Sunday Open Thread | VaShawn Mitchell | Praise & Worship

VaShawn MitchellVaShawn Mitchell was born and raised in Chicago, IL.  The city known as the birthplace of Gospel music quickly made its imprint on him.  When he was barely a teenager, VaShawn became the assistant music director of St. Mark Baptist Church, working closely with nationally renowned choir leader Lonnie Hunter.

For nearly a decade he served as Minister of Music at Bishop Larry D. Trotter’s Sweet Holy Spirit Church, setting the musical tone both within the church walls and on the ministry’s top-selling recording projects.  The youngest Minister of Music in that church’s history, he successfully merged the contemporary themes he composed with the traditional choir vibe that marked the church’s worship services.

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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74 Responses to Sunday Open Thread | VaShawn Mitchell | Praise & Worship

  1. blushedbrown says:

    @SG2

    GOOD NEWS The twitter war has begun, Knox has jumped in and Papa trashed him with an upload of a picture disputing his claim of incorrect measuring!!!!!!

    http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad257/Papa813_bucket/TMMrExpert20.jpg

    I love when a plan comes together.

    Justice for Trayvon Martin!!!

  2. Blushedbrown,

    I think I got it through. They’ll both get it.

  3. blushedbrown says:

    Keeping you informed Judge Nelson denied the defense to compel Crump to be deposed.

    http://184.172.211.159/~gzdocs/documents/0313/order_re_crump.pdf

    On a side issue Mr. Knox the so called “expert” challenged Our LLMPapa.

    http ://knoxforensics.blogspot.ca/2013/03/llmpapas-bullet-hole-misalignment.html

  4. blushedbrown says:

    Good Morning, Everyone : ^ )

  5. Ametia says:

    This is what was all over the tubes SUNDAY MORNING. Same GOP thugs, same lies.

  6. blushedbrown says:

    @3CHICSPOLITICO

    LLMPAPA’s Videos……….
    Didn’t know where to post them but please feel free to move…. :smile:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6khDK3PSg8

    Hi Blush. THANKS! :-)

  7. rikyrah says:

    this comment was at Balloon JUICE

    I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet Says:

    A couple of things:

    1) re the Who Suggested the Sequester, DeLong had link to a nice little video (1:29) that gives a good answer to that, if you haven’t seen it.

    2) re (roughly) Obummer’s always wanted to gut Social Security and Medicare and is really a secret Republican – too many people on the left seemingly can’t understand him even though he seems to me to be the most transparently straightforward politician in my memory. Obama has been clear for years that his over-arching goal is to get the Congress and the Presidency working properly again. The President following the law and moving the country forward; the Congress doing its job and passing sensible legislation rather than spending months/years on manufactured crises. He’s willing to accept a “grand bargain” of things that he doesn’t like because: a) it’ll finally get the Republicans to break their ‘no taxes, ever’ pledge; b) it’ll get these manufactured crises about the deficit and the debt limit and so forth behind us; c) it’ll let us move on to real issues (climate change; dependence on foreign oil; investments in education and technologies of the future; shrinking the DOD sensibly; controlling health-care costs; etc. d) he knows that a present Congress can’t prevent a future Congress from making changes. Incremental reforms now don’t mean more can’t be done in the future. A Chained CPI can be tweaked in the future as well; benefits can always be expanded – all it takes is people in the House and Senate willing to vote for it.

    If Obama had 65 votes in the Senate and Nancy had the gavel in the House, does anyone think that he would be pushing for a chained CPI and frozen discretionary spending for years on end? I don’t. He knows that unemployment is the biggest problem right now, not the deficit. But he knows that he can’t get anything of substance done with the way the House is now unless he gets the leadership and enough Republicans on board so he can get a vote.

    Remember when he said (during the ’04 campaign) he would have chosen a single-payer health care system if he were starting from scratch but that wasn’t going to happen with limitations imposed by our existing system and the politics? He wasn’t lying. It’s the same thing now.

    Don’t mistake tactics imposed by circumstances with what he would like to do if circumstances were different.

    If you want Obummer to not do a Grand Bargain with a chained CPI, work to give Nancy the gavel and Harry a bigger majority. It’s that simple.

    My (probably too long) $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. rikyrah says:

    This person’s comment is spot. on.:

    Every time I hear these disgraceful d-bag Republicans blame Obama for yet another FABRICATED CRISIS in Washington D.C…..I always picture a conservative bigot standing in front of a black man’s chair at his desk.

    Conservative bigot: ”Hey boy..how come you ain’t sitting down and workin’ ?”

    Black man: ”I can’t sit down sir. You’re blocking my chair.”

    Conservative bigot: ”I ain’t blockin’ nothin’ boy. I just think that you’re a lazy incompetent who shouldn’t have this job in the first place.”

    Black man: ”That’s not true sir. I’m actually quite competent. In fact..I was just RE-HIRED.
    You’re just preventing me from getting any work done.”

    The black man attempts to walk around the conservative bigot BUT the bigot steps in front of him again.

    Conservative bigot: ”YOU LIE !! I ain’t preventing you from doin nothin’ boy.”

    Black Man: ”Well how about a compromise? You move out of my way and go get your own work done and I can get back to work. Maybe we could even work together on some things later.”

    Conservative bigot: ”Work together with YOU? You kiddin me boy? I would sooner spit in your face than work with you on anything !”

    Black man: ”Ok sir. Well would you at least stop blocking me then?”

    Conservative bigot: ”Hell No! I ain’t moving! How come you never have nothin’ to do with anything boy? How about you take personal responsibility? I ain’t the reason why you can’t get nothin’ done !! You are a failure ! Admit it ! ”

    Black man: ”I haven’t failed sir. In fact…I have done quite a lot to clean up the mess left by the last guy who had this job.”

    Conservative bigot: ”You watch your mouth boy!. The last guy who had your job was a great American and a patriot !! You watch your mouth !!”

    Black man: ”Did you block him too? Did you try prevent him from getting work done?”

    Conservative bigot: ”He always did HIS job…unlike you !!”

    AND SCENE !!!!

    ON AND ON IT GOES…….THE MADNESS CONTINUES !

    FOUR YEARS AND COUNTING OF THE SAME BIGOTRY, VITRIOL AND HATE.

    WHAT A SHAME. CONSERVATIVE BIGOTS GIVE REAL AMERICANS A BAD NAME.

  9. rikyrah says:

    Philly Mag cover: Whites must criticize blacks more

    Filed Under: Media | News

    POSTED: Saturday, March 2, 2013, 5:02 PM

    Philadelphia Magazine just published an article by Robert Huber titled “Being white in Philly: In a city that is largely poor and segregated white people have become afraid to say anything at all about race. Here’s what’s not being said.”

    No, it is not an Onion-esque parody of Philadelphia’s most white-bread journalistic institution, a magazine that seemingly hired Gene Marks just because he wrote the jaw-droppingly offensive article “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” for Forbes.

    But before I continue, I must first disable the story’s booby trap, a defense built into its very DNA: the idea that “in so many quarters, simply discussing race is seen as racist.”

    Huber is not a brave man, and his premise is totally false. People will only think you “simply discussing race” is racist if you, like Huber, treat black people like inscrutable extraterrestrials whose moral shortcomings might be responsible for their own poverty.

    The reality is that many black people frequently talk about race and racism. And really, white people do too–sometimes intelligently, sometimes not so much. To the extent that whites do not discuss race more it is because they do not want to address important pieces of context like, say, history (see Louis CK).

    Indeed, I’m a white guy who writes about race and frequently talk to black Philadelphians–and often, gasp, about race. Black sources have never protested frank questions about race for articles I write about poverty and educational inequity, police brutality and mass incarceration, or neighborhood segregation and (yes, largely black) gun violence.

    Huber’s idea that white people are uniquely aggrieved because they are muzzled in discussions of race (why are they allowed to say the n-word and not me) is not a new one. It’s more that Huber wants to have a particular sort of conversation about race. Namely, he “yearn[s] for….the freedom to speak to my African-American neighbors about…how the inner city needs to get its act together.” Like, you know, an arguably racist conversation about race.

    Yes, that’s certainly not the sort of conversation about race most blacks or sensible whites (not to mention unmentioned Asians or Latinos) want to have.

    Huber seems to feel that his holding the door for black people at Wawa and being “overly polite,” an example he weirdly invokes a few times, is some sort of pathetic expression of white guilt. It’s not clear how Huber convinced his editor that personal hangups better discussed with a psychotherapist were “journalism” about “race in Philadelphia” and so he conducted interviews with some white people. In Fairmount.

    One source is a “tall, slim, dark-haired beauty from Moscow getting out of her BMW” who tells him that “Blacks use skin color as an excuse” and waste your tax dollars while “not doing anything except sitting on porches smoking pot…Why do you support them when they won’t work, just make babies and smoking pot?” If this is “what’s not being said” about race by whites then white people like Huber might indeed need to keep theirs mouths shut.

    Not only does this Russian fail to suggest where Philadelphians of any race are supposed to smoke pot (only half-kidding here, and surely Huber is aware that young whites are ten percent more likely to smoke pot than their black counterparts?), Russia is infamous for virulent racism against Afro-descendant people. (And then there’s the matter of some male journalists feeling compelled to point out the physical attractiveness of female sources.) That being the case, this woman’s quote appears more like a socket puppet for Huber’s own mindset than a meaningful representation of anything about Philadelphia. Other characters include some kind of hipster who once lived next to a violent (black) drug dealer and prides himself “on [being at] the outer limits of engagement–even at the expense of his own well-being.”

    Then there’s a white lady named Jen who bravely went to a pool in Brewerytown even though she and her daughter were the only white people there. Jen, who Huber clearly thinks deserves some sort of race relations medal, gushed that “these kids were so happy and sweet.” Anyhow, what really shocked Huber was that one who lived across the street from the pool said she was “the luckiest girl in the world”–even though her house is a “beaten-down row.”

    http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/nakedcity/Philly-Mag-cover-Whites-must-criticize-blacks-more-.html

  10. rikyrah says:

    Bob Woodward’s Back-And-Forth With The White House Gets Even Weirder, As He Invites Obama And Others Over

    As White House economic adviser Gene Sperling made the Sunday show rounds to dispel any notion of a feud between him and Bob Woodward, Woodward extended the olive branch to Sperling and President Barack Obama and invited them both to his house.

    “He’s a peacemaker,” Woodward said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”

    “I am in the business of listening, and I’m going to invite him over to my house if he’ll come and hopefully he’ll bring others from the White House — maybe the President himself. You know, talking really works.”

    http://www.businessinsider.com/bob-woodward-obama-gene-sperling-threat-emails-sequester-price-politics-reporting-2013-3#ixzz2MVRXVGdB

  11. rikyrah says:

    learn something new everyday.

    Urban Dictionary: 2520

    Means white dude or white people. The 25th letter is Y The 20th letter is T put them together you get YT=whitey.

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=2520

  12. Howard Kurtz rips Hannity for comparing black Democrat to the KKK http://sns.mx/N5tby5
    ****************************

    Keith Ellison blistered Hannity’s lying racist azz.

  13. Mitt Romney: It kills me not to be there in the White House.

    Mitt Romney- it kills me not to be in the WH

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/mitt-romney-election_n_2801129.html#comments

    WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney said Sunday that until late into the evening on Election Day 2012, he thought he was going to win the presidency.

    “By 8 or 9 o’clock, it was clear that we were not going to win,” Romney told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

    In his first television interview since that loss, Romney reflected on almost all facets of the campaign, not just the night the White House slipped from his grasp. Below, some other takeaways from the interview:

    Asked about the “47 percent” video that helped sink his presidential candidacy, Mitt said he’d been misunderstood. “It was a very unfortunate statement that I made,” he said. “It’s not what I meant … What I said is not what I believe.” He also acknowledged the toll it took on his candidacy: “That hurt, there is no question that hurt and did some real damage to my campaign.”

    Romney still opposes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, telling Wallace he does not support an idea put forward by the “Gang of Eight” senators to allow provisional status. “People who have come here illegally should not be given a path to permanent citizenship just because they have come here illegally,” he said.

    Republicans need to do a better job of bringing minority voters to their side, Romney added, when asked about the future of the GOP. But nobody in the party, he joked, is going to listen to the guy who lost.

    As for Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent snub by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) — who, in the days after the storm, praised President Barack Obama — that wasn’t why he lost, said Romney. “I lost my election because of my campaign, not because of what anyone else did,” he said. “I see my mistakes and I see my flaws, and I did better this time than I did the time before.”

    Romney criticized Obama over the sequester, hinting that he would have accepted a 10-1 spending-cuts-to-tax-hikes deal. “It kills me not to be there in the White House doing what needs to be done,” he said. “The hardest thing about losing is watching this critical moment, this golden moment slip away with politics.”

  14. Audio: V.P. Biden Speaks at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Brunch

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/vp-biden-speaks-martin-and-coretta-king-unity-brunch

  15. rikyrah says:

    Ann Romney admits frustration with husband’s campaign
    By Elise Viebeck – 03/03/13 09:53 AM ET

    …Asked if she and her son Tagg were angered by the campaign’s unwillingness to “let Mitt be Mitt,” Ann Romney said yes.

    “Well, of course … It’s true,” she said. “But it’s not just the campaign’s fault. I believe it was the media’s fault as well. He was not being given a fair shake. People weren’t allowed to really see him for who he was.”

    Mitt Romney was criticized during the campaign for his apparent coldness — a quality his wife said is not representative of his personality.

    “I’m like a she-lion when it comes to defending Mitt,” Ann Romney told Fox. “He’s an exceptional, wonderful person.”

    She also conceded that the GOP campaign was “blindsided” by the enthusiasm for President Obama.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/285865-ann-romney-admits-frustration-with-husbands-campaign?utm_campaign=hillballotbox&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#ixzz2MUcZknOr

  16. rikyrah says:

    Antonin Scalia retire bitch
    — Danny DeVito (@DannyDeVito) March 3, 2013

  17. rikyrah says:

    State Dept. Releases Keystone XL Report

    by BooMan
    Sat Mar 2nd, 2013 at 10:20:17 AM EST

    In politics, it is a time-honored tradition to release unpopular news late on a Friday afternoon in order to minimize both the news coverage and the reader/viewership. That’s why the Obama administration’s State Department waited until 4pm yesterday to release their report on the Keystone XL pipeline. It’s also why the administration chose yesterday afternoon to announce a somewhat curious list of pardons.
    I’ll be honest. Writing well about environmental issues is difficult and I tend to defer to Steven D, who has more patience for delving deep into the source material. I haven’t had time to look at the State Department’s report, and the reaction has been so immediate and so heated, that I wonder how many people who are writing about it have actually read it.

    One interesting thing about the report is that it was prepared over a two year period under the stewardship of Hillary Clinton. The new Secretary of State, John Kerry, has a strong environmental record and it is quite possible that his State Department would have come to different conclusions. It’s hard to know how much this is determined by the science, how much by the Secretary of State’s guidance, and how much by Obama’s guidance.

    As a general matter, I am very concerned by the energy boon we’ve unleashed with the development of fracking and the exploitation of Tar Sands. Obviously, these are enormous opportunities to create wealth and to increase our energy independence, but they are also going to be sources that put a lot more carbon in the air and that carry all the environmental hazards associated with mining and drilling and transporting. Just the sheer amount of money that is involved creates tremendous political clout for the carbon-emitting industries, and the availability of all this energy undermines a needed sense of urgency about dealing with climate change. Even if these activities create something salutary, like lower energy prices, that can turn around and bite us by making cleaner fuels less competitive. That’s why I understand that the environmental movement opposes the Keystone XL pipeline on principle, regardless of the findings of the State Department report.

    That’s not to say that the report cannot be deeply flawed, and some of the early criticisms seem valid to me. But I do think people should read and discuss it a little more before we jump to the conclusion that we’re all doomed. This is a really complicated topic, from the science to the politics to the mechanism the government goes through to approve or disapprove of the pipeline. It’s the last part that I particularly don’t understand well enough to jump to conclusions about the meaning of the report. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this pipeline is going to eventually be approved, what tools does the administration have (unilaterally, and in concert with Congress) to mitigate or offset any increase in emissions? Can they wheel and deal, perhaps behind the scenes, so that final approval is informally linked with other anti-carbon measures?
    – See more at: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/3/2/102017/8733#sthash.82SlfJmM.dpuf

  18. rikyrah says:

    The Midterms Start Early

    by BooMan
    Sun Mar 3rd, 2013 at 09:17:02 AM EST

    I guess the midterms are starting early. Articles in the Washington Post and Roll Call report on the president’s focus on winning back control of the House of Representatives. Both articles treat this as a highly risky strategy. It’s straight-up concern trolling.

    They act like this is some kind of unprecedented thing, the president wanting his party to control Congress. But it’s only unusual for a second-term president to fight for control of Congress because the sample size is so small. In 2006, President Bush faced his second midterm election and he was battling to retain control of both chambers. He lost. In 1998, Bill Clinton faced his second midterm election, but he was more concerned with his looming impeachment trial. He won both the trial and the midterms, but it didn’t change the Republican control of either chamber. In 1986, Ronald Reagan faced his second midterm and he was dealing with the Iran-Contra affair. He lost control of the Senate and faced Democratic opposition in both chambers for the rest of his presidency. In 1974, Nixon had resigned before his second midterm. Lyndon Johnson only had one midterm election, as did John F. Kennedy. So, in the last fifty years, we have never had a situation where the president was in an analogous situation.

    Another thing I see in print a lot is the idea that second-term presidents only have a brief period to do anything before they become lame-ducks. Again, the sample size is so small that this is meaningless. Insofar as we can talk about LBJ as a two-term president, his second term was ruined by Vietnam. Nixon’s by Watergate. Reagan’s by Iran-Contra. Clinton’s by Linda Tripp. Bush Jr.’s by the war in Iraq. If you want to predict that Obama will make a similar blunder, you’re welcome to play Nostradamus, but it doesn’t look likely right now.

    What’s unprecedented is the situation we are in this country, where a minority party simply insists on its agenda with no compromises or concessions. In this situation, it’s either civil war or the midterms start early.

    I’ll opt for the latter.

    For now.
    – See more at: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/3/3/9172/54970#sthash.YnnSc0vK.dpuf

  19. Romney: ‘Obamacare’ Was Attractive To Minority, Low-Income Voters

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/romney-obamacare-was-attractive-to-minority-low-income

    Mitt Romney stood by his belief that President Obama was aided in his re-election by giving gifts to minority voters, during an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”

    “The president had the power of incumbency, ‘Obamacare’ was very attractive, particularly to those without insurance, and they came out in large numbers to vote,” Romney said. “So that was part of a successful campaign.”

    Romney first made comments to this effect on a conference call with donors after the November election, when he said Obama had been “very generous” in doling out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as women during his first term. Asked about them in the Fox News interview, recorded earlier this week in his California home, he reiterated that belief.

  20. Ametia says:

    This is why Obama can’t make a deal with Republicans
    Posted by Ezra Klein on March 2, 2013 at 3:19 pm

    File this under “Jonathan Chait is right.”

    My column this weekend is about the almost comically poor lines of communication between the White House and the Hill. The opening anecdote was drawn from a background briefing I attended with a respected Republican legislator who thought it would be a gamechanger for President Obama to say he’d be open to chained CPI — a policy that cuts Social Security benefits — as part of a budget deal.

    The only problem? Obama has said he’s open to chained CPI as part of a budget deal. And this isn’t one of those times where the admission was in private, and we’re going off of news reports. It’s right there on his Web site. It’s literally in bold type. But key GOP legislators have no idea Obama’s made that concession.

    The question my column left open was whether improving the lines of communication would actually change anything. Chait’s view is no, it wouldn’t. He begins by quoting Upton Sinclair’s famous line: “It is impossible to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on not understanding it.” Chait continues:

    If Obama could get hold of Klein’s mystery legislator and inform him of his budget offer, it almost certainly wouldn’t make a difference. He would come up with something – the cuts aren’t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.

    What happened next on Twitter proved Chait’s point in every particular.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/02/this-is-why-obama-cant-make-a-deal-with-republicans/

  21. Republicans turned off by the size of Obama's package

    ***goes to the corner***——->

  22. David Gregory: Obama, Washington Media Don’t Like Each Other

    [wpvideo VSyfrUyy]

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/david-gregory-obama-washington-media_n_2797311.html

    NBC’s David Gregory said on Friday that the Washington media doesn’t like President Obama very much.

    Speaking on “Today,” the “Meet the Press” host said there has long been tension between the two sides. That tension has found its most recent outlet in the kerfuffle over Bob Woodward’s emails with White House economic adviser Gene Sperling. Gregory said that the intensity of the debate emanated in part from the mutual disdain both sides felt for each other.

    “The President does not particularly like the Washington press corps,” Gregory said. “And I think that feeling is mutual in a lot of respects. And so there’s not a great relationship between that Washington establishment and the President.” He added that the situation was not “unprecedented.”

    • Dear David,

      No one likes you either. Your Meet The Press sucks. How’s that?

    • Ametia says:

      Who gives a FLYING shit about who likes the media. If they were credible, there’dbe no need to be discussing likes and dislikes either way.

      The media can’t handle the fact that THIS PRESIDENT is plugged into TECHNOLOGY, and bypasses their STUPID INCOMPETENT, LYING ASSES.

      Keep up or get out, MOFOS!

  23. Good Morning, everyone!

    1 John 5:14-15

    This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

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