Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, artist, and writer. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan’s early songs, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’“, became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving behind his initial base in the culture of the folk music revival, Dylan’s six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” radically altered the parameters of popular music in 1965. His recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan’s lyrics have incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performance style of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres.
Arizona governor vetoes controversial anti-gay bill
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has announced that she has vetoed a controversial bill that would allow businesses to deny service to gays and lesbians if they feel it violates their religious rights.
Gay rights advocates have denounced the legislation, labeling it a form of legalized discrimination, and Arizona’s two GOP senators and leading Republican candidates for governor urged Brewer to veto the bill. Even a few GOP state legislators who voted for the measure now say it is not the right thing to do.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Brewer vetoed the anti-gay bill
That bitch had NO CHOICE. Gays have $$$$ too, don’tcha know!
VETO the fuckin’ bill Brewer
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s office says she will speak at 7:45 p.m. ET about a bill allowing businesses that assert their religious beliefs the right to deny service to gay and lesbian customers.
Both sides have ramped up pressure in the fight over the legislation, which opponents say encourages discrimination against gays and lesbians. Brewer is expected to veto the measure, but she hasn’t said publicly what steps she’ll take.
Follow the developing story on CNN.com,
That’s OUR POTUS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOc4JgBypLs
Texas police defend DUI arrest of black man who blew 0.00 on Breathalyzer
Despite negative blood and breath tests, man arrested for DWI
By Tony Plohetski
To Austin attorney Daniel Betts, driving while intoxicated can sometimes be what he calls “an opinion crime.” Law enforcement must decide, sometimes within only a matter of minutes, whether a person is intoxicated and should go to jail — or be allowed to simply drive way.
On the night Austin police arrested his client, they made the wrong choice, he says – his opinion bolstered by a voluntary breath and blood test showing Larry Davis wasn’t intoxicated when he was arrested Jan. 13, 2013. He tested 0.00 on a Breathalyzer – the lowest possible reading — and the blood test, which took months to be tested, came back negative.
“My reaction was just shock that it happened,” Betts said of the arrest, after watching a police dash cam video and reviewing the evidence.
http://www.statesman.com/weblogs/investigations/2014/feb/24/despite-negative-breath-blood-tests-man-arrested-d/
People in Texas need to treat black people better!
WTFF is this kind of ish coming from a teacher—> ‘Hope the black boy burns in hell.’
Students look to teachers to inspire & lift up. Susan Wright wrote on Facebook about Jordan Davis: ‘Hope the black boy burns in hell.’ / OMFG!
Clay County School District, Susan Wright has no business teaching children harboring that kind of hate. She needs to be FIRED ASAP!
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/content/topstories/story/Clay-school-employee-investigated-for-Facebook/D4ACKpQU1EiiSekDUBAc9g.cspx
That’s why they MAD!
Obama embraces a lifelong cause: Helping minority boys succeed
By Liz Goodwin and Garance Franke-Ruta
2 hours ago Yahoo News
On Father’s Day last June, President Barack Obama welcomed 14 teenagers sporting black-and-white T-shirts that read “BAM” into the Oval Office.
The letters stood not for the nickname occasionally slapped on the president by big-city tabloids, but for “Becoming a Man,” a program run by a Chicago nonprofit working with at-risk youth in the public schools. The president had met the group of young black men once before, when he dropped by one of BAM’s hourlong group discussion sessions at Hyde Park Academy High School last February. He’d pulled up a chair and sat in the boys’ circle that day, talking with them so long about their lives his aides worried he would blow up his carefully planned schedule during his visit to the city.
Now they were meeting again, teenagers from the South Side of Chicago and the president who began his organizing career not far from where they lived. It had already been an emotionally powerful trip for the boys, only two of whom had ever been on a plane before. Now here they were visiting with the most powerful man in the world in the inner sanctum of the Oval Office.
As the teens gathered around the president, one handed him a green and gold Father’s Day card, which all the boys had signed. They had gone out and purchased it the day before, unbeknown to their counselor, Marshaun Bacon, who traveled with them to the White House.
“I never signed a Father’s Day card before,” the young man explained as the president opened the card. “I’ve never signed a Father’s Day card, either,” Obama replied, according to an aide, improbably closing the distance between the Chicago teens and the American president. It was an intimate, private moment that moved him.
https://news.yahoo.com/obama-embraces-a-lifelong-cause–helping-minority-boys-succeed-164019997.html
About Bubba Campaigning for Grimes in Kentucky.
The obviousness of this is grating.
It was THE TRUTH that the Hillary SuperPAC was going to sit out the 2014 Elections.
They didn’t give a shyt if the Dems could get back the House or Keep the Senate.
If we turn the House – all we need is muthafuckin’ 18 seats…
Then Nancy Smash gets back her gavel.
We keep the Senate, and the President can continue on his goals.
IF the President accomplishes stuff the last 2 years like the first two years..
Then there is no need for Hillary to be THE SAVIOR, which is the bullshyt they were gonna peddle if the 2014 elections go bad.
We got at least a dozen states putting in place things to curb VOTING RIGHTS..
And the Hillary SuperPac was going to sit out 2014?
We got Bubba stomping for Grimes in red-ass Kentucky,
But, we got State Senator Nina Turner running for Secretary of State in OHIO, where you know she WOULD PROTECT THE VOTE, and you don’t hear anything about Bubba going there, do you?
President Barack Obama has shown the way..
You don’t need one muthafuckin’ Southern State to become President of the United States.
He has shown the electoral path to render the South ELECTORALLY IRRELEVANT.
But, that path includes OHIO< so, IMO, stomping for Nina Turner to be SOS and protect the vote in OHIO, is far more a return on value than stomping for Grimes in red Kentucky.
These mofos think somebody is playing with them.
NOBODY is playing with them.
My girl on FIRE! I tweeted all of it. Bring it, baby!
LMBAO Rik’s rippin’em a new one. All kinds of TRUTH-TELLIN up in HERE.
I mean she ripped it apart. All I could do was throw up my hands! 👏👏👏👏
LMBAO Rik’s rippin’em a new one. All kinds of TRUTH-TELLIN up in HERE.
***********************
…with her soft spoken self.
CHURCH ALL UP IN HEE-YA! Beat that ASS, Rikyrah. BEAT.IT
You beat me to it. DARN IT! LOL!
@SG2 Hee hee hee. Hill & Bill need to have a few stadiums FULL-O-SEATS!
Like we don’t see them?
I can’t tell you the joy I feel when I see this graphic. I love it! LOL!
The Clintons cannot be trusted, IMHO. They are politicians to the marrow of their bones, it is all about power and their legacy.
Pass the 3 Chics Obama fans too!
OMG! That was RIGHTEOUS! LOL! I’m still feeling it!
Rikyrah should have front paged this. It’s sooo good. Folks need to know what the Clintons are up to. I see them.
I FrontPaged it.
I’ve been a Bob Dylan fan since the 60s when my older sisters were into folk music. I liked his different phases until the late 70s, the most recent album of his that I still own is “Street Legal” which was produced over 35 years ago. We really are fortunate that Dylan actually grew old, that we’ve had him for so long unlike so many others who died young and left us with just a glimpse into their genius. I still listen to Dylan regularly, especially this version of “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorites, always will be:
SCANDAL RETURNS TOMORROW NIGHT! :-))))))
President Obama to outline plan to fix crumbling roads, rail, bridges
By Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:05am EST
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama will announce in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Wednesday a four-year, $302 billion plan to create jobs by fixing the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges, rail and transportation infrastructure.
Congress faces a September 30 deadline to renew federal funding for transportation programs, a deadline that has made state governors concerned about planning projects that typically run through September and into the fall months.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/26/us-usa-transportation-obama-idUSBREA1P0MO20140226
Today at 8:45 AM
Barclays Telling Hip-Hop Acts to Keep It Down
By Adam Martin
After months of noise complaints, it’s come to this. Barclays Center says it will tell bass-heavy acts to keep it down in order to stop bothering the neighbors. The arena has an ongoing problem with heavy bass from concerts rumbling the insides of neighbors’ apartments. And while the $3,200 fine it incurred hardly puts a crimp in the operation’s finances, seething neighborhood wrath eventually might. So in addition to new soundproofing, special acoustic baffles, and a “sound concierge,” the New York Daily News reports the arena is taking an old-fashioned approach: “hip-hop artists like former arena investor Jay Z and Kanye West will be asked to lower their concert volume.” Novel!
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/barclays-telling-hip-hop-acts-to-keep-it-down.html
What the FUCK? Spike Lee’s BEATDOWN on GENTRIFIATION could never be TRUER.
Today at 8:48 AM
The Republican Health-Care Plan Is Almost Here, and Always Will Be
By Jonathan Chait
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Gerry Seib, Eric Cantor gives a status update on the forthcoming Republican health-care plan. Last month, he announced, to much fanfare, that House Republicans would stop endlessly carping on Obamacare’s flaws and rally around an alternative plan of their own. Cantor’s original promise, from January 30, had the ringing certainty of Jack Kennedy vowing to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s:
“This year, we will rally around an alternative to ObamaCare and pass it on the floor of the House.”
On February 21, Cantor was asked how the health-care plan is going. It’s going! Almost done:
“As we continue to work to finalize our Obamacare replacement plan, we will also act to highlight and address the serious consequences of the law …”
They’re just dotting some is and crossing some ts. Also, by the way, they’re going to be spending a lot of time highlighting Obamacare’s flaws.
Yesterday’s Roll Call gave a less optimistic update on the state of the plan:
House Republican leaders will meet Friday to begin crafting an alternative to Democrats’ health care law …
That task will fall to Cantor and his top committee chairmen, who will gather the party’s best ideas, build support in their respective committees and craft consensus among the conference writ large
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/gop-health-care-plan-is-almost-here-again.html
Thank you everyone for showing love for my boy on his birthday!
Josh’s a GREAT YOUNG MAN. Kudos to Mama. :-)
:)
Spike Lee’s Amazing Rant Against Gentrification: ‘We Been Here!’
By Joe Coscarelli
Speaking Tuesday night in Brooklyn, blocks away from his company headquarters and his father’s apartment, Spike Lee went off on how the neighborhood has changed. The filmmaker, wearing a Knicks beanie, orange socks, blue Nikes, and “Defend Brooklyn” hoodie, was at Pratt Institute for a lecture in honor of African American History Month, surrounded by locals, when he was nearly asked a question about “the other side” of the gentrification debate. “Let me just kill you right now,” Lee interrupted, “because there was some bullshit article in the New York Timessaying ‘the good of gentrification.’” (See: “Argument Over a Brownstone Neighborhood” and New York’s “Is Gentrification All Bad?”)
“I don’t believe that,” said Lee. And for the next seven minutes he explained, with passion, humor, and a fair amount of f-words.
There’s more at the link.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html
TELL.IT.SPIKE. WE BEEN MUTHAFUCKIN’ H.E.R.E!
THIS:
“Nah. You can’t do that. You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re motherfuckin’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a code. There’s people.” <b.
News casters: he used some ‘bad words.” AWWWW what’s the matter? Fee fees hurt?
http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/24826013/spike-lee-slams-hipsters-for-brooklyn-gentrification#axzz2uRroyFcR
Guess who’s coming to MINNE-SNOWTA?
Wonderful!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/25/first-black-female-ole-miss-student-body-president-reacts-to-newest-racial-incident-at-university/
This article is accompanied by a news video.
http://www.wlox.com/story/24809759/former-student-says-racist-desecraton-devalues-ole-miss-degree
Photo:
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2014_08/202386/140221-james-meredith-mississippi-1650_53a875f8a46a4bfeb64107a1ad479859.nbcnews-ux-640-900.jpg
Melody Barnes @MelodyCBarnes
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I am thrilled to join @JimMessina @JonCarson and so many wonderful @OFA volunteers at the #ActionSummit
4:17 PM – 25 Feb 2014
https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/438361206835798016/photo/1
Talk about letting the filthy, disgusting, rightwingnuts infilitrating one’s country and spreading their HATE.
https://twitter.com/attorneycrump/status/438361799541280768/photo/1
https://twitter.com/EI_EcoPictures/status/438535886737657856/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Powerful_Pics/status/438539050111483905/photo/1
https://twitter.com/endsolitary/status/438522085431078912/photo/1
https://twitter.com/HartforddotCom/status/438370517910032384/photo/1
Top Conservative Cat @TeaPartyCat
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Gov. Nathan Deal blocked 600,000 poor people from getting Medicaid, resulting in 4 hospitals closing. You know, FREEDOM.
11:45 AM – 25 Feb 2014
Why Republicans Will Never Stop Lying About Obamacare
By Gene Lyons
Politically speaking, here’s the thing about those melodramatic ads attacking the Affordable Care Act currently running on TV: In terms of actual policy, they’re as futile as the 40-odd votes to repeal the law that House Republicans have already cast.
GOP hardliners are like a drunk in a bar fight threatening to whip somebody twice his size if only his friends would let go of his arms.
It’s all over but the shouting.
Even if Republicans make big gains in the 2014 congressional elections, they can’t possibly win enough votes to overcome a presidential veto. What’s more, chances of capturing the White House in 2016 on a platform of canceling millions of Americans’ health insurance benefits appear so remote as to be downright delusional. Like it or not, the ACA is here to stay.
Indeed, governors and legislatures in previously recalcitrant states including New Hampshire, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia are considering Medicaid expansion they’d previously shunned. Despite early signup problems with the federal HealthCare.gov exchange, signups for individual private policies have increased to where it now appears the ACA will come close to meeting its projected goal of 7 million enrollees by the March 31 deadline.
Moreover, for all the predictions of actuarial doom heard on Fox News and elsewhere—supposedly caused by an imbalance of old, sick enrollees versus younger, healthier ones—the Washington Post reported last month that “the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that if the market’s age distribution freezes at its current level—an extremely unlikely scenario—‘overall costs in individual market plans would be about 2.4 percent higher than premium revenues.’”
That’s a minor problem, but nothing like a “death spiral.”
http://www.nationalmemo.com/republicans-will-never-stop-lying-obamacare/
do my eyes deceive me, or is this woman wearing a bulletproof vest?
……………………..
https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/438408674071949312/photo/1
February 25, 2014 4:20 PM
Hardy Perennials
By Ed Kilgore
In a post on Texas today, Slate’s Dave Weigel talks about the bane of perennial and/or bizarre candidates winning low-turnout primaries, mostly of the Democratic variety, in reporting on a new statewide poll:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_02/hardy_perennials049217.php
February 25, 2014 5:26 PM
Cheering for the Wild Man
By Ed Kilgore
Regular readers know I’m closely watching the U.S. Senate race back home in Georgia, and especially the GOP primary, which I’ve called a “conservative petri dish.” And without a doubt, the maddest scientist in the lab is U.S. Rep Paul Broun, Jr., he of the “evolution is a lie straight from the pit of hell” remark and other fine vein-charring elocutions.
Broun recently made news by indicating at a candidate forum that he would (of course) vote for the impeachment of the president, and challenging the conservative bona fides of any rival who was not willing to take that pledge (Karen Handel and some minor candidates did not; Jack Kingston, Phil Gingrey, and David Perdue—the other major candidates—weren’t there). The Georgia Democratic Party, eager to spread Broun’s fever as thoroughly as possible throughout the candidate field, put up a YouTube video repeating the fiery congressman’s call-out to the others to take a position.
So now, in his very first television ad, Broun is using the Democratic video as an argument that “liberals fear a true conservative,” and are thus attacking him:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_02/cheering_for_the_wild_man049220.php
A lesson in the challenges of governing
02/26/14 08:44 AM
By Steve Benen
When congressional Republicans talk about health care policy in any depth, it’s quite common for them to struggle. GOP policymakers tend to find it easy to blast “Obamacare” with poll-tested soundbites, but when it comes to real substance, the party’s record in recent years can charitably be described as woeful.
And at a certain level, it’s tempting to be forgiving. After all, this is an exceedingly complicated issue. There’s a reason we’ve come to celebrate the media health care wonks who help bring clarity to our health care questions – they understand what many find mystifying.
The trouble, though, is that congressional Republicans don’t understand what they don’t understand. They seem convinced that they’re fully aware of the nuances of health care policy, but their confidence is sorely misplaced, based more on confidence than knowledge.
Take Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.), for example, who came up with the “Save American Workers Act,” which has 208 co-sponsors and is set for a House vote next week. The bill seeks to “fix” the Affordable Care Act by changing the definition of a full-time work week from 30 hours to 40 hours.
But when it comes to a complex health care system, a policy change in one area often has unexpected consequences in another area.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/lesson-the-challenges-governing
Welcoming an ugly, divisive fight
02/26/14 08:01 AM
By Steve Benen
Following up on Rachel’s report last night, we don’t yet know for certain whether Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) will veto the proposed right-to-discriminate bill, but by all appearances, a veto appears quite likely. Opposition to the measure, SB1062, has become overwhelming – even Republican voters in the state are against it – and the governor seems all too aware of the adverse consequences if she signs the measure into law.
But while we wait, perhaps the most surprising aspect of this fight is that other conservative state policymakers elsewhere are watching the divisive fiasco unfold and they’re apparently thinking to themselves, “Let’s bring that ugliness here!”
Arizona’s legislature was the first to pass a right-to-discriminate bill, but it was hardly the first to consider one. Over the last couple of months, similar measures were debated in Kansas, South Dakota, and Tennessee, but in each case, the proposals were either defeated or delayed.
There are still some GOP state lawmakers, however, who are eager to bring the controversy, scorn, and threat of boycotts to their state, on purpose. Adam Serwer reported on the latest developments in Georgia.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/welcoming-ugly-divisive-fight
House GOP struggles with immigration ‘principles’
02/25/14 03:37 PM—Updated 02/26/14 06:29 AM
By Steve Benen
It’s been a few weeks since House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) effectively pulled the plug on immigration reform. When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) unveiled his plans for the chamber’s near future, immigration was noticeable in its absence.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce unveiled a joint letter from 636 American businesses this afternoon, urging Republican leaders to act on immigration, but there’s no reason to believe the House GOP will budge an inch in response to appeals from anyone.
But to understand why reform is struggling, one must look past the rhetoric. House Republicans don’t oppose immigration legislation because of “trust issues” with President Obama; they oppose immigration legislation because they’re simply against the underlying idea.
While Speaker John A. Boehner says his conference “by and large” backs the immigration outline the leadership presented in January at the GOP retreat, a poll of every House Republican conducted by CQ Roll Call found only 19 who would confirm their support.
We surveyed Republican lawmakers’ offices and combed through member statements to see if they supported the immigration principles, which include a pathway to legalization for illegal immigrants and a pathway to citizenship for children brought here illegally.
There are currently 232 Republicans currently serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to Roll Call’s tally, only 19 – just 8% of the total – are prepared to say on the record that they support their own party’s published principles on immigration reform.
In fairness, there are very likely some House Republicans who privately endorse the principles Boehner outlined on Jan. 31, but who are reluctant to state their position on the record.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-struggles-immigration-principles
Minimum wage going nowhere fast
02/25/14 04:36 PM—Updated 02/26/14 02:46 AM
By Steve Benen
Senate Democrats hoped to bring a minimum-wage increase to the floor in December. Then in January. The latest plan was to try again next week, but now that’s off, too.
The problem isn’t a lack of will; it’s a lack of votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
There are currently 55 members of the Senate Democratic caucus. As of now, 54 of them support the minimum-wage increase (all except Arkansas’ Mark Pryor). That means, in order for the Senate to be allowed to vote on a popular piece of legislation, it would take just six Republicans to end their party’s obstructionism and let the chamber vote yea or nay.
This afternoon, we learned those six votes do not yet exist.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/minimum-wage-going-nowhere-fast
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
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Lucia McBath to Black children: “You exist. You matter. You have value.” #JordanDavis. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/i-am-still-called-by-the-god-i-serve-to-walk-this-out/284064/ …
3:54 PM – 25 Feb 2014
February 24, 2014 4:54 PM
An Antichoice Freudian Slip
By Ed Kilgore
Some will just dismiss this story (per HuffPost’s Laura Bassett) as an example of progressives jumping on a malapropism uttered by a random conservative state legislator, but I’d say it’s more like a Freudian slip:
After the Facebook post got some attention, Martin amended it to change “host” to “bearer of the child,” which I guess is marginally less insulting.
But this is the standard RTL position, and why most antichoicers oppose “rape and incest” exceptions other than as a matter of tactical flexibility. Once a zygote exists, it’s a person and a baby and has rights equal to (if not superior to, because of its “innocent” nature) the mother, or the “bearer of the child,” or the “host,” or however you want to put it. No interest of the woman in terminating the pregnancy (or even preventing it, if that happens after fertilization) other than preservation of her own life can possibly trump that “right to life.”
I’d say “host” perfectly captures the position of women in the antichoice moral universe, if not “slave.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_02/an_antichoice_freudian_slip049202.php
LOLGOP @LOLGOP
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REMINDER: 9 to 14 million Americans have gained health insurance in less than five months and the GOP thinks that’s a bad thing.
5:23 PM – 25 Feb 2014
Libertarians Plan to Sit Out the Coming Collapse of America…in Chile
Welcome to the new Randian paradise! (Never mind the socialist president, mandatory health insurance, and strict gun laws.)
—By Steven Bodzin
| March/April 2014
Ken Johnson’s Jeep crests a ridgetop on a dusty track a few miles off the private tollway that connects Santiago and Valparaíso, Chile. He gets out, takes a swig of beer, and gestures at the hardwood forests rising up to the craggy mountaintops. Below, Pacific coastal scrub stretches toward the lemon groves where cooks are roasting three lambs on an open fire. “Look at that, look at how majestic that is,” Johnson says. “That is awesome.”
Welcome to Galt’s Gulch Chile, a libertarian refuge from the coming economic, social, and political collapse of the United States. The would-be free-market utopia, named after the mountain redoubt of the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, is taking advance payments (Bitcoins gladly accepted) for parcels on its 11,000 acres.
Joining Johnson, the project’s managing partner, are three prospective buyers: a retiree from Oregon, a California-based expert in moving assets offshore, and another retiree who doesn’t want to give much in the way of personal data. “Oh, the NSA’s here too?” he says the first time he sees my audio recorder. The men talk of a coming financial meltdown caused by the Federal Reserve, followed by a Homeland Security police state. They’re ready to get out with their silver, guns, and organic honey—but not quite ready to sacrifice fast internet, access to an international airport, and a time zone convenient for Skyping with the doomed sheeple back home. Throw in low taxes, privatized social security, and a Mediterranean climate, and you have Chile.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/libertarian-expat-communities-chile
Biden: ‘I may be a white boy, but I can jump’
By Aaron Blake
February 25 at 9:03 pm
Joe Biden is being Joe Biden again.
The vice president on Tuesday took some time out from a Black History Month event to talk up his basketball skills.
At one point, he commented that he wanted to team up with former NBA star and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson to take on President Obama.
“I told the president, next game, I’ve got him,” Biden said. “I may be a white boy, but I can jump.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/02/25/biden-i-may-be-a-white-boy-but-i-can-jump/
Did Slavery Create Modern Medicine?
My new book looks at the ways contemporary medical knowledge arose from slavery and was paid for in the lives of slaves.
excerpt:
Consider, for example, the way the advancement of medical knowledge was paid for with the lives of slaves.
The death rate on the trans-Atlantic voyage to the New World was staggeringly high. Slave ships, however, were more than floating tombs. They were floating laboratories, offering researchers a chance to examine the course of diseases in fairly controlled, quarantined environments. Doctors and medical researchers could take advantage of high mortality rates to identify a bewildering number of symptoms, classify them into diseases, and hypothesize about their causes.
Corps of doctors tended to slave ports up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Some of them were committed to relieving suffering; others were simply looking for ways to make the slave system more profitable. In either case, they identified types of fevers, learned how to decrease mortality and increase fertility, experimented with how much water was needed for optimum numbers of slaves to survive on a diet of salted fish and beef jerky, and identified the best ratio of caloric intake to labor hours. Priceless epidemiological information on a range of diseases—malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and so on—was gleaned from the bodies of the dying and the dead.
When slaves couldn’t be kept alive, their autopsied bodies still provided useful information. Of course, as the writer Harriet Washington has demonstrated in her stunning Medical Apartheid,such experimentation continued long after slavery ended: in the 1940s, one doctor said that the “future of the Negro lies more in the research laboratory than in the schools.” As late as the 1960s, another researcher, reminiscing in a speech given at Tulane Medical School, said that it was “cheaper to use Niggers than cats because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/slavery-modern-medicine-human-rights
@nbcnightlynews 1m
Pres. Obama orders Pentagon to prepare for a possible complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. @JimMiklaszewski reports: http://nbcnews.to/1fp9Uiu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjHREwH0gc8
We’ve been joking about Al Qaeda and the expense reports ….
Now, we know that they’re doing a headhunter search for a new CEO.
HUH?
…………………………
Stealth Search: Embattled Al Qaeda Hunts for a New Bin Laden
By Robert Windrem
Battered and on the run, al Qaeda is quietly looking for a charismatic leader capable of taking command when Ayman al-Zawahri’s tenure comes to what will likely be a violent end. And just as quietly, the U.S. intelligence community is searching for that same man -– so they can kill him.
A Secret Job Search
The search for a successor to the 62-year-old Zawahri is cloaked in secrecy, in large part because of the success of U.S. efforts to wipe out al Qaeda’s leadership.
According to an NBC News analysis, the U.S. has eliminated at least six potential successors -– all in drone attacks — since bin Laden was killed in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011. All of them were on a “kill list” created by the U.S. intelligence community and approved by the president. No name added to the kill list has ever been removed
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/stealth-search-embattled-al-qaeda-hunts-new-bin-laden-n37656
SMGHD Are these MOFOs serious? Ask OBL how this will turn out on PBO’s watch.
Oh, that’s right:
Happy Birthday, Joshua!!!
Your Mama is so proud of you…I know you were raised right.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
It’s colder than a mutha here.
The kind of cold that you freeze from the house to the car.
Yes;, it’s sub zero here too. I’m still waiting for my car to warm up, even after being in the garage all night.
Check your e-mail please. Thanks
Happy birthday to the most HUMBLE, the most LOVING boy! I am so proud you were born to me. His uncle Dave use to tease and call him a mama’s boy but that’s ok because he loves his mother. He’s always so responsible & kind hearted to his family. He’s going to make a very good husband to some lucky girl. Wishing you the bestest birthday ever, Joshua! I love you so much!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday, Joshua! Wishing you a GREAT day!
Good Morning, SG2 & Everyone. :-)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH! You’re a fine young man.
Happy Birthday, Josh, I hope you’re having your best birthday ever and there’s many more to come.
Thank you, Liza! Josh is such a lovable boy. My mother would be so proud of him. Josh was the apple of her eye!
Some young woman is going to get lucky someday, I suppose. Josh certainly is handsome in addition to his other qualities.
TY, Liza! Josh has a good heart and he’s so humble. You’d like him if you met him.
How old is your son? Happy birthday to him.
Hi, Vitamin! He’s 26 today. Thank you for the birthday wish. I’ll be sure and tell him what you said.