Happy Monday, Everyone! This week 3 Chic’s featured artist is the incomparble Marvin Gaye.
Some of you ladies are going to need one of these:
Wiki: Marvin Gaye (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984), born Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr.,[1] was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Gaye helped to shape the sound of Motown Records in the 1960s with a string of hits including “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and duet recordings with Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, later earning the titles “Prince of Motown” and “Prince of Soul”. During the 1970s, Gaye recorded the concept albums What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On and became among the first artists in Motown to break away from the reins of its production company. Gaye’s later recordings influenced several R&B subgenres such as quiet storm and neo-soul.
Following a period in Europe as a tax exile in the early 1980s, Gaye released the 1982 Grammy Award-winning hit “Sexual Healing” and the Midnight Love album. Since his death in 1984, Gaye has been posthumously honored by many institutions, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[2]
SNIP
What’s Going On June 1, 1970, Gaye returned to Hitsville U.S.A., where he recorded his new composition “What’s Going On“, inspired by an idea from Renaldo “Obie” Benson of the Four Tops after he witnessed an act of police brutality at an anti-war rally in Berkeley.[42] Upon hearing the song, Berry Gordy refused its release due to his feelings of the song being “too political” for radio.[43] Gaye responded by going on strike from recording until the label released the song.[43] Released in 1971, it reached number one on the R&B charts within a month, staying there for five weeks. It also reached the top spot on Cashbox‘s pop chart for a week and reached number two on the Hot 100 and the Record World chart, selling over two million copies.[44][45On and subsequent success.
Let’s kick off with the answers to WHAT’S GOING ON.
Chris says:
October 7, 2013 at 6:22 pm
@fuckwit:
Yes.
I’ve said it before; health care is one of their few tools of control that TR, FDR and LBJ didn’t take away from them when they created the American welfare state. It’s not just “the leverage,” it’s the only leverage of its kind, apart from perhaps education, that they have left. They’ve spent the last century watching their slavemasters’ whips being taken away from them one by one, and now we’re coming for their last one. No wonder they fought it so energetically for all these decades, and no matter they’re so fucking desperate now.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/10/07/the-big-money-behind-the-teahadists-shutdown/
LOLGOP @LOLGOP
We’ve come to the point in history where Republicans feel they deserve a treat for not destroying the economy.
7:02 AM – 7 Oct 2013
here’s another gif for 3CHICS!
http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/misc/storm%20trooper%20fuck.gif
Oct 2008: “You’ll never get elected and pass healthcare.”
Nov 2008: “We’ll never let you pass healthcare.”
Jan 2009: “We’re gonna shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare.”
July 2009: “We’ll fight to death every attempt you make to pass healthcare.”
Dec 2009: “We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare.”
March 2010: “We can’t believe you just passed healthcare.”
April 2010: “We are going to overturn healthcare.”
Sept 2010: “We are going to repeal healthcare.”
Jan 2011: “We are going to destroy healthcare.”
Feb 2012: “We’re gonna elect a candidate who’ll revoke healthcare NOW.”
June 2012: “We’ll go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare.”
Aug 2012: “American people’ll never re-elect you-they don’t want healthcare.”
Oct 2012: “We can’t wait to win the election and explode healthcare.”
Nov 2012: “We can’t believe you got re-elected & we can’t repeal healthcare.”
Feb 2013: “We’re still going to vote to obliterate healthcare.”
June 2013: “We can’t believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare.”
July 2013: “We’re going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare.”
Sept 2013: “We are going to leverage a government shutdown into
defunding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing,
dismantling, erasing and ripping apart healthcare.”
Oct 2013: “WHY AREN’T YOU NEGOTIATING???”
Love that rundown! Ain’t it the truth.
Ron Fournier @ron_fournier 36m
@JohnJHarwood agree. My POV: it’s a new day. Pres Obama has leverage/incentive. GOP desperate. Obama should set aside ego, old scars, go big
where is the middle finger from 3CHICS?
Rev Al’s new book T”he Rejected Stone” arrives in bookstores tomorrow!
Has anyone seen Rev Al’s book being promoted on the other MSNC talk shows? *looking@rachelchrisED*
Just found this promotion:
JOHN BOEHNER HOLD A VOTE!
Take a vote, little johnny!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeIWQyeq2pw
This commercial is ridiculously funny.
INSIDE THE GOP -PDF
http://www.democracycorps.com/attachments/article/954/dcor%20rpp%20fg%20memo%20100313%20final.pdf
JAY to JON KAPOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Al Sharpton, ‘PoliticsNation’ Advertisers Targeted in New Boycott
by David FreedlanderOct 7, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
A new group bent on unmasking ‘leftists in the media’ has its first target—MSNBC’s ‘racial extortionist,’ the Rev. Al Sharpton. David Freedlander talks with the leader of the right’s answer to Media Matters.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/07/al-sharpton-politicsnation-advertisers-targeted-in-new-boycott.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
Devin Nunes: “I’OIN’T KNOW NOTHING ‘BOUT NO GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!
WASHINGTON – Rep. Devin Nunes, a conservative Republican from California’s Central Valley, on Monday accused freshman GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of misleading House Republicans that they could dismantle the Democratic health care-reform law known as Obamacare by forcing a government shutdown.
Nunes, said the strategy pursued by Cruz, a Texas freshman, and to a lesser extent Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is “based on a false premise” because Republicans can’t get two-thirds votes in the House and the Senate to override President Barack Obama’s veto when he rejects any bill that ends his signature law.
Obama and the Democratic-majority Senate have refused to entertain any legislation passed by the GOP-majority House that would overhaul, change, delay or end the health care law. The partial shutdown is nearly a week old with no deal to end it in sight.
Nunes said Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has run into a wall of opposition from Cruz’s House allies to any deal to reopen the government.
“It’s really difficult at this time until the Cruz people decide and admit to our base that their whole premise of getting rid of Obamacare by shutting down our government was a lie,” Nunes said. “This is his strategy that he’s laid out, spent money on and he’s got a lot of members of the Congress to go along with.”
Cruz’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2013/10/07/nunes-cruz-shutdown-lie/2937579/
Konan A. DoBosu @kdobosu
.@TheObamaDiary What the extremist Tea party is doing to our country is called SEDITION and it is against US law.
11:54 AM – 7 Oct 2013
SEDITION
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.
Typically, sedition is considered a subversive act, and the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is also a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution.
The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government by democratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).
Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or state, giving aid to enemies, or levying war against one’s state. Sedition is encouraging one’s fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one’s country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition
Sedition sounds like what is happening, yeah, that’s it.
Those Teapartiers are bad “boys”
Those “bad” boys will not be elected again in 2014 if they are up for reelection…..the voters are “gonna come for them” by NOT reelecting them!
UNITED STATES GOP HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power.
Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.
Totally! A complete and ridiculous lack of decency and respect!
Marvin Gaye….
YEAH YEAH YEAH
:-)))))
Senate Dems to call GOP’s bluff on debt limit
By Greg Sargent, Updated: October 7, 2013
Senate Democrats are planning to start the process this week for a Senate vote on a clean debt limit increase, sources tell me – a move that could call the bluff of Republicans in both chambers and force them to take a stand on whether they will allow default and economic destruction if Dems don’t accept their unilateral demands.
The move has the backing of the White House, according to a source familiar with discussions.
The idea is that Senate Dems will move their own clean debt limit bill, rather than wait for the House GOP to hold its own vote on either a clean CR funding the government (which Senate Dems have already passed with broad bipartisan support) or on a debt limit hike. Dems would be challenging Senate GOP moderates to vote for or against averting default and economic havoc outside of any set of conditions House Republicans insist must be attached to any measure raising the debt limit.
Senator John Cornyn is claiming no clean debt limit hike can pass the Senate, but Dems believe there may be at least half a dozen GOP Senators who would be willing to support one. A vote would put that to the test.
The move might also increase pressure on House Republicans. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for John Boehner, tweeted today: “POTUS & his advisers keep calling for a clean debt hike. So when will his party in the Senate pass one?”
This prompted a response from Harry Reid aide Faiz Shakir: “Will you if we do?”
Now it looks like Senate Dems will do it, though I couldn’t determine when the vote will take place or how long the debt limit extension would last.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/10/07/senate-dems-to-call-gops-bluff-on-debt-limit/?print=1
Don’t Know Your Players Without a Program
By Ed Kilgore
One of the odd features of the current Republican-manufactured fiscal crisis is that it has consistently been the “reasonable” GOPers like John Boehner who have wanted to make the debt limit increase rather than appropriations the flashpoint for demanding Democratic concessions, while the Tea Folk have consistently argued for going to the mats on appropriations rather than the debt limit. That continues today, as evidenced by this Erick Erickson post:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/dont_know_your_players_without047207.php
The worst debt-ceiling talking point of them all
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 7, 2013 1:02 PM EDT.
Once we brush past shallow rhetoric about “negotiations,” the Republican line on the debt ceiling boils down to this: other presidents have paid a ransom to avoid catastrophic economic consequences, so President Obama should, too.
The talking point — which GOP pollsters hadn’t formulated during the Republicans’ first debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 — may even sound fairly reasonable, at least at first blush, for those who don’t know better. It also makes it seem as if GOP lawmakers are doing something routine when they threaten to hurt Americans on purpose. If it’s happened before, the argument goes, then folks like me are wrong to use words like “unprecedented.”
Here was House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) pitch yesterday:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/07/20856640-the-worst-debt-ceiling-talking-point-of-them-all?lite
October 07, 2013 1:19 PM
Defining Default Down
By Ed Kilgore
An important detail to keep in mind when one is trying to reconcile Republicans claims that they won’t allow a debt default but also won’t allow a vote on increasing the debt limit unless Democrats make concessions is this: conservatives tend to have a rather eccentric definition of what constitutes a “default.” National Journal’s Tim Alberta and Michael Catalini offered a reminder yesterday:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/defining_default_down047208.php
Why ‘negotiations’ are no longer a credible option
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 7, 2013 11:24 AM EDT.
Republican pollsters have clearly told GOP lawmakers to say the same thing over and over again: “All we want is to talk to Democrats and work out a solution. Why won’t Democrats negotiate?” Speaker Boehner, for example, used the word “negotiate” seven times during a fairly brief ABC interview yesterday.
Perhaps now is a good time for a recap of the measure that’s currently pending.
This proposal was approved by the Democratic-led Senate and it’s been endorsed by the White House. It’s 100% in line with what House Republican leaders endorsed a month ago, and it gives GOP lawmakers 100% of what they said they wanted as part of the budget process. If the House were to pass this today, the government would reopen tomorrow.
But the House isn’t permitted to vote on this. Boehner claims it won’t pass, but (a) vote-counting isn’t exactly high on this guy’s list of talents; and (b) he’s refused to test his assessment. The Speaker could bring this bill to the floor today and prove how right he is, but to ensure the far-right remains happy, Boehner is committed to not allowing a vote, apparently because he assumes it would pass relatively easily.
Now, I imagine my conservative friends would look at the above image and balk. “That’s not fair,” they’ll say, “because Democrats would get the end of the shutdown.” But that’s a break from the Republican line — GOP officials say they neither wanted nor like the shutdown, so its end would hardly represent a “win” for Democrats. Ending the shutdown, according Republicans themselves, would benefit everyone, not just one side of the political divide.
And yet, despite the one-sided nature of the pending resolution, Republicans insist the existing compromise — grudgingly accepted by Democrats — just isn’t good enough. They want more. They say they need more. In fact, the current resolution so inadequate that the government must remained closed until the party that won the elections agrees to give the party that lost the elections even more — even if they’re no longer sure what “more” might be.
In fact, I’m fascinated by Republicans who seem eager to end the shutdown suggest Democrats should just throw Boehner a face-saving bone and let this fiasco come to an end.
——————————————————————————–
Byron York had an interesting chat with an unnamed House Republican.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/07/20855487-why-negotiations-are-no-longer-a-credible-option?lite
Appomattox Now or Appomattox Later
by BooMan
Mon Oct 7th, 2013 at 12:10:40 PM EST
Harry Reid will give Senate Republicans the chance “to shut that whole thing down,” meaning the shutdown.
Appomattox now or Appomattox later.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/10/7/121040/102
-☺@BruceBartlett
Racism underlies much of the opposition to the Affordable Care Act. http://economix.blogs.nytimes…. …
Retweeted by Jeff Gauvin
View summary
– – –☺@JeffersonObama
Despite the GOP destroying teh US Govt. & US economy, our Commander-In-Chief is still keeping us safe from terrorists pic.twitter.com/VHU1nc29vj
View photo —PRESIDENT —POSITIVITY♥ – -:>)
President Obama to John Boehner: ‘prove’ you don’t have the votes
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 10/7/13 1:27 PM EDT
President Barack Obama called Monday on the House to hold a vote on a clean government funding bill, after Speaker John Boehner said over the weekend that the bill wouldn’t pass.
If Boehner and his colleagues are saying there aren’t enough votes, “then they should prove it,” Obama said while visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Washington.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obama-to-boehner-prove-you-dont-have-the-votes-97931.html#ixzz2h3jWAXZb
Didn’t need to watch the Sunday show gabfests to know that they either carried GOP water, or had GOP clowns to justify their TREASONIST acts against our country.
John Cornyn’s doomsday ad: If Texas turns blue, the Lone Star State as we know it is finished.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/john-cornyn-ad-texas-97569.html
Short: “if all the brown & black folks keep voting for Dems, Y’all crackas are toast.
:)
WTFF is this ISH?
Kobach Moving Forward With Plan to Create Two Classes of Voters in Kansas
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kobach-moving-forward-plan-create-two-classes-voters-kansas
Back in August, we reported that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was considering a novel voter suppression idea. Kobach has been struggling to implement a new law that he backed requiring voters to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. As a result of the law, over 17,000 Kansans who registered to vote using a federal form (which doesn’t require proof of citizenship) or used a state form but couldn’t dig up a birth certificate have had their voter registration suspended. Kobach said that this mass disenfranchisement wasn’t a “major problem,” but he did have a proposal to deal with it: Create two classes of voters, some who are allowed to vote only in federal elections and others who are allowed to vote in both state and federal elections.
WHAT THE FUCK?
He’ll be hearing from the DOJ.
This is horrible.
Does the Federal DOJ have a say in “state only” elections?
I guess that the DOJ can say it is a violation a citizen’s civil rights when a citizen can not vote for his local representation.
Police Probe Announced in Capitol Hill Shooting
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/family-capitol-shooting-deadly-force-was-not-necessary
Washington police are investigating the use of deadly force in the shooting of 34-year-old Miriam Carey, who reportedly tried to ram her car through a White House barrier. The review comes after Carey’s family raised questions about the shooting, saying it was “unjustified.”
Deadly force experts have also raised questions about the number of bullets used, and why shots were fired at a moving vehicle.
The Associated Press says investigators will reconstruct the car chase, which put the nation’s capital on lockdown, and examine how officers interacted with the driver and determine if protocols were followed.
Earlier:
Devastated family members of the 34-year-old Connecticut woman shot by police on Capitol Hill this week following a wild car chase told the Daily News that she was a troubled soul, not a “terrorist.”
Valarie Carey, of Brooklyn, N.Y., told the paper that her sister, Miriam Carey, had her 19-month-old daughter, Erica, in the car when she was shot her and “didn’t deserve to die like she did.”
“Deadly force was not necessary,” said the grieving sister, a retired NYPD transit police sergeant who lives in Bushwick. “They could have rammed the car or disabled the car.”
“There had to be something else they could have done,” chimed in Amy Carey, a registered nurse who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “She didn’t have to die. To know a child was in the car, too, why did they shoot?”
Ah! “What’s Goin On?” Timely for today. Later this week, baby making music just as we begin our Autumn chill. Can’t wait.
Good Morning, Tyren. Yes; timely music indeed. The baby-making tunes are coming. LOL
Bet a four word petition could get millions and millions of signatures:
“End the government shutdown!”
Hear From the GOP This Week
So, a default really wouldn’t be that bad? That’s what Republicans are going to start saying this week as the debt-ceiling debate ramps up. Michael Tomasky debunks the talking points in advance.
by Michael Tomasky Oct 7, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
Attention will turn more sharply this week in the direction of the debt ceiling and the question of a possible default. We’re just 10 days away from D-Day, and since default is a much bigger deal than a shutdown, we’re going to have a week of cable debates about who’ll be to blame if the country defaults. It is with that in mind that offer you three arguments you’re sure to hear Republicans make. They’re all foolish or false or both, so clip this list and tape it to your refrigerator. The roof is finally starting to fall in on these serial liars, and I want you to be part of the growing army of Americans that knows a lie when it hears one.
1. A default wouldn’t really be that bad.
We haven’t heard this very much yet, but I expect it will start getting a stern workout this week. It was a heavy talking point back in 2011.
I remember reading, back in the summer, how Republicans had decided that they weren’t going to fight too much over a possible government shutdown, as they knew it would make them unpopular, and they were going to save their powder for a debt-limit battle. Of course, that was then. They obviously changed strategies and decided to fight on both, because when it comes to fighting with Obama they’re just lab monkeys with cocaine, and because Ted Cruz made them. But I remember thinking, How in God’s green acres did they settle on that strategy? I was aghast.
While a shutdown is terrible, it’s not in the same solar system of disaster as a default. But the substance meant nothing at all to them. What mattered was that a shutdown is comparatively easy for the public to grasp, while the debt-limit topic is confusing. So the idea that they might be jeopardizing the national and world economies didn’t mean a thing to them during their summer strategy sessions. The debt fight provided the better opportunity for them to confuse the public and disguise their game of Russian roulette over settled law (Obamacare), and it polled better.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/07/here-are-three-debt-ceiling-lies-you-ll-hear-from-the-gop-this-week.html
Get Ready. It’s Going to Happen.
Josh Marshall – October 6, 2013, 9:49 PM EDT12436
The Post has a profile in motion of freshman House Republican Ted Yoho (FL). The focus is how he’s part of the faction who forced John Boehner to trigger the government shutdown and now wants to move along to default on the national debt. How bad will default be? “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets,” Yoho told the Post.
Absorb that for a moment. He’s on the team that’s driving this bus. What would at best be a huge jolt to the global economy and more likely trigger a global financial crisis and do irreparable harm to the country, he thinks will actually improve things.
Ken Spain used to be one of the top GOP flacks on Capitol Hill, one of the guys our reporters called for comment on developments during campaign season. Here’s his take.
So professional Republican spokesmen are freaked out by what they’re hearing.
Couple this with the Times article from this morning detailing how the current shutdown and soon to be default crisis was planned by a working group of top GOP money men and the major far right and Tea Party pressure groups in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 election.
There many roots of this crisis. Demographic, ideological, regional, some parts tied to accidents of history (the existence of the debt ceiling itself), others to the structure of our government. But I think most people, as crazy as this looks, are underestimating the scope of the crisis we’re in the midst of. The pieces are in place to resolve the matter quickly, in the narrow sense of the votes. But the House Tea Party (and it really does look more like a distinct party or faction at this point) is forcing the matter, despite having well under a hundred seats in the House. Behind them they have an aggrieved GOP base and sustaining them the vast tranches of money provided by the Kochs and other top GOP mega-funders. John Boehner, not structurally in the sense of his office or position but personally, is simply too weak a figure to avert what’s coming. Get ready.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/get-ready-it-s-going-to-happen
“Prof Keorapetse Kgositsile on the most important book in his life”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=D54QDViQGDA
“New Terminator-style ‘bots can self-assemble, leap, climb and SWARM”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/07/m_block_self_assembling_cube_robots_mit/
Miriam Carey’s Sisters – She was ‘fleeing’ police out of fear
LIES COME OUT WHEN THE LIGHT IS SHONE UP THEM.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/10/07/late-night-open-thread-170/
Children’s picture book:
“Mimi’s Tutu by Tynia Thomassie and illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist”
From inside book flap:
Cover illustration:
http://nextbookshop.co.kr/15149-thickbox/mimi-s-tutu-paperback-.jpg
Miriam Carey Shooting – Questions Over Deadly Force.
I hope Miriam’s family NEVER give up on finding out what really happened to her last week.
TODAY is the LAST DAY to REGISTER TO VOTE in Texas!
http://votetexas.gov/register-to-vote/
How is the registering going in Texas, SG2?
Well, on the radio they’re pushing the you must have a voter ID here.
Sen. Cornyn sounds alarm about Texas going blue
http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2013/09/30/cornyn-texas-red-blue-taxes/2896061/
What if Texas went from deep-red Republican to bright blue for Democrats?
Republican Sen. John Cornyn, the state’s senior U.S. senator, is painting a doomsday scenario of higher taxes and fewer jobs tied to the energy sector in a new Web ad if the Lone Star state puts Democrats such as Wendy Davis into office.
“President Obama and his liberal allies want to turn Texas blue,” Cornyn says in the ad, paid for by his re-election campaign. “But what does that mean? Look at California, and Detroit. It means higher taxes, higher unemployment and a government drowning in debt. As your senator and a proud Texan, I’ll continue to take the fight to President Obama, to keep Texas strong and on the path to prosperity and freedom.”
I hope people register!
Politico goes to Texas: “The ground war over Obamacare — the one that will determine whether people sign up — will be won and lost in places like Texas. If Obamacare fails in the Lone Star State — that is, if a significant portion of the 6.1 million uninsured Texans don’t or can’t enroll — then the White House could miss its national enrollment targets, the new health insurance exchanges could falter and insurance rates could spike. Obamacare could be unsustainable. And that’s exactly what leading Texas politicians like Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz would like to see happen. With the political leaders’ ‘hell no’ approach to Obamacare, Texas may not seem like a health law battleground. But the demographics — a huge, hard-to-reach uninsured population — mean it’s a make-or-break state for making the law work.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamacare-showdown-in-lone-star-state-97906.html?hp=t1_3
(Question: But why is Texas any more important than, say, California?)
Peak Scalia
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 7, 2013 9:22 AM EDT
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, once a highly respected jurist, has seen his reputation as a credible conservative voice falter of late. His Holocaust references; his over-the-top dissent in the DOMA case; his political antics that appear to be an audition for a slot on “Fox & Friends” — it’s all been a bit much. Last year, a constitutional law professor at UCLA said the conservative justice has “finally jumped the shark,” and yet, Scalia somehow still manages to get more offensive.
Consider, for example, this amazing interview between Scalia and New York magazine’s Jennifer Senior. It’s tough to excerpt because the whole thing is just endlessly fascinating, but there were a few tidbits I thought I’d highlight.
Senior asked, for example, about his philosophy of originalism. “I don’t know when I came to that view,” he replied. “I’ve always had it, as far as I know. Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.
I see. So Scalia sees himself as a congenital originalist, who believes dictionary entries from the 18th century are — or at least should be — indistinguishable from contemporary definitions.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/07/20854151-peak-scalia?lite
Scalia is a TOTAL wingnut justice. THE END.
U.S. nabs al Qaeda leader in Libya
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 7, 2013 8:00 AM EDT
For U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, it was a busy weekend, which produced an important victory.
If his name sounds familiar, there’s a good reason: Abu Anas al-Libi is believed to be responsible for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/07/20853056-us-nabs-al-qaeda-leader-in-libya?lite
That Thing About Unions Being Waived from Obamacare? Another Whopper Lie.
Posted on October 7, 2013 at 7:31 am by Bob Cesca
Last week, we proved that the congressional Republicans and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have been serially lying whenever they’ve said that Congress is “exempted” from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
In fact, not only is Congress not exempt, but Obamacare specifically mandates that members of Congress, as well as Hill staffers, leave the Federal Employees Benefit Health Plan and attain health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. Furthermore, it was a Republican lawmaker, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who proposed this amendment to the Obamacare law in the first place. And on top of everything else, it was Boehner who lobbied the Office of Personnel Management to allow the government to continue paying 75 percent of the cost of premiums under the marketplace insurance plans.
So you’d think being caught red-handed in a huge, whopper lie would perhaps dictate some restraint from Mr. Boehner. Perhaps he’d do well to cool it for a while — to exercise a little more caution about what he blurts out while appearing in public.
Appearing on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Boehner did it again. The leader of the Republican Party lied about the Obamacare law. Boehner was asked about a previous remark in which he said he wouldn’t attach the de-funding of Obamacare to a continuing resolution. Deftly changing the subject, Boehner replied:
But providing — providing fairness to the American people, under Obamacare, is — all we’re asking for. My goodness. They give big businesses a waiver. They give all these unions a waiver. And yet they’re forcing the American people to buy a product, buy a product that they do not want and cannot afford.
Yes, he went there again. More organizations are unfairly exempted from the law, he said. Notice, however, that he didn’t toss Congress into the mix this time, so perhaps he’s making progress. But let’s zero in on one particular sentence: “They give all these unions a waiver.”
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/10/that-thing-about-unions-being-waived-from-obamacare-another-whopper-lie.html
The Morning Plum: John Boehner doesn’t really want to `negotiate’ with Obama
By Greg Sargent, Updated: October 7, 2013
With the government shutdown dragging into Week Two, and the debt limit deadline creeping closer, Republicans continue to insist the cause of our current governing crisis is that Obama and Democrats refuse to negotiate with them. On ABC News yesterday, John Boehner repeated this talking point again and again.
Yet in the process, Boehner revealed what this invitation to “negotiate” really means. He implicitly confirmed Republicans will only negotiate in a context in which Republicans can employ the looming threat of disaster for the country as a way to unilaterally increase their leverage, and will not negotiate without being granted this leverage. Here’s the key exchange, with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Democrats, including Senate Democrat Harry Reid, has said he’s more than willing to have a conference, more than willing to have a negotiation, but not under the threat of a government shutdown, not under the threat of a default.
BOEHNER: So it’s my way or the highway. That’s what he’s saying. Complete surrender and then we’ll talk to you.
This is an extremely important and revealing moment. Boehner is explicitly saying that the Democrats’ refusal to negotiate in a context where the threat of widespread harm to the country gives Republicans leverage – and their insistence on negotiating outside this context — represents a demand for ”complete surrender” by Republicans, and hence is a non-starter. But in this scenario, Republicans would not be giving up anything, other than the very leverage Republicans presume the threat of widespread harm to the country grants them. For Republicans, agreeing to negotiate without this unilateral leverage would itself be surrender!
Indeed, later in the interview, Boehner agreed not raising the debt limit would mean widespread economic damage:
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Treasury Department put out a report just the other day, where they said it would be unprecedented and catastrophic, that would be the impact of failing to pass a debt limit. They’re going to say, credit markets could freeze. The value of the dollar could plummet. U.S. interest rates could skyrocket. The negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse. Do you agree with that assessment?
BOEHNER: I do.
Stephanopoulos also asked Boehner what concessions Republicans would be willing to make in this “negotiation” he’s requesting. Boehner couldn’t name any, and indeed, he even ruled out conceding anything on new revenues.
A lot of folks have been willing to accept Boehner’s demand for “negotiations” at face value. But let’s be clear on what he is really asking for here. Boehner is actually ruling out any negotiations in which Republicans don’t enjoy the leverage that the threat of a massive economic meltdown confers upon them. And he’s also saying Republicans will make no concessions of their own in them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/10/07/the-morning-plum-john-boehner-doesnt-really-want-to-negotiate-with-obama/?print=1
The Worst Bluffer in the World
by BooMan
Mon Oct 7th, 2013 at 09:02:05 AM EST
Ahem.
Your move, John Boehner.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/10/7/925/77979
The Shutdown Prophet
Washington couldn’t have gone dark without a radicalized Republican Party. Or maybe it was destined to all along.
By Jonathan Chait
Published Oct 4, 2013
… The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. (Obama could, theoretically, threaten to veto a debt ceiling hike unless Congress attaches it to the creation of single-payer health insurance.) To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic. But it turns out to be the perfect tool for the contemporary GOP: a party large enough to control a chamber of Congress yet too small to win the presidency, and infused with a dangerous, millenarian combination of overheated Randian paranoia and fully justified fear of adverse demographic trends. The only thing that limits the debt ceiling’s potency at the moment is the widespread suspicion that Boehner is too old school, too lacking in the Leninist will to power that fires his newer co-partisans, to actually carry out his threat. (He has suggested as much to some colleagues in private.) Boehner himself is thus the one weak link in the House Republicans’ ability to carry out a kind of rolling coup against the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Boehner’s control of his chamber is tenuous enough that, like the ailing monarch of a crumbling regime, it’s impossible to strike an agreement with him in full security it will be carried out.
The standoff embroiling Washington represents far more than the specifics of the demands on the table, or even the prospect of economic calamity. It is an incipient constitutional crisis. Obama foolishly set the precedent in 2011 that he would let Congress jack him up for a debt-ceiling hike. He now has to crush the practice completely, lest it become ritualized. Obama not only must refuse to trade concessions for a debt-ceiling hike; he has to make it clear that he will endure default before he submits to ransom. To pay a ransom now, even a tiny one, would ensure an endless succession of debt-ceiling ransoms until, eventually, the two sides fail to agree on the correct size of the ransom and default follows.
This is a domestic Cuban Missile Crisis. A single blunder could have unalterable consequences: If Obama buckles his no-ransom stance, the debt-ceiling-hostage genie will be out of the bottle. If Republicans believe he is bluffing, or accept his position but obstinately refuse it, or try to lift the debt ceiling and simply botch the vote count, a second Great Recession could ensue….
http://nymag.com/news/politics/nationalinterest/government-shutdown-2013-10/
Opinion: Boehner is leader in name only
By Juan Williams – 10/07/13 06:00 AM ET
The sparks flying from the polarized politics that shut down the government make it hard to see how history will record these events.
Only one fact will clearly hold over time: Never before in American history has the Speaker lost control of his caucus to people who are not elected members of the House.
National Review reported last week that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told key members of the GOP House caucus to oppose Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) plan to move away from stalled efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act and instead begin negotiations on the debt ceiling.
The conservative publication’s story described the Speaker’s leadership team as “startled by Cruz’s attempt to shape House strategy and work against the Speaker.” It was more than an attempt. The House members followed Cruz’s instructions.
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/326823-opinion-boehner-is-leader-in-name-only#ixzz2h2cDvWZ2
“Stuff African Americans Say To Africans”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=otfMcwb9kCs
Uploaded on Feb 6, 2012 by NaboJenkins
Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology after discovering how cells precisely transport material.
James Rothman and Randy Schekman, both from the US, and Thomas Sudhof, from Germany, shared the prize.
They found the way “vesicles” act like a fleet of ships transporting their goods to the exact destination.
It is crucial for the way the brain communicates, the release of hormones and parts of the immune system.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24427951
Boehner Urges G.O.P. Unity in ‘Epic Battle’
By JONATHAN WEISMAN and ASHLEY PARKER
Published: October 4, 2013
WASHINGTON — With his troops anxious for a way forward, Speaker John A. Boehner began a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Friday morning with a recitation of letters from local schoolchildren on how they deal with stress.
A shower helps, one child counseled. So does a nap.
But on the matter causing all the Congressional stress, the speaker offered no clue as to how he expected Congress to get out of the dead end it has found itself in, with the government shut for a fourth day and no clear path to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the nation’s first default. “We are locked in an epic battle,” the speaker told his rank and file, those who attended the meeting said, urging them to “hang tough.”
The overarching problem for the man at the center of the budget fight, say allies and opponents, is that he and his leadership team have no real idea how to resolve the fiscal showdown.
They are only trying to survive another day, Republican strategists say, hoping to maintain unity as long as possible so that when the Republican position collapses, they can capitulate on two issues at once — financing the government and raising the debt ceiling — and head off any internal party backlash. Republican lawmakers say Mr. Boehner has assured them privately that he will not permit a default.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/us/politics/boehner-urges-gop-unity-in-epic-battle.html?ref=jonathanweisman&_r=0
Reid: Boehner backed out of deal
By Alexander Bolton – 10/03/13 01:42 PM ET
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reneged on a deal they hashed out in private earlier this year to pass a “clean” stopgap bill funding the government.
Reid said Boehner never wanted to wage a protracted battle over ObamaCare as part of the negotiations to keep the government running.
“I know that that’s not the path he preferred,” Reid said. “I know that because we met the first week we came back in September and he told me that what he wanted was a clean CR and the $988 [billion] number.
“We didn’t like the 988 number. We didn’t like it but we negotiated. That was our compromise,” Reid added. “The exact bill that he now refuses to let the House vote on. That was our negotiation.”
Many Democrats wanted to set the funding level in the continuing resolution at $1.058 trillion, rather than at the sequester level of $988 billion.
Reid said he didn’t have to twist Boehner’s arm to get a preliminary deal on a clean stopgap.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/326425-reid-boehner-backed-out-of-deal#ixzz2h2YhxP00
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Boehner: ‘I don’t want the United States to default on its debt, but…’
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 7, 2013 8:37 AM EDT
Over the last few months, the conventional wisdom has been that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is talking tough about a debt-ceiling crisis, but he won’t actually follow through on his threats. The inept Speaker will huff and puff, we’ve been assured, but he’ll pull back before actually blowing our house down. In fact, the argument goes, now that Boehner has shut down the government, the odds he’ll also push the nation into default are even more remote.
Indeed, just last week, the New York Times reported that Boehner has already told his members that he won’t let the nation default, and will rely on Democratic votes if he has to. On Friday’s show, former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R) told Rachel, “We’re not going to default. I’m going to tell you, John Boehner is a friend of mine. We’re both from Ohio. I served with him for 18 years. He’s not going to let that happen.”
And yet, on the other hand, we have Boehner and his chief spokesperson saying the exact opposite. Who’s right? Let’s recap the two facts we know for sure.
First, the debt ceiling must be raised by next week. Let me say that again: the debt ceiling must be raised by next week. We’re not talking about a distant horizon; the deadline is literally 10 days away and Congress hasn’t even lifted a finger on this.
Second, if you listen to what Boehner himself says, the crisis is both terrifying and intensifying. The beleaguered Speaker sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos yesterday.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/07/20853562-boehner-i-dont-want-the-united-states-to-default-on-its-debt-but?threadId=3833200&commentId=79505631#c79505631
The Boehner Bunglers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 6, 2013
The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?
The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
But there’s one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they’re also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.
To see what I’m talking about, consider the report in Sunday’s Times about the origins of the current crisis. Early this year, it turns out, some of the usual suspects — the Koch brothers, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation and others — plotted strategy in the wake of Republican electoral defeat. Did they talk about rethinking ideas that voters had soundly rejected? No, they talked extortion, insisting that the threat of a shutdown would induce President Obama to abandon health reform.
This was crazy talk. After all, health reform is Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement. You’d have to be completely clueless to believe that he could be bullied into giving up his entire legacy by a defeated, unpopular G.O.P. — as opposed to responding, as he has, by making resistance to blackmail an issue of principle. But the possibility that their strategy might backfire doesn’t seem to have occurred to the would-be extortionists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/opinion/krugman-the-boehner-bunglers.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
‘THIS IS EXTORTION PLAIN AND SIMPLE’
Watch This for 22 Seconds and You’ll See Why Obama Can’t Give an Inch
BY JONATHAN COHN
————————————————————-
House Speaker John Boehner went on ABC News “This Week” to make clear his position: Republicans won’t give the government new borrowing authority until Democrats agree to negotiate about Obamacare and fiscal priorities.
.
.
The key exchange takes all of 22 seconds, starting at about 12:25 in the video above. It goes like this:
STEPHANOPOULOS: What the president says is he believes that the consequences of negotiating again over a debt limit and re-creating a cycle of crises are worse.
BOEHNER: Every president in modern history has negotiated over a debt limit. Debt limits have been used to force big policy changes in Washington. And guess what, George? They’re going to be used again.
Boehner is wrong on the history. Congress has increased the debt limit in the course of passing other legislation—the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a nice review of recent legislation—and sometimes one or the other party made a big fuss about it. But, as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein explain in their acclaimed book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, until recently officials in neither party seriously threatened to let the government default on expenses it had already incurred:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115033/boehner-abc-still-demanding-debt-ceiling-negotiations
Good Morning, Everyone :)
“Afrofuturism” excerpt from Wikipedia
There is a video on Octavia Butler, early African American science fiction writer, at this link:
http://www.biography.com/people/octavia-e-butler-38207/videos/octavia-e-butler-changing-science-fiction-11167811951
You can find many art and cinema images of afrofuturism at this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=afrofuturism&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=xJ9SUv2bNaHc4AOoi4CIAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1276&bih=583&dpr=1
Also:
http://www.nationalartsprogram.org/users/artistjameseugene/future-sky-tribe
http://neoartstyle.com/artworks/
“Afrofuturist Literature”
http://afrofuturism.net/literature/
An example:
by Walter Mosley:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0316570982/vietnamgeneratioA/
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2013/10/07/bending-towards-justice
“Black and Latino Wealth Drops to Records Levels”
http://www.newpittsburghcourieronline.com/index.php/opinion/18027-black-and-latino-wealth-drops-to-record-levels
“Fear White Influx Will Erase West Oakland History”
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fear-white-influx-will-erase-West-Oakland-history-4874291.php
Excerpts:
and
Good morning 3Chics!
This is going to be a wonderful week of music, thanks to you Ametia.
I love Marvin Gaye!
Good morning, everyone!
Marvin Gaye week! Loves it!
Hi SG2,
I am going to clean the refrigerator today :)
Morning, Everyone! Happy MUN-dane. :-)))