I hope that you have enjoyed the music of Old Souls Week.
Today’s Old Soul is Michael Buble.
Michael Steven Bublé (/ˈbuːbleɪ/; born 9 September 1975) is a Canadian singer, songwriter and actor. He has won several awards, including four Grammy Awards[2][3] and multiple Juno Awards.[4] His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the UK. He found a worldwide audience with his 2005 album It’s Time, and his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible which reached number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, the UK Albums Chart, the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart, the Australian ARIA Albums Chart and several European charts.
Bublé’s 2009 album Crazy Love debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 after three days of sales, and remained there for two weeks. It was also his fourth number one album on Billboard’s Top Jazz Albums chart. His 2011 holiday album, titled Christmas, was in first place on the Billboard 200 for the final four weeks of 2011 and the first week of 2012, totaling five weeks atop the chart, it also made the Top 5 in the United Kingdom. With this, Christmas became his third-consecutive number-one album on the chart.
To Be Loved, released in April 2013, was preceded by the release of the lead single and original composition “It’s a Beautiful Day”. “Close Your Eyes” followed, and “After All” featuring Bryan Adams was performed by him as a UK exclusive and posted on YouTube. The single came out in late September 2013.
I’m wondering if anything will come of this, but I would really like to know what the DOJ found out about George Zimmerman.
George Zimmerman case heads to federal grand jury
Published On: Oct 31 2014 07:52:05 AM EDT Updated On: Oct 31 2014 07:52:17 AM EDT
ORLANDO, Fla. –
A federal grand jury is expected to hear testimony Wednesday surrounding the George Zimmerman case.
The hearing is related to whether Zimmerman violated Trayvon Martin’s civil rights when he shot and killed the unarmed teen in Sanford in 2012.
At least one witness has been subpoenaed to testify. That man is believed to be Zimmerman’s former neighbor, Frank Taaffe.
Taaffe stood by Zimmerman throughout his trial but recently said publicly that he believed Zimmerman racially profiled Martin.
The grand jury will meet at the Federal Courthouse in Orlando.
Zimmerman, 30, was acquitted last year of a second-degree murder charge in Martin’s death.
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/george-zimmerman-case-heads-to-federal-grand-jury/29452200
SO THE DOJ HAS NO CASE AGAINST DARREN WILSON?!
WHAT THE FUCK?!
Liza, where are you?
National Security
Federal civil rights charges unlikely against police officer in Ferguson shooting
Justice Department investigators have all but concluded they do not have a strong enough case to bring civil rights charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., according to law enforcement officials.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-civil-rights-charges-unlikely-against-police-officer-in-ferguson-shooting/2014/10/31/56189d80-6055-11e4-8b9e-2ccdac31a031_story.html?wpisrc=al_national
If this is true, then it is a travesty in the making. It is not clear to me how Darren Wilson could walk away from this without even being tried. We know that the grand jury outcome is rigged because of who the prosecutor is. But for the Department of Justice to pass on this case would be a major injustice and it will only encourage other cops to kill young men like Michael Brown because they know that they will never be charged or tried.
I’ve had some fear that I have not expressed yet that the DOJ investigation of the Ferguson PD might be a substitute (in their minds) for not charging Darren Wilson for civil rights violations. The logic could be that they are going to somehow fix the whole Ferguson PD instead of just having a trial for one officer. That’s a wild guess that has crossed my mind.
But, the truth is, the DOJ was really the only hope that Darren Wilson would ever face a prosecution for murdering Michael Brown. And, for crying out loud, exactly what does it take in their minds for a law enforcement officer to be charged with violating civil rights? The young man is buried six feet underground, his life has been stolen, and all he was doing was walking while black. He was unarmed, their are several witnesses who saw what happened, and it really shouldn’t be difficult to prove that Darren Wilson did not fire three shots into Michael Brown’s head in self-defense.
Eric Holder needs to speak to this ASAP and not let this go another day. If this is true, that the DOJ has concluded that this case should not be prosecuted and the so-called leaking “officials” are for real, then he needs to speak right now. And if these so-called officials do not really know the true intentions of the DOJ, then he needs to speak to that as well.
People deserve the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth. I am sick and effing tired of these leaks that end up in the New York Times and The Washington Post that are intended TO KEEP PEOPLE UNCERTAIN ABOUT WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING. After what Ferguson has been through, I can’t think of anything more inhumane and more cruel than trying to manipulate people in this manner.
I’ve been looking for any credible information on these DOJ leaks and there doesn’t seem to be anything beyond what is being said by “anonymous officials.” Really, it seems way too soon for the DOJ to have made this kind of decision. Nonetheless, the leaks have me concerned which is the intended purpose of the leaks. This is so wrong.
America’s media, true CLUSTERFUCK.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.
A-DORABLE
https://twitter.com/dreadlawk/status/528188477192810496/photo/1
LOL Kahlo, to KUTE!
Tony Perkins: ‘If Republicans Capture The Senate, There’s No More Excuses About Impeachment’ Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 10/30/2014 4:55 pm
Yesterday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins once again demanded that Congress impeach and remove President Obama from office, telling a caller on his “Washington Watch” radio show that the GOP must go through with impeachment after the midterm elections. When a caller asked why Republicans haven’t made impeachment into an election issue,
Perkins responded that they should pursue it if the elections go there way: “If the Republicans do capture the Senate, there’s no more excuses about impeachment. See, what we’ve heard so far is how we can’t do that because we’d never get it through the Senate, the House could impeach him but the Senate would never convict, it would just be a waste of time. Well, if they have control of the Senate it won’t be.” Of course, it takes a two-thirds vote in the Senate to remove a president. –
See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tony-perkins-if-republicans-capture-senate-theres-no-more-excuses-about-impeachment#sthash.AVAxsBkh.dpuf
https://twitter.com/ObamaFoodorama/status/528178256030490626/photo/1
The Enormous, Secretive Effort To Purge Thousands Of Minorities From 27 States’ Voter Rolls
by Ian Millhiser Posted on October 31, 2014 at 11:50 am
Updated: October 31, 2014 at 12:48 pm
In a story that has grown all too common as an election draws near, election officials across the country are engaged in an ambitious effort to purge voters from state voter rolls. Moreover, voters from racial minority groups are especially likely to be targeted by this purge. As Al Jazeera America reports, after examining the purge lists from 3 of the 27 states participating in the purge, the purge lists “are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic.”
White voters are not immune from the purge, although they are less likely to be caught in it than voters of color. According to Al Jazeera, “fully 1 in 7 African-Americans” in the 27 states are listed as suspect voters. The same applies to 1 in 8 Asian American voters, 1 in 8 Hispanic voters, and 1 in 11 white voters. Moreover, “officials have begun the process of removing names from the rolls — beginning with 41,637 in Virginia alone.” The purge works by asking voters targeted by it to return a postcard mailed to voters on the purge list. In practice, however, according to one direct-mail expert, “4 percent to 20 percent of any mailing goes astray,” and lower income families are more likely not to receive the card because they tend to move addresses more frequently.
The premise of the purge, which is the “pet project” of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), is that a list of almost 7 million voters are suspected of casting a ballot during the same election in two different states. Thus, to accept this list as plausible, one has to believe that a massive chunk of voters, potentially amounting to nearly 6 percent of the voters who cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential race, cast two votes in a past election. If true, this would be voter fraud on a truly epic scale.
The reality, however, is that the purge list appears to be massively over-inclusive — if it identifies any legitimate cases of voter fraud at all. In many cases, “all it takes to become a suspect is sharing a first and last name with a voter in another state.” The list matches a voter named Kevin Antonio Hayes of Durham, North Carolina with another named Kevin Thomas Hayes from Alexandria, Virginia, for example, suggesting that both men may be the same voter who voted twice. The same is true of John Paul Williams of Virginia and John R. Williams of Atlanta, as well as Robert Dewey Cox of Georgia and Robert Glen Cox of Virginia.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/10/31/3587074/the-enormous-secretive-effort-to-purge-thousands-of-minorities-from-27-states-voter-rolls/
BLACK & BROWN PEOPLE have POWER, don’t ever let these MOFOs think we DON’T. We know and they know it.
Republicans Tried to Suppress the Black Vote in North Carolina. It’s Not Working.
Thousands more African-Americans have already turned out to vote this year than in 2010. Here’s how Democrats are doing it.
—By Erika Eichelberger
| Fri Oct. 31, 2014 2:18 PM EDT
“The first question I ask my customers is: Are you registered?” Jolanda Smith says.
Smith runs a hair salon on the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her hair is dyed lavender and her arms are covered in heart and shooting-star tattoos. In the lead-up to the midterms, she’s lending her storefront to Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s reelection campaign. Smith passes out sample ballots and flyers and tells customers how to register and where their polling location is. Last Saturday morning, she was talking God and voting as she straightened a customer’s hair.
“It’s: Are you gonna vote, yes or no?” she says, sectioning off a lock of hair and pulling it through the iron. “God gave us a choice, and the choices are always yes or no. It’s not maybe. It’s not, ‘Let me think about it,’ ’cause those are excuses…on down from choosing Christ to voting. You gonna vote? Yes or no?”
IN 2013, North Carolina Republicans, led by Hagan’s opponent, state house speaker Thom Tillis, passed a far-reaching voting law that curtails early voting and eliminates same-day registration. The Justice Department sued North Carolina over the law, charging it was discriminatory and would depress minority turnout.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/north-carolina-democrat-black-vote-kay-hagan
LUVVIE HAS A RECAP UP:
An Innocent Man: Scandal Episode 406 Recap
Luvvie —October 31, 2014
Chile, last night’s episode of Scandal, I met my spirit animal in a woman named Bitsy Cooper. Let’s talk about it!
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/10/innocent-man-scandal-episode-406-recap.html#comment-808181
Yes I love Bitsy and Nelly learned quick.
Bitsy was ALLADAT! Women ruled that episode last night, RULED it, without a measuring stick.
How A South Dakota County Is Suppressing The Native American Vote
by Kira Lerner Posted on October 24, 2014 at 10:29 am Updated: October 26, 2014 at 11:15 am
FORT THOMPSON, SOUTH DAKOTA — The Crow Creek Indian Reservation lies along the Missouri River in central South Dakota, an area marked by rolling hills of corn fields, a government-constructed dam and a Native American town centered around the tribe’s casino.
While South Dakotans across the state have been voting for weeks — the state offers 46 days of early absentee voting — the Crow Creek Sioux have yet to see their ballots. The closest early voting site is a 50 mile roundtrip away in Gann Valley, a town with a population of 14. The Buffalo County auditor, a white resident of the town, has refused to set aside federal funds to open a satellite office for early voting on the reservation this year.
That 50-mile trip is effectively impossible for many people on the reservation. Sixty-five-year-old Crow Creek resident Sylvia Walters lives in a government-subsidized apartment building for the elderly and disabled in Fort Thompson, the largest town on Crow Creek. She told ThinkProgress that because she doesn’t have a car, she has to pay someone to drive her if she wants to leave her immediate part of town. “I stay home a lot. Let’s put it that way,” she said. Although she plans on voting in November, she said she would have preferred having the option to vote early. “Sometimes you forget on the day or you’re busy,” she said. “This way when you’re thinking about it you can get it done.”
Native American voting rights group Four Directions has been fighting since 2002 to give Indians the same voting opportunities as other South Dakotans. Over breakfast at the Lode Star Casino in Fort Thompson, executive director OJ Semans, his wife Barb and Buffalo County Commissioner Donita Laudner told ThinkProgress the county’s refusal to open an early voting center is an attempt to suppress Native American votes.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that if you’re given 46 days to vote, you are going to have more people vote than if you’re given one day,” Semans, a Rosebud Sioux, said. “[The auditor] says there’s six different ways to vote, but we don’t want six different ways. We just want what you have, which is a satellite office.”
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/10/24/3583565/south-dakota-native-american-voter-suppression/
https://twitter.com/crissles/status/528251935489810432/photo/1
https://twitter.com/nedlow/status/436882258335518721/photo/1
Looking out my window….
I see snow…..
sigh…
sigh…
sigh….
LOL 29 degrees here. and remember to turn back the clocks Saturday!
Looks like we’ll be getting some snow here too.
The gag rule Kasich doesn’t want to talk about
10/31/14 08:50 AM
By Steve Benen
The editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, hosted a meeting recently with the state’s gubernatorial candidates: incumbent Republican Gov. John Kasich, Democrat Ed FitzGerald, and Green Party Candidate Anita Rios. The discussion got a little … odd.
FitzGerald, behind in the polls, not surprisingly stayed on the offensive, and noted the Kasich approved a law that restricts what rape-crisis counselors can tell victims. “Why was it important to have a piece of legislation that literally imposed a gag rule on rape crisis counselors?” the challenger asked.
The governor, slumped in his chair and visibly annoyed, decided to pretend that FitzGerald wasn’t in the room. Wonkette did a nice job summarizing the scene.
One of the editors prompts him: “Would you like to answer that, governor?”
“Do you have a question?” Kasich responds. The editor then tries to explain the question FitzGerald just asked. As much as the editor understands the question, anyway.
“I assume that it had to do with, uh, there were limits on what they could say about having abortions,” the editor says.
Kasich still says nothing, possibly because the reporter made the mistake of mentioning FitzGerald’s name while summarizing the question. Once more, Kasich spreads his hands and asks, “I mean, did you have a…?” At which point FitzGerald jumps in and explains to the clueless reporter, “He’s trying to pretend he didn’t hear me say it, so you need to repeat it.”
The discussion, such as it was, continued for a while, with the governor repeatedly saying he’s “pro-life,” while (a) refusing to answer the question; (b) refusing to acknowledge his rivals were sitting next to him; and (c) refusing to recognize the policy he imposed on his state.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-gag-rule-kasich-doesnt-want-talk-about
Grimes Campaign Expresses Confidence After New Poll Shows McConnell Up In Kentucky
By: Jason Easley
Thursday, October, 30th, 2014, 8:24 pm
The final Bluegrass Poll of the 2014 election showed Mitch McConnell leading Alison Lundergan Grimes 48%-43%, but the Grimes campaign expressed confidence that they will prevail on Election Day.
According to The Courier-Journal,
The poll found that 48 percent of likely voters plan to vote for McConnell while just 43 percent plan to back Grimes. Three percent said they are voting for Libertarian David Patterson and 6 percent said they haven’t made up their minds.
…
The biggest problem for Grimes appears to be the negative ads that outside groups have used against her.
The poll found that only 37 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of her, while 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion of her. That almost mirrors McConnell’s 37-44 favorability gap.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/10/30/grimes-campaign-expresses-confidence-poll-shows-mcconnell-kentucky.html
Screw the POLLS, folks just need to get their asses out there and VOTE!
Totally!!
When the going gets tough, Scott Brown falls to pieces
10/30/14 04:01 PM—UPDATED 10/30/14 05:14 PM
By Steve Benen
In a season in which plenty of politicians are trying to deliberately terrify voters, Republican Scott Brown stands out – offering a unique combination of demagoguery, cynicism, cowardice, and confusion.
The former senator, hoping to re-join the Senate after his other home state rejected him two years ago, started hitting the panic button in early September, seizing on Americans’ fears about Islamic State terrorists to baselessly argue that ISIS may attack through the Mexican border. Brown later added that terrorists with Ebola may also try to infiltrate the Southern U.S. border.
The more anxiety the public feels, the more Scott Brown descends into rambling, fear-based incoherence. If crises reveal a person’s true character, recent tumult reveals the New England Republican has the spine of a marshmallow.
Today, however, Dave Weigel reports that Brown’s desperate hopes of scaring voters have taken an unintentionally hilarious turn.
In an interview with NH1, Brown rejected the idea that he was running on “fear” – Ebola, he said, was the “No. 1, 2, and 3” issue on the minds of voters he talked to.
“Carrying diseases doesn’t need to be Ebola,” said Brown. “but the whooping cough and polio and other types of potential diseases are coming through.”
Yes, the often-confused Republican believes polio – a disease that no longer exists in the Western hemisphere – may be sneaking into the United States. So New Hampshire should make him a senator again … so he can tackle an issue he’s never shown any interest in … which he has no working understanding of … and he can oppose a bipartisan immigration reform bill that strengthens border security.
This really is campaign politics at its most mindless and offensive. Brown thinks New Hampshire voters might be afraid of terrorism, so he plays on those fears, encourages panic, and tries to blame his rivals for the threat in ways that defy reason. Brown then thinks the electorate might be afraid of Ebola, so he begins the process anew, encouraging fear instead of deterring it.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/when-the-going-gets-tough-scott-brown-falls-pieces
ICYMI
Go, Mr. President.
Happy Friday, Everyone!
Great posts this week, Rikyrah. I’ve enjoyed Old Souls Week.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Glad you’ve enjoyed the music.
Good Morning, Ametia, Rikyrah, and Everyone :)
Here are some helpful words of wisdom from a tweeter in Ferguson who has been pushing for justice for Michael Brown,:
Charles Wade @akacharleswade · 7h
Burnout is real. And we have to understand that a great help to this movement is to pace ourselves so we can endure for the long haul.
Know your bandwidth. Know when you’re no longer being effective. It’s ok. Regroup and tag back in.
But you’ll get back everything you’ve invested in the work by way of a better world. I’m sure it sounds cliche but I really believe that.
Even in all this mess, I’ve seen the best in people and it’s inspiring and rewarding.
from “Carry It On” lyrics
When you can’t go on any longer,
Take the hand, hand of your brother,
Every victory brings another,
Carry it on, carry it on.</em
I believe that the light of love, truth, goodness, and hope is stronger than the darkness of evil and hate. Light can destroy darkness.
Yes, "freedom is a constant struggle." Just as in a football game, advocates for justice and equality will sometimes have to deal with interceptions, tackles, missed passes, and fumbles, but the goal is still clear. We WILL have successful touchdown passes and a strong team spirit and grit to work the ball down the field to MANY touchdowns!
It's all about teamwork and knowing how to rotate players in and out for rest and recuperation in order to keep the team strong and successful.
(Italics should have ended with the last line of the 4-line stanza.)
Hi there yahtzee! How are you, lady?
Hi Ametia!
I am doing great :) Hope things are good for you.
I did need to “refuel” this week after watching the video of Milton Hall being killed in a parking lot execution-style. That evening, after viewing the video, everything seemed so overwhelming. However, now I am refreshed again and have even MORE reason to fight for justice!
[I have been outside a lot this week doing yard work :) I love the outdoors! ]