The Complete Works of William Shakespeare:
Comedy
All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Cymbeline
Love’s Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter’s Tale
History
Henry IV, part 1
Henry IV, part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III
Tragedy
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus
Poetry
The Sonnets
A Lover’s Complaint
The Rape of Lucrece
Venus and Adonis
Funeral Elegy by W.S.
Shakespeare Quotations on Love
___
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18)
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2)
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
(Romeo and Juliet, 1.1)
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2)
Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.
(The Tempest, 3.1)
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
(As You Like It, 3.5)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(Sonnet 116)
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor
But was a race of heaven.
(Antony and Cleopatra, 1.3)
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
(Hamlet, 2.2)
When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
(Love’s Labour’s Lost, 4.3)
Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? Why, now let
me die, for I have lived long enough.
(The Merry Wives of Windsor, 3.3)
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
(Sonnet 88)
But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
(Love’s Labours Lost, 4.3)
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2)
One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.
(The Merchant of Venice, 3.2)
The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.
(As You Like It, 3.4)
Love is merely a madness: and, I tell you, deserves as
as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do: and the
reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that
the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too.
(As You Like It, 3.2)
Black Teens Discuss Classroom Discrmination in New Colorlines Series
Young teen boys discuss the stereotypes they face in the classroom
by Courtney Connley Posted: May 13, 2014
n the first installment of Colorlines newly launched series, Life Cycles of Inequities: A Series on Black Men, filmmaker Andre Robert Lee and writer Kai Wright talk to eight Oakland teen boys about the challenges they face within the classroom and how they’re constantly working to defy the stereotypes as black male students.
Publishing content monthly on the experiences of black men, Wright describes the new series as one that will be a “package of content focused on a life stage or event that for black men in the United States is uniquely confined by broad, societal inequities.”
The idea of the series came about following the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and the continuous discussion that takes place about the experiences of black men in America. The video below shows young black boys opening up about the discrimination they face from teachers and peers in school and how they handle being stereotyped on a daily basis.
“I felt like as teachers they had internalized the belief that because I’m black my expectations of the type of work that I could do was less than some of the other students,” one student name Vaughn expressed. “So when I walked in the room they automatically thought the work I was going to do maybe wouldn’t have been as articulate or as progressed as some of the other kids just based off the way I looked.”
Vaughn and the other young men in the series go into detail about being disciplined differently in the classroom, being judged based off how they speak and being boxed in academically.
http://youtu.be/ezZn_N43Jdw
http://www.blackenterprise.com/education/black-teens-discuss-classroom-discrmination-in-new-colorlines-series/#.U3KzQ8z5MoM.twitter
Thanks for this.
Liberal Librarian @Lib_Librarian
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The same Dems rushing to defend Hillary say boo about defending Obama. Odd.
5:31 PM – 13 May 2014
Liberals Pick Dumb Fights with President Obama’s Judicial Nominees
Spandan Chakrabarti May 13, 2014
Liberal groups – and some Democratic members of Congress – are picking dumb fights with two of President Obama’s judicial nominees. The fights aren’t dumb simply because they are trying to open a fissure when the party needs to close ranks behind the President, but rather because of the actual fights they have picked: in one case displaying the disastrous liberal ideologue propensity against compromise and in another, (of course), the liberal Benghazi: DRONES. Let’s talk about them one by one.
David Barron: Circuit Judge Nominee, First Circuit
One of the president’s nominees is Harvard Law Professor David Barron. His sin against dogmatic liberals? He wrote a Justice Department memo that provided legal grounds for the President to target a terrorist born and bred in America but recruiting for Al Queda in Yemen via drone attack. That has particularly stuck in the craws of the ACLU, who made strange bedfellows with the despicably racist Rand Paul to try to block Barron’s nomination. On second thought, the ACLU and Rand Paul may not be that strange as bedfellows. After all, one can thank the ACLU for arguing to the Supreme Court that money is speech and for giving us the never-ending gift of Citizens United and Koch Brothers.
While the ACLU was busy performing the Constitutional perversion of money – which is a medium of commerce, something the Constitution gave Congress explicit control over – into speech – which the founders specifically protected from government interference, it has never explained just what part of the US Constitution exempts American citizens who take up arms against the United States and aide America’s enemies from being met with the same fate as a foreign combatant against the United States. It has never explained just what part of the president’s oath to protect the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic created a special right for terrorists who happen to be born in the USA.
Not to get side-tracked on a personal rant here, but the ACLU-supported Citizens United decision alone is enough to risk every single progressive achievement ACLU has made in the last 100 years. Gay rights, civil rights (although I am expecting to get news any minute now that the ACLU has joined Rand Paul in his frank and open condemnation of the public accommodations part of the Civil Rights Act, a line of argument that would also seem to invalidate the Americans with Disabilities Act), voting rights – it could all go out the window in a system bought and paid for my billionaires. The systematic undermining of voting rights, workers’ rights, and the ability of big money to claim exemptions from the law because of their concocted religious views prevent them from obeying the law can do far more damage to American democracy than even the ACLU is able to repair.
There comes a time when we must look at one’s actions rather than one’s intentions. I don’t care if the ACLU comes with good intentions. But the direct consequences of their actions are the following: a right wing majority on the Supreme Court is providing green lights to billionaires to buy American democracy while the ACLU joins Rand Paul in blocking a Democratic nominee who could preserve some of it. Why? Because, you know, drones. I am so tired of the psychotic, if not suicidal, ravings of the Left’s lunatics that keep insisting on burning down the village in order to save it.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2014/5/12/liberals-pick-dumb-fights-with-president-obamas-judicial-picks
http://youtu.be/zlnvebul580
**************************
HELL NO!
All I need is for my sister to see this pic.
She’s already crazy about random stuff like this.
but, DAMN!!!
I would hit the floor running, and wouldn’t stop until I was OUT OF MY HOUSE.
LOL! That snake will have to catch me first. *running*
LOL I just can’t even start with the jokes about this pic! BWA HA HA HA
Hey Chicas!
Lawd!!!
Poor Kentucky has no stomach for Obama. Jim Feltner wants nothing to do with PBO’s economic inequality.
http://news.yahoo.com/poor-kentucky-no-stomach-obama-153854246.html?bcmt=1400015875650-c8179485-0daa-4a55-99a7-95d4d770a8a3
Jackson (United States) (AFP) – Jim Feltner’s days are empty. He is a poor man in the poorest county in the United States and lives off government aid.
But the Kentucky resident has nothing but scorn for the head of that government, President Barack Obama, who has made the fight against economic inequality one of his battle cries.
Feltner sits in a plastic chair outside his ramshackle mobile home, surrounded by rusty cars and car parts. He has no television.
People around here, he says, are “just surviving, barely. I know, because I’m one of them.”
A victim of two heart attacks, he lives off disability checks, and $105 a month in government food stamps.
Feltner voted for a previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, but now says: “I will vote for anybody against Obama.
“I don’t care who runs against him, I’ll vote for him. I don’t care if it’s a Democrat, a Republican, an Indian, a Pakistani, even a Frenchman!”
Cling to that Whiteness, mofo.
Cling to that Whiteness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YEPtF5bL-c
Please, don’t judge me.
‘West Wing’ Uncensored: Aaron Sorkin, Rob Lowe, More Look Back on Early Fears, Long Hours, Contract Battles and the Real Reason for Those Departures
1:30 AM PDT 5/13/2014 by Lacey Rose, Michael O’Connell, Marc Bernardin
NBC executives stood before a sea of media buyers in Avery Fisher Hall 15 years ago this month and unveiled a series they hoped would defy television’s odds. The show, titled The West Wing, from Sports Night producers Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, would explore the personal and professional lives of those in the White House who worked directly for the President of the United States. And if viewers embraced it, the drama would become the first White House drama in the medium’s history to succeed.
The following May, that same Madison Avenue audience would rise to its feet when the West Wing cast, led by Martin Sheen, took the upfront stage, this time at the Metropolitan Opera House. “A standing ovation. I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is a phenomenon,’ ” recalls Warner Bros. Television chief Peter Roth. Although the unapologetically liberal drama only would crack Nielsen’s top 10 once in its seven seasons, it was showered with awards (26 Emmys, including four best drama series wins), critical praise and a high-profile fan base that included President Clinton
Over the course of its run, The West Wing weathered its share of loss, both onscreen (Rob Lowe departed midway through season four; star John Spencer died during season seven) and off (Sorkin and Schlamme exited after season four).
Here, the cast, creators and executives involved look back at the series that paved the way for a new generation of political series from Scandal to House of Cards.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/west-wing-uncensored-aaron-sorkin-703010
The red-state/blue-state divide deepens on health care
05/13/14 11:37 AM
By Steve Benen
It’s simply taken as a given in conservative circles that the Affordable Care Act is awful for the economy, but increasingly, no one else seems to think so.
A Goldman Sachs researcher published a report for clients last week explaining that ACA subsidies bolstered the economy in the first quarter and will do the same this quarter. “While we were initially skeptical of the large estimated effect of the new subsidies on personal income, these now look more reasonable to us in light of revisions, greater enrollment than expected several months ago, and the fact that states are likely contributing to the subsidies on top of the well-known estimates of federal costs,” the report said.
And it’s not just consumers getting a boost. As Jason Millman reported, hospitals are benefiting, too – at least in some states.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-red-stateblue-state-divide-deepens
Senate GOP still eyeing new abortion restrictions
05/13/14 11:04 AM—Updated 05/13/14 12:13 PM
By Steve Benen
Those who think congressional Republicans will steer clear of divisive social issues this election season need to think again.
Senate Republicans, led by Lindsey Graham, are planning to ramp up their advocacy for an abortion bill around the high-profile anniversary of a former abortion provider’s murder conviction.
The South Carolina Republican is organizing a group of his colleagues to speak in support of a bill that would federally ban abortions after more than 20 weeks of pregnancy, legislation that has the support of 41 Senate Republicans and has already passed the House. Graham is centering this legislative push on the May 13 anniversary of Kermit Gosnell’s conviction for killing infants that were born alive.
In case anyone’s forgotten, 20-week abortion bans would not prevent the Gosnells of the world; they’d arguably do the opposite, forcing desperate women into the hands of dubious “doctors.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/senate-gop-still-eyeing-new-abortion
ABC FALL 2014 SCHEDULE
MONDAY
8 pm Dancing With the Stars
10 pm Castle
TUESDAY
8 pm SELFIE
8:30 pm MANHATTAN LOVE STORY
9 pm Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
10 pm FOREVER
WEDNESDAY
8 pm The Middle
8:30 pm The Goldbergs
9 pm Modern Family
9:30 pm BLACK-ISH
10 pm Nashville
THURSDAY
8 pm Grey’s Anatomy
9 pm Scandal
10 pm HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
FRIDAY
8 pm Last Man Standing
8:30 pm CRISTELA
9 pm Shark Tank
10 pm 20/20
SATURDAY
Saturday Night Football
SUNDAY
7 pm America’s Funniest Home Videos
8 pm Once Upon a Time
9 pm Resurrection
10 pm Revenge
Shonda Rhimes owns Thursdays on ABC this fall.
ABC unveiled its schedule for the 2014-15 TV season on Tuesday, and Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal are moving up an hour to make room for Rhimes’ new drama How to Get Away With Murder at 10/9c.
http://tvline.com/2014/05/13/abc-fall-tv-lineup-2014-greys-scandal/#
THURSDAY night is all mine. LOL
New Orleans Teachers and Students Wrestle With Racial Tension
Students protest the absence of African-American teachers, many of whom were fired after Hurricane Katrina.
BY: JORDAN FLAHERTY Posted: May 13 2014 3:00 AM
Every year hundreds of young, idealistic recent college graduates flood into New Orleans to teach at the city’s public schools. But in a school system where the vast majority of students are African American, the mostly white influx of new teachers has brought complaints of racism and cultural insensitivity, and helped birth a new student-led protest movement.
African Americans are about 60 percent of New Orleans’ population (down from 67 percent before Hurricane Katrina) but make up 88 percent of the city’s public school system. White students are clustered at a handful of high-performing schools, and other ethnicities make up only small portions of the system, so most schools are almost entirely African American. Before Hurricane Katrina, most teachers were black women, mostly from New Orleans and often from the neighborhoods of the schools in which they worked.
But in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the entire staff of the school system—about 7,000 teachersand other employees—was laid off, their contract was ignored and their union was powerless to help. Katrena Ndang, who worked for 17 years as a teacher in New Orleans, found out she’d been fired while watching the news after being evacuated. “Even though we had given them forwarding addresses, they never sent us notice,” she says.
This January the Louisiana Court of Appeal affirmed an earlier ruling that found the teachers were wrongly terminated. But the school system, now almost entirely charter, looks very different from the one from which the teachers were dismissed. And one of the major changes was the entry of thousands of new teachers, many drawn from elite colleges and universities.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/new_orleans_schools_plagued_by_racial_tension.html
May 12, 2014
Bonus Quote of the Day
“If you bastards want a fight, you damn well will get one.”
— Bill Clinton, as recounted by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) in his new memoir, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black, after Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 South Carolina Democratic primary to Barack Obama.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2014/05/12/bonus_quote_of_the_day.html
Buki Williams @jidts07
Told you he never gave a shit about voting rights –> Paul’s office clarifies voter ID remarks | TheHill http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/205906-pauls-office-clarifies-voter-id-remarks#.U3Iv77WJzAY.twitter … via @TheHill
Rand Paul is just like his daddy Ron. Two peas in a pod. And no matter how much lil Rand tries to hem and haw to hide his disdain for BLACK people, it won’t work. Rand’s a spiteful Libertarian racist. THE END.
5 lessons from Solange attack video
Opinion
by Luvvie | May 13, 2014 at 8:00 AM
If this news were tea, the Lipton factory would be sending us all a bill.
Solange Knowles tried to fight Jay-Z in an elevator at the Met Gala as Julius (the BAWDYguard) tried to hold her back and Beyonce stood out the way. Mama Tina’s youngest was out for blood because she lunged at Jay with such ferocity that honey badgers everywhere are like “she stole my move.”
This is all super messy, and the internet has basically lost its collective mind over it. We’re not used to this type of scandal in the Knowles camp, so we don’t know how to behave.
There’s just so much to peel back about that video, and we’ve all speculated about what could have started the fight. What sucks is that we might not find out because the Knowles Carter machine will put a lock down on anything else leaking. For nosy nancies like me, this is a major disappointment. I just want to know what made Solange go all Mortal Kombat on her in-law like this.
Anyway, I’ve watched the video multiple times (for research purposes coughs), and I feel like there’s certain things we can all learn here.
Don’t piss off Solange Knowles.
Seriously. Do not. If you end up in a confined space together, she might come for your throat, neck and nethers. It doesn’t matter if she’s in a dress (that made her look like walking candy corn) and it’s a frou frou affair. Homegirl will not let you have peace until she settles her beef. Also, she’s adept at the art of being mad, acting like you’re cool so people can stop holding you back and then you trick them by lunging for your opponent. It’s a great skill to have in times when people won’t let you connect like you want to.
Ok fine. Maybe that’s not fair. She doesn’t typically go around fighting, so this definitely adds fuel to the “Jay-Z did some terrible stuff” fire that the internet is stoking. AGAIN, I WANNA KNOW! Maybe Jay told her that she doesn’t ever match and her love of rocking multiple prints on one outfit makes us all dizzy.
Beyoncé is a robot
The entire time all this chaos was happening, Bey was mostly calm and unbothered. Many of us think that it’s because this sort of thing has happened before. This doesn’t feel like it was a first time thing. No hairs (baby or synthetic) of hers were outta place, and she let her bodyguard do the intervening. On the extended clip though, we see that she seemed to exchange words with both Jay and Solange, but she still looked super calm. I salute her. My dramatic self woulda been all out of sorts, yelling at both of them not to shame me or my name while talking with my hands excitedly. Not her, though. She kept her cool as her sister fought her husband like he stole her last pink Starburst.
http://thegrio.com/2014/05/13/solange-attack-video-lessons/
V. Hussein Savage @Kennymack1971
Well… I’ll show the same level of interest in defending Hillary that she and White feminists showed in defending Susan Rice and FLOTUS.
X’s 100
https://twitter.com/Hieroglyph_News/status/466201772269502465/photo/1
this is some nasty shit right here:
Good grief, apparently this is a trend
At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter-ID laws’
05/13/14 10:11 AM
By Steve Benen
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) earned some progressive praise over the last few days, following comments that put some distance between himself and his party’s voter-suppression tactics.
“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter-ID thing,” Paul told the New York Times on Friday. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.”
The plaudits from the left may have been a little premature. Late yesterday, the director of Rand Paul’s political action committee issued a statement, clarifying matters.
“Senator Paul was having a larger discussion about criminal justice reform and restoration of voting rights, two issues he has been speaking about around the country and pushing for in state and federal legislation.
“In the course of that discussion, he reiterated a point he has made before that while there may be some instances of voter fraud, it should not be a defining issue of the Republican Party, as it is an issue that is perhaps perceived in a way it is not intended. At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter ID laws. In terms of the specifics of voter ID laws, Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/no-point-did-senator-paul-come-out
Whether he likes it or not, Boehner controls immigration bill’s fate
05/13/14 08:02 AM—Updated 05/13/14 08:16 AM
By Steve Benen
For months, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) tried to blame President Obama for House Republicans’ refusal to consider immigration reform: GOP lawmakers don’t trust the White House, the argument went, so the administration’s responsible for Republican intransigence. A few weeks ago, however, Boehner accidentally told the truth: House Republicans, afraid of hard work and tough choices, are ultimately responsible for inaction on the issue.
So which is it? As a matter of substance, the Speaker’s accidental honesty gave away the game, but as a matter of politics, it’s awkward when the House Republican leader blames his own members for a colossal failure – so now Boehner seems to be pushing both arguments simultaneously.
The Ohio Republican, speaking at a luncheon sponsored by several San Antonio business groups, acknowledged that there are some in his conference who do not want to take on the issue, but he was measured in speaking about his colleagues’ resistance.
“There are some members of our party who just do not want to deal with this. It’s no secret,” he said. “I do believe the vast majority of our members do want to deal with this, they want to deal with it openly, honestly and fairly.”
Boehner then added, “I put the ball back in the president’s court. He’s going to have to do something to demonstrate his trustworthiness.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/whether-he-likes-it-or-not-boehner
from TOD:
Quelle surprise to find my TOD comment here at 3ChicsPolitico. Thanks!
Senate GOP kills bipartisan energy-efficiency bill
05/13/14 08:31 AM
By Steve Benen
Federal lawmakers almost passed worthwhile, bipartisan legislation yesterday, but as is too often the case, the do-nothing Congress found a way to do, well, nothing.
A bipartisan bill to encourage energy efficiency in buildings died in the Senate on Monday, derailed by the contentious debate over the Keystone XL pipeline and President Obama’s plans to issue new climate change regulations. […]
The measure, sponsored by Senators Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, was a rarity in today’s political environment: Until last week, it had widespread support from members of both parties in both chambers of Congress. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Representatives David B. McKinley, Republican of West Virginia, and Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, has also drawn strong bipartisan backing.
Congressional staff members have been working behind the scenes for nearly a year to draft a consensus version of the bill that party leaders in both chambers could endorse. Just a few weeks ago, leaders of both parties were optimistic that the Senate bill would show that bipartisan agreement is still possible in a gridlocked Capitol and pave the way for a broader energy bill.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/senate-gop-kills-bipartisan
Never forget this:
Obamacare is the first expansion of the American Social Safety Net that did NOT include in its design, the exclusion of swaths of the American people. Remember Social Security was allowed to begin with the exclusion of huge swaths of certain types of jobs, that ‘coincidentally’ just ‘happened’ to exclude BLACKS. ANd that design has repercussions to this day, with Black Seniors on the receiving end of far lower SS checks that they should’ve received. The reason why Medicare’s age was set at 65, was because Black folk didn’t live long enough to get it. OBAMACARE in it’s design, did not exclude anyone. It took the Roberts Court to do that. And NOBODY will convince me that the main reason for non-expansion of Medicaid isn’t wrapped up in denying access to healthcare to all those Black people.
TELL.IT. Rikyrah, you need to do a separate post on this and BRING THE FACTS. That movie the Help” and all those other maid and butler movies, are living proof of the jobs blacks were relegated to, to provide for themselves and their familes without the benefit of SOCIAL SECURITY.
Again with the WMD?
05/13/14 09:17 AM
By Steve Benen
There’s a wide-open U.S. Senate race in Iowa this year, where Sen. Tom Harkin (D) is retiring after 30 years as a progressive champion. Rep. Bruce Braley (D) is the early favorite, though it’s still early and Iowa is a competitive battleground.
It’s a fairly crowded Republican primary field, with no obvious frontrunner, though state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) is going to great lengths to help put some distance between her and her GOP rivals. It was Ernst, for example, who ran the notorious castration ad, and it was Ernst who pulled off the rare feat of picking up endorsements from both Mitt Romney (representing the party establishment) and Sarah Palin (representing the activist base).
But Ernst is also using her military background in a curious way. The conservative Republican, whose claims about her National Guard service have drawn scrutiny, made these comments to the Des Moines Register’s editorial board on Friday.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/again-the-wmd
The Drug War Was the Wrong War – How We Missed the Battlefield by Light-years
palmerskiss
What if the drug war was actually a distraction?
Bealefeld has an obsessive streak, and soon he was pouring over the matrices that predicted violence: What made you likely to be a murderer? It was true that nearly all of Baltimore’s murderers and murder victims had drug arrests in their past. But in many parts of Baltimore, nearly everyone seemed to have some involvement in dealing—the narcotics-unit lingo was “8-88,” meaning there were participants in the drug trade as young as 8 years old or as old as 88. Trying to organize policing around drugs, given these circumstances, could only mean a broad roundup of the neighborhood, and though this had worked very well in New York, it had worked much less well when smaller departments (New Orleans, Philadelphia, Baltimore) tried the same model—and it had the additional effects of overwhelming jails and probation systems and alienating the community. “We are fishing with a net,” Bealefeld started to say publicly, “and we need to be fishing with a spear
Read more at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/308303_The_Drug_War_Was_the_Wrong_War#tQevcU7Sq3Csd1Ut.99
Clay Aiken’s Opponent Dies Suddenly
Less than a week after losing to former American Idol Clay Aiken in a close North Carolina primary election for Congress, 71-year-old businessman Keith Crisco died in a fall at his home in Asheboro on Monday. The race to take on incumbent GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers had been deemed too close to call initially, but Aiken was ahead of Crisco by around 369 votes. Prior to his death, Crisco had been expected to concede to Aiken on Tuesday.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/05/12/clay-aiken-s-opponent-dies-suddenly.html
Whistleblower Suit Alleges Corruption, Cronyism, and Affairs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s Administration
Two former appointees of the governor’s level a series of explosive allegations against a Martinez appointee and his deputy.
—By Andy Kroll
| Thu May 8, 2014 2:20 PM EDT
A recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit filed in New Mexico state court makes a series of explosive allegations against appointees of rising GOP star Gov. Susana Martinez, accusing high-ranking officials in her administration of public corruption, mismanagement, and intimidation. It claims that officials at the state’s economic development agency engaged in extramarital affairs that could expose the state to sexual harassment charges and that officials tried to silence employees who reported contracting violations and other wrongdoing.
The 22-page complaint—filed February 10 on behalf of two former state employees—claims that a company co-founded by Martinez appointee Jon Barela, secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, secretly benefited from a state tax credit program. The complaint also alleges that aides to Martinez instructed a state employee to use his personal email for sensitive government work to avoid being subject to public records requests; that Barela and his deputy, Barbara Brazil, ignored waste and mismanagement at the state’s Spaceport project in southern New Mexico; and that Brazil ran several Dairy Queen franchises she had an interest in “while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/susana-martinez-new-mexico-whistleblower-suit-jon-barela
https://twitter.com/ShawnHuckaby/status/466010164810629121/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheWorldStories/status/441936486272094208/photo/1
Meet the Preacher Behind Moral Mondays
The Reverend William Barber is charting a new path for protesting Republican overreach in the South—and maybe beyond.
—By Lisa Rab
| Mon Apr. 14, 2014 6:00 AM EDT
On a recent Sunday afternoon, the Reverend William Barber II reclined uncomfortably in a chair in his office, sipping bottled water as he recovered from two hours of strenuous preaching. When he was in his early 20s, Barber was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a painful arthritic condition affecting the spine. Still wearing his long black robes, the 50-year-old minister recounted how, as he’d proclaimed in a rolling baritone from the pulpit that morning, “a crippled preacher has found his legs.”
It began a few days before Easter 2013, recalled Barber, pastor at the Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “On Maundy Thursday, they chose to crucify voting rights,” he said.
“They” are North Carolina Republicans, who in November 2012 took control of the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion for the first time in more than a century. Among their top priorities—along with blocking Medicaid expansion and cutting unemployment benefits and higher-education spending—was pushing through a raft of changes to election laws, including reducing the number of early voting days, ending same-day voter registration, and requiring ID at the polls. “That’s when a group of us said, ‘Wait a minute, this has just gone too far,'” Barber said.
On the last Monday of April 2013, Barber led a modest group of clergy and activists into the state legislative building in Raleigh. They sang “We Shall Overcome,” quoted the Bible, and blocked the doors to the Senate chambers. Barber leaned on his cane as capitol police led him away in handcuffs.
That might have been the end of just another symbolic protest, but then something happened: The following Monday, more than 100 protesters showed up at the capitol. Over the next few months, the weekly crowds at the “Moral Mondays” protests grew to include hundreds, and then thousands, not just in Raleigh but also in towns around the state. The largest gathering, in February, drew tens of thousands of people. More than 900 protesters have been arrested for civil disobedience over the past year. Copycat movements have started in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama in response to GOP legislation regarding Medicaid and gun control.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/william-barber-moral-monday-north-carolina
https://twitter.com/YellowstoneNPS/status/465830977844293633/photo/1
John Boehner says he is encouraging Jeb Bush to run for president
By Susan Ferrechio | MAY 12, 2014 AT 2:15 PM
House Speaker John Boehner said he is “nudging” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to run for president and he wants to take up immigration reform legislation in small pieces, starting first with border security.
Boehner made the remarks at the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce during a question-and-answer session with the editor of Texas Monthly.
Boehner, when asked whether the House would take up immigration reform this year, said it would depend on whether he can “bring my members along,” and he acknowledged that one group of GOP lawmakers has no interest in taking up the issue during an election year.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/john-boehner-says-he-is-encouraging-jeb-bush-to-run-for-president/article/2548330
https://twitter.com/CuteOverloads/status/446851232448389120/photo/1
Chris Connelly ✔ @ChrisConnelly
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Solange waiting at CNN elevator bank for Donald Sterling
7:45 PM – 12 May 2014
Anderson Cooper 360° ✔ @AC360
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“He’s messing with the wrong brother. Magic is loved around the world” @SpikeLee on #DonaldSterling’s #AC360 interview.
7:42 PM – 12 May 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
Last Call To Mind That Gap Again
The good news for Democrats: the enthusiasm gap among Republicans is the worst recorded. The bad news: Democrats are even less enthusiastic about voting in 2014.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/05/last-call-to-mind-that-gap-again.html
The Politics of Polarization: Not as Simple as They Seem
Paul Waldman
May 12, 2014
Too often, journalists talk about this phenomenon as though it were symmetrical, with Republicans and Democrats moving away from the center at roughly the same rate. But that’s just not true.
Polarization is everywhere these days. Voters are polarized, legislators are polarized, the courts are polarized, all perhaps to different degrees at different moments, but the movement of the parties—and those who represent them—away from each other is evident in one realm after another.
But too often, journalists talk about this phenomenon as though it were symmetrical, with Republicans and Democrats moving away from the center at roughly the same rate, even though that’s not true. For instance, Congress has seen asymmetrical polarization in recent years, with Democrats growing slightly more liberal and Republicans growing much, much more conservative. There are a lot of reasons that has happened, but what I want to focus on at the moment is the differing internal dynamics of the two parties that help produce it.
http://prospect.org/article/politics-polarization-not-simple-they-seem
EJ Dionne: The Democrats’ strategic ambiguity
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: May 11
It’s a lot of good news. But note that word “significant.” It’s less buoyant than, say, “fantastic” or “wonderful.” The understatement reflected what Obama said a moment later: “What we also know is that the American public is anxious.”
The president listed the many sources of that anxiety, concluding with a central Democratic theme: that “for a couple of decades now, even when we’re growing, even when corporate profits are soaring, incomes, wages have not gone up.” For “ordinary Americans,” he said, the improvement “hasn’t translated into greater financial security.”
Obama’s be-happy-but-worry theme is justified by the facts, but it leads to a peculiar imbalance in the campaign dialogue. Republicans rail against everything Obama has done. Their agenda may look like a catalog of Fox News obsessions — last month it was Obamacare, currently it’s Benghazi. But they will not stop blaming Obama and his party for all the country’s shortcomings. Democrats, by contrast, feel constrained from offering an unambiguously sunny rebuttal.
The long-term stall in middle-class incomes Obama described is one reason they can’t. Most Democrats also have a philosophical commitment to reducing inequalities. They may hold the White House but they are not championing the status quo.
The party’s candidates fear that if they are too upbeat, they’ll look out of touch with a country whose spirits aren’t very high. The RealClearPolitics polling averages show that over the last month, only 28 percent of Americans saw the country as being on the right track; 63 percent said it was moving in the wrong direction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-the-democrats-strategic-ambiguity/2014/05/11/8cafc8fe-d799-11e3-95d3-3bcd77cd4e11_story.html
Peters, Land ramp up ads in Michigan U.S. Senate race
By Charles Crumm, The Oakland Press
Posted: 05/12/14, 1:11 PM EDT|Updated: 7 hrs ago
A new ad released Monday criticizes Republican Terri Lynn Land for bulldozing the trailer park she claims in her own advertising was part of her successful background.
The campaign of U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, a Bloomfield Township Democrat, claims in the 30-second spot that people were left homeless so Land could make a profit.
It’s a response to a Land ad that touts her background managing a trailer park and motel as part of her own personal and political success story.
Peters and Land seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Carl Levin.
The ad is the latest between the two financially well-heeled candidates who are in a virtual tie in the polls six months before the November election and who are likely to duke it out in advertising in the months until the election.
How well-heeled are they? The most recent campaign finance reports for the quarter ending March 31 indicates each has free cash in the neighborhood of $3.5 million, enough to take to the airwaves with ads.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/government-and-politics/20140512/peters-land-ramp-up-ads-in-michigan-us-senate-race
Europe’s top court: people have right to be forgotten on Internet. Reuters reports: “People can ask Google to delete sensitive information from its Internet search results, Europe’s top court said on Tuesday.”
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/PSLW3N/FKIT5E/FIQ6PF/S3TLR2G/R37E2A/N9/h
Let this muthafucka get sick and bankrupt himself. I have no sympathy for folks willing to be this goddamned stupid.
……………………………………………………………
Monday, May 12, 2014
What The Democrats Are Up Against in 2014
They are up against people who have been convinced to destroy their own self-interest in the name of greed and power, people like 33-year-old New Hampshire auto mechanic Derek Gagnon.
Darek Gagnon is exactly the type of person the Affordable Care Act is supposed to be helping: uninsured, working class Americans who if they ever got truly sick or hurt would be in a world of financial pain.
But the Right Wing Noise Machine has made sure of two things: that Derek Gagnon is acting against his own self-interest and will continue to do so, and that he will vote in order to perpetuate this situation. The first is Derek’s problem. The second problem affects all of us, because he will vote to put someone like Scott Brown in the Senate rather than Democrat Jeanne Shaheen to make laws for all 315 million of us.
Derek Gagnon will vote. For whatever reasons he has for voting, his vote counts the same as yours.
Will you vote? People like Derek will. And if you don’t vote, he’ll get to choose who runs this country
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-democrats-are-up-against-in-2014.html
The SEC Has Revealed Astounding Corruption in Private Equity And, for once, the commission is not letting them get away with it
By Mike Konczal
When liberals talk about economic regulation, they often use eye-rolling abstractions like “accountability” and “transparency.” What do those things even mean? How are those objectives enforced, and what would this enforcement even look like? Luckily we have a real-time example of what it all means, courtesy of Dodd-Frank and the SEC. It involves one of the more controversial parts of the financial markets, and it gives us a view into how reform happens.
As a result of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, private equity firms must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This, in turn, allows the SEC to examine the behavior of private equity firms on behalf of investors. The SEC just completed an initial wave of 150 firms, and what it found is shocking.
These results were unveiled last week when Andrew Bowden, the director of the SEC’s examinations office, gave a speech titled “Spreading Sunshine in Private Equity.” The big takeaway: Half of the SEC’s exams find corruption in the way fees and expenses are handled. Or as Bowden forcefully describes it: “When we have examined how fees and expenses are handled by advisers to private equity funds, we have identified what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time.”
As Bowden notes, the business model of private equity, which manages almost $3.5 trillion dollars of our nation’s assets, has unique conflicts of interest built into the structure. Private equity firms use their client’s money to do leveraged buyouts of companies. Since this gives them major operating control of both the investment and a pool of other’s investment money, there are significant opportunities to shift costs and otherwise skim off their investors.
Bowden’s speech has numerous examples. One scam is to fire employees of the private equity firm and rehire them immediately as “consultants.” The investors are responsible for consultants’ salaries, where private equity employees are paid out of their own pockets. Another is taking what most private equity investors believe to be part of management fees, things like legal and compliance costs, and billing their investors for them without the investors properly knowing it. A third is private equity firms lying about the valuation methods they use to tell investors about the returns they make each year. All of these are ways for private equity firms to take money from their investors for themselves.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117735/private-equity-fraud-how-firms-are-ripping-their-investors
May 12, 2014 11:54 AM
The Backlash to Rand Paul’s Disavowal of Voter ID Laws
By Ed Kilgore
Like (I hope) a lot of progressive writers, I applauded Sen. Rand Paul’s statement on Friday that having discussed the issue with a group of African-American ministers, he though the Republican Party should declare a cease-fire in the War on Voting, and stop promoting voter ID laws and other efforts to restrict the franchise. But I also figured he’d get some blowback from other Republicans. And boy, is that happening.
Check out this rant from the featured post today at RedState, from Leon Wolf, under the calm headline: “Rand Paul and his Lickspittles Strike Again:”
In other words, Paul is crazy to oppose Voter ID laws that are popular among white folks; unpopular only among black folks who aren’t voting Republican anyway; and thus help Republicans win elections.
Interestingly enough, the post goes on to ask that if Paul is so solicitous of the views of African-Americans, why did he keep a neo-Confederate on his payroll for so long, and why did he struggle to reconcile himself with the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 until quite recently? Good questions.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/the_backlash_to_rand_pauls_dis050304.php4
May 12, 2014 5:17 PM
Moderation and the Minimum Wage
By Ed Kilgore
I have mixed feelings about Ross Douthat’s column suggesting that would-be Republican “moderates” can’t claim a coherent economic message just by saying the usual conservative stuff and then endorsing the most popular progressive legislation, such as a minimum wage increase. On the one hand, Douthat’s again positioning himself as a brave heretic—but one who just happens to agree with conservatives on a lot of details, such as the inadvisability of minimum wages increases. On the other, I can empathize with his annoyance at pols whose idea of “moderation” is to embrace one or two conveniently poll-tested policy ideas from the other side, whether or not it fits in with anything else he or she is saying (I sure don’t like it when Democratic “moderates” do that).
But I’ll go him one better: what’s even more displeasing logically and morally than the cherry-picking “moderate” is the ideologue who won’t disclose underlying positions that aren’t popular. For example: if you believe half of what Douthat seems to believe about the actively negative effects of a minimum wage increase, then you need to admit you don’t favor the minimum wage at all. Accordingly, there’s no particular reason other than pure political expediency to embrace the alternatives to a minimum wage increase he urges on Republicans while refusing to embrace them as alternatives to the minimum wage itself.
Maybe that’s what Douthat is trying to say when he tells pols to develop a “an alternative, right-of-center suite of policies on jobs and wages,” but if he means “in lieu of any minimum wage,” he should make that very clear.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/moderation_and_the_minimum_wag050312.php
I’m gonna be blunt here, only a privileged White Man could talk about the saving lives as not the BIGGEST benefit. Really? Truly? Are you serious?
See, I just think differently because I think that saving lives and helping people get access to healthcare so that they can live longer lives with those that they love
IS THE FUCKING POINT!
………………………………
Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit
—By Kevin Drum
| Mon May 12, 2014 11:00 AM EDT
Ed Kilgore points me to a recent piece by Harold Pollack that takes a look at the recent study of Romneycare in Massachusetts and tries to extrapolate what it means about Obamacare:
I’d very strongly emphasize that last sentence. The effect of Obamacare on mortality is always going to be contentious. The Massachusetts study might be wrong. Medicaid might be less effective than private insurance. And there’s no telling how long these medical interventions delay death. Six months? Six years? More?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/05/obamacare-saves-lives-thats-not-really-its-big-benefit
Obamacare saving lives is not really its big benefit?!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone! :-)
Robin Roberts on love and healing”
http://www.thespec.com/living-story/4515124-robin-roberts-on-love-and-healing/
“D.C. area writers among winners of Go On Girl! Book Club Awards”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/05/12/d-c-area-writers-among-winners-of-go-on-girl-book-club-awards/
The Confirmation of Michael P. Boggs Raises Serious Concerns for the Civil and Human Rights Community”
http://www.civilrights.org/advocacy/letters/2014/the-confirmation-of-michael.html
“Tale Of Two Billboards: An Ozark Town’s Struggle To Unseat Hate”
http://wunc.org/post/tale-two-billboards-ozark-towns-struggle-unseat-hate
Joe Lewis was born on this day in 1914. From Wikipedia:
“Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981), better known as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from 1937 to 1949.
“He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis helped elevate boxing from a nadir in popularity in the post-Jack Dempsey era by establishing a reputation as an honest, hardworking fighter at a time when the sport was dominated by gambling interests.
“Louis’ championship reign lasted 140 consecutive months, during which he participated in 26 championship fights….. All in all, Joe was victorious in 25 title defenses, a record for the heavyweight division.
“In 2005, Louis was ranked as the #1 heavyweight of all-time by the International Boxing Research Organization, and was ranked #1 on The Ring’s list of the 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time.
“One of Us: Joe Louis is remembered as an ‘American hero’ by his son on his 100th birthday”
http://jacksonville.com/news/columnists/charlie-patton/2014-05-12/story/one-us-joe-louis-remembered-american-hero-his-son
Matilda Evans was born on this day in 1972. From Wikipedia:
“Matilda Evans, M.D., (May 13, 1872 – November 17, 1935) was the first African-American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina and an advocate for improved health care for African Americans, particularly children.”
You can learn more about her at this link:
http://library.sc.edu/blogs/newspaper/2013/02/19/matilda-evans/
Good Morning, Everyone :)