Happy HUMP day, folks! Peabo’s duets are unmatched in their silky smooth deliveries.
Celine Dion & Peabo Bryson – Beauty And The Beast
Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle – Without You (Love Theme From ‘Leonard Part 6’)
Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle-
Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack Tonight I Celebrate My Love
• • •
Remarks by the First Lady at the Summit of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders
“…. no matter where you all work, no matter what issue you focus on – whether it’s health or microfinance, human rights or clean energy – women’s equality must be a central part of your work. It must. Because make no mistake about it, the work of transforming attitudes about women, it now falls on your shoulders. And it’s up to you all to embrace the future, and then drag your parents and grandparents along with you.
And I know this won’t be easy. I know that you will face all kinds of obstacles and resistance – you already have. But when you get tired or frustrated, when things seem hopeless and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember the words of the man whom your fellowship is now named – and I know these words have been spoken many times.
As Madiba once said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”
And I, oh, I know the truth of those words from my own history and from the history of my country.
My ancestors came here in chains. My parents and grandparents knew the sting of segregation and discrimination. Yet I attended some of the best universities in this country. I had career opportunities beyond my wildest dreams. And today, I live in the White House, a building — (applause) — but we must remember, we live in a home that was constructed by slaves.
Today, I watch my daughters – two beautiful African American girls – walking our dogs in the shadow of the Oval Office. And today, I have the privilege of serving and representing the United States of America across the globe.
So my story and the story of my country is the story of the impossible getting done. And I know that can be your story and that can be Africa’s story too. But it will take new energy, it will take new ideas, new leadership from young people like you.
We’ve done this because we believe in Africa, and we believe in all of you. And understand we are filled with so much hope and so many expectations for what you will achieve. You hold the future of your continent in your hands, and I cannot wait to see everything you will continue to accomplish in the years ahead.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/07/30/remarks-first-lady-summit-mandela-washington-fellowship-young-african-le
Conservatives Are Already Planning for the Supreme Court to Nuke Obamacare Subsidies
By Brian Beutler
Washington Post reporter Greg Sargent’s forensic investigation into the origins of the disputed statutory text in Obamacare should have ended the political and historical “debate” over whether Congress intended to induce states to set up their own exchanges. He shows quite conclusively that the key draft bills that preceded the final Affordable Care Act—from the House of Representatives, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee—all unequivocally contemplated that subsidies would be available everywhere, and that the disputed text is an accidental relic of merging the latter two.
But this is the closest I’ve seen any conservative journalist come to conceding the historical point:
……………………..
And I think I know why.
Everyone else on the right, as near as I can tell, is holding the line and insisting on one revisionist history or another, all of which entail supposing that Democrats merged these three unequivocal bills into something that intentionally says the opposite. Which is convenient, because, as Douthat’s tweet implies, once you concede intent, the legal and political argument for invalidating subsidies all reduce to the same thing: Congress made an oops, and for that oops, five million people should lose their insurance.
As it happens, I don’t think conservatives have quite as clean a textual case as they assume. Multiple federal judges have held that the law unambiguously envisions subsidies in every state. One of them, James Spencer, is a Reagan appointee. “When statutory context is taken into account, Plaintiff’s position is revealed as implausible,” he wrote. “Courts have a duty to construe statutes as a whole.” He likewise rejected the plaintiff’s theory of intent. Multiple other federal judges hold that the text is ambiguous, but that the government’s interpretation is plausible and should be given deference. If you’re keeping score in this way, the government’s case is actually winning.
Law professor Nicholas Bagley has more on why conservatives are begging the question when they claim they want to uphold ‘the law as written.’
……………………………………..
I’m not solely concerned with appearances, though. I’m concerned with what happens if five Supreme Court conservatives ignore the statutory context and invalidate the subsidies. A ruling for the challengers would immediately tee up a crucial debate over what to do next. And that debate must unfold in an intellectually honest fashion. “Should we fix a simple but consequential error?” rather than, “Should Democrats (not to mention voters) live with the unintended consequences of the scheme they devised?” Conservatives obviously have no interest in debating the former proposition. That’s part of the reason they’re holding so tightly to the fabricated notion that Democrats did this on purpose. Or at least to the idea that such an interpretation is plausible. Among other things, the point of suggesting that this is what the law’s authors intended is to rig the post-Halbig debate, so that Republicans don’t suffer any consequences for sitting on their hands as beneficiaries suffer over something so easily fixed.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118903/supreme-court-could-side-halbig-nuke-obamacare-subsidies
Sticking it to the GOP on deportations
By Greg Sargent July 30 at 4:25 PM
If and when Obama announces his executive actions to ease deportations, Republicans are likely to portray it as a wholesale shredding of the Constitution done for no other reason than to reward a base constituency — Latinos.
Which raises a question: Is it possible that Democrats could build some kind of coalition behind the coming executive action that includes GOP-aligned constituencies — agricultural interests, business, evangelicals — who have long pushed Republicans to adopt broader reform?
It’s far fetched idea, but some Dems are beginning to think about whether there are ways to broaden out Obama’s coming executive action — not in terms of the number who would be impacted by easing deportations, but more in terms of administrative reforms that could address some of these groups’ problems. Some of the constituencies themselves are quietly debating whether to ask for such reforms as part of Obama’s action, according to several people involved in these discussions.
Dem Rep. Joe Garcia of Florida, a key player on immigration, is circulating a memo among Dems arguing that the White House could take several actions that could appeal to such groups. Among them would be recapturing and re-issuing old work visas that have gone unused for various bureaucratic reasons — something that tech interests have wanted. Another is granting employment authorization for spouses of foreign nationals — something that might appeal to business. A third is giving more work flexibility to students, something educational institutions might like.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/07/30/sticking-it-to-the-gop-on-deportations/
More good Obamacare news highlights why GOP alternative will never materialize
By Paul Waldman July 30 at 12:43 PM
You may have noticed that the Medicare trustees have announced that the life of the program’s trust fund had been extended another four years to 2030 because of savings achieved through the Affordable Care Act. But you probably didn’t hear about this: The Obama administration has announced that because the ACA closed the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole,” since 2010, over 8 million seniors and disabled people have saved a total of $11.5 billion on medications, or an average of over $1,400 per beneficiary.
It was a good reminder that the ACA does a lot of things to improve the health system, not all of which make the front pages. And that has forced Republicans to come up with yet another way to keep alive the notion that someday we’ll finally get rid of it: Claim that it is only a matter of time until the law collapses on its own, making and vow to have something or other ready to go in its place.
We’ll get to that in a moment, but in case you’ve forgotten, the donut hole was part of the prescription drug benefit passed in 2003 under President Bush. The way it works is that Medicare pays for much of your prescription drug costs up to the first couple thousand dollars, then stops paying entirely for the next few thousand dollars — that’s the hole, where beneficiaries had to pay for 100 percent of their drug costs — and then begins paying again after your out-of-pocket costs approach $5,000. The donut hole represented a huge hardship for millions of seniors, so the ACA closes it over time.
The donut hole sometimes comes up when you hear an administration official or some other Democrat give a long list of the good things the ACA has done for people. And almost all of the items on that list are benefits that Republicans would never risk taking away from voters.
………………………………..
So what’s a Republican to do? They’re faced with two unacceptable options. They could publicly admit that the ACA is here to stay (which they know by now) and bring on the wrath of their base, to whom they’ve been promising repeal for years. Or they could detail what “repeal and replace” would look like and open themselves up to blistering attacks from Democrats. The answer to that quandary is to promise that a detailed Republican health care plan is on its way, but never actually deliver it. To see how that works, we can look at this interview with Paul Ryan published in the Washington Examiner:
“I don’t think Obamacare’s going to survive anyway, because I think the law is so fundamentally unsound, that I think it’s going to collapse under its own weight in time, if anything. And so I do think we need to get ahead of that and propose a full repeal and replace — no, fully repeal and replace the law, ultimately. Is that going to be when the guy named Obama’s in office? No. But I think we need to get prepared for how to deal with health care reform.”
They need to “get ahead of that” — how forward-thinking and proactive, given that it’s been a mere four years since the law was passed and the GOP has yet to come up with its alternative. The interviewer tries just once to get Ryan to be specific, and is rewarded with an utterly meaningless free-market word salad:
Examiner: What should health care reform look like?
Ryan: It should be patient-centered, not government-run. That’s the basic core of it all … It should be a patient-centered system designed around the whole notion that the patient is the nucleus of the system, where all of the providers of health care services, be they insurers, nursing homes, doctors, hospitals, compete against each other for our business as consumers. And so we bring the basic fundamentals in a market economy to work in the health care sector, where they really haven’t been applied. And I think that is the core at getting at health inflation, accessibility and affordability, which is not only a family problem, because people are working paycheck to paycheck — it’s taking more of their disposable income away — but it’s also the core of our budget crisis.
Examiner: Is it enough for Republicans to say they’re going to repeal Obamacare, or do you need to communicate to voters that you’re going to fix health care broadly?
Ryan: Yes, I do believe it’s our obligation to articulate what we would replace Obamacare with and what the health care system would look like under our reforms and I really believe that more than ever before, the country is open to new possibilities and new ideas, and so, we should offer them.
In other words, they’ll be getting right on that. And thus it will be forever: the GOP “repeal and replace” plan will be always be coming soon, yet it will never arrive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/07/30/more-good-obamacare-news-highlights-why-gop-alternative-will-never-materalize/
REVIEW: Get On Up Is a Loud, Proud and Oscar-Worthy James Brown Biopic
Richard Corliss
12:26 PM ET
Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in ’42,’ is sensational as the Godfather of Soul in this bold movie from the director of ‘The Help’
Even by the standards of early rock ‘n’ roll songs, the 1956 “Please, Please, Please” is primitive, in fact primal. It’s the “Hare Krishna” of sexual desperation: one word is repeated a couple dozen times in a lover’s mantra, prayer or threat, as crooned by the vocal group, The Famous Flames, and howled by their lead singer. In the biopic Get On Up, a record-label executive listens to the number and dismisses it. Where are the verse and chorus, where’s the play of words? And Brown’s manager keeps repeating, “It’s not the song.” Exactly right. It’s the singer — the pleader, the testifier — James Brown.
The singer and the showmanship. On stage more than on records, Brown turned “Please, Please, Please” into fervent melodrama with a comic undercoating. The first record and first R&B hit for Brown and the Flames, the song always came at their end of their set, with Brown intoning the dirge as the house-band saxes followed him in a slow, keening descent. This went on for a few thrilling minutes. Then, totally spent by his exertions, and crushed by the perfidy of womankind, Brown collapsed onstage, was lifted to his feet by attendants and, with the robe of a defeated boxer draped over his shoulders, began to drag himself toward the wings — until the cries of the audience magically revived him. Like Lazarus or the Frankenstein monster, he summoned the will and strength to sing one more chorus. Now that’s entertainment.
http://time.com/3057251/james-brown-get-on-up-biopic-review/
Michelle Obama says the ‘blood of Africa’ runs through her veins
BY ANNIKA MCGINNIS
Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:43pm EDT
(Reuters) – First lady Michelle Obama embraced her family’s African roots in a speech on Wednesday, telling a group of young Africans that the “blood of Africa” runs through her veins as she urged changing traditional beliefs on the worth of educating women.
Her husband had shied away from discussing his African heritage in his own remarks to the 500 Africans finishing a six-week Washington leadership fellowship on Monday, referencing his Kenyan father only once and in the question-and-answer session. But Michelle Obama said as an African American woman, her discussion with the African youth was “deeply personal.”
“The roots of my family tree are in Africa,” the first lady told the cheering crowd. “My husband’s father was born and raised in Kenya. Members of our extended family still live there. I have had the pleasure of traveling to Africa many times over the years, including four trips as first lady, and I have brought my mother and my daughters along whenever I can.”
“The blood of Africa runs through my veins, and I care deeply,” Obama said, addressing her listeners as her “brothers” and “sisters.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/30/us-usa-obama-michelle-idUSKBN0FZ26D20140730
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/494537958393778176/photo/1
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
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President Barack Obama – not the GOP – is trying to impeach himself. Thank you @ChuckTodd and @PRyan for that nugget of stupidity.
10:43 AM – 30 Jul 2014
New Republic: McDonald’s Workers Were Just Handed a Huge Victory by the Obama Administration
The news for America’s low-wage workers has been pretty bleak these past, oh, 30 or 40 years or so. Their pay has stagnated and their bargaining power has atrophied, even as their corporate overlords have seen their own profits and compensation soar. But there are signs of a brightening underway, and the latest one arrived Tuesday in the form of a possibly consequential finding against one of the most iconic low-wage employers of all, McDonald’s.
The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, Richard Griffin Jr., ruled that he would include McDonald’s as a “joint employer” in the 43 unfair labor practice complaints filed by McDonald’s workers over the past 20 months that Griffin deemed had merit (the complaints mostly involve retaliation against workers who engaged in organizing efforts). In the past, McDonald’s and other big fast-food chains have avoided responsibility in such cases, on the premise that their thousands of franchisees are the real employers, not the corporate giant in whose name they operate….
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118893/mcdonalds-ruling-obamas-nlrb-big-win-low-wage-workers
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/494483294247870464/photo/1
https://twitter.com/nedrapickler/status/494536634600534016/photo/1
https://twitter.com/j12doz/status/494538414385926144/photo/1
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Impeachment And You: The Long Game On The Border
Associated Press reporter Erica Werner has a pretty sharp analysis on President Obama’s anticipated immigration move, and its effects both short and long term.
Even as they grapple with an immigration crisis at the border, White House officials are making plans to act before November’s mid-term elections to grant work permits to potentially millions of immigrants who are in this country illegally, allowing them to stay in the United States without threat of deportation, according to advocates and lawmakers in touch with the administration.
Such a large-scale move on immigration could scramble election-year politics and lead some conservative Republicans to push for impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama, a prospect White House officials have openly discussed.
That’s the first two paragraphs, and so far that’s the smartest, most accurate response I’ve seen on this subject. The scope of this immigration order is large, and the urge by the bonkers right to push “the big I button” will be, I think, too much for them to resist.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/07/impeachment-and-you-long-game-on-border.html
Another update from TOWN:
Town:
This comment was below, in regards to Maureen McDonnell. I want to touch on this some more.
I have never heard of Maureen McDonnell ever having a job after marrying Bob. Seems like she was probably a stay at home mom; Bob’s college thesis was that women should not work outside of the home. They had been married for 35 years so if she was a SAHM she’s been out of the workforce for almost 40 years.
No matter which way it goes for him, Bob McDonnell will be dumping his wife’s a$$. Now imagine, you are 60 years old, your husband has dumped you and you have no marketable workplace skills. He might break you off some $ but since the entire country has seen you twerking and jerking for some other man who is not your husband, ya might not get nothing.
At any rate, you might have to go back to work. But what would you do? You don’t have any skills and you can best believe all your Republican job makers will close ranks and shut you out.
But check it: Maureen McDonnell was known for being very nasty to low level staff people. How ironic it would be if she had to start over working along the very people she thought she was better than and was nasty to?
It’s either that or going to jail with the very people she thought she was better than and was nasty to.
Irony. It’s whats for dinner.
No Labels, no accomplishments, but plenty of money
07/30/14 11:43 AM
By Steve Benen
It’s easy to forget that No Labels exists as an entity, but it does. Four years after a high-profile launch, the group apparently still wants to help the political system by promoting non-partisanship.
If you’ve forgotten about the organization outside of its role as a punch-line to Twitter jokes, you’re forgiven – it’s not at all clear what No Labels has been up to for the last four years. Looking over my archives, the group apparently took a keen interest in bipartisan seating at the State of the Union – up to and including a full-page New York Times ad on the subject – but in terms of substantive, meaningful work, No Labels doesn’t appear to have made any impact on American politics at all.
That does not, however, appear to have adversely affected the group’s bank account. Meredith Shiner uncovered some interesting details this week about No Labels’ finances and the degree to which the group has become “yet another cog in the D.C. moneymaking machine.”
Like many other outside political groups, No Labels spends a disproportionate part of its budget maintaining and promoting its own organization, trying to keep its profile high while ensuring a steady flow of fundraising dollars, whose donors they keep secret, in a cluttered nonprofit environment. […]
And though No Labels has positioned itself as a warrior against gridlock, an internal document obtained by Yahoo News suggests the group is banking on more political dysfunction in an attempt to find “opportunity” and relevance for itself.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/no-labels-no-accomplishments-plenty-money
In Kansas, Brownback tried a red-state ‘experiment.’ Now he may be paying a political price
By Zachary A. Goldfarb July 30 at 6:00 AM
GODDARD, Kan. — Gail Jamison, a lifelong Republican, voted for Sam Brownback for governor in 2010 believing he would restore school funding that had been greatly reduced by the recession.
Four years later, she has joined with more than 100 prominent Republicans in publicly throwing their support behind Brownback’s Democratic opponent — because, she said, Brownback pursued a hefty tax cut for the rich that deprived schools of needed resources.
“I am shocked by what’s happened,” said Jamison, president of the Board of Education in this Wichita suburb. “I find it personally a very extreme stance.”
As he runs for reelection, Brownback is finding that what he once called a “real live experiment” in red-state governance is struggling to produce the benefits he had promised, spurring an increasingly competitive gubernatorial race against state House Minority Leader Paul Davis (D). His troubles also provide a case study of what can happen when single-party control — now the norm in most states — combines with the sharp rightward shift of the Republican Party.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-kansas-gov-brownbacks-reelection-race-is-case-study-in-republican-party-shift/2014/07/30/3192d86c-1420-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html
More trom TOWN:
GOP lawmaker: No to Obama lawsuit
By Bob Cusack – 07/30/14 06:00 AM EDT
A Republican congressman opposes legislation that would authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for his executive actions.
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) told The Hill that the lawsuit, spearheaded by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is “theater, is a show.”
Jones, who will vote no on the legislation that is scheduled to hit the House floor on Thursday, said he prefers impeaching Obama.
“Why not impeach instead of wasting $1 million to $2 million of the taxpayers’ money? … If you’re serious about this, use what the founders of the Constitution gave us,” Jones said.
http://thehill.com/news/house/213751-jones-no-to-obama-lawsuit#ixzz38y0es9Li
The most frightening candidate I’ve met in seven years interviewing congressional hopefuls
By David Wasserman July 30 at 6:00 AM
As a House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, I’ve personally interviewed over 300 congressional candidates over the course of seven years, both to get to know them and evaluate their chances of winning. I’ve been impressed by just as many Republicans as Democrats, and underwhelmed by equal numbers, too. Most are accustomed to tough questions.
But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday. It’s tough to decide which party’s worst nightmare she would be.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/30/the-most-frightening-candidate-ive-met-in-seven-years-interviewing-congressional-hopefuls/
GOP attorney: No Miss. law prohibits crossover voting
An attorney for the Mississippi Republican Party says there is no law in the state that prohibits crossover voting in a primary and runoff election, only an intrepretation by the attorney general.
The Clarion-Ledger11 p.m. CDT July 29, 2014
An attorney for the Mississippi Republican Party says state law does not prohibit people from crossing over to vote in party’s primary and another’s primary runoff, an issue in Chris McDaniel’s presumed challenge to his GOP runoff loss to Sen. Thad Cochran.
“You heard me right,” said Michael Wallace, attorney for the state Republican Party. “There is an attorney general’s opinion on the subject, but that is all. The attorney general may be right. I wasn’t telling the judge that the attorney general wasn’t right. I was telling her that the issue has never gone to court. … The attorney general may be 100 percent right, but the issue has not been tested in court that I know of. It may have came up in a county court somewhere that hasn’t made it to reported cases. But to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been tested. All we have is an attorney general interpretation.”
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2014/07/30/gop-attorney-miss-law-prohibits-crossover-voting/13348489/
VA GOPer: Idea That Muslims Contributed To America Is ‘Nonsense’
JULY 30, 2014, 11:56 AM EDT
The treasurer of the Virginia Republican Party on Tuesday made some intolerant comments about Muslims in a Facebook post.
Bob FitzSimmonds called President Obama’s statement at the end of Ramadan thanking Muslims for their contributions “nonsense,” and then scoffed at other religions.
http://a5.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/w_652/wmyjfmenfsgh28glkgig.jpg
OOPS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrCodfpk3ww
So it’s PBO’s fault as usual that the GOPers want to IMPEACH him? LOL
Shame on you “MR 2012 OHIO’S GOING DOWN FOR ROMNEY”
“I submit that Barack Hussein Obama’s unilateral negotiations with terrorists and the ensuing release of their key leadership without consult – mandated by law – with the U.S. Congress represents high crimes and misdemeanors, an impeachable offense,” former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., wrote on his website in June.
…
South Dakota’s Republican Party passed a resolution at its June convention calling for Obama’s impeachment for violating “his oath of office in numerous ways.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/02/232163/time-to-impeach-obama.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Ir6cra09o
SUE=IMPEACH, Only Johnny Walker RED didn’t call it IMPEACHMENT!
MOFOS are scurred now
GOP lawmaker: No to Obama lawsuit
By Bob Cusack – 07/30/14 06:00 AM EDT
A Republican congressman opposes legislation that would authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for his executive actions.
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) told The Hill that the lawsuit, spearheaded by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is “theater, is a show.”
REALLY? Well where’s the popcorn, 3 Chics?! LOL
Read more: http://thehill.com/news/house/213751-jones-no-to-obama-lawsuit#ixzz38y68Le3N
http://thehill.com/news/house/213751-jones-no-to-obama-lawsuit#ixzz38y0es9Li
Tell it Smartypants!
Chuck Todd is finally embarrassed
Oh…so I see that Chuck Todd is finally embarrassed by Washington because of all the impeachment talk. I have a few questions for Mr. Todd:
•Were you embarrassed by the fact that our first African American President was required to produce a birth certificate?
•Were you embarrassed when Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” to President Obama during a SOTU speech?
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2014/07/chuck-todd-is-finally-embarrassed.html
The GOP loses control of its Frankenstein monster
07/30/14 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
The headline on the L.A. Times story reads, “Boehner rules out impeachment.” But when it comes to what the House Speaker actually said yesterday, the headline isn’t quite right.
“No, no, no, no,” Congressman Greg Walden, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Politico when asked whether the House would initiate impeachment proceedings. Boehner told reporters on Tuesday that there were “no plans” to remove Obama, calling the idea “a scam started by Democrats at the White House.”
We already know with certainty that the Ohio Republican is wrong when he blames this on the White House – the impeachment talk has come from GOP lawmakers and it’s been going on for years. Indeed, if this is a “scam,” John Boehner’s own leadership team is in on it – the new House Majority Whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) refused to take presidential impeachment off the table during an interview just three days ago.
But then there’s the part about Boehner’s “plans.”
There are a few angles to this story that are running on parallel tracks, all of which carry equal weight. The first is the GOP’s Frankenstein problem: Republican leaders created a monster, doing nothing to tamp down the right’s crusade to tear down the Obama presidency, and they suddenly find themselves scrambling now that the monster is running lose. As Arit John put it, Republicans have “lost control of the impeachment plot they hatched.”
It’s led to, among other things, an awkward dance in which pro-impeachment Republicans try to walk back their own rhetoric now that they realize how happy Democrats are to hear it.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-gop-loses-control-its-frankenstein-monster
No ‘Rainbow Families’: Canadian Fertility Clinic Refuses to Match White Patients With Nonwhite Donors
Dr. Calvin Greene, the administrative director at the Regional Fertility Program, told the Calgary Herald that his stand on race mixing is firm and has been policy since the clinic opened in the 1980s.
By: Stephen A. Crockett Jr.
Posted: July 28 2014 7:44 AM
A Canadian fertility clinic doesn’t want to create “rainbow families,” so it refuses to match clients with donors of different ethnicities, claiming that children should be able to easily identify their “ethnic roots.”
A 38-year-old white woman named Catherine (she didn’t want to give her last name) told the Calgary Herald that she was looking into the process of in vitro fertilization and was shocked when the Regional Fertility Program, a Calgary clinic, told her that she could only use sperm donors who were also white, in order to avoid “creating rainbow families.”
“I was absolutely floored,” she told the newspaper.
Catherine believes that because of the clinic’s policy, many of the same men have been chosen by different patients in the area, which was one of the reasons she cited for wanting to broaden her search to include other races.
“Frankly, it’s appalling how many people have the same donors, probably because of this policy,” she told the Herald. “A friend of mine just went through this process and used the donor that I would have picked.”
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/07/no_rainbow_families_canadian_fertility_clinic_refuses_to_match_white_patients.html
Why Won’t More Wealthy Black Celebs Dig Deeper in Their Wallets?
More wealthy African Americans should be willing to make big-dollar contributions to the political causes they care about.
By: Keli Goff
Posted: July 25 2014 3:00 AM
Though the outsized influence of wealthy conservative donors like the Koch brothers tend to dominate debates about the role of money in politics, a new report indicates progressives now appear to have a fundraising advantage. According to the Sunlight Foundation, the top donors to super PACs for the past year have leaned progressive. But none of the top donors are women or minorities.
While increasing the number of women who are major political donors has become more of a priority for both Republicans and Democrats in recent years, there’s been less focus on the importance of increasing the number of people of color who give in large amounts to political causes—even though super PACs are increasingly becoming the great influencers in our political process, whether we like it or not.
I certainly don’t consider this ideal for democracy, but they’re a fact of life, and not treating super PACs as a priority is like playing in only half of a Super Bowl and surrendering the rest of the game to the other team. Which is why instead of merely focusing on increasing voter turnout among African Americans, we should also be encouraging more wealthy African Americans to become major players in America’s fundraising game.
To clarify, plenty of wealthy black Americans make political donations. Plenty attend political fundraisers, perform at them and host them. Earlier this week, Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes hosted a fundraiser headlined by President Barack Obama and attended by Scandal’s star, Kerry Washington. But while the amounts raised at events like this are certainly significant—the cheapest tickets were $1,000, and the maximum amount an individual can donate to a political party is $32,400—the sum an individual can give to a super PAC is limitless.
Comedian Bill Maher gave $1 million to a progressive super PAC in 2012. That same year, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson gave a whopping $30 million to super PACs benefiting Republicans and nearly as much four years earlier. So where are the black Sheldon Adelsons?
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2014/07/super_pacs_need_more_women_and_minority_donors.html
Lobbyists advise GOP: give up anti-gay stance
07/30/14 10:13 AM
By Steve Benen
The Hill reports today that a growing number of Republican lobbyists on K Street – home to many of Washington’s largest lobbying firms – are “helping members of their party shift their stance on gay rights issues.” The piece specifically highlighted Kathryn Lehman, a top GOP lobbyist and partner at Holland & Knight, who sounded optimistic.
“The issue is losing its toxicity, from a Republican perspective,” she said.
Is there anything to this? Maybe. Jennifer Bendery raised an interesting point the other day.
When President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday making it illegal for federal contractors to fire or harass employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, civil rights advocates hailed the move as one of the most important actions ever taken by a president to stem discrimination.
Democratic lawmakers raced to issue statements celebrating the advancement for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community…. But in Republican quarters on Capitol Hill, it’s as if nothing happened. GOP leaders have been silent. Socially conservative members have gone quiet.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/lobbyists-advise-gop-give-anti-gay-stance
FROM TOWN
This is a royally HOT MESS.
U.S. economy bounces back in a big way
07/30/14 08:51 AM
By Steve Benen
y any measure, the U.S. economy was unusually weak in the first quarter of the year (January through March), though most in the economic, financial, and political sectors were untroubled by the data. Indeed, for most, the winter drop was something of a fluke, caused by unusually harsh weather conditions and an unexpected drop in health spending.
Still, the first-quarter report made the second-quarter data all the more important. Would the economy bounce back? This morning, we received an answer – and for those rooting for economic success, the results were even better than expected.
The U.S. economy grew by a 4% annual pace in the second quarter, bouncing back from a revised 2.1% decline in the first three months of the year, according to a preliminary government estimate. Economists polled by MarketWatch predicted GDP would grow by a seasonally adjusted 3.2%. Consumer spending, the main source of economic activity, accelerated to show a solid 2.5% gain after a meager 1.2% rise in the first quarter. […]
Also adding to U.S. growth was a pickup in construction spending, increased business investment, a bigger buildup in inventories and slightly higher government spending, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
Also note, the most recent data showed the first quarter GDP at -2.9%. Today’s report revises that total in a less-awful direction, to -2.1%.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/us-economy-bounces-back-big-way
Chuck Todd’s impeachment tirade
By JONATHAN TOPAZ | 7/30/14 7:53 AM EDT
Chuck Todd on Wednesday railed against both the White House and congressional Republicans for engaging in “disgusting” and “embarrassing” rhetoric on impeachment and suing the president.
“This is sort of an embarrassing moment for Washington,” the NBC News chief White House correspondent said. “The leaders for both parties here — they’re driving away people from the polls, they’re driving people away from politics. This is cynical, it’s ugly, it’s disgusting.”
The “Morning Joe” panel was discussing reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has raised $2.1 million on fundraising largely related to its campaign materials that Republicans are trying to impeach Obama. At a White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Josh Earnest read a list of GOP lawmakers that have suggested impeaching the president and said he wouldn’t call on Democrats to stop fundraising on the issue.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/chuck-todd-impeachment-109533.html#ixzz38xTgAckT
Democrats ask: Where’s FLOTUS?
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE | 7/29/14 6:56 PM EDT Updated: 7/30/14 8:03 AM EDT
First lady Michelle Obama is the most popular member of the Obama administration, and Democrats say she’s the one they want to see more of in the midterms.
She’s a woman and an African-American, with a direct appeal to two groups that the Democrats need to turn out in major numbers in November. She can bring the Obama brand without the baggage of President Barack Obama himself. She can go to states where he can’t. She’s a fresh draw for donors and voters.
So where is she? Democrats want an answer — they desperately need the help, and especially the cash.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/2014-elections-democrats-michelle-obama-109518.html#ixzz38xk9NEzI
Pol-idiot-cos is a SHIT-STIRRER!
and if Dems are really wanting FLOTUS, they’d better be asking for her more graciously than what this piece-o-shit article is implying.
And the comments are rank & despicable. What a RAG.
Tentative good news on the Detroit water front!!
~~~~~~~~~~
Our water is no longer under emergency management.
We did it! Thanks to pressure from activists across the city and around
the world, today the Emergency Manager of Detroit relinquished control
of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and handed it back to the city’s democratically elected mayor.
http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3000ba396484a7eda281a3946&id=4e0d15cd4d
Flipping the script is a wonderful thing. The MSM humored them and winked at them, but now that the Dems are like, THIS IS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY’RE ABOUT, they are desperately trying to do the’ both sides do it’.
Naw, mofos.
Nope.
………………………………………….
White House won’t tell Dems to stop fundraising off impeachment
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE 7/30/14 6:39 AM EDT
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday called repeatedly for Republicans to stop talking about impeaching President Barack Obama — but said he wouldn’t do the same for Democrats who’ve been fundraising off it nonstop in recent days.
“It is up to Democrats to make their own decisions,” Earnest said at the White House daily briefing. “I will leave it to Dem strategists who have a much better sense than I do about the best way to raise money for their campaign committees.”
Earlier in the briefing, Earnest read through a list of Republican members of Congress who have spoken supportively of impeachment: Reps. Steve King of Iowa, Ted Yoho of Florida, Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, Blake Farenthold of Texas, Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan and Steve Stockman of Texas, whom Earnest sarcastically referred to as “the distinguished.”
Earnest said that if House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) truly believes that the impeachment talk is a “scam” by Democrats just to raise money, “then I suspect that there may be members of the Republican conference that didn’t receive the memo.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/obama-impeachment-gop-democrats-109501.html#ixzz38xXJkQBK
WH & Dems be like
Oliver Willis @owillis
Ohhhhh RT @SquawkCNBC: #BreakingNews: Advanced Q2 GDP release shows U.S. economy grew at 4%, beating 3% expectation. GDP shrank 2.9% in Q1.
The GOP’s impeachment dilemma will only get worse
By Paul Waldman July 29 at 12:31 PM
Today John Boehner declared that any talk of Republicans impeaching President Obama is a sinister plot originating in the White House, from which so many other sinister plots have come. “It’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House,” he said. “This whole talk about impeachment is coming from the president’s own staff and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Why? Because they’re trying to rally their own people to give money and show up in this year’s elections.” Which is partially true. Democrats do want to talk about impeachment, and it does help them raise money (though while an actual impeachment would certainly get Democratic voters to the polls in November, it’s much less likely that just talking about it will do so). But that’s only part of the story.
Boehner and other Republican leaders are now trying to walk an impossible tightrope. On one hand, they’re arguing that they have no interest in impeaching the president — they know that it would be a political catastrophe if they did — and any suggestion to the contrary is nothing but Democratic calumny. On the other hand, they’re arguing that Obama is a lawless tyrant who is trampling on the Constitution. If that contradiction has put them in a difficult situation, they have no one to blame but themselves.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/07/29/the-gops-impeachment-dilemma-will-only-get-worse/?hpid=z3
ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith was handed a one-week suspension after he made controversial comments on his show.
Smith was discussing the NFL’s suspension of the Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Rice and implied that women should be blamed for domestic violence, cautioning them not to do “anything to provoke wrong actions.” He apologized on Twitter and in a pretaped segment, saying it was “the most egregious error of my career.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/07/29/espn-suspends-stephen-smith.html
End the Gaza blockade to achieve peace
By Keith Ellison July 29 at 10:45 AM
Keith Ellison, a Democrat, represents Minnesota’s 5th District in the House of Representatives.
It seems as though each day brings new horrors and heartbreaks in the Holy Land. More than 1,000 dead. Gazan children blown up on the beach. A U.N. shelter hit. Two-thirds of Israelis living in fear from indiscriminate rocket fire launched by Hamas. But as the calls for a cease-fire gain momentum, it is important to understand that many Gazans who have no association with Hamas view the return to the way things were as unacceptable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/keith-ellison-end-the-gaza-blockade-to-achieve-peace/2014/07/29/e5e707c4-16a1-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
The first time I ever really ‘knew’ about Celine Deon was the Aladdin duet
Aladdin was the first Disney movie I ever purchased on video.
Loving Peabo this week
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Happy HUMP day, Everyone!