Stomp Dance – Performed by various Eastern Woodland tribes including the Muscogee Creek, Yuchi, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Caddo, Delaware, Miami, Ottawa, Peoria, Shawnee, Seminole, Natchez, and Seneca-Cayuga, the Stomp Dance is a ceremony that contains both religious and social meaning. The term “Stomp Dance” is an English term, which refers to the “shuffle and stomp” movements of the dance. In the native Muskogee language the dance is called Opvnkv Haco, which can mean “drunken,” “crazy,” or “inspirited” dance, referring to the effect the medicine and dance have on the participants. A nighttime event, the dance is affiliated with the Green Corn Ceremony by the Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, and other Southeastern Indians.
These dances are generally performed several times during the summer months to insure the community’s wellbeing. Performed by both men and women, these events may include some 30 or more performances, each sung by a different leader and may also include other dances such as the Duck Dance, Friendship Dance, or the Bean Dance.
When a leader begins, he circles the sacred fire and is followed in single file by those who wish to participate. Leading the dancers counter-clockwise around the fire, participants sing, shake leg rattles, and dance in a stomping step. Men and women alternate positions behind the leader, organizing themselves by age and skill, with the youngest and least experienced dancers at the end of the line.
Dancing typically starts well after dark and continues until dawn of the next day. Participants who are making a religious commitment will begin fasting after midnight, and are obligated to stay awake the whole night. The “medicine” taken by participants is made from roots and plants which have been ceremonially gathered and prepared by a Healer. Dancing continues until the sun rises, at which point the event is concluded.
https://twitter.com/ModArts_Dance/status/454661672896974848/photo/1
Magnificent!
Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy achieves 100 percent college acceptance for 5th consecutive year
by Lilly Workneh | April 11, 2014 at 12:12 PM
Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy is celebrating yet another year of extraordinary success.
For the fifth year in a row, all 240 seniors at the all-African-American-male high school have earned acceptance letters into a four-year college or university.
On Tuesday, the young men of the Class of 2014 celebrated their momentous occasion during a traditional ceremony where they exchanged their red uniform ties for a red-and-gold striped tie – a tradition done in observance of their achievement.
“The tie represents to me moving on from a boy to becoming a young man and actually doing something with my life,” graduating senior Dumar Harris told NBC Chicago.
http://thegrio.com/2014/04/11/chicagos-urban-prep-academy-achieves-100-percent-college-acceptance-for-fifth-consecutive-year/
Karyn Washington, creator of ‘For Brown Girls’ website, reportedly commits suicide at age 22
by Lilly Workneh | April 11, 2014 at 4:13 PM
Karyn Washington, the 22-year-old founder of the empowering and uplifting website For Brown Girls, reportedly committed suicide Tuesday.
According to Madame Noire, Washington faced a few tough struggles and reportedly dealt with depression after facing the loss of her mother.
The inspiring young lady helped to empower young women through her work in celebrating the beauty of African-American women, particularly those of dark-complexion.
One example of Washington’s great influence was her #DarkSkinRedLip project, which she launched after rapper ASAP Rocky openly criticized women with darker skin for wearing red lipstick. With this project, Washington allowed all shades of women to band together in knocking down barriers in beauty by encouraging them to embrace their beauty and claim confidence in wearing any lipstick they please.
Washington served as an inspiration to her league of fans, many of whom are left devastated as they express their condolences on Twitter. In doing so, fans helped to shed light on the issue of depression and suicide in the black community.
http://thegrio.com/2014/04/11/karyn-washington-creator-of-for-brown-girls-website-reportedly-commits-suicide-at-age-22/
https://twitter.com/Interior/status/454736488220352512/photo/1
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/454733898853806080/photo/1
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/454732929831170048/photo/1
LUVVIE’S SCANDAL RECAP IS UP
Flesh and Blood: Scandal Episode 317 Recap
April 11, 2014
| Luvvie
The phenomenal empress by the name of Debbie Allen (@msdebbieallen) directed episode 317 of Scandal! I loved her giddiness too and she tweeted the picture below, sent to her by her daughter. Yesssss!
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/04/flesh-blood-scandal-episode-317-recap.html
Tee hee hee, just got my e-mail notice!
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
Follow
Pres. Obama on @GOP: “The right to vote is being threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights effort.”
3:30 PM – 11 Apr 2014
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/454722961920892929/photo/1
https://twitter.com/GovernorOMalley/status/454682718542909440/photo/1
@lynnsweet: Pres., Michelle in NYC dining at Maialino w/ Elizabeth Alexander, Kelly & Andrew Dibble, Valerie Jarrett & Ahmad Rashad, says pooler Parnes.
that’s just dust in my eye…
that’s it. dust.
…………………………………
A FATHER’S LOVE: POOCH HALL HOSTS SPECIAL NEEDS PROM FOR DAUGHTER
April 10, 2014 ‐ By Madame Noire
He may play the long lost, illegitimate black son in Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” returning July 13, but in real life, Pooch Hall was shown nothing but love from his TV fam as they came out to support a charity close to his heart.
In March, the actor and his wife Linda hosted a first-of-its-kind Special Needs Family Prom in North Hollywood, Calif. that doubled as a “Sweet 16” party for their own special needs daughter, Djanai.
The couple’s charity organization, Djanai’s Angels, threw the event as part of its goal to raise awareness and enrich the lives of families of children with special needs. Participants enjoyed red carpet arrivals, a candy cocktail hour, prom photos, a “Sweet 16” birthday cake for Djanai, an inclusive fashion show and the crowning of Prom King and Queen. Music was provided by their very own special needs DJ… DJ Kripple King.
http://madamenoire.com/418987/pooch-hall-hosts-special-needs/#sthash.UqydgLyV.dpuf
C’mon now, SG2. America’s not planning on having the “DARKIES” around in 2050.
UH UH UH. Not one DARK-SKINNED American, and look at the eye color.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WHITE-WASHING peoples of color.
Police Brutality: Santa Ana Cop Puts Crying Boy in Chokehold “Stop Speaking Spanish!”
Michael Eric Dyson blasts Cornel West: ‘You ain’t that important’
Fri., Apr. 11, 2014 10:22 AM EDT
by Stereo Williams
Over the past several months, Dr. Cornel West has been vocal in his disapproval of President Barack Obama, as well as Dr. West’s fellow intellectuals and cultural commentators; Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Rev. Al Sharpton. Speaking last year in regard to President Obama’s 2013 inauguration. Dr. West stated, “We saw, of course, the coronation of the bonafide house Negro of the Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton, supported by the Michael Dysons and others who’ve really prostituted themselves intellectually in a very ugly and vicious way.”
As he spoke about the state of black intellectualism at Rev. Sharpton’s National Action Network Conference yesterday (April 10th), Dr. Dyson addressed Dr. West’s criticisms.
“The prophetic temptation is to believe your voice is the only voice,” said Dr. Dyson. “[You think that] your vision is the only vision. That’s what makes you a genius at a certain level. That’s the nature of genius — but you’re tripping, because you’re not the only one.”
“I don’t see [humility] in a lot of Negroes talking. They act like it’s ‘my way or the highway’ — you ain’t Frank Sinatra!” he continued. “Howard Thurman said, ‘You can go to the Atlantic Ocean, you can dip your glass into the Atlantic Ocean and it may be full of the Atlantic Ocean — but it ain’t all of the Atlantic Ocean. So stop thinking that your way is the only way. It may be a great way, it may be a powerful way that works for you, but one size don’t [sic] fit all. So be honest and humble in genuine terms — not the public performance of humility masquerading a huge ego. No amount of hair can cover that.”
After insinuating that he was referring to Dr. West, Dr. Dyson spoke about his contemporary directly.
http://rollingout.com/politics/michael-eric-dyson-blasts-cornel-west-aint-important/#_
The minimum wage and the blue/red divide
04/11/14 01:26 PM
By Steve Benen
In Washington, D.C., the harder President Obama pushes for an increase to the minimum wage, the harder congressional Republicans push back in the opposite direction. The likelihood of GOP lawmakers changing their mind, at least for now, is effectively zero.
But have you noticed all the activity outside the Beltway?
An increase in the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour is nearly law, making Minnesota the latest state controlled by Democrats to offer the lowest wage workers a boost.
The final House vote of 71-60 delivers the measure to DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, who says he will be happy to sign it into law, and brings to an end a multiyear debate among Democrats about the wage floor. President Obama celebrated the move.
“I commend the state Legislature for raising their minimum wage and we look forward to Governor Dayton signing the bill into law soon,” Obama said in a statement. “Congress should listen to the majority of Americans who say it’s time to give America a raise and help ensure that no American who works full time has to raise a family in poverty.”
The formal bill signing with Minnesota’s Democratic governor is scheduled for Monday. The increase, which will be phased in over two years, doesn’t go quite as far as the $10.10/hour wage national Democrats are seeking, but it will still be well above the current federal minimum of $7.25/hour.
Minnesota’s move comes on the heels of Maryland’s decision to increase its minimum wage, which came on the heels of Connecticut raising its minimum wage.
What’s more, workers can expect more progress elsewhere very soon. In Massachusetts, for example, the Democratic majority is trying to decide between a $10.50 and an $11 minimum wage. In Hawaii, policymakers are nearly done with a proposal to raise their state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2018. In Vermont, a plan is nearly in place for a more expedited implementation of a $10.10 minimum wage.
And if you’re thinking all of these states have something in common, you’re correct.
Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Vermont all are reliable “blue” states, governed by Democratic legislatures working with Democratic governors. (In Michigan, where there’s a strong public demand for an increase, Republicans control the reigns of state government, so citizens are having to work around their elected officials to get the issue on the statewide ballot this November,)
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-minimum-wage-and-the-bluered-divide
Colorlines.com @Colorlines
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Date Night for the Obamas: Denzel Washington in ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ on Broadway http://bit.ly/1gilKQS
11:22 AM – 11 Apr 2014
This made me cry.
…………………………….
http://www.menastar.com/
Interesting, MHP invited Chait on her show last Saturday to sit down with Te nahisi Coates
Friday, April 11, 2014
Did You See Jonathan Chait’s Letdown of an Interview About Conservative Racism and White Victimology on MSNBC?
One of my friends of many years was obsessed with extraterrestrials and how they supposedly kidnap people and then conduct sexual experiments on their victims. He would dream about these visitations and put on a public performance of the “Grays” riding their victims to orgasm.
I had a female friend who would call me at odd hours of the night and ask me to talk to her because she had a nightmare where the witches were riding her. Apparently, my voice and a late night visit were the only things that could calm her.
We all have burdens to carry in life.
And we all have our own obsessions.
I would like to thank you for indulging mine these last few days.
Jonathan Chait appeared on MSNBC last night.
His discussion with Salon.com’s Brittney Cooper and Chris Hayes on MSNBC was a profound letdown.
OF COURSE IT WAS A LET DOWN
http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/04/he-is-breather-from-student-bodies-did.html
Sebilius resigns. Wish her well. Meanwhile, CHRIS CHRISTIE AND GWB GATE!
Paul Krugman: Health Care Nightmare
When it comes to health reform, Republicans suffer from delusions of disaster. They know, just know, that the Affordable Care Act is doomed to utter failure, so failure is what they see, never mind the facts on the ground. Thus, on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, dismissed the push for pay equity as an attempt to “change the subject from the nightmare of Obamacare”; on the same day, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a study estimating “a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.” Some nightmare. And the overall gain, including children and those who signed up during the late-March enrollment surge, must be considerably larger. First, there was the amazing come-from-behind surge in enrollments.
Then there were a series of surveys — from Gallup, the Urban Institute, and RAND — all suggesting large gains in coverage. Taken individually, any one of these indicators might be dismissed as an outlier, but taken together they paint an unmistakable picture of major progress. But wait: What about all the people who lost their policies thanks to Obamacare? The answer is that this looks more than ever like a relatively small issue hyped by right-wing propaganda. RAND finds that fewer than a million people who previously had individual insurance became uninsured — and many of those transitions, one guesses, had nothing to do with Obamacare. It’s worth noting that, so far, not one of the supposed horror stories touted in Koch-backed anti-reform advertisements has stood up to scrutiny, suggesting that real horror stories are rare. Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond to these developments. They can’t offer any real alternative to Obamacare.Their political strategy has been to talk vaguely about replacing reform while waiting for its inevitable collapse. And what if reform doesn’t collapse? They have no idea what to do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/opinion/krugman-health-care-nightmares.html?_r=0
Brian Beutler: The Right Searches For Obamacare Alternative, Finds Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act’s enrollment comeback has confounded conservatives in many ways. The realization that there happens to be popular demand for something as self-evidently grotesque as Obamacare has given rise to a palpable cognitive dissonance on the right. A growing recognition among Republicans that they can’t bank on organizing the midterm campaign around relentless Obamacare opposition has party elders looking at contingency plans (even if they haven’t exactly gone back to the drawing board). But most importantly, it has thrown the conservative health policy community for a loop, and completely wrong-footed Republicans in Congress who were hoping — against considerable odds and a well-worn historical pattern — to craft an Obamacare alternative that both passes the laugh test and doesn’t create a significantly lower level of welfare.
If enrollment had sputtered, that task would have been considerably easier. The fact it surged in March, and continues to grow today, measurably limits their options. If you accept (or acquiesce) to the need for a large coverage expansion and don’t want a single payer or substantial expansion of existing public systems, you need to make sure private insurers cover the sick, which means you need guaranteed issue and community rating — so that nobody is closed out of the system, and so that risk is spread across large populations, not assigned to individuals. But if you have those two things then you need a coverage requirement, so you’re not just spreading risk among old, sick people. And if you have that mandate, you need substantial subsidies — means tested or otherwise — so people aren’t required to purchase insurance they can’t afford. Of course, that’s just Obamacare.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117326/republican-obamacare-alternative-looking-more-and-more-obamacare
https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/454459024180654081/photo/1
Live streaming now: President Obama announces the nomination of Sylvia Burwell as HHS Secretary
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
Potus protecting Michelle on & off the plane. Too sweet!
Katherine Sebilius resigning is a NON-STORY.
Media hype is BULLSHIT. WE SEE YOU, MSNBC.
https://twitter.com/Interior/status/454028303092178946/photo/1
LePage vetoes Medicaid expansion for all the wrong reasons
04/10/14 04:58 PM—Updated 04/11/14 12:29 AM
By Steve Benen
Maine’s Democratic state House Speaker, Mark Eves, noted the circumstances this week surrounding Medicaid expansion. “We have a bipartisan plan for life-saving health care for tens of thousands of Mainers,” he said. “It creates jobs, it save lives, it saves money.”
All of this happens to be true. Every state north of Virginia has either embraced Medicaid expansion or is working towards doing so – except Maine, where Gov. Paul LePage (R) refuses to cooperate. More than 60,000 low-income Mainers would benefit from the policy, on top of the economic and fiscal benefits, but the Republican governor nevertheless vetoed Medicaid expansion yesterday.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/lepage-vetoes-medicaid-expansion-all
https://twitter.com/amk4obama/status/454592345321635840/photo/1
…. WITH A SMOKIN’ HOT PITCH FORK.
About This Grudge Folks Hold Against Michael Vick…
[ 102 ] April 10, 2014 | Luvvie
Michael Vick did a terrible thing. TERRIBLE. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to sponsoring a dogfighting ring, participating in many himself and being a part of the killing of dogs (pit bulls) by drowning or hanging. And he made money off this stuff. AWFUL stuff, really.
He was convicted, went to jail and paid fines. He has expressed remorse through public apologies, served time and lost his livelihood, and did community service. For all intents and purposes, he has paid his debt (legally). Dude don suffer, which is more than can be said for many terrible people who’ve done terrible things.
So…why won’t people let the dude live now?
Michael Vick has been signed to a deal with the New York Jets and there’s a Change.org petition going around right now demanding that he be banned from the practice field at SUNY Cortland. Talmbout “We MUST send the message that we won’t be party to the torture of animals by conveniently forgetting what he has done. If we welcome Vick onto our campus, we are complicit in his crimes.”
Get THEE entire hell outta here and please tuck in your petty!
It’s gon be 2050 and some white folk are STILL gon be mad at him. “Remember when he fought and killed them dogs?” There are genocides (of humans) going on in the world AS WE SPEAK that folks aren’t bothered about but y’all wanna still be mad about these dogs.
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/04/michael-vick-petition.html#comment-454654
I got your “killed them dogs.” banned @ SunnyCortland petition
Yes; Jimmy, we KNOW. Frank Schaffer’s already given us the scoop on it.
Thanks for playing though.
Ametia..
Scandal…last night….
sigh…
****DOUBLE SIGH**** Waiting for Luvvie’s recap.
Conservative Newspaper Mocks Female Candidate In Sexist Editorial
Posted: 04/10/2014 1:40 pm EDT
The conservative-leaning Washington Times has published an editorial about a female candidate for U.S. Senate that could help to explain why some women are hesitant to run for public office.
The editorial compares Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, to Hollywood’s “beautiful plastic people pretending to be someone else.”
“Mrs. Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, has smiled and chirped her way across the state trying to avoid debate like a terrified Dracula dodging sunlight,” the editorial charges.
Grimes, who is in a dead heat with McConnell in the polls, has served as Kentucky’s secretary of state for two years. During that time, she has launched a program to protect domestic violence and sexual assault victims and introduced a bill to help the military vote from overseas, among other accomplishments.
She is undoubtedly more liberal than McConnell, although she finds herself to the right of most Senate Democrats on certain issues, such as gun control and health care. For instance, she told The Huffington Post in August that while she doesn’t want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by repealing the Affordable Care Act, as McConnell wants to do, she does want to delay the coverage mandate for small businesses.
But conservatives have consistently portrayed her as an attractive but empty-headed cheerleader for Obama. The National Republican Senatorial Committee tweeted out a blog post in November that featured Grimes’ head photoshopped onto the sexily clad body of “Obama Girl” — the model who made racy videos in 2007 about her crush on then-Sen. Barack Obama. And NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring called Grimes an “empty dress” in a September interview.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/10/alison-lundergan-grimes_n_5125850.html?1397151706
Dems run on, not from, the ACA
04/11/14 08:40 AM—Updated 04/11/14 08:41 AM
By Steve Benen
The conventional wisdom on the politics of health care is so widely accepted, it usually goes unchallenged. Democrats – especially vulnerable, red-state Democrats – will be desperate to avoid the Affordable Care Act this election year, eager to talk about anything but the health care law.
Indeed, Dems will simply have no choice: they will run from, not on, their record and the ACA successes.
Perhaps now would be a good time to reevaluate those assumptions.
The Affordable Care Act remains deeply unpopular across the conservative terrain of Alaska, but a super PAC supporting Democratic Sen. Mark Begich’s reelection isn’t shying away from touting the health care law’s success stories.
The pro-Begich group Put Alaska First released an ad Thursday titled “Beat,” in which breast cancer survivor Lisa Keller notes Obamacare enabled her to get health insurance despite the pre-existing condition.
“I was lucky I beat cancer, but the insurance companies still denied me health insurance just because of a pre-existing condition,” Keller says in the ad. “I now have health insurance again because of Mark Begich. Because he fought the insurance companies, so that we no longer have to.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dems-run-not-the-aca
Dems broaden attack on Paul Ryan budget
By Greg Sargent
April 10 at 12:36 pm
The Paul Ryan budget just passed the House of Representatives, with many House Republicans who are running for Senate this cycle voting Aye. Dems have, of course, already signaled plans to make the Ryan budget central to their efforts to draw an economic contrast with Republicans in the 2014 elections.
But here’s something to look out for: Dems will increasingly use the Ryan blueprint to sharpen the contrast in particular on the two parties’ economic agendas for women.
The push on pay equity and the minimum wage have been all about making the case that Dems are offering concrete policies to help women economically, and Republicans aren’t. The Ryan budget will now be added to this argument — to make the case that the GOP economic agenda will disproportionately set women back.
In a statement released just now, the DSCC signaled that this argument will be central in multiple Senate races:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/04/10/dems-broaden-attack-on-paul-ryan-budget/
Morning Plum: Republicans know, just know, Obamacare will destroy country
By Greg Sargent
April 10 at 9:10 am
As many have already pointed out, one of the most serious political problems Democrats face in 2014 is that Republicans are far more motivated by hatred of Obamacare than Dems are by their approval of the law. And some new polling just released by Pew Research captures this very nicely.
The poll’s basic finding: While a minority of Republicans say the law has personally impacted them in a negative way (39-52), Republicans overwhelmingly say the law is currently harming the country overall (69 percent) and say in even greater numbers (73 percent) that the law will harm the country overall. Republicans believe those things in far greater numbers than independents.
That perhaps helps explain the other key finding: Republicans are far more likely to say a candidate’s stance on the ACA will be “very important” to their midterm vote (64 percent) than either independents (45 percent) or Democrats (52 percent). The intensity is with the Obamacare-haters, which could help exacerbate the “midterm dropoff” problem Dems would already be facing.
…………………….
The Pew poll’s finding of overwhelming GOP certainty that the law will hurt the country is generally mirrored in other polls. Kaiser recently found that only Republicans support repealing the law; and only Republicans want the debate over it to continue, while everyone else wants to move on.
The Obamacare Intensity Gap is a real problem for Dems. But the above helps explain why Republicans, too, face complications. They are constrained from advocating only for repeal, because the law’s provisions are kicking in for millions, and they are broadly popular. But they are also constrained from offering any meaningful alternative, because as Jonathan Cohn explains well, that would require supporting the tradeoffs necessary to accomplish what Obamacare accomplishes. Republicans either have to quietly back away from repeal or support ”replacing” it with something that looks a lot like Obamacare. Yet both are nonstarters because the base won’t allow for it to be anything other than an unremitting catastrophe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/04/10/morning-plum-republicans-know-just-know-obamacare-will-destroy-country/
Darrell Issa Started His IRS Investigation Because Karl Rove Was Denied Tax Exempt Status
By: Adalia Woodbury
Friday, April, 11th, 2014, 8:12 am
On Wednesday, the Republican controlled House Oversight and Government Control Committee voted to seek criminal charges against Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress. In other words, the Republicans on the committee know there is no scandal. However, in the name of keeping the theater alive, they’ve got to do something or at least look like they’re doing something. And besides, Lerner’s actions made Darrell Issa look bad on Fox and just made Fox look the same as it usually does.
The odds of this resulting in a prosecution are pretty low. Issa didn’t take the constitutionally necessary steps of overruling Lerner’s Fifth Amendment assertion and he wasn’t “clearly directing her to answer the committee’s questions.”
This doesn’t mean that Lerner is completely in the clear either because there is an ongoing investigation of the IRS’s handling of tax exempt groups and of Lerner’s role in it.
You may remember how Darell Issa embarrassed Fox when he was caught lying about Lerner’s next appearance before the committee. You may also recall that when Lerner waved her rights, Issa took the unprecedented step of shutting down the committee’s hearing without so much as allowing ranking member Elijah Cummings to speak. Issa wasted a year, millions of dollars and thousands of hours in labor desperately seeking an IRS persecution of right wing organizations where none existed.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/11/documents-prove-crossroads-nexus-issa-investigation.html
How to Assess ObamaCare’s Role in the Midterms
by BooMan
Fri Apr 11th, 2014 at 08:12:47 AM EST
Since Easter is almost upon us, I guess it is a good time to talk about the wisdom of putting all your eggs in one basket or, alternatively, the wisdom of trying to make the midterm elections a referendum on ObamaCare.
But, before I get to that, I want to briefly discuss my philosophy of handling polling data. I trust polling data the least when it attempts to weigh public opinion on issues rather than electoral preferences. The reason for this is twofold. First, polling of issues is usually solicited by issue advocates and only released if a favorable result is found. Second, issue polling is literally never verified. We eventually learned exactly what the public thought about Obama vs. Romney, but we never learned exactly what the public thought about abortion rights or Bain Capital. We can judge how accurate the various pollsters were in predicting the presidential election, but we can’t ever judge how accurate they are or were in polling the issues. Having said that, electoral polling done close to an election is the best predictor of the results, and you can use a resource like Nate Silver to get the best predictive value out of electoral polling data. I don’t believe in “skewed polls” for elections, provided that you have a system for accounting for outliers and adjusting for institutional bias. In contrast, I place little value on polls about ObamaCare that are taken now and expected to tell us how the midterms will play out. As Greg Sargent notes, the concern about the public’s opinion of ObamaCare is less about the law’s overall popularity and more about the potential for opposition among Republicans to provide them with a motivational advantage in terms of voter turnout.
As we’ve seen with opposition to reproductive rights, it can be less important what the public as a whole thinks about an issue than how impassioned people are about the issue. Therefore, I think it’s more important to keep track of how opposed the Republican base is to ObamaCare than what the total population thinks.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/11/81247/7885
Republicans Accuse Women of Lying About Being Paid Less Than Men
By: Rmuse
Thursday, April, 10th, 2014, 8:45 pm
What the preponderance of Republican assertions about equal pay for equal work really told American women was to stop lying because according to conservatives there is no pay inequality and women and equal pay advocates are liars for claiming otherwise. Fox News insists there’s no such thing as pay inequity, and the Heritage Foundation said pay equity will hurt women working to support their families mired in poverty. Teabagger Jim DeMint’s organization claimed ”Equal pay and minimum wage: Two ways to hurt women in the workplace.” Republicans continue the stunning assertion that paying American workers more will hurt them financially, and it is supposed to give them cover to oppose overtime pay, raising the minimum wage, and to block any attempt at gender equality in pay. Texas Governor Rick Perry said the pay gap between men and women is “nonsense,” while Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker called it “bogus.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called equality in pay “the left’s latest bizarre obsession” and accused Harry Reid of “blowing a few kisses to his powerful pals on the left.” McConnell thought he was being cute, but there is nothing cute about women earning 77 cents for every dollar as a man in the same job. However, McConnell is right about one thing, women are powerful and Mitch should fear that not all women suffer bible-inferiority complex or Stockholm Syndrome.
Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (TX) said, “This whole thing is a transparent political campaign. It isn’t actually about solving problems, because the law of the land is already paycheck equity.” Cornyn is as big a liar as he is a patriarchal advocate because he just helped Republicans block the bill that would have made paycheck equity the law of the land and he knows it. Kansas Republican Representative Lynn Jenkins claimed “Democrats’ push for pay equity between men and women is “condescending . . . Some folks don’t understand that women have become an extremely valuable part of the workforce today on their own merit, not because the government mandated it.” But according to Republicans they are not “extremely valuable” enough to deserve equal pay according to the second-class status bestowed on them by Republicans exercising freedom of religion to subject women to lower pay than men.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/10/republicans-accuse-women-lying-paid-men.html
Good Morning, Everyone :)
The trouble with Albuquerque according to the DOJ
BY LINDSEY BEVE
It was Jan. 9, 2010.
Aaron Renfro, 32, was riding in a car with two other men when an Albuquerque police officer pulled them over for speeding.
Police said he gave them a fake name, one that had a warrant out for it. And, when they told him to get out of the car, he started running.
Police yelled at him to stop.
He pulled out a gun.
Police fatally shot him, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/11/the-trouble-with-albuquerque-according-to-the-doj/?wpisrc=nl_headlines
Papa Pope Literally got the SHAFT last night.
Good Morning & Happy FRY-day, Everyone! :-)
Whew, that Stomp Dance gave me a good workout.
Good morning, everyone! Glad you got a good workout. I love it!
Girl I do my morning contemplation and them turn on the Native American Dance music. Sweatin like I got caught with my hands in the cookie jar.