Thursday Open Thread | Country Music | Tim McGraw

Posted on May 22, 2014 by SouthernGirl2

Tim McGrawSamuel Timothy “Tim” McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country music singer, songwriter and actor. Many of his albums and singles have topped the country music charts with total album sales in excess of 40 million units in the US, making him the eighth best-selling artist, and the third best-selling country singer, in the Soundscan era. He is married to country singer Faith Hill and is the son of the late baseball player Tug McGraw.

McGraw had 11 consecutive albums debut at Number One on the Billboard albums charts. Twenty-five of his singles hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts. He has also won three Grammys, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People’s Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour with Faith Hill is the highest grossing tour in country music history, and one of the Top 5 among all genres of music.

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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79 Responses to Thursday Open Thread | Country Music | Tim McGraw

  1. Yahtc says:
    May 22, 2014 at 9:54 pm

    Reply
  2. Yahtc says:
    May 22, 2014 at 9:13 pm

    “At vigil for Amherst teacher, action urged on ‘institutionalized racism”

    http://www.recorder.com/news/fivecollegeareanews/11515835-95/at-vigil-for-amherst-teacher-action-urged-on-institutionalized-racism

    Reply
  4. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 5:54 pm

    Marco Rubio and Bernie Sanders Brawl over Need for Law Holding VA Accountable
    by Noah Rothman | 1:59 pm, May 22nd, 2014

    On Thursday, in the wake of the scandalous revelations surrounding the VA, the House passed the VA Management Accountability Act. That law would provide Veterans Affairs Department managers with a means of removing VA administrators judged incompetent from their posts. During a debate on that law in the Senate, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sparred over whether the law was necessary or if broader reforms were needed.

    Responding to Rubio, Sanders said that the VA has many problems, not merely those regarding the covering up of wait times which may have led to deaths. He said that access to education, sexual assault, and other issues should be a part of broad VA reform.

    “I am very glad that my Republican colleagues are now beginning to focus on veterans’ issues, and we need to step up to the plate to help not only our veterans but their families,” Sanders said, objecting to the VA Management Accountability Act. “We are going to hold a hearing on that legislation and other legislation in early June.”

    Rubio replied by saying that he agreed that the VA’s issues should not be politicized, and noted that he has not called for the resignation of VA Sec. Eric Shinseki. “I’m not claiming this was created by the Democrats or other party,” Rubio said. “This issue may become politicized in the sense that it seems that all of the reluctance to move forward on it is coming from one side of the equation but that does not necessarily have to be.”

    He added that the bill would pass the upper chamber of Congress by an overwhelming majority, as it did in the House, if the leadership would bring it up for a vote.

    “I don’t’ think that any of us want to go home for the Memorial Day recess and when we’re asked ‘What are you doing on this issue,’ our answer is, ‘Well, in about 15 days we’re going to have a hearing,” Rubio concluded.

    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/marco-rubio-and-bernie-sanders-brawl-over-need-for-law-holding-va-accountable/

    Reply
  5. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    Jorge Ramos Confronts Boehner for Playing Obamacare Card on Immigration
    by Josh Feldman | 3:24 pm, May 22nd, 2014

    Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos confronted John Boehner
    at a press conference today about why the House has stalled for a year on immigration reform, and called him out for invoking Obamacare as a reason they haven’t gotten it done yet.

    Boehner insisted he’s not blocking immigration reform, it’s just that the president “continues to ignore Obamacare, his own law,” and so he “reduces the confidence” of people who would otherwise like immigration reform. Ramos responded, “What does Obamacare have to do with immigration reform?”
    He challenged Boehner on how the House could do it if they really
    wanted to, but they haven’t because Boehner hasn’t brought it to a vote.
    Boehner simply answered, “I appreciate your opinion. Thank you.

    http://www.mediaite.com/online/jorge-ramos-confronts-boehner-for-playing-obamacare-card-on-immigration/

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 5:29 pm

    The Cost: What Stop and Frisk Does to a Young Man’s Soul
    Every afternoon when Trey left school in his car, two white patrolmen would follow him in their cruiser, sometimes a few blocks, sometimes several miles, before turning on their patrol lights.

    When my godson Trey was a toddler growing up in Brooklyn, every white woman who saw him fell in love with him. He was a beautiful child, sweet natured, affectionate, with cocoa-colored skin and a thousand-watt smile. I remember sitting with him and his mom in a pizzeria one day, watching as he played peekaboo with two white ladies at a nearby booth. “What a little doll!” the ladies cooed. “Isn’t he adorable?”

    I told Marilyn I dreaded the day he would run up against some white person’s prejudice.“His feelings are going to be hurt,” I said. “He won’t know it’s about this country’s race history, he’ll think it’s about him. Because so far in his young life every white person he’s ever met has adored him.” Marilyn nodded, but her closed expression seemed to say I was talking about things I didn’t really understand.

    ……………………..

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/21/the-cost-what-stop-and-frisk-does-to-a-young-man-s-soul.html

    Reply
  8. Ametia says:
    May 22, 2014 at 4:04 pm

    Jonathan Karl’s Latest Benghazi Scoop Was Reported By His Network In 2012

    Blog ››› 58 minutes ago ››› HANNAH GROCH-BEGLEY

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/22/jonathan-karls-latest-benghazi-scoop-was-report/199433

    Reply
  12. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 1:29 pm

    Rik and Ametia

    check your email.

    Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    skeptical brotha @skepticalbrotha

    Black Conservatism is a delusion & a psychotic break from the legacy, reality & omnipresence of institutionalized discrimination in America.

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:14 pm

    skeptical brotha @skepticalbrotha

    what angers Black Conservatives is any effort by blackfolks to get them to stop colluding with those who actively discriminate against us.

    Reply
  15. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:14 pm

    skeptical brotha @skepticalbrotha

    the thing that disturbs me most about Black Conservatives is that they’re not angry about slavery, segregation, and continuing exploitation

    Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    Bella B. Chillinson @brownandbella

    Equivalencies like Mark Cubans are dangerous. Biases like his are the EXACT reason black children like Trayvon, Amadou, and others DIE.

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 11:46 am

    The Case for Reparations

    Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

    ——————————————————————————–
    By
    Ta-Nehisi Coates
    May 21, 2014

    I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”

    Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired—the protection of the law.

    In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote—a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. “You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. “You do it the night before the election.”

    The state’s regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. Many of Mississippi’s black farmers lived in debt peonage, under the sway of cotton kings who were at once their landlords, their employers, and their primary merchants. Tools and necessities were advanced against the return on the crop, which was determined by the employer. When farmers were deemed to be in debt—and they often were—the negative balance was then carried over to the next season. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death. Refusing to work meant arrest under vagrancy laws and forced labor under the state’s penal system.

    Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. In her 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of Eddie Earvin, a spinach picker who fled Mississippi in 1963, after being made to work at gunpoint. “You didn’t talk about it or tell nobody,” Earvin said. “You had to sneak away.”

    ………………….

    This was hardly unusual. In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned land stretching back to the antebellum period. The series documented some 406 victims and 24,000 acres of land valued at tens of millions of dollars. The land was taken through means ranging from legal chicanery to terrorism. “Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia,” the AP reported, as well as “oil fields in Mississippi” and “a baseball spring training facility in Florida.”

    http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

    Reply
  18. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 11:31 am

    Portland drivers ‘clearly’ show racial bias at crosswalks, PSU study says (poll)
    By Joseph Rose | jrose@oregonian.com
    on May 21, 2014 at 11:40 AM, updated May 21, 2014 at 6:00 PM

    Racial bias doesn’t stop with education, employment, health care and criminal sentencing. It’s also prevalent at crosswalks in Portland, according to a new study of traffic psychology.

    Conducted in downtown Portland, the joint Portland State University and University of Arizona study found that twice as many drivers failed to yield for black pedestrians than those who were white. Meanwhile, black pedestrians typically had to wait a third longer for cars to stop for them when they had the legal right of way.

    With fewer motorists yielding for them, minorities are more likely to take greater risks to cross the street, which might factor into why they’re disproportionately represented in U.S. pedestrian fatalities, the study concluded.

    “In a fast-paced activity like driving, where decisions may need to be made in a fraction of a second, people’s’ actions can be influenced by these subtle attitudes,” the study said.

    The results come at the same time as the Smart Growth America’s annual “Dangerous by Design 2014” report (PDF) showing the most dangerous U.S. Cities for pedestrians. Despite a string of deaths in the final weeks of 2013, the Portland metro area was ranked the seventh safest for walking, according to the group’s “pedestrian danger index.”

    http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/05/portland_drivers_clearly_exhib.html

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 11:14 am

    Before their time

    The 1960s saw the first significant presence of black men in Yale College. Forty years later, a disproportionate number have died. Did the racial barriers they faced all their lives play a part?

    By Ronald Howell | May/Jun 2011

    In three decades as a news reporter, I’ve seen hundreds of bullet-riddled bodies in Haiti and in the Middle East, and I’ve had friends and colleagues killed in both of those places. I lost my father to cancer.

    But no death transformed me like the death last August of Clyde E. Murphy, my buddy from the Class of ’70, my brother in Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the best man at my wedding as I was at his. Clyde was the confidant with whom I shared deeply held feelings about life and death and—perhaps most of all—about being a black man in America.

    Then, six months later, as I was making peace with the sudden loss of Clyde to a pulmonary embolism, word came that yet another brother who’d pledged Alpha with us, Ron Norwood ’70, had succumbed to cancer. A few weeks after that we learned that Jeff Palmer ’70, another black classmate, had passed, also from cancer.

    Truth be told, over the years I have from time to time floated the idea that some racist scientist had slipped poison into our milk, after our births or while we were at Yale. Others, not easily inclined to conspiracy theories, have also puzzled at what seemed to be a disproportionately high death rate for black Yalies.

    “For ten years or more, I have been commenting on the excessively high mortality in that cohort of male black students at Yale who matriculated there between ’64 and ’70,” wrote Charles S. Finch III ’70, an Atlanta-based emergency room physician who was a close friend and Alpha brother to Clyde and me, in an e-mail to a list of black alums. “I think there may be 24 (or more) such men, none of whom got past age 62, most not even seeing their 60th year. It is astonishing and disturbing.”

    I began pondering this issue of black mortality with increased energy and fervor last summer, after my wife Marilyn and I drove up from Brooklyn to New Haven for the last day of my class’s 40th reunion. I had a wonderful time, reminiscing and sharing with guys I had not seen in decades and others I did not know at all.

    https://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3193

    Reply
  21. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:41 am

    KARMA! When evil gets to rockin; Karma comes a knockin!

    Reply
  22. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:34 am
    Reply
  23. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

    First lady: Malia will be driving this summer

    http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/first-lady-malia-will-be-driving-this-summer

    The first lady commented on Malia’s milestone in a taped interview broadcast Tuesday by the entertainment news show “Access Hollywood.” It was a joint interview with actress Sarah Jessica Parker about the role of arts in education, but host Billy Bush could not resist asking Mrs. Obama about her daughters, Malia, 15, and Sasha, 12.

    Mrs. Obama said Sasha loves dancing and does so several times a week in an organized program.

    She said her girls are like other teens in that they are anxiously counting down to the start of summer and getting ready for camp and internships.

    “One child is going to be driving this summer,” the first lady said, jokingly adding: “Look out.”

    Asked whether Secret Service agents would be in the back seat when Malia is behind the wheel, Mrs. Obama said only that “we’ve got a plan.”

    Malia turns 16 on July 4, making her eligible for a learner’s permit in the District of Columbia.

    Reply
  32. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:17 am

    Issa’s War on the Post Office continues.

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of Americans would no longer get mail delivered to their door but would have to go to communal or curbside boxes instead under a proposal advancing through Congress.

    The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on an 18-13 party-line vote, approved a bill Wednesday to direct the U.S. Postal Service to convert 15 million addresses over the next decade to the less costly, but also less convenient delivery method.

    Democrats objected to the plan, and efforts in recent years to win its adoption have failed. “I think it’s a lousy idea,” Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said. Other lawmakers said it wouldn’t work in urban areas where there’s no place on city streets to put banks of “cluster boxes” with separate compartments for each address. People with disabilities who have difficulty leaving their homes could get waivers, and people who still want delivery to their door could pay extra for it — something Lynch derided as “a delivery tax.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/committee-oks-end-door-slot-mail-millions-221201345–politics.html

    Reply
  33. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:16 am

    May 21, 2014 1:28 PM
    Did You Know Last Night Was a Mittiganza?

    By Ed Kilgore

    I’ve seen a lot of post-election spin in my day, but this may take the cake (from BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins):

    For the small orbit of friends, loyalists, and former aides that still revolves around Mitt Romney, Tuesday’s GOP primaries were cause for celebration — and a little bit of gloating.

    The elections featured a trio of Romney-endorsed Republicans beating back challenges from the tea party by filling their coffers with establishment cash, and appealing to electoral pragmatism. In Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson defeated his primary opponent with $4 million raised by allies like the United States Chamber of Commerce. In Pennsylvania, incumbent Rep. Bill Shuster triumphed over a challenge from the right. And in Oregon, Monica Wehby, a pro-abortion rights neurosurgeon who many Republicans have touted as a rising star, emerged victorious despite a last-minute character assault led by Democrats

    Never mind that all three of these candidates were heavily favored. Or that one of them, Wehby, won not because of any help from Mitt but because revelations of her serial stalking of former menfolk in her life (illustrated by police reports and 9-1-1 records, not by any “character assult led by Democrats) came out too late to affect the result in a all-mail-ballot state. Or that Wehby enters the general election against Jeff Merkley perhaps mortally wounded. Or that Romney had nothing to do with all the other races last night, most of which got more attention than the three he was involved in.

    No, May 20 was a Mittiganza.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/did_you_know_last_night_was_a050448.php

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:03 am

    Ta-Nehisi Coates Outdoes Himself
    by BooMan
    Thu May 22nd, 2014 at 10:04:03 AM EST

    I predict that Ta-Nehisi Coates will win many awards for his latest piece making the case for reparations for the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and predatory housing policies. He’s right that the subject has become a taboo, largely because the first questions people ask are who should be paid and who should do the paying. I’d add to that a second problem. The way blacks were oppressed historically was that they were arbitrarily treated as a distinct class of citizens based on a subjective perception of their race. It didn’t matter if they were half-black, a quarter-black, or an eighth-black, so long as they looked recognizably African.
    We’ve done away with that way of thinking, at least under the law. In order to institute some form of reparations, we’d probably have to reintroduce the same arbitrary standard to identify the people who are deserving of compensation.

    It may be the case that there are still-living individuals who can demonstrate that they were the victims of, say, a predatory housing system that robbed them blind. But, then, the same case can be made for many of those who were robbed blind during the most recent housing boom.

    I think if there were to be reparations, it wouldn’t be a cash transfer to individuals, but some kind of commitment to communities. Beyond the political difficulty of achieving a just settlement, it’s hard to even come up with a solution in an idealized world.

    http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/5/22/1043/16652

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      May 22, 2014 at 10:42 am

      With all do respect to Coates reparations, the whole idea is captivating and does deserve thoughtful, careful, well-planned considerations, if it where to actually become a REALITY.

      We’re talking consciousness-changing here. You can’t drop a gazillion $$$ on folks without any background, knowledge, or savvy about FINANCES.

      Give a poor, uneducated man a million $ or an educated one for that matter without the financial background or consciousness to handle it, and they’ll go broke in a hot minute.

      Changing the structures that where put in place is fine, but the consciousness of the people needs an overhaul too.

      Reply
  35. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:00 am

    Quvenzhané Wallis Named Face of Armani Junior

    Ten-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, star of Beasts of the Southern Wild, has been named the face of Armani Junior, Giorgio Armani’s line for children and teens.
    Posted: May 22 2014 7:50 AM

    Giorgio Armani has tapped Oscar-nominated actress Quvenzhané Wallis as the face of his Armani Junior fall ad campaign. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 10-year-old star of the upcoming Annie remake is the first major child celebrity to be the face of a luxury brand.

    http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2014/05/quvenzhan_wallis_named_face_of_armani_junior.html

    http://www.theroot.com/content/dam/theroot/blogs/the_grapevine/2014/05/quvenzhan_wallis_named_face_of_armani_junior/armanijunior.jpg

    Reply
  36. Ametia says:
    May 22, 2014 at 9:46 am

    DON’T START NONE, WON’T BE NONE

    Fox News weekend host Gregg Jarrett was arrested and jailed Wednesday afternoon after an incident at a Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport bar.

    Airport police responded just after noon on Wednesday to reports of an intoxicated man at the Northern Lights Grill in the central terminal. Authorities say Jarrett refused to follow orders and was arrested. Jarrett was released at 1:30 Thursday morning to $300 bond, and is expected in court on June 6.

    Just last week, Fox News had announced Jarrett was taking time off for personal reasons, causing a shuffle in the network’s weekend lineup.

    Mugshot below via breaking911:

    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-anchor-gregg-jarrett-arrested-in-minneapolis-airport-bar/

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 8:53 am

    A comment from Booman about the Democratic choices for Benghazi panel:

    I like the line-up. I like the armed forces expertise because it takes head-on one of the so-called strengths of the GOP – though we all know they’ve botched everything for the last 23 years – I’ll give Pappy Bush his due for desert storm in ’91.
    I really like Cummings on point. I would have liked Grayson but lets face it:
    Cummings – 18 years
    Smith – 17 years – prosecutor
    Schiff – 13 years – prosecutor
    Sanchez – 11 years
    Duckworth – Decorated Iraq War Veteran and more cajones than the entire GOP delegation combined …http://www.stripes.com/news/the-pedals-were-gone-and-so-were-my-legs-1.34578

    That’s not a bad starting 5.

    Vs.

    Brooks – 2 years
    Jordan – 7 years and wrestling champion
    Pompeo – 3 years and Koch puppet
    Roby – 3 years
    Roksam – 7 years
    Westmoreland – 9 years plus HS graduate
    Gowdy – 3 years

    I think Pelosi did well.

    by Racer X on Thu May 22nd, 2014 at 01:43:14 AM EST

    Reply
  39. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 8:52 am

    Why Alan Grayson Was Kept Off Benghazi Committee

    By John Amato May 21, 2014 3:47 pm

    Since the Democrats announced their five members of the House Select committee on Benghazi, I’ve been researching why Rep. Alan Grayson was left off the list. He publicly said he wanted to be on it and was aided by a Credo petition to push for his inclusion if indeed the Democrats were going to participate. When we look at who makes up the Dems, we notice that there was nobody selected from House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which seemed very odd to me, as well as to others that have also mentioned this. Here are the five that were chosen.

    …………………………………………
    The House Democrats were fractured on the whole with many who thought this new committee was a charade and wanted no part of it. Rep. Adam Schiff, who is surprisingly now part of the Committee recently said it was a ‘colossal waste of time’ on Fox News.

    Schiff also said that Democratic leaders should not appoint anyone to the committee. “I don’t think it makes sense, really, for Democrats to participate,” he said. “I think it’s just a tremendous red herring and a waste of taxpayer resources.”

    So why was he included on the committee now? I’ve been checking around since the announcement was made and a source who wishes to remain anonymous said Rep. Steny Hoyer was afraid that Grayson would be too rambunctious for his taste, and so used his power to keep him off the committee — despite the fact that Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs committee, had already handpicked Rep. Grayson and gave his selection to Nancy Pelosi. Steny Hoyer went crying (to who, we don’t know) and Nancy Pelosi then pulled Grayson from the panel.

    http://crooksandliars.com/2014/05/why-alan-grayson-was-left-benghazi

    Reply
  42. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 8:12 am

    Tornado hunter Ricky Forbes was driving through Kootenay National Park when he spotted the black bear cub sitting dangerously close to the highway.

    http://youtu.be/fP3rigAU7V4

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      May 22, 2014 at 2:39 pm

      My head THROBS, every time I read about this couple. Who the living fuck fines human beings for feeding HOMELESS people?

      Reply
  44. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 8:03 am

    zizi2 @zizii2
    Follow
    It is quite revealing that #Democratic congresscritters are more worried abt GOP Bullghazi “harming” Hillary than abt having PBO’s back
    9:43 PM – 21 May 2014

    Reply
  46. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 7:58 am

    The GOP and veterans: It’s complicated
    By Jonathan Capehart May 21 at 6:29 pm

    In the very real scandal engulfing the department of veterans affairs and the White House, the moralizing and scapegoating by the Republican House majority is too much to take. “It is time for our president to come forward and take responsibility for this and do the right thing by these veterans and begin to show that he actually cares about getting it straight,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) yesterday.

    Yes, President Obama and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki have a lot to answer for since the buck ultimately stops with them. And the president acknowledged his responsibility during his remarks from the press briefing room today. Yet, Cantor’s comments are galling when you consider what Congress has and hasn’t done for veterans.

    Just last month, the Obama administration expressed concern about “the funding level for VA Medical Care” in a military construction and veterans affairs bill in the House. It was $386 million below what the president asked for. “This funding level could delay the timely delivery of health care services to veterans and impede the Administration’s efforts to end veterans’ homelessness in 2015,” the statement of administration policy from the Office of Management and Budget said. The measure passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats in the House. Now the action moves to the Senate.

    In February, Senate Republicans actively thwarted the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014. The $21 billion legislation was supposed to improve health, education and other benefits for veterans. Instead, it failed to get the 60 votes needed to stop a threatened filibuster. That same month, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated that “close to 200,000 veterans are among the 2 million unemployed workers who’ve lost access to federal jobless benefits since Congress allowed Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) to expire at the end of last year.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/05/21/the-gop-and-veterans-its-complicated/

    Reply
  47. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 7:55 am

    22 May 2014
    Thailand coup d’etat as military seizes power

    Thailand’s military has announced it is taking control of the government and has suspended the constitution.

    In a televised statement, army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha said the military would restore order and enact political reforms in the South-East Asian nation.

    The coup came after two days of inconclusive talks between the main political factions.

    Thailand has been in political turmoil for months. On Tuesday the army imposed martial law.

    A curfew has now been declared, effective across the country from 22:00 to 05:00 local time.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27517591

    Reply
  51. rikyrah says:
    May 22, 2014 at 7:39 am

    Good Morning, Everyone :)

    Reply
  52. CarolMaeWY says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:08 am

    My favorite thing about Tim McGraw besides his music is the fact he seems to be happily married to Faith Hill and a good father. :)

    Reply

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