Jonathan Butler (born October 10, 1961, Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa) is a singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music is often classified as R&B, jazz fusion or worship music.
Born and raised in Cape Town during Apartheid, Butler started singing and playing acoustic guitar as a child. Racial segregation and poverty during Apartheid has been the subject of many of his records.[1] His first single was the first by a black artist played by white radio stations in the racially segregated South Africa and earned a Sarie Award, South Africa’s equivalent to the Grammy Awards.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
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Every time I stop to think, it amazes me — That President Obama accomplished so much for the country with ZERO help from GOP. Never forget.
6:52 PM – 28 Sep 2014
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
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Democrats need to use PBO’s playbook. He saved this country from sliding into a Great Depression. He will never be ashamed of that. #60Mins
6:49 PM – 28 Sep 2014
Jeff Gauvin @JeffersonObama
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I’m sure Greenwald is critical of the brutal Chinese regime’s crackdown in Hong Kong? Not…silly…only America is the world pariah
6:39 PM – 28 Sep 2014
https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/516370749486284800/photo/1
https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/516368314965426176/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheAPJournalist/status/516385293432537088/photo/1
A Health Care Success Story
By BOB KOCHER and FARZAD MOSTASHARI
SEPT. 23, 2014
IT may have been the most influential magazine article of the past decade. In June of 2009, the doctor and writer Atul Gawande published a piece in The New Yorker called “The Cost Conundrum,” which examined why the small border city of McAllen, Tex., was the most expensive place for health care in the United States.
The article became mandatory reading in the White House. President Obama convened an Oval Office meeting to discuss its key finding that the high cost of health care in the country was directly tied to a system that rewarded the overuse of care. The president also brought up the article at a meeting with Democratic senators, emphasizing that McAllen represented the problem that needed to be fixed.
Five years later, the situation has changed. Where McAllen once illustrated the problem of American health care, the city is now showing us how the problem can be solved, largely because of the Affordable Care Act that Mr. Obama signed into law in 2010.
In his article, Dr. Gawande cited studies showing that patients in high-cost areas like the Rio Grande Valley, which includes McAllen, were much less likely to receive preventive services like cancer screenings or vaccines, but far more likely to be prescribed costly drugs, invasive procedures and expensive diagnostic tests. And they were not any healthier for it: Compared with places like El Paso, McAllen had worse health outcomes, despite spending twice as much per capita on Medicare.
The problem was that doctors in McAllen were responding to reimbursement incentives in the American health care system that rewarded activity rather than value. The more procedures and visits a doctor billed, the more he got paid.
The Affordable Care Act was designed to change that. One of its provisions created the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which rewards doctors for keeping their patients healthy. Participation in the program requires primary care doctors to create networks, called accountable care organizations, or A.C.O.s, to better coordinate patient care. These networks are reimbursed for delivering high-quality care below a baseline of historical Medicare costs.
In 2012, doctors in McAllen formed the Rio Grande Valley Accountable Care Organization Health Providers, and signed up for this experiment. The early results are in, and they are stunning: From April 2012 to the end of 2013, the Rio Grande Valley A.C.O. saved more than $20 million from its Medicare baseline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/opinion/a-health-care-success-story.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
President Obama is being interviewed right now on 60 Minutes
GStuedler @GStuedler
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If Republicans actually had the answers most people want…they would not have to lie, cheat and negative campaign to elect their candidates.
11:48 AM – 28 Sep 2014
Lawdy be
this is RIDICULOUS!
Is the child even ONE?
https://twitter.com/kimkpictures/status/516318538571984896
From Lamh, who is on point:
This is just a shame. That little child does look bewildered and frightened.
Black moms tell audience how they fear for their sons
By Aisha Sultan asultan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8300
Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a mixed crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly strangers.
They were going to talk about something they didn’t normally share with their white friends or colleagues.
It was about to get real in that room.
In the aftermath of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer, conversations about race in the St. Louis area have been loaded.
Christi Griffin, the president of the Ethics Project, wanted this to be different. She wanted to invite other mothers to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/parenting/aisha-sultan/black-moms-tell-audience-how-they-fear-for-their-sons/article_050d4db8-8155-568a-93d3-20ec1d10f7a4.html
College Board Backs Colo. Students Protesting AP US History Censorship
ByCaitlin MacNealPublishedSeptember 28, 2014, 3:50 PM EDT 945 views
The College Board on Friday expressed support for the Colorado high school students protesting proposed county school board changes to the AP U.S. History course curriculum.
“The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program® supports the actions taken by students in Jefferson County, Colorado to protest a school board member’s request to censor aspects of the AP U.S. History course,” the company said in a statement.
“These students recognize that the social order can – and sometimes must – be disrupted in the pursuit of liberty and justice. Civil disorder and social strife are at the patriotic heart of American history – from the Boston Tea Party to the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement. And these events and ideas are essential within the study of a college-level, AP U.S. History course.”
The Jefferson County school board has proposed forming a new committee that would ensure that the AP history course materials “promote patriotism” and don’t “condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”
The board proposed the changes in response to the new course framework, which conservatives have denounced as a “radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/college-board-backs-colorado-students-ap-history
Georgia County Bizarrely Kills Early Voting Because It Would Mean More People Could Vote
Umm, isn’t that the point?
September 26, 2014 |
Georgia has a slew of competitive statewide races for the first time in more than a decade. Around the state, battles are brewing over early voting, which would allow more people—especially working class people who typically have to work on election day—the opportunity to vote.
After Georgia’s populous Dekalb County moved to open up October 26 th as a Sunday early voting day, the state’s embattled Republican Governor Nathan Deal blasted the move as “partisan,” while a GOP state senator said he wanted to “eliminate this election loophole.”
This week, Georgia conservatives on the Bibb County Board of Elections killed a proposal similar to Dekalb’s that would’ve opened up an extra Sunday for voting. Their excuse? Early voting would mean more…voting, according to Republican board member Rinda Wilson:
Rinda Wilson, a Republican, called it “a partisan thing” backed by Democrats: “There have been six states that have been targeted, Georgia being one of them, that this would be a way just to wring out every last vote.”
The fights in Dekalb, Bibb, and elsewhere in Georgia have turned into a full-blown war on voting rights, as Republicans fear that the state’s shifting demographics will result in the end of GOP control of the state.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/georgia-county-bizarrely-kills-early-voting-because-it-would-mean-more-people
The right to vote is NOT an exclusive right to country club types. We as individual Americans all have the right to vote. Period.
Side-Eye (Harder) @prisonculture
We’re still $35,000 away from meeting the goal of $100,000 for Marissa’s legal defense (which will cost $250,000 with pro-bono lawyers)
Side-Eye (Harder) @prisonculture
It’s expensive as heck to be on trial in the U.S. Anyway, you can contribute to her legal defense fund here:
http://gogetfunding.com/project/marissa-alexander-freedom-fundraiser
https://twitter.com/BibhuMohapatra/status/516216295650775040/photo/1
https://twitter.com/metaquest/status/516296158130364416/photo/1
Democracy Returns To Detroit…Or Does It?
By: Black Liberal Boomer more from Black Liberal Boomer
Saturday, September, 27th, 2014, 5:04 pm
On Thursday evening, September 25, democracy was permitted to return to Detroit when City Council members voted unanimously to restore full power to the city’s elected leaders, removing Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr from his 18-month Governor-appointed tenure as the unelected King of Detroit – but re-instating him with lesser powers to oversee the ongoing bankruptcy process.
Although Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and City Councilmembers are publicly celebrating the occasion, which ostensibly gives them permission, courtesy of PA 436, to cease bending over for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder after 18 months and resume standing upright to perform the civic duties they were elected to do by Detroit residents, the uncomfortable question still hangs in the air of whether we are really, truly free to enjoy our (supposedly) constitutionally protected voting rights. Just as a refresher for those who may not recall, PA 436 is the Emergency Manager law that was forced down the throat of the Michigan electorate under cover of darkness during a lame duck session of the Michigan Legislature in December 2012 by our very own Governor Snyder, who did not approve of how the majority of his constituents went against his wishes in November and voted to repeal the Emergency Manager Law. So he had one of his legislative flunkies write up a virtually identical law to replace the one the voters repealed. Not surprisingly, this case is currently waiting to be heard in Federal Court.
But now 18 months are up, Detroit’s new mayor is in place, and we’d like to cheer the fact that Orr is no longer calling all the shots. Which is good. Only problem is, well, we still have years to endure of living under the oversight of a state-appointed board. According to the Detroit Free Press:
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/09/27/democracy-returns-detroit-or-it.html
Charles Johnson @Green_Footballs
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I’ve been watching the Values Voters Summit conference for several years, and this is the most insane one I’ve seen – by far.
8:37 PM – 26 Sep 2014
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/516060871534346240/photo/1
The only show that could explain Black Wealth in reality would be a documentary. Some things I don’t expect tv to do.
Want folks to know about Black wealth disparity, then teach folks about it
………………………………..
Black Wealth On TV: Realities Don’t Match Perceptions
Lillian D. Singh
September 26, 2014
African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, but have less than 3 percent of total wealth.
Raised by a single mother in South Central
Los Angeles in the 1990s, I didn’t realize just how poor my family was
until I filled out my FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid)
when applying for colleges.
That is when I learned that my total family income was below the
poverty line. Instead of being embarrassed by the discovery, I was blown
away by how my mom managed to do so much with so few resources. My family wasn’t rich, but I didn’t feel poor.
Perhaps it was because I grew up watching reruns of Good Times, where the parents worked multiple jobs to ensure shelter in a high rise project. In other sitcoms such as Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show, and Steve Harvey, non-traditional family units shared one similarity: The main characters all had jobs.
……………………………….
Unfortunately, today’s American tweens, teens and younger are watching reality television shows such as the Fabulous Life of series featuring lavish lifestyles of singers and actors, or the Real Housewives of Atlanta featuring actresses parading “I’m rich b@itch”. Finally, the Black Entertainment Network (BET) flagship series, The Game, follows the lives of professional football players, where the only financially conservative player is half white.
This coming week the fall television lineup launches and ABC-TV is applauding itself for having the most diverse show lineup.
Black-ish is
a show launching this week and depicting an upper middle class father
who is struggling to maintain his children’s cultural identify because
of their high income. I am a fan of actor Anthony Anderson,
but I suspect this show will contribute to a already distorted
portrayal of the black families’ dire economic challenges. Certainly
there are black families in this country who are middle and upper middle
class, but their experience is not the norm.
Black programming features TV shows that collectively create false
perceptions of wealth for African-American families. The images
displayed are in stark contrast to the economic conditions the average
black family is battling each day.
http://prospect.org/article/black-wealth-tv-realities-don%E2%80%99t-match-perceptions
Obama Goes Off Script and Drops A Truth Bomb On Selfish Republican Governors
By: Sarah Jones more from Sarah Jones
Sunday, September, 28th, 2014, 10:11 am
President Obama went off script while speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Awards Dinner Saturday evening and deployed a truth bomb on selfish Republicans.
While paying homage to the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, he said he was puzzled when certain governors decided to take a stand to make sure poor folks in their state can’t get health insurance even though it doesn’t cost that person a dime, adding one of the most salient political observations in the entire healthcare reform debate, “It’s easy to take a stand when you’ve got health insurance.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/09/28/president-obama-script-disses-selfishness.html
https://twitter.com/ColMorrisDavis/status/516196436472778752/photo/1
can you imagine going about your day delivering packages and THIS happens?
LOL
https://twitter.com/pourmecoffee/status/515859525296201730/photo/1
ok all,
got back from my early morning date with Denzel.
LOVED The Equalizer.
it’s what you think it is, and I just wanted to enjoy myself with some good action and Denzel.
I’m fine with the movie.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Sharon Attaway @AttawayArt
Oil portrait of Trayvon by Sharon Attaway.
https://twitter.com/AttawayArt/status/511515400522432514/photo/1
Deborah Woods @tshalachjob2312
@AttawayArt: @attorneycrump I would love to present this to Sybrina Fulton and Mr. Martin.
this is beautiful
Really nice.
Akeem Z. Walker@azwalker757- 16h
If you are in Baltimore,MD & serious about Social Justice get to Empowerment Temple w/ Pastor @jamalhbryant tomorrow
pic.twitter.com/DwGAtCc8Ca
https://twitter.com/azwalker757/status/516008740114673664/photo/1
Good morning Everyone :)
Powerful gospel song. Thanks, SG2!
Good morning!
YVW, Yahtc. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
HI SG2, please check your email. Thanks~