Friday Open Thread | The Movies of John Hughes

Today we end the week of John Hughes’ movies with Home Alone.

home-alone

Home Alone is a 1990 American family comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. The film stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old boy, who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation. While initially relishing time by himself, he is later greeted by two would-be burglars played by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci. The film also features Catherine O’Hara and John Heard as Kevin’s parents. As of 2009, Home Alone was the highest-grossing comedy of all time.[2]

 

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30 Responses to Friday Open Thread | The Movies of John Hughes

  1. rikyrah says:

    Mother Scolds Princeton Women for Not Marrying Her Sons

    By Amanda Marcotte

    |

    Posted Friday, March 29, 2013, at 4:55 PM

    40

    494

    Princeton women wasting their time studying instead of showing gratitude for this awesome opportunity to get that MRS. degree.

    Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

    As reported by Hanna Rosin in the Atlantic back in September (and blogged about here!) researchers who actually bothered to spend time with students on college campuses have discovered that the traditional narratives about the “hook-up culture” have it all wrong. Casual sex is not something imposed by wily young men on young women too dumb to hold out for a ring. It’s often more a strategy young women use to delay commitments that they perceive as obstacles to their personal and career goals. Rosin reported on the findings of researchers Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton:

    Armstrong and Hamilton had come looking for sexual victims. Instead, at this university, and even more so at other, more prestigious universities they studied, they found the opposite: women who were managing their romantic lives like savvy headhunters. “The ambitious women calculate that having a relationship would be like a four-credit class, and they don’t always have time for it, so instead they opt for a lighter hookup,” Armstrong told me.

    Now we have further evidence that this is exactly what’s going on. Why else would Susan Patton, the mother of two Princeton-attending sons, direly warn young women in a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian that if they don’t snatch up the bright young men in college—men like her son—then they run a very high risk of being forever alone with their cats and their books?

    Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.

    I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again—you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

    Patton’s sons deserve the benefit of the doubt here: They’re probably not Ross Douthat types, turned off by these modern women with their birth control pills. They probably did not instigate conversations about how their female classmates are too busy studying and partying to get serious about finding someone to marry. If I know anything about meddlesome older people, I’d guess that the description of Princeton women as unhurried on the subject of romantic commitment was proffered to end a series of tiresome questions about when parents can expect to see serious girlfriends brought around.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/29/susan_patton_is_very_concerned_for_women_that_aren_t_trying_harder_to_marry.html

  2. rikyrah says:

    just for today at Amazon.com in the MP3 Music – Aretha Franklin’s ALBUM

    The Very Best of Aretha Franklin for only $1.99!!!

  3. rikyrah says:

    Dumb America

    Garry Wills

    But the current South is willing to cut off its own nose to show contempt for the government. Governor Rick Scott of Florida turned down more than $2 billion in federal funds for a high-speed rail system in Florida that would have created jobs and millions of dollars in revenues, just to show he was independent of the hated federal government. In this mood, his forebears would have turned down TVA. People across the South are going even farther than Scott, begging to secede again from the Union. Packer notes that the tea is cooling in parties across the rest of the nation, but seems to be fermenting to a more toxic brew in the South. No one needs better health care more than the South, but it fights it off so long as Obama is offering it, its governors turning down funds for Medicaid. This is a region that rejects sex education, though its rate of teenage pregnancies is double and in places triple that of New England. It fights federal help with education, preferring to inoculate its children against science by denying evolution.

    No part of the country will suffer the effects of global warming earlier or with more devastation than the South, yet its politicians resist measures to curb carbon emissions and deny the very existence of climate change—sending it to the dungeon with evolution and biblical errancy. One doesn’t need much imagination to see the South with lowered or swollen waters in its rivers and ports, raging kudzu, swarming mosquitos, and record-breaking high temperatures, still telling itself that global-warming talk is just a liberal conspiracy. But it just digs deeper in denial. The South has decided to be defeated and dumb.

    Humans should always cling to what is good about their heritage, but that depends on being able to separate what is good from what is bad. It is noble to oppose mindless change, so long as that does not commit you to rejecting change itself. The South defeats its own cause when it cannot discriminate between the good and the evil in its past, or pretends that the latter does not linger on into the present: Some in the South deny that the legacy of slavery exists at all in our time. The best South, exemplified by the writers listed above, never lost sight of that fact. Where are the writers of that stature today in the Tea Party South? I was made aware of the odd mix of gain and loss when I went back to Atlanta to see my beloved grandmother. She told me not to hold change between my lips while groping for a pocket to put it in—“That might have been in a nigger’s mouth.” Once, when she took me to Mass, she walked out of the church when a black priest came out to celebrate. I wondered why, since she would sit and eat with a black woman who helped her with housework. “It is the dignity—I would not let him take the Lord in his hands.”

    Tradition dies hard, hardest among those who cannot admit to the toll it has taken on them. That is why the worst aspects of the South are resurfacing under Obama’s presidency. It is the dignity. That a black should have not merely rights but prominence, authority, and even awe—that is what many Southerners cannot stomach. They would let him ride on the bus, or get into Ivy League schools. But he must be kept from the altar; he cannot perform the secular equivalent of taking the Lord in his hands. It is the dignity.

    This is the thing that makes the South the distillation point for all the fugitive extremisms of our time, the heart of Say-No Republicanism, the home of lost causes and nostalgic lunacy. It is as if the whole continent were tipped upward, so that the scattered crazinesses might slide down to the bottom. The South has often been defeated. Now it is defeating itself.

    http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jan/21/dumb-america/

  4. rikyrah says:

    In my twin sister’s rape, there were many victims

    By Christa Parravani,

    Published: March 28

    Whether you’re traveling on a bus in New Delhi, India, or drinking at a teen party in Stuebenville, Ohio, rape, it seems, is never far. In the United States, nearly one in five women have been raped at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — most of them before age 25. Across the planet, more than one in three women will be physically or sexually abused by men.

    But whatever the grisly statistics, the number of people damaged by rape is much higher. Those devastated by sexual violence against women far outnumber any official tallies.

    I know this math intimately.

    In 2001, my identical twin, Cara, was raped by Edgardo Hernandez, a stranger, when we were 24. It was a violent act that destroyed her. And then it almost destroyed me.

    After her rape, Cara took drugs in quantities that would prove to be lethal, doses she felt she needed to help her forget. She died from an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl, a pain medication, on a late spring afternoon — June 13, 2006. And even though her death was an accident, no one who knew Cara doubts that Hernandez, though he didn’t murder her, took her life nonetheless. It just took four years, seven months and 26 days.

    Cara said it best from the witness stand during her rapist’s sentencing: “Edgardo Hernandez is the worst kind of thief. He did not steal my wedding rings, yet my marriage has dissolved. He did not take my legs, yet for over a year I was afraid to leave my house, to walk around in broad daylight. October 18, 2001, was the day I died.”

    My sister died from a rape. She is that rape’s core victim — its axis of suffering, of torment, of woe — but she is not its only victim.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-my-twin-sisters-rape-there-were-many-victims/2013/03/28/09ac8442-9622-11e2-894a-b984cbdff2e6_story.html

  5. Hey Chicas!

    I’m heading out to see the doc. I can’t take this coughing anymore. Everytime I cough my heads feels like it’s going to explode.

  6. rikyrah says:

    Carson to bow out of Johns Hopkins event after anti-gay comments

    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:00 PM EDT

    Ben Carson has had quite an interesting couple of months, hasn’t he? The Republican physician became a far-right cause celebre just last month after using his National Prayer Breakfast platform to condemn the Affordable Care Act, which inexplicably led conservative news outlets to tout him as a possible 2016 presidential candidate.

    But the more he talks, the more trouble Carson finds himself in. This week, the doctor equated homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality, which led to criticism from Carson’s own colleagues at Johns Hopkins. Soon after, a group of students from the graduating class at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine called for replacing Carson as their commencement speaker, citing his extremist rhetoric and criticism of, all things, evolutionary biology.

    To, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Carson whether he’s prepared withdraw as the commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins in light of the controversy. “Absolutely,” he said. “I would say that this is their day. And the last thing I would want to do is rain on their parade.”

    Asked if he’d communicated this to university officials, Carson added, “I am waiting for appropriate channels.”

    Postscript: Incidentally, Carson also believes marriage equality could destroy America like the “fall of the Roman Empire.” I’m sure this guy is an accomplished medical professional, but a historian he isn’t it — unless Carson knows something scholars don’t about fifth-century German tribes, it wasn’t married gay people that caused the sack of Rome.

    Update: I should also mention that when Mitchell asked Carson about his anti-gay comments on Fox, he said he apologizes “if anybody was offended,” which is exactly what a non-apology apology looks like

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17519497-carson-to-bow-out-of-johns-hopkins-event-after-anti-gay-comments?lite

  7. rikyrah says:

    From The Maddow Blog:

    Three months, 30 states, 55 new voting restrictions
    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:33 PM EDT

    In North Carolina this week, some Republican lawmakers unveiled some new ideas. Are they related to jobs, jobs, jobs? I’m afraid not — GOP legislators in the state hope to cut the early-voting window in half, eliminate same-day voter registration, and end Sunday voting.

    If this seems rather familiar, there’s a good reason. In 2011 and 2012, Republican policymakers at the state level invested all kinds of time and energy into approving the most sweeping voting restrictions since the Jim Crow era, and as Ari Berman reported yesterday, in 2013, they’re picking up where they left off.

    In 2011 and 2012, 180 new voting restrictions were introduced in forty-one states. Ultimately, twenty-five laws and two executive actions were passed in nineteen states following the 2010 election to make it harder to vote. In many cases, these laws backfired on their Republican sponsors. The courts blocked ten of them, and young and minority voters—the prime target of the restrictions—formed a larger share of the electorate in 2012 than in 2008.

    Despite the GOP’s avowal to reach out to new constituencies following the 2012 election, Republican state legislators have continued to support new voting restrictions in 2013.

    We’re just three months into the year, but Berman reports that we’ve already seen 55 new voting restrictions proposed in 30 states. It is, as Project Vote’s Erin Ferns Lee put it, “an onslaught.”

    It’s worth noting that different states are considering different voting restrictions. Some are pushing voter-ID laws, while others are considering banning election-day voter registration. Some want proof-of-citizenship requirements, while others intend to reduce early voting. Some are pushing efforts to purge voter rolls, while at least one state (Virginia) is eyeing a bill to disenfranchise ex-felons.

    Many of these efforts are in the South, and may run into Voting Rights Act troubles if approved, but let’s also not forget that Supreme Court conservatives may very well be poised to destroy the Voting Rights Act altogether.

    ——————————————————————————–

    We talked this morning about President Obama’s election-reform commission, and voting-rights advocates can certainly hope something worthwhile will come of their efforts, but in the meantime, the political world is once again faced with a systemic issue: a few too many Republican policymakers appear desperate to put new hurdles between voters and the ballot box. It didn’t much matter in 2012, but they’re intent on keeping the “war on voting” going anyway.

    With this in mind, Jamelle Bouie raises an important point.

    The GOP just can’t hire new personnel if it wants to make headway with nonwhite voters. They need to show real interest in the particular priorities of minority voters. And that begins with abandoning the drive to limit their presence at the polls. Because in the end, Republican protests notwithstanding, that is the practical effect of the voter identification laws pushed and passed by GOP legislatures.

    “[S]tudy after study,” writes Berman, “has shown that voter ID laws disproportionately impact young and minority voters. Not only are these constituencies less likely to have photo ID, but even in states without ID laws, black and Hispanic youth were significantly more likely than whites to be asked to show ID.”

    The RNC’s Reince Priebus says he’s entirely sincere about reaching out to minority voters and bringing minority communities into his party’s tent. I’m skeptical, but that’s what he’s said.

    If the RNC chair means it, though, he can prove it rather easily — denounce Republican efforts to make voting more difficult and publicly reject proposals that disproportionately affect minorities.

  8. rikyrah says:

    A misguided approach to public health

    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:07 PM EDT.

    By any fair standard, Mississippi has some serious public issues. It’s the worst state in the nation for heart disease, worst for infant mortality, and nearly the worst for diabetes. Given this, it stands to reason the state would take its public board of health quite seriously.

    Alas, Mississippi’s governor doesn’t seem to agree.

    Gov. Phil Bryant has nominated staunch pro-life activist Terri Herring, national director for the Pro-Life America Network, to sit on the Mississippi Board of Public Health.

    The 11-member board, according to its website, provides policy direction for the Mississippi Department of Health, appoints a state health officer to operate the agency; approves the state health plan; and approves all rules and regulations of the agency.

    Most of the members of the Mississippi Board of Public Health are medical professionals. Herring has no medical background and identifies herself as a “pro-life lobbyist.”

    Wait, it gets worse. The vacancy on the Mississippi Board of Public Health was going to be filled by Dr. Carl Reddix — a Tufts-education physician with a public health background, including getting a master’s degree in public health from Harvard, and doing his residency at Johns Hopkins.

    This guy was deemed unacceptable, and his slot on the Mississippi Board of Public Health is now going to an anti-abortion lobbyist who has no background in medicine.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17518953-a-misguided-approach-to-public-health?lite

    • rikyrah says:

      FYI, Dr. Reddix is a Brotha.
      A Black man, with those kinds of credentials, that chose to go back to Mississippi and practice medicine.

  9. rikyrah says:

    The Morning Plum: Keep talking about jobs, Mr. President

    Posted by Greg Sargent on March 29, 2013 at 9:10 am

    With the country mired in extended sequestration, and Congress trapped in a stalemate over how much austerity to impose, it’s good to see that President Obama today plans to renew his push for infrastructure investment to create jobs and get the economy going. The Associated Press reports that Obama will today unveil a plan to create jobs by encouraging more private investment in highways and other infrastructure projects — and with billions in new federal spending on infrastructure, partly via a national “infrastructure bank” that was originally proposed during Obama’s first term.

    It appears Obama will propose new spending in his forthcoming budget, which will call for a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The White House is likely to argue that deficit reduction measures can co-exist with new spending on infrastructure, research, and early-childhood education, which will be offset by other unspecified budget changes.

    Obviously new spending is a nonstarter among Republicans, as the President’s partial emphasis on private infrastructure investment makes clear. But Obama should continue pushing infrastructure spending, anyway. For one thing, it’s highly popular: A recent Gallup poll found that 72 percent of Americans — and even 53 percent of Republicans — support new federal spending to put people to work on infrastructure repairs. For another, the notion that we should prioritize spending to get the economy going over deficit reduction in the short term has been entirely marginalized from the Washington conversation, which remains trapped in a dialog between “balanced” austerity (the Dem push for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes) and extreme austerity (the Paul Ryan budget).

    We are likely to remain in a state of extended sequestration for some time. Dems can only hope that the damage done by the sequester cuts focuses people on the relationship between government spending and their own economic well being. With it becoming clearer and clearer that the only alternative to extended sequestration is some kind of “grand bargain” that includes serious cuts to entitlements, the least we can hope for is that the possibility of new spending to get the economy going is not completely absent from the discussion.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/29/the-morning-plum-keep-talking-about-jobs-mr-president/

  10. rikyrah says:

    Get off yer butt

    By Tim F. March 29th, 2013

    Seeing as how I un-retired to motivate some phone calls for gun control, I should note that Obama is using that bully pulpit for all it’s worth to get a bill passed.

    Everyone in Congress thinks that, polls be damned, everyone in America hates gun control. They think this because Rush Limbaugh and the NRA get their people misinformed, angry and on the phone. Representative democracy serves people who make noise by design. If you want representation then pick up the phone and ask for it.

    Q: My Republican is an idiot. Should I phone him or her?

    A: Yes.

    Q: Even Ted Cruz?

    A: Yes goddamit, even Ted Cruz. Full court press. Now git.

    Find your Congressperson and Senator here.

    Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

    Guide for first timers below the jump.

    http://www.balloon-juice.com/

  11. rikyrah says:

    Daughter Of Georgia Mom Whose Baby Was Killed Claims Mom May Have Killed Him For Insurance Money

    Mar 29, 2013

    By NewsOne Staff

    Glassy says that her mother lost custody of her when she was 8-years-old but they have spoken regularly since 13-month old Antonio Santiago was fatally shot in the face. According to Glassy, her mother’s story has changed several times.

    First Coast News reports:

    Glassey said she started to have her doubts after receiving a phone call from her mother telling her that her brother, Antonio Santiago, had been killed. She claims the night of the shooting her mother asked, “How soon do you think life insurance policy will send me a check?”

    Glassey tells First Coast News she hopes her suspicions are wrong but based on conversations with her mother she’s not sure. Glassey described their discussions by saying her mother is crying one minute and then sounds fine the next.

    “I spoke with the detectives and investigators and the evidence leads to many witnesses, not just me,” said Sherry West, mother of the 13-month-old that was killed last Thursday morning.

    Glassey says her mother is bipolar and has schizophrenic tendencies. She believes her mother is on medication but could not tell me any prescriptions specifically.

    “She changed her story she told me the baby was shot first and then she told me she was shot first,” said Glassey.

    http://newsone.com/2313413/sherry-west-antonio-santiago/

  12. rikyrah says:

    Why Mike Kelly ‘got distracted’

    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:34 AM EDT.

    If you’ve ever had the impression that congressional Republicans just don’t take public policy seriously enough, it’s not your imagination.

    Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) was assigned to write legislation that would cut $380 million in loan guarantees to clean-energy companies. But nothing happened with that idea, because Kelly never wrote a bill. He got distracted.

    “It was a priority, and it remains an issue of interest. But Mike’s efforts shifted when he chose to focus more on holding the administration accountable with regards to [Operation] Fast and Furious. And then when the Benghazi tragedy occurred, that took the cake,” said Kelly’s spokesman, Tom Qualtere.

    It’s worth noting that cutting $380 million in loan guarantees to clean-energy companies is a truly awful idea. The United States should be expanding these investments, which are not only good for the economy, but also improve innovation and international competition, while positioning the country well for a changing energy-policy landscape.

    But even if we put that aside, the anecdote is amazing. A Republican congressman intended to work on a public policy he and his party take seriously, but ended up getting nothing done — failing to even write a bill — because some far-right conspiracy theories popped up, which necessarily meant actual policymaking was pushed to the backburner.

    As Jonathan Bernstein put it, “Couldn’t write a bill because he was distracted by Fast and Furious and Benghazi? Why not just say that his computer was down or that a dog ate his homework? At least those cliched excuses don’t imply what is really going on here: Republican politicians who believed that the job of a member of Congress is to be outraged, and once they’ve done that, they can pretty much go home.”

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17517191-why-mike-kelly-got-distracted?lite

  13. rikyrah says:

    Martin O’Malley ✔ @GovernorOMalley

    BREAKING: Maryland added 10,500 jobs in February. We’ve now recovered over 94% of the jobs lost during the recession.

    2:01 PM – 29 Mar 13

  14. rikyrah says:

    Obama follows through on voting commission

    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:47 AM EDT

    On Election Night 2012, President Obama added a line to his speech that wasn’t in the original text: referencing election reform, he said, “By the way, we have to fix that.”

    In January, Obama referenced the issue again in his inaugural address: “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” And in February’s State of the Union address, the president went a step further, not only emphasizing the need for election reforms, but vowing to create “a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America — and it definitely needs improvement.”

    The good news for reform proponents is, Obama followed through yesterday, signing an executive order to establish the commission. The bad news is, the commission faces an uphill climb.

    The commission will be headed by the lawyers for last year’s presidential campaigns: Robert Bauer, who represented Mr. Obama, and Benjamin Ginsberg, who represented his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Mr. Bauer has long been Mr. Obama’s legal adviser and served a stint as his White House counsel. In addition to Mr. Romney, Mr. Ginsberg represented former President George W. Bush during both of his campaigns and the 2000 recount.

    Mr. Obama’s order directed the new commission to submit a final report within six months of its first public meeting, but it was not clear when it would gather because seven other members are still to be appointed by the president.

    The commission was charged with finding ways to shorten lines and “to promote the efficient administration” of elections.

    There’s certainly nothing wrong with the commission’s goals, and there can be no doubt that the problems the panel hopes to address are real. When we have a system that asks 102-year-old voters to wait six hours to participate in their own democracy, no fair-minded person can doubt that the status quo is indefensible.

    What’s more, I’m delighted the Obama White House continues to take this issue seriously. It’s common for election reform to be an important issue in the immediate aftermath of an election, but the issue invariably fades as the campaign season gets further away in the political world’s rear-view mirror. The president deserves credit for keeping the issue alive.

    But let’s not overlook the commission’s hurdles.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17516129-obama-follows-through-on-voting-commission?lite

  15. rikyrah says:

    NRSC uses Gore smear to attack Markey

    By Steve Benen

    Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:22 AM EDT

    As Massachusetts’ Senate special election approaches, Republicans are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attacks on the Democratic frontrunner, Rep. Ed Markey (D). But yesterday’s criticisms of the congressman were a little more interesting than most.

    The National Republican Senate Committee accused Markey yesterday of claiming he “invented the satellite dish, low-cost mobile phone calls, and the ability for cable companies to provide long distance service.” The NRSC added, “Perhaps Markey can use the technology he invented to call, tweet, or message his friend Al Gore, inventor of the internet.”

    Conservative humor is just so droll, isn’t it?

    The problem, of course, is that the National Republican Senate Committee is lying. For one thing, Al Gore never claimed to be the inventor of the Internet. It just never happened — Republicans distorted a Gore comment, the media uncritically ran with it, and a ridiculous smear quickly entered the public consciousness.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17516477-nrsc-uses-gore-smear-to-attack-markey?lite

  16. Ametia says:

    In pursuit of maximum mayhem
    By Eugene Robinson,

    The gunman in the Newtown, Conn., massacre fired 154 bullets from his Bushmaster military-style rifle in fewer than five minutes, killing 20 first-graders and six adults. He brought with him 10 large-capacity magazines, each holding up to 30 rounds, which allowed him to reload quickly. He also carried two semiautomatic handguns, one of which he used to take his own life.

    Is this supposed to be the price of the Second Amendment? Is this the kind of America we want?

    know that realists have concluded there is little chance of getting an assault-weapons ban through Congress. I know that many gun-control advocates believe legislation mandating universal background checks, thought to have a reasonably good chance of being approved, can be even more valuable in preventing Newtown-style tragedies. I know that politics is the art of the possible.

    But still it’s hard for me to accept that the right to “keep and bear arms” extends to the kind of arsenal that Adam Lanza — and his mother, Nancy, whom he also killed — assembled and kept in their home.

    Lanza was outfitted like a commando, with guns and ammo clips engineered to kill the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time. There were other weapons in the family’s possession that would have seemed better suited for recreation or self-defense — the reasons why, according to the National Rifle Association, we need to arm ourselves to the teeth. But Lanza left a .22-caliber rifle at home and a 12-gauge shotgun in the car he drove to the school. He had maximum mayhem on his mind.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-adam-lanza-had-maximum-mayhem-on-his-mind/2013/03/28/bc5ff472-97e2-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

  17. SG2 is still not feeling well.

    Coughing, sneezing, teary eyes! Yuck!

  18. Ametia says:

    Barbara Walters to Retire—Really
    by Lloyd GroveMar 29, 2013 4:00 AM EDT

    After nearly 60 years of groundbreaking television, the ABC icon is reportedly stepping down in May 2014. A talk with Dan Rather, Mika Brzezinski, Connie Chung, and other colleagues who are in shock.

    The idea that Barbara Walters would ever hang it up is so difficult to wrap one’s brain around, so far beyond the realm of human comprehension, such a grievous assault on the senses, that even people not easily shocked find it impossible to accept.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/29/barbara-walters-to-retire-really.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

  19. CBS sports analyst tells all-black panel he’s giving ‘the white man’s perspective’

    Doug Gottlieb

    http://ow.ly/jzjkC

    A CBS analyst Doug Gottlieb is apologizing after telling an all-black panel that he was giving “the white man’s perspective” during coverage of the NCAA basketball tournament on Thursday.

    Gottlieb made the awkward joke during pre-game coverage of the Sweet 16 portion of the tournament on Thursday night.

    “Cream rising to the top,” the CBS analyst quipped. “I don’t know why you guys ask me, I’m just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man’s perspective.”

  20. rikyrah says:

    GOP congressman uses anti-Latino racial slur

    By Steve Benen
    Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:00 AM EDT

    In the wake of Republican defeats in the 2012 elections, party leaders came to a few specific conclusions. They wouldn’t change the party’s policy agenda, but they would focus on rhetoric and choosing better words to communicate the GOP’s vision, while also making minority outreach a priority.

    Of course, the two goals are sometimes intertwined. Perhaps, the theory goes, the GOP would have more success with minority communities if the party communicated with these voters more effectively.

    But at this point, Republicans actually seem to be going backwards.

    Rep. Don Young’s use of an ethnic slur to describe the California farmworkers who picked tomatoes for his father threatens to become an embarrassment for a Republican Party trying to court Latino voters.

    In a radio interview in Ketchikan Tuesday, Young, R-Alaska, called the workers “wetbacks.” […] “I used to own – my father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. You know it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

    The Alaska Republican later issued a statement, clarifying, “I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect.” The statement did not include an apology.

    Just so we’re clear, it’s 2013. Republicans were recently reminded not to use words like “aliens” and “anchor babies” when referring to Hispanics, but apparently that advice was not all-encompassing enough, since we still have at least one congressman using the word “wetback” — on the air — as if it were perfectly acceptable.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/29/17515566-gop-congressman-uses-anti-latino-racial-slur?lite

  21. rikyrah says:

    There’s a Snake in the Garden: Scandal Episode 17 Recap

    [ 7 ] March 29, 2013 | Luvvie

    The fact that the last episode of Scandal ended without me rolling on carpet shoulda let me know that Shonda was preparing to slay all our feelings this week. I shoulda been ready, but I wasn’t. Let’s just get right into it.

    http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2013/03/snake-in-the-garden-scandal-217-recap.html#comment-127951

  22. Ametia says:

    Good Morning, Everyone! :-)

  23. rikyrah says:

    Good Morning, Everyone :)

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