version.
FLASHBACK! Oh yes, Olivia Pope did tell Prez Fitz she’s beginning to feel a lil “Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings.”
Thu Dec 06, 2012 at 01:18 PM PST.
CNN Discovers “Mr. Charlie” and the Black Agency of Sister Rosa Parks
by chaunceydevega
In 2011, Rosa Parks was in the news, six years after her death. An excerpt from a breathtaking essay she wrote in the 1950s about a “near rape” by a white man in Alabama was released to the public. The handwritten narrative detailed Parks’ steely resistance to a white man, “Mr. Charlie,” who attempted to assault her in 1931 while she was working as a domestic for a white family.
It was late evening when “Mr. Charlie” pushed his way into the house and tried to have sex with her. Having grown up in the segregated South, she knew all too well the special vulnerabilities black women faced. She recalled, for example, how her great-grandmother, a slave, had been “mistreated and abused” by her white master.
Despite her fear, she refused to let the same thing happen to her. “I knew that no matter what happened,” she wrote, “I would never yield to this white man’s bestiality.” “I was ready to die,” she said, “but give my consent, never. Never, never.” Parks was absolutely defiant: “If he wanted to kill me and rape a dead body,” she said, “he was welcome, but he would have to kill me first.”
Does that sound like the Rosa Parks we know?
I wonder how many readers of the above story at CNN, that are not privy to black vernacular speech, are wondering who “Mr. Charlie” is?
There are lies, necessary lies, noble lies, and big lies. Sometimes lies are told with the best of intentions. At other times, lies are pernicious both in intent and consequence. At times, entire peoples believe a lie. It motivates their sense of national identity, citizenship, and purpose: American exceptionalism is one such example.
Myths are a type of lie that can combine all of the above traits. For example, the debate around Spielberg’s Lincoln (which merits further discussion this week) involves a myth surrounding a legendary president, the agency of black people in seeking their own freedom, and how various public(s) are invested in the white savior narrative.
Myths should be debunked when we are adults and mature critical thinkers. To point. CNN has a short piece on elder goddess Sister Rosa Parks that pulls aside the curtain of lies surrounding her legacy, and exposes the facile story we tell little children and naive lay people about Parks’ tired feet and a public bus.
In all, the Rosa Parks fable is the Santa Claus story of the Civil Rights Movement. Just as with Lincoln, the real story of the Black Freedom Struggle and activists such as Parks, King, Rustin, Randolph, Williams, and many others involves people making choices–to participate or not–in a grand struggle for justice.
Here, Black agency matters. Black agency also scares and upsets people on both sides of the colorline.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/06/1167780/–CNN-Discovers-Mr-Charlie-and-the-Black-Agency-of-Sister-Rosa-Parks
Reminder: Obama has already agreed to big spending cuts
Posted by Jamelle Bouie on December 6, 2012 at 11:22 am
President Obama’s proposal on the fiscal cliff was notable for its lack of spending cuts — at most, he offered $400 billion in unspecified reductions to Medicare, while also asking for more spending on stimulus, unemployment insurance, and temporary payroll tax cuts. The Republican response, of course, was incredulity: “The Democrats have yet to get serious about real spending cuts,” said House Speaker John Boehner last week, “No substantive progress has been made in the talks between the White House and the House over the last two weeks.”
Obama has continued to hold to his initial proposal, and likewise, Republicans refuse to consider a package that doesn’t contain more spending cuts. Here’s what Boehner said during yesterday’s press conference:
“We have got to cut spending and I believe it is appropriate to put revenues on the table,” Boehner told reporters on Wednesday. “Now, the revenues that we are putting on the table are going to come from guess who? The rich.”
This sounds reasonable — it is supposed to be a “deal,” after all — until you realize that there’s an important piece of context missing. Namely, that Democrats have already agreed to big spending cuts.
With last year’s Budget Control Act — which resolved the debt ceiling crisis, and set the stage for the “fiscal cliff” — President Obama agreed to cut discretionary spending by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. If you split defense spending — which accounts for $600 billion in savings — from that total, you’re left with $900 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, accomplished by an across-the-board cap on appropriations.
What’s more, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, this cap is based on 2010 funding levels, which weren’t pumped up by the stimulus (“increases in discretionary funding under the Recovery Act are 2009 appropriations,” even if the money wasn’t spent until the following year).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/06/reminder-obama-has-already-agreed-to-big-spending-cuts/
Michael Tomasky on the Ridiculousness of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio
Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio recently laid out a vision for the GOP’s future. Too bad it shows Republicans have learned nothing at all from their historic trouncing on Election Day.
by Michael Tomasky Dec 6, 2012 4:45 AM EST
So we saw Tuesday night the unveiling of the “new” Republican Party at the Jack Kemp Foundation dinner. The two young stars spoke, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Politico gave it a big write up, noting how many times Ryan mentioned the word “poverty” and how many times Rubio said “middle class.” One can see already that the media is going to hype these two and their supposed new thinking relentlessly. Is there anything to the hype? Of course not, and the reason is simple. Neither they nor the people they’re talking to are ready to accept that they’ve been wrong about anything except messaging, and until they are, this is just gaseous rhetoric
he rhetoric, I admit, they’ve got down. No 53 percenters, these two! They love everybody. The GOP, Ryan said in his speech, knows how to talk to the “risk-takers.” But unlike Mitt Romney, he sees that “there is another part of the American creed: when our neighbors are struggling, we look out for one another. We do that best through our families and communities—and our party must stand for making them stronger. We have a compassionate vision based on ideas that work—but sometimes we don’t do a good job of laying out that vision. We need to do better.”
Rubio went so far in his remarks as to mimic liberal economic belief, sounding not too unlike Barack Obama at certain moments: “The emergence of a strong, vibrant, and growing 21st-century American middle class is the answer to the most pressing challenges we face. Millions of Americans with jobs that pay more means more buyers for our products, more customers for our businesses, and more taxpayers for our governments. The more they spend, the more jobs they create for others…” And so on. You get the picture. There’s an implicit rejection of supply-side theology in there, which I doubt would have made old Mr. Kemp very happy
On both went, about education, opportunity, the working poor, student loans. Rubio even offered one or two … well, they could be called policies, or inklings of policies. But here’s what neither man came close to doing.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/06/michael-tomasky-on-the-ridiculousness-of-paul-ryan-and-marco-rubio.html
President Obama,Michelle & their daughters enjoying the concert during the 90th National Christmas Tree Lighting
Ah, I get it now. Just saw J.C. Watts on Hardball..
Voter suppression is just speculation?!!! WTF
Look who’s up for a GRAMMY!
Michelle Obama’s Grammy Nod: The Beekeeper Gets Credit, Too!, She Says
By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall
12/06/2012 at 05:45 PM EST
Her husband already has two Grammys on the shelf, but for First Lady Michelle Obama, her first nomination is still an honor – one for which she shares the credit.
Mrs. Obama, who is nominated in the spoken-word category for her book American Grown, says in a statement to PEOPLE: “This nomination is such an honor not just for me, but for everybody who contributed to the garden and the audio book, from the National Parks Service employees to our White House chefs to our beekeeper.”
The book – part gardening how-to, part cookbook, part White House history – is, “So close to my heart because it tells the story of our White House Kitchen Garden and gardens all around the country,” she says, “as well as what Americans are doing to make sure our kids are growing up healthy.”
No official word on whether Mrs. Obama will attend the glittery music-awards ceremony in February (her husband never did; neither did Hillary or Bill Clinton when their audiobooks won), but the First Lady says she hopes the nomination alone “keeps the conversation going about how we can all work together to ensure a healthy future for all our nation’s children.”
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20654182,00.html
The Morning Plum: A way out of the impasse?
Posted by Greg Sargent on December 6, 2012 at 8:56 am
Here’s the GOP’s predicament right now: Conservatives won’t tolerate any action that extends just the middle class tax cuts without also extending the tax cuts for the rich. That’s because it would mean a tax hike on the top two percent, which is so intolerable that it must be opposed even if it means denying a tax cut to the other 98 percent. But Dems won’t allow Republicans to do anything other than extend just the middle class tax cuts, and will let all the tax cuts expire if necessary.
That leaves Republicans with a difficult choice. Either they agree to continue just the middle class tax cuts (a nonstarter for conservatives) or the middle class tax cuts lapse (a nonstarter for the American public for which they will be blamed).
Today, however, it looks as if top GOP aides have hit on a possible way out — a way Republicans can allow an extension of the middle class tax cuts while simultaneously opposing it. They tell the Post’s Lori Montgomery:
The Republican-controlled House could adopt two competing bills. One, supported primarily by Republicans, would extend the expiring low tax rates for all households, including the rich. The second, supported primarily by Democrats, would extend the current low rates only on income less than $250,000 a year, allowing rates for the wealthy to increase. Both measures would go to the Democratic-controlled Senate, which would then pass only the Democratic bill.
So Republicans get to go on record supporting tax cuts for the rich — sorry, tax cuts for everyone. Then they get to vote against extending just the middle class tax cuts, but that passes anyway, thanks to House Dems. The second measure passes the Senate. The middle class keeps its taxes low; the taxes on the rich expire with Republicans on record against it; the GOP regroups to fight again next year. Problem solved, right?
Here’s where it gets complicated, however — and potentially very revealing about the true nature of GOP priorities. It will be very interesting indeed to see if conservatives and Republicans are willing to support this scenario. After all, simply by holding these two votes, Republicans would be willingly adopting a procedure that allows taxes to go up on the rich but not on everyone else (even as they vote against this outcome). Since this is supposed to be resisted at all costs, you may see a situation where even this two-vote solution is deemed unacceptable to conservatives. Indeed, it wouldn’t be surprising if this solution is labeled a “tax hike”! If so, it will reveal yet again how high a priority keeping taxes low on the wealthy remains for them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/06/the-morning-plum-a-way-out-of-the-impasse/
Dem unity forces McConnell to filibuster his own proposal
Posted by Greg Sargent on December 6, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Mitch McConnell, in an effort to bluff Democrats, today demanded a straight up or down vote on a measure that would give the President the authority to raise the debt ceiling. According to Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff, the GOP calculation was that some Dems would vote against it, proving Dem disunity on the debt ceiling.
But then the maneuver backfired, forcing McConnell to filibuster the proposal he’d previously wanted subjected to a straight vote:
The minority leader apparently did not think Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would take him up on his offer, which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Barack Obama’s desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senate staff reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea.
McConnell was forced to say no.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/06/dem-unity-forces-mcconnell-to-filibuster-his-own-proposal/
Ametia,
HOT Scandal preview:
‘Scandal’ – ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ Exclusive Sneak Peek
http://on.aol.com/video/scandal—happy-birthday–mr–president-exclusive-sneak-peek-517572212
Damn! Those two chemistry is COMBUSTIBLE. Thanks for the preview, Rik.
http://youtu.be/6Q0R1nybuwM
Our First Family at the WH Christmas Tree Lighting 2011
The Michelle Obama Look Book 2012
By Ally Betker
.
Michelle Obama has brought bright colors and pretty prints to the style forefront this year, and with Barack’s reelection campaign underway, there’s sure to be plenty more MObama fashion moments in 2012. Peruse her outfits from 2008 to 2009, 2010, and 2011, then click through the slideshow to see our growing collection of the First Lady’s looks.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/01/michelle-obama-look-book-2012.html
http://youtu.be/YAkvDOz_DN0
BWA HA HA HA This is a thing of sheer BEAUTY!
This is all kinds of crazy & sad
Minnesota boy, 4, shoots, kills 2-year-old brother
A 4-year-old boy playing with a handgun apparently shot and killed his 2-year-old brother in their Minneapolis home Wednesday, police said.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/251916/group/homepage/
And THAT, JC, is why you’re considered a clown by Black people like me.
Watts sounds like a fool.
What’s up with Watts? I heard him on CNN last night with Eric Burnett. All of a sudden he’s shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you about the racists in the Republican party. Those fools aren’t concerned with him, and certainly aren’t going to give that negro a go at bein RNC Chairman.
Oregon GOP County Chair Gets the Boot for Claiming Democrats Seek Utopian Enslavement
By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
December 6th, 2012
For years, Republicans have built up the narrative that they are the only legitimate political party in the United States. Ipso facto, Barack Obama must be an usurper and not the legitimately elected president of the United States – twice. Republicans have ruthlessly fear-mongered, painting liberals as some sort aberrant life form. This isn’t surprising. When you transfer your true/false paradigm from religion to politics, after all, there can be only one: one true God, one true political party.
But one Republican official in Oregon, Washington County, Oregon, Republican chairman Gary Bray, caught up in the rhetoric, found himself out of a job when he claimed that Democrats were to be equated with communists seeking “utopian enslavement” and that liberalism was an atheistic cult. If you look at the title of his self-published magnum opus, “Brayn Food: For the Tea Patriot Hungry for the Truth,” you won’t be surprised.
“The Democrats,” old, white, and angry lumber magnate Bray said, “have replaced personal morality with social morality which means to be a good person you no longer have to worry about your personal failings but your societal failings…You can be a drug addict, leave your family in shambles or steal from your boss but, as long as you drive a Prius and are concerned about polar bears, you are a good person.”
Bray’s troubles began, as these troubles so often do, when he sent out an email to precinct officials. Who knows what he was thinking? Maybe he thought this crap would actually be well-received, unlike all those other emails other Republicans have sent out that got them into hot water and out of jobs.
The Oregonian called the email “provocative.” Greg Leo, the chief of staff for the Oregon Republican Party, apparently agreed; he was quick to point out that Bray was not speaking for the party, saying, “We do not endorse or support what he is saying. Those are his beliefs, not the party’s.”
http://www.politicususa.com/oregon-gop-chairman-claims-democrats-seek-utopian-enslavement.html
Republicans Turn Charter School Officials Into the New Robber Barons
By: Hrafnkell HaraldssonNovember 25th, 2012
It is not news to anyone that the Republican Party hates public education, so much so that we can speak not only of a Republican War on Women, or a Republican War on Science, but of a Republican War on Education.
And, of course, there is always the concomitant Republican War on Government.
Our Founding Fathers wanted people educated. Schools followed westward the course of westward expansion and were as much a component of Manifest Destiny as the railroads.
The Republican Party wants to undo all that history. Everywhere we see the same push toward privatization that we see in other areas of government. Nirvi Shah, at Education Week, reported on the GOP’s plans for our education system following release of the Republican Party Platform:
The platform doesn’t see money as a solution, a happy match for Paul Ryan, whose budget called for cuts in education spending. It was big on vouchers. According to the platform, “If money were the solution, our schools would be problem-free. More money alone does not necessarily equal better performance.”
It was big on what it called “local innovations” like single-sex classes (you know, the sort they have in Kabul).
And of course, the 2012 party platform, as you would expect of a document crafted by religious conservatives, also favored the teaching of abstinence-only education.
http://www.politicususa.com/gop-charter-school-officials-robber-barons.html
Heated Newark council battle has been building for months
These are wild times in Newark politics, even by Newark standards.
Two weeks ago, a council meeting to appoint a successor to Council President Donald Payne Jr. ended in a police lockdown, complete with pepper spray, a din of shouting and trampled residents. Wednesday the council met to vote all over again and the battle continued — this time without the pepper spray.
A SWAT team patted down residents as they entered the council chamber, a council member was nearly censured and the city clerk was asked to resign immediately.
“This is the darkest day for democracy in Newark that I’ve seen in six years,” West Ward Councilman Ron Rice said when Wednesday’s session was over.
Yet while rancor between Newark’s leaders seems to be at an all-time high, interviews with council members and administration officials show the long fight over a vacant city council seat is quintessential Newark politics: familial dynasties, simmering grudges and a sudden vacuum of power all in the same volatile brew.
The first meeting to fill Payne’s seat ended in pandemonium two weeks ago after Mayor Cory Booker and four of his council allies voted in Shanique Davis Speight with a highly contested maneuver. The mayor’s four opponents said he never had the right to weigh in as there was no tie. Both sides filed suit in Superior Court in Newark.
Judge Dennis Carey III, ordered all council members back to the chamber yesterday for a do-over. Speight received four yes votes, two no votes and two abstentions. Booker, who argues that the abstentions should be counted as no votes, cast a fifth to break the would-be tie.
The judge will determine next week if the vote stands.
Various sources close to the action say this latest battle began in July, shortly after Payne Jr. won the Democratic primary to fill the vacant congressional seat formerly held by his father, who died in office in March.
In the intervening months, jockeying to fill his seat became a maddening chess game of switched alliances and secret handshakes involving the same family names that have dominated city politics for decades.
John Sharpe James — a decorated war veteran and son of the legendary former mayor — had a seeming lock on the council seat.
He had the backing of four council members, themselves scions of Newark’s most influential families.
The pro-James coalition consisted of South Ward Councilman Ras Baraka, a fiery speaker and son of the famed poet Amiri Baraka; Central Ward Councilman Darrin Sharif, the deliberative policy wonk and son of Mayor Cory Booker’s former strategist Carl Sharif; West Ward Councilman Ron Rice, once one of Booker’s closest allies and son of state Sen. Ronald Rice, one of Booker’s most vocal critics; and Mildred Crump, the outspoken council elder.
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2012/12/heated_newark_council_battle_h.html
With the help of her glam squad style expert Daisy Lewellyn takes a woman from drab to CocoaFab with a makeover inspired by First Lady Michelle Obama.
Ezra Klein@ezraklein
To state the obvious, you don’t make Jim DeMint the head of your think tank in order to improve the quality of your scholarship.
Cory Booker Struggling With Hunger Pains On Food Stamp Challenge
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/cory-booker-food-stamp-challenge_n_2250692.html#comments
Cory Booker is getting hungry.
The Newark, N.J. mayor is now on day three of his self-imposed food stamp challenge. Inspired by a Twitter spat about the responsibility of government to provide food for its people, Booker decided to live for a week on the monetary equivalent of food stamps. He had $30 for the whole week — a mere $4.32 a day — to pay for all of his meals and beverages.
True to form, Booker is tweeting up a storm about his experience and keeping a blog.
After a few days of eating mostly vegetable-based foods, Booker is famished. “The constrained food options I have for this one short week highlight for me (with the hunger pains I felt today between small meals) what many hardworking families have to deal with week after week,” he wrote on his blog.
“Not being able to stop and drop a few dollars for a Venti coffee or Diet Mountain Dew is really raising my consciousness about the food choices I often take for granted,” Booker observed.
Unified House Republicans?
by BooMan
Thu Dec 6th, 2012 at 09:07:38 AM EST
I am not sure that I am sharing the same universe with Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times. She says that Speaker Boehner has never enjoyed stronger or more unified support from his caucus than he has now. How can that be? At some point, John Boehner is going to ask his caucus to vote for something they have almost all pledged not to vote for. Either that, or Boehner can’t get his caucus to cooperate and he has to tell the president that he can’t deliver his strongly supportive and unified caucus for any deal. Or, his caucus splits, with the majority voting against their Speaker and his deal. Or maybe they all vote “present” because they are a bunch of children.
The backbenchers may be keeping their criticisms quiet, but that doesn’t mean that are about to line up to vote for a tax increase on the top 2% of earners that is accompanied by few benefit cuts for Medicare and none for Social Security. Furthermore, the president is insisting that the debt ceiling be removed as a weapon. Perhaps the Republican Establishment wouldn’t mind having that gun put back in a locked case, but I’d like to see John Boehner sell that to his Tea Party caucus.
It is unclear to me why we should expect Boehner to successfully sell a deal for anything remotely similar to what the president is offering. And if he can’t sell it, he doesn’t have the strong support of his caucus. The fact that he just threw four members off key financial committees is also a sign that maybe things are not quite that harmonious inside the House GOP.
If Boehner can pull off an orderly retreat here, I will be shocked. I don’t think he is often sober past mid-afternoon. I don’t think he is good at his job. And I don’t think his caucus is reconciled to breaking their Norquist pledge and giving up on using the debt ceiling as leverage and basically doing the president’s bidding.
But, we’ll see, won’t we?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/12/6/9738/81923
Jim DeMint to Resign, Run Heritage
by BooMan
Thu Dec 6th, 2012 at 10:51:34 AM EST
Well, this is just weird. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina is resigning from the Senate in January to take the top spot at the Heritage Foundation. Governor Nikki Haley will select his replacement and there will be a special election in 2014 for the right to serve out the last two years of DeMint’s term. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina will also be on the ballot in 2014, but he’ll be running for a full six-year term. I’ll let someone who knows Palmetto State politics better than me start the speculation about who Gov. Haley will tap.
I can kind of see why Sen. DeMint would prefer the job at Heritage to the one he has, especially since he had already pledged not to run for a third-term. It is much harder for me to understand why Heritage wants him. I thought they fancied themselves the preeminent right-wing thought center, not a backwater for Tea Party cast-outs. Handing the keys of the foundation over to a nutcase like Jim DeMint is highly irresponsible and signals a coming break with the Washington Establishment, as the GOP leadership considers how to pivot for the 2016 presidential campaign.
DeMint spent his time in the Senate knocking heads with the party leadership and actively recruiting and supporting alternate candidates who frequently wound up costing the party Senate seats. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of DeMint’s motivation in resigning is that he’s burned too many bridges with his colleagues and he doesn’t like going to work in a hostile workplace. If I am not mistaken, he is turning down an opportunity to be the ranking member on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. That could have translated to a nice chairmanship after the 2014 midterms. As an aside, I expect that John Thune of South Dakota will land the spot in DeMint’s stead.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/12/6/105134/030
There goes the DEATH of think tanks!
President Obama Tops Forbes’ ‘Most Powerful’ List
http://www.forbes.com/powerful-people/
_____________________
THERE YOU GO!
BREAKING: Initial jobless claims fall 25,000 to 370,000 for week ending 12/1.
YIPES! Any psoting of this devil’s mug should come with a warning! LOL Let’s hope and pray that Ashley Judd runs for Senate and take this MOFO down.
Breaking News: Senate Republican leader blocks simple majority vote on giving Obama power to raise debt limit.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-usa-fiscal-debtlimit-idUSBRE8B513I20121206 …
Mitch McConnell filibusters his own bill to lift the debt ceiling http://tpm.ly/SJmhPT
How Barbara Boxer is working to fix long lines at polling places http://thkpr.gs/TUaJGD
Sen. Barbara Boxer@SenatorBoxer
I asked AG Eric Holder to help ensure that Americans will never again be forced to wait in line for hours to vote. http://1.usa.gov/TMCWzE
Breaking Politics @breakingpol
US Senate to vote on legislation to give Obama power to raise debt ceiling without Congressional approval – @Reuters http://reut.rs/YS4vxz
Laura Ingraham makes embarrassing blunder in Obama attack http://huff.to/11LzH1p
Obama, Boehner talk; Geithner prepared to go off “cliff
By Thomas Ferraro and Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:57am EST
(Reuters) – Republicans in Congress and President Barack Obama consumed much of Wednesday talking up their positions on the “fiscal cliff” and though Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone, neither side offered any new compromises in public.
Nor was the phone call, a rarity, followed by any immediate announcement of a face-to-face meeting that has been widely anticipated all week and was explicitly requested early in the day by House of Representatives Republican leader Eric Cantor.
Asked in an interview with CNBC if the administration was ready to go over the so-called fiscal cliff if Republicans don’t come around on taxes, Obama’s chief negotiator, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, responded: “Oh, absolutely.”
Facing spending cuts and tax increases that start to take effect in January unless Congress acts, Republicans on Capitol Hill were privately acknowledging that they were taking a public relations thrashing at the hands of the White House, which has marshaled a campaign-style
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-usa-fiscal-idUSBRE8A80WV20121206?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
Robert Gates on Syria, Obama’s warning
Joe Lieberman Wishes He Had Left Obama Criticism Out Of 2008 Convention Speech
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/joe-lieberman-obama_n_2247892.html
________________
Go to hell!
HuffPost Politics@HuffPostPol
Chris Christie is at the White House, per @AliNBCNews
Begging for more GUBMENT money?
Sen. Jim DeMint to Head Heritage Foundation
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323501404578161613763222762.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint will replace Ed Feulner as president of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. DeMint will leave his post as South Carolina’s junior senator in early January to take control of the Washington think tank, which has an annual budget of about $80 million.
Sen. DeMint’s departure means that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, will name a successor, who will have to run in a special election in 2014. In that year, both Mr. DeMint’s replacement and Sen. Lindsey Graham will be running for reelection in South Carolina.
_________________
Hey 3Chics! Lets celebrate together.
I’ll have sparkling water. Thank you! BYE BOY!
Why OFA cannot just hand over data to Dem Candidates:FACTS about the Obama “Database”
by zizi.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/05/1167492/-Why-OFA-cannot-just-hand-over-data-to-Dem-Candidates-FACTS-about-the-Obama-Database …
I am expanding a comment I made earlier this PM to a diary that charged the Obama campaign with “refusing to give up data to help other Democratic candidates”. The diarist relied solely on POLITICO’s breathless slant on the status of the Obama voter Database without considering the full ramifications of simply “handing over voter data to Democratic candidates”.
The diarist should have known better than to rely on GOP-shilling POLITICO for information that they took from Craig Timberg’s and Amy Gardner’s Nov 20th Washington Post article without giving credit.
I am not a member of the Obama campaign team and am not privy to internal documents nor discussions. However, while the information currently made public (here, here, here, here, here, and here) about the new ground that the Obama for America campaign broke in this election in integrating voter profiles with behavioral data, and donor details using cutting edge technologies, has set beltway denizens abuzz about who gets access to the coveted database, the unique nature of and transferability of this data is a complex issue about privacy, ethics, campaign finance laws, as well as yet to be written election laws.
If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.
Father of slain Florida teen steps into ‘Stand Your Ground’ battle http://bit.ly/Xuda9d
Dana Perino says women who are domestic violence victims should “make better decisions.” http://goo.gl/fu3M8
Too bad Dana mom made the decision to birth here. THERE, FIXED!
Get out the POPCORN!
The Meltdown Gets Ugly as Conservatives ATTEMPT A COUP To Overthrow Boehner
The #FireBoehner hashtag really took off last night on Twitter. No, it wasn’t started by evil liberals – it was the conservatives at American Majority Action (AMA) who started it. The gang smelled blood and the sharks are circling. The Daily Caller was promoting their version of online activism to “dispose” Boehner of his speakership. They’re mad at a “secret list” they think Boehner used to purge several “real conservatives” from House committees. Republican Reps. David Schweikert, Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp come up often in these circles, with Freedom Works urging members to call Boehner’s office in order to instruct him to stop kicking real conservatives, such as the above three, from committees.
Conservatives suspect that Speaker Boehner (R-OH) was behind The Republican Steering Committee (Boehner chairs it) voting to remove Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) from the House Budget Committee. Who is going to tell these angry conservatives that it is reasonable to assume that Amash and Huelskamp were kicked off at the request or at least mention of Paul Ryan (R-WI), their hero at large? Ryan was after all kept on by the very same Steering Committee as budget chairman, in spite of his inability to do math on the campaign trail.
See, Amash and Huelskamp voted against Paul Ryan’s budget because it did not cut spending enough. Yes, that budget — the one the nuns protested for immorally cutting funding to needy Americans. These two are quite literally destroying the Republican Party’s image (as if that was hard to do at this point). Party leadership must feel they had to be cut off from having the ability to obstruct the GOP from making deals they need to make in order to spare their reputation more damage (read: fiscal cliff deal). No doubt Boehner agrees that these guys have to go if the Republican Party is going to have a fighting chance of not taking the total blame for yet another fiscal cliff/debt ceiling debacle. Boehner is not stupid. He has been, however, ineffective as a Speaker, but he’s also been placed in a horrible position by the Tea Party and he waited too long to grab the reins. He knows his career is on the line, and that’s why he’s threatening panel assignments and reminding his party that leadership is watching their votes.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/271173-boehner-members-punished-for-their-votes
LOL Yummy; and with lots of butter too.
bwa ha h ah ha ha ha ha
Happy Birthday, Dave Brubeck.
Love this.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone! :-)
Good morning, everyone!