Native American music plays a vital role in history and education, with ceremonies and stories orally passing on ancestral customs to new generations. Native American ceremonial music is traditionally said to originate from deities or spirits, or from particularly respected individuals. Rituals are shaped by every aspect of song, dance and costuming, and each aspect informs about the “makers, wearers and symbols important to the nation, tribe, village, clan, family, or individual”.[3] Native Americans perform stories through song, music and dance, and the historical facts thus propagated are an integral part of Native American beliefs. Epic legends and stories about culture heroes are a part of tribal music traditions, and these tales are often an iconic part of local culture.[4] They can vary slightly from year to year, with leaders recombining and introducing slight variations. The Pueblo compose a number of new songs each year in a committee which uses dreams and visions.[5]
A tribal lifestyle flourished amongst the locals of America long before the colonial powers stepped foot in the region. Music was an integral part of this culture and each tribe had its own peculiar style of music with which it was identified.
Music and history are tightly interwoven in Native American life. A tribe’s history is constantly told and retold through music, which keeps alive an oral narrative of history. These historical narratives vary widely from tribe to tribe, and are an integral part of tribal identity.
This week let 3 Chics take you on a journey with our tribute to “FIRST NATIONS” people and Native American music. Through chants, drums, percussion, and dance, the music tells of their history of courtships, healings, meditation and spiritual rituals. With a mix of traditional, inter-tribal, and subgenre the transformative sounds and chants will definitely lift your spirits.
If you are of Native American heritage and would like to share lyrics, videos or chants, please feel free to do so. We love learning about artists, their intruments, and the contributions they’ve made to their tribes and our nation.
Chuck Hagel confirmed–> President Obama-Winning!
BREAKING: Senate Defeats Republican Filibuster Of Hagel Nomination | ThinkProgress http://fb.me/2xcboTzyo
Breaking: Chuck Hagel wins confirmation to be Defense Secretary.
Chuck Hagel confirmed 58-41
Tee hee hee. Junior League of Hezbollah strikes again!
LOL!
Some classic In Living Color Benita Butrell LMBAO
I loved In Living Color!
I loves me some Ms. Jenkins, bet nobody mess with her! But you didn’t hear it from me, you understand. LOL
bwa ha ha ha ha
“That baby looks just like the mailman; folks gonna start putting their letters in her diaper. BWA HA HA
LOL! She was a mess. Loved it. Loved the dancing after the show too.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH! Live long and Prosper.
So sweet and precious! Thank you for thinking of my baby! I love this kid!
LOL @my baby. Woman, you know they’re always going to be our babies. We love and hold them dear to our hearts.
YEP! Josh is so kind & lovable.
And oh so handsome!
TY!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH!!
Josh is going to love all these women wishing him a happy birthday. TYVM!
WORTH A READ & PRINTOUT
Health Insurance
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
By Steven BrillFeb. 20, 2013
Corrections Appended: February 26, 2013
1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.
Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.
Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.
About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”
Nonetheless, Sean was held for about 90 minutes in a reception area, she says, because the hospital could not confirm that the check had cleared. Sean was allowed to see the doctor only after he advanced MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The hospital says there was nothing unusual about how Sean was kept waiting. According to MD Anderson communications manager Julie Penne, “Asking for advance payment for services is a common, if unfortunate, situation that confronts hospitals all over the United States.”
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/print/
http://youtu.be/n2iNfNtruZg
Thanks for this, Rik. Thanks, Chips!
February 25, 2013
Klein’s flawed assumption
Ezra Klein tries to make sense of things:
As I understand it, the GOP has five basic goals in the budget talks:
1) Cut the deficit.
2) Cut entitlement spending.
3) Protect defense spending, and possibly even increase it.
4) Simplify the tax code by cleaning out deductions and loopholes.
5) Lower tax rates.
He then outlines the fundamental incompatibility of Republicans’ hostility to the White House’s attempted accommodations of the former’s stated goals, noting that “I’ve asked some Republican sources to explain their thinking to me. But none of the answers quite seems to add up….. Perhaps I’m missing something?”
In fact, Ezra, the underlying problem may be that you’ve included too much; that is, you have accepted as premise #1 the Republican goal to “cut the deficit.” While this is a noble-sounding marketing slogan for the GOP, it is politically antipodal to the party’s deeper objective of goal #2–“cut entitlement spending”–which, to be somewhat repetitive, becomes politically more palatable only by not accomplishing goal #1.
Put another way, one should not accept at face value anything the GOP says (is it really still necessary to say that?)–especially when it comes to deficits, and especially since it was the GOP that deliberately cranked them up. And having gone to so much trouble to wreck our fiscal house, why would the GOP want to help rebuild it, which in short order would only let entitlements off the hook?
Finally radicalized nearly to the point of clarity, the contemporary GOP is left with one fundamental goal: to destroy the welfare state, along with anything that smacks of a welfare state, which includes earned entitlements. And that cannot be accomplished through logical fiscal policies, nicely ordered, beginning with “cut the deficit.”
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2013/02/kleins-flawed-assumption.html
slave catching coon
http://youtu.be/8sX1GR7CPEo
I really need that cooning graphic
DANCE, NEGRO, DANCE!
February 26, 2013
Brooks doubles-down: the NYT columnist as Fox Newser
David Brooks writes that his most recent transgression against overt reality and basic fairness prompted him to rethink Obama’s mistakes and his own “dissatisfaction” with them. And this, from the penumbral universe of desperately thrashing-about conservatism, is what Brooks’ ponderous rethink comes up with:
The problem is that [Obama’s ‘Democratic orthodoxy’] locks us into the same debate framework we’ve been stuck in since 1980, which has produced so much gridlock. If politics is framed [as big government versus small, as the individual versus the collective], then the country divides and policy stagnates. We will keep having these endless budget squabbles. The dysfunction will metastasize
A moment of silence …
There. Perhaps by now you’ve absorbed that offensive barrage of fanciful bullshit. You don’t believe it, because it’s patently unbelievable, but you’ve absorbed it. And its thrust is unmistakable: The right, from fringe to core, has got nothing–nothing but make-believe tales and pseudo-realities and a weird kind of deeply disingenuous post-conservatism which even the post-conservatives don’t really believe. Because it’s patently, provably unbelievable
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2013/02/brooks-doubles-down-the-nyt-columnist-as-fox-newser.html
Not-Racist Threatens to Kill Black Legislator
by Steven D
Tue Feb 26th, 2013 at 02:29:10 PM EST
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man sends emails containing racial slurs and threatening violence to African American legislator as well as President Obama. Man is arrested. Man claims that despite said emails, he is not a racist.
Franklin Glenn Sain was arrested on Feb. 22 on suspicion of harassing state Rep. Rhonda Fields (D) and unlawfully attempting to influence a public official.
Sain admitted to using racial and sexual slurs against Fields in a series of emails dated between Feb. 13 and Feb. 15. is also believed to have sent an unsigned letter to her office threatening “Death to both” her and her daughter, as well as the message, “I keep my 30 Round Magazines There Will Be Blood! I’m Coming For You!”
One of Sain’s emails, sent on Feb. 15, said of Fields and fellow state Rep. Beth McCann (D), “Hopefully somebody Gifords [sic] both of your asses with a gun,” an apparent reference to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head in a public attack. Giffords survived, but the mass shooting resulted in the deaths of six people.
Rep. Fields canceled a Town Hall Meeting over concerns about her safety and the safety of her constituents prior to Mr. Sain’s arrest. And though Sain admitted using racial slurs against both Fields and the President, he was adamant that he was not a racist. He was only expressing his opinion regarding her support for new gun control legislation, that’s all.
Sain is chief operating officer of Englewood-based SofTec Solutions, a technology services consulting firm. He says he is not a racist and was “just voicing his frustration about a sacred topic.
A “sacred topic” which apparently gave him license to use racially offensive language and threaten the life of Ms. Shields and her daughter. Because, hey, First and Second Amendment, er … Freedums!
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/2/26/134359/287
Let his ass rot in jail. Then maybe he’ll learn to stfu!
Hagel Filibuster is Defeated
by BooMan
Tue Feb 26th, 2013 at 01:26:26 PM EST
The time has come to drink Jennifer Rubin’s tears, as Chuck Hagel’s confirmation vote has cleared the cloture vote in the Senate and the stupid filibuster is finally broken. In the end, Hagel received 71 votes, which is more than he will get when it comes time for the actual vote on confirmation. It’s interesting to look at the roll call because it reveals a bit about how Republicans view the Senate and it’s role in advising and consenting to the president about his cabinet. For example, some relatively moderate Republicans, like Ohio’s Rob Portman and Illinois’ Mark Kirk, voted to uphold the filibuster, while Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma did not. It seems that the newer members (Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona excepted) were more likely to be obstinate.
The same thing could be seen when the Democrats attempted to amend the filibuster rule. It was long-serving members like Carl Levin, Max Baucus, and Barbara Boxer who were the most skittish about changing the traditional way of doing business, while almost all of the Democrats elected since 2006 were in favor of reform.
Another interesting feature of this cloture vote is that the neo-cons mostly voted for it. That includes John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and their new sidekick Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. For all their bitching about Hagel, they didn’t want to create the precedent that Defense nominees could not be afforded an up or down vote.
Anyway, J-Rube’s tears taste like honey nectar.
http://www.boomantribune.com/
Food stamps for pets organization opens in New York
Pet Food Stamps, a donation-based program, provides assistance to low-income people with pets
A new charity called Pet Food Stamps promises to help low-income families who are struggling to feed their pets. The program is based in New York but recently became open to anyone in the United States, ABC News reported.
More than 45,000 pets have been signed up in two weeks. If a family’s application is approved, they receive pet food each month from a retailer for a six-month period.
But conservatives who don’t like food stamps can calm down: these so-called “food stamps” aren’t actually food stamps. “We’re not looking for government funding at this point,” Pet Food Stamps executive director Marc Okon told ABC.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/food-stamps-pets-organization-opens-new-york
Senate clears Hagel for confirmation
By Steve Benen
–
Tue Feb 26, 2013 1:27 PM EST
It was nearly two weeks ago when the Senate first considered Chuck Hagel’s Defense Secretary nomination, and at the time, Americans saw something that’s never happened before: the Senate minority filibustered a cabinet nominee, blocking an up-or-down vote for the first time ever.
Even at the time, Republicans conceded they were unlikely to kill Hagel’s nomination, but the GOP minority wanted a delay.
Today, the delay ended. The Senate voted 71 to 27 to end debate and bring Hagel’s confirmation to the floor for an up-or-down vote. The bipartisan majority included several fierce Republican critics of Hagel, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he expects a final vote later today, perhaps as early as 4:30 p.m. (ET).
While we wait for Hagel’s now-inevitable confirmation, I’m still not altogether sure what Republicans were thinking when they launched his doomed crusade against Hagel in the first place. Indeed, other than allowing everyone to laugh at Republican media over the “Friends of Hamas” fiasco last week, what was the point of forcing delays?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17103897-senate-clears-hagel-for-confirmation?lite
a reply to the pony and unicorn crowd:
Martin Says:
Seriously? Are you that out of touch with where political power comes from?
Obama could not be making this push if not for Newtown. Further, if the timing of Newtown had been much different he could not be making this push. Almost all legislative pushes have their window of opportunity, and we’re in it for gun violence. We’re also in it for immigration reform because Republicans have at least acknowledged that they lost the last election in part due to it and are likely to lose the next one without it. So that window is also open.
The window for healthcare never opened. It was a straight up grind. It’s amazing it even got as far as it did since it wasn’t something the public was looking at. Major policy initiatives do not happen just because a handful of activists want it to happen. If you want to know why the firebagger and moonbeam and shit get applied – its a reflection of the complete political ignorance with which those people seem to operate under.
Obama to tell Netanyahu US gearing up for Iran strike’During upcoming visit, president will convey message that window for American military operation opens in June, TV report saysBy YIFA YAAKOV February 25, 2013, 11:22 pm
When he visits Israel next month, US President Barack Obama will tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a “window of opportunity” for a military strike on Iran will open in June, according to an Israeli TV report Monday evening.
Obama will come bearing the message that if diplomatic efforts and sanctions don’t bear fruit, Israel should “sit tight” and let Washington take the stage, even if that means remaining on the sidelines during a US military operation, Channel 10 reported. Netanyahu will be asked to refrain from any military action and keep a low profile, avoiding even the mention of a strike, the report said, citing unnamed officials.
In London Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said an Iran with nuclear weapons was “simply unacceptable” and warned the time limit for a diplomatic solution was running out.
“As we have repeatedly made clear, the window for a diplomatic solution simply cannot remain open forever,” said Kerry, on his first international tour as America’s top diplomat. “But it is open today. It is open now and there is still time, but there is only time if Iran makes the decision to come to the table and to negotiate in good faith.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-to-tell-netanyahu-us-gearing-up-for-strike/
Michelle Obama Talks Black History, the ‘Let’s Move’ Campaign and Her First Kiss on the TJMS
First Lady Michelle Obama spoke with Tom and Sybil today about her “Let’s Move” campaign to end obesity and the important tradition of black history in her family.
“I just don’t want my kids to be shocked or stunned when they are confronted with racism or things that come up because of somebody else’s history. I want them to be prepared..” says the first lady.
Read full transcript of the interview below.
—
Tom Joyner: Hey, everybody! The First Lady on the phone!
MRS. OBAMA: Good morning! It’s the First Lady calling. How are you guys doing?
TOM JOYNER: Hey, Mrs. First Lady. How are you?
MRS. OBAMA: I am good. How is everything going there in the world? I can’t tell you — you’re just everywhere. So how is everything going everywhere?
TOM JOYNER: Everything is going good everywhere.
MRS. OBAMA: Good.
TOM JOYNER: And thank you for the invitation to the Black History reception. That’s going to be Wednesday, but it’s kind of short notice as First Lady.
MRS. OBAMA: Yes, well, you know we had the Inauguration, and –
SYBIL WILKES: You all had other things to do.
MRS. OBAMA: Well, I mean, you all are creating black history. It’s one of these things where you don’t know if you’re going to win. (Laughter.) Kind of on hold — everything else that you normally do, you start thinking, okay, well, maybe they won’t want to do this. (Laughter.) So we’re going to get back on it and make sure that we have some really outstanding programs.
But we’ve got four more years to do some really good stuff. So in addition to creating black history, we are going to celebrate it and be creating more of it every single day.
TOM JOYNER: Let me talk to you about your girls and Black History Month, because we had an interesting conversation the other day on the show — yesterday on the show. Roland had a lady on from Montgomery, Alabama who was upset that her five-year-old was taught black history and slavery by having them be a slave on an auction lot. And so the question was, how old should your child be to talk to them about slavery?
MRS. OBAMA: First of all, everybody has different traditions and beliefs about when you talk to your kids about anything. We come from a household of lots of talking as early as possible, whenever they’re starting to ask questions and things come up. So we kind of follow what life has to offer.
So when things — so I would say we started talking to our kids very early about life in general, and our history. And for us, we can talk about these things in the context of our own family, especially now that there are books written about my ancestry, and there — Barack has written about his. I mean, that conversation is a regular part of our lives.
And we live with my mom, you know, who is their direct connection to history. So when they get curious and they want to know about what life was like for my mother’s father and what she remembers, we encourage those conversations to happen as much as possible. But not every family feels the same way, and it’s hard to kind of dictate what people do in their homes.
But I think our kids need to understand this history and they need to understand the consequences as it impacts their lives every day. I just don’t want my kids to be shocked or stunned when they are confronted with racism or things that come up because of somebody else’s history. I want them to be prepared, and the best way to prepare our children, I believe, is to talk them honestly and openly as often as we can, whenever we can.
the rest is here:
http://blackamericaweb.com/104872/michelle-obama-talks-black-history-the-lets-move-campaign-and-her-first-kiss-on-the-tjms/?omcamp=es-baw-nl
You got fast fingers, Rikyrah. I was just coming to post this. I listened in on thr show this morning. It was good!
The first recess kiss was with Teddy! :)
Great listening to FLOTUS.
THIS: “But I think our kids need to understand this history and they need to understand the consequences as it impacts their lives every day.
I just don’t want my kids to be shocked or stunned when they are confronted with racism or things that come up because of somebody else’s history. I want them to be prepared, and the best way to prepare our children, I believe, is to talk them honestly and openly as often as we can, whenever we can.”<b.
The Senate voted to end debate on the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as U.S. Secretary of Defense on Tuesday, ultimately paving the way for his confirmation. The cloture vote to end the GOP filibuster succeeded by a margin of 71 – 27, with numerous Republicans changing their votes from initial opposition just a few weeks ago.
The final confirmation vote is expected at 4:30pm ET later today.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/senate-votes-to-end-debate-on-hagel-nomination
February 25, 2013
SETH MACFARLANE AND THE OSCARS’ HOSTILE, UGLY, SEXIST NIGHT
Posted by Amy Davidson
Watching the Oscars last night meant sitting through a series of crudely sexist antics led by a scrubby, self-satisfied Seth MacFarlane. That would be tedious enough. But the evening’s misogyny involved a specific hostility to women in the workplace, which raises broader questions than whether the Academy can possibly get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host next year. It was unattractive and sour, and started with a number called “We Saw Your Boobs.”
“We Saw Your Boobs” was as a song-and-dance routine in which MacFarlane and some grinning guys named actresses in the audience and the movies in which their breasts were visible. That’s about it. What made it worse was that most of the movies mentioned, if not all (“Gia”), were pretty great—“Silkwood,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Monster,” “The Accused,” “Iris”—and not exactly teen-exploitation pictures. The women were not showing their bodies to amuse Seth MacFarlane but, rather, to do their job. Or did they just think they were doing serious work? You girls think you’re making art, the Academy, through MacFarlane, seemed to say, but all we—and the “we” was resolutely male—really see is that we got you to undress. The joke’s on you. At a moment when Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook chief operating officer, talks about how women have to “lean in” in the workplace, Seth MacFarlane pops up from behind to say, “So we can see your boobs.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/02/seth-macfarlane-and-the-oscars-hostile-ugly-sexist-night.html#ixzz2M1vua664
February 26, 2013 12:32 PM
Ghosts at the CPAC
By Ed Kilgore
Here are two grains of salt to take with the stories you are probably reading about those wonderful problem-solving, bipartisan-oriented Republican governors who have none of the pathologies of their representatives in Congress and are clearly the future of the GOP.
The first is that such stories never seem to mention the large number of Republican governors who don’t fit that description by any stretch of the imagination: e.g., Kansas’ Sam Brownback, Texas’ Rick Perry, Maine’s Paul LePage, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, Mississippi’s Phil Bryant, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Georgia’s Nathan Deal, and probably several others with whom I’m less familiar. A couple of others (John Kasich and Rick Scott) seem to have been elevated to Good Republican status because of the single act of accepting the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which is to say they finally decided they couldn’t continue to look a gigantic gift horse in the mouth. It makes me particularly crazy when MSM types describe Jindal as some sort of non-ideological reformer, since best I can tell he wants the GOP to move even further to the right.
The second grain of salt is that in order to “lead” the GOP any Republican elected official has to be acceptable to its dominant conservative wing. So it’s worth mentioning that among the 41 speakers currently being confirmed for the 2013 CPAC conference next month, you do not find the health-care heretics Kasich and Scott, or the serial heretics Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie. It is interesting that McDonnell’s successor as Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli (who has been at odds with McDonnell on a host of issues lately), will be there with bells on.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/ghosts_at_the_cpac043212.php
First black character appears in Downton Abbey
DOWNTON Abbey is introducing its first black character as part of a storyline about race relations in the 1920s.
The award-winning stately home drama is seeking an actor to play musician Jack Ross.
Casting notes were sent out to actors’ agents earlier this month. They describe Ross as “Male, 25-30. A musician (singer) at an exclusive club in the 20s.
“He’s black and very handsome. A real man (not a boy) with charm and charisma.”
Whoever lands the role should “ideally be able to sing brilliantly”. The notes add: “Overall he should be a very attractive man with a certain wow factor.” Jack Ross will play a key part in the fourth series of the hit TV saga alongside a string of other fresh faces.
Lady Mary Crawley gets a new love interest — dashing Lord Anthony Gillingham.
The character also helps the family with their money woes, so he could be a big hit with Mary’s father, the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville. In casting notes, the character is described as a “good looking, very charismatic” 35 to 45-year-old with a “perfect cut glass accent. He’s warm and charming, but also a strong man with morals.”
Another new character is a party-loving cad called Sir John Bullock who “must be able to act drunk”.
Filming on Downton is due to start on March 23
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4812825/first-black-character-in-downton-abbey.html#ixzz2M1rvWHUv
LOL I knew it was only a matter of time, before they’d introduce their token black character. Downton Abbey has a moderate swath of black viewership.
Who can play this role? Idris? Inquiring minds want to know!
The consequences of misguided assumptions
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:37 PM EST
I’m beginning to think an infectious disease is spreading in the nation’s capital. Symptoms include memory loss (forgetting everything Republicans have done in recent years), blurred vision (an inability to see obvious GOP ploys), and an uncontrollable urge to blame “both sides” for everything, even when it doesn’t make any sense.
The disease has already affected pundits like Bob Woodward, Ron Fournier, David Brooks, nearly everyone on the network Sunday shows, and today reaches the editorial board of the Washington Post. Indeed, the Post’s editors seem to have come down with an especially acute case today, as evidenced this bang-your-head-against-your-desk editorial on the sequester, which cavalierly ignores the paper’s own reporting, and demands that President Obama “lead” by somehow getting congressional Republicans to be more responsible.
You can almost feel James Fallows’ frustration.
In short the facts before us are: an Administration that has gone some distance toward “the center”; a Republican opposition many of whose members still hold the absolutist position that taxes cannot go up at all; a hidden-from-no-one opposition strategy that embraces crises, shutdowns, and sequesters rather than wanting to avert them. […]
That’s the landscape. And what is the Post’s editorial conclusion? You guessed it! The President is to blame, for not “leading” the way to a compromise.
The infectious disease — I’ll assume Fallows was inoculated and therefore immune to its effects — is leading to some kind of bizarre madness in Washington, which is getting worse. It doesn’t matter that President Obama is ready to compromise; it doesn’t matter that Republicans refuse to compromise; and it doesn’t matter that the deficit is already shrinking and that both sides have already approved $2.5 trillion in debt reduction.
What matters, victims of this disease keep telling the rest of us, is that President Obama is obligated to “lead.” Lead where? They don’t know. Lead to what? They don’t know that, either. What would leadership look like, exactly? Apparently, Obama is supposed to use Jedi mind tricks that will make people in the other party — the party that has nothing but contempt and disgust for his presidency — do what he wants them to do.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17103486-the-consequences-of-misguided-assumptions?lite
Watch at 1:05 p.m. ET: President Obama speaks on the devastating impact of the sequester on WhiteHouse.gov/Live.
What Is the Sequester?
In just a matter of days, harmful automatic cuts — known as the sequester — take effect, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and cutting vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform.
President Obama put forward a plan to avoid these cuts and reduce the deficit by cutting spending and closing tax loopholes. Now it’s up to Congress to act.
Read more about the devastating impact of the sequester, and learn http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live?utm_source=022613&utm_medium=topper&utm_campaign=daily
you know, sometimes these Kneegrows can wear the nerves:
……………………………………………….
Obama’s Credibility Gap on Black Fatherhood
Did he squander the trust of black parents with his Chicago speech?
When President Obama gave a speech in his hometown of Chicago in a bid to address the city’s stratospheric gun violence, his remarks drew criticism, but not just from the usual suspects. While his gun-control remarks often spur complaints from the National Rifle Association, this time he also found himself under attack from his most loyal supporters: members of communities of color.
Critics took issue with the president’s emphasis on fatherless households when discussing the culprits to blame for excessive violence in urban communities. To be clear, the president is not wrong. Single-parent households have historically been linked to higher rates of poverty and crime among the children who grow up in them — no matter how much many modern-day single parents try to pretend this is not true. As of 2012 researchers found that marriage “reduces by two-thirds the likelihood that a family will live in poverty.” It is simply easier to make it as a family on two incomes and with two sets of eyes and hands raising kids than it is with one parent. (And before you draft an angry comment on this statement, know that my mother was once a single parent. That still doesn’t change the facts.)
but critics were right to condemn the president’s remarks. They just did so for the wrong reason. It’s not that the president isn’t right on the issue. It’s that he doesn’t have any credibility on the issue. He squandered whatever credibility he may have had in his first term.
http://www.theroot.com/blogs/obamas-credibility-gap-black-fatherhood?wpisrc=root_more_news
HUH?
His first term..
the term where he
1. saved the world economy
2. saved the America Auto industry
3. put the USA on the road to UNiversal Healthcare
4. Killed the world’s #1 terrorist
5. Decimated the world’s #1 terrorist organization
6. Ended the war in Iraq.
7. Ended DADT
you mean that first term
You really can’t make up this SHYT. I loathe these NEGROES, really, I DO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh3xa9qy3iE
What a Liar. You and the GOP are not willing to COMPROMISE on the proposed plans set forth by Senate and PBO.
Boehner starts to lose his cool
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:02 AM EST
As the sequester fight intensifies, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been reduced to an increasingly hysterical message:
We have moved a bill in the House twice,” Boehner said. “We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something.”
I think it’s probably fair to say that Boehner, his other strengths notwithstanding, is not always as sharp when it comes to legislative details and public policy. The Speaker is relatively adept at reading talking points others write for him, and he can schmooze with the best of them, but he’s often confused about the substantive angles to ongoing debates.
So, as Boehner starts to lose his cool in public, let’s pause and help him understand the one detail the Speaker seems to have forgotten: in this Congress, House Republicans have done no work on the sequester. Literally, none. Boehner and his caucus haven’t voted on an alternative; they haven’t unveiled a substitute plan; they haven’t shown up for bipartisan negotiations. Since this Congress has gotten underway, Speaker and his team have known this threat is coming, and they’ve done absolutely nothing about it except whine in public.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have put together a compromise plan that requires concessions from both sides
So when Boehner demands that senators get “off their ass,” the Speaker isn’t just being crude, and he isn’t just being dishonest, he’s actually been reduced to irony
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17102692-boehner-starts-to-lose-his-cool?lite
February 26, 2013 11:48 AM
The Secret Nelson Rockerfeller Most Feared the World Would Learn About Him
By Paul Glastris
It looks like the filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s nomination will end today. Personally, I don’t think it would be a tragedy if Hagel didn’t become defense secretary, since it would open the way for Michele Flournoy, who in addition to being a loyal Democrat and a woman is in many of the ways that matter more qualified. Still, Hagel is plenty qualified and it’s a disgrace that such a brave and honorable man has been put through the gauntlet of incoherent complaint and politicized posturing by members of his own party.
Writing about the Hagel nomination in the Washington Post this past weekend, former ambassador, GOP uber-lobbyist and confirmation prep expert Tom Korologos noted that in the entire 20th Century only three cabinet nominees were voted down, and only one of them, John Tower, was a secdef nominee (and his nomination wasn’t filibustered). There are lots of interesting historical bits in the piece. But not included is a great story that Korologos, who has helped over 300 nominees win confirmation, told at a lunch I attended last week put on by the National Hellenic Society that’s worth passing on.
In 1974, after Richard Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became president, Ford brought Nelson Rockerfeller into the Oval Office and offered to nominate him to be vice president. When Ford and everyone else was leaving the room, Korologos approached Rockefeller, explained that he had been chosen to shepherd his nomination through the Senate, and invited the governor to his office to start the grueling process of going through Rockerfeller’s past. One of the first questions Rockerfeller asked was whether his financial disclosure forms might be made public. This is Washington, Korologos told him, you can bet someone will leak them. The hearings ultimately revealed, among other things, that Rockerfeller had failed to pay $1 million in taxes and financed a negative biography of a political rival. But that day, Rockerfeller confessed to Korologos his biggest concern: that the disclosure would show that Rockerfeller was worth “only” $600 million, far less than everyone assumed, and he would lose stature in the eyes of his billionaire buddies.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/it_looks_like_the_filibuster043211.php
February 25, 2013 5:35 PM
“Clearing the Field”
By Ed Kilgore
Jonathan Martin’s Politico piece today wherein he asks a bunch of ambitious Democratic governors if they think Hillary Clinton could “clear the field” if she runs for president in 2016 is the first of many along these lines we will likely see in the months and maybe years ahead.
Read the whole thing if you are interested in hearing what the governors are willing to say on the record on this subject (my favorite is the response from Colorado’s John Hickenlooper: “You should be asking Martin O’Malley.”)
But I thought it would be more useful to look at the historical record and ask exactly what it means these days to “clear the field.”
It does not, presumably, mean preempting any competition whatsoever. There will always be someone willing to enter the lists in the early primaries in case the presumed nominee dies or becomes very ill or it is revealed she was in the habit of celebrating Black Masses in her college dorm room. And if the “clearing” candidate is Hillary Clinton (or for that unlikely matter, Joe Biden), the temptation to form an insurgent, anti-establishment campaign will be overpowering to at least one theoretically credible challenger.
The more practical question is whether a candidate as strong as Clinton could obliterate the opposition in the first couple of contests and make the primaries and caucuses a historical footnote.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/clearing_the_field043201.php
yardarm756
February 26, 2013 at 11:25 am
G’day TODville. Some inappropriate comic relief.
An elderly couple, who were both widowed, had been going out with each other for a long time. Urged on by their friends, they decided it was finally time to get married.
Before the wedding, they went out to dinner and had a long conversation regarding how their marriage might work. They discussed finances, living arrangements and so on. Finally, the old gentleman decided it was time to broach the subject of their physical relationship.
‘How do you feel about sex?’ he asked, rather tentatively.
‘I would like it infrequently’ she replied.
The old gentleman sat quietly for a moment, leaned over towards her and whispered –
‘Is that one word or two?’
———————————FLATLINES____________________
The “Fix” Is In: Laying Bare Some Sequester Lies
Tuesday, 26 February 2013 09:11
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
With the sequester ax trembling over the neck of the nation, everyone in the “news” media seems desperate to toss their two cents into the well…including, apparently, some who would be wise to remain in the children’s pool, lest they drown trying to stroke out to deeper waters. Enter Chris Cillizza, keeper of “The Fix,” perhaps the most useless corner of the Washington Post next to the ink that publication sadly donates to the incoherencies of Jennifer Rubin.
Mr. Cillizza’s “Fix” is the Post’s failed-hipster answer to those who enjoy the vacuity of horse-race politics. For reasons passing understanding, the powers-that-be at the Post gave Cillizza an outlet to explain – ever without basis beyond his own dubious lights – who’s up, who’s down, who won, or lost, in any particular political situation. “The Fix” is a triumph of flash over substance, written with wanna-be-clever insider snark for those in DC who still think the internet isn’t a real thing yet. Plainly put, Cillizza, as a journalist, is taken about as seriously as the vapid quislings who wait around red carpets to make fun of celebrities’ outfits.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14793-the-fix-is-in-laying-bare-some-sequester-lies
GOP’s election-rigging scheme not yet dead
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:32 AM EST
As of a few weeks ago, the Republican scheme to rig the presidential election by allocating electoral votes along gerrymandered district lines looked to be in very big trouble. GOP leaders in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin all denounced the plan, and in Virginia, state Republican lawmakers killed it.
But some lingering question remarks remain. As my colleague Laura Conaway explained yesterday, for example, Michigan Republicans are still extremely enthusiastic about the scheme. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has criticized the idea, but the governor has a bad habit of doing what he’s said he won’t do.
Meanwhile, as Benjy Sarlin reported late yesterday, Pennsylvania remains the state where the election-rigging proposal arguably has the best chance of actually passing.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17102406-gops-election-rigging-scheme-not-yet-dead?lite
Waiting for the Tantrum to End
by BooMan
Tue Feb 26th, 2013 at 10:21:32 AM EST
Watching cable news, you will see iteration after iteration of Capitol Hill reporters and other commentators expressing mystification that the House isn’t talking to the Senate, the White House isn’t talking to Congress, Democrats aren’t negotiating with Republicans, etc. Here’s a tip.
John Boehner has already told everyone, including Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Barack Obama, that his caucus isn’t going to budge on the Sequester until after it kicks in and starts causing real pain. He doesn’t have a strategy beyond that. Everyone knows that this is what he’s going to do, so anytime you see someone call for negotiations or compromise, they are either positioning themselves politically or they are actually referring to some time in the future, meaning March.
When reporters call for negotiations or wonder why they aren’t occurring, they are either engaging in unprofessional partisanship or simply demonstrating they can’t understand their own beat. When partisans call for negotiations, they are either spinning the public or simply appealing for sanity.
This isn’t that complicated. John Boehner already promised his Caucus that he would not introduce a bill to replace the Sequester that adds one dime in taxes or raises any revenue from closing tax loopholes that the wealthy use to avoid paying their full share. Since this is exactly what the president considers the bare minimum of any deal, Boehner is trapped and he isn’t going to do anything proactive. Until his caucus stops hyperventilating, he can do nothing. McConnell knows it. Reid knows it. And Obama knows it. So, we’re just waiting for the tantrum to end.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/2/26/102132/388
February 26, 2013 9:52 AM
Agony of the Florida Tea Folk
By Ed Kilgore
As you might imagine, Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to support the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion (at least for three years) has not only brought down scorn on him from national conservative groups, but was particularly painful to his back-home Tea Party supporters, many of whom probably found him attractive in the first place because of his history of battling anything remotely like universal health coverage. The Tampa Bay Times’ Adam Smith quickly concluded Scott’s relationship with the Tea Folk is broken beyond repair:
With his Medicaid decision this week, Scott officially and forever cast off his image as a tea party standard-bearer. Just glance at most of the recent comments on his Facebook page if you have doubts.
“Agreeing to expand Medicaid in Florida is your ‘Charlie Christ hugs Obama’ moment. Very disappointed in your decision… . Be proud to call yourself a RINO (Republican in Name Only),” wrote Jackie Soler-Gonzalez
Smith also reports Scott’s jilted fans are actively looking for a primary challenger. After all, it worked when Charlie Crist strayed off the right-wing reservation.
Crist, of course, is the likely Democratic candidate for governor in 2014. So you could have “true conservatives” battling not one but two of their former political allies in what is already looking to be one of the most expensive political races in the history of the planet. It could get really crazy.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/agony_of_the_florida_tea_folk043209.php
From Aleth:
aleth
Don’t you just love it
Don’t you just love how the sight of a female black skin on TV can drive a certain segment of America into a tailspin (FLOTUS to Quvenzhane)
Don’t you just love it that inspite of the hatefulness, we keep on keeping on.
Gone are the days were you intimidate with your nonsense. We talk back now.
I love it that FLOTUS keeps on trucking… its like — next….
I absolutely love it.
I hope to God she keeps on trolling these “people” (put in quotes because i don’t think they are people).
I get what drives certain segment of America crazy whether they call themselves liberals, libertarian, republicans — EVERYWHERE YOU TURN YOUR TV THE PRESIDENT AND FLOTUS are there. It must irritate them to no end and for the next four years she will be in your face.
One last thing, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, ABC, SALON—they don’t give a shit about your opinions SINCE you jumped the shark to irrelevancy. Its amazing in order to have an audience these critics need to obsess about blackness.
Yep, they are showing you out with your insecurity. As I have always stated racism is a white problem and nothing as been clearer since 2009.
I love being black.
With all the cray cray we have to see… we still keep rising.
What a beautiful picture for the coming generation— break the cycle of the focusing on the glare of whiteness and just live according to your own terms instead of stereotypes. Break the cycle of violence, broken home etc… and lets just keep on keeping on..
Its create to see their insecurity on display
February 26, 2013 9:20 AM
Learning To Embrace the Stupidity
By Ed Kilgore
So last time we checked on congressional plans for dealing with the appropriations sequester, there was (in my mind at least) a tiny glimmer of light in that Senate Republicans were interested in giving the administration the flexibility to implement the cuts in a less stupid matter than making them across-the-board for all programs not made exempt in the original legislation. But we were told that Senate Democrats would no go along because they didn’t want to make the administration responsible for the winners and losers in such decisions, and that House Republicans hated the idea, too, because they feared Alinskyite in the White House would find ways to screw them over.
But I must report today that the situation has changed: yes, Senate Republicans are backing away from any “flexibility” proposal, too, because they just can’t give power away, even the power to be less stupid and destructive.
Politico’s got a story today from David Rogers and Manu Raju quoted GOP senator after senator objecting to this “abdication:”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/learning_to_embrace_the_stupid043208.php
When the judicial confirmation process gets ‘stupid’
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:46 AM EST
As Senate Republicans take obstructionist tactics to levels unseen in American history, the effects are seen throughout government, most notably on the federal courts. Because the GOP minority cares about blocking President Obama’s judicial nominees than the courts’ ability to function, there are an extraordinary number of judicial vacancies, with more on the way.
The only way to resolve the problem is for Senate Republicans to become more responsible. Robert Bacharach offers a perfect example of how the GOP is actually getting worse, not better.
The White House’s Jennifer Palmieri summarized the story nicely last night
This evening the Senate confirmed Robert Bacharach to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Oklahoma. Judge Bacharach waited 263 days for a Senate floor vote, only to be approved overwhelmingly, by a vote of 93-0. Not only was Judge Bacharach supported by the two Republican Senators from Oklahoma, he was recommended to the White House for this judgeship by Senator Coburn in October 2011.
Yet, early last summer, Senate Republicans blocked Judge Bacharach from even getting an up or down vote – the first successful filibuster of a judicial nominee who had bipartisan support in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17101946-when-the-judicial-confirmation-process-gets-stupid?lite
February 25, 2013 3:41 PM
The Cruz Litmus Test
By Ed Kilgore
Parallel to the ongoing discussion of whether or not the Republican Party has any serious interest in curtailing the right-wing bender it’s been on since at least 2009 (and arguably a lot longer), we have the interesting phenomenon of a new and very loud Republican Senator who stands proudly for the point of view that the bender needs to get a lot crazier. Here’s the most succinct version of his argument that Republicans are losing because they aren’t standing up for “conservative principles:”
“Why did we lose? It wasn’t as the media would tell you: because the American people embraced big government, Barack Obama’s spending and debt and taxes. … That wasn’t what happened. I’m going to suggest to you a very simple reason why we lost the election: We didn’t win the argument,” Cruz said before pointedly lowering his voice. “We didn’t even make the argument.
Yeah, not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, as George Wallace used to say back in the day.
But beyond this continuation of the ludicrous proposition that Republicans are too moderate and compromise-oriented (which really hasn’t been a credible argument since 1990, if then), Cruz is already distinguishing himself as the kind of mendacious bully-boy—sort of a smarter version of the Rick Perry who first emerged on the 2012 presidential campaign trail roaring and strutting around and threatening to tear the godless liberals limb from limb—who makes any sort of bipartisan discussion absolutely impossible. And while a few Republicans whisper about him obliquely or off-the-record, he’s mostly been lionized for this behavior:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/the_cruz_litmus_test043200.php
What Are the GOP’s Sequester Priorities?
by Justin GreenFeb 25, 2013 2:45 PM EST
Ezra Klein is forgivably baffled by the GOP’s strategy on the sequester. As he understands it, the GOP priorities are:
1) Cut the deficit.
2) Cut entitlement spending.
3) Protect defense spending, and possibly even increase it.
4) Simplify the tax code by cleaning out deductions and loopholes.
5) Lower tax rates
Klein is confused that Republicans would rebuff the White House’s proposed compromise:
The White House is willing to cut a deal with Republicans that will accomplish 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Republicans don’t want that deal. They’d prefer the sequester to that deal. That means they will get less on 1, basically nothing 2, 4, and 5, and they will actively hurt themselves on 3. So, rather than accomplishing four of their five goals, they’re accomplishing part of one. Some trade.
In other words, Ezra is answering his own question, although I’m not sure he sees it as such. To understand why, it’s helpful to restructure the priority list.
The primary GOP goal, really the only one, is to cut spending without raising taxes. That’s the golden goose, and Klein misses it in his effort to be fair and comprehensive.
Now if this can be accomplished, the next step is to preserve defense spending. When the sequester passed in 2011, the assumption was that Republican defense hawks would balk at such cuts, forcing the GOP to find an alternate deal. However, the situation has changed. As is detailed by the New York Times, Congressional Republicans are now willing to let spending cuts go through, even if that means defense takes a hit.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/25/what-are-the-gop-s-sequester-priorities.html
It’s as if the election never happened
Posted by Jonathan Bernstein on February 25, 2013 at 5:14 pm
House Republicans held a quick session with the press this afternoon to mainly make one point: They have no responsibility for sequestration. Speaker Boehner:
“Republicans have acted twice…to replace with the sequester with what we would argue are smarter cuts. Listen, the president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester. Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase.
“The House has acted twice. We shouldn’t have to act a third time before the Senate begins to do their work.”
This standoff isn’t going to be resolved by rhetoric. But it’s worth noting the extent to which Republican spin simply ignores that there was an election in November.
First of all, whether Boehner and the Republicans like it or not, Barack Obama was in fact re-elected on a platform of “balanced” deficit reduction — that is, new revenue and new spending cuts. Republicans have of course every right to oppose that, but it’s a little strange hearing them talk as if that campaign and election never happened.
But more to the point: claiming to have “acted twice” is nonsense. The expired 112th House may have passed things, but that’s entirely irrelevant now. The current 113th House, with a smaller Republican majority, has passed absolutely nothing to replace sequestration. And as Roll Call points out, the two measures Boehner refers to won by narrow margins last year; it’s quite likely that Republicans don’t have the votes to pass them now
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/02/25/its-as-if-the-election-never-happened/
The Morning Plum: The false equivalence pundits are part of the problem
Posted by Greg Sargent on February 26, 2013 at 9:12 am
The battle over the sequester has sparked a corollary argument over the proper role of pundits in assigning blame in political standoffs of this type. A number of us have argued that the facts plainly reveal that Republicans are far more to blame than Obama and Democrats for the current crisis. The GOP’s explicit position is that no compromise solution of any kind is acceptable — this must be resolved only with 100% of the concessions being made by Democrats — which means any compromise Dems put forth is by definition a nonstarter at the outset.
Analysts reluctant to embrace this conclusion — an affliction I’ve called the “centrist dodge” — have adopted several techniques. One is to pretend Dems haven’t offered any compromise solution, when in fact they have. A second is to argue that, okay, Dems have offered a compromise while Republicans haven’t, but Dems haven’t gone far enough towards the middle ground, so both sides are still to blame for the impasse. (The problem with this dodge is that it fails to acknowledge that Republicans themselves have openly stated that there is no distance to which Dems could go to win GOP cooperation, short of giving them everything they want.)
We’re now seeing a third technique appear: Acknowledge that Republicans are the uncompromising party, but assert that it’s ultimately on the President to figure out a way to either force Republicans to drop their intransigence or to otherwise “lead” them out if it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/02/26/the-morning-plum-the-false-equivalence-pundits-are-part-of-the-problem/
Virginia’s Cuccinelli draws fire from business leaders
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:13 AM EST.
In Virginia, increasingly one of the nation’s most competitive battleground states, there appears to be a division between Republican business leaders and social conservative activists, neither of whom has any use for the other.
And with about eight months to go before the commonwealth holds its next gubernatorial election, the GOP’s candidate, right-wing state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, is finding himself at the center of this fissure. Over the weekend, some prominent Virginia business leaders reportedly “got into a heated exchange” with the Republican in from of leading party donors.
Bobbie Kilberg, a longtime Republican donor and CEO of Northern Virginia Technology Council, and Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Arlington-based Consumer Electronics Association, stood up separately to confront Cuccinelli about what is on the minds of many Virginia and national Republicans: whether the Tea Party-backed attorney general can, or wants to, run a pragmatic campaign in the increasingly moderate Old Dominion.
The face-off took place at a meeting of the Republican Governor’s Association’s “Executive Roundtable,” a group of national CEOs and business leaders, Friday morning at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington…. But instead of simply making his pitch and picking up a few business cards from potential donors, Cuccinelli was all but dressed down by two fellow Virginians.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17101631-virginias-cuccinelli-draws-fire-from-business-leaders?lite
your straight GOP business type is tired of the crazy. they just want lower taxes. they don’t give a rat’s heiney about the social stuff that Cucinnelli wants.
Virginia is ground zero for government corporate welfare, aka the Defense Industry. they don’t want anything that will stop their welfare from coming in
he Sequestration Fight Is Based on Lies and Stupidity
By Bob Cesca · February 26,2013
As a political writer, being pissed off about certain issues and policies is like rocket fuel. I’m not an angry guy by nature, but there’s a universe of things in politics that piss me off and, combined with an involuntary need to seek and disseminate the truth, I’m never really at a loss for topics to cover.
But the sequestration issue has been one of those rare items that frustrate me to the point of being incapable of spending time on it. When I read about sequestration, my brain seizes. The stupidity of it all simply confounds me to the point of being speechless. For me, this is a shocking and rare predicament.
It’s not even the chronic brinksmanship — the reoccurring doomsday countdowns and the Republican-manifested economic sabotage that’s behind it all. It’s not the Keynesian in me who opposes the very notion of deficit reduction during a sluggish recovery. Granted, these are both points of irritation, but the characteristic of the sequester that ought to force us all into complete apoplexy and subsequent outrage-induced catatonia is the epidemic of ignorance regarding the status of the federal budget deficit.
There are two sides to this deficit idiocy. Firstly, the completely inexcusable conflation of the deficit and the debt, and, secondly, the total failure to acknowledge actual deficit reduction. The press, and especially the Republicans, refuse to acknowledge that not only has the deficit been reduced by more than half-a-trillion dollars since 2009, but also that the deficit will continue to drop with or without the automatic cuts that appear to be inevitable by the end of the week. As a result, deficit hysteria is based on nearly unprecedented stupidity and deliberate deception. And very few players are innocent in this endeavor.
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/02/the-sequestration-fight-is-based-on-lies-and-stupidity/
The GOP Rage Machine and Its Mainstream Apologists
by Michael TomaskyFeb 26, 2013 4:45 AM EST
Michael Tomasky: How the credulousness of mainstream media figures like Bob Woodward and Ron Fournier enables Republican extremism …. On Saturday, I wrote about what I called the conservative Republican “rage machine” and its poisonous impact on our politics. I argued that a number of prominent conservative thinkers and pundits …. were and are partly responsible for this problem as long as they sit there pretending it doesn’t exist.
But there’s another responsible group here, too: Just as today’s Republican extremists benefit from the silence of conservative pundits, they also gain from the credulousness of mainstream figures who keep pretending that today’s GOP is a responsible party …. So that when the GOP takes a radical position on the sequester and Barack Obama a reasonable one, both are accorded equal seriousness, even when facts have to be ignored to do so.
Bob Woodward is Exhibit A here…..
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/26/the-gop-rage-machine-and-its-mainstream-apologists.html
http://youtu.be/K-P9Mmno2VQ
What contempt for the public looks like
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:28 AM EST.
Did you happen to catch yesterday’s Capitol Hill press conference with the entirety of the House Republican leadership? House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and House Republican Conference Cathy McMorris Rodgers wanted to talk about this week’s sequestration cuts, but in the process, they offered a case study in how to insult Americans’ intelligence.
It’s awfully tempting to go line by line, pointing out every error of fact and judgment, but that would lead to a post so long, no one would read it. Instead, consider some of the more striking whoppers uttered over the course of the six-minute press conference.
Each of the Republican lawmakers said President Obama was responsible for the sequester, which is ridiculous. Each of them said it’s up to Democrats to think of a way to make Republicans happy enough so that Republicans won’t hurt the country on purpose. Each of them said the House already voted to replace the sequester, hoping no one would notice that in the current Congress, GOP leaders haven’t even proposed, better yet voted on, a replacement.
But consider this gem from the House Speaker:
“Listen, the president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester. Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17101235-what-contempt-for-the-public-looks-like?lite
CPAC sends message, snubs Christie
By Steve Benen
Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:59 AM EST
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is the year’s biggest event for Republicans and the right in general. The speakers’ list for the multi-day event reads like a who’s who for conservatives, and the more ambitious the GOP candidate, the more he or she desperately wants to win CPAC attendees’ approval.
With this in mind, the fact that the conference will not extend an invitation to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) seems noteworthy.
The list of speakers for the March confab currently includes the party’s failed 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, as well as former VP hopeful Sarah Palin and a string of current officials and 2016 hopefuls like Sen. Marco Rubio.
But Christie, who infuriated some Republicans for praising President Barack Obama’s performance post-Hurricane Sandy, will not be among them.
In a narrow sense, the CPAC guest seems trivial, but in the larger context, the Christie snub says quite a bit about the contemporary conservative movement
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17100922-cpac-sends-message-snubs-christie?threadId=3674377&commentId=74438713#c74438713
Janet Jackson’s been married to her billionaire for over a year.
HOW THE HELL does she marry and keep it secret?
This is her THIRD SECRET MARRIAGE!!!
Go Ms. Janet. Congrats!
‘Guns for Greatness’: Gun buyback program would reward New York’s young gunslingers with mentorship and Beyonce concert tickets for The Mrs. Carter Show
A millionaire hip-hop mogul has a bold plan to rid New York City streets of firearms: He wants to offer young gunslingers who turn in their weapons mentorships … and Beyoncé concert tickets.
Michael (Blue) Williams, the head of Family Tree Entertainment, has pitched the city’s first private-sector gun buyback program to NYPD brass and is waiting for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s okay.
“We want to get as many guns off the streets, and if this works, we’d like to support it,” Kelly told the Daily News, adding that the proposal needs more study.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/turn-gun-beyonce-live-article-1.1273410#ixzz2M0ftgXI9
Soledad O’Brien: Jeff Zucker ‘Has Done Exactly What He Said He Would Do’
What a difference 48 hours can make.
Less than two days after Thursday’s announcement that Soledad O’Brien would leave CNN to start her own production company, she says she had already received four pitches for documentaries and other long-form programming.
“I’ll consider all pitches,” says O’Brien, 46, who will continue as anchor of ‘Starting Point’ until May or June. “’Excited’ is an overused word, but I’m excited to take this step.”
O’Brien’s Starfish Media Group, to launch in June, will produce three documentaries for CNN in 2014, including another of her ‘Black in America’ series. She is free to create content for other networks, platforms and partners.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/soledad-obrien-on-jeff-zucker-he-has-done-exactly-what-he-said-would-do_b168215
First Lady Michelle Obama announces the Best Picture Oscar to Argo live from the Diplomatic Room of the White House, Feb. 24
—-Photo by Pete Souza
The First Lady speaks to the National Governors Association.
I love the look on FLOTUS’ face. Tee hee hee.
http://youtu.be/5YEZPDRBkYE
http://youtu.be/flYg8Q0J_C4
The New Official Portrait of Vice-President Biden.
Cruising on the Crazy Jet Stream
by BooMan
Mon Feb 25th, 2013 at 10:32:10 PM EST
It’s interesting to see that Erick Erickson of Red State is declaring war on Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and comparing him unfavorably to former Florida Governor Charlie Crist. This is a governor who is most well-known for pushing legislation that would force women to submit to government-spronsored forced vaginal ultrasounds who is now considered an apostate to the conservative movement. Let that sink in for a moment.
I don’t know if you’ve yet had a chance to read Ryan Lizza’s excellent eleven-page profile of Eric Cantor in The New Yorker. It took me a couple of hours to read because I had to intersperse parenting duties into the mix. I knew that the strategy that is currently being pursued by the leadership of the House is not something they actually support, but Lizza’s piece added some much-needed flavor to my understanding of the situation.
The GOP has gone bonkers, and it isn’t something that has gone unnoticed by Governor McDonnell, John Boehner, or even Eric Cantor. In fact, they are tied in knots and have no idea how to deal with the situation.
As Lizza points out, Cantor didn’t start out as a Tea Partier. His initial reaction to the election of Obama was to tack to the middle.
After Obama’s election in 2008, Cantor started a group called the National Council for a New America, which sought to embrace the idea that the G.O.P. needed to become more moderate. He told reporters that he was reading David Frum and Ross Douthat, two conservative writers at odds with the rightward drift of the Party. The efforts were short-lived. As the Tea Party movement took off, in 2009, Cantor worked to harness its energy.
What happened after the 2010 midterms is that a whole bunch of frankly stupid people were elected to the House of Representatives to represent the views of people who are even dumber than Donald Trump and Victoria Jackson combined. These are people who can’t understand basic concepts. Concepts like, you don’t get to enact things into law when you don’t control the Senate or the White House unless you are willing to compromise. Concepts like, the president just got reelected, so your revolution is over.
Boehner can tell them over and over and over again that they only control one-half of one-third of the government, and they still can’t understand why they haven’t yet repealed The New Deal
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/2/25/223210/196
A muddled message gets messier and more mendacious
By Steve Benen
Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:45 AM EST.
With the sequestration cuts just days away, Republicans have spent the last several focused on rhetoric instead of policy. By any sensible standard, GOP policymakers have invested no real effort on resolving the problem, and have instead devoted all of their energies in winning a public-relations fight once the sequester starts doing real damage.
And with this in mind, one might expect their message to be amazing. After all, once a political party gives up on governing and focuses solely on messaging, it’s stands to reason they’ll be pretty good at it.
And yet, Republicans’ sequestration message “is all over the place.” GOP leaders believe the sequester will be awful but they want to let it happen. The policy was integral to the Republican fiscal plan and it’s entirely the White House’s idea. When Republicans say the cuts will hurt, that’s fine; when Democrats say the cuts will hurt, it’s evidence of scare tactics.
And now Republicans are simultaneously convinced the cuts will hurt and help the economy.
http://youtu.be/L-jH5h-WcXw
For those who can’t watch clips online, Rep. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a likely U.S. Senate candidate, argued over the weekend that sequestration cuts “must” happen in order to “get this economy rolling again.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/25/17087809-a-muddled-message-gets-messier-and-more-mendacious?lite
Rand Paul’s failed fish tale
By Steve Benen
–
Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:26 AM EST.
17
Getty Images
We talked last week about an unfortunate phenomenon: congressional Republicans pointing to government spending they consider wasteful, which turns out to be money well spent under closer inspection. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) offers another fun example.
On Fox News on Thursday night, Paul said the military has spent $5.2 million studying goldfish and advocated yanking funding for such programs to cut the budget.
“In the military they have $5.2 million they spent on goldfish — studying goldfish to see how democratic they were and if we could learn about democracy from goldfish,” Paul said on Fox. “I would give the president the authority to go ahead and cut all $5 million in goldfish studies.”
At first blush, Paul sounds like he has a point, right? If policymakers are looking for funding to cut, $5.2 million to “learn about democracy from goldfish” seems excessive, at least at first blush.
But Princeton science professor Iain Couzin filled in some of the gaps to Poltico: “[Paul] got the funding wrong and the species wrong, and he misrepresents the work we’ve done.”
Apparently, the research has nothing to do with learning about “democracy” from goldfish — they’re not even goldfish — but rather, is intended to “lead to advances in technology for robots that work on deep sea oil spills and radioactive leaks.”
Couzin said the research has “direct applications to human security,” adding, “Perhaps Sen. Paul should read our papers before he comments on them and perhaps he should consider more broadly how science can help society.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/
Wisconsin’s GOP Governor Proposes ‘Middle Class Tax Cut’ That Primarily Benefits The Rich
By Pat Garofalo on Feb 25, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) last week unveiled a supposedly “middle class tax cut.” “”Our middle class tax cut is a down payment on my goal of reducing the tax burden in our state every year I’m in office. I want to cut taxes over and over and over again until we are leading the country in economic recovery,” Walker said.
But according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Walker’s definition of middle class is a bit off. In fact, his tax cut plan would deliver the majority of its benefits to the top fifth of Wisconsin earners.
Meanwhile, “the lowest 20% of tax filers would receive a tax cut of just $2 a year.” People in the middle fifth would receive a whopping $43 dollars per year in tax relief. Meanwhile, those in the richest fifth would receive nearly $300:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/25/1636711/walker-middle-class-tax-cut/?mobile=nc
CNN’s Zucker to Meet With NABJ to Discuss Network’s State of Black Journalists
By Betsy Rothstein on February 25, 2013 12:00 PM
CNN President Jeff Zucker is scheduled to meet today in Atlanta with the leadership of the National Association of Black Journalists to discuss the state of black journalists at the network, FishbowlDC has learned.
Bob Butler, Vice President of Broadcast for NABJ, posted a note on the group’s Yahoo list serve last night saying that he, President Greg Lee and Executive Director Maurice Foster, will sit down with Zucker today.
The meeting comes on the heels of an announcement last week that morning show anchor and NABJ member Soledad O’Brien is transitioning to a new and less visible role at the network producing documentaries.
Speculation continues…to swirl about the network’s future with journalist and NABJ member Roland Martin. He recently answered a question from a fan on Twitter who would like to see him go to MSNBC. Martin’s contract with CNN expires April 8.
Some at the network believe times have been iffy for black journalists at CNN. TJ Holmes left his anchor slot in late 2011 over concerns of future advancement. Morning anchor Tony Harris did not have his contract renewed by CNN in early 2011 and surfaced at Al-Jazeera
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/cnn-jeff-zucker-nabj-black-journalists_b97237
CNN is DEAD. Died long time ago, when they went the route of FOX. Screw’em!
Someone was trying to get smart with Wendell Pierce and he wasn’t having it
Steve@TheSteamer
@WendellPierce So, what’s the age limit that works for you? It’s a joke.
Wendell Pierce @WendellPierce
@TheSteamer There is a concept of honor. I am about to literally see her. What kind of man would I be to let the Onion treat her that way.
………………………………………………………………………………………….
Steve@TheSteamer
@WendellPierce So, what’s the age limit that works for you? It’s a joke.
Wendell Pierce @WendellPierce
@TheSteamer I would never let anyone call my mother a cunt, and you wont getaway with calling Quvenzhane one.
Warren G. Harding@Snarky_Harding
Add @WendellPierce to the list of people who just found out there are offensive things on the internet
Wendell Pierce @WendellPierce
@Snarky_Harding I’m not naive. I’ll defend a child.What offends me more is knowing they would never offend anyone in LA that could hire them
* Italy: “Italian voters delivered a rousing anti-austerity message and a strong rebuke to the existing political order in national elections on Monday that threatened to plunge the country into political paralysis after early results failed to produce a clear winner.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, Everyone!
Morning, everyone!