Happy HUMP day, Everyone! More of the late, great, Mingus!
Charles Mingus – Work Song
So Long Eric
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
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My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Issa’s a COWARD and known CRIMINAL. How does he get to investigate anyone, pray tell?
White privilege!
I could slap Issa CLEAR into the next century for that DISGRACEFUL, DISRESPECTFUL stunt.
I’m so there with you! He needs the taste smacked out of his mouth.
https://twitter.com/NutmegNews/status/441290962963161088/photo/1
Morning Plum: Why Republicans have the advantage in 2014
By Greg Sargent
March 4 at 8:56 am
So here’s the current political situation in a nutshell:
1) Republicans hold an advantage in the midterm elections, particularly in the Senate races, where they have, at minimum, a very plausible shot at reclaiming the majority.
2) This is driven by structural factors to a far greater degree than Obamacare, despite the party’s single-minded obsession with the law and unshakable certainty that it alone will deliver the Senate.
3) Dems hold an advantage on key issues and on image overall, and the question now is whether that can put enough of a dent in the GOP’s structural edge to matter. Meanwhile, that structural advantage may temporarily mask the GOP’s need to moderate in ways that could hamper it heading into the 2016 presidential race.
The new Washington Post/ABC News poll captures all of this very neatly. Key findings:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/04/morning-plum-why-republicans-have-the-advantage-in-2014/
Today at 7:45 AM
Paul Ryan Tries to Enlist Social Science to Back Up His Poverty Plan, Disaster Ensues
By Jonathan Chait
Paul Ryan’s budget proposals are not mere compilations of proposals, but grand vision statements. The classic versions relied on sweeping ideological pronouncements (i.e., “it is built on the enduring truths from which America’s Founders established this great and exceptional Nation.”) that would be perfectly at home in a Glenn Beck monologue. This year, Ryan has dramatically changed course. He has prefaced his budget with a review of the scholarly literature of the entire range of federal anti-poverty programs. In the place of grandiose, Randian lectures, Ryan ventures outside the world of right-wing pseudo-scholarship and actually attempts to engage with mainstream economic analysis.
This decision is very much to Ryan’s credit. On the other hand, it turns out to have been a gigantic mistake.
Basically everything in Ryan’s report turns out to be wrong. The Fiscal Times contacts a number of researchers whom Ryan cites, and they all report that Ryan knows nothing of their work:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/ryan-enlists-social-science-disaster-ensues.html
Lil Eddie’s gonna run for POTUS, that’s why he’s snatching up mainstream thinking and mixing it up for another round of complete FAIL
It’s still Paul Ryan’s party
By Greg Sargent
March 5 at 12:35 pm
In an interview on Morning Joe today, Paul Ryan, projecting his usual seriousness and existential deficit angst, lamented that President Obama’s new budget moves so far to the left that he fears compromise will be impossible.
And yet, in the same interview, Ryan also drew a line against conceding any new revenues in the form of closing loopholes enjoyed by the wealthy, and even better, confirmed that his forthcoming budget will contain the Medicare Advantage cuts that Republicans have been attacking Democrats over for three years.
Watch the whole thing. First Ryan laments the additional spending in Obama’s budget: “That isn’t really an attempt to bridge the gap and find common ground. He’s just moving farther to the left…he’s not trying to move to the middle.” It’s true that Obama’s budget does call for billions in new spending to boost the economy and break austerity’s grip on the recovery. It’s also true that liberals are supportive of that.
But when Ryan derides this as a failure to search for “common ground,” he’s implicitly defining seeking “common ground” as “not asking for anything more in spending for any Democratic priorities.” Because Obama’s budget does seek some common ground. It proposes an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The general underlying policy idea, as a way to help the working poor, has drawn the support from Republicans like Marco Rubio, as well as from conservatives. But Obama wants to pay for the expansion by closing loopholes on the wealthy and corporations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/05/its-still-paul-ryans-party/
Colored Girl’ in the Early 20th Century
Anita Reynolds crossed paths with some of the greatest names in art, music and literature as she “passed” across Europe.
By: Teresa Wiltz
Posted: March 3 2014 3:00 AM
Anita Thompson Dickinson Reynolds was the black—or mocha—Zelig, traipsing continents at will, dancing on Broadway, acting in Hollywood with Rudolph Valentino, toiling as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, slumming it with French royalty—all the while rubbing shoulders with the likes of Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin and W.E.B. Du Bois.
As Reynolds recounted in her recently discovered memoir, American Cocktail: A “Colored Girl” in the World, she had adventures. Oh, did she have adventures. Reynolds had a knack for getting herself entangled in key moments of early 20th-century history: There she is, in Harlem in the ‘20s, a “jazz baby” hanging out with artists of the Harlem Renaissance. There she is in the ‘30s, partying with Picasso in Paris. (Matisse sketched her, too.) In the ‘40s, you could find her working for the French Red Cross, scrambling to help Jewish refugees as Nazi planes fly over France. And finally, you could find her in Lisbon, hopping the last thing smoking out of Europe.
“I was an asteroid then, in orbit around the brilliant stars,” wrote Reynolds, who later became a psychologist. “Perhaps some of their genius would rub off on me.”
Actually, Reynolds’ genius was in her ability to blend in and ingratiate herself with some of the world’s most powerful. Reynolds thought she deserved to experience what the world had to offer—and she went for it at a time when few black women were able to escape the confines of skin color. Of course, looking like a generic ethnicity helped. A self-described “American cocktail,” Reynolds was born in Chicago at the turn of the century to a well-to-do mixed-race African-American family and raised in Los Angeles. (Langston Hughes was a close cousin.) No one would mistake her for white, as they did with her blond mother, but they certainly mistook her for plenty of other things: Mexican, South Asian, American Indian. Most of the time she didn’t bother to correct them. The confluence of skin color and class worked to her advantage—and so, she took advantage.
Call it the audacity of audacity
Reynolds, a contemporary of author Nella Larsen, certainly seemed to know anyone who was anyone during her day. But beyond her charmed circle, not many knew of her. In the late ‘70s, she figured she should chronicle her incredible life. But publishers weren’t interested in her autobiography, which she co-wrote with Howard Miller. She died in 1980, and for a while, her story died with her—until Cornell University scholar George Hutchinson found her unpublished papers in Howard University’s archives. Working with photos, original manuscripts and Reynolds’ scribbled notes, Hutchinson resurrected her memoir. The result is a fascinating, and sometimes maddeningly conflicted, account of an apolitical party girl who was pro-royalty, pro-sex and (sometimes) pro-black.
“I was not reminded of the horrors of American lynching every day, nor did I care to be,” she wrote of her time in Europe. “One must feel deeply to want to write about these things, but at the time, I wanted to be living a light, gay way, not feeling deeply about much of anything.”
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/03/american_cocktail_a_colored_girl_in_the_world_is_a_breezy_read.html
Lupita’s Spotlight: A Reality Check for Light-Skinned Women?
Race Manners: Actually, there’s enough attractiveness to go around. Why do people insist that black beauty is a zero-sum game?
By: Jenée Desmond-Harris
Posted: March 5 2014 2:00 AM
If you can get those things, maybe pause for a minute before accepting the assumption that beauty for black women is a zero-sum game in which, for it to be recognized and appreciated in some, it must be snatched back from others.
I like the way supermodel Alek Wek put it in her recent response to learning that she was a role model to Lupita, and who helped Lupita go from hating her skin color to embracing it: “When I was growing up, my mother taught me and my sisters to celebrate each other—there was no room in our household for negativity. She taught us to embrace each other and this was empowering for us. She also taught us the value of celebrating our differences.”
While, sure, people have preferences, and preferences have trends, and trends can be informed by whoever’s the golden girl of the moment, it’s just not true at all that there are a finite number of people or types of people who can be deemed attractive.
Yaba Blay, whose Pretty Period project aims to fill a cultural gap by highlighting brown and dark-skinned beauty, also has a take that’s instructive here. She told me that she strongly disagrees with those who think her site’s failure to include light-skinned women (what exactly counts as “light” and “dark” is a whole separate column) is “opening up the divide.” However, she insists that celebrating dark-skinned women doesn’t have to be about putting light-skinned women back in their place, any more than Black History Month is meant to tear down white people. (And we all know how annoying that argument is.)
Danielle Moodie-Mills got at this in “From Patsey to Princess: Why Lupita Makes Black Women Proud,” writing, “Mixed skin is beautiful—it tells a story, but why is it the only marker of beauty black people can claim?” Key word: “Only.” Choosing just one marker and dismissing others is always going to be messed up. And it doesn’t really benefit anyone, even the chosen group of the moment.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/03/colorism_and_beauty_no_need_to_choose_light_or_dark.2.html
now this is some true bullshyt here.
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Paul Ryan stuns CNN host: Keystone pipeline will solve Russia’s Ukraine invasion
By David Edwards
Wednesday, March 5, 2014 10:33 EST
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) shocked CNN host Kate Bolduan on Wednesday when he asserted that Congress and President Barack Obama could solve the crisis in Ukraine by approving the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Wisconsin Republican began his interview saying that he did know if he agreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that the president’s response to terrorist attacks in Benghazi were to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
“First of all, who is to blame for this? Vladimir Putin,” Ryan said. “My argument is that… we have projected weakness in our foreign policy, and now in our defense policy with out military budget the president’s proposing.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/05/paul-ryan-stuns-cnn-host-keystone-pipeline-will-solve-russias-ukraine-invasion/#.UxdoyeBGgBI.twitter
Dallas ISD home-rule backers’ petition drive met with mixed reaction from voters.
Supporters of an effort to make Dallas ISD a home-rule charter launched their campaign Tuesday with a petition that voters met with mixed reaction, confusion and lots of questions.
Volunteers for the group Support Our Public Schools fanned out across Dallas to catch voters leaving polling locations for primary elections. But when asked to sign the petition, some people were baffled.
“What is this? It’s like a charter school?” Kieunnia Boyking asked a volunteer outside an East Dallas church.
Outside an Oak Cliff polling location, Gil Cerda wondered whether the initiative would make DISD resemble a charter school operation. Charter schools have more local control.
“That’s good when you give people a little bit of authority, but you’ve got to make sure the right people are making the decisions,” Cerda cautioned.
Support Our Public Schools dispatched volunteers to the 45 busiest polling locations in Dallas. Some volunteers weren’t terribly well-versed in the 1995 Texas law that allows home rule. It has never been used before.
The law allows a voter-approved charter to guide a district’s operations and free it from some state laws. For instance, the charter could eliminate the school board in lieu of another governing body, such as appointed officers.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20140305-dallas-isd-home-rule-backers-petition-drive-met-with-mixed-reaction-from-voters.ece?nclick_check=1
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/441270195659620353/photo/1
https://twitter.com/WTNH/status/441257937990725633/photo/1
NJ Edwina @NJedwina
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Pope: No one has done more than the Church against sex abuse. Orly? Frontline’s Secrets of the Vatican begs to differ
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-of-the-vatican/ …
10:00 AM – 5 Mar 2014
https://twitter.com/CTConfidential/status/441273354813583360
Meet The 7 Democrats Who Just Voted Down A Civil Rights Nominee For Supporting Civil Rights
BY IAN MILLHISER ON MARCH 5, 2014 AT 12:56 PM
Debo Adegbile, who previously served as the acting head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, is one of the nation’s top civil rights attorneys. He’s also a leading expert on voting rights who twice defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court — the first time successfully. He was, in other words, an ideal candidate to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — the division which, among other things, oversees the federal government’s voting rights work in an era where conservative state lawmakers are currently waging a widespread campaign to prevent demographic groups that tend to vote for Democrats from casting a ballot.
And yet, the Senate just voted his nomination down, thanks to seven Democrats. TheDemocrats who opposed Adegbile’s confirmation are Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA), Chris Coons (D-DE), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Pryor (D-AR) and John Walsh (D-MT
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/03/05/3364851/meet-the-7-democrats-who-just-voted-down-a-civil-rights-nominee-for-supporting-civil-rights/
LUVVIE’S SCANDAL RECAP IS UP!!!
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/03/ride-sally-ride-scandal-episode-311-recap.html
In honor of Elijah Cummings STEAMROLLING DARELL ISSA
CAPTION the PIC
If I dropped my caption here, y’all would indeed send me to the NAUGHTY CORNER for at least a MONTH. LMBAO
POTUS to Congress’ TeaParty types: “Stop your childish nonsense; get with the program and start caring about our citizens.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD_iVqwdgKU
BEAT THAT ASS, MR. CUMMINGS!
There ain’t shit to MONITOR with Mr. Cummings, lady stenographer. MONITOR Issa and his fake investigations!
GO MR. CUMMINGS!!
See & hear video above. Where’s the graphic, SG2?
where’s our dancing raccoon gif?
Skin-Bleaching Cameroonian Singer Attacks Lupita Nyong’o On Twitter
by Clutch — Mar 5, 2014
Cameroonian pop star Dencia apparently wasn’t too fond of Lupita Nyong’o giving a fan advice against bleaching their skin. During the recent Essence Black Women In Hollywood Awards, Nyong’o’s speech included an anecdote about how she learned to be proud of her dark and that she encouraged a young fan to do the same.
Dencia definitely didn’t agree with those sentiments and went on a Twitter rant, claiming Nyong’o is “owned” by white companies.
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/03/skin-bleaching-cameroonian-singer-attacks-lupita-nyongo-on-twitter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=skin-bleaching-cameroonian-singer-attacks-lupita-nyongo-on-twitter
For 3 CHICs!
Talk about being owned by “White company” If you gotta bleach yourself to become WHITER, who the fuck owns you, Denicia? Mind-Numbing stupidity….
M.S. Bellows, Jr. @msbellows
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Like all right-thinking Americans, I’m grateful that Lindsey Graham is coaching Barack Obama on how to look tough and macho.
8:04 PM – 4 Mar 2014
https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/441223669264564224
EPIC!!! See video above
Whew lawdy!
Rep Cummings BLASTED Darrell Issa to the moon.
How The Western Press Is Getting It Terribly Wrong In Ukraine
When the pundits talk about Vladimir Putin’s offensive in Ukraine, they usually mean troops and tanks, but his greatest weapons are ,in fact, his propaganda machine and the gullible western media.
So far, he has been winning stunning victories without firing a shot. Make no mistake, Vladimir Putin cares deeply what the western public thinks and has an army of PR professionals and lobbyists to wage informational warfare, along with a network of sites including “Russia Today” and a variety of “strategy” blogs.
Amazingly, the western press in its desire to adopt what NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the view from nowhere, has been repeating many of the false assertions that Putin has promoted. Here’s a quick guide to the most egregious errors:
Myth 1: The Interim Ukrainian Government Is Shaky, Illegitimate And Run By Neo Nazis
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/03/04/5-important-facts-that-the-western-press-is-getting-terribly-wrong-in-ukraine/
A Stupidity of Simpletons: The GOP & Their Media Enablers Fail the Ukrainian Crisis Test
Frederic Poag on March 04, 2014
Americans love to think we run the world. We certainly have the biggest stick thanks to our bloated, runaway defense budget courtesy of the Military Industrial Complex. That stick gives other nations a lot of pause, but it doesn’t make us an omnipotent ruler. Nations don’t tremble, and kingdoms don’t shake before us.
The crisis in Ukraine has nothing to do with President Obama, or any perceived weakness on his part. In fact in terms of deliberateness and boldness President Obama is one of our stronger Presidents. Just ask Osama bin Laden, or Muammar Gaddafi. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, about the respect he had for President Obama’s courage in taking a “significant risk” to his Presidency in his decision to go after Bin Laden.
Violating another nation’s sovereignty, showing up their military at a major garrison, and exposing to the rest of the world that the head of a major terrorist network was right under Pakistan’s nose is pretty ballsy. Going after terrorists world-wide, raining remote controlled death from above in the form of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles isn’t the result of affability. It’s pretty fuckin’ deliberate. This is why, as Bob Cesca pointed out, the far left considers President Obama a “Muslim-hating drone-aholic”. Ethical dilemmas aside President Obama is anything but indecisive on foreign policy.
However, once again, like a Waffle House jukebox stuck on the same, tired ass song the GOP didn’t wait before they declared this entire thing President Obama’s fault.
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/03/a-stupidity-of-simpletons-the-gop-their-msm-enablers-fail-the-ukrainian-crisis-test/
Washington is Ignoring Obama’s Budget. You Shouldn’t.
BY JONATHAN COHN @citizencohn
Mere hours after the White House released President Obama’s budget, Washington had reached a consensus about it: It’s “irrelevant.”
As this argument goes, the House and Senate have already agreed on a fiscal policy plan—the agreement from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray that Congress passed in the fall. Ryan-Murray lays out the basic parameters of what the government will take in and spend, not just for 2014 but also for 2015. Neither party wants to revisit that pact. And to the extent Obama is proposing new ideas for the long term, like pouring money into early childhood education, the Republicans simply aren’t interested in passing them. That would seem to render Obama’s new budget an exercise in pure political symbolism, and maybe empty symbolism at that.
I take a different view—and not simply because I’m nerdy enough to think of reading 200-plus pages of figures and charts as an opportunity, rather than a burden. For one thing, some of Obama’s budget proposals could still become legislation—not as sweeping initiatives, for sure, but as scaled-down pilots or add-ons to other pieces of legislation. It’s already happened once, in the Ryan-Murray spending agreement. Mostly that pact was about restoring some of the funding that various federal agencies had lost, because of budget sequestration. But the Administration and its Capitol Hill allies managed to squeeze out a little extra funding for early childhood programs. One reason: Obama’s call for a massive, $75 billion investment in the previous year’s budget put the issue onto the agenda.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116873/washington-cynics-say-obamas-budget-irrelevant-theyre-wrong
Turning the Tide on Reaganomics: Obama’s Budget Raises $1 Trillion in Additional Taxes from the Rich
Spandan Chakrabarti| March 4, 2014
The Affordable Care Act, which provides the largest middle class tax credits for health insurance in history, is paid for by raising taxes and fees on the wealthy and corporations. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, the most significant banking regulations and consumer financial protections reforms since the Great Depression and designed to protect the average consumer, is paid for by charging higher fees to big banks. Student loan reform is paid for by shutting out the banks as the middlemen. In the 2013 fiscal cliff deal, Obama forced Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans so that tax cuts for the middle class and poor could be made permanent.
If you are seeing a pattern here, you are not alone. One of the defining progressive characteristis of Barack Obama has been to keep up the pressure to turn the tide from the Reagan years’ severe shifting of the tax burden from the rich to the poor and the middle class. Obama has steadily taken the country in the opposite direction. With his proposed 2015 budget, the president has proposed yet another step in that direction: he would significantly expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, cancel the rest of the sequester cuts, invest heavily in infrastructure and renewable energy, and rebuild our education system to give the middle class and the working class a fighting chance.
And he’d do it by extracting nearly $1 trillion over 10 years in increased tax revenues from the rich. Here is exactly how the big items on that list pan out:
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2014/3/4/obama-budget-collects-1-trillion-more-from-rich
Utah governor unveils Medicaid expansion alternative
By Reid Wilson
February 28 at 12:00 pm
After weeks of loud debate within the Republican-dominated legislature, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said Thursday he will seek to use federal funding intended to expand Medicaid to help provide coverage for more than 100,000 low-income residents.
But Herbert’s plan won’t be a straightforward expansion of Utah’s Medicaid program. Instead, Herbert will ask the Department of Health and Human Services to provide block grants that would allow the state to spend the money on subsidies for Utah residents who make up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
The three-year pilot program Herbert proposed Thursday, dubbed the Healthy Utah Plan, would provide subsidies to individuals and families based on their ability to work, their household incomes and access to health care through employers, Herbert’s office said.
Participants would have to make co-payments, and parents with children on Medicaid would have the option to put their whole family on private insurance plans. Recipients of the subsidies would contribute an average of around $420 per year toward their own health care.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/28/utah-governor-unveils-medicaid-expansion-alternative/
https://twitter.com/AaronBlakeWP/status/440947628801802241/photo/1
Way to smack him and her in the mouth!
Medicaid expansion survives in Arkansas
03/04/14 04:49 PM
By Steve Benen
Arkansas struck a creative deal with the Obama administration last year, allowing it to embrace Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, and bringing coverage to nearly 100,000 low-income Arkansans. This year, however, state Republicans were poised to take it away.
Because of a quirk in the state policymaking process, last year’s vote that expanded access needs to be reauthorized this year, and many of the same GOP policymakers who backed the policy in 2013 are facing primary challengers in 2014. Arkansas’ state House has therefore voted down Medicaid expansion several times in recent weeks.
In a minor miracle, the policy somehow prevailed today. Apparently, the fifth time was the charm.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s report quoted one Republican lawmaker, state Rep. Kim Hammer, who had voted against the policy, but ultimately changed his mind.
“There are people who will be hurt if I don’t vote for this,” Hammer said. “And I don’t want to see those innocent people hurt because of that.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/medicaid-expansion-survives-arkansas
Kentucky AG bows out of marriage case
03/04/14 12:38 PM
By Steve Benen
Just last week, a federal judge in Kentucky issued a final ruling that requires the state to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where it is legal. Kentucky’s constitutional amendment on the issue, Judge John Heyburn ruled, violates state residents the right to equal protection under the law.
The court’s decision would ordinarily fall to the state Attorney General’s office to appeal in order to defend state law, but as it turns out, that’s not going to happen.
Kentucky will hire outside attorneys to appeal a federal judge’s ruling requiring Kentucky to recognize same-sex marriages from outside the state, Gov. Steve Beshear said Tuesday.
His announcement came minutes after a tearful Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway said his office will not appeal the ruling, calling it a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Conway told reporters he prayed over what to do and decided to put “people over politics.” He added, “I can only say that I’m doing what I think is right.”
Coincidentally, he’s doing what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder thinks is right, too.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/kentucky-ag-bows-out-marriage-case
McCain lambastes ‘student Obama’
03/05/14 08:45 AM—Updated 03/05/14 09:01 AM
By Steve Benen
About a month ago, Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) team decided to go after its former ally, David Wildstein, with a bizarre attack memo. In the document, Christie aides targeted Wildstein’s credibility by shining a light on his teenaged high school antics – in 1977.
It quickly became obvious how foolish this was. If you’re forced to go back several decades to find damning evidence against a perceived foe, literally relying on materials he or she produced as a student, then you really don’t have much.
Someone might want to tell John McCain.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday drew from a new source in arguing that President Barack Obama has been too ‘soft’ on Russia: An article Obama wrote back when he was in college. […]
[McCain] shifted his attention to a 1983 article called “Breaking the War Mentality,” which Obama penned for a campus magazine as a senior at Columbia University. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg resurfaced the article on Monday in a USA Today op-ed.
In his article, Obama blamed “U.S.-Soviet tensions largely on America’s war mentality and the twisted logic of the Cold War,” McCain said, quoting from Goldberg. “President Reagan’s defense buildup, according to Obama, contributed to the ‘silent spread of militarism’ and reflected our ‘distorted national priorities’ rather than what should be our goal: a ‘nuclear free world.’”
“That’s what student Obama said,” McCain added.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mccain-lambastes-student-obama
http://youtu.be/f6I_5Jl63n8
http://youtu.be/LHUvCbNcal4
does this make any sense?
…………….
VH1′s ‘Single Ladies’ Cancelled, To End Run After Three Seasons
By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Friday February 28, 2014 @ 4:40pm PST
Single Ladies helped usher drama series programming on VH1. Now the show, from Queen Latifah‘s Flavor Unit, is set to end its run after three seasons. Single Ladies‘ third season is currently airing, with the upcoming March 24 season finale serving as series finale. “We’ve been proud to deliver three seasons of the drama, romance and style that engaged viewers in each episode of Single Ladies,” VH1 said in a statement to Deadline.“Although we’ve decided not to move forward with another season, we hope to work again with the talented cast, creatives and producers as well as our partners at Flavor Unit Entertainment in the near future. We also thank the show’s fans for their support since the premiere in 2011.”
…Still, Single Ladies is leaving on a high note. Its third season opener drew 2.6 million viewers. For the premiere airing and its same night encore combined, Single Ladies grew each seasons:, posting 2.9 for the season premiere, 3.2 million for the Season 2 opener and 3.5 million for Season 3.
http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/vh1s-single-ladies-cancelled-to-end-run-after-three-seasons/
https://twitter.com/realjlive/status/440991229883318273/photo/1
bwa ha ha ha ha
http://youtu.be/c_xZgMrxI2k
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/440941724978778112/photo/1
Too sweet! They’re helping the President up!
https://twitter.com/petesouza/status/441014006405660672/photo/1
This has to go in President Obama’s kid’s corner.
In all actuality, I would have been in the hospital, because my parents would have beat my ass if I had done this. I mean beat it to the point where my Black behind would have been in the hospital. Y’all can call it child abuse, but I wasn’t raised that children would even open their mouths to utter the shyt this child did, let alone TAKE PARENTS TO COURT?
W-T-F?
I couldn’t even wrap my mind around this story. I read it twice, because I didn’t even think it was real the first time I read it.
…………………………….
NJ teen suing parents won’t get immediate support
Associated Press Updated: March 4, 2014 6:56pm
A northern New Jersey honor student who has sued to get her parents to support her after she moved out of their home had her initial request denied Tuesday by a judge who cautioned that the case could lead to a “potentially slippery slope” of claims by teenagers against their parents.
Rachel Canning had sought immediate relief in the form of $650 in weekly child support and the payment of the remainder of her tuition at Morris Catholic High School, as well as attorney’s fees.
State Superior Court Judge Peter Bogaard denied those motions but ordered the parties to return to court on April 22, when they will present evidence and testimony on the over-arching question of whether the Cannings are obligated to financially support their daughter. Rachel Canning, a high school senior, has already been accepted by at least one college and is seeking to have her parents pay some or all of her tuition, attorney Tanya Helfand told Bogaard Tuesday.
Dressed in her school uniform and with several friends in the gallery, Rachel Canning didn’t speak to reporters after the hearing.
Bogaard sounded skeptical of some of the claims in the lawsuit, saying it could lead to teens “thumbing their noses” at their parents, leaving home and then asking for financial support.
“Are we going to open the gates for 12-year-olds to sue for an Xbox? For 13-year-olds to sue for an iPhone?” he asked. “We should be mindful of a potentially slippery slope.”
http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/NJ-judge-doesn-t-yet-force-parents-to-support-teen-5282575.php
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/440976628974227456/photo/1
Forest Whitaker’s wife Keisha sparks concern after displaying her painfully thin figure
By Sarah Bull
PUBLISHED: 05:23 EST, 4 March 2014 | UPDATED: 10:08 EST, 4 March 2014
Just seven years ago, Keisha Whitaker looked happy and healthy as she posed on the arm of her superstar husband.
But it was an entirely different story as the 41-year-old joined her actor spouse at a series of A-list events this week.
Wearing a sleeveless black gown, Keisha sparked concern with her painfully thin figure as she arrived for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards at Santa Monica Beach on Saturday.
Keeping a tight grip of Forest, it was Keisha’s worryingly slender arms that caused the most concern – with her upper arm looking even thinner than her elbow.
According to RadarOnline.com, Keisha, who turns 42 this week, is estimated to have lost around 35lbs (two and a half stone) over the past few years.
And such extreme weight loss at her age could lead to significant health problems, according to The Hampton’s Diet author Dr. Fred Pescatore.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2572811/Forest-Whitakers-wife-Keisha-sparks-concern-displaying-painfully-figure.html
Paul Ryan’s ‘unfortunate’ poverty report
03/04/14 10:26 AM—Updated 03/04/14 11:17 AM
By Steve Benen
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been pretty aggressive in recent months about leaking word of his recent policy focus on poverty. The far-right congressman has periodically let major news outlets know he now hopes to “help” those who would suffer most under his own budget plan: low-income families.
And so, as Ned Resnikoff reported, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Ryan yesterday issued a 204-page report, called “The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later,” condemning a variety of federal efforts to reduce poverty in the United States. It’s apparently intended to serve as a precursor to the congressman’s next budget blueprint, which, predictably, will seek more cuts to Medicaid, Head Start, and food stamps.
Ryan will justify his efforts, working from the assumption that many federal programs, aimed at helping those struggling, unintentionally make matters “worse.”
The editorial board of the New York Times did a nice job summarizing the degree to which Ryan’s ideas are “small and tired.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryans-unfortunate-poverty-report
Money More Important Than Tanks
by BooMan
Tue Mar 4th, 2014 at 03:24:12 PM EST
Understanding international finance and the Russian stock market is above my pay grade, but it appears that Putin’s decision to invade Crimea had an immediate and brutal effect on the Russian economy which forced him to make some less bellicose and somewhat conciliatory remarks today. The result is a partial recovery of the massive losses experienced yesterday.
It must be nice to have the kind of cash you need to play in that casino. Russia may have oil and natural gas, but that doesn’t mean that the West can’t wipe our their wealth in a few hours if they are displeased. It’s a different kind of mutually-assured destruction than we’re used to, but it might be just as effective in preventing a major shooting war with potentially apocalyptic consequences.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/3/4/152412/7313
Why Neocons Love the Strongman
Michael Tomasky
This is just the crisis to make themselves seem relevant again within the GOP—even if they’re undermining the commander in chief at a pivotal moment.
Say this for Rudy Giuliani: He gave away the game with his now-infamous admiring comments on Fox News two days ago about Vladimir Putin. “He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly,” the former mayor said. “Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/05/why-neocons-love-the-strongman.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
Good Morning, Everyone!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
It’s snowing again :(
Puxatawney Phil….needs to be put in a stew.
Morning, everyone!
I’m sorry, Rikyrah, It’s just too much. I wish you all relief soon.
*sigh* I’ll join you in a bowl of stew, even if the sun is shining here.