Hope you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.
And SG2 – you are in our thoughts and prayers. Sending positive thoughts your way.
Hope you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.
And SG2 – you are in our thoughts and prayers. Sending positive thoughts your way.
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.
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/460561786438029312/photo/1
This is a sad, sad truth.
I’ve learned so much about this country since President Obama took office.
But the children, yes, they are always out there giving us hope.
Jessie Redmon Fauset was born on this day in 1882.
Excerpts from Wikipedia:
August Wilson was born on this day in 1945.
From Wikipedia:
Alice Allison Dunnigan was born on this day in 1906.
http://www.aaregistry.org/aareg_files/event_images/ADunnigan.gif
Ann Peebles was born on this day in 1947.
LEO Weekly: Mitch McConnell Enters A High-Risk Pool On Kynect Opposition
Gov. Steve Beshear announced the almost-final enrollment numbers for Kentuckians gaining access to health care coverage under Kynect before the spring deadline, in which a staggering 413,410 people — 9.6 percent of all Kentuckians — now have health insurance. Roughly 300,000 of these people previously did not have health insurance, and 52 percent of Kynect enrollees are under the age of 35. Sen. Mitch McConnell is beating the drum of repealing Obamacare “root and branch,” though he occasionally slips up and talks about a “fix.” Where this stance becomes dicey for him is when he’s asked what he would do for those 413,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through Kynect, 300,000 of which were previously uninsured, if he succeeds in repealing the ACA. When cornered with this question, McConnell usually goes into talking points mode to avoid specifics, but last week His Swaggerness got McConnell to bite. Asked what he would do for terminally ill Kentuckians who would lose their new insurance if the ACA is repealed, McConnell actually presented what appears to be a specific answer
McConnell is referring to here is Kentucky Access, the state’s former high-risk pool that helped provide insurance on the private market for Kentuckians who were otherwise turned down by insurance companies due to their pre-existing condition. The program operated from 2001 until the end of last year, when it was rendered moot by the ACA. However, Kentucky Access was not very popular, as it was still too expensive for people to buy insurance. In 2013, only 3,988 Kentuckians gained coverage through the program — which did not provide the same consumer protections under the ACA — with the average basic premium for an individual being $680 a month, and the most popular plan with a pharmacy rider having a monthly premium of $1,118 for a male aged 64.
On the other hand, these same people — and hundreds of thousands more — can now gain coverage through Kynect, along with a subsidy to reduce their premium cost and new consumer protections that make their insurance more valuable if they have a medical emergency and cover the costs of basic check ups and screenings. What McConnell is essentially saying is that we should just go back to the way it was before, with vulnerable Kentuckians having to rely on expensive insurance through an unpopular program that did not provide the same protections they have now. Kynect? 413,000 Kentuckians signing up for insurance in the exchange shows you what a popular insurance pool looks like. And yes, 413,000 is greater than 4,000.
http://fatlip.leoweekly.com/2014/04/25/mitch-mcconnell-enters-a-high-risk-pool-on-kynect-opposition/
Irin Carmon: Texas Women Are Running Out Of Options
There is no more birth control at the flea market. And if there ever were abortion pills, they’re long gone, too. At the Rio Grande Valley’s biggest outdoor market, known as la pulga, locals can buy car parts and fertilizer, watermelons out of a pickup, a parakeet, an iPhone case or stickers from their favorite Mexican fútbol team. But since this flea market was among several raided last August over suspicion it was selling abortion pills, if you even ask for birth control you’ll hear voices lower to a fearful whisper. You’ll be sent to the vendor who sells nuts, or the women selling jewelry. On a recent afternoon, all those destinations were a dead end. “Not anymore,” a woman whose table bore aspirin and homeopathic remedies said in Spanish. She shrugged. “Obama wants us to have more babies.” In fact, it wasn’t the federal government that raided four flea markets’ thriving illegal pharmaceutical trade, making undocumented residents that much more terrified to shop in them. The Sheriff of Hidalgo County, who took the lead, didn’t find any abortion pills, but he did charge nine people with selling prescription-drug contraband like diet pills and Viagra from Mexico.
The arrests came a month to the day after a front page New York Times story about how the state’s new omnibus law restricting abortion – the one Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis famously tried to block – was expected to close the Rio Grande Valley’s two abortion clinics.The combined crackdown by state and local authorities in Texas has done more than make it harder for the women of the Valley to get an abortion. They’re now having trouble getting any reproductive health care at all, since the same state legislature that shuttered the abortion clinics also slashed family planning funds and closed family planning providers. And Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid means its distinction as the uninsured capital of the United States isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, making the state’s broader health care crisis even worse.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/texas-women-are-running-out-options?cid=sm_twitter
Blocking health care for 500,000 people is huge plus in GOP primary
By Greg Sargent
April 25 at 1:20 pm
“Thom Tillis has a proven record of fighting against Obamacare. Tillis stopped Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion cold. It’s not happening in North Carolina, and it’s because of Thom Tillis.”
The expected GOP Senate nominee for North Carolina is boasting, in effect, that he is the sole reason 500,000 people in the state he would represent will not get health coverage under the Medicaid expansion. This quote comes from a radio ad Tillis ran this week in the GOP Senate primary.
This will be another interesting test of how the actual GOP position on Obamacare — get rid of it and its benefits for millions — will play politically, as the law’s implementation has made it harder and harder for Republicans to campaign on abstract notions of “repeal and replace.” It’s slowly sinking in with the national press that Democrats are not uniformly running away from the law, and that the GOP repeal stance just might have problems of its own.
The backstory: Tillis, who has to avoid a primary runoff, has been under fire from conservative rivals as soft on Obamacare, because he suggested the law’s general goals might not be uniformly awful and even said Obamacare is a “great idea that can’t be paid for.” Senator Kay Hagan’s campaign then ran a radio ad tweaking Tillis over that quote, in a move observers speculated was designed to hurt him among GOP primary voters. Now Tillis is up with the radio spot — flagged by North Carolina Dems — reinforcing his anti-Obamacare cred:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/slavery-nostalgia-is-real-and-its-dangerous/?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytopinion
rikyrah, I just finished watching the Scandal season finale. Whew! Talk to me, lady.
Papa Pope LARGE & IN CHARGE.
Daddy Pope is the Devil. But, damn, I love the man. Can’t help it. Not in the least. Olivia and B613 being BOTH his babies, and Fitz fucked around with both. Take a man’s children, and you don’t know what he’s capable of doing.
I thought Charlie would physically harm Quinn and Huck. Not that he might not still do it, but the bomb he put in Quinn’s lap was truly evil, because HE was there when Huck was forced to give up his family the first time – Quinn wasn’t. She doesn’t REALLY understand what it cost Huck – Charlie does, which is why that envelope was beyond cruel.
Been thinking about it, and I don’t think Mama and Papa Pope were working together. Remember what Mama Pope said to Adnan when she said she would find the bomb maker and Adnan thought SHE was the bomb maker.
” I don’t make Bombs. I make MONEY…..besides, who would be the patsy? Certainly, not me.”
Papa Pope made Mama Pope his patsy.
Mama Pope being locked up for 20+ years, she didn’t know how things had advanced. Remember, she was shocked that you could use a cellphone to detonate a bomb.
And, she probably wasn’t up on foreign accounts and wire transfers. She hadn’t had the time to set up her own accounts in offshore banks. She only trusted the money she could feel, and Papa Pope knew this, which is why he tricked Harrison into giving up the location of the bank, which he knew was Mama Pope’s weakness.
He doesn’t kill her, because she’s Olivia’s mother. Has no problem holding her hostage, but won’t kill her.
Same reason she won’t kill him – he’s Olivia’s father. Some goon code, I guess.
I’m hoping that Harrison isn’t dead – so that they can re-cast or bring back Columbus Short.
David gets on my nerves. After all he’s seen, he still thinks he’s wearing the White hat. he needs to stop. He’s going to get himself killed, and if it comes to pass, I would feel sad, but not really because he’s just so stupid.
The moment where Olivia told Mellie’s truth about Big Jerry, there was no other way around it. What woman could go off into the sunset with another woman’s husband knowing the true reason as to why the relationship went into the crapper in the first place. You’re already fucking another woman’s husband, but to think that that wouldn’t come back to bite you seriously would be delusional.
Fitz on his knees in the Oval?
Uh uh uh.
They can reset the entire show now. I don’t know when they’ll come back. 6 months from now, or 2 years…it would be interesting.
Andrew McCarthy is Clueless About Crack
by BooMan
Sun Apr 27th, 2014 at 12:03:17 PM EST
I wish the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy would stop to consider the implications of his own words. As he acknowledges, under The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, possession of 5 grams of crack or 500 grams of powder cocaine were treated the same way: a mandatory prison sentence of five years was imposed. Now, consider the practical difference. A group of white suburban teenagers might purchase an “eight-ball” of coke to have some fun on a Saturday night. Possession of two eight-balls would be equal to possession of seven grams of powder cocaine. In other words, someone who brought a slightly more than average amount of coke to a party would have been subject to a five-year sentence if powder cocaine had been treated the way that crack was. Looked at another way, possession of five grams of crack was not a true indicator that someone was a a significant narcotics dealer, or a dealer at all. A crack addict might buy five or more grams at a time for simple convenience, or because they were buying some for their friends, too. So, the disparity wasn’t just that crack-dealing and coke-dealing were treated differently, but that the crack sentences netted a lot of people who were mere addicts or, at worst, couriers. Casual users of cocaine did not commonly possess 500 grams of it at any one time. Casual users of crack often possessed 5 grams at one time.
That’s why the following is so myopic:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/27/12317/9320
NYT: Slavery Nostalgia Is Real, And It’s Dangerous
Northerners may be a little shocked that anyone could feel a bit nostalgic for slavery, in the manner of the government-hating Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy. But in the South, such sentiments are hardly unheard of, even if they are usually muttered in private over a few bourbons rather than spoken at a news conference. Occasionally, in fact, they are expressed or embraced by public figures. A particularly relevant case started about 14 years ago, when Maurice Bessinger, owner of a chain of South Carolina barbecue restaurants called Maurice’s Piggie Park, began distributing pro-slavery tracts in his stores. One of the tracts, called the “Biblical View of Slavery,” said the practice wasn’t really so bad, because it was permitted in the Bible. It argued that many black slaves in the South “blessed the Lord” for their condition, because it was better than their life in Africa.
When the tract was discovered, Mr. Bessinger was denounced and his restaurants boycotted. Many retail stores pulled his distinctive (to be kind) yellow mustardy barbecue sauce from their shelves. But one prominent South Carolinian decided to stand up for Mr. Bessinger. Glenn McConnell, then a state senator from Charleston, stocked the sauce in his Confederate “art gallery,” which was loaded with secessionist flags and uniforms, as well as toilet paper bearing the image of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. When a local power utility banned its trucks from the parking lots of Piggie Park, Mr. McConnell threatened a legislative vendetta against the company. Mr. Bessinger died in February. Mr. McConnell is now the lieutenant governor of South Carolina.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/slavery-nostalgia-is-real-and-its-dangerous/?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytopinion
Dylan Scott: NYT Poll Blows Up GOP’s Obamacare Narrative
A poll released Wednesday offers yet another data point showing the politics of Obamacare aren’t as set in stone as the conventional wisdom would have you believe. Embracing Obamacare isn’t necessarily a political loser, and obstructing it isn’t necessarily a winner. The New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation poll surveyed four Southern states that will help determine control of the Senate this fall. It earned headlines for finding the Democrats in better shape in the Senate races than most would have expected. But it also assessed the popularity of four governors who have taken vastly different approaches to Obamacare — and the findings are a direct contradiction of the narrative that the law is a loser, plain and simple, especially in states like these.
The poll showed Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who expanded Medicaid under the law, are hugely popular. Their approval ratings are more than 20 points higher than their disapproval ratings; Beebe holds 68 percent approval, and Beshear is at 56 percent. But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) are at best treading water with their constituents after they declined to expand the program to cover low-income residents.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/nyt-kff-poll-governors-obamacare-politics
The GOP will go to their graves fighting against OBAMACARE. It doesn’t matter what the American people want.
As long as there’s breath in their wicked bodies, they’ll keep fighting against it. This is where their strength lies, in their consistency.
I’m gonna keep on saying this.
IF they are stupid enough to cling to the Whiteness, instead of getting the help that they need because it comes from a Black man…
FUCK THEM!
………………………………….
Health Law
By JACKIE CALMES
APRIL 26, 2014
excerpt:
“Literally, people thought there would be chips embedded in their bodies if they signed up for Obamacare,” Mr. Bryant said.
Far to the east, at a branch of the Shenandoah Valley Medical System in Martinsburg, Sara R. Koontz, a social worker, said she had heard people express fears about chip implants as well as “death panels” as she sought to enroll uninsured residents. Some told her that they would rather pay a penalty than sign up for insurance, she said, and even people who did enroll paused in their excitement to ask, “Wait — this isn’t that Obamacare, is it?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/us/politics/in-poorest-states-political-stigma-is-depressing-participation-in-health-law.html?hpw&rref=politics&_r=2
DITTO, on your comments, Rikyrah. Fuck them with a rusty nail.
Trying to use Elizabeth Warren as a pawn in the game, of splitting the Dems eh, Georgie Porgie?
Yesterday, Ametia gave us an update on SG2′s health:
Ametia says:
April 26, 2014 at 11:52 am
http://3chicspolitico.com/2014/04/25/3chics-southerngirl2s-in-the-hospital-prayer-circle-thread/#comment-255135
I’ve spoken with SG2 this morning, and she sends her most humblest THANKS.for all your well wishes and prayers. Right now the status is no surgery, lots of medicine via IV therapy and rest.
Keep those prayers and well wishes coming! We’re grateful to you all.
For you, SG2:
Southern Girl 2, God will turn your trial into a testimony. You’re in my prayers for health, strength and a complete recovery. You’re missed in this space~
Hi Vette. Thank you for your prayers and well wishes for SG2.
James McCune Smith was born on this day in 1813.
“Danny Glover as James McCune Smith (produced by the New-York Historic Society)” :
Coretta Scott King was born on this day in 1927.
Three quotations of Coretta Scott King:
“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”
“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
“I’m fulfilled in what I do. I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes – the finer things of life – would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.”
Good Morning Everyone :)
Thanks, rikyrah, for these soul-touching videos. Wow, these hymns delivered in gospel-style really “reached” me!
When I was little, my mom used to sing this song to me. It has always been a favorite of mine, and I heard it in this style:
I am so moved when I hear Aretha Franklin sing it.
Good Morning, Yahtc & Everyone! Sunday spirituals, I’m loving it. :-)