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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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Barack Obama’s Better Half
Why the first lady is so popular.
By ANDREW KOHUT
July 06, 2014
Michelle Obama is a popular first lady. On average, her favorable ratings have been higher than those of her predecessors, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. This may well reflect the fact that more so than other first ladies, Mrs. Obama has a stand-alone personal image. Unlike other recent first ladies, her popularity has not fallen or risen with her husband’s.
How popular is Michelle? A steady two-thirds of the public has held a favorable view of Mrs. Obama, according to nationwide Gallup poll and Pew Research Center surveys, for most of her time as first lady. At 69 percent, her average Pew Research Center favorable ratings have been only somewhat higher than Laura Bush’s (65 percent) but considerably higher than Hillary Clinton’s (55 percent) during Bill Clinton’s term in office.
Laura Bush was never a polarizing first lady, but views of her soured somewhat near the end of her husband’s unpopular second term. In late 2007, her favorable rating fell to 54 percent from a high of 70 percent.
Hillary’s ratings rose and fell substantially over the course of her time in the White House, reaching a low of 42 percent in early 1996 as fallout from her spearheading her husband’s unpopular health care reform effort. But they rebounded over the course of Bill Clinton’s second term, especially during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when the public rallied sympathetically to the first lady. Her ratings slipped again afterward, even as Bill’s approval ratings remained fairly high.
The arc of Michelle’s popularity is strikingly different — in fact, it’s more of a flat line than an arc. Barack’s sinking poll numbers haven’t dragged down Michelle. As the president’s approval score has ranged from the mid 50s to the low 40s, the first lady’s have oscillated around the mid to high 60s. The polls do show consistently, however, that in an era of polarization, she has been much less well liked by conservatives, Republicans and white men. Her biggest fans have been women, Democrats and African-Americans.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/michelle-obama-popularity-108593.html#ixzz36vhtpyvr
HUFFPOLLSTER: Michelle Obama’s Ratings Are Breaking The Pattern For First Ladies
Posted: 07/07/2014 5:51 pm EDT
Andy Kohut explains why Michelle Obama’s popularity continues to soar above her husband’s. Most Americans continue to align with one of the two parties. And forget castrating hogs — here’s an Iowa candidate who weighted data. This is HuffPollster for Monday, July 7, 2014.
MICHELLE OBAMA STAYED POPULAR EVEN AS HER HUSBAND’S RATINGS FELL – Andrew Kohut: “Michelle Obama is a popular first lady. On average, her favorable ratings have been higher than those of her predecessors, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. This may well reflect the fact that more so than other first ladies, Mrs. Obama has a stand-alone personal image. Unlike other recent first ladies, her popularity has not fallen or risen with her husband’s. How popular is Michelle? A steady two-thirds of the public has held a favorable view of Mrs. Obama, according to nationwide Gallup poll and Pew Research Center surveys, for most of her time as first lady….In-depth polling about perceptions of her by The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that broad segments of the public hold positive views of Michelle’s personal qualities that transcend partisanship, gender and race. Supermajorities of men and women, blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats alike see Michelle as intelligent, a good role model for women and a good mother….In short, more so than other recent first ladies, the public views Michelle Obama as her own person, and her image has not been tied closely to swings in judgments about her husband.” [Politico]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/07/michelle-obama-ratings_n_5565249.html
Jezebel gets it wrong with new ‘Editor’ hire
by Luvvie | July 8, 2014 at 4:12 PM
Jezebel is constantly getting critiqued for being a site that mostly amplifies white voices, instead of being truly intersectional. It says it embraces diversity, but the site’s mostly monochromatic masthead and roster of writers shows otherwise.
But one of the strongest voices on it is that of Dodai Stewart, the black woman who has been deputy editor and has been working at Jezebel since the launch of the site in 2007.
Not only does she stand out because she’s one of the few black women on staff but because she’s a writer’s writer, and she’s fearlessly awesome and outspoken about issues that matter to us. She’s the main reason I still read that website, and she’s one of its biggest champions. Her Twitter handle is even @JezebelDodai.
This is why news that Jezebel just hired Emma Carmichael, formerly of The Hairpin, as their editor-in-chief has spurred much disappointment among those who read the site and apparently, even the site’s staffers. In a piece by the Capital, it was also revealed that Dodai didn’t know the job wasn’t hers until minutes before the story dropped on BuzzFeed.
To me, this all feels like layers of disrespect.
When you pass up your 2nd in command who has been there longer than anyone else, is admired, talented and clearly capable for someone from outside, that’s disrespect. Then you don’t let the person know in advance so they’re basically finding out at the same time as everyone else. That is discourteous and super shady. Her leadership, her commitment and her great work means she deserved way better than that.
http://thegrio.com/2014/07/08/jezebel-gets-it-wrong-with-new-editor-hire/
the entire family is nothing but phucking vermin.
…………….
Did You Know That Antonin Scalia’s Son Is Sabotaging Wall Street Reform?
Eugene Scalia is quietly freeing big banks from the rules meant to keep them from crashing the economy again.
——By Patrick Caldwell
| July/August 2014 Issue
Ambrose Bierce once quipped that a lawyer is one skilled in the circumvention of the law. By that definition, Eugene Scalia is a lawyer of extraordinary skill. In less than five years, the 50-year-old son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has become a one-man scourge to the reformers who won a hard-fought battle to pass the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to rein in the out-of-control financial sector. So far, he’s prevailed in three of the six suits he’s filed against the law, single-handedly slowing its rollout to a snail’s pace. As of May, a little more than half of the nearly four-year-old law’s rules had been finalized and another 25 percent hadn’t even been drafted. Much of that breathing room for Wall Street is thanks to Scalia, who has deployed a hyperliteral, almost absurdist series of procedural challenges to unnerve the bureaucrats charged with giving the legislation teeth.
Scalia has “created this sense that we’re paralyzed, because if we write a rule we’re just going to be reversed,” says Lisa Donner, executive director of the watchdog group Americans for Financial Reform. The threat of more suits, she says, has “cast a real chill” over Wall Street regulators, particularly at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Scalia’s legal challenges hinge on a simple, two-decade-old rule: Federal agencies monitoring financial markets must conduct a cost-benefit analysis whenever they write a new regulation. The idea is to weigh “efficiency, competition, and capital formation” so that businesses and investors can anticipate how their bottom line might be affected. Sounds reasonable. But by recognizing that the assumptions behind these hypothetical projections can be endlessly picked apart, Scalia has found a remarkably effective way to delay key parts of the law from going into effect.
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) says Scalia and the big banks are attempting an end run around the law he coauthored: “These are ideologues who want to kill the rules. They can’t say they’re unconstitutional. They are doing this because it’s the only possible way to knock them out.” (Scalia declined to comment for this article.)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/eugene-scalia-court-antonin-financial-reform-dodd-frank
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/486608216357236736/photo/1
Could Hillary Clinton Become the Next Republican President?
For those who harbor concerns about Hillary Clinton becoming the triangulating, Republican agenda empowering candidate that Bill was as President, looks like those concerns may be well grounded:
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/hillary-clinton-begins-to-move-away-from-obama-ahead-of-2016-1404691988-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNzEwNDcyWj
The recent tactics from Hillary seem to be revealing the same mercenary, conservative/non-Progressive sensibilities we saw from Hillary in 2008. I’m not going to rely on one article to define Hillary but I am prepared for the possibility of seeing Hillary continue down this road of Republicanism under the guise of “working for bipartisanship” and “reaching out to Republicans”…just as Bill did.
Bill Clinton’s years were a boon for many key Repub agendas, destroying unions while outsourcing jobs via NAFTA, killing Glass-Steagall and setting the country on a course for Wall Street to rob the 99% and crash the economy and forcing a work requirement on those on Welfare.
Anyone who’s become a bit familiar with Bill Clinton and his foundation knows that it’s all about networking with the wealthiest people to get them to back his projects. Bill has extremely close relationships with the same wealthy Republican throwing millions into elections to elect Republicans by hook or by crook (with an emphasis on the “crook”). Chelsea Clinton worked for a hedge fund, her husband ran a hedge fund and the Clintons have a net worth somewhere between $55-$80 million dollars.
…………………………………………………….
Her quickness and lack of hesitation or conscience to spin and stab Obama in the back as referenced at the top of this article and her dishonesty about her and Bill leaving the White House “dead broke” revive that creepy feeling in me that I had about her in 2008…that she may be what we used to call…”A Republican”.
While he was President, it was argued that Bill Clinton was one of the better Republican Presidents. Hillary Clinton seems like she can hardly contain herself when it comes to saber rattling, anxious to prove she doesn’t think “like a girl” and would happily send our troops into harm’s way if given the chance (this hawk aspect of Hillary is primarily what opened the door for Obama in 2008).
Because the Republican Party has moved so far to the lunatic fringe, in comparison, a Hillary Clinton who wants limited new wars, wants to support bills to which Republicans are sympathetic and is beginning to run against Obama as part of her campaign may not seem to be the definition of today’s GOP but think back a decade or two, wouldn’t a Republican in the 1990′s have similar positions?
It is probable that whoever the Republican candidate turns out to be, would be far more toxic for our nation than Hillary. In a General Election against Rand Paul or Jeb Bush, she would be the better choice…but since it still wouldn’t be voting for a Progressive, it would be more a situation of voting for the lesser of two Republicans.
I make predictions here from time to time, my batting average ain’t so bad but of course it’s not perfect (I was so sure that aqua was going to be the new black this season!). I do think this is an easy one though since she’s already seemed to tip her hand a bit. I expect Hillary to run philosophically as a moderate Republican. That is, she will support the social issues that most Dems support, the right to contraception and abortion, immigration reform, gay marriage, etc., but she will also support the financial and international issues that Republicans support, aggressive involvement in world conflicts, minimizing regulations on corporations and supporting tax benefits for the wealthy (“to encourage investment”) and framing Obama and his successes as failures.
You couldn’t blame Hillary for being convinced by those in her bubble and the MSM that she’s entitled to win the Presidency and make history as the first woman President. You couldn’t be surprised by her taking the Progressive base for granted (“Who are they going to vote for anyway?”) and appealing to conservatives and RWs to win the election in a mandate landslide. And she shouldn’t be surprised that a presently unlikely candidate for the Dem nomination may run to her left and give her a run for her money (which would be quite a run)…and maybe even beat her.
Hillary seems to be ready to start off as running for the General Election instead of running to win the Dem primary and that is the same slippery slope she slid down in 2008. It wouldn’t be strange if an actually Progressive candidate started gaining ground on her in the primaries. I could imagine her suddenly adopting that candidate’s Progressive values while attacking that candidate as ruthlessly as she attacked Obama (we all remember how vicious she and Bill were towards Obama when he started looking stronger…both throwing around the race card with Reverend Wright and other racial statements, it was Hillary supporters who started the Birther accusations against Obama, Hillary attacked Obama as unAmerican for his “ties” to Bill Ayers and of course Hillary just outright lied about her and Chelsea being shot at on a runway by a Bosnian sniper to seem more heroic than Obama).
http://planetpov.com/2014/07/08/could-hillary-clinton-become-the-next-republican-president/
83 Year Old Woman Beαts Back Burglar With Pot of Boiling Water and Stick
July 8, 2014
A burglar may’ve believed he didn’t have anything to worry about when he broke into the home of an 83 year old Houston woman, but the woman quickly surprised the would be thief with resolve and ingenuity.
When Lillie McClendon faced off with an intruder, she used a stick and a pot of water to fend off the robber and then McClendon told the thief exactly what she thought of him.
“I told him, I said, ‘What kind of momma you got that raised you up like this? You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’” McClendon recalled.
McClendon says she was doing laundry when she noticed an open window and some of her things out of place.
“I couldn’t see his face, just his eyes like that. All he was asking about was, ‘Where’s the money at? Where’s the money at?” McClendon said.
The intruder was looking for money and began chοking McClendon and demanding that she turn over the cash. That’s when the 83 year old decided to take matters into her own hands and fιght the intruder.
“Oh, shoοt yeah. I got a stick and tried to hιt him,” she explained. “I had sausage on the stove. I put hot water on him.”
http://naturallymoi.com/2014/07/news/83-year-old-woman-be%CE%B1ts-back-burglar-with-pot-of-boiling-water-and-stick/
BWA HA HA HA
You have entered the “Lillie McClendon BEATDOWN ZONE.”
And she gave dude a righteous verbal BEATDOWN TOO!
LMBAO
What kind of momma you got that raised you up like this? You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’”
Troy Davis’ Nephew is Raising Money for Second Year at Morehouse
by Jamilah King
Tuesday, July 8 2014, 3:00 PM EST
Before Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia in 2011, his case galvanized the nation. Among his strongest supporters were his family, who, as Jen Marlowe reported for Colorlines before the execution, made it their mission to bring what they saw as the injustice of Davis’ case into the national spotlight.
Davis left behind a teenage nephew, De’Juan, who grew up visiting his uncle in prison. The boy’s strength was put to the test after Davis’ execution when, months later, his mother — Davis’ sister, Martina Davis-Correia — died of breast cancer. But De’Juan’s managed to perservere and last year enrolled as a freshman at Morehouse College. He made the dean’s list his first semester while majoring in engineering, and is now on a mission to raise enough money to stay in school. See details at his Indiegogo campaign.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/07/troy_davis_nephew_raises_money_for_second_year_at_morehouse.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28Colorlines.com%29
I can’t believe this is Don Cheadle.
First Look: Don Cheadle as Miles Davis in biopic ‘Miles Ahead’
http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2014/07/02/don-cheadle_612x655.jpg
now tell me what would have happened if this had been BLACK PEOPLE DOING THIS
………………….
Senators worried by desperate parents who ‘re-home’ children they no longer want
By Reuters
Tuesday, July 8, 2014 15:08 EDT
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday that the federal government may have to take a stronger role to stop parents from transferring custody of their adopted children to strangers they meet on the Internet.
At a subcommittee hearing in the U.S. Senate, lawmakers took their first look at the practice known as “private re-homing,” which bypasses the government’s child welfare system to leave boys and girls in the custody of strangers, often with little more than a notarized power of attorney.
The hearing came in response to a Reuters investigation that found online forums where desperate parents solicited new families for children they no longer wanted. Testimony shed light on the potential need for federal action to strengthen protections for children and support state efforts to help parents with post-adoption challenges.
“(It) certainly makes sense to the extent that re-homing is happening over the Internet, that it’s crossing state borders, that that necessitates – even requires – a federal response,” said Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat.
Joo Yeun Chang, the Obama administration official’s top official for foster care and adoption assistance programs, said the federal government needs to provide guidance for states on what she described as a new issue. But she called for an approach that would protect all children rather than risk singling out adoptive families.
“There’s a lot of confusion about what legal custody of power of attorney documents even mean, what kind of responsibility that confers and what responsibilities parents have to maintain,” she said during testimony.
“State laws need to be clear about what the parent’s responsibility is even if they do transfer legal custody.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/08/senators-worried-by-desperate-parents-who-re-home-children-they-no-longer-want/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
in today’s lesson of Black don’t crack
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1142/5262/original.jpg
Hillary and Obama: Different campaigns, opposite tasks
Susan Page, USA TODAY 7:14 p.m. EDT July 7, 2014
WASHINGTON — Both are groundbreaking politicians. And Democrats.
Beyond that, if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president in 2016, the differences between her campaign and Barack Obama’s in 2008 would be more striking than their similarities. Their strengths and weaknesses are in some ways polar opposites, and Clinton in 2016 would face a political landscape fundamentally different from the one Obama encountered in 2008.
Rival-turned-ally Clinton undoubtedly would have lessons to learn from Obama’s 2008 tactics, including the power of social media and the use of technology in tracking voters. But if she decides to run, his campaign won’t offer much of a template when it comes to strategy.
In some ways — she would be a candidate seeking a third term for her party while the incumbent president’s popularity is sagging — her task could be more like that faced by the Republican contender in 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
“You’ve got obviously a very different political dynamic,” says Robert Gibbs, Obama’s chief spokesman during the 2008 campaign and his first term in the White House. “You’ve got Hillary Clinton running to replace another Democratic president. You don’t have the great foil of a Republican incumbent like George Bush that we had in the Obama campaign. And Hillary comes in as a completely known quantity. That’s both a positive and a negative.”
“You can’t compare her with Obama,” says Democratic consultant Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000. “That was totally different.”
Start with their résumés.
…………………………………..
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/07/hillary-clinton-barack-obama-different-campaigns-different-challenges/12267593/
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
What are the 2014 midterms going to be about?
Smartypants
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-are-2014-midterms-going-to-be-about.html
Top American corporate tax avoiders
Fortune Editors
July 7, 2014
The S&P 500 stock index supposedly includes the largest public American companies. It turns out that 28 of them are incorporated in places like Ireland and Switzerland to avoid high U.S. tax rates. These companies sure seem American—except when it comes to paying taxes.
http://fortune.com/2014/07/07/top-tax-avoiders/
Cruz: Investigate Cochran primary
By JONATHAN TOPAZ | 7/8/14 6:19 AM EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz is calling for an official investigation into the Republican Senate primary runoff in Mississippi between Sen. Thad Cochran and the challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel.
The Texas Republican on Monday evening called the runoff contest “appalling” and said that allegations of voter fraud need to be investigated.
We’ve seen serious allegations of voter fraud,” Cruz said on “The Mark Levin Show.” “And I very much hope that no Republican was involved in voter fraud. But these allegations need to be vigorously investigated and anyone involved in criminal conduct should be prosecuted.”
Earlier in the program, Cruz criticized the Washington establishment for its meddling in the runoff: “What happened in Mississippi was appalling. Primaries are always rough and tumble, but the conduct of the Washington, D.C., machine in the Mississippi runoff was incredibly disappointing.”
The Mississippi Republican Party on Monday evening officially certified the incumbent Cochran as the winner of the June 24 runoff election by more than 7,667 votes. McDaniel, a tea party favorite who has attacked Cochran from the right in the contentious primary battle, vowed to challenge the results.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ted-cruz-mississippi-gop-primary-thad-cochran-108643.html#ixzz36u9stMbV
nothing but dust…
dust, I tell ya.
………………………………..
http://youtu.be/nrGsdrW8HlE
Lord, this precious child is so courageous. Gives me hope. *lets-tears-fall*
this is an actual flower…..an orchid
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/69/fd/44/69fd4429616cf706ce74cbbd931721af.jpg
Boehner demands Dems’ health care plan, irony reels
07/08/14 11:23 AM
By Steve Benen
Failures of self-awareness are all too common in politics, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) outdid himself yesterday. Democrats “like to say” they want to fix the Affordable Care Act, Boehner complained, “but where’s their plan? They don’t have one.”
No, the Speaker’s Twitter account hadn’t been hacked. Boehner, or at least the aides who help write his script, actually felt compelled to argue that Democrats don’t have a health care plan. This from the head of the House Republicans, who’ve been promising to present an alternative to “Obamacare” for five years, but who haven’t actually produced anything.
But the Speaker’s tone-deaf nonsense got me thinking – where is that GOP plan?
It was on Jan. 30 of this year that then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) made a specific vow: “This year, we will rally around an alternative to Obamacare and pass it on the floor of the House.” Whatever happened to that solemn promise?
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking primary loss … all but kills any chance of the House voting on an Obamacare replacement bill this year.
The prospects of Republicans rallying around a replacement policy and scheduling a vote was already an uphill endeavor…. But the loss of the House leader who was most closely allied with the lawmakers seeking a vote is probably an insurmountable obstacle.
Asked about his party’s vow to pursue a Republican alternative to the ACA, Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said of Cantor, “He’s the guy who made the commitment.”
What an interesting reply. The House Majority Leader made a promise on behalf of his party, but apparently that promise was annulled when the Majority Leader lost in a primary. In other words, after five years of waiting for a GOP health care policy, Americans can start to look forward to a sixth.
All the while, there’s poor John Boehner, who not only prefers to ignore his party’s non-existent plan, but who also wants to mock Democrats for not having a detailed plan to improve their already effective plan.
Of course, we know why the House GOP is struggling with this. As we talked about in February, Republicans could present an alternative policy that they love, but it’ll quickly be torn to shreds, make the party look foolish, and make clear that the GOP is not to be trusted with health care policy. Indeed, it would very likely scare the American mainstream to be reminded what Republicans would do if the power over the system were in their hands.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/boehner-demands-dems-health-care-plan-irony-reels
A gif for 3CHICS
Had to show the VISUALS on this gif. HILARIOUS!
BWA HA HA HA
Wish a MOFO would…
Now if the cat were chewing gum, it’ll def be on and poppin’
And the claws are out. bwa ha ha ha
I know right, don’t start NONE, won’t be NONE. LMBAO
So cute, I love this.
July 07, 2014 1:23 PM
Defund or Impeach
By Ed Kilgore
Insofar as it’s CW that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is suing the President of the United States to placate a furious conservative “base” that doesn’t think its heroes in Washington are sufficiently standing up to the godless Kenyan socialist, there’s evidence it’s not working. Here’s Erick Erickson’s contemptuous reaction to the Boehner lawsuit:
Most of Erickson’s subsequent tirade involves the House leadership’s refusal to use perpetual threats of an imminent government shutdown to impose the GOP’s will on Obama (he characteristically questions Republican leaders’ “testicular fortitude,” which is presumably the worst insult he could think of). But it’s clear the i-word is in his mind the other option.
This “defund or impeach” challenge is one I suspect we are going to hear a lot of in the months just ahead, and perhaps even see on bumper stickers. It’s simple and catchy, and gets right to the underlying demand that the last two presidential elections be nullified.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_07/defund_or_impeach051089.php
NC housing official won’t resign over pro-Confederate, anti-black Facebook posts
By Travis Gettys
Tuesday, July 8, 2014 12:52 EDT
A housing official in North Carolina is under investigation for Facebook posts targeting black people, illegal immigrants, and Democrats.
Malcolm “Mac” Butner refuses to step down from his appointed post as chairman of the Rowan County Housing Authority, and county commissioners say there’s not much they can do because the comments were made in his personal time.
The local chapter of the NAACP and other organizations have called for Butner’s termination after he made denigrating comments about blacks in a post in reference to a Moral Monday protest.
“Gee, they are all black,” Butner posted. “I guess the white folk could not get off because they were too busy working (and) being productive, good citizens.”
He also claimed liberals and Democrats “don’t have a principled bone in their body and they don’t care even if our constitutional republic is destroyed.”
“To hell with the lesbos, queers, liberals and baby killers,” he added.
Butner removed some of those posts from his Facebook page, which still shows several pro-Confederate posts he shared, along with his own all-caps commentary.
“The primary difference between the leaders of the Confederate States of America and the Union is that Confederate leaders were godly gentlemen and the Union folks were not,” Butner posted June 5.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/08/nc-housing-official-wont-resign-over-pro-confederate-anti-black-facebook-posts/
Federal judge slams SCOTUS: ‘STFU’
07/07/14 01:18 PM
By Jane C. Timm
“As the kids say, it is time for the Court to stfu,” Judge Richard George Kopf declared after the Supreme Court ruled on the Hobby Lobby case, slamming the Court’s ruling on his personal blog.
Kopf, a George H.W. Bush appointee, linked to a Urban Dictionary entry on stfu which defined it as an “acronym used for the phrase ‘shut the f–k up’ for efficiency reasons.”
Kopf declined by email to chat with msnbc about the post, but his office confirmed that the blog is indeed his.
“In the Hobby Lobby cases, five male Justices of the Supreme Court, who are all members of the Catholic faith and who each were appointed by a President who hailed from the Republican party, decided that a huge corporation, with thousands of employees and gargantuan revenues, was a ‘person’ entitled to assert a religious objection to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate because that corporation was ‘closely held’ by family members,” the judge wrote in a blog post first flagged by Think Progress. “To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse.”
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/federal-judge-slams-scotus-stfu?cid=sm_m_lastword_4_20140708_27398136
Why You Don’t Know Obama Has Created 4.5 Million Jobs
Do you have any idea how many more jobs Obama has created than Bush did? You don’t, because liberals are less likely than conservatives to cheerlead.
The terrific June jobs report may be the signal we’ve been waiting for that we’re finally turning the psychic corner. The overall jobs number was great at 288,000, and the unemployment rate was down to 6.1 percent. But the most important number was that the employment-to-population ratio, which many economists think of as the truest measure of the jobs market, was up a bit to 59 percent, a high for the recovery, indicating that maybe more people are finally out looking for work than staying home.
A lot of liberals puzzle over why the Obama administration isn’t getting more credit, or doesn’t do a better job of making sure it gets credit, for such good economic news. There are a lot of theories, and most of them hold varying amounts of water. But the main reason to me is fairly obvious: Liberals don’t speak as one big fat propagandistic voice on this subject in remotely the same way conservatives do when a Republican president is in power.
Before I get into all that, I want to review some numbers with you, because unless you’re a hyper-informed political junkie, I doubt you know them. How many net jobs has the economy created during Barack Obama’s presidency, and how many did it create during George W. Bush’s tenure? Notice first that I wrote “has the economy created” rather than “did Obama create/did Bush create.” I think it’s a better description of reality.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/why-you-don-t-know-obama-has-created-6-5-million-jobs.html
Millennials get cut off at the polls
By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer July 7 at 8:34 PM
First they came for blacks, and we said nothing. Then they came for Latinos, poor people and married women, and we again ignored the warning signs.
Now, after our years of apathy, they’re coming for us: the nation’s millennials.
Across the country, Republican state policymakers have hoisted barriers to voting by passing voter-ID laws and curtailing electoral accommodations such as same-day registration and early voting. These policy changes are allegedly intended to eradicate the imagined scourge of voter fraud, but the real point seems to be voter suppression.
For a time, the targeted populations were primarily racial, ethnic and income groups that traditionally vote Democratic. Now they happen to include Gen-Y’ers, more specifically my college-age brethren. We millennials may be fickle in our loyalties, generally distrustful of government institutions and unaligned with any political party, but our generation’s motley, liberal-to-libertarian-leaning ideological preferences still threaten red-state leadership.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-republicans-are-cutting-millennials-off-at-the-polls/2014/07/07/c3bbd132-060e-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html
Boehner’s Anti-Obama Lawsuit Could Seal the GOP’s Coffin with Latinos
By Brian Beutler @brianbeutler
John Boehner would never cop to it, but his pending lawsuit against President Obama will be the final word on whether the GOP is the party of maximum deportations, including of immigrants eligible for the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive—the group of upstanding undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country when they were children known as “Dreamers.”
Boehner will either include the DACA program among his list of the president’s supposedly illegal executive actions, and thus cement his party’s standing as one that represents the reactionary anti-immigrant minority in the country; or he’ll leave DACA out, giving tacit consent to the program and infuriating the anti-immigrant faction of his own conference.
And he may have just tipped his hand toward the anti-immigrant bunch.
In a Sunday CNN.com op-ed, Boehner subtly alluded to his underlying thinking by making clear that his pursuit of legal action is a last resort—the end of a concerted legislative effort to rein Obama in, specifically with respect to his immigration policies.
“I don’t take the House legal action against the President lightly,” Boehner wrote. “We’ve passed legislation to address this problem (twice), but Senate Democrats, characteristically, have ignored it.”
Boehner didn’t name the two bills in the article. But his staff confirms that they are the ENFORCE the Law Act and the Faithful Execution of the Law Act, both of which were drafted with an eye toward reversing DACA. The former would expedite House and Senate lawsuits against the executive branch for failing to enforce the law. The latter would compel government officials to justify instances of non-enforcement.
The House Judiciary Committee’s report (PDF) on the ENFORCE the Law Act is essentially a bill of attainder against the Obama administration, but it leans heavily on his enforcement of immigration law, and DACA specifically.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118572/boehners-obama-lawsuit-test-gop-commitment-maximum-deportations
Republicans need to get over their ’47 percent’ obsession
It’s factually wrong. It’s morally repugnant. And it’s politically stupid.
By Ryan Cooper | July 7, 2014
Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 had many causes, but the one that crystallized his reputation as an out-of-touch plutocrat was the “47 percent” tape. In case you’ve forgotten, he went on at awkward length about how those who pay no federal income tax are a bunch of whining moochers whose will to work has been drained to nothingness by government handouts.
It is now clear that this kind of thinking is dangerously attractive to Republicans, and is going to be a consistent political liability if they can’t deal with it. New tape released last week shows Bob Beaubrez, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, saying similar things back in 2010:
I see something that frankly doesn’t surprise me, having been on Ways and Means Committee: 47 percent of all Americans pay no federal income tax… I’m guessing that most of you in this room are not in that 47 percent — God bless you — but what that tells me is that we’ve got almost half the population perfectly happy that somebody else is paying the bill, and most of that half is you all. I submit to you that there is a political strategy to get slightly over half and have a permanent ruling political majority by keeping over half of the population dependent on the largesse of government that somebody else is paying for. [Denver Post]
http://theweek.com/article/index/264232/republicans-need-to-get-over-their-47-percent-obsession
No surprises that Lindsey and the rest to these MOFOs want to tell PBO what to do and how to handle this situation.
Lauryn Hill is Touring the U.S. and Europe This Summer
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/07/lauryn_hill_is_touring_the_us_and_europe_this_summer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28Colorlines.com%29
Dems plot legislative offensive on high court’s birth control decision
Democrats want to lure Republicans into a fight over birth control with legislation to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision that ObamaCare may not require certain businesses to include contraception in their employee health coverage.
At least three bills are being crafted in the House and Senate to amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which the high court used as the basis for its ruling that the contraception mandate violated federal law.
Democrats are expected to introduce the measures prior to Congress’s August recess as part of an effort to recalibrate the party’s election-year messaging. Their hope is to turn out female voters by casting the court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby as a strike against reproductive rights.
“Last week’s decision reignited a conversation across the country reminding women once again that their access to healthcare has become a political issue, when it should be a basic right,” said Marcy Stech, national press secretary for EMILY’s List.
“It will drive women to the polls this November to vote for the women candidates who are on the right side of women’s access to basic healthcare.”
“This will be a huge motivator for women in the fall and a liability for Republican candidates up and down the map,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) spokesman Justin Barasky added.
Republican campaign officials say they’re not worried and challenged the idea that the court ruling can help individual Democrats who supported the healthcare law and are considered vulnerable next year.
“The polling shows that when we fight back, women believe in what we’re saying,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said.
“The Dems are a one-trick pony, and waging a false war on women is the only way they believe they can win. If you don’t fight back, why wouldn’t the voters believe them? Those days are over, and we’ve been very open and aggressive with our messaging and tactics,” Kukowski said.
Read more: http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/211521-democrats-plot-legislative-offensive-on-high-courts-birth-control#ixzz36tgGzEhS
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
In President Obama’s White House, some traditions give way to modern technology
By Juliet Eilperin July 6
Since Barack Obama took office, the White House has established a dedicated digital team, started tallying incoming phone calls electronically instead of by calculator and has begun using computer software to design floral arrangements. His media monitor tracks thousands of tweets and some 50 publications online every day. Casework is sent by e-mail instead of using human couriers.
The White House has long lagged behind the outside world in its technological capabilities, relying in large part on face-to-face meetings and mountains of paper to conduct business. But the future finally seems to have arrived, at least in part, redefining the way many staffers do their jobs and recalibrating the balance of power within 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Some of the changes are simple matters of efficiency. Intern hopefuls no longer have to print out their applications before submitting them, and White House tours are scheduled online. But other advances are aimed at promoting the president’s policies and personality, whether through chats on Twitter or “hackathons” aimed at the computer literati.
In the midst of all this modernization, a few enclaves of tradition persist at the White House. The wait staff has been serving formal dinners in tuxedos for the past 20 years, the porcelain in the residence is still handled with museum-quality gloves, and two calligraphers on staff still inscribe invitations and placecards by hand for events involving the president and first lady.
And even under Obama, the digital team sent correspondence to other staffers by fax for the first year of the administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-president-obamas-white-house-some-traditions-give-way-to-modern-technology/2014/07/06/431864be-eb51-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
Backlash stirs in US against foreign worker visas
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ and PAUL WISEMAN
July 6, 2014 10:57 AM
Kelly Parker was thrilled when she landed her dream job in 2012 providing tech support for Harley-Davidson’s Tomahawk, Wisconsin, plants. The divorced mother of three hoped it was the beginning of a new career with the motorcycle company.
The dream didn’t last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson’s tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia.
The firm, India-based Infosys Ltd., denies wrongdoing and contends, as many companies do, that it has faced a shortage of talent and specialized skill sets in the U.S. Like other firms, Infosys wants Congress to allow even more of these temporary workers.
But amid calls for expanding the nation’s so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.
“It’s getting pretty frustrating when you can’t compete on salary for a skilled job,” said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. “You hear references all the time that these big companies … can’t find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker.”
Hajinlian, 56, who develops his own web applications on the side, said he applied for a job in April through a headhunter and that the potential client appeared interested, scheduling a longer interview. Then, said Hajinlian, the headhunter called back and said the client had gone with an H-1B worker whose annual salary was about $10,000 less.
“I didn’t even get a chance to negotiate down,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/backlash-stirs-us-against-foreign-worker-visas-135208422–finance.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons
Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and AMY CHOZICK
JULY 7, 2014
As its relationship with Democrats hits a historic low, Wall Street sees a solution on the horizon: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton was the industry’s home state senator, and the financial sector was the second-largest giver to her presidential campaign in 2008. In her post-State Department life, she has been showered with lucrative speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan and other financial firms. In her talks, she says it is unproductive to vilify the industry, and she avoids the kind of language that puts off financial executives, as when President Obama referred to “fat cat” bankers in 2009.
But as Wall Street hopes for a warm embrace from the former secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton must grapple with a populist surge coursing through politics, on both the right and the left.
Attacks on Wall Street bailouts are a staple of Tea Party campaigns. Republicans, many of whom deliberately stood on the sidelines during the legislative battle over the Dodd-Frank legislation and have quietly reaped the benefits of Wall Street’s disenchantment with Mr. Obama, are now reeling from the primary election defeat of Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the former majority leader. Mr. Cantor’s opponent, David Brat, won in part by attacking Mr. Cantor’s ties to the financial world.
…………………………….
The Third Way, a center-left think tank founded by two former Clinton administration aides, has assailed Ms. Warren, saying her economic populism would be “disastrous for Democrats.”
As Democrats debate whether to get tougher on Wall Street, the industry appears to have taken notice. Securities and investment firm employees have given a smaller proportion of their political donations to Democrats over the last three years than any period for which data is available, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
………………………………………
Financial regulation has also become a pivotal issue in the jockeying over who will become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee should Democrats keep control of the Senate.
Some Wall Street donors have been unwilling to give to Senate Democrats’ re-election efforts, according to two Democratic lobbyists, because one of the leading contenders for the chairmanship of the Banking Committee is Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is pushing for a host of measures resisted by Wall Street, including higher capital requirements for big banks and a closer look at potential manipulation of commodities trading.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“I think most Democrats agree that Wall Street is too powerful,” Mr. Brown said. “I understand some don’t — talk to them about why. Too many in my party are too close to Wall Street.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/08wallst.html?ref=us&_r=0
Morning Plum: Is Hillary worried about the left?
By Greg SargentJuly 8 at 9:23 AM
The New York Times weighs in this morning with a big piece reporting that Wall Street, which is wringing its hands about the Democratic Party’s supposed sharp turn to the left, “sees a solution on the horizon: Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
The piece runs through the ways Clinton is said to be more friendly to Wall Street than populists like Elizabeth Warren, and raises the question of whether rising populism is a threat to a potential presidential bid. It contains the de rigeur quote from the centrist group Third Way, warning that Warren-style populism would be “disastrous” for Dems in 2016.
But perhaps the most telling thing in the piece is that Clinton allies and spokespeople appear to be trying to burnish her anti-inequality, anti-Wall Street cred:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/07/08/morning-plum-is-hillary-worried-about-the-left/
10 Medical Reasons Why a Woman Might Be Prescribed Birth Control
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that a closely held, for-profit company can deny employees health insurance coverage for contraception if it conflicts with the employers’ religious beliefs. Since the majority of businesses in the U.S. are closely held companies, the ruling has the potential to affect a lot of women.
One of the biggest problems with the decision, however, (and there are a few) is that it doesn’t take into account women who have been prescribed birth control for non-contraceptive medical reasons. While the pill is most often associated with preventing pregnancies, and thus, often comes with a stigma of promiscuity, it has non-contraceptive benefits as well.
Writer Zoe Fenson brought up this issue over at The New Republic earlier this week. In her piece, Fenson—who has polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition that she was told would require her to take oral contraceptives to keep her healthy, and put her on the pill before she was even sexually active—expressed her outrage at medical conditions like her own being dismissed as irrelevant: “By highlighting religious discomfort first and foremost, without any acknowledgement of birth control’s medical importance, this case communicated loud and clear that women like me are collateral damage.”
With this in mind, we asked Dr. Eileen Krim, an ob-gyn in North Hills, New York, who’s affiliated with North Shore University Hospital, about the non-contraceptive benefits of birth control. “Birth control pills are not named correctly as they do so much more than prevent pregnancy,” she told us in an e-mail. “There are a multitude of reasons why a physician might prescribe birth control pills to his or her patients.” Below, Dr. Krim shared 10 reasons why a doctor might prescribe a birth control pill other than to prevent pregnancy.
http://www.elle.com/news/lifestyle/the-medical-reasons-for-birth-control?src=nl
https://twitter.com/yo_bookie/status/483606541564514304
From Sepia:
Sepia
So, the Black deputy editor of Jezebel, who has worked for the site since a month after it launched, managed the day-to-day operations of the site, and had the full support of Jezebel staff, was passed over for the editor-in-chief job in favor of a 25 yr-old white girl with less experience?
Mixed emotions as Jezebel gets new editor
The announcement two weeks ago that Emma Carmichael, editor of The Hairpin, will succeed Jessica Coen as editor-in-chief of Jezebel left some Jezebel staffers feeling conflicted—both happy for Carmichael and disappointed that management passed over deputy editor Dodai Stewart for the top job.
“I wouldn’t say that we’re unhappy with Emma at all, but…we had like a really optimal choice that they passed over,” one staffer, who asked to be quoted anonymously, told Capital.
Stewart is one of the few women of color on Jezebel’s masthead and the longest-serving staffer at the site, having been hired by founding editor Anna Holmes shortly after the site launched in 2007. In the past year, she has also assumed a larger role in running the site, three people familiar with the site’s internal workings told Capital.
Coen, the site’s editor-in-chief, has had to split her time between her home in Chicago and Gawker Media’s New York office, and Stewart has frequently stepped in to manage Jezebel’s day-to-day operations.
According to one staffer, Stewart’s experience with the site and familiar presence made her the staff’s choice to replace Coen.
“From the get go, I think the staff was really supportive of Dodai, because she’s wonderful at her job and has been doing it for so long. I know we were all really rooting for her,” the person said.
As Capital first reported in May, Stewart was a leading internal candidate for the position. A source close to her said that she had met with Gawker editorial director Joel Johnson in late April to talk about taking the top job, and Johnson told Capital in May that she would make an excellent candidate.
For the next two months after the April meeting, she didn’t hear much—until June 24, the day Buzzfeed reported that Carmichael would be the site’s next editor. Two people close to Stewart said that she only learned that she was out of the running for the job minutes before the news of Carmichael’s hire was announced to staff and reported by Buzzfeed.
Right now, the plan is for Carmichael to take over as editor-in-chief in September, with Stewart remaining as deputy editor, though one source close to Stewart expressed a concern that she might decide to leave the site. She told Capital that she had not made any decisions yet.
“I like my job, and I’m considering what my options are,” she said.
……………..
But the decision to hand the site to a young white woman instead of Stewart—a black woman who has been working at the site since Carmichael was still in college—rubs some current and former staffers the wrong way, especially since the site has been criticized in the past for its handling of race issues.
“I would not say that I think it is like a racist action, but it is kind of a missed opportunity,” one staffer said. “The race thing would have been a really wonderful—just like to have a really well-established Black woman who is so good at her job running the site would have been great.”
“But that’s not the crux of what’s disappointing about Dodai not getting the job,” the staffer added. “She deserves it.”
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/07/8548439/mixed-emotions-jezebel-gets-new-editor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lKS-Et-VmE
This UGLY mannequin can’t stand the TRUTH.
She can dish it out but can’t take it or accept being questioned about it.
Ugly niche she has put herself in…she is the queen of “No offense, but….”
July 08, 2014, 07:08 am
WH: Obama would ‘welcome’ Perry meeting
By Rebecca Shabad
..
President Obama would “welcome” a meeting this week with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to discuss the border crisis, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote in a letter to Perry late Monday.
“The President would welcome a meeting with you while he is in Texas. In addition, he asked me to invite you to join him for a meeting to discuss the situation on the border with faith leaders and local elected officials in Dallas on Wednesday,” she said.
Jarrett highlighted the Obama administration’s efforts so far to handle the crisis at the border, where about 52,000 unaccompanied children have crossed into the United States from Central America since October.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/211530-obama-offers-to-meet-with-perry-in-texas-on-border-crisis#ixzz36shFd1FL
Good Morning 3Chics,
There’s not enough “Oops” in the world to describe how that meeting would go down, especially if there were cameras present.
Hi Tyren. Hope you and the fam had a peaceful 4th.
That ignoramous refused to shake PBO’s hand on the tarmac, purely for the optics and his base.
https://twitter.com/KXAN_Weather/status/486471554339856384/photo/1
Edward Marshall @edmarshallcbs2
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We are not to ask @RahmEmanuel questions about weekend violence say his press team.
12:24 PM – 7 Jul 2014
Monday, Jul 7, 2014 07:30 AM CDT
Gun nuts’ sick power trip: What’s really behind the “open carry” crusade
Why do gunslingers want to terrify others? A desire to change how you think and behave by conditioning — or fear
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig
When it comes to inspiring audiences to dizzying, irrational fear, right-wing media is especially skillful. Take, for example, the “knockout game“ hysteria of last year, in which Fox pundits like Sean Hannity did their best to marshal a handful of disparate cases of real or alleged violence into evidence of widespread, growing, untargeted murderous intent among primarily black teenagers. Was the knockout game ever a rising threat, ever a swelling trend? It now seems unlikely, though the notion that unarmed black teenagers should be seen as de facto lethal coincided rather curiously with Fox’s banner-waving over the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. Whatever the source, the right-wing media narrative surrounding the knockout game proved that the intentional generation of fear is a tactic far-right media is comfortable engaging in, and the performance of similar tactics in real life should be understood to have similar political purposes.
The “open carry” movement is one such tactic. Weekly, it seems, new cells of gunslingers take it upon themselves to disturb order and intimidate innocent civilians in order to establish a nebulous, rotating series of political aims. A Richmond iteration of open-carrying young men stated they wanted to “raise awareness of responsible gun ownership,” as though the population of Virginia were somehow wholesale unaware of guns. In Arlington, Texas, the open carry commandos who valiantly terrified the staff of a Jack-in-the-Box claimed they merely wanted to “make it as normal as possible for people to see a gun like a fashion accessory … this is America.” In every instance of open carry demonstrations there are two constants: some kind of constitutional concern mashed together with a host of other orthogonal aims, and a roundly frightened public.
Meditate for a moment on the notion of making people comfortable with the sight of guns in public via habituating them to the instinctual terror of seeing one, and two issues immediately arise: firstly, it resembles other illogical forms of activism in which the goal is wholly incompatible with the means, such as murdering abortion providers to achieve a culture of life; secondly, it is, above all else, an effort at achieving control
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/07/gun_nuts%e2%80%99_sick_power_trip_what%e2%80%99s_really_behind_the_%e2%80%9copen_carry%e2%80%9d_crusade/?source=newsletter
See video below. It’s all in attempts to SCARE folks.
Thanks for posting this excellent article, rikyrah!
I’ll check out the video, Ametia
Monday, Jul 7, 2014 10:11 AM CDT
GOP’s worst déjà vu ever: Another incredible “47 percent” meltdown
Bob Beauprez joins the “47 percent” all-stars. Here’s your ultimate guide to the big world of 47 percent antagonism
Simon Maloy
Leading up to the June 24 Colorado gubernatorial primary, Republicans were concerned that the party would end up nominating an unlikable extremist. Tom Tancredo, a former congressman and one of the more disgusting anti-immigrant voices in the nation, stood a credible chance of actually pulling out a win and forcing the party to get behind a nominee who has gone on record supporting literacy tests as a prerequisite for voting.
But in the end, the Republicans got the candidate they wanted. Former congressman Bob Beauprez edged out Tancredo by 3.6 percent, and put to rest any fears the party might have had about nominating a bomb-throwing lightning rod of a candidate.
Well, those fears are back. Last week the Denver Post (with an assist from the Colorado Democratic Party) reported on a video of Beauprez shot in 2010 in which he railed against the “47 percent of all Americans pay no federal income tax,” thus making him the unlikely prequel to Mitt Romney’s campaign- and legacy-defining gaffe from 2012.
Ever since Romney made 47 percenterism a known commodity, it’s been popping up all over Republican politics. But there are subtle variances and nuances to the different flavors of “47 percent” antagonism that may not be apparent to the casual observer. So, as an act of public service, I’ll break them down here to foster understanding of the specific ways in which Republican candidates denigrate nearly half the population, and rate them accordingly.
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/07/gops_worst_deja_vu_ever_another_incredible_47_percent_meltdown/?source=newsletter
Supreme Court’s civil war: Scary aftershocks of the Hobby Lobby earthquake
The female justices’ dissent in another case shows the deep distrust the conservative SCOTUS majority has earned
Joan Walsh
A few days after the Supreme Court’s disturbing Hobby Lobby decision, the court’s three female justices joined in a fierce dissent on another contraceptive case that underscored the tension and distrust that has split the court, and the country.
At issue was an order by Justice Samuel Alito allowing a Christian college to at least temporarily refuse to participate even in the “accommodation” the Affordable Care Act granted religiously affiliated organizations from the contraception mandate. Such organizations can sign an opt-out form, which then lets the insurer provide contraceptive coverage directly without the employer paying for it. Wheaton College insists that even submitting the form would make it “complicit in the provision of contraceptive coverage.”
On the heels of the Hobby Lobby decision, which seemed to say that the accommodation was a reasonable measure to protect both religious liberty and an employee’s healthcare rights, the order was surprising, to say the least.
“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. “Not so today.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/07/supreme_courts_civil_war_scary_aftershocks_of_the_hobby_lobby_earthquake/?source=newsletter
Beyonce’s father targeted with yet another paternity suit
July 8, 2014
Mathew Knowles, the father of the singer Beyonce, is big in the music business. He built his daughter’s career and has gained the respect of moguls around the world. But he hasn’t gained a good reputation as a husband and father and seems to have an apetite for affection that far exceeds that which can be fulfilled within the confines of his troubled former marriage.
TMZ is reporting that Mathew is now the subject of yet another paternity suit from a woman who says that he is the father of her child. TaQoya Branscomb filed legal documents claiming that Mathew got her pregnant back in 2010. That was the same year that Beyonce’s mother Tina filed for divorce and the year that the father parted ways with his superstar daughter.
The 30-year old woman has an interesting past as a lingerie model. She says that she is now a real estate agent, and stands to gain financially if she is rewarded additional financial support for her child. This is the second woman in the last five years to file a paternity suit against Mathew Knowles. The first was Alexsandra Wright, who says that the businessman should pay for the son they created together
http://naturallymoi.com/2014/07/uncategorized/beyonces-father-targeted-with-yet-another-paternity-suit/
He makes me wanna throw up!
That kid in the video…. MAKINGS OF A MASS-SHOOTER.
Well, that is one restaurant I would never enter.
Don’t they realize a crazed patron could easily grab their guns?
These gun nuts are scary. Seems as if there is an arms race going on. I’d hate to be around one of these gun nuts if they are prone to having bad tempers.
Look into that kid’s eyes. Where do you suppose he is getting all that garbage about “safety-protecting” These kids are groomed early to fear the “other.”
The most asinine ignorance I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
sG2, look at that boy’s eyes. They’re GLAZED over already. You know this kid has all the makings of a mass-shooter. Sitting up in that diner talking about protection, like who the fuck is after him in a diner? He’s being programed to fear and use guns.
It’s another form of “Jim Crow” used to keep POC out of their establishments.
Who the fuck wants to eat in a joint with waitresses brandishing guns?
These fools want to go back to the wild west, where whites only way of getting their way was to blow everybody else away with GUNS.
I was just stunned to hear a little kid talking about defending himself. Defending himself from who? Who is after a little kid? The parents need their ass kicked for brainwashing this kid.
All these morons brandishing guns in a restaurant is meant to intimidate. They want to shoot someone soo bad. I hope they know folks shoot back.
BINGO!
Paul Solomon @FrankTheDoorman
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John Boehner plans to sue Obama. But first he must finish Congress’s July vacation and get ready for the August and September vacations.
1:56 PM – 6 Jul 2014
https://twitter.com/SpryGuy/status/485543821569040384/photo/1
In the words of Jack Nicholson
Yeah, I was thinking about this. If employer provided health insurance is to survive, benefits must be essentially equal, or this goes back to the courts. Well, the insurance industry is obviously heavily vested in selling insurance, and they clearly don’t want this conflict to take off. Quite frankly, I think we are paving the way for a single payer health care system because we are ever going to be able to achieve universal healthcare with health insurance in this country.
Reasons:
1. Too many stupid people (5) on the Supreme Court right now.
2. Too many red states and districts which beget too many stupid elected officials and legislators at the federal and state level.
3. No way to correct numbers 1 and 2 for the foreseeable future.
4. Citizens (even the stupid ones who vote for number 2) will increasingly demand reasonable access to healthcare when they get sick (and they will.)
Correction, meant to write this – “…we are NEVER going to be able to achieve universal healthcare with health insurance in this country.”
Cosigning, Liza. There comes a time in everyone’s life where they will need HEALTHCARE. I’m all for single payer, so the insurance companies don’t profit off our illnesses.
It’s all about profit for insurers. We need to become more conscious of our lifestyle choices, educate ourselves and our loved ones, and do whatever it takes to maintain our health.
LOLGOP @LOLGOP
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Whether the GOP is denying women health care, yelling at refugee kids or trying to toss out black votes, they never stop thinking about 2016
9:18 PM – 7 Jul 2014
https://twitter.com/PPact/status/486199656456912897/photo/1
Come with it, Wise Latina Woman. We know what’s up and will join in this DISSENT!
Teresa Kopec @TeresaKopec
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Birth control isn’t a right wing or a left wing concept for women. It’s a “I don’t want 15 kids” concept.
2:01 PM – 7 Jul 2014
“I don’t want 15 WHITE kids” concept.
There FIXED!
They barely can deal with the 2.3 they have.
https://twitter.com/mashable/status/486478226378985473/photo/1
Entire Italian Village for Sale on eBay
If you ever wanted a little slice of Italy, here’s your chance. An entire alpine village is up for sale on eBay. The auction for the town of Borgata Calsazio, just a few ski runs away from Turin, is real, with a “Buy it Now” price of a mere $333,057. But it’s also a fixer-upper. The National Union of Mountain Communities, which is assisting the town’s few remaining inhabitants in the sale, told La Repubblica newspaper that any buyer would have to restore the stone and wood homes under a master plan provided by the organization. While the hamlet may be one of the most picturesque Italian municipalities for sale, it’s not the first. In recent years, the Italian state has turned to auctioning off monuments and properties to escape its crushing debt and the mounting expenses of maintaining these historic locales. In 2012, a Tuscan village went up for sale for $25 million. And earlier in 2014, the “most haunted island in the world,” off the shore from Venice found itself itself on the auction block.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/entire-italian-village-sale-ebay-n149666?g11=43001
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Two tweets from Rep. John Lewis on July 5, 2014:
John Lewis @repjohnlewis · Jul 5
“Democracy is an act. It requires participation, organization, and dedication to the highest principles.”
John Lewis @repjohnlewis · Jul 5
“There is no sound more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people.”
I get goosebumps seeing John Lewis step off that bus and then the tears begin to fall. So proud of my hero.
Thank you so much for this powerful video with music and singing by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon with the school children.
How many today have the willingness to make the kind of sacrifices made by John Lewis and the Freedom Riders and those others in that era. I hope there are as many willing freedom fighters today…I bet there ARE as many! …… and it WILL surprise a lot of racists in positions of power who are trying to turn the clock back.
“Yankees fan Andrew Robert Rector suing ESPN for showing him sleeping on TV”
http://larrybrownsports.com/baseball/yankees-fan-andrew-robert-rector-suing-espn-sleeping-tv/235079
IMO, these broadcasters were engaging in hurtful bullying that was heard and seen by millions.
They set a poor example in their unkind remarks.
All of this at a time when citizens are trying to stop hurtful cyber-bullying among our youth.
What do you think?
Good Morning Everyone :)
Ametia, thank you so much for bringing us this week of Sarah Vaughan. I love her amazing talent!
Good Morning, Yahtc & Everyone! :-) Glad you’re enjoying Ms. Vaughn
Good morning!
Ametia, you’re banging with Sarah Vaughan this week.