Saturday Open Thread

Posted on June 22, 2013 by rikyrah

I hope you enjoy the weekend with Family and Friends.

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38 Responses to Saturday Open Thread

  1. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 10:08 pm

    Goldie Taylor @goldietaylor

    RT @QuadCityPat: Pelosi heckler emoprog Marc Perkel muses,”Should Blacks thank America for ending Slavery?” http://po.st/a3InxY
    7:13 PM – 22 Jun 2013

    Reply
  2. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 10:06 pm

    Imani ABL‏@AngryBlackLady11m
    My face when the Pelosi heckler said he thinks Obama is a white man bc he was raised by white people. #TWiB #nn13

    ……………………….

    http://twitpic.com/cynwa9

    Reply
  3. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 6:33 pm

    I’m Not Your ‘Black Friend’

    Crystal Sykes reflects on hipster racism and being African American in San Francisco
    Published on February 5, 2013

    When I was asked to write about my experience of being black in San Francisco, I was stoked. How could I not be? I’ve been black for almost 25 years, five of those years have been in SF, and I’m a writer. Perfect candidate, right?

    But when I started to actually put pen to paper, I quickly realized the assignment was going to be more challenging than I ever thought. On one hand, I love this city. I love the food. I love day drinking. I love the music. I love not having a car. When more and more of my friends moved elsewhere, I held on to SF tighter and tighter. On the other hand, I find myself frustrated with its lack of diversity and the consequences that come from it.

    Before I dive in, I know that if you’re reading this, you’re probably white – and that’s okay. I won’t be calling anyone “blue-eyed devils” or making fun of how you dance at Booty Basement. I’m just as hipster as most everyone else I know in this city; it’s just a little different for me and probably any other person of color who lives here.

    http://www.thebolditalic.com/negroclash/stories/2784-im-not-your-black-friend

    Reply
  4. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 6:06 pm

    Germany and the US – still best of friends

    Berlin and Washington are bound by a deep friendship. It developed in the Cold War and has now survived more recent turmoil in transatlantic relations.

    The casual question from the old man he’d just been having such a nice conversation with hit him like a slap in the face. “What country are you from?” Juan Diaz was outraged. The memory of the anger that boiled in him still twists up the corners of his mouth. How dare he! When he’d tried so hard to speak his best German? Then Juan Diaz smiles – the man gave him a hug, just like that, when he told him he was from America. “And he said: I remember the Americans saving my life when I was a little kid. With the Berlin Luftbrücke [Berlin airlift].’ ”

    In the summer of 1948, Soviet troops had cut West Berlin off from the outside world, and for almost a year, US and British planes brought supplies to the city’s people. A lump comes to Juan Diaz’ throat when he remembers the hug. He has to sniff and blink away tears before he can continue – since that day he has stopped keeping his nationality a secret.

    http://www.dw.de/germany-and-the-us-still-best-of-friends/a-16889656

    Reply
  5. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 6:04 pm

    America’s smart sisters are doin’ it with style

    Monday, June 17, 2013

    Sasha and Malia Obama have shown poise and grace while growing up in the public eye. As they visit Ireland, Rachel Marie Walsh looks at their Mum-influenced fashion choices

    By Rachel Marie Walsh
    THE First Lady always adds glamour to any event but fashion fans will be just as keen to see the style choices of her daughters Malia and Sasha in Ireland for the G8 summit this week. Michelle Obama and her girls will reportedly be staying at Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel and are expected to attend a number of events while President Barack Obama is at the summit in Fermanagh.

    Malia and Sasha were just sweet little girls when their parents visited in 2011 but have swiftly grown into poised, intelligent young women their parents can’t stop talking about. Sasha turned 12 last week and Malia, who currently stands a model-esque 5’11, will be 15 on July 4.

    The Obama girls are frequently seen with their parents, but rarely heard. The media’s fascination is most often expressed through praise for their cute clothes. The sisters certainly seem to have inherited their mother’s sense of style. They favour empire-line dresses, sequinned cardigans, full skirts and ballet flats for special occasions. Their casual wardrobe is preppy, which suits their active lifestyle — Mrs Obama insists they practise one sport they like and one she chooses, telling Women’s Home Journal: “I want them to understand what it feels like to do something they don’t like and then improve”.

    We see them in colourful T-shirts, Converse trainers and patterned leggings while helping out in the White House vegetable garden, reading children’s stories at the annual Easter Egg Roll or playing on the lawns with their Portuguese water dog, Bo. The whole family dons jeans and trainers to visit local galleries and museums in Washington.

    The responsibility their roles impose leaves little room for wild self-expression but that doesn’t mean they don’t have fun. Malia sports heart-shaped sunnies, spotted tights and metallic brogues while Sasha is partial to Alice bands and beaded bracelets. Like Mom, the sisters do a lot of “colour blocking” in bright, on-trend shades. When they wear designer labels, they tend towards the same names as Mrs Obama. Women’s Wear Daily reports that many designers were asked to submit sketches for the First Lady’s Inauguration Day outfit, including ideas for Sasha and Malia too. Malia has been known to pass on more expensive garments to her stylish sibling.

    After their Dad took the oath of office in January, the girls stole the show in leather gloves and peacoats (Malia in blue from J Crew, Sasha ladylike in purple Kate Spade). Their excitement was infectious as they danced in their seats, snapped “selfies” on their phones and pulled faces while their parents kissed. They also wear cooler, youth-oriented labels, like the Chris Benz and ASOS skirts they chose for election night in November. The Obamas’ look is quite ‘modern Kennedy’: All-American, polished and effortlessly stylish.

    “What has always struck me about this First Family is how incredibly well-coordinated they are,” People Stylewatch editor Susan Kaufman told The New York Times. “Being as media savvy as they are, they know how to look good in front of the world.”

    http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/humaninterest/americas-smart-sisters-are-doin-it-with-style-234271.html

    Reply
  6. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 4:44 pm

    Published on Mar 30, 2012

    Air Force One: It is America’s plane, a national icon and the most secure aircraft in the world. Now, journey aboard, as the members of the Presidential Airlift Group fly this specially modified 747 in a time of global uncertainty, following September 11th, 2001. The events of 9/11 thrust Air Force One’s crew into a day of terror that none could have predicted. Crewmembers stationed at every corner of the jet recall the urgency of shepherding the President on an emergency flight over America’s heartland. Seven years later, preparations are now underway for a diplomatic mission of historic significance and scope: an eight-day tour through six countries in the Middle East. This journey summons recollections of another high-stakes mission to the region, one set in the heart of conflict – the President’s secret flight into Baghdad, Thanksgiving Day, 2003. Following a steep, corkscrew descent, their landing into Iraq was unannounced and unexpected. Now, each member of the PAG, from maintenance and engineering to the flight crew and presidential security detachment, must be ready for a highly publicized trip.

    http://youtu.be/AZ2Fjqld2_A

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 4:39 pm

    Kurt Eichenwald

    @kurteichenwald

    My God. Now Snowden is showing US classified documents to the Chinese, not just telling them things. Unforgiveable. http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

    4:16 PM – 22 Jun 2013

    Kurt Eichenwald

    @kurteichenwald

    Folks, u have 2 accept – something wrong
    w/ Snowden. Exposing stuff he thinks US ought to know is one thing.
    Spilling secrets 2 Chinese? No.

    4:19 PM – 22 Jun 2013

    Reply
  8. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 4:19 pm

    Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady

    Guy escorted from Pelosi event for yelling Obama = Bush is same guy who came to #TWiB booth asking why everything has to be abt race. #NN13
    2:55 PM – 22 Jun 2013

    Reply
  9. Ametia says:
    June 22, 2013 at 2:50 pm

    Amy Holmes says Paula Deen will bounce back. she has followers. ?????

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      June 22, 2013 at 2:55 pm

      MSNBC has on the black MAMMY” to try and help redeem Paul Dean’s iamge.*looking@youAMYHOLMES*

      Reply
    • SouthernGirl2 says:
      June 22, 2013 at 2:55 pm

      Amy Holmes says Paula Deen will bounce back…
      *******************************
      SLAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Reply
    • Ametia says:
      June 22, 2013 at 3:01 pm

      I just can’t with this coonin bitch, Homes. In one breath she says what Deen said is unacceptable, and in the next breath, she’ll bounce back, her fans will support her.

      Signals that it’s ok; you don’t have blacks supporting you, but I’m black and it’s ok that you said what you said, because we know that your white family and some of your fans are down with you racist behavior no matter what the blacks think. MIND-NUMBING how negroes give these bigots a free ride.

      Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      June 22, 2013 at 4:19 pm

      shinning and grinning

      Reply
  10. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 2:28 pm

    Paula Deen Meet My Black Friend …If You Can See Him!

    …Deen explains how her great-grandfather was devastated when the Civil War ended … because he didn’t know how to operate his plantation
    without “help” … saying “black folk were such integral parts of our
    lives.” They weren’t “folk” … they were slaves.

    Paula goes on to say she thinks prejudice will never be completely gone, but that “black people feel the same prejudice that white people feel.”

    Then Paula does something even more ridiculous and says she has “a young man” in her life she wants everyone to meet named Hollis Johnson, who is “black as that board” (her words) while pointing to the black background behind her.

    At one point she hollers, “Come out here Hollis. We can’t see you standing against that dark board.”

    http://www.tmz.com/2013/06/22/paula-deen-interview-black-friends-racism-slavery-food-network/#ixzz2WxjN9wOv

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      June 22, 2013 at 2:34 pm

      16 fuckin; years for crack cocaine? And some white bitches bragging about hustling marijuana makes them better parents?

      The ‘Marijuana Moms of Beverly Hills’ who throw cannabis-infused dinner parties and say taking drugs makes them better parents

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343868/The-Marijuana-Moms-Beverly-Hills-say-taking-drugs-makes-better-parents.html

      Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      June 22, 2013 at 2:40 pm

      http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2013/ag-speech-130621.html

      Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the American Film Institute’s Screening of Gideon’s Army
      ~ Friday, June 21, 2013

      Thank you, Maya [Harris], for those kind words; for your leadership at the Ford Foundation; and for your friendship over the years. I’d also like to thank Dawn [Porter] for her tireless efforts to bring this outstanding documentary to life – and I want to congratulate her on her appearance on The Daily Show earlier this week.

      It’s a pleasure to join you in welcoming so many friends – including Maya’s husband, Associate Attorney General Tony West – other distinguished colleagues, leaders, passionate advocates, indispensable partners, and members of the public to the National Portrait Gallery this evening. And it’s a privilege to help introduce an extraordinary, inspiring, and deeply moving film that shines a light on the difficulties and deficiencies that plague America’s indigent defense systems every day – despite the fact that half a century has passed since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which set those systems in motion.

      “Gideon’s Army” is a documentary that challenges each of us – as legal professionals, as policymakers, and as patriotic citizens from all backgrounds and walks of life – to reclaim the values enshrined in this important ruling, to ask difficult questions about our criminal justice system as a whole, and to recommit ourselves – as individuals, and as a people – to realizing the founding promise that has always stood at the core of our identity as a nation: of equal justice, and equal opportunity, for all.

      Fifty years ago this March, this promise drove Justice Hugo Black – writing for a unanimous Supreme Court – to observe that “in our adversary system, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured of a fair trial unless counsel is provided to him.” Like each of the stories you’re about to see, the journey that led to this moment began quite humbly, with an act as simple as it was profoundly optimistic – when a poor man named Clarence Earl Gideon, who had been denied a court-appointed lawyer and convicted of a felony – took up a pencil and a sheaf of prison stationary, drafted a petition arguing that his right to due process had been violated, and addressed that petition to the Supreme Court of the United States.

      In the decades since this remarkable case, when the Court sided with Gideon and called for his retrial – at which he was found not guilty – public defender systems have been established and strengthened in states across the country. Significant strides have been made in expanding access to quality representation for more of those who need it. Yet – despite the undeniable progress our nation has witnessed over the last half-century – America’s indigent defense systems continue to exist in a state of crisis. And, as this film demonstrates, a great deal of work remains before us.

      Reply
  12. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 2:14 pm

    Get ready to cry

    ………………………….

    Hingham Middle School pays tribute to retiring principal Roger Boddie.

    http://youtu.be/J-2utYVSNAM

    Reply
  16. Ametia says:
    June 22, 2013 at 9:57 am

    FLOTUS in Soweto 2011

    Reply
  17. SouthernGirl2 says:
    June 22, 2013 at 9:49 am

    BREAKING: Nelson Mandela is unresponsive.

    http://bit.ly/1c7sjzS

    After being rushed to the hospital last week, Nelson Mandela has been reported to be in serious, but stable condition.

    According to CBS, things might be more serious than that since a source revealed to them that the 94-year-old former African leader is unresponsive and hasn’t opened his eyes in days.

    Twitter

    Reply
  18. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 8:34 am

    CAMILLE dropping another good comment:

    CamilleCamille

    Sometimes it’s important to not forget and to revisit the past if only to instruct our future — but even more instructive to our future, is the recent past —

    “–Obama’s camp rejected demands that Obama denounce the anti-Clinton radio ad. “Coming from a campaign that is repeatedly launching absolutely false attacks against Senator Obama, it takes some chutzpah,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

    “When I was 20 points down, everybody loved me,” Obama sardonically responded at a rally last Thursday night and then proceeded to tear into what he described as Clinton’s willful misrepresentation of his positions. She was part of the tired, old, Washington gang “willing to say anything just to get elected,” he said. He dismissed her criticisms of his inexperience and optimism, rooted, he said, in the misguided thinking of a Washington establishment that believed “we have to season and stew [Obama] a little bit more … boil all the hope out of him, so he sounds just like us.”

    The angry tone of the campaigns reflected not just the tightening of the race, but also something more emotional: the feeling of many supporters of both candidates that this campaign is about making history and that the other candidate stands in the way. Gloria Steinem made the case in a New York Times op-ed that essentially argued that it was a woman’s turn to be president.

    In introducing her husband last week, Michelle Obama expressed another view. Obama’s election, she said, would lift “the veil of impossibility … off the heads off thousands and millions of kids like me and Barack who have been told all their lives, ‘No. You can’t. You’re not ready. You’re not good enough. Your turn is later.’ ”

    The crowd roared in approval.–”

    http://elliscose.com/articles/…

    Michelle Obama was right of course and absolutely spot on as usual — And as always in those few words, she spoke truth to power while looking out and speaking up for millions of the unseen and unheard in our society — for the truly marginalized and hopeless amongst us — for that faceless and invisible child and adult in East Los Angeles and Detroit—

    And those forever thought “unimportant”; who do not have friends who can at the snap of a finger, immediately have access to churn out op-ed’s in the NYTimes arguing on their behalf — or leading vanity movements mostly cooked up out of boredom and designed to fill the idle time of privileged women with pedigreed childhoods; to help make them feel useful by pursuing a cause — any cause;

    And not necessarily to make a case for true equality and acceptance, but more a myopic and blatantly exclusionary stab at what is essentially a social club that services the whims of a certain kind of woman, from a certain strata of society—

    And in this “feminist” idea, a cause that is not in the least all-encompassing or one that necessarily seeks a true greater good— just like the exclusive memberships at country clubs, it mostly serves to pass time and to help complete their otherwise charmed and enviably pedigreed lives–

    I’ve never really encountered a poor or hungry (in the literal sense) feminist—

    Most people including women want to first simply survive –and to subsequently have a fighting chance at life and living—with dignity —

    Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      June 22, 2013 at 8:37 am

      More from Camille in reference to this tweet:

      Morphus Bfly ‏@morphusbfly1m
      Hillary Hints At 2016, Tells Crowd She Hopes For ‘Woman President My Lifetime.’ http://feedly.com/k/1274OFz

      ……………………………………………………………………………

      CamilleCamille

      Watched the video. LOL!

      She comes off as arrogant and still very much with a shade of that silly 2008 “inevitability”–

      She’s speaking to women in Toronto, Canada, but she’s talking about “our country”–

      But what’s funnier is Hillary’s attempt to at once shamelessly beg for support by telling women it’s time for a woman president and then with an arrogant smirk on her face, insisting that “the woman” in question would have to have a thick skin –hint, hint – pick me I’m tough—LOL!

      And she then invokes President Obama’s historic election — even though she seems to almost choke on his name –(please nobody ever tell me this woman likes our current president – and yes, Hillary’s very much party to and very much in with all this oral diarrhea Bill has been suffering lately with regard to President Obama, Syria etc.)–

      She then goes on to try to draw a rather shallow and convenient comparison with President Obama’s 2008 electoral win. She insists that just as President Obama’s election was historic and meaningful, it was just as important to now elect a woman for the same shallow reasons she seems to want to attribute and reduce President Obama’s successful win to–

      Let’s just say I was never impressed and even less so for having watched that unfortunate and rather embarrassing video address–

      Hillary does not want to or intend to work for this nomination — She wants to be crowned. She’s actually gone ahead and once again bought into her own hype. But worst of all, it’s obvious she doesn’t even have the energy to pursue this thing—

      She thinks she’s going to simply glide in by harnessing some sort of faux feminist hunger for “one of their own” to “make history” —

      And she still hasn’t learned that it’s not all about her — and that try as she may, most of us have absolutely no emotional connection to her or her newly usurped “feminist desires” for a “woman as president” — For Hillary, read Hillary and only Hillary – not any other “woman” – she’s really not interested in seeing or getting any other woman to that office–

      Actually, something tells me that if Hillary doesn’t get the nomination or the election, she’s the sort to make sure no other woman ever does —

      Yes, she’s really that arrogant, self-absorbed and that selfish.

      I hate to break it to all her feminist sisters, but Hillary isn’t really that into you except for the purposes of exploiting you to help propel her into the White House if possible—

      And when that fails, and it will, she’ll be dumping your pathetic arses as quickly as you can say “exploitation”–

      Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 8:29 am

    From gn •

    GG’s still on twitter laying it on thick, hollering like a hit dog now that Snowden has been charged with stealing and leaking intel:

    @marieann66
    @ggreenwald Snowden was ill advised by those who had their own interest in mind.

    ‏@ggreenwald
    @marieann66 You have no idea what you’re talking about – you don’t have slightest idea who “advised” him, or what their “interests” are.

    Reply
  20. rikyrah says:
    June 22, 2013 at 8:27 am

    Good Morning, Everyone :)

    Reply

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