Happy Monday, Everyone. This week’s featured artist is the INCOMPARAPLE Ms. Sarah Vaughan.
Black Coffee
Sarah Vaughan Live in ’58 & ’64
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Black Girls Rock!
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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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.
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Presidential hug
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Rev. Barber’s on Chris Hayes. He’s not playing. Bless him.
I love Rev Barber. Lord, give him strength to keep going.
The Politics Blog
The State Republican Party in Texas Is Now the Craziest in America
It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented.
By Charles P. Pierce on July 7, 2014
If you want to see the clearest symptoms of the prion disease that has devoured the brain of the Republican party, the state Republican party is your Patient Zero. And, before a whole bunch of people in the Beltway media playpen begin minimizing this craziness because it pretty much shatters the whole idea of Both Sides Doing It without which most of those people can’t get out of bed in the morning. This isn’t four guys in camo in Idaho. This isn’t a guy broadcasting on a short-wave from upper Michigan, or receiving the truth about chemtrails and the Illuminati through his teeth. This is the Republican party representing the state from which he got our last Republican president, and one of the biggest states in the Union. This is what it believes, as summed up with realit-based parentheticals by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:
Keep an eye on that last sentence. The Republican party of the state of Texas, a state which has 38 electoral votes and which will send 153 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention, has endorsed the exact theory of government that was promulgated by the gun-toting yahoos at the Bundy Ranch. And there’s more.
The Republican party of the state of Texas, a state that went for Mitt Romney by over two million votes, would like to do away with the Federal Reserve, and any Supreme Court jurisdiction in any case involving the Bill Of Rights. And, yes, there’s more.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Crazy_In_Texas
Speaker still struggling to explain anti-Obama lawsuit
07/07/14 09:10 AM
By Steve Benen
No one seems quite as happy about House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) anti-Obama lawsuit as President Obama himself. For the West Wing, the Republican litigation helps prove to the public, in a rather definitive way, that Obama’s governing while GOP lawmakers in Congress sit around and complain. Indeed, the frivolous case is effectively a bold announcement that the Republican-led House wants the federal government to be paralyzed indefinitely – which is hardly a winning message in an election year.
And so the president has ended up talking more about Boehner’s prospective lawsuit than Boehner has. “I told [the House Speaker], ‘I’d rather do things with you, pass some laws, make sure the Highway Trust Fund is funded so we don’t lay off hundreds of thousands of workers.’ It’s not that hard,” Obama said last week. “Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So sue me. As long as they’re doing nothing, I’m not going to apologize for trying to do something.”
Yesterday, Boehner responded with a CNN op-ed, defending the litigation he has not yet filed. It’s worth scrutinizing in detail.
[T]oo often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws.
First, the Speaker needs to understand, in a “Schoolhouse Rock” sort of way, that the White House cannot create its own laws. That’s gibberish. Obama can create policies through executive orders and executive actions, but those aren’t literally new laws. Second, to help bolster his case about Obama abuses, Boehner referenced exactly zero specific examples.
What’s disappointing is the President’s flippant dismissal of the Constitution we are both sworn to defend.
No, holding the debt ceiling hostage, vowing to crash the global economy on purpose while ignoring the “Full Faith and Credit” of the United States is a “flippant dismissal of the Constitution.” Obama’s use of executive authority, on the other hand, is fairly routine.
I know the President is frustrated. I’m frustrated. The American people are frustrated, too. After years of slow economic growth and high unemployment under President Obama, they are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’
Boehner may not remember this – 2008 seems like a long time ago – but Obama inherited the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. The president proceeded to turn the economy around, no thanks to Boehner, who demanded a five-year spending freeze at the height of the crisis, and has fought ever since for fewer investments, less capital, less demand, and higher unemployment through laid off public-sector workers.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/speaker-still-struggling-explain-anti-obama-lawsuit
Court conservatives add insult to injury on contraception
07/07/14 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
A week ago today, a narrow Supreme Court majority broke new legal ground, issuing a 5-4 ruling that said some corporations can restrict employees’ access to birth control. And while that controversial decision generated considerable attention, what much of the country may not realize is that the same conservative justices quietly returned to their decision – twice.
The first “clarification” came a day after the ruling – which was intended to bring clarity to the law – when the legal community was left wondering about the applicability of the Hobby Lobby decision. The chain store’s lawsuit did not target all birth control, just the forms of contraception the corporation’s owners found morally objectionable. Did the court’s ruling apply to the contraception methods included in the litigation or everything, including regular ol’ birth control pills?
On Tuesday, the Court said the ruling covered all 20 forms of contraception protected through the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit only covered 4 of the 20. By what rationale did the conservative majority reach this expansive conclusion? I believe it’s called the “because we said so” rule of American jurisprudence.
For proponents of reproductive rights and the separation of church and state, Tuesday’s “clarification” simply added insult to injury. But on late Thursday, the Supreme Court returned to the same issue again, this time granting an emergency request from an evangelical school in Illinois called Wheaton College. Irin Camron explained:
At issue is the “accommodation” the Obama administration worked out for religiously-identified non-profits: Sign a form certifying your objection, and the insurer will provide the coverage directly, without the objecting organization having to pay. As of now, 122 non-profits have sued, claiming that signing the opt-out form for someone to get contraception violates their religious liberty. (An attorney for the plaintiffs has repeatedly referred to it as a “permission slip for abortion,” even though it does not actually cover abortion.)
In fact, that accommodation was one of the reasons Justice Samuel Alito cited to justify his Hobby Lobby decision – words [Justice Sonia Sotomayor] threw back at him in the dissent.
The justices usually go out of their way to be respectful towards one another, but in this case, the conservatives were being so cavalier with the law, contradicting their own conclusions from literally a few days prior, that Sotomayor felt the need to call out the right’s judicial recklessness in unusually strong terms.
“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” Sotomayor wrote. “Not so today.” She added that the conservatives’ latest gambit is the sort of action that “undermines confidence in this institution.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/court-conservatives-add-insult-injury-contraception
The misguided searches for Obama’s Watergate and Obama’s Katrina
07/07/14 03:16 PM
By Steve Benen
On at least 10 separate occasions, President Obama’s critics have raised the prospect of various controversies constituting “Obama’s Watergate.” In reality, none of these stories actually amounted to a legitimate scandal – worse yet a crisis along the lines of Watergate – but the incessant search for an elusive White House scandal led to an unfortunate cliche.
Making matters slightly worse, it’s not the only misplaced historical parallel in frequent circulation
Via the Washington Free Beacon, I see that USA Today’s Susan Page used the K-word when the subject of an Obama visit to Texas came up on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown.
“It’s a Katrina moment, right?” said Page. “He’s going to a fundraiser, and not going to the border where there’s a crisis?”
The video of the comments are online here.
On the substance, it’s fair to characterize the humanitarian crisis at the border as a crisis, but to compare it to the Bush/Cheney response to Hurricane Katrina is a tough sell. It’s not as if the recent immigration problem is a result of the Obama administration’s neglect and indifference. For that matter, there’s nothing to suggest the president’s literal, physical presence at the border would actually affect the circumstances at all.
But the comparison appears even more misplaced when one considers just how often Americans have been confronted by chatter about “Obama’s Katrina.”
It was just last fall when Ron Fournier insisted troubles with healthcare.gov were comparable to the Katrina disaster – an argument that appeared painfully foolish at the time, and which looks even worse with the benefit of hindsight.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-misguided-searches-obamas-watergate-and-obamas-katrina
Dear Susan Page,
You’re a DISASTER. Now go sit you ass down somewhere.
Sincerely,
Ametia
Chicago Police shoot 5, kill 2 over weekend, but mayor isn’t talking
BY JON SEIDEL
Staff Reporter
July 6, 2014 5:30PM
After police cornered Warren Robinson under a junked car in the Gresham neighborhood Saturday night, the 16-year-old pointed a .387-caliber semiautomatic pistol at two cops as he tried to crawl out, authorities say.
So the cops shot him.
But then, the boy allegedly raised his gun again.
And the officers opened fire a second time on the Brainerd boy in the 8700 block of South Sangamon. That’s where he would soon be pronounced dead — one of two teenagers killed and three people wounded by Chicago police in less than 48 hours this holiday weekend.
Officials defended, but were at a loss to fully explain Sunday the startling rate of police gunfire that also left 14-year-old Pedro Rios of Rogers Park dead. Mayor Rahm Emanuel refused to comment on the shootings at an unrelated event.
“Five shootings in two days is not normal,” said Larry Merritt of the Independent Police Review Authority. IPRA has investigated approximately 312 shootings by Chicago police since late 2007, when it replaced CPD’s widely-criticized Office of Professional Standards, and has consistently backed officers’ use of deadly force.
Of the 158 investigations of “officer involved shootings” it has completed, according to its website, it found that an officer violated department rules in just one case — a 2008 incident in which a cop shot through an interior wall at a gunman he could not see, though it said there were “extraordinary circumstances” that “mitigate” his actions.
http://www.suntimes.com/28511850-761/chicago-police-shoot-5-kill-2-over-weekend-but-mayor-isnt-talking.html#.U7sprrG2Ono
This is sheer MADNESS.
And just you watch, folks will find a way to blame PBO for MAYOR Rahm Emanuel’s silence.
UGH! Tweety has on that Ed Rendell and Harold Ford Jr. tow Clintonistas. He’s yelling about PBO not connecting to his own good work.
GET.THE.FUCK.OUT.OF.HERE. Don’t get it TWISTED, Chris Matthews, it’s Hillary, her crew, and the EMOS who are NOT.CONNECTING.
john miller @deaconmill
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All those folks wanting to send back kids fleeing violence in Central America are probably same ones wanting kids fleeing Cuba to stay here.
11:54 AM – 7 Jul 2014
The Associated Press ✔ @AP
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BREAKING: Lawyers: Judge approves NFL concussion settlement involving thousands of former players.
3:40 PM – 7 Jul 2014
How The (Never) Mighty Have Fallen: Sarah Palin Begs To Be Named Co-Host Of The View
By: Jason Easley more from Jason Easley
Monday, July, 7th, 2014, 4:30 pm
Sarah Palin has hit a new level of rock bottom as the former Alaska governor is openly campaigning/begging to be named a new co-host of The View.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/07/07/never-mighty-fallen-sarah-palin-begs-named-co-host-view.html#comment-376044
BWA HA HA HA
I hope ABC does hire that witch, so their ratings can TANK even further.
National Geographic @NatGeoTVNews
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‘Cosmos’ Draws Biggest Global Audience Ever for National Geographic Channel http://www.snsanalytics.com/c1qIy0
1:49 PM – 7 Jul 2014
LiberalPhenom @LiberalPhenom
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Welcome to the US Jim Crow media where 6.1% unemployment and 17,000 Dow under our black POTUS is spun as a bad thing. @morningmika
7:23 AM – 7 Jul 2014
https://twitter.com/AU4Change/status/486192110304247808/photo/1
HE’S BLACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
Gitmo detainees’ lawyers invoke Hobby Lobby decision in court filing
Attorneys say clients have religious rights afforded by same law cited by SCOTUS in controversial Hobby Lobby ruling
July 5, 2014 3:42PM ET
by Philip J. Victor @philjvic
Lawyers for two Guantanamo Bay detainees have filed motions asking a U.S. court to block officials from preventing the inmates from taking part in communal prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The lawyers argue that – in light of the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision – the detainees’ rights are protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
The motions were filed this week with the Washington D.C. district court on behalf of Emad Hassan of Yemen and Ahmed Rabbani of Pakistan. U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve said both men asked for the intervention after military officials at the prison “prevented them from praying communally during Ramadan.”
During Ramadan, a month of prayer and reflection that began last weekend, Muslims are required to fast every day from sunrise to sunset. But what is at issue in this case is the ability to perform extra prayers, called tarawih, “in which [Muslims] recite one-thirtieth of the Quran in consecutive segments throughout the month.”
U.S. Army Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the “Defense Department is aware of the filing,” and that the “government will respond through the legal system.”
The detainees’ lawyers said courts have previously concluded that Guantanamo detainees do not have “religious free exercise rights” because they are not “persons within the scope of the RFRA.”
But the detainees’ lawyers say the Hobby Lobby decision changes that.
“Hobby Lobby makes clear that all persons – human and corporate, citizen and foreigner, resident and alien – enjoy the special religious free exercise protections of the RFRA,” the lawyers argued in court papers.
In its controversial Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the contraception insurance coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – violated the rights of “closely held for-profit corporations,” if a company’s owners object to birth control on religious grounds. The court, which decided the case 5-4, said that the mandate “substantially burdens” the corporation’s exercise of religion in violation of RFRA.
Lawyers for the detainees also contend that both Hassan and Rabbani are being prevented from participating in communal prayers because they are on hunger strike.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/5/hobby-lobby-guantanamo.html
Boehner’s unprincipled fight with Obama over separation of powers
By Jonathan Capehart July 7 at 2:34 PM
House Speaker John Boehner took to CNN.com yesterday to continue to tout his intention to sue President Obama for “[circumventing] the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold.” This notion that Obama is willfully lawless and exercising powers above and beyond the Constitution has me side-eyeing so hard right now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/07/boehners-unprincipled-fight-with-obama-over-separation-of-powers/
This is what this NITWIT Jon Karl considers newsworthy
Breaking: TV news and GOP Congress top list of most hated institutions in America
Spandan Chakrabarti | July 6, 2014
It should come as a surprise exactly to no one that since the forray of conservatives into the media world to try to get rid of the “liberal bias” and pesky things like “facts”, the popularity of TV news has taken a nosedive. Now, TV news the distinction of sharing the stage with the obstructionist Congress as the two most hated institution in America. And these numbers point to an electoral reality that might surprise pundits.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2014/7/6/breaking-tv-news-and-congress-top-list-of-most-hated-institutions-in-america
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGe32G5isoU
Love your suit, Mr. President.
Supreme Court Broadens Hobby Lobby Ruling to All Forms of Birth Control
So much for Justice Alito’s “narrow” opinion.
—Patrick Caldwell on Wed. July 2, 2014 8:32 PM PDT
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/supreme-court-scotus-hobby-lobby-all-forms-contraception
White Supremacy Stripped Bare: What “Do the Right Thing” Tells Us 25 Years Later
July 6, 2014 |
Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1989, Barack Obama took his new romantic interest Michelle Robinson on a first date to see the debut of Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing.” Premiering just 25 years after the watershed civil rights events of 1964, Lee’s iconic film challenged the narrative of American racial progress, citing rising ethnic tensions, continued police brutality, and increasing urban disaffection among black folks living in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
Rooted sonically and aesthetically in a hip-hop ethos authored by Public Enemy’s Chuck D, who wrote the film’s signature song “Fight the Power,” the film engaged the social realities of urban blacks living in New York in the aftermath of civil rights. I use the term “aftermath” deliberately. Chuck D famously referred to hip-hop as the CNN of black America, precisely because much of the music that emerged from the culture in the late 1980s detailed with troubling acuity and precision the war zone-like conditions in which black and brown folks lived in the two decades following the out-migration of good factory jobs. For elder characters like Da Mayor and Mother Sister, played by our beloved Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, moving North had signaled something akin to freedom and possibility for most of the 20th century. After 1970, more black folks than not opted simply to stay South.
http://www.alternet.org/print/culture/white-supremacy-stripped-bare-what-do-right-thing-tells-us-25-years-later
Associated Press–President Barack Obama speak about education during a lunch meeting with teachers, Monday, July 7, 2014, in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) More Info
President Obama highlights push for better skilled teachers
“The one ingredient that we know makes an enormous difference is a great teacher,” Obama said before discussing the issue over lunch in the Blue Room of the White House with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and four teachers from Springdale, Arkansas; Washington, D.C.; Greensboro, North Carolina, and Philadelphia.
http://www.ktvu.com/ap/ap/top-news/us-seeks-better-teachers-for-high-needs-schools/ngZq7/
Associated Press
President Barack Obama, right, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, far left, speak with teachers about education, Monday, July 7, 2014, in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington. From left clockwise are, Duncan, teachers Justin Minkel, and Leslie Ross, President Obama, teachers Dwight Davis and LeShawna Coleman. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) More Info
Rev. Barber is the real deal.
Rev Barber’s a can do man. He knows success comes in “CANS.”
Police: Dad sent nude photos while boy sat in car
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man who police say intentionally killed his toddler son by leaving the boy inside a hot SUV was exchanging nude photos with women the day his son died and had looked at websites that advocated against having children, a detective testified Thursday.
Cobb County Police Detective Phil Stoddard testified at a hearing that evidence showed Justin Ross Harris was practically leading a double life and should not be granted bond. Stoddard described the evidence he said suggests Harris, who is charged with murder, killed his 22-month-old son Cooper intentionally.
http://www.journalreview.com/news/article_48399292-b2df-58f4-987f-c659677a43fe.html
Jesus Christ! That poor little baby.
Who in their RIGHT MIND would forget their child is in a hot-fucking car with windows rolled up and locked for a full 8 HOURS work day?
PLEASE TELL ME; I WANT TO KNOW
I want to cry thinking how that poor baby suffered. Why kill him when they could have given him up?
It’s beyond scary. This guy’s a sociopath.
uh uh uh
he murdered that sweet angel.
in cold blood.
for $$$$$$$$$$.
It hurts my heart so bad. Whhhhhyyy?
THESE 2 CLOWNS RIGHT HERE
Court conservatives add insult to injury on contraception
07/07/14 08:00 AM
As Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West put it, “Overnight, the cure has become the disease. Having explicitly promised that Hobby Lobby would go no further than Hobby Lobby, the court went back on its word, then skipped town for the summer.”
What an embarrassment.
EMBARRASSMENT? It’s CRIMINAL what these MOFOs are doing
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/court-conservatives-add-insult-injury-contraception
but, it’s who they are. we knew their ruling was bullshyt.
How about some Benita Butrell
LOL@ “It takes her 3 days to watch “24 hours.”
MSM JACKALS are quiet about this and the Israeli murdering the Palestinian teen.
‘Opie and Anthony’ shock jock Anthony Cumia’s sad, racist double standards
http://wapo.st/1kjeMcI
Apparently, Anthony Cumia, the shock jock better known as half of the duo “Opie and Anthony,” had a bad Tuesday night in New York. He claims that he was taking pictures when a woman just happened to wander into the frame and then assaulted him. If his account is true, it is highly unfortunate.
There is, of course, every reason to be skeptical. Cumia makes a living setting up pranks and saying outrageous things, and after 20 years of doing so, it would be foolhardy for listeners, whether skeptics or enthusiastic fans, not to be looking out for the setup to some punchline.
The pictures Cumia tweeted do not exactly support his account, either, unless he is in the habit of taking pictures of scaffolding on nondescript city streets. The photo he describes as the inciting incident shows a woman who is already agitated, not caught by surprise, which might suggest some prior provocation.
And as upset as Cumia claims to be, he did not take the next logical step and call in the alleged incident. A New York Police Department spokesman checked for me and said no Anthony Cumia had filed a report for a Tuesday altercation.
It’s mind-boggling to think about this. The only thing white in that restroom was the toilet.
Parchman…
had no idea that Cong. Lewis did time in Parchman.
damn.
Good Morning Everyone.
Good Morning, Everyone! Happy Mun-dane. :-)