Timothy Wright (June 17, 1947 – April 24, 2009) generally credited as Rev. Timothy Wright or Reverend Timothy Wright on recordings, was an American gospel singer and pastor.
Wright started on piano at age 12, and sang and composed for his church choir as a teenager at the St. John’s Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God in Brooklyn.[2] He played piano for Bishop F. D. Washington and Isaac Douglas in the 1960s and 1970s, including on recordings, and he formed his own gospel ensemble in the mid-1970s, the Timothy Wright Concert Choir. He eventually became pastor of the Pentecostal Grace Tabernacle Christian Center Church of God in Christ located in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and issued albums regularly from 1990.
Box Office (Specialty): ’12 Years a Slave’ Opens Big, Attracts Diverse Audience
12:43 PM PDT 10/20/2013 by Pamela McClintock
Steve McQueen’s harrowing drama 12 Years a Slave did impressive business in its theatrical debut, playing to both arthouse audiences and African-Americans as it continues to build awards momentum.
The Fox Searchlight release grossed $960,000 from 19 theaters in six top markets for an enviable location average of $50,526, by far the best of the weekend and one of the top averages ever for a movie opening in that number of theaters.
Produced by New Regency and Plan B — Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner’s company — 12 Years a Slave has earned stellar reviews since its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. It also drew an A CinemaScore.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-specialty-12-years-649650
Rubio: House Republicans ‘deserve’ to dictate immigration reform after government shutdown
By David Edwards
Sunday, October 20, 2013 11:50 EDT
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Sunday said that President Barack Obama must cave to House Republicans’ demands on immigration reform because he had “undermined” the effort by refusing to defund his signature health care reform law.
During an interview with Fox News, Rubio reasoned that since the Obama administration had delayed parts of the Affordable Care Act, it could also decide to selectively enforce parts of any new immigration reform law.
“Certainly, the president has undermined this effort because the way he’s behaved over the last three weeks [during the government shutdown],” he explained to Fox News host Chris Wallace.
But even after House Republicans shut the government down in an attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act and took the country to the brink of default by threatening to raise the debt limit, Rubio argued that those same lawmakers might have the best immigration reform solution.
“This notion that they’re going to get into a room and negotiate a deal with the president on immigration is much more difficult for two reasons,” he explained. “Number one, because the way the president has behaved towards his opponents over the last three weeks as well as the White House and the things that they’ve said and done. And number two, because what I have outlined to you… So, I certainly think that immigration reform is a lot harder to achieve today than it was just three weeks ago because of what’s happened here.”
Rep. Edwards schools ABC analyst who says Obama poisoned tone by blaming GOP for shutdown
By David Edwards
Sunday, October 20, 2013 13:11 EDT
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) on Sunday pushed back against President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd, who now works as an analyst for ABC News, after he accused President Barack Obama of poisoning the tone in Washington, D.C. by faulting Republicans after they forced a government shutdown.
“It’s really easy to cast this off on the president, but the fact is when you have now what looks to be a majority of Republicans in Congress who stop the president at any point, who want say, you know, ‘We want to undo your signature health care act and shut down government over that and not pay our bills over that,’ I mean that really is very extreme,” Edwards explained. “And this president, in my view as a progressive Democrat, has bent over backwards to try to accommodate the Republican Party and try to construct support.”
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“Come on,” Edwards interrupted. “It is really important here, we don’t want to do a rewrite here. And in order not to do a rewrite, you have to actually understand who was at fault and there was real fault here. We had a majority of Republicans and Democrats who wanted to keep the government open.”
Dionne derails Gregory’s segment on Obama ‘leadership’: You mean ‘adopt Republican positions’
By David Edwards
Sunday, October 20, 2013 15:44 EDT
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne threw cold water on NBC host David Gregory segment’s calling for more “leadership” from President Barack Obama on Sunday when he explained that people were mistaking the “leadership” for capitulating to Republicans’ demands.
During an NBC’s Meet the Press segment titled “Presidential Leadership,” Gregory wanted to know when Obama was going to “demonstrate he can bring along converts to his side and actually get something meaningful accomplished.”
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“A lot of times, though, when people say the president should lead, what they want him to do is adopt Republican positions and then push for those,” Dionne explained. “That’s not leadership, that’s capitulation.”
“I think we should stop talking about a Grand Bargain and try to have normal government in the next two months.”
The Super Hot California Model
by BooMan
Sun Oct 20th, 2013 at 08:42:17 AM EST
Everybody seems to be flogging the top-two primary system that has been instituted in California and Washington state as the antidote to hyper-partisanship and gridlock.
I favor the top-two system, but not because I think it is some great cure for hyper-partisanship. I just think it gives voters better choices. For example, if you live in Oakland, California, why do want to have an election between Rep. Barbara Lee and a Republican? What’s the point? Rep. Lee is going to win with 80% or more of the vote. But how about she has to face a green party candidate in the general election? Now the people of Oakland can have a debate between two people who both might be acceptable to them. The same thing is true in some of the farming districts on the Nevada border. Those constituents might prefer to have two Republicans debating policy rather than having to listen to a Democrat who has no chance. The top-two system also makes it easier for third, fourth or fifth party candidates to get on the primary ballot, and therefore easier for them to get heard. They are much less likely to act as spoilers that harm the most viable candidate on their side of the right/left divide.
Most important than the top-two innovation is taking redistricting out of the hands of the politicians and putting it in the hands of a independent citizens board. Despite being the biggest state with the most congressional districts, and despite the massive turnover in the 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections, California lost almost no incumbents in that period. Most of the members they did lose, they lost to aging or scandal. But, in 2012, after the redistricting and top-two system were in place, there was quite a lot of reshuffling.
I don’t know how much these changes can improve the national political divide, but I like them without regard to that. I think California is functioning today primarily because the Democrats have supermajorities in the state congress and Jerry Brown is the governor. If Obama had those kind of majorities, no one would be talking about partisanship and gridlock. They’d be talking about progress.
Only Four African Americans Have Ever Been Elected To The U.S. Senate In All Of American History
By Ian Millhiser on October 17, 2013 at 9:00 am
New Jersey voters elected Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) on Wednesday to the seat once held by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D). When he is seated, Senator-elect Booker will join Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as one of only two African Americans in the upper house of Congress. Close to thirteen percent of the country is black, despite the fact that African Americans control just two percent of the seats in the Senate.
Yet, despite their current under-representation, African Americans are actually unusually well-represented in the current Senate as compared to most of American history. Only four black men and women were elected to the United States Senate in all of American history — former Sens. Edward William Brooke (R-MA) and Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) join Booker in this very exclusive group, along with President Barack Obama. Five other African Americans also served in the Senate, including incumbent Sen. Scott, but each of these men were either appointed by governors to fill vacant seats or were selected by state legislatures prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for direct elections of senators. Additionally, former Louisiana Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback, a Republican, was selected by his state legislature to be a senator but denied his seat by Democrats in Congress.
Last June, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “[o]ur country has changed” from the one riddled with racial apartheid 50 years ago, and he cited this progress as a reason to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. America has changed, and there can be no doubt that the nation we live in today is better than the one our grandparents lived in when the Voting Rights Act became law.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that only four African Americans have been elected to the Senate in America’s entire history. Perhaps America hasn’t made as much progress as John Roberts thinks.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/17/2795201/african-americans-elected-senate-american-history/
Tennessee Supreme Court Upholds Voter Suppression Law, Despite Lack Of Voter Fraud in State
By Josh Israel on October 18, 2013 at 11:52 am
Tennessee’s Supreme Court upheld a voter photo identification law on Thursday, deciding unanimously that because the state law included an exception for those voters who are “indigent and unable to obtain proof of identification without payment of a fee,” it did not impose an undue burden. But the court acknowledged that in-person voter fraud is rare and has only been “documented in other parts of the country” — not in Tennessee.
The state law was enacted in 2011. After local libraries began issuing free photo identification cards, the GOP-controlled state legislature amended the law in April to exclude these as a valid form of voter identification. The high court said that even this more-restrictive requirement was acceptable, because the law allows voters to get a free voter ID card with certain proof of identity.
The sort of voter impersonation fraud that would be prevented by photo ID laws is virtually non-existent in the United States. Numerous studies have shown that one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. Additionally, photo ID requirements statistically put the greatest burden on low-income and minority voters.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/18/2804861/tennessee-supreme-court-voter/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFZGyUZ9YrM
New twist on GMO debate: Are they ‘natural’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-twist-on-gmo-debate-are-they-natural/2013/10/19/96ea1b12-29fc-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
“Inspiring Words From Oprah Winfrey”
“Black Abstraction Artist Talk – Elsa Gebreyesus”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rGF2G5GDSGw
What a beautiful beginning to the day, SG2!
Thank you, Yahtc!
Happy Sunday, everyone!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
Praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
Praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
Praise him with the harp and lyre,
Praise him with timbrel and dancing,
Praise him with the strings and pipe,
Praise him with the clash of cymbals,
Praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
The angels are in the sunlight and gentle breeze this morning:
Good Morning, Everyone! Bless this Day. :-)))
AMEN!
Good Morning, Everyone :)