Hutch returned to Motown in 1982, where he scored the disco hit, “In and Out“, that same year and also recorded a song for the film The Last Dragon in 1985 called “The Glow”. Hutch left Motown again by the end of the decade and by 1994 had moved back to Dallas.
Hutch continued to record and perform while living comfortably on royalties from old hits and new samples.[1] His manager, Anthony Voyce, said of Hutch: “I’ve never met a more generous and caring person.”[1] He died in 2005.[1]
He is survived by six children, and was the uncle to Cold 187um of the rap group Above the Law
Cara Lynch @caradox
Good lord. RT @txvoodoo: Cuccinelli: those w/ non life-threatening illnesses & no ins “need to live with it” http://j.mp/16S6SmV
12:30 PM – 15 Aug 2013
http://youtu.be/tOMeQ3LKpSc
Rachel Maddow did a good segment on the new North Carolina Voter Suppression tonight….
will someone put it in a postable video?
I would like to see the video.
https://twitter.com/STARZYahoo/status/368081023734534145/photo/1
Phillip M. McKenzie @pmmcken
CRIME PAYS: Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald wants $50K for access to an interview with Snowden he will conduct himself. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579014611497378326.html …
5:15 PM – 15 Aug 2013
“First Take: Why big media is ripe for hacking”
Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
5:39 p.m. EDT August 15, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/
Obama’s daughters join family’s Vineyard vacation
by Darlene Superville, Associated Press | August 15, 2013 at 5:25 PM
President Barack Obama’s family vacation on Martha’s Vineyard is now complete: Daughters Malia and Sasha arrived Thursday.
They had been finishing up at camp, and their absence was noted when Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their dog, Bo, arrived on this picturesque Massachusetts island last Saturday for the family’s fourth summer vacation since Obama took office. It’s the first time the girls came separately from their parents.
Obama, who played 18 holes of golf every day but one this week, cut his game to just nine holes Thursday before returning to the family’s $7 million Chilmark rental home to see 15-year-old Malia and 12-year-old Sasha. Reporters had been given the signal that Obama would spend the rest of the day on the property.
He had joked several weeks ago about feeling lonely at the White House because his children were away.
The White House announced the girls’ arrival Thursday afternoon by email.
Obama is scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday.
One sign of the daughters’ absence was that Obama had yet to drop by the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven, where he typically takes them on their full first day of vacation to pick up summer reading. That visit could now come Friday, although there isn’t much time left to make headway on a summer book list.
http://thegrio.com/2013/08/15/obamas-daughters-join-familys-vineyard-vacation/
How sad. How tragic that we from the sixties are seeing so much of the achievements of the civil rights era undermined and destroyed. Just to remember all of the blood and tears and killings and beatings that were endured by untold numbers to bring about those advances.
There is a sophisticated, organized racist movement and machine that is throwing out a net and closing it quickly now on African Americans. We have to act quickly now to undo each step they have taken or it will be TOO LATE very soon!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWlMfmsIW8U
I heard the people weeping.
I heard the verdict read.
The tears that they were shedding
Is echoing in my heart.
Oh God!!!!!!!!!!!
The Crazy Thing That Happened on NY1 Last Night Demonstrates Just the Kind Of Person Who Supports Stop-and-Frisk.
Speechless!!!
“Those People”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bizarre!!!!!!!!!
Thinking of the 1964 Democratic Convention and Fannie Lou Hamer’s discovery about Liberals and Democrats!!!!!!!!
Are you okay, SG2. I can’t begin to think what emotions you might be experiencing.
The betrayals!
How do you trust any white person? How do you trust me? How would you trust that white radio host if he moved to the Upper West Side? Would he develop her thinking?
“Those people” This says it all, how this white racist woman feels and thinks.
STOP THE MADNESS!
How do you stop the madness? It is snowballing.
*tears*
huh?
HUH?
So, I am just now getting it.
You all have known for a lifetime.
This is what the white power structure means and has always produced. It is systemic.
Steve King’s important insight
By Greg Sargent, Published: August 15 at 12:06 pm
GOP Rep. Steve King, who lives in perpetual fear of cantaloupe-sized calves trooping over the border, offers his latest expression of shock and horror at the shifting ground beneath his feet:
“Last year, almost everybody in my conference would have agreed with me on this immigration issue,” King told CNN’s “New Day.” “And this year, it seems as though after the presidential election, a spell’s been cast over a good number of Republicans, and they seem to think the presidential election was about immigration.”
As I noted earler, it’s crazy that so much attention gets lavished on King while House GOPers who are seriously entertaining reform mostly go ignored. But in this case, King’s quote contains an important insight about the current debate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/08/15/steve-kings-important-insight/
The Black Helicopter Left and Its Disconnect from the Constitution
Wednesday, August 14, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 1:41 PM
Not long ago, people who imagined black helicopters lowering themselves in American cities and towns were considered tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists who couldn’t be taken seriously. Now, their leaders are some of the most prominent media (and elected) figures in American politics – on both the Left and the Right. The collusion of the tinfoil-hat crowd has taken the form of people on the supposed Left having ideological orgasms about #standwithrand, wondering if Obama could order a drone strike on your favorite coffee shop in Anytown, USA, and people from “tech journalists” to shills declaring Edward Snowden a hero.
We have gotten to a place where conspiracy theories and downright counterfactual assertions are taken as the truth when it comes to the government’s legal, legitimate power to conduct surveillance in the interest of national security. Any assurances given by the law and by process to protect privacy and liberty is tossed aside as insufficient when it isn’t derides as a lie. Yet, it is the libertarian side of the argument that fails to make a factual case: thus far any and all the programs unearthed by Snowden’s defection have proven to be legal, Constitutional, and Congress and court-supervised, and no abuse, illegality, negligence or fraud.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/08/the-black-helicopter-left-and-its.html
Newt to GOP: We’ve got a problem
By Greg Sargent, Published: August 14 at 4:34 pm
There’s been lot of chatter today about these rather blunt remarks from Newt Gingrich about the perils of the GOP’s obsession with destroying Obamacare while refusing to offer any meaningful alternative:
“I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich blamed the problem on Republican culture that rewards obstruction and negativity instead of innovation and “being positive.”
“We are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything,” Gingrich said, acknowledging the “totally candid” nature of his remarks. “We have to do the homework.”
“This is a very deep problem,” said Gingrich.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/08/14/newt-to-gop-weve-got-a-problem/
New Trailer for The Best Man Holiday – Official Trailer
http://youtu.be/uZZXBQrDh8Y
Tea Partiers: U.S. ‘can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship’
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:45 PM EDT
A few incumbent Republican senators have primary opponents to worry about — most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — but Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) doesn’t appear to be one of them. The two-term senator and former governor remains fairly popular in the Volunteer State and is generally expected to win re-election easily.
But yesterday, a group of Tea Party organizations wrote Alexander a letter, urging him to quit and make room for a more right-wing candidate. Their letter included a classic line, that speaks volumes about Tea Partiers’ ideology.
Got that? After more than a decade on Capitol Hill, Alexander has developed a reputation as a senator capable of working with people he disagrees with — and the Tea Party groups consider this outrageous. “Compromise and bipartisanship” have been repackaged as insulting words senators would be wise to avoid.
Indeed, the letter added, “Quite honestly, your voting record shows that you do not represent the conservative values that we hold dear and the votes you have cast as Senator are intolerable to us.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20038405-tea-partiers-us-can-no-longer-afford-compromise-and-bipartisanship?lite
A question for everyone reading here:
If you were to design a political button, what words would you put on it?
Some of the ones I have though of are
1. No More Trayvons
2. Don’t wait, Register to Vote NOW
3. Stop Racism
4. Stop Voter Suppression
I would put “Stop Racism” because racism drives and fuels the hate that leads to voter suppression, Trayvons of the world, injustice, divisions etc.
You are correct…….you know from experience.
@SG2 DITTO!
https://twitter.com/ethanklapper/status/368024241129525248/photo/1
WWE Superstar Darren Young Comes Out Of The Closet
Aug 15, 2013
By Ruth Manuel-Logan
WWE’s Darren Young (pictured) gave TMZ’s cameramen the shock of their lives on Wednesday, when he revealed to them that he was in fact a gay man.
…………..
Young’s coming out was done without fanfare, press releases, or news conferences. Instead, he simply responded to an inquiring reporter in a very nonchalant manner that he is in fact gay and was quite satisfied with his life.
When Young was asked whether he hoped to make some kind of difference by revealing that he is a gay, he responded in the affirmative, “I hope so. I’m hoping to be able to make a difference. It’s very important to me that people understand that somebody’s sexual preference shouldn’t really matter. It should be about the person.“
http://newsone.com/2679057/darren-young-wwe/
https://sphotos-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/p480x480/1095028_542931942426864_892437293_n.jpg
Voter-suppression off to a fast start in North Carolina
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:43 AM EDT.
It was only four days ago that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed sweeping new voting restrictions into law (despite his own personal confusion over what the law says and does). But it’ll probably be a little while until we start to see the practical effects, right?
Wrong. Voter-suppression efforts are off to a fast start in North Carolina (thanks to my colleague Tricia McKinney for the heads-up).
Much of the criticism of the voting restrictions in North Carolina have focused on Republican efforts to suppress African-American and low-income voter participation, but efforts to target students — who tend to be more progressive — are a key provision of the new state law.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20037180-voter-suppression-off-to-a-fast-start-in-north-carolina?lite
Get to know the new GOP hostage strategy
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:09 AM EDT
A spirited debate has unfolded within the Republican Party over the last several weeks about what the party intends to do to sabotage the federal health care system. A significant contingent within the GOP has demanded a hostage strategy: Republicans should tell Democrats that they’ll shut down the government unless Dems agree to deny health care benefits to millions of Americans.
The strategy is, of course, destined to fail. Democrats will never agree to pay such a ransom, and Republicans don’t want to be on the hook for a shutdown that puts their control of Congress in jeopardy.
GOP leaders realize they can’t follow through on such threats, but they also realize radicalized rank-and-file congressional Republicans won’t be satisfied with nothing. With this in mind, National Review’s Robert Costa reports that GOP leaders are prepared to let one hostage go, while taking a new one for Republicans to threaten.
I lack the words to describe how truly crazy this is. “Dangerously stupid” and “hopelessly insane” come to mind, but even these phrases don’t capture the radicalism of the plan under consideration. It’s threatening a level of madness without modern American precedent.
As Ezra Klein explained, “Trading a government shutdown for a debt-ceiling breach is like trading the flu for septic shock. And Boehner knows it. Republicans will effectively be going to the White House and saying, ‘Delay the health-care law or we will single-handedly cause an unprecedented and unnecessary global financial crisis that everyone will clearly and correctly blame on us, destroying our party for years to come.’ … This is not a safe way to govern the country.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20036866-get-to-know-the-new-gop-hostage-strategy?lite
Charleston City Paper
“As the Neck (Charleston’s upper peninsula) and placemakers set an agenda, will the black community be included or neglected again?”
by Elizabeth Pandolfi
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/as-the-neck-develops-and-placemakers-set-an-agenda-will-the-black-community-be-included-or-neglected-again/Content?oid=4700562
“Post-Zimmerman trial, a divided America”
David Dennis
theguardian.com, Thursday 15 August 2013 10.30 EDT
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/15/george-zimmerman-trial-racially-divided-america
President Obama on Thursday condemned the violence in Egypt and announced that the United States has canceled next month’s joint U.S. military exercise with Egypt, but left U.S. aid commitments to Egypt intact. “The Egyptian people deserve better than what we’ve seen,” Obama said. The president spoke as the death toll from Wednesday’s government crackdown rose significantly overnight, to 525 according to Egyptian officials, raising the threat of prolonged violence and enduring military rule in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com
On presidents and vacations: President Obama has taken MORE vacations than any other BLACK president. THERE FIXED!
‘The king of golf and vacations’
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 9:18 AM EDT.
Maybe there’s something about presidential vacations that many folks find irksome on a reflexive level. Americans may think that presidents shouldn’t take off when there’s so much work to be done.
But RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is taking these attitudes to a very silly level.
Look, I realize RNC chairs are going to take cheap shots at Democratic presidents, even when it doesn’t make sense. But on a story like this, Priebus’ first instinct — he wasn’t “going to get into that” — was the one he should have listened to.
First, President Obama is taking an eight-day break because, well, humans in stressful jobs occasionally need to take a breather. But for Republicans to make hay out of this is absurd — Obama has taken 87 days off since his first inauguration, and at the comparable point in George W. Bush’s presidency, Obama’s Republican predecessor had taken 399 days off. Remember this chart?
For every day off Obama has taken, Bush took 4.5 days off.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20036540-the-king-of-golf-and-vacations?lite
The Big Savings Obamacare Critics Miss
BY JONATHAN COHN
Obamacare critics keep insisting that Obamacare is a bad deal for most people buying insurance on their own. And a big reason is that they don’t think much of the subsidies.
I know. You’re getting tired of hearing about the subsidies. Bear with me, because today we have some new and important information, thanks to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
To review: Obamacare provides offers tax credits to offset the cost of insurance. If your income is less than four times the poverty line, and if you’re buying through one of the new insurance exchanges, then the tax credit will operate like a discount. The less money you have, the bigger the discount. Nowadays, most Obamacare critics acknowledge that the subsidies exist. But they tend to dismiss them as trivial. “Some low-income people will get subsidies,” Rich Lowry of the National Review wrote on Monday. “But that doesn’t change the essential facts.”
Actually, it does change the essential facts—by quite a lot. The study, by Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton and Anthony Damico, shows it.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114302/kaiser-study-obamacare-tax-credits-worth-thousands-lots-people
Aug 14, 2013
A Fine Bromance
By Charles P. Pierce at 5:00PM
Remember when a whole bunch of suckers from our side of the aisle got all gooey about Rand Paul, because Aqua Buddha and Aqua Buddha alone stood between us and a Hellfire missile fired up our keisters from a drone because we said mean things about the president? Well, in the days since, Aqua Buddha’s shown that he has more than a small sweet-tooth for the days when Freedom meant states could keep black people from eating in restaurants and, of course, voting.
“So really, I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.”
May I introduce Aqua Buddha to Pastor Willie D. Whiting?
Voters such as Willie David Whiting, a Tallahassee pastor who has never been convicted of a crime, testified that they were denied their rights to vote because the lists conflated him with felon Willie J. Whiting. The purge list parameters considered him a “derived,” or approximate, match (see November 7, 2000). Whiting had to threaten to bring his lawyer to the precinct before being allowed to vote. “I felt like I was slingshotted back into slavery,” he testified. He tried to understand why he and so many others were denied their right to vote. “Does someone have a formula for stealing this election?” he says he asked himself. Overall, the new purge lists are hugely disproportionate in including black citizens. Hillsborough County’s voting population is 15 percent black, but 54 percent of its purged voters are black. Miami-Dade County’s voting population is 20 percent black, but 66 percent of its purged voters are black. Leon County’s voting population is 29 percent black, but 55 percent of its purged voters are black.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Rand_Paul_And_His_Enablers
The Wrong Lesson From Detroit’s Bankruptcy
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
When I was growing up in Gary, Ind., nearly a quarter of American workers were employed in the manufacturing sector. There were plenty of jobs at the time that paid well enough for a single breadwinner, working one job, to fulfill the American dream for his family of four. He could earn a living on the sweat of his brow, afford to send his children to college and even see them rise to the professional class.
Cities like Detroit and Gary thrived on that industry, not just in terms of the wealth that it produced but also in terms of strong communities, healthy tax bases and good infrastructure. From the stable foundation of Gary’s excellent public schools, influenced by the ideas of the progressive reformer John Dewey, I went on to Amherst College and then to M.I.T. for graduate school.
Today, fewer than 8 percent of American workers are employed in manufacturing, and many Rust Belt cities are skeletons. The distressing facts about Detroit are by now almost a cliché: 40 percent of streetlights were not working this spring, tens of thousands of buildings are abandoned, schools have closed and the population declined 25 percent in the last decade alone. The violent crime rate last year was the highest of any big city. In 1950, when Detroit’s population was 1.85 million, there were 296,000 manufacturing jobs in the city; as of 2011, with a population of just over 700,000, there were fewer than 27,000.
So much is packed into the dramatic event of Detroit’s fall — the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history — that it’s worth taking a pause to see what it says about our changing economy and society, and what it portends for our future.
Failures of national and local policy are by now well known: underinvestment in infrastructure and public services, geographic isolation that has marginalized poor and African-American communities in the Rust Belt, intergenerational poverty that has stymied equality of opportunity and the privileging of moneyed interests (like those of corporate executives and financial services companies) over those of workers.
At one level, one might shrug: companies die every day; new ones are born. That is part of the dynamics of capitalism. So, too, for cities. Maybe Detroit and cities like it are just in the wrong location for the goods and services that 21st-century America demands.
But such a diagnosis would be wrong, and it’s extremely important to recognize that Detroit’s demise is not simply an inevitable outcome of the market.
For one, the description is incomplete: Detroit’s most serious problems are confined to the city limits. Elsewhere in the metropolitan area, there is ample economic activity. In suburbs like Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the median household income is more than $125,000. A 45-minute drive from Detroit is Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, one of the world’s pre-eminent hubs of research and knowledge production.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/the-wrong-lesson-from-detroits-bankruptcy/?_r=1
A very sobering article
Sweet – August 14, 2013 4:45 pm
Four takeaways from the Jesse and Sandi Jackson sentencings
WASHINGTON–Takeways in the wake of the sentencing of Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi on Wednesday….
MENTAL HEALTH, NOT SO MITIGATING
Mental health issues melted away as a mitigating factor in reducing the sentence for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is suffering from bipolar disorder and depression.
Last April 26, federal prosecutors told U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson (no relation) in open court that if Jackson planned to raise his bipolar disorder as a mitigating factor when is comes to sentencing-—which defense lawyers by then had signaled they were going to do–the prosecutors would want to have Jackson checked out by government doctors.
It turned out that Jackson’s defense team never presented much detailed information about his mental illness beyond short letters from his doctors to the judge in the months before the Wednesday sentencing.
In a June filing pleading for a shorter sentence, Jackson’s lawyers said it was “unlikely” he would be able to relate to a prison psychiatrist, though no specifics were provided.
So what happened? Either there was not enough there there–or the defense did not want to risk a hearing pitting defense doctors against government experts—or Jackson wanted to keep his health issues private and did not want all the details out in court.
The result? The judge said she was at a loss to consider how, for example, his bipolar diagnosis led to an episode of binge spending at Best Buy.
Prosecutor Matt Graves told the judge it was up to the defense team to make the mental illness argument and there was not even agreement between Jackson’s doctors as to what, exactly, he was suffering from.
The judge–right before she sentenced Jackson– said she was not “given enough information” to make his mental illness a substantial factor for her to consider.
“The mitigating circumstances do not mitigate,” she said.
DOWN-TO-EARTH JUDGE BRUSHES OFF MOM FACTOR
Judge Jackson turned out to be quite interesting. She was at times very sympathetic to Jackson, far less so to Sandi. She was brisk, wry in a common sense way and seemed very down-to-earth.
The judge lamented the fact that she was meeting the Jacksons’ for the first time on their sentencing day. Another judge handled the guilty pleas in February.
She said she was “distressed” from the beginning that the “first time I laid eyes on these people is at the sentencing.”
Sandi Jackson’s lawyers main argument for probation—in lieu of prison time—was how much the Jackson kids, a son, age 9 and a daughter, who is 13 needed their mom.
The judge noted that Sandi was hardly a “passive spouse” in this case, pointing out a day when she spend $8,500 for clothes and furs from looted campaign funds.
A lot of defendants are devoted parents—whose kids are hurt when they go to prison.
Said the judge to Sandi, right before handing down a year in prison, “It’s not the court that put your children in this position.”
RESTITUTION BREAK
When she pled guilty in February, Sandi Jackson agreed to pay restitution of more than $168,000 to the IRS. The judge reduced this to $22,000.
http://voices.suntimes.com/early-and-often/sweet/four-takeaways-from-the-jesse-and-sandi-jackson-sentencings/
Mary Mitchell: Jackson and his wife got what they deserved
By MARY MITCHELL
Last Modified: Aug 15, 2013 02:18AM
In the end, former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi Jackson, got what they deserved.
The prison sentences handed down by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson — 30 months for him and 12 months for her — was a humiliating comeuppance for a couple who were often treated like royalty.
For weeks, Jackson foes have speculated that the court would go light on the couple because of their political pedigree.
But Judge Jackson (no relation) imposed a sentence that fits the crime.
Jesse Jackson Jr. will have to go behind the wall for 2½ years. When he gets out, his wife will serve 12 months.
Unlike most of the Illinois politicians who have been swept into jail on corruption charges, Jackson’s financial scheme directly involved his wife.
Jackson pleaded guilty to stealing $750,000 from his campaign fund while his wife admitted to filing false tax returns by under-reporting the couple’s income.
Besides paying for celebrity memorabilia, a Rolex watch and elk heads, some of that pilfered money went for fur coats, salons and spa treatments.
Even though Jackson had pleaded that he alone be held accountable for the theft, the judge saw otherwise.
“You and Sandra used campaign money to support a way of life you could not afford,” she said, chastising the couple.
But it was Sandi Jackson’s use of the couple’s 13- and 9-year-old children to make the case that she should get probation that was repugnant.
“My heart breaks every day with the pain this has caused my babies,” she told the judge, weeping.
“I ask to be a parent, provider and support system that my babies will require in the difficult months ahead.”
“It is not the court that put your children in this position,” Judge Jackson said before handing down a sentence that Mrs. Jackson spends one full year behind bars.
“It is not the government that put your children in this position. These children have two parents,” the judge added.
Had Sandi Jackson been sentenced to 12 months and a day, she could have been out of prison in 10 months. The judge’s sentence of exactly 12 months signaled that she wasn’t moved by the former alderman’s pleas.
Actually, the judge cut the couple a lot of slack by allowing Sandi Jackson to remain free until her husband completes his prison time.
http://www.suntimes.com/21937742-761/mary-mitchell-jackson-and-his-wife-got-what-they-deserved.html?print=true
No doubt, if you dance to the music, you got to pay the piper.
Does this include GOVERNOR BOB MCDONNELL & his wife too?Just asking…
It certainly didn’t include John Edwards, but he did have a trial.
Jesse Jackson Jr. and wife Sandi: From power couple to prison inmates
BY NATASHA KORECKI AND LYNN SWEET Staff Reporters August 14, 2013 8:34AM
They were congressman and alderman, candidate and campaign chief.
They are also husband and wife, father and mother.
And on Wednesday, in an extraordinary sentencing hearing, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Sandi Jackson added another layer of complexity to their relationship: Both will be prison inmates.
Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. was sentenced to 2 1/2 years behind bars for stealing $750,0000 from his campaign fund while former Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) is to serve one year for filing false tax returns.
Sandi Jackson, 49, appeared stunned by the imposition of a prison term, her face frozen and drained of color after the judge ordered a 12-month sentence that offers no ability to earn time off for good behavior.
The former alderman later retreated to her defense chair and dropped her head. Sandi Jackson’s lawyers had vigorously argued for probation.
http://www.suntimes.com/21924478-761/jesse-jackson-jr-and-wife-sandi-from-power-couple-to-prison-inmates.html
and she didn’t know this before she appointed him?
G-T-F-O-H
……………….
Preckwinkle asks her Metra Board appointee to step down over residency
BY MITCH DUDEK Staff Reporter August 14, 2013 7:30PM
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle asked a Metra Board member to step down Wednesday after learning his current address did not meet residency requirements.
Stanley Rakestraw lives in Chicago. His position requires him to live in suburban Cook County
http://www.suntimes.com/21938175-761/preckwinkle-asks-her-metra-board-appointee-to-step-down-over-residency.html
Jobless claims improve, reach lowest point in nearly 6 years
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:37 AM EDT
It’s been quite a long time since initial unemployment claims reached a level this low. How long? Nearly six years.
Signaling a slower pace of layoffs, the number of people who applied for new jobless benefits fell 15,000 to 320,000 in the week that ended Aug. 10, hitting the lowest level of initial claims since October 2007, according to government data released Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected a claims level of 333,000, matching an original estimate for the prior week. On Thursday, the government slightly revised the initial claims level to 335,000 for the week that ended Aug. 3. The average of new claims over the past month, a more reliable gauge than the volatile weekly number, fell 4,000 to 332,000, also reaching the lowest level since the weeks leading up to the start of the Great Recession.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20036198-jobless-claims-improve-reach-lowest-point-in-nearly-6-years?lite
Funeral director says Chicago gun violence destroying city
The Leak and Sons funeral home has been on Chicago’s South Side for 80 years. Spencer Leak Sr. arranges 2,000 funerals a year. More and more, they are for shooting victims.
Leak says he’s arranged about 45 gun-violence-related funerals so far this year.
That’s about the number of murders last year in Seattle and Tampa, combined.
“A significant portion of my day is spent trying to counsel with mothers who have lost sons through gun violence,” Leak says. “I saw three mothers over the weekend. I’m waiting to see a mother today, possibly another.”
“My heart goes out to her, because I know what’s happening to her … I just can’t turn her down or away,” he says.
Leak says the hardest part of his job is “the age of the young people.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57598592/funeral-director-says-chicago-gun-violence-destroying-city/
N/A @justjerdi9m
@britters_43 @LoisLnae swear, that is exactly what he said. I took notes!
—————————————-
N/A @justjerdi56m
“In order for a resurgence to occur in the Rep party, we have to get the black vote. I’ve been to the west end 4 times.” #RandPaulquotes
N/A @justjerdi55m
“We have to talk about injustice and fairness. That’s important to them.” #RandPaulquotes
Heritage Action, the activist wing of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is out with a new poll today that’s getting some favorable coverage in the mainstream political press. According to Heritage, the survey shows that the GOP shouldn’t fear a government shutdown over Obamacare defunding. But there’s a catch.
The background here is that a group of conservative senators, including Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio, are trying to push Republican leaders to demand that Congress defund Obamacare in upcoming appropriations battles , even if it means forcing the government to shut down. Heritage supports the effort, so it took the poll to try to steel the spines of Republican leaders.
“Americans — including 57 percent of independents in ten critical congressional districts — favor defunding Obamacare,” said Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action. “House Republicans should be much more concerned with the fallout of failing to defund Obamacare than with the imaginary fallout of doing so.”
What Needham fails to mention, however, is that even this push poll that dramatically oversamples Republicans (more on that in a minute) finds respondents are more likely to say that the Affordable Care Act should be kept than scrapped — and that a plurality would blame Republicans if the government were to shut down.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/right_wing_push_poll_accidentally_finds_obamacare_popular/
Questlove on Police Racial Profiling, Stop & Frisk, the Message He Took from Trayvon Martin Verdict
On the heels of this week’s historic ruling declaring the “stop-and-frisk” tactics of the New York City Police Department unconstitutional, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Grammy Award-winning band The Roots joins us to talk about his own experiences being racially profiled by police. Questlove describes the first time he was harassed by police, as a young teenager in Philadelphia on his way to Bible study, to the most recent: being pulled over in his car by the NYPD two weeks ago, despite being one of the most acclaimed artists in hip-hop. He also discusses the message he took away as an African-American male from the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin: “You’re guilty no matter what, and you just now have to figure out a way to make everyone feel safe and everyone feel comfortable, even if it’s at the expense of your own soul.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/14/questlove_on_police_racial_profiling_stop
I highly recommend watching this interview!
Amy Goodman is the only TV reporter I know of who has had “Stop and Frisk” on her show for a long time.
Rand Paul, voting rights, and ‘objective evidence’
By Steve Benen
Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:00 AM EDT
There can be no doubt that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants to be seen as an inclusive, color-blind kind of politician. A few weeks ago, the senator insisted, “I don’t think there’s anyone in Congress who has a stronger belief in minority rights than I do.” Soon later, Paul added, “There is no greater defender, truly, of minority rights … than myself.”
The boasts of an easily confused, crass egomaniac? Perhaps, but there’s more to it than that.
Paul is absolutely convinced he’s the guy who’ll expand the Republican Party’s reach to racial and ethnic minorities. Sure, he’s on record opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sure, he’s long opposed the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act. Sure, he found a neo-Confederate who celebrates the birthday of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, wrote a book with the guy, and then hired him to work on his Senate staff.
But never mind all of that, Paul says. When it comes to “minority rights,” the Kentucky Republican expects you to believe he’s every bit as bold a champion as John Lewis.
As is too often the case, the senator doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/15/20035676-rand-paul-voting-rights-and-objective-evidence?lite
Shaking my head. Is this guy for real?!
Whom does he think he is fooling?!
Short: Black folks (THE SUBJECTS) voicing their concerns aboout voter suppression don’t count. Rand’s voice (THE OBJECT) counts!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good morning, everyone!
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)))
Good morning! Wishing all of you a great day!
This is from Kenneth Little Hawk:
A few years ago I was at a booth selling handmade Native American flutes. Also, looking at the flutes was a man who was Native American. He and I began talking with each other, and he asked me if I would like him to help me select a flute. I was happy to have his assistance, and I purchased a beautifully sounding one.
It was only later that I discovered that this man was Kenneth Little Hawk who is well known for his flute playing and for his storytelling. He performed later on at the pow wow with his flute and also related inspirational stories.
I still remember one of the stories of this master storyteller.
Even though I am using my own words to retell this story, I feel I should put it in quotes now because the story is Little Hawk’s:
Kenneth Little Hawk is the person in the video link I posted above.
I love the sound of the flute here. So beautiful.
Beautiful, SG2! Thanks for posting this.