Hope you have enjoyed the music so far.
1992–97: Maverick Records, Sex, Erotica, Bedtime Stories, Evita, and motherhood
In 1992, Madonna had a role in A League of Their Own as Mae Mordabito, a baseball player on an all-women’s team. She recorded the film’s theme song, “This Used to Be My Playground”, which became a Hot 100 number one hit.[37] The same year, she founded her own entertainment company, Maverick, consisting of a record company (Maverick Records), a film production company (Maverick Films), and associated music publishing, television broadcasting, book publishing and merchandising divisions. The deal was a joint venture with Time Warner and paid Madonna an advance of $60 million. It gave her 20% royalties from the music proceedings, one of the highest rates in the industry, equaled at that time only by Michael Jackson’s royalty rate established a year earlier with Sony.[86] The first release from the venture was Madonna’s book, titled Sex. It consisted of sexually provocative and explicit images, photographed by Steven Meisel. The book caused strong negative reaction from the media and the general public, but sold 1.5 million copies at $50 each in a matter of days.[87][88] At the same time she released her fifth studio album, Erotica, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200.[24][88] Its title track peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.[37] Erotica also produced five further singles: “Deeper and Deeper”, “Bad Girl”, “Fever”, “Rain” and “Bye Bye Baby”.[89] The provocative imagery continued in the 1990s with the erotic thriller, Body of Evidence, a film which contained scenes of sadomasochism and bondage. It was poorly received by critics.[90][91] She also starred in the film Dangerous Game, which was released straight to video in North America. The New York Times described the film as “angry and painful, and the pain feels real.”[92]
In September 1993, Madonna embarked on The Girlie Show World Tour, in which she dressed as a whip-cracking dominatrix surrounded by topless dancers. The show faced negative reaction, specifically in Puerto Rico where she rubbed the island’s flag between her legs on stage.[50] In March 1994, she appeared as a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, using profanity that was required to be censored on television and handing Letterman a pair of her underwear and asking him to smell it.[93] The releases of her sexually explicit films, albums and book, and the aggressive appearance on Letterman all made critics question Madonna as a sexual renegade. She faced strong negative publicity from critics and fans, who commented that “she had gone too far” and that her career was over.[94]
Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli describer her ballad “I’ll Remember” (1994) as an attempt to tone down her provocative image. The song was recorded for Alek Keshishian’s film With Honors.[95] She made a subdued appearance with Letterman at an awards show and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno after realizing that she needed to change her musical direction in order to sustain her popularity.[96] With her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories (1994), Madonna employed a softer image to try to improve the public perception of her.[96] The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and produced four singles, including “Secret” and “Take a Bow”, the latter topping the Hot 100 for seven weeks, the longest period of any Madonna single.[97] At the same time, she became romantically involved with fitness trainer Carlos Leon.[98] Something to Remember, a collection of ballads, was released in November 1995. The album featured three new songs: “You’ll See”, “One More Chance”, and a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You”.[37][99]
1996 saw the release of Evita, in which Madonna played the title role of Eva Perón.[100][101] For a long time, Madonna had desired to play Perón and even wrote to director Alan Parker, explaining how she would be perfect for the part. She stated, “This is the role I was born to play. I put everything of me into this because it was much more than a role in a movie. It was exhilarating and intimidating at the same time….. And I am prouder of Evita than anything else I have done.”[102] After securing it, she underwent vocal training and learned about the history of Argentina and Perón. During shooting she fell sick many times due to the intense emotional effort required.[103] However, as she told Oprah, she was also pregnant during the filming, which was also a factor: “I was winded after every take. I had to lie on the couch every ten minutes so I could recover from dizzy spells, I was worried that I was shaking the baby around too much and that would injure it in some way.”[104] Nevertheless, Madonna managed to find a positive side to those problems, which she wrote in her personal diary at the time: “Ironically, this feeling of vulnerability and weakness is helping me in the movie. I’m sure Evita felt this way every day of her life once she discovered she was ill.”[105]
After its release, Evita garnered critical appreciation. Zach Conner from Time magazine commented “It’s a relief to say that Evita is pretty damn fine, well cast and handsomely visualized. Madonna once again confounds our expectations. She plays Evita with a poignant weariness and has more than just a bit of star quality. Love or hate Madonna-Eva, she is a magnet for all eyes.”[106][107] Madonna won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for the role.[108] She released three singles from the Evita soundtrack album including “You Must Love Me” (which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1997) and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”.[109] Madonna was later presented with the Artist Achievement Award by Tony Bennett at the 1996 Billboard Music Awards.[110] On October 14, 1996, Madonna gave birth to Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, her daughter with Leon.[111] Biographer Mary Cross writes that although Madonna was often ill during the filming and worried that her pregnancy would harm the film, she reached some important personal goals: “Now 38 years old, Madonna had at last triumphed on screen and achieved her dream of having a child, both in the same year. She had reached another turning point in her career, reinventing herself and her image with the public.”[112] Her relationship with Carlos Leon ended in May 1997;[113] she declared that they were “better off as best friends.”[114] After Lourdes’ birth, Madonna became involved in Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah. She was introduced to Jewish mysticism by actress Sandra Bernhard in 1997.[11
http://youtu.be/QKnVWr2PkIU
The Koch Brothers And Republican Party Have Just Joined Forces To Track Voters
by Josh Israel Posted on August 28, 2014 at 12:17 pm
A secretive data and technology company linked to conservative oil billionaires Charles and David Koch has reached an agreement to share its information with the “voter file and data management company” that holds an exclusive agreement with the Republican National Committee. This will allow the Republican Party full access to voter data collected by the Koch’s Freedom Partners entities and clients — and entrenches the Kochs’ network even deeper into the GOP.
Because political parties are not allowed to accept corporate contributions, it would be illegal for the Kochs to simply give their massive databases to the Republican National Committee directly. But the Republican National Committee has outsourced its database management to a company called GOP Data Trust. And that company joined forces Thursday with i360 (aka Themis), a firm reportedly backed by the Koch Brothers’ Freedom Partners and serving as repository for the data amassed by the Kochs’ political empire.
In a press release, the two companies claimed that the “historic data sharing partnership” will “allow Republican and Conservative campaign resources to be spent more efficiently than ever before.” They noted that “voter contact information gathered by clients of either The Data Trust or i360″ will be now used by both to “improve the data shared with all clients,” meaning “conservative groups and campaigns will have more information about voters at their disposal for their own activities than ever before.”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/28/3476810/koch-brothers-rnc-data/
Obama is not the black sheep of the family
By Jonathan Capehart August 28 at 4:53 PM
Some African Americans can’t stand it when the family’s dirty laundry is aired in public. They can’t stand it when someone of prominence talks about the pervasive hopelessness that leads to alienation that leads to bad choices that leads to crime — black-on-black and otherwise — that leads to decimated families, communities and their collective aspirations. And when that prominent person is President Obama, who uses himself and his own journey as proof that obstacles can be overcome with hard work and support, those aforementioned folks lose their minds. We’ve seen a lot of that since the police shooting and killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9.
But here’s the thing: The howling critics refuse to acknowledge the applause and standing ovations Obama receives from black audiences every time he dares to keep it real.
That’s what happened at the NAACP convention in July 2009 when the president said, “No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands — you cannot forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. No excuses.” And they really loved what Obama said next.
To parents — to parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. (Applause.) You can’t just contract out parenting. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox — (applause) — putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. (Applause.) It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework. (Applause.)
And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor’s sons and daughters. (Applause.) We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and — it wasn’t your child, but they’ll whup you anyway. (Laughter and applause.) Or at least they’ll tell your parents — the parents will. You know. (Laughter.) That’s the meaning of community. That’s how we can reclaim the strength and the determination and the hopefulness that helped us come so far; helped us make a way out of no way.
There were more ovations and applause for Obama at his Feb. 2013 speech in Chicago in the wake of gun violence that killed Hadiya Pendleton. And at his May 2013 commencement address at Morehouse College, one of the preeminent historically black colleges in the country. These are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/08/28/obama-is-not-the-black-sheep-of-the-family/
https://twitter.com/andrewfox10/status/505059342907748352/photo/1
Hey, Chicas! Shoe magic. Try it and see if it works.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to make a statement from the White House briefing room at 4 p.m. ET
President Obama is expected to make a statement soon from the White House about the situation in Ukraine. Watch it at the link below.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/live/Obama_to_make_statement_on_Ukraine/53ff868ce4b0b19c172c8fd1
Van Susteren: Obama Associating with Sharpton Sends ‘Rotten Message’
by Josh Feldman | 8:21 pm, August 27th, 2014
Greta Van Susteren ended her show Wednesday night with a big question: why isPresident Obama “picking Reverend Al Sharpton as his liaison in Ferguson“? Van Susteren expressed outrage that a man with Sharpton’s history would get to associate with the President of the United States.
Van Susteren called this a “poke in the eye of many Americans” and cited many of the problems in Sharpton’s past, including the Tawana Brawleycase and past anti-Semitic comments he made.
Van Susteren said, “All this and more makes it perplexing that President Obama uses Sharpton as his go-to outreach guy. It’s a rotten message to send to the nation.”
She wondered why Obama wouldn’t go with someone like Cory Booker instead (but she assumed Obama wouldn’t because of a fear Booker would “show him up”).
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/van-susteren-obama-associating-with-sharpton-sends-rotten-message/
Tough luck, Greta. You sound like such a loser.
She had to go way back in Sharpton’s history. Michael Bloomberg consulted with Sharpton on many racially charged incidents here in NY. Our current mayor deBlasio had a sit down with Sharpton and police commissioner Bratton about Gardner. I love Cory but he couldn’t get peace in Newark.
LOL SHORT: Cory’s the safer NEGRO!
KARMA IS ONE HELLUVA BITCH, AIN’T JOAN?
NBC Nightly News ✔ @NBCNightlyNews
Follow
NEW: Joan Rivers taken to NYC hospital after she stopped breathing during throat surgery, sources tell @NBCNewYork http://nbcnews.to/1nISl2u
10:43 AM – 28 Aug 2014
Parents Announce Boycott of Newark Schools Over School Reform Plan
by Julianne Hing, Wednesday, August 27 2014, 1:51 PM EST
A group of Newark parents announced today that their children will boycott Newark public schools beginning next week, at the start of the new school year. “NPS Boycott 4 Freedom” is a response to “One Newark,” a school reform plan set to take effect next month that will restructure or shut down a third of schools in the city’s state-run public school district.
“The NPS Boycott 4 Freedom is an act of resistance and a statement against the One Newark Plan — Gov. Christie and Superintendent Cami Anderson’s destructive and shortsighted plan,” Newark parent Deborah Cornavaca said in a statement. “We have decided to escalate our actions to a boycott because we cannot continue to let the state and the superintendent disregard our lived experience and endanger the lives of our children.”
In May, Newark parents, together with groups from Chicago and New Orleans and the Advancement Project, filed federal complaints with the Department of Education, charging that school reform and closure plans disproportionately affected African-American and Latino children in those cities. Last month, the Department of Education confirmed that it opened an investigation into Newark’s One Newark plan off of the complaints it received.
According to the federal complaint civil rights groups filed, African-American students comprised 53 percent of the district enrollment but nearly three quarters of those impacted by school closures in the 2011-2012 school year. One Newark will have similarly racially disparate impacts on Newark students, parents warn.
Parents are calling for an end to the One Newark Plan, and an end to decades-long state control of Newark Public Schools, as well as implementation of “community-driven sustainable schools,” according to parents’ demands.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/parents_announce_boycott_of_newark_schools_over_school_reform_plan.html
Why the odds of a government shutdown are growing
08/28/14 10:12 AM
By Steve Benen
Funding for the federal government expires at the end of the fiscal year – Sept. 30 at midnight – and for months, everyone in Washington assumed the odds of another shutdown were zero. Just this week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) dismissed the very idea of another standoff as absurd.
House Republicans “will pass a clean” spending bill, Ryan assured the public, and that will be that. Congress will only work 10 days in September, following its five-week summer break, but that should be plenty of time to approve a straightforward measure (called a “continuing resolution”) to keep the government’s lights on.
And with roughly a month to go, that may yet happen. But just over the last 48 hours, there’s new reason to believe the odds of a shutdown are improving.
Indeed, The Atlantic’s Molly Ball published an important piece yesterday with two particularly noteworthy paragraphs.
A well-placed House Republican source tells me GOP leadership is increasingly nervous about the potential for a rebellion on the funding bill. The small but influential hard core of House conservatives were emboldened by what happened earlier this month with the border bill: A proposal favored by Speaker John Boehner to address the border crisis with emergency funding and expedited deportations had to be pulled when conservatives, egged on by Senator Ted Cruz, revolted. The legislation the House passed instead had a smaller price tag and would bar President Obama from continuing his policy of allowing some young undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. The Democrat-led Senate, meanwhile, did not manage to pass its own version of border legislation at all, so Congress failed to act on the issue.
House conservatives like Michele Bachmann and Steve King considered the episode a major victory. Bachmann called it a highlight of her career. Now, Republican leaders are worried that conservatives will not go along with a simple government-funding bill unless it reflects their priorities.
And what priorities might those be? I’m glad you asked.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-the-odds-government-shutdown-are-growing
The GOP’s All-Out War On Obamacare Is In A Death Spiral
ByDylan Scott
PublishedAugust 28, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT 7246 views
The implosion of the GOP’s all-or-nothing assault on Obamacare might have started on Election Night 2010. Republicans thought they had been validated in their relentless attacks on the law, swept to huge victories in the House. Four years ago, it seemed unthinkable that they would ever waver.
As recently as last fall, conservatives felt as confident as they’d ever been when the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov failed miserably in its first days. It reinvigorated their faith in fighting the law after the U.S. Supreme Court and 2012 presidential election dealt that thinking a serious blow.
But since the heady days of cancelled policies and a balky website, the political viability of absolutist repeal has been on a downward spiral. It was probably a decline made inevitable when President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, which ensured that repeal would at least be vetoed for another four years. But that decline has been slow enough that it can be difficult to detect.
………………….
“It really is extraordinary in a lot of ways. Republicans were absolutely convinced that the antipathy toward the ACA would be the ticket to victory,” Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM. “Now they still may have a ticket to victory, but it’s not going to be that.”
Ornstein called the GOP’s singular focus on attacking Obamacare — and inability to foresee that it would eventually collapse on them — “a textbook case of mass psychology.”
“They basically worked themselves up into a frenzy over the notion that this was a government takeover of health care and socialism,” he said. “I think they convinced themselves that this was so awful, that they denied any objective reality.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-obamacare-2014-elections-no-mas?utm_content=buffere75a3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Sam Wang @SamWangPhD
Follow
Senate Democrats are slightly outperforming data-pundit expectations – with implications for November. My analysis: http://election.princeton.edu/2014/08/28/senate-democrats-are-outperforming-expectations/ …
8:46 AM – 28 Aug 2014
Jobless claims inch lower, remain below key threshold
08/28/14 08:38 AM
By Steve Benen
For several years, those rooting for the U.S. job market to improve found it hard to imagine initial unemployment claims dropping below the 300,000 threshold. Now, it’s happening all the time. Take the latest data from the Labor Department, for example.
The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week remained below 300,000, suggesting little likelihood that a brightening outlook for the labor market will dim anytime soon. Initial claims edged down by 1,000 to 298,000 in the seven days ended Aug. 23 and remained near an eight-year low, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to total 300,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.
What’s more, the average of new claims over the past month fell by 1,250 to 299,750. The monthly figure smooths out the jumpiness in the weekly data and offers a better look at underlying trends in the labor market.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jobless-claims-inch-lower-remain-below-key-threshold
How Atlantic City’s promise failed its black community
Opinion
by Will Wright | August 20, 2014 at 1:28 PM
tlantic City apparently didn’t see it coming.
Thirty-five years ago, when the first of the casinos began to dot the boardwalk, there was a virtual monopoly in casino gaming in the region.
There also appeared to be no voice from the black community surrounding the inception and subsequent failure of the gambling industry in Atlantic City. There was no champion to assure that the benefits of the cash flowing from the casinos would lead to revitalization.
And, more importantly, there was no backup plan looking toward the future to insulate against the inevitable collapse of the city’s gaming monopoly.
As a result, you see what is happening today. Thousands of casino workers will soon be joining the ranks of the unemployed in this historically blighted city as four of the city’s eleven casinos will be closed in mere weeks.
Author Nelson Johnson, the writer of Boardwalk Empire, once referred to Atlantic City, New Jersey, as “a plantation by the sea.” And when you examine the socio-economic history of the city, you can see why.
Since the first casino emerged along the Atlantic City boardwalk, the political line was that the casinos would be a boon to the local community. Critics of the city say over the past three decades no attention was given to making the place a tourist destination for anything other than gambling.
Residents at first believed that if they voted for the casinos, the casino industry would be committed to improving the surrounding community for the benefit of its own survival. As a matter of fact, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in efforts to bypass the city and take tourist dollars directly to the casinos.
Casinos became all-inclusive silos independent from the surrounding community. Once patrons entered their doors, the casino provided no need to venture out into the community. With that level of exclusion, it was easy for planners to literally ignore revitalization of the black community, saying the casinos were providing jobs. That way of thinking virtually assured that the relatively poor surrounding black community would continue to serve as the under utilized and unappreciated work force to benefit the privileged.
A scholarly paper titled “Broken Promises: Atlantic City and its African-American Population” written in 1982 documents institutional benign neglect. Writer Christine Salvatore-Smith wrote:
Cora Boggs, housing chairman of the Atlantic City Congress of Community Organizations, a coalition of 30 neighborhood groups said, “On a scale of 1 to 10, what the casinos have done for the people of Atlantic City is minus-1. Nothing has been done. Things are getting worse. People from the outside have come in and gotten the jobs… North of the casino area, the city is a dump… Since casinos, the city has gone down, down, down… You can’t uproot people who have been here for years and years and just say get out, but that is what’s happening.”
http://thegrio.com/2014/08/20/how-atlantic-citys-promise-failed-its-black-community/#s:on-july-30-2014-in-atlantic-city-new-jersey
This shyt is absolutely CRAZY
………………
NRA Tweets About Kids Having Fun At Shooting Range After Uzi Accident
ByCatherine ThompsonPublishedAugust 28, 2014, 7:13 AM EDT 1136 views
The NRA Women’s Twitter account blasted out suggestions for making practice at the shooting range fun for kids on Wednesday, less than two days after a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot her shooting instructor at an outdoor range in Arizona.
The instructor, 39-year-old Charles Vacca, later died of his injuries. He suffered at least one gunshot wound to the head after the girl lost control of a 9mm Uzi that was put into “fully automatic” mode.
The tweet from the @NRAWomen handle was deleted without explanation a little over an hour after it was posted, according to the Huffington Post.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nra-tweets-kids-having-fun-guns-after-uzi-accident
https://www.facebook.com/dailykos/photos/a.416444264254.190398.43179984254/10152678612819255/?type=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/opinion/thomas-edsall-the-expanding-world-of-poverty-capitalism.html?_r=1
In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.”
Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month.
The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.”
Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.
In terms of food, housing and other essentials, the cost of being poor has always been exorbitant. Landlords, grocery stores and other commercial enterprises have all found ways to profit from those at the bottom of the ladder.
The recent drive toward privatization of government functions has turned traditional public services into profit-making enterprises as well.
Never-before-seen African-American artifacts creating a buzz in Atlanta
by Kunbi Tinuoye | April 17, 2014 at 9:44 AM
TLANTA – The nationally acclaimed exhibition, The Kinsey Collection, is in Atlanta for the first time since its inception.
The exhibit at the Atlanta History Center is creating a buzz, in part because it features never before displayed artifacts, including an early edition of Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave.
“A young man called me eight months ago about a stack of books his uncle had been collecting for 75, 80 years,” said philanthropist and avid collector Bernard Kinsey, who began the collection over 35 years ago, along with his wife Shirley.
“We purchased these books about a month before the Oscars, really not thinking about 12 Years a Slave quite being so impactful. We got it because it’s really one of the first-person slave narratives that’s important to be in our collection.”
Aside from Northrup’s harrowing memoir, which inspired the Oscar-winning movie, W.E.B Du Bois’s first edition copy of his groundbreaking book, The Souls of Black Folk, is also on public display for the first time ever.
http://thegrio.com/2014/04/17/never-before-seen-african-american-artifacts-creating-a-buzz-in-atlanta/#s:kinsey-exhibit_patron-viewing-images
well, they did it
…………….
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Get Married in France
Aug 28, 2014, 8:50 AM ET
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married Saturday in Chateau Miraval, France, says a spokesman for the couple.
Jolie and Pitt wed Saturday in a small chapel in a private ceremony attended by family and friends. In advance of the nondenominational civil ceremony, Pitt and Jolie also obtained a marriage license from a local California judge. The judge also conducted the ceremony in France.
The couple’s children took part in the wedding. Jolie walked the aisle with her eldest sons Maddox and Pax. Zahara and Vivienne threw petals. Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers, the spokesman says.
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/brad-pitt-angelina-jolie-married-france/story?id=25157846
New Ferguson Post up
The journey to preserve Madam CJ Walker’s historic estate
August 27, 2014 at 3:01 PM
Due to the deeply rooted racism that has been a part of this country since its founding, gentrification and centuries of deliberate erasure of African diaspora culture and history, manyphysical structures that celebrate or acknowledge black achievement have been destroyed or left to rot in the bowels of forgotten history.
Fortunately, people like Brent Leggs of the National Trust for Historic Preservation have dedicated their careers to preserving and honoring the structures that represent a diverse array of cultures and history, including African-American.
It’s one thing to read about a great person of times past but quite another to have a tangible reminder of that person’s existence and legacy.
“Our signature program is National Treasure. We take direct action to remove preservation threats at culturally and nationally significant historic sites in the United States. We provide assistance in legal issues, advocacy, preservation planning and marketing,” said Leggs.
One of Leggs’ current projects is preserving Villa Lewaro, the estate of Sarah Breedlove — a black woman who was born in Louisiana in 1867. She was the daughter of former slaves. Like many black women of the time, she was a domestic who washed clothes. Breedlove went on to become the first female in the United States to earn a million dollars. She is better known as Madam CJ Walker.
http://thegrio.com/2014/08/27/the-journey-to-preserve-madam-cj-walkers-historic-estate/
https://twitter.com/LizPeinadoSTL/status/504362041067327488/photo/1
https://twitter.com/sonamie/status/504838251438276609/photo/1
LOVE THIS
http://twitter.com/jazziz2/status/504937818175832064/photo/1
Jamil Smith ✔ @JamilSmith
Follow
Black and Latino activists are partnering to try to prevent future Fergusons, using the vote. http://bzfd.it/1vnGfDJ
4:45 PM – 27 Aug 2014Manhattan, NY, United States
Wendell Pierce ✔ @WendellPierce
Follow
If you don’t know Black men are frequently stopped with weapons drawn you are either naive or choose to ignore the disparity.
9:37 PM – 27 Aug 2014
Wendel, you’re a KING, in my book. Keep on telling the truth, brother.
How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
By ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
AUG. 26, 2014
IRVINE, Calif. — LAST week, a grand jury was convened in St. Louis County, Mo., to examine the evidence against the police officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, and to determine if he should be indicted. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. even showed up to announce a separate federal investigation, and to promise that justice would be done. But if the conclusion is that the officer, Darren Wilson, acted improperly, the ability to hold him or Ferguson, Mo., accountable will be severely restricted by none other than the United States Supreme Court.
In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.
The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/opinion/how-the-supreme-court-protects-bad-cops.html?_r=1
Greg Sargent ✔ @ThePlumLineGS
Follow
DREAMers are doing what many media outlets refuse to do: Describe GOP positions on immigration accurately.
9:33 AM – 27 Aug 2014
https://twitter.com/stevebenen/status/504721482887729152/photo/1
Big Food to divulge chemical info
by HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH | 8/27/14 4:18 PM EDT Updated: 8/27/14 8:07 PM EDT
Food companies are trying to beat the federal government’s push to make chemicals in food more transparent.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents America’s biggest food companies, announced a major new initiative Wednesday that will give the Food and Drug Administration access to a large database of safety information for chemicals commonly used in processed foods, from Twinkies to almond milk.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/big-food-to-divulge-chemical-info-110395.html#ixzz3BgjyQcHW
Study: 3 of 4 Whites Have No Non-White Friends
Aug 26, 2014
By NewsOne Staff
The Wonkblog over at the Washington Post has a pretty interesting write-up of new research from the Public Religion Research Institute. In a study of race and friendship, PRRI found that a large majority (75 percent) of whites have “entirely white social networks without any minority presence.” And, for what it’s worth, the same holds true for less than two thirds of Blacks.
The research went on to state that, in a 100-friend scenario, the average white person has 91 white friends; one each of black, Latino, Asian, mixed race, and other races; and three friends of unknown race. On the other hand, the average black person has 83 black friends, in addition eight white friends, two Latino friends, zero Asian friends, three mixed race friends, one other race friend, and four friends of unknown race.
Ultimately, the average black person’s network of friends is 8 percent white. The average white person’s friend network is just 1 percent black. The Wonkblog illustrated the stats pretty well with this infographic
http://newsone.com/3048467/study-3-of-4-whites-have-no-non-white-friends/
Exclusive: GOP poll of women: Party ‘stuck in past’
By JAKE SHERMAN and ANNA PALMER | 8/27/14 5:47 PM EDT Updated: 8/28/14 5:33 AM EDT
A detailed report commissioned by two major Republican groups — including one backed by Karl Rove — paints a dismal picture for Republicans, concluding female voters view the party as “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion” and “stuck in the past.”
Women are “barely receptive” to Republicans’ policies, and the party does “especially poorly” with women in the Northeast and Midwest, according to an internal Crossroads GPS and American Action Network report obtained by POLITICO. It was presented to a small number of senior aides this month on Capitol Hill, according to multiple sources involved.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/gop-poll-of-women-party-stuck-in-past-110398.html#ixzz3BgjAhcSi
People’ Magazine’s Only Ever Black Editor Suing For Discrimination
Aug 22, 2014
By NewsOne Staff
Tatsha Robertson, 48, was the only Black senior editor People magazine has ever had. Following her being laid off in May, Robertson filed a lawsuit claiming she was discriminated against by her boss and that her time at the magazine was fraught with racial tension.
People is “a discriminatory organization run entirely by white people who intentionally focus the magazine on stories involving white people and white celebrities,” Tatsha Robertson’s said in her suit.
She says only five of the mag’s 110 employees were black, and that now-former executive editor Betsy Gleick treated her like a second class-citizen when she came to the magazine from another Time Inc. publication, Essence, in 2010.
“You need to talk like everyone else here. You’re not at Essence anymore,” Gleick is quoted in the suit as saying.
She says Gleick left her out of important meetings, and denigrated her attempts to do more stories on black people. Robertson said when she pitched a story about an African-American model who’d been killed, Gleick told her the victim looked like a “slut” and the magazine wasn’t interested.
“You know the rule — white suburban women in distress,” she said, according to the suit. She also allegedly said the magazine was only interested in stories involving “white, middle-class suburbia.”
Gleick, 51, followed Robertson out the door in June.
She did not return a call for comment Wednesday.
A spokesperson for People said, “People declines to comment.”
http://newsone.com/3047294/people-magazines-only-ever-black-editor-suing-for-discrimination/
Politics
Former Iowa state senator pleads guilty in Ron Paul endorsement-for-pay scheme
By Matea Gold August 27 at 7:19 PM
A former Iowa state senator pleaded guilty Wednesday to concealing campaign expenditures and obstructing justice as part of an endorsement-for-pay scheme that roiled the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012.
Kent Sorenson, of Milo, Iowa, admitted in federal district court that former Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign secretly paid him $73,000 after he dramatically dropped his backing of Rep. Michele Bachmann in late 2011 and endorsed Paul’s White House bid, saying at the time that Bachmann was no longer a viable candidate.
A furious Bachmann charged then that Sorenson was being paid to flip his support to Paul — an accusation that Sorenson, Paul and his campaign officials all denied.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/08/27/former-iowa-state-senator-pleads-guilty-in-ron-paul-endorsement-for-pay-scheme/
Politics Christensen Set to be U.S. First Black Female Governor August 26, 2014
by James Wright
Special to the NNPA from The Afro-American Newspaper
The United States has never had a Black female as the governor of a state-level jurisdiction but that could change in the November general election. U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Donna Christensen (D) is well on her way to becoming the governor of her territory. She and Basil Ottley Jr. won the crowded Aug. 2 Democratic Party primary for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, and because of the strength of the party, will face minor opposition from the island’s other political parties in the Nov. 4 general election.
Christensen was delighted to win her latest political battle. “I am pleased to have the nomination of the Democratic Party and I invite all of my fellow Democrats to work together with me to ensure victory in November,” Christensen, 68, said. “We have a lot of work to do; our people expect that we will have a common vision and a plan to move our territory forward.”
Christensen has been the delegate from the Virgin Islands since 1997. Before her election to Congress, she practiced family medicine for 21 years and held other political offices in the territory.
The delegate earned her bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind. in 1966 and her medical degree from the George Washington University in the District in 1970. She did her residency at Howard University Medical Center from 1973-74.
While African-American females have served as lieutenant governors of such states as Ohio and Florida, no Black female has mounted a serious bid to lead a state.
The Virgin Islands has a population of 106,405 and is 76 percent Black. The residents are United States citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections even though they can participate in the Democratic and Republican party activities.
– See more at: http://www.blackpressusa.com/2014/08/christensen-set-to-be-u-s-first-black-female-governor/#sthash.dEwRjB8l.6WhPSoLg.dpuf
Congratulations, Donna Christensen!
https://twitter.com/SenJaffer/status/504742298270593024/photo/1
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, Rikyrah. Thank you for Maddona week.
I danced to plenty of her music back in the day in aerobics class. Love Vogue.