Happy Monday, Everyone. This week’s featured artist is Kenny G!
Kenneth Bruce Gorelick (born June 5, 1956), better known by his stage name Kenny G, is an American adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986. Kenny G is the biggest-selling instrumental musician of the modern era and one of the best-selling artists of all time, with global sales totaling more than 75 million records.
Kenny G was born in Seattle, Washington, to Jewish parents (his mother was originally from Saskatchewan, Canada) and grew up in the city’s Seward Park neighborhood, which is a center of the city’s Jewish community. He came into contact with a saxophone when he heard someone performing with one on The Ed Sullivan Show. He started playing the saxophone in 1966 when he was 10 years old. He learned how to play under the direction of local trumpeter Gerald Pfister and by practicing along with records (mostly of Grover Washington, Jr.), trying to emulate the sounds that he was hearing. His first saxophone was a Buffet Crampon alto.
Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta has died, close friends of the family and industry colleagues told CNN on Monday. He was 82.
FLOTUS finally wore his clothes, now he can rest in peace. Please, don’t judge me.
No judgement here. I was one of those who never forgave Oscar de la renta for his disrespect of FLOTUS. Unlike Joan Rivers, he at least realized at some point that petty wasn’t a good look and he dialed it back. Life is truly fleeting. May he rest in peace.
@joesonka: Grimes’ support cratered among black voters. Was up 65% 2 weeks ago, now only up 38%. Maybe she should have just said “yes.” #kysen
Sort of how Hillary’s numbers are among black voters.
These mofos think they can count on us to vote for them, just because, without EARNING it. Then when they lose, IT’S THE BLAH peoples fautl. FUCK’EM
tell it, Ametia!!
Ain’t nobody got time for the FOOLISHNESS.
Allison Grimes has been pitiful!! She’s painfully immature and has a lot of seasoning and growing up to do. If you ask me, I don’t think she voted for President Obama. There’s every reason to believe her PUMA roots run deep.
As for Hillary, I think she and her PUMA’s are in for a rude awakening.
https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/524202739711377408/photo/1
I voted for her last week! (Early voting).
Jonne’ this weekend at her Pastor’s appreciation with Wess Morgan as the speaker.
Jonne’s BEAUTIFUL. She has a commanding presence, full of light, God’s LIGHT.
I’ll make sure I tell her.
So happy Jonne has found her true calling. Many Blessing to her.
Quite lovely, SG2.
You produced some good looking kids…LOL
Thank you, Rikyrah.
The Supreme Court Eviscerates the Voting Rights Act in a Texas Voter-ID Decision
Ari Berman on October 20, 2014 – 12:40 PM ET
In 1963, only 156 of 15,000 eligible black voters in Selma, Alabama, were registered to vote. The federal government filed four lawsuits against the county registrars between 1963 and 1965, but the number of black registered voters only increased from 156 to 383 during that time. The law couldn’t keep up with the pace and intensity of voter suppression.
The Voting Rights Act ended the blight of voting discrimination in places like Selma by eliminating the literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented so many people from voting. The Selma of yesteryear is reminiscent of the current situation in Texas, where a voter ID law blocked by the federal courts as a discriminatory poll tax on two different occasions—under two different sections of the VRA—remains on the books.
The law was first blocked in 2012 under Section 5 of the VRA. “A law that forces poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionably denies or abridges their right to vote,” wrote Judge David Tatel. “The same is true when a law imposes an implicit fee for the privilege of casting a ballot.”
Then the Supreme Court gutted the VRA—ignoring the striking evidence of contemporary voting discrimination in places like Texas—which allowed the voter ID law to immediately go into effect. “Eric Holder can no longer deny #VoterID in #Texas after today’s #SCOTUS decision,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeted minutes after the Shelby County v. Holder decision. States like Texas, with the worst history of voting abuses, no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. Texas had lost more Section 5 lawsuits than any other state.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/183561/supreme-court-eviscerates-voting-rights-act-texas-voter-id-decision
https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP/status/524237034949718017/photo/1
http://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/524235073483075585/photo/1
Scott Brown sees Mitt Romney as an Ebola repellent
10/20/14 09:10 AM
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By Steve Benen
Ordinarily, candidates for major public offices get better as campaigns progress. The improvements tend to be organic – politicians do more interviews, make more appearances, deliver more speeches, and answer more questions, and the process hones their skills. Practice makes perfect.
Scott Brown, however, is one of those rare candidates who defies the odds. As the only politician in the country who’s run in three separate U.S. Senate campaigns in four years, one might assume he’d be the sharpest and most pitch-perfect candidate in America.
And yet, the Republican is arguably getting worse. Brown has gone from suggesting terrorists will strike by sneaking through Mexico with Ebola to arguing that Mitt Romney could stop Ebola with his amazing Romney-esque talents.
Scott Brown told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade Friday that Ebola wouldn’t be a problem for America if Mitt Romney had won in 2012.
“Gosh can you imagine if Mitt was the president right now?” Brown said. “He was right on Russia, he was right on Obamacare, he was right on the economy. And I guarantee you we would not be worrying about Ebola right now and, you know, worrying about our foreign policy screw ups.”
Clearly, all of our assumptions about candidates getting better with practice need to be revised. Brown’s on-air comments may position him to lead the Mitt Romney Fan Club in whichever state Brown ends up living in next, but they’re not the words of a sensible political observer.
The pitch itself defies rational thought. Even putting aside the substantive inanity, Brown isn’t supposed to be running out playing the role of Romney surrogate, making the case for the failed candidate’s alleged greatness; Brown is ostensibly running his own campaign – in a state Romney lost.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/scott-brown-sees-mitt-romney-ebola-repellent
Congressional hopeful downplays military heroism
10/20/14 11:29 AM
By Steve Benen
Recent history offers plenty of examples of politicians exaggerating their accomplishments, using embellishments to advance their ambitions. In 2012, Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) exaggerations were pretty embarrassing for the far-right congressman, and two years earlier, Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) exaggerations very nearly ended his career.
It is a rare and welcome treat, then, to see a congressional candidate exaggerate in the opposite direction. The Boston Globe reported over the weekend on Seth Moulton, whose military heroism is even more impressive than he’s been willing to admit.
The American political graveyard has more than a few monuments to politicians and public officials who embellished details of their military service, in some cases laying claim to medals for heroism or other military honors they never received.
And then, uniquely, there is Seth W. Moulton, the Democratic nominee for Congress in the Sixth Congressional District, a former Marine who saw fierce combat for months and months in Iraq. But Moulton chose not to publicly disclose that he was twice decorated for heroism until pressed by the Globe.
In 2003 and 2004, during weeks-long battles with Iraqi insurgents, then-Lieutenant Moulton “fearlessly exposed himself to enemy fire” while leading his platoon during pitched battles for control of Nasiriyah and Najaf south of Baghdad, according to citations for the medals that the Globe requested from the campaign.
The Globe apparently did extensive research into Moulton’s career, and noticed some omissions – the Democratic candidate hadn’t bragged nearly enough. Moulton earned the Bronze Star medal for valor and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal for valor, but hadn’t even told his staff – or his parents.
After covering this campaign cycle closely all year, this might be my favorite story of them all – the candidate who thinks it’s inappropriate to talk about the amazing feats of bravery he performed for his country.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/congressional-hopeful-downplays-military-heroism
Unrelenting Negative Spin Against Democrats
by BooMan
Mon Oct 20th, 2014 at 09:05:33 AM EST
The Hill has just been unrelenting in its predictions of doom for the Democrats in this election cycle, to the point where they are now reporting that self-proclaimed “Clinton Democrats” like Mark Pryor and Alison Lundergan Grimes are “falling flat” in their efforts to get elected.
Maybe the Clinton Democrats (whether self-proclaimed or not) will fall flat on November 4th, but it does seem a bit premature to make that characterization. The polls have not been encouraging for the Democrats over the last few weeks, but they show dead heats in southern states like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Considering that all of those states except Florida voted for Mitt Romney, and considering that this is a midterm election cycle that favors the Republicans, and considering that this is the sixth year of an incumbent president’s term, and considering that the president’s approval numbers are weak, the proper conclusion should be that the Republicans are struggling somewhat inexplicably to put away campaigns in their own strongholds.
But the spin we get is that it is the Democrats that are struggling.
My answer to that is, “We’ll see, won’t we?”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/10/20/9533/2011#4
GOP blames Obama for obstruction on Surgeon General
10/20/14 08:30 AM
By Steve Benen
Last week, as public anxiety over Ebola grew, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) issued a statement demanding that the White House withdraw Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination to be Surgeon General. “Now more than ever, our nation needs to have an experienced and effective Surgeon General to help coordinate the government’s Ebola strategy,” the GOP senator argued. “It has been clear for almost a year that the president’s nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy is not the right person for this consequential job.
Except, it’s not “clear” at all.” Congressional Republicans seem to agree that it’s in the nation’s interests to have a Surgeon General, but they don’t want to take responsibility for derailing a qualified nominee. On the contrary, they now seem eager to blame President Obama for their knee-jerk obstructionism.
On “Meet the Press” yesterday, for example, Chuck Todd asked Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) about the vacancy in the Surgeon General’s office. “This seems to be politics,” the host noted. “The NRA said they were going to score the vote, and suddenly everybody’s frozen. That seems a little petty in hindsight, does it not?”
Blunt replied, “Well, you know, if the president really ought to nominate people that can be confirmed to these jobs, and frankly, then we should confirm them.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) went even further during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley.
CROWLEY: Do you think it would have helped … had there been a surgeon general in place to kind of calm what has become the fear of Ebola?
CRUZ: Look – look, of course we should have a surgeon general in place. And we don’t have one because President Obama, instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti- gun activist.
To hear the Texas Republican tell it, Dr. Vivek Murthy isn’t even a “health professional,” which is the exact opposite of reality.
Outside of far-right politics, the facts are not in dispute.
Murthy is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He’s also the founder of TrialNetworks, an Internet portal for clinical-trial operations that counts Merck and Biogen Idec as customers. Earlier, he helped start a rural community health program in Sringeri, India, and an HIV/AIDS youth education program in India and the United States. He went to Harvard for his undergraduate degree and Yale for medical and business degrees.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-blames-obama-obstruction-surgeon-general
Good MOrning, Everyone :)
Keene State Colliege, New Hampshtire . “Bedlum! Pumpkin Pandemonium!” That’s what the media is calling the RIOTING by the college students this morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkWoTrhDsyc
Some of the comments are typical, i.e, “you don’t understand , some of these poeple are’t from our town,…. GTFOH
Good Morning, Everyone! :-))))
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T4HUvXOvgkQ
I just want people to remember that these cops and their union leader lie and obstruct to protect their own. There is no way to make me believe they didn’t do it with Mike Brown