Robert Battle’s The Hunt is a primal ritual with a distinctly urban feel fueled by a thundering percussion soundtrack by Les Tambours du Bronx. Perhaps Battle’s most popular work, it explores the relationship between modern sports and the rites of the gladiators.
Battle found inspiration for the work in his background in martial arts, replicating the intensity and combative stances. Costumed in long black skirts with under layers of red, six men throw themselves into the movement, reveling in the thrill of the hunt.
It’s a work that challenges the physical limits and the emotional stamina of even the famously indomitable Ailey men. Said rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing, “at times Robert gave us images of being in a rave club, letting loose and going wild and not caring about technique or form — just throwing out energy. A lot of times it feels like you’re in a fight, or you’re fighting to get through. ”
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/446050039245176832/photo/1
http://youtu.be/8bhfu1KnKjM
I love them!
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
Follow
POTUS on Black, Jewish, and Hispanic veterans: “Some of these soldiers fought and died for a country that did not always see them as equal”
2:42 PM – 18 Mar 2014
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/446023628367220736/photo/1
Koch’s tangled political network uses obscure LLCs to hide from the public
By Kim Barker and Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 9:22 EDT
Libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch were among the first to grasp the political potential of social welfare groups and trade associations — nonprofits that can spend money to influence elections but don’t have to name their donors.
The Kochs and their allies have built up a complex network of such organizations, which spent more than $383 million in the run-up to the 2012 election alone.
Documents released in recent months show the Kochs have added wrinkles to their network that even experts well versed in tax law and campaign finance say they’ve never seen before — wrinkles that could make it harder to discern who controls each nonprofit in the web and how it disperses its money.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/18/kochs-tangled-political-network-uses-obscure-llcs-to-hide-from-the-public/
Chris Christie town hall disrupted by protesters again
snip
“Governor Christie, we are here to demand, you stop your corrupt uses, of Hurricane Sandy money,” they said. “There are still families without homes who have received no aid.”
“Be quiet,” one woman in the audience yelled at the protesters chanted.
The hecklers specifically took aim at a housing project in New Brunswick that received federal Sandy relief aid.
snip
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/03/chris_christie_town_hall_disrupted_by_protesters_again.html
A Tougher Hillary Clinton Distances Herself From Obama
The former secretary of state’s comments on Russia and Crimea suggest she’s trying to create a foreign-policy buffer ahead of the 2016 campaign.
Michael HirshMar 17 2014, 12:33 PM ET
In recent weeks, as the standoff over Ukraine escalated, Hillary Clinton did something that she never did as secretary of state: She put considerable distance between herself and the president she served loyally for four years. While Barack Obama cautiously warned Vladimir Putin to back off his claims on Ukraine, Clinton rolled out a rhetorical cannon, comparing the Russian president’s moves to the seizure of territory by Adolf Hitler that set off World War II. Her comments were so harsh and controversial that she was forced to walk them back a bit, saying, “I’m not making a comparison, certainly, but I am recommending that we perhaps can learn from this tactic that has been used before.”
Clinton’s remarks appeared to be an indication of two things. One, she’s concerned enough about shoring up her reputation for toughness that she may indeed be thinking about running for president in 2016. Clinton offered up, in other words, a rare and enticing hint about the question that everyone in the politics game is asking these days. Undoubtedly she knows that the effort she led as secretary of state in 2009, an attempted “reset” of relations with Russia that included a new arms treaty, now looks naive in the face of Putin’s repudiation of Obama over Ukraine and his lack of cooperation on other issues, such as resolution of the Syrian civil war. Two, Clinton could be worried that by the time the next presidential season rolls around, what was once seen as one of Obama’s stronger points—foreign policy—could easily become a liability to whomever is seeking the Democratic nomination.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/a-tougher-hillary-clinton-distances-herself-from-obama/284457/
Short: The black POTUS is week. Hillary’s your woman, for 2016!
GTFOH
President Obama Awards the Medal of Honor
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
So wonderful and heart-warming that these valiant men get their honors before they die.
Black NYC firefighters announce $98M settlement
http://news.msn.com/us/black-nyc-firefighters-announce-dollar98m-settlement
NEW YORK (AP) — About 1,500 minorities who took New York City fire department entrance exams that were found to be biased will be eligible to receive back pay totaling $98 million, a black firefighters’ group that had sued the city over racial discrimination said Tuesday.
The settlement of the 7-year-old case capped a long and arduous legal fight by the group, the Vulcan Society, over diversity in the fire department. In a city where more than half of residents identify with a racial minority group, black firefighters have never made up more than 4 percent of the department’s total.
“This is a great day in the city of New York,” said Capt. Paul Washington, a past president of the Vulcan Society. “And we hope that this is the beginning of a new day for the New York City Fire Department.”
Besides back pay, the settlement includes more than $6 million to cover lost medical payments, fringe benefits and interest for those who took the test in 1999 and 2002. It also allows for firefighters to be assigned to firehouses in neighborhoods where they live. The payment method hasn’t been determined and will have to be approved by a federal judge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has yet to appoint a new fire commissioner, and his corporation counsel, Zachary Carter, praised the settlement as a way to diversify stationhouses.
https://twitter.com/ericwolfson/status/446015466533048320/photo/1
The Obamacare Coalition: Why ACA is a Huge Political Asset for Democrats
Spandan Chakrabarti | March 18, 2014
The media, as usual, always gets it wrong on Obamacare. But with a Bloomberg poll now showing two-thirds of Americans support the Affordable Care Act, there is little reason for Democrats to be afraid of their own shadow. Dig a little deeper into the polling and enrollment numbers, and see how Obamacare might be the biggest asset Democrats have this year.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2014/3/18/the-obamacare-coalition-why-aca-is-a-huge-political-asset-for-democrats
I Can’t even imagine how he and his family feel.
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/445955444054306816/photo/1
This is a going to begin some MAJOR healing for Sgt Morris. *TEARS*
Indeed! Lord Have Mercy!
Updated: 2:48 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, 2014 | Posted: 11:33 a.m. Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Arrests follow protests at state Capitol
By Janel Davis and Chris Joyner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More than 20 people were arrested Tuesday in a string of protests targeting Gov. Nathan Deal’s decision not to expand Medicaid in Georgia under the Affordable Care Act.
Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor, was among those placed in handcuffs by Georgia State Patrol troopers. Warnock and a group of supporters staged a sit-in outside of Deal’s office Tuesday afternoon. They were arrested without incident and led away as the remaining crowd of protesters sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
“It is no exaggeration to say that we are here on a matter of life and death,” Warnock told a group of about 100 supporters.
Warnock was the last of a series of speakers in the Capitol rotunda, including two Democratic state senators, criticizing Deal and Republican leaders on a range of issues from education to abortion rights to voting rights. But the governor’s position on Medicaid expansion was the centerpiece of Tuesday’s action by a coalition of liberal groups organized under the name Moral Monday.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/protesters-disrupt-state-senate/nfFwg/
The financial benefits should be obvious.
If you were paying $1100/month for insurance, and now you’re paying $500/month, that’s $600/month in your pocket. Maybe you all are doing ‘ that well’, but $600/month freed up in a budget is a nice chunk of money to me.
………………………………………………………………..
The financial protection effects of health reform, evidence from Massachusetts
by The Incidental Economist on March 17, 2014 · 3 comments
the reform significantly improved credit scores, reduced the total amount past due, reduced the fraction of debt past due, and reduced the probability of personal bankruptcy. We find particularly pronounced reductions in the probability of having a large delinquency of over $5,000. These effects tend to be larger among individuals whose credit scores were low at the time of the reform, suggesting that the greatest gains in financial security occurred among those who were already struggling financially.
http://blog.academyhealth.org/the-financial-protection-effects-of-health-reform-evidence-from-massachusetts/
Keep putting a face with the names, SG2. We’re not going to be INVISIBLE.
tell the truth.
keep on telling it.
I hope this tweet gets the living shit tweeted out of it.
A Campaign Inquiry in Utah Is the Watchdogs’ Worst Case
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
MARCH 18, 2014
It is the nightmare scenario for those who worry that the modern campaign finance system has opened up new frontiers of political corruption: A candidate colludes with wealthy corporate backers and promises to defend their interests if elected. The companies spend heavily to elect the candidate, but hide the money by funneling it through a nonprofit group. And the main purpose of the nonprofit appears to be getting the candidate elected.
But according to investigators, exactly such a plan is unfolding in an extraordinary case in Utah, a state with a cozy political establishment, where business holds great sway and there are no limits on campaign donations.
Public records, affidavits and a special legislative report released last week offer a strikingly candid view inside the world of political nonprofits, where big money sluices into campaigns behind a veil of secrecy. The proliferation of such groups — and what campaign watchdogs say is their widespread, illegal use to hide donations — are at the heart of new rules now being drafted by the Internal Revenue Service to rein in election spending by nonprofit “social welfare” groups, which unlike traditional political action committees do not have to disclose their donors.
In Utah, the documents show, a former state attorney general, John Swallow, sought to transform his office into a defender of payday loan companies, an industry criticized for preying on the poor with short-term loans at exorbitant interest rates. Mr. Swallow, who was elected in 2012, resigned in November after less than a year in office amid growing scrutiny of potential corruption.
“They needed a friend, and the only way he could help them was if they helped get him elected attorney general,” State Representative James A. Dunnigan, who led the investigation in the Utah House of Representatives, said in an interview last week.
What is rare about the Utah case, investigators and campaign finance experts say, is not just the brazenness of the scheme, but the discovery of dozens of documents describing it in fine detail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/us/politics/a-campaign-inquiry-in-utah-is-the-watchdogs-worst-case.html?_r=0
‘If you go back to 1933…’
03/18/14 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
Ben White and Maggie Haberman report this morning that the political winds seem to have shifted lately in the One Percenters’ direction. Whereas a few months ago, economic populism looked like it’d give Democrats a boost in 2014, and polls showed strong public support for addressing economic inequality, Wall Street and its allies are feeling more confident.
Oh for crying out loud. Do we really have to deal with another billionaire with a victim’s complex who sees a parallel between economic populism and Nazis?
Apparently so.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/if-you-go-back-1933
Morning Plum: What the Obamacare enrollment numbers mean
By Paul Waldman
March 18 at 8:57 am
The Obama administration announced late yesterday that 800,000 people have signed up for new health insurance so far in March. That brings the total under the Affordable Care Act to over 5 million and makes it likely that 6 million will have enrolled by March 31, the last day to sign up before getting a fine. That 6 million number would meet a projection made by the Congressional Budget Office. So what are we to make of those numbers?
To a degree, targets like these are arbitrary when we’re judging the law’s success. It isn’t as though we’ll say that if 5,999,999 people signed up by the end of the month then the law has failed, while if 6,000,001 sign up then it has succeeded. Nor does that number include the millions of people who have been enrolled in Medicaid, many of whom are getting health coverage for the first time. And the number of people signed up will continue to rise, particularly since the fines are quite small in the first year but get larger over time. But it’s worth remembering that for all the time we spend gaming out the political winners and losers of Obamacare, there are real people’s lives at stake.
If you were just watching political ads, you’d think that there were precisely zero Americans who had actually been helped by the ACA, since for some rather strange reason, the law’s advocates seem reluctant to actually tell the individual stories of those who have gotten covered for the first time, or can now get coverage despite a pre-existing condition. Meanwhile, the law’s opponents have spent millions of dollars blanketing the airwaves in states with upcoming elections, telling horror stories of people whose lives have allegedly been devastated by the ACA. And yes, nearly every one of those stories turns out to be utterly bogus when it is examined. But how many voters know that?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/18/morning-plum-what-the-obamacare-enrollment-numbers-mean/
Anyone else watch Crisis on NBC?
The thing that kills me is that THIS is the exact type of guy we should be grooming to run for office post Administration service.
………………………..
White House ‘Recalibrating’ On How To Save Surgeon General Nominee From Senate Defeat
Posted: 03/17/2014 4:56 pm EDT Updated: 03/17/2014 6:59 pm EDT
The White House learned its lesson earlier this month when it urged a Senate vote on Debo Adegbile, a key Justice Department nominee, and then watched his nomination fall apart for political reasons — with the help of some Democrats.
Administration officials aren’t about to let that disaster play out again with Vivek Murthy, the president’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general.
Murthy, a physician at a top Boston hospital and a teacher at Harvard Medical School, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in February with the support of all Democrats and one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.). He would be the first Indian-American surgeon general, if confirmed, and he’s supported by more than 50 key organizations and figures in the health and wellness community, per the White House.
But past comments he made in support of gun control have drawn strong opposition from the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America. Specifically, in his role as the leader of Doctors for America, Murthy called gun violence “an important public health issue” and urged a ban on military-style assault weapons after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings in December 2012. That position isn’t sitting well with powerful leaders in the gun lobby.
“Simply put, confirmation of Dr. Murthy is a prescription for disaster for America’s gun owners,” Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s legislative arm, wrote to Senate leaders in February.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/obama-surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-nra_n_4980022.html?1395089786
Mark my words, some Senate Democrats will vote nay too. They’re in the pockets of the NRA. It’s despicable!
Yeah, apparently the National Rifle Association gets to choose the Surgeon General. And it can’t be anyone who opposes the sale of military style assault weapons to the public.
Do people even realize how f*cked up that is? I realize that our elected officials like the NRA’s money, but isn’t there a line somewhere that they won’t cross? I guess not.
The Rachel Maddow Show / The MaddowBlog
Why pay equity keeps tripping up conservatives
03/18/14 08:40 AM—Updated 03/18/14 08:56 AM
By Steve Benen
There’s a new Republican political action committee in Texas called RedState Women, which hopes to give gubernatorial hopeful Greg Abbott (R) a boost with women voters later this year. At a distance, it appears the PAC’s efforts are off to a rough start.
Over the weekend, RedState Women’s executive director, Cari Christman, sat down with WFAA in Dallas, and fielded questions about, among other things, Republican opposition to measures like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Christman argued that women “want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.”
It was an odd thing to say. Federal laws that empower workers facing wage discrimination to seek remedies in the courts aren’t “rhetoric,” they’re the opposite.
But as Laura Bassett reported, Christman’s argument got worse from there.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-pay-equity-keeps-tripping
BLACK NRA
http://youtu.be/wzLoyY-ypPQ
SPOT ON! And it’s painfully funny and so full of TRU-TRU. Y’all know these white folks would stop that 2nd amendment bullshit pronto if such a group would form and speak out like the current NRA. After all, it’s why they cling to their guns, right? The BIG, BAD, BLACK, MEN are coming for them!
Sun Mar 16, 2014 at 11:15 AM PDT.
The damnation of the happy slave
by Hunter
Surely, this had to be a joke. Surely, there is no person on earth who would sniffle that the problem with the movie 12 Years a Slave is that it failed to show any slaves being sufficiently happy about their slavery. That it was not, as the phrase goes these days, sufficiently fair and balanced on the whole question of whether slaves were mistreated prisoners or merely servants engaged in the alternative lifestyle of being treated as property by their owners, to be bought or sold, bred or beaten, captured or freed in accordance with the free market notions of the time.
Certainly, no doubt, there would be people thinking such things, because in this nation you can find people who think nearly anything you can imagine, including that Jesus rode dinosaurs and that aliens live among us and often disguise themselves as farm-road mailboxes—but surely a person who was passing himself off as a critic of movies or of culture would have the general awareness to stop the thought somewhere between noggin and pen. “Your movie needs to show happy slaves being happy in their slavery” is one of those statements that will land with a heavy thud no matter where you dispense it. It is not a question of being politically correct or politically incorrect, but a question of not making yourself a laughingstock. “Your movie needs to show happy slaves” is not, objectively speaking, movie criticism. It is your own brain giving your own ideological preferences a soggy tongue bath while you force the rest of us to watch.
…………………………….
So that, then, is really and truly to be the complaint against the film. That this single film did not show a single happy, singing slave being looked upon by a kind and generous owner. That it therefore is an incomplete and fatally flawed picture of the 250-year, continent-spanning institution it purports to enlighten us upon, or at the least is exactly as flawed as any of those other tittering films that portray slavery as a genteel institution of happy but sub-literate house servants always singing songs and baking pies, never worried that they might be beaten or sold off or hung by the neck near the front gate if they are caught being insufficiently appreciative of their pie-loving master. That by showing the capture, enslavement and barbaric treatment of a man,as taken from his own memoirs, slavery is shown too roughly as a cruel institution, as opposed to showing a balanced picture in which slavery was portrayed equally as a cruel institution and as a happy summer camp. Were there no water slides? No trust falls? How can truth be manifested in art if we do not insist that all artistic works show the precise portions of truth we most want to see? How can historical scholarship claim to seek reality if historians criticize Gone with the Wind for its characterization of slavery while criticizing some other film less than that?
Our movie critic has, true to his word, begun with a complaint that credentialed historians praising the film have demanded nothing more to be said on the subject, and fleshed it out with assertions that, by golly, he will thwart them and their credentials by bravely saying things regardless. But the things he has then gone on to say have been vapid.
He mentions the people who have praised the film for a willingness to show the brutalities of slavery in a way that past art on the subject have dodged; he then asserts that praise to be demonstration of their politics. He cites the moviemaker’s supposition that he was able to get away with showing those brutalities when past movies could not because recent events have conspired to make the public willing to look back on that history in a blunter, less timid fashion; he declares it an obvious political agenda. The movie, the movie makers, the historians, the public—it is all the result of a political agenda. The only one without an apparent political agenda is the movie and cultural critic of The American Spectator magazine, just under the pop-up advertisement soliciting funds to stop Hillary Clinton and her Clintonian scheming—but no, I do suspect our sly author has an agenda in mind. He had one from the first sentence, and it has so overwhelmed him that all pretense of critiquing the movie has so far been for naught, so wrapped up are we in critiquing the motives of the people surrounding it. Keep at it, my man, you’ll get to it sooner or later.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/16/1284573/-The-damnation-of-the-happy-slave#
I CAN’T, I JUST CAN.NOT. Not today.
Federal court strikes down Arkansas’ 12-week abortion ban
03/17/14 04:25 PM—Updated 03/18/14 06:30 AM
By Steve Benen
Almost exactly a year ago, Republicans in Arkansas’ state legislature not only approved one of the most sweeping anti-abortion bills in the country, they overrode Gov. Mike Beebe (D) to impose a 12-week abortion ban statewide. Late last week, the law which had been on hold was struck down altogether.
A federal judge Friday struck down Arkansas’ attempt to ban most abortions beginning 12 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy, saying viability, not a heartbeat, remains the key factor in determining whether abortions should be allowed.
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright last year had stopped enforcement of the law while she reviewed it, and on Friday she declared that it was unconstitutional. She cited previous court decisions that said abortions shouldn’t be restricted until after a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Note, as the AP report added, the same law requires doctors to check for a fetal heartbeat and to notify the pregnant woman if one is present. This part of the law was left intact in Wright’s ruling.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/federal-court-strikes-down-arkansas
A coal ash mess in North Carolina
03/18/14 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
We’ve been keeping a close eye on pollution problems in North Carolina, and as Rachel noted on the show last night, there have been quite a few important developments of late.
Consider, for example, this Associated Press report on Gov. Pat McCrory’s (R) administration shielding Duke Energy – the governor’s former employer – from legal accountability.
Note, the McCrory administration last year cleared out North Carolina’s Environmental Management Board, replacing its members with the governor’s allies. As Rachel explained, this set the stage for a change in state policy that allowed Duke Energy pollute larger areas around their coal ash pits without having to clean them up.
What’s more, as we discussed a few weeks ago, federal investigators have already issued subpoenas as part of a criminal probe of a Duke coal ash spill.
Wait, it gets worse.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/coal-ash-mess-north-carolina
From TOD:
North Dakota tries to woo workers for empty jobs
March 17, 2014 6:12 PM ET
By By JAMES MacPHERSON
North Dakota officials are sending a plea to people across the country: We need you.
The state’s unprecedented oil bonanza has made it the economic darling of the nation — boasting a sturdy economy, a state government budget surplus, and its highest population ever, as swarms of people have migrated to North Dakota. But it hasn’t been enough, officials say, citing some 25,000 more jobs than takers in all industries in the state.
Hoping to woo workers to fill those jobs, Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley and the North Dakota Economic Development Foundation on Monday unveiled a “Find the Good Life in North Dakota” campaign at the state Capitol in Bismarck.
“These are exciting times in our state,” said Wrigley, who called the lack of an adequate workforce one of “the challenges of prosperity.”
The $800,000 campaign is being paid for equally by tax-supported state funds and a donation by Hess Corp., a New York based oil company. The campaign will rely on media advertising and a state website that is expected to be running in May. Specific details of the campaign have yet to be released.
Officials said in a statement that the campaign will focus on career opportunities in North Dakota and promoting the state as “a great place to live, work and raise a family.” It will target states with “chronic unemployment” and will attempt to lure skilled workers of various occupations, from engineering to nursing. The effort also will target military veterans, and those who will soon leave the armed services, officials said.
North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at less than 3 percent. It is leading the nation in population growth and the number of residents in the state is at an all-time high, at more than 725,000 people, according to the Census Bureau.
The surge in economic activity and population growth has come largely from oil. The state has gone from the nation’s ninth-biggest oil producer in 2006 to the second, behind only Texas.
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20140317&id=17441790
About North Dakota,
Maddow did a segment this week about how companies are dumping nuclear waste all over North Dakota..on Indian Reservations, Foreclosed buildings, Abandoned places in the middle of nowhere. Just dumping the nuclear waste.
FILTH! And they’re advertising jobs, while they poison their citizens.
https://twitter.com/NationalGeoPix/status/445753484118212608/photo/1
LOLGOP @LOLGOP
Follow
We’ve now reached the point in Obama’s Katrina when 5 million Americans have picked health plans and another 7 million have gained coverage.
3:48 PM – 17 Mar 2014
https://twitter.com/AmericaTonight/status/445740122714439681/photo/1
Handsome.
From TOD:
On March 18th, 2014, President Barack Obama will award 24 Army veterans the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry.
These veterans will receive the Medal of Honor in recognition of their valor during major combat operations in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Each of these Soldiers’ bravery was previously recognized by award of the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest military award; that award will be upgraded to the Medal of Honor in recognition of their gallantry, intrepidity and heroism above and beyond the call of duty.
In 2002, Congress, through the Defense Authorization Act, called for a review of Jewish American and Hispanic American veteran war records from WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, to ensure those deserving the Medal of Honor were not denied because of prejudice. During the review, records of several Soldiers of neither Jewish nor Hispanic descent were also found to display criteria worthy of the Medal of Honor. The 2002 Act was amended to allow these Soldiers to be honored with the upgrade – in addition to the Jewish and Hispanic American Soldiers.
http://youtu.be/wOm53_RAFkU
It’s Election Day Here. If it is where you are too, please get out and vote!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good morning!
Good Afternoon, Everyone!