We continue with Lionel Richie.
Solo career
Richie’s 1982 self-titled debut contained three hit singles: the U.S. #1 song “Truly”, which launched his career as one of the most successful balladeers of the 1980s, and the top five hits “You Are” and “My Love”. The album hit #3 on the music charts and sold over 4 million copies. His 1983 follow-up album, Can’t Slow Down, sold over twice as many copies and won two Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, propelling him into the first rank of international superstars. The album contained the #1 hit “All Night Long” a Caribbean-flavored dance number that was promoted by a colorful music video produced by former Monkee Michael Nesmith. In 1984, Richie performed “All Night Long” at the closing ceremony of the XXIII Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Several more Top 10 hits followed, the most successful of which was the ballad “Hello” (1984), a sentimental love song that showed how far Richie had moved from his R&B roots. Richie had three more top ten hits in 1984, “Stuck on You” (#3), “Running with the Night” (#7) and “Penny Lover” (#8). Now described by one critic as “the black Barry Manilow”, in 1985 Richie wrote and performed a suitably soothing theme song, “Say You, Say Me”, for the film White Nights, winning an Oscar for his efforts as well as reaching #1 on the U.S. charts and staying there for four weeks, making it the #1 song of 1985 according to Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart. He also collaborated with Michael Jackson on the charity single “We Are the World” by USA for Africa, another #1 hit.
I just finished copying 3 pages from William Still’s book and posted it at this link:
http://3chicspolitico.com/2013/12/27/friday-open-thread-lionel-richie-week/#comment-217736
N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules
17 sec ago – N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ADAM LIPTAK Published: December 27, 2013 WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically …
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/us/nsa-phone-surveillance-is-lawful-federal-judge-rules.html?hp&_r=1&
ObamaCare Won’t Get Popular On Its Own
by BooMan
Fri Dec 27th, 2013 at 12:28:34 PM EST
Before the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land, people had two main attitudes about their health insurance. They either hated it, or they didn’t use it. This idea that there were a lot of people who liked their health insurance and wanted to keep it is largely a myth. At best, the vast majority of people were afraid of change, but that doesn’t mean that they thought they had great insurance or enjoyed the process of trying to get their insurer to pay their bills. In general, people hate paying for insurance and experience hassles when they try to use it. So, once the Democrats decided to push everyone into for-profit insurance, they pretty much took ownership of something most people experience negatively. Add to this that people will always want a bigger subsidy than they’re getting, a bad rollout of the exchanges, and a political opposition uniformly opposed to the bill and determined to highlight every flaw within it, and you have a recipe for a political drubbing. That’s why I think Teacher Ken is wildly optimistic when he declares that the benefits of the law will become clear by next November’s midterm elections. I do not believe that to be the case.
The only way to make that the case is for Democrats to very thoroughly follow Ryan Cooper’s advice and rally around the health care law in a relentless and single-minded way that can match the Republicans’ opposition.
I have further advice on this front. The fact that formerly uninsured people are getting insurance is not a very compelling rejoinder for someone who is having a negative experience with their health insurer. What’s compelling is a political party that constantly points to the benefits of the law, like annual caps, keeping your kids on your insurance, protections against having your insurance dropped, and limits on profit-taking. The way to promote this politically is to constantly talk about real people who would have been screwed without the reforms. Trot them out daily to talk about how their lives and livelihoods have been saved.
Secondly, the Dems should be introducing reforms that address areas where people are experiencing problems. These reforms won’t pass, but they can form a platform of sorts that will partially inoculate the party from criticism. After all, fixing a problem is better than repealing the whole law and having a solution is more appealing than having none.
If the Democrats do not pursue these two strategies and just rely on people discovering that the law is working, they will be slaughtered. They will be slaughtered because people hate health insurance.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/12/27/122834/05
Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade & The Boys Snap Their First HOLIDAY Family Photo!
http://theybf.com/2013/12/25/gabrielle-union-dwyane-wade-the-boys-snap-their-first-family-holiday-photo
No fools on our ticket’
12/27/13 08:45 AM—Updated 12/27/13 10:55 AM
By Steve Benen
Just over the last few months, we’ve seen reports from the New York Times, Bloomberg News, and the Washington Post on the simmering tensions between Corporate America and Tea Party Republicans, driving a wedge into the GOP coalition. With party primaries looming, talk of a “Republican civil war” abounds.
Some of the party’s major players are even putting their money where their mouths are. This Wall Street Journal piece yesterday was circulated far and wide in Republican circles.
Republican leaders and their corporate allies have launched an array of efforts aimed at diminishing the clout of the party’s most conservative activists and promoting legislation instead of confrontation next year. […]
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce early next year plans to roll out an aggressive effort – expected to cost at least $50 million – to support establishment, business-friendly candidates in primaries and the general election, with an aim of trying to win a Republican Senate majority.
Though Reed did not specify who would qualify as a “fool,” it’s not hard to look back at major Senate races from the last couple of cycles and know exactly the kind of candidates he’s referencing (O’Donnell, Akin, Mourdock, Angle, et al). In other words, when Reed and the Republican Party’s Chamber of Commerce wing talk about “loser candidates” and “fools,” they’re obviously talking about right-wing Tea Party favorites.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/no-fools-our-ticket
Glenn Greenwald’s Heart Cries Out at MSNBC’s Failure to Promote the Republican Agenda
Thursday, December 26, 2013 |
Posted by Spandan Chakrabarti at 4:20 PM
By now, everyone probably has heard of the comments by Glenn Greenwald appearing with Kristen Welker on MSNBC. The most reported parts of his comments deal with his charge that MSNBC is essentially a mouthpiece for the Obama administration – proving, of course, that he doesn’t watch MSNBC, a channel whose agenda, if there is one, is far better aligned with his own – that is to say to undermine the president from the faux Left.
But here is the part of the his comment that are failing to be highlighted in the coverage: when lashing out MSNBC’s “viewpoint” and “agenda,” Greenwald did not merely beat up on the channel’s perceived partiality to President Obama. In defending his admiration for Snowden’s cowardly acts, Greenwald grieved MSNBC’s perceived lack of promotion for the Republican agenda:
That really is where Glenn Greenwal’d heart lies. This shouldn’t be surprising in the least bit, given that his heroes have consistently turned out to be right wing gasbags. One of the key reasons Snowden sought out Glenn Greenwald was because of their mutual admiration for the racist former Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Julian Assange, another partner in crime for Greenwald in his quest for self-aggrandization, lamented a mere four months ago that the libertarian wing of the Republican party – you know, the wing that believes that the Civil Rights Act went too far – is the only hope for America.
……………….
Greenwald’s defenders – and there are no shortage of them on the white-privileged Left – will say that Greenwald was merely making the point that having an agenda of one’s own doesn’t disqualify someone from being a journalist. Although that is his first mistake – letting your political agenda color your coverage of the truth is where journalism begins to diverge from propaganda – it is far from his last. Greenwald’s embrace of Snowden is far more akin to Sarah Palin’s defense of the Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson than to MSNBC’s often unfair and hair-on-fire coverage of the Obama administration.
But to understand Greenwald’s complete state of mind, one must look at the entire sentence: that a media station exists dedicated to glorify Barack Obama and undermine the conservative one. Where else do you hear this? On Fox News and on every right wing talk show to ever pollute our airwaves. Glenn Greenwald is playing to the same audience with the same language. This is no innocent all-journalists-have-agendas plea. This is an overt attempt to establish the myth of a pro-Obama media and to demand that the Republican agenda be given an even bigger platform – that is, the Republican agenda of ending the social safety net, repealing the Voting Rights Act and probably the Civil Rights Act, and completely dismantling the social safety net.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/12/glenn-greenwalds-heart-cries-out-at.html
Senate eyes 3-month extension for jobless
12/27/13 08:00 AM—Updated 12/27/13 09:30 AM
By Steve Benen
Federal emergency unemployment benefits expire tomorrow for 1.3 million jobless Americans. By the summer, another 1.9 million will be affected by the lapsed assistance. But congressional efforts to address the problem are still very much underway and a new Senate vote on benefits may be the first order of business when lawmakers return from their holiday break.
Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, announced Thursday that he will introduce a 3-month extension to long-term federal unemployment insurance with a Republican co-sponsor and hopes for a procedural vote as soon as Jan. 6. […]
Mr. Reed said he plans to introduce the extension with Sen. Dean Heller, Nevada Republican. The short-term extension is not paid for in other parts of the budget because it’s considered an economic emergency, said Rep. Sander Levin, Michigan Democrat. The cost would just be tacked on to the deficit, something Republicans have refused to do in the past.
On that last part, about Republicans having refused to tack on emergency costs to the deficit “in the past,” this comes by way of the Washington Times, an unabashedly conservative newspaper. The reason the claim stands out, however, is that it happens to be wrong.
Congressional Republicans, in the recent past, had no problem tacking on the cost of the war in Iraq to the deficit. They also tacked on the cost of the war in Afghanistan to the deficit. They also tacked on two rounds of massive tax cuts, a Wall Street bailout, Medicare expansion, and the cost of No Child Left Behind to the deficit without giving it much thought.
As Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) once put it, during the Bush/Cheney era, Republicans considered it “standard practice not to pay for things.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/senate-eyes-3-month-extension-jobless
Paul: jobless aid ‘weakens’ U.S.
12/26/13 12:45 PM—Updated 12/26/13 01:53 PM
By Steve Benen
A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reemphasized his opposition to extended emergency unemployment benefits in a rather startling way. To continue to provide assistance to these jobless Americans, the Republican senator said, would be to “do a disservice to these workers.” He repeated the line a week later.
In other words, for Rand Paul, cutting off aid to those struggling to find work during a period of high unemployment is actually doing those folks a favor.
He continues to believe this.
It’s important to understand how misguided his argument really is. For one thing, China owns only a small percentage of U.S. debt. For another, there’s no reason policymakers necessarily have to borrow the funds needed to help the unemployed (though borrowing costs are low and it makes perfect economic sense to do so).
But the notion that helping the unemployed “is weakening us as a country” is plainly ridiculous. Will the nation be stronger on Sunday when 1.3 million Americans lose their purchasing power, costing the country as many as 300,000 jobs in 2014?
Indeed, it’s not unreasonable to consider this a binary choice. Under which scenario is the United States better off: helping these 1.3 million jobless or cutting them off? Paul believes the latter, but every shred of evidence points in the opposite direction.
The senator elaborated on his approach during a recent Fox News interview, arguing, “There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said, if you have a worker that’s been unemployed for four weeks and on unemployment insurance and one that’s on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer, nearly 100 percent, said they will always hire the person who’s been out of work four weeks.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-jobless-aid-weakens-us
No one likes a bully
12/26/13 11:00 AM—Updated 12/26/13 11:32 AM
By Steve Benen
Late Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) top two appointees to the Port Authority, both of whom have since resigned, complied with subpoenas related to the ongoing bridge scandal. Soon after, state Assemblyman John Wisnieswki (D), chairman of the committee investigating the incident, acknowledged soon after that the probe will continue into 2014.
But while we wait for the process to continue and for the new materials to be scrutinized, one of the overarching questions is whether Christie could possibly be so petty as to cripple a community with paralyzing traffic, just to punish the local mayor for having refused to endorse him.
The evidence on the bridge controversy is still coming together, but Kate Zernike reported yesterday that Christie’s track record of bullying New Jersey officials for even minor slights is extraordinary.
In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild comment on a radio program: Some of the public employees that Gov. Chris Christie was then vilifying had been some of the governor’s biggest supporters.
The whole article is worth reading to appreciate just how thin-skinned the governor really is. The piece points to example after example of Christie using the power of his office to punish rivals – even other Republicans – who’ve offended him in minor and inconsequential ways
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/no-one-likes-bully
Disguise Leads To Freedom For Former Slaves
Say the words “slave revolt” and images of bloody confrontations waged with guns, machetes, and pitchforks come to mind. But the self-liberation of former slaves Ellen and William Craft shows that the route to freedom could also be paved with smarts and guile as opposed to bloodshed.
Using her light-skinned hue to her advantage, Ellen, a biracial slave born in 1826 in Georgia, figured that the best way to beat the slave holders in her region of the country was to, in a sense, join them.
So Craft cooked up a plan to to pose as a White slave owner by cutting her hair, adopting a man’s walking gait, and hiding the fact that she couldn’t read. All this with her “slave” in tow.
The plan allowed the Crafts to travel through the South to Philadelphia, where they arrived in the winter of 1848. They moved to Boston and became influential abolitionist speakers.
One would think that would be the heartwarming end to the Crafts story of ingenuity and bravery, but one would also be underestimating the brutality of the American slave system.
In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed slave masters to cross in to non-slaveholding areas to retrieve their “property.” The Crafts were forced to run to England but returned to Georgia after the Civil War.
http://newsone.com/2027294/ellen-and-william-craft-fugitive-slaves/
Thank you for posting this wonder piece of history, rikyrah!
Here is the video found in the article you linked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T3ad6O9PQmQ
William Sill includes them in his 1872 book entitled “The Underground Railroad. A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, etc.” on pages 368 – 377.
I will see if I can find it on Google Books and then provide a link.
I am back. Good news! William Still’s book has been reprinted. Here is a write-up on the book:
Here is the Google book link where the above quotation is from:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Underground_Rail_Road.html?id=Q8FPADAu5asC
Yahtc,
Thanks for all you do here at 3CP!
You are welcome, SG2 :)
And, thank you for having this blog site.
I appreciate all that you three Chics do in bringing me the news and updating me on political issues. And, of course, I love being able to listen to all the great music the three of you post!
Great finds Rikyrah & Yahtc. Thanks!
YW, Ametia!
I just copied the first 3 pages (bottom half of p. 368 to top of p.370 from my copy of the 1st edition of the book.) What follows are William Still’s words:
:
:
Note…on the pages that follow this, Still tells how the Crafts felt safe in Boston for two years, but then the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed and fugitive slaves could no longer feel safe anywhere in the U.S.
First Look: Knight Life with Gladys
The Empress of Soul is coming to OWN! Grammy® Award winning recording artist Gladys Knight juggles family and fame without missing a beat.
Tune in for the sneak peak of Knight Life with Gladys on Saturday, December 28 at 10/9c.
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/own/First-Look-Knight-Life-with-Gladys-Video#ixzz2ogSBJC00
https://twitter.com/mistyonpointe/status/416373879062269952/photo/1
She’s truly a work of ART…just stunning.
Beautiful.
http://www.newarkpostonline.com/regional/article_d5dd08e2-95ca-574e-81bf-ed0d3a568449.html
December 26, 2013
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/12/26/kwanzaa-kicks-off-today/
December 26, 2013
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=9373185
So much for inclusion.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20131226/LIFESTYLE/312260002/Saturday-African-American-Museum-FACES-FREEDOM-
http://www.heraldsun.com/lifestyles/books/x1401024895/-Hidden-stories-New-book-chronicles-N-C-African-American-music-traditions
Good Morning Everyone :)
Good Morning, Yahtc and everyone at 3CHICS!
Good Morning, Everyone Happy FRY-day! :-)
Morning, everyone!
Just getting here. I have my coffee in hand. I needed a little pick me upper. Now I’m ready to rock & roll.
Thank you, Yahtc. Carlos Nakai’s my favorite native American musician.
YW, Ametia. I think he is so great, too!