Early solo work[edit]
In September 1981, Sting made his first live solo appearance, performing on all four nights of the fourth Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in London’s Drury Lane theatre at the invitation of producer Martin Lewis. He performed solo versions of “Roxanne” and “Message in a Bottle”. He also led an all-star band (dubbed “The Secret Police”) on his own arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”. The band and chorus included Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Phil Collins, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, all of whom except Beck later worked together on Live Aid. His performances were featured prominently in the album and movie of the show and drew critical attention to his work. Sting’s participation in The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball was the beginning of his growing involvement in raising money and consciousness for political and social causes. In 1982 he released a solo single, “Spread a Little Happiness” from the film version of the Dennis Potter television play Brimstone and Treacle. The song was a re-interpretation of a song from the 1920s musical Mr. Cinders by Vivian Ellis, and was a surprise Top 20 hit in the UK.[17]
1980s[edit]
His first solo album, 1985’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles, featured a cast of jazz musicians, including Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones, Omar Hakim and Branford Marsalis. It included the hit singles “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” (backed with the non-LP song “Another Day”), “Fortress Around Your Heart”, “Love Is the Seventh Wave”, and “Russians”, the last of which was based on a theme from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite.[18] Within a year, the album reached Triple Platinum. This album would garner Sting Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, and Best Engineered Recording.
Also in 1985, he sang the line “I Want My MTV” on “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits. He performed this song with Dire Straits at the Live Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium.[19] Prior to the Live Aid concert, in November 1984 Sting was part of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, which raised money for famine victims in Ethiopia.[20]
In 1985, Sting provided a short guest vocal performance on the Miles Davis album You’re Under Arrest. He also sang backing vocals on Arcadia’s single “The Promise”, and on two songs from Phil Collins’ album No Jacket Required. He also contributed a version of “Mack the Knife” to the Hal Willner-produced tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill. In September 1985, Sting performed “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards at the Radio City Music Hall in New York.[21] The 1986 film Bring on the Night, directed by Michael Apted, documented the formation of the band and its first concert in France.
Sting released …Nothing Like the Sun in 1987, including the hit songs “We’ll Be Together”, “Fragile”, “Englishman in New York”, and “Be Still My Beating Heart”, dedicated to his mother, who had recently died. It eventually went Double Platinum. The song “The Secret Marriage” from this album was adapted from a melody by German composer Hanns Eisler, and “Englishman In New York” was about the eccentric writer Quentin Crisp. The album’s title is taken from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.[22] The album won Best British Album at the 1988 Brit Awards and in 1989 received three Grammy nominations including his second consecutive nomination for Album of the Year. The hit song “Be Still My Beating Heart” earned Sting additional nominations for Song of the Year & Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In 1989, …Nothing Like the Sun was ranked #90 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 greatest albums of the 1980s”.[23]
Soon thereafter, in February 1988, he released Nada como el sol, a selection of five songs from Sun sung (by Sting himself) in Spanish and Portuguese. He was also involved in two other recordings in the late 1980s, the first in 1987 with jazz arranger Gil Evans, who placed Sting in a big band setting for a live album of Sting’s songs (the CD was not released in the U.S.), and the second on Frank Zappa’s 1988 Broadway the Hard Way album, where Sting performs an unusual arrangement of “Murder By Numbers”, set to the tune “Stolen Moments” by jazz composer Oliver Nelson, and “dedicated” to fundamentalist evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. October 1988 saw the release of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with the London Sinfonietta conducted by Kent Nagano. It featured Vanessa Redgrave, Sir Ian McKellen and Sting in the role of the soldier.[24]
Tiger unable to play in the Masters after successful microdiscectomy
Woods underwent surgery for a pinched nerve and will require rest and rehab for the next several weeks
Tiger Woods announced Tuesday that he has undergone a successful microdiscectomy for a pinched nerve that has been hurting him for several months.
The procedure was successful, but Woods will be unable to play in the Masters Tournament, instead requiring rest and rehabilitation for the next several weeks.
“After attempting to get ready for the Masters, and failing to make the necessary progress, I decided, in consultation with my doctors, to have this procedure done,” Woods said.
http://www.tigerwoods.com/news/2014/04/01/70599322/tiger-unable-to-play-in-the-masters-after-successful-microdiscectomy/
Obama Told Military Leaders: Accept Gays In Military Or Step Down, Admiral Says
In a 2010 meeting in the Oval Office, the president told service chiefs they could “go do other things” if they didn’t support abolishing DADT, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp said. posted on March 31, 2014 at 6:37pm EDT
In a meeting with the heads of the five service branches in 2010, President Obama offered the leaders a choice: Support my efforts to end the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, or resign, the Commandant of the Coast Guard said.
In a video obtained by BuzzFeed via a Freedom of Information Act request, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp revealed that Obama was unwilling to compromise with service leaders over DADT during a meeting in 2010. “We were called into the Oval Office and President Obama looked all five service chiefs in the eye and said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I cannot divulge everything he said to us, that’s private communications within the Oval Office, but if we didn’t agree with it — if any of us didn’t agree with it — we all had the opportunity to resign our commissions and go do other things,” he said.
Papp talked about the meeting during a Q&A session with U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets following a leadership address to the corps on Jan 8. The admiral was asked how officers should respond to policies that they disagreed with but were required to enforce. “If I disagree morally with [a policy], it’s my obligation to voice that, regardless of the risk it might give my career,” he said. “I’ve been in those situations. I’ve been fortunate to have good leaders that have appreciated that.” Using himself as an example, Papp said it was OK for leaders to “not be thrilled” with a certain regulation, but if they didn’t “see anything terribly wrong with it,” it was their job as officers to support and enforce it.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/obama-told-military-leaders-accept-gays-in-military-or-step
Ellie Hall BuzzFeed Staff
Get on board or jump off, MOFOs.
Obamacare Cuts Kentucky’s Uninsured Rate By 40 Percent
Sahil Kapur – April 1, 2014, 12:47 PM EDT4949
Obamacare has cut Kentucky’s uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Some 75 percent of them — 270,000 — were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky’s uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent.
The enrollment figures, which state officials relayed to the Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, underscore the relative success of Kentucky’s state-based Obamacare exchange compared to other states and, in some ways, the HealthCare.gov federal marketplace portal.
Like the federal government, Kentucky has decided to give people who began their applications until April 15 to sign up for insurance on the exchanges. State officials told the Herald-Leader that those who are eligible for Medicaid can sign up after the March 31 deadline.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obamacare-cuts-kentucky-uninsured-rate-by-40-percent
Here’s your GRAND PASS KEY to a 2014 senate victory, Alison Lundergan Grimes!
Black Leaders Gather in New Orleans to Discuss Policy Agenda
New York, NY (BlackNews.com) – Fresh off the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama as the first African American to win the White House, Black leaders will gather in New Orleans November 19-23 for the State of the Black World Conference (SOBWC) to explore ways to seize the opportunity to advance policies critical to the Black community, labor, the middle class and poor people. Convened by the New York-based Institute of the Black World 21st Century under the leadership of veteran scholar-activist Dr. Ron Daniels, SOBWC will be the first major gathering of African Americans after the election. As such, organizers view the conference as a veritable post-election political convention where an agenda of priority public policy proposals will be developed to present to participants who will be asked to return to their home districts to mobilize/organize for change.
“We’re excited to be able to utter the words President-Elect Barack Obama,” Dr. Ron Daniels commented, “but we must work to create and advance a progressive agenda to fulfill the aspirations of millions of people, including an unparalleled number of African Americans who marched on ballot boxes to achieve this milestone victory.” A number of Black leaders have observed that the crises afflicting New Orleans, before and after Katrina, is a metaphor for the conditions facing Black communities across America. Concurring with this view, Dr. Daniels said, “We must not make the mistake of believing that the new President will be able to resolve these crises without a powerful grassroots movement to promote our agenda. This is very much in keeping with Barack Obama’s position that change comes from the bottom up.”
http://www.blacknews.com/news/state_of_the_black_world_conference401.shtml#
Please, Republicans, Run Against Obamacare This Year and We’ll See You in November
Anyone who tells you the GOP is a lock for holding onto the House of Representatives while taking back the Senate in the midterms doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Why? Because it’s April. The election isn’t for another seven months. That’s a huge block of time, especially knowing how the speed of online media has accelerated news cycles and shortened voter attention spans.
I’m old enough to remember way back in October when Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) disastrous filibuster and the subsequent government shutdown were the inciting incidents that would surely hand over control of the House to the Democrats. Online and traditional media were abuzz with predictions of a narrow edge for the Democrats in the midterms.
And then, within days, everything went to hell. Health and Human Services flummoxed the roll-out of Healthcare.gov and a late-October shitstorm landed on President Obama’s head due to his “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” line.
Control of Congress, at least according to the very serious cable news and Sunday morning talkers, shifted wildly within a very small window of time, but today we’re supposed to believe Mitch McConnell is staring at his sleestak-ish reflection in the mirror and repeating to himself, “Hi there, handsome. You look like the next Majority Leader. Why yes, I do!”
Not so fast. There continues to be one major wild card.
The Republican Party has committed itself to making the Affordable Care Act the centerpiece of its midterm strategy.
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/04/please-republicans-run-against-obamacare-this-year-and-well-see-you-in-november/
https://twitter.com/NewsBreaker/status/451002666290651137/photo/1
President Obama Makes a Statement on the Affordable Care Act.
April 01, 2014 4:15 PM EDT
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
*********************
7 million biatch
President Obama Honors the 2013 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
All my Chicago peeps…
The WINTER PARKING BAN IS OVER!!!
You can park where you want!!!
If ObamaCare Benefits You, You Don’t Exist
by BooMan
Tue Apr 1st, 2014 at 12:43:44 AM EST
According to Byron York, if you are getting Medicaid benefits or you are 26 years or younger and getting coverage on your parents’ health insurance plan, you simply do not exist. There are an estimated seven and a half million people in this country that fall into one of those two categories and now have access to health care that they would not have enjoyed if John McCain had won the 2008 election, but they don’t count.
Let me explain the logical error here, in case it isn’t immediately obvious. Byron York says in the first paragraph that 9.5 million people now have health insurance that they would not otherwise have. In his the second paragraph he says that two million people now have health insurance that they would otherwise not have.
How did he subtract 7.5 million people? He refused to acknowledge that they actually exist.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/1/04344/96289
Just like these fools are REFUSING to acknowledge Barack Obama was born in America and is now a TWO TERM PRESIDENT!
Eric Boehlert @EricBoehlert
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stating the obvious: if Obamacare had only 5M sign-ups today it’d be wall-to-wall DC chatter re: failure. 7M? Shhh; http://bit.ly/1pHKcff
8:44 AM – 1 Apr 2014
From “Doomed” To Boom: How The Press Missed The Obamacare Comeback Story
By Eric Boehlert
—————————-
So the larger media coverage question is, has the press been wed for so long to the Republican-friendly narrative of a broken and doomed Obamacare system that journalists are refusing to adjust the storyline as crucial new facts emerge?
Some newsrooms seem to be in denial as they strain to still portray Obamacare enrollment as a failure. Today’s doom-and-gloom Wall Street Journal headline: “New Technical Woes Hobble Health Sign-Ups at Zero Hour.” It wasn’t until the seventh paragraph that the Journal even mentioned that Obamacare had defied the odds and reached the seven million mark. The Washington Post’s front page headline likewise reads “HealthCare.gov hiccups amid deadline-day frenzy.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/01/from-doomed-to-boom-how-the-press-missed-the-ob/198698
This is how PBO rolls. While the talking heads & haters babble on about “he’s weak, he’s a failure, he’s a dictator, he just KEEPS MOVING AHEAD.
BYE, BYE, BITCHES!
Obamacare enrollment drive’s secret weapon: Radio
By Olivier Knox, Yahoo News
…But a look inside the Affordable Care Act’s all-out enrollment drive shows that — for all the talk about social media and unorthodox strategies — the Administration relied heavily in the final stretch on a century-old way to reach the public: Radio.
On Monday, senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett did her first radio interview at 8:30 am. By 6:30 pm, she was on her 21st, bringing her total over the past six weeks to 82.
She has done them from her office, home, car, an airport runway, her hotel room. Some DJs she has spoken to did not have health insurance before the Affordable Care Act but have now signed up, a White House aide said. Some DJs – like Joe Madison, to whom she spoke on Monday — have amplified the administration’s message by playing stories of callers helped by the law.
Overall, top administration officials – and celebrity surrogates – have taken part in some 300 individual radio interviews, according to administration figures shared with Yahoo News.
http://news.yahoo.com/obamacare-enrollment-drive-s-secret-weapon–radio-230545028.html
Barack Obama upon finding out about the 7 million signups:
http://youtu.be/t3KskO3_2YQ
BWA HA HA HA
https://twitter.com/Our4thEstate/status/450811889732173824/photo/1
@newsone: Ben Carson @RealBenCarson is set for an exclusive interview on @TVOnetv’s #NEWSONENOW, 4/4 http://t.co/oBXzCLfO71 Share your Q’s for him.
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/450837518510862337/photo/1
Yellen says Fed is determined to lower jobless rate
By Binyamin Appelbaum
New York Times April 01, 2014
CHICAGO — Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, devoted more than an hour last week talking by telephone with three Chicago area residents struggling to find jobs.
On Monday, she made their stories the centerpiece of the first public speech in her new job, delivering a strong statement about her concern over unemployment, her conviction that the Fed has the power to help, and her determination to do so.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/03/31/yellen-says-fed-determined-improve-employment-situation/UOFx0dgT7dVFtaxckPitzJ/story.html
Kwasi Enin: NY Teen Accepted To All 8 Ivy League Universities
Apr 1, 2014
By NewsOne Staff
Kwasi Enin, a senior at William Floyd High School in Shirley, New York, applied to all eight Ivy League Universities—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Cornell—and was accepted to all of them.
“My heart skipped a beat when he told me he was applying to all eight,” says Nancy Winkler, a guidance counselor at William Floyd. In 29 years as a counselor, she says, she’s never seen anything like this. “It’s a big deal when we have students apply to one or two Ivies. To get into one or two is huge. It was extraordinary.”
http://newsone.com/3003065/kwasi-enin-ny-teen-accepted-to-all-8-ivy-league-universities/?omcamp=sf_N1TW
TheObamaDiary.com @TheObamaDiary
Helloooooo @chucktodd, you haven’t tweeted for six hours, you okay?
—–> #Obamacare on track to hit 7 million sign-ups on deadline day
http://youtu.be/jwI_HjxMrhI
David Plouffe @davidplouffe
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7M number thru exchanges terrific. But the # covered so far due to ACA much larger. 12M plus perhaps. Will only grow. VP was right. BFD.
10:11 PM – 31 Mar 2014
AprilDRyan @AprilDRyan
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ACA Sources say White House Tech director announced this morning at 12:01am at QSSI the ACA numbers surpassed 7 mill
6:49 AM – 1 Apr 2014
Frankie Knuckles, house music ‘godfather,’ dead at 59
Greg Kot
7:07 a.m. CDT, April 1, 2014
In Chicago, Frankie Knuckles was called the “godfather,” not because of any underworld connections, but because he helped build house – a style of Chicago dance music that revolutionized club culture in the ‘70s and ‘80s and still resonates around the world today.
Knuckles died Monday at the age of 59, as confirmed by his longtime business partner, Frederick Dunson. More details would be forthcoming Tuesday, Dunson said, who said in an email that Knuckles “died unexpectedly this afternoon at home.” In addition to developing the sound and culture of house music, Knuckles would go on to mix records by major artists such as Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode.
Knuckles learned his craft as a club DJ in New York City, then moved to Chicago in the late ‘70s and developed a reputation as one of the city’s most influential dance-music tastemakers. He arrived in Chicago just as disco was losing steam. For many, disco literally went up in flames between games of a Chicago White Sox double header at Comiskey Park, when radio deejay Steve Dahl blew up hundreds of disco albums.
“I witnessed that caper that Steve Dahl pulled at Disco Demolition Night and it didn’t mean a thing to me or my crowd,” Knuckles told the Tribune. “But it scared the record companies, so they stopped signing disco artists and making disco records. So we created our own thing in Chicago to fill the gap
……………………..
He brought that knowledge west with him to Chicago, where he became known as “the godfather of Chicago house music” at the Warehouse and later the Power Plant. He would extend mixes of soul and R&B records and turn them into dance tracks, introduce new singles being produced by fledgling house artists and incorporate drum machines to emphasize the beat. In addition to building dynamic ebb-and-flow sets that would keep his dancefloor filled from midnight to noon on weekends, he would create theater-of-the-mind scenarios with inventive sound and lighting. “Sometimes I’d shut down all the lights and set up a record where it would sound like a speeding train was about to crash into the
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/turnitup/chi-frankie-knuckles-obit-20140331,0,565674.column
http://youtu.be/QIdimVDuSEU
Game change’ for Bloomberg?
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By Joe Pompeo 5:00 a.m. | Apr. 1, 2014 follow this reporter
As part of a developing digital strategy, Bloomberg L.P. has talked to the prominent political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about launching a new politics offering, sources tell Capital.
Justin B. Smith, who was named C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media Group last fall after a long stint at Atlantic Media, recently concluded a review of the company’s consumer media division and has said that he wants to build out “a portfolio of new digital assets” that attracts audiences beyond the subscribers who pay hefty fees for Bloomberg’s financial information and news-service terminals.
Sources said that independent channels focused on politics and business are two such initiatives, and that Bloomberg Business
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/04/8542942/game-change-bloomberg
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2014 06:44 AM CDT
It’s all over, Obamacare haters! Why they’ve officially lost the battle
With success stories, over 7 million sign-ups and a shift in public opinion, it’s time for the right’s white flag VIDEO
Brian Beutler
By 11:59:59 p.m. Monday night — the last moment of the Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period — sign-ups on Healthcare.gov and 14 state-based exchanges had cleared the symbolic 7 million threshold, according to both administration officials and data experts, and will continue to climb above it over the next few weeks as HHS processes applications from people who were mid-queue when the clock struck midnight.
Throw in new Medicaid enrollments, off-exchange enrollments into Qualified Health Plans, young invincibles on their parents’ plans, and the beneficiary total far exceeds 10 million. On net, millions more people — perhaps about 10 million — are now (or will soon be) insured because of Obamacare than were covered beforehand. That net number will probably be less than initially forecast, but when you account for the fact that almost half of all states didn’t expand Medicaid, and Healthcare.gov effectively experienced a two-month outage last year, you have to be a fanatical Obamacare hater not to call it a comeback.
Now that it’s all over but the shouting, conservatives are watching the mechanisms they’ve employed to discredit the enrollment numbers shrink away from them. They are left to think wishfully that the new enrollees will not pay their premiums in overwhelming numbers, or deny that they exist altogether. The universe of Obamacare “success stories” is larger than the universe of Obamacare “horror stories” and many of said horror stories fall apart or are revealed to be ambiguous upon mild scrutiny.
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/its_all_over_obamacare_haters_why_theyve_officially_lost_the_battle/
Behind the Scenes With Rosie the Riveters at the White House
By ABC News
Apr 1, 2014 8:27am
Phyllis Gould waited 12 years for the moment when she, one of the six original “Rosie the Riveters,” made it to the White House.
Gould, 92, and her five fellow “Rosie the Riveters,” who worked in a shipyard during World War II, were invited by Vice President Joe Biden Monday after a decades-long letter campaign by Gould that began when Bill Clinton was in office.
“I thought we are not going to be here that much longer and we need to get this out,” Gould said of why she asked for a White House invitation. “Because no one else can do it for us.”
“Truthfully, I always thought I would drift through my life invisible to anybody,” she said.
Instead, Gould’s letter to Biden, in which she said her dream was to take a picture with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office, resulted in an invitation for Gould and her fellow “Rosies” to a week-long visit to Washington, D.C.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/behind-the-scenes-with-rosie-the-riveters-at-the-white-house/
Haslam Administration Linked $300M Offer To VW-UAW Process
by Phil Williams
Chief Investigative Reporter
Were hundreds of millions of your tax dollars offered to Volkswagen — and then pulled back — to try to keep the United Auto Workers out of Chattanooga?
For months, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has denied any connection.
But documents leaked to NewsChannel 5 Investigates offer conclusive proof that the Haslam administration wanted a say in the automaker’s deal with organized labor — in exchange for $300 million in economic incentives to help VW expand its Chattanooga operations.
Volkswagen opened the Hamilton County facility in May 2011 with great fanfare.
Initially producing the midsize Passat, there were hints of more to come. It was located on a 1,400-acre site with plenty of room for expansion.
http://www.jrn.com/newschannel5/news/253308391.html?lc=Smart
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good morning, everyone!
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)