“Blue Christmas” is a Christmas song written by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson. It is a tale of unrequited love during the holidays and is a longstanding staple of Christmas music, especially in the country genre.
The song was first recorded by Doye O’Dell in 1948,[3] and was popularized the following year in three separate recordings: one by country artist Ernest Tubb; one by bandleader Hugo Winterhalter and his orchestra; and one by bandleader Russ Morgan and his orchestra (the latter featuring lead vocals by Morgan and backing vocals by singers credited as the Morganaires).
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvf6bv_elvis-presley-blue-christmas_music
I read either in my timeline or someone else’ said these people or grand juries are going to keep on until the wrath of God rain down on us.
https://twitter.com/TheCiera/status/540167745749655552/photo/1
https://twitter.com/BayyyBayyy__/status/540296585734017024/photo/1
I will never forget this. It rings so true!
“@DDSSBlog: Being black in America means navigating a constant minefield of stress, oppression and certain death for no reason”.
*weeps*
This picture. Try to imagine being killed this way, broad daylight, all these people around, and a cop is killing you. This is horrific, this is from hell.
https://twitter.com/garyyounge/status/540289492419358721
https://twitter.com/1623dongambino/status/540277929998307328
A man is murdered for “selling a loosie.” Murdered, killed by a cop, and a grand jury gives it a high five. Why in the blazing hell do we even have these grand juries? Wasn’t the video enough to charge the cop? “I CAN”T BREATH!!!!!!!!!!”
https://twitter.com/goldietaylor/status/540291607791407104
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/540294177427173377
Heads up, folks! Civil rights investigation into death of Eric Garner will be led by AG nominee US Attorney Loretta Lynch.
So unbelievable that the cop who murdered Eric Garner wasn’t indicted. They had a video, for crying out loud.
The DOJ is the only recourse, the only hope there is in this country to bring killer cops to justice.
This is a recurring nightmare right now, an absolute nightmare.
BREAKING:
Justice Dept opens civil rights probe into death of Eric Garner in NY police custody
https://twitter.com/JimDalrympleII/status/540274173000417280
Fuck talking about this for 3 days & we go back to business as usual. Fix this failed system now! There is a crisis in this country! Police are killing young blk boys & men with impunity!
Chris Rock Pens Blistering Essay on Hollywood’s Race Problem: “It’s a White Industry”
9:00 AM PST 12/03/2014 by Chris Rock
Writing for THR’s current issue, the ‘Top Five’ writer, director and star tackles Hollywood’s third rail as he explains what it’s really like to be black in the entertainment industry (hint: you get asked to be Huggy Bear, not Starsky or Hutch) and the “slave state” of Mexicans: “If Kevin Hart is playing 40,000 seats a night, and Jon Stewart is playing 3,000 … why does Kevin Hart have to cross over?”
I was probably 19 when I first came to Hollywood. Eddie Murphy brought me out to do Beverly Hills Cop II and he had a deal at Paramount, so I remember going through the gates of the Paramount lot. He’s in a Rolls-Royce, and he’s not just a star, he’s the biggest star in the world. Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer’s office was in the same building as Eddie’s office, and they would come to work every day with matching cars. Some days it would be the Porsches, and the next day it would be Ferraris. I was like the kid in A Bronx Tale. I got to just hang around when the biggest parts of show business were happening. I was only there a couple of weeks, but I remember every day Jeffrey Katzenberg would call Eddie Murphy — I don’t even know if Eddie was calling him back — but it was like, “Jeffrey Katzenberg called again.” “Janet Jackson just called.” “Michael Jackson called.” It was that crazy. I’ve still never seen anything like it. I had a small part in the movie, but my dream was bigger than that. I wanted to have a convertible Rolls-Royce with a fine girl driving down Melrose blasting Prince.
Now I’m not Murphy, but I’ve done fine. And I try to help young black guys coming up because those people took chances on me. Eddie didn’t have to put me in Beverly Hills Cop II. Keenen Wayans didn’t have to put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Arsenio didn’t have to let me on his show. I’d do the same for a young white guy, but here’s the difference: Someone’s going to help the white guy. Multiple people will. The people whom I’ve tried to help, I’m not sure anybody was going to help them.
And I have a decent batting average. I still remember people thinking I was crazy for hiring Wanda Sykes on my old HBO show. I recommended J.B. Smoove for Saturday Night Live, and I just helped Leslie Jones get on that show. She’s about as funny as a human being can be, but she didn’t go to Second City, she doesn’t do stand-up at The Cellar and she’s not in with Judd Apatow, so how the hell was she ever going to get through unless somebody like me says to Lorne Michaels, “Hey, look at this person”? I saw her at a comedy club four or five years ago, and I wrote her name down in my phone. I probably called four managers — the biggest managers in comedy — to manage her, and all of them said no. They didn’t get it. They didn’t get it until Lorne said yes a few years later, and then it was too late.
………………………..
Fifteen years ago, I tried to create an equivalent to The Harvard Lampoon at Howard University, to give young black comedy writers the same opportunity that white comedy writers have. I wish we could’ve made it work. The reason it worked at Harvard and not at Howard is that the kids at Howard need money. It’s that simple. Kids at Harvard come from money — even the broke ones come from money. They can afford to work at a newspaper and make no money. The kids at Howard are like, “Dude, I love comedy, but I’ve got a f—ing tuition that I’ve got to pay for here.” But that was 15 years ago; it might be easier to do it now because of the Internet. I don’t know.
I really don’t think there’s any difference between what black audiences find funny and what white audiences find funny, but everyone likes to see themselves onscreen, so there are some instances where there’s a black audience laughing at something that a white audience wouldn’t laugh at because a black audience is really just happy to see itself. Things that would be problems in a world where there were a lot of black movies get overlooked. The same thing happened with those Sex and the City movies. You don’t really see that level of female movie that much, so women were like, “We’re only going to get this every whatever, so f— you, f— the reviews, we’re going, we like it.”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223
Found this in the comments at BJ:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/12/03/eric-garners-killer-wont-be-indicted/#comment-5188269
Don’t let your kids play with a toy gun in the store & please DON’T buy it because God forbid, the kid might want to take it outside to play. #TamirRice
The Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice Was Found Unfit for Police Duty in 2012
Tim Loehmann, the Cleveland police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death last month, resigned from a smaller Ohio police force in 2012 after being found unfit for duty. Among other obviously disqualifying behavior, Loehmann was “distracted” and “weepy” during his firearm qualification session, according to just-released records from his brief tenure with the Independence police department.
“He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” Independence Deputy Chief Jim Polak wrote in a letter on November 29, 2012, according to records obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group. “For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”
Loehmann resigned from the Independence force on December 3, 2012, just four days after Polak’s letter and six months after joining the department. In March 2014, Loehmann joined the Cleveland police department, in part, according to his father, because he wanted “more action” than the Independence department could offer.
http://gawker.com/the-cop-who-killed-tamir-rice-was-found-unfit-for-polic-1666341124/all
a black kid is dead thanks to white male privilege and the good ol boy network.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wehearyou?src=hash
http://twitter.com/joshuafoust/status/540250842235162625/photo/1
you can see the video. you can hear him say I CAN’T BREATHE.
and still it’s not enough to hold over to put the cop ON TRIAL.
I think people brush past this. I’m not even say that the cop would be convicted.
but, killing someone on video who is unarmed should AT LEAST WARRANT A TRIAL.
217-60-1-5
Posted by Richard Mayhew at 11:17 am
Dec 032014
Those were the critical numbers for the Affordable Care Act to assemble a minimal winning coalition in 2010.
The actual winning coalition was 219-60-1-5 on everything except mandatory Medicaid expansion.
I am of the opinion that Nancy Pelosi probably had a few extra votes in her back pocket if she needed them, but this is pure specualtion that caps the spare votes out at five or six votes. I am of the opinion that President Obama would be willing to sign something significantly more liberal. That leads the binding constraints on a changed PPACA minimal winning coalition to be both the Senate as any defector from the aye to the nays could kill the bill, or Chief Justice Roberts.
When I think of PPACA within this framework, my analysis quickly leads me to assume that there were very few tweaks that could have been passed with a sufficient minimal winning coalition that were not already included in the bill. So when I see Senator Harkin say the following, I want to pull my hair out:
He wonders in hindsight whether the law was made overly complicated to satisfy the political concerns of a few Democratic centrists who have since left Congress.
“We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,” Harkin told The Hill. “So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.
“What we did is we muddle through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively,” he added….
“We had the votes in ’09. We had a huge majority in the House, we had 60 votes in the Senate,” he said.
He believes Congress should have enacted “single-payer right from the get go or at least put a public option would have simplified a lot.”
“We had the votes to do that and we blew it,” he said.
There were never the votes for Medicare for All in 2009 if we assume the minimal winning coalition is 217-60-1-5. I agree with Senator Harkin that it would have been better, more efficient and much smoother implementation to go for Medicare for All. However, as we saw with the proposal to drop the Medicare buy-in age to 55, there were multiple veto players (Sen. Lieberman of CT) who were not even willing to extend a successful single payer system at all to a logical target population.
The choice was not Single Payer or PPACA in 2010, the minimal winning coalition for PPACA included multiple veto players who would have vetoed Single Payer in the Senate and the House. The choice was PPACA or something extremely close to PPACA (you can convince me about a tweak here or there plus drafting fixes would have passed with the same coalition) versus nothing. And since we only had PPACA instead of a fine tooth combed revised PPACA, the actual choice was PPACA or nothing given the minimal winning coalition built.
Is PPACA perfect. Fuck no. Is it a massive improvement over the status quo. Fuck yeah.
Was single payer a passable option in 2010 — fuck no. So let’s take a good win when we can and celebrate it.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/12/03/217-60-1-5/#comment-5188206
They stack the deck with these Grand Juries to make sure a non indictment occurs. Having black people on is for show so one can call foul.
We are seeing Grand juries from hell. It’s going to get worse. Stay woke, folks! The handwriting is on the wall. Body cams are not going to solve ANYTHING. All we have is US.
I will repeat it…
CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE THE DEVIL
………………….
From BJ:
Baby Einstein
Posted by constitutional mistermix at 11:00 am
Dec 032014
Here’s one to add to the grifter file:
Greater Works Charter School will no longer open in Rochester in 2015, part of the continuing fallout over lies in the resume of its 22 year-old founder.
Ted Morris Jr. represented himself to the New York State Education Department as a precocious businessman and educational advisor with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees earned mostly online. In fact, he has no college degrees and scant professional experience.
He resigned Nov. 25, the day most of the misrepresentations came to light and just a week after the school gained approval from the state Board of Regents.
[…]
For such a young man, “Dr.” Ted is sure a very prodigious liar, since he he inflated his role as administrative assistant at a non-profit into CEO status, and also claimed a different alma mater in a previous filing with the state. No matter: Ted’s little grift was one of the few chosen by the state for funding:
In the fall 2014 charter approval cycle, 51 organizations submitted letters of intent, 17 were invited to submit full proposals, and only four, including Greater Works, were approved, according to the state education department.
In other words, 34 applications were written out in Crayola on Big Chief tablets, or scribbled on the back of 7-11 receipts. 17 of them used full sentences at the 8th grade reading level, and were invited to put pen to paper for a handwritten note to the state. 1 of the 4 that made it through that arduous process was “Dr” Ted’s. No wonder every charlatan, quack and ne’er-do-well wants to open a charter school.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/12/03/baby-einstein/
https://twitter.com/CuteEmergency/status/539243753886998528/photo/1
https://twitter.com/CuteEmergency/status/539559597271683072/photo/1
https://twitter.com/CuteEmergency/status/539881724466196480/photo/1
I’m hyperventilating! No indictment on the death of Eric Garner? And it’s on camera? WTF will a body cam do? Racist hate is running rampant.
yes, it is running rampant.
they murdered that man.
MURDERED HIM
https://twitter.com/stopbeingfamous/status/540231714409566208
Shaun King @ShaunKing · 4m 4 minutes ago
Eric Garner was lynched.
My latest. Please read and spread.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/13/1344670/-5-ugly-and-uncanny-parallels-between-lynchings-and-police-killings-in-America …
I’m shaking.
BREAKING: No indictment for cop in chokehold death of New York man http://on.msnbc.com/1yKeWmt
I am heartbroken for his family knowing that chokeholds by police are NOT allowed. I am sending prayers for his loved ones.
I cannot imagine the emotions being felt right now by my fellow African American citizens across the country and the fears that they have for the safety of their children and loved ones.
Hugs and tears for the Black community across the U.S.
Hey Ladies missed you and your informative information.
Hey Silently! Nice to see you.
The media needs a stepinfetchit like Charles Barkley to say “look what he says about you black people” so they can feel better about themselves.
Michael Hiltzik ✔ @hiltzikm
Follow
Where Sen. Schumer gets Obamacare wrong: It’s a huge boon to the middle class http://fw.to/Q2FWZyB
9:40 AM – 3 Dec 2014
Literacy tests were outlawed for a reason
12/03/14 11:40 AM
By Steve Benen
If many states’ voter-ID laws help represent a modern-day poll tax, perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that literacy tests strike some as appealing, too.
For example, on “Fox & Friends” this morning, the co-hosts chatted about the state of civics education, and a proposal that would require high-school students to pass the same civics test given to immigrants applying for citizenship. After highlighting some of the more basic questions, viewers were treated to this unfortunate exchange:
STEVE DOOCY: Listen. Not only – okay, you’ve got to answer those questions correctly to become a citizen of the United States. I think not only would it be great if high school students had to have a proficiency in America, but I think they should have a test before you vote.
BRIAN KILMEADE: That’d be great.
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Not bad, not bad.
Well, actually, it is bad.
Doocy is not the first person to suggest it’d be a good idea to impose tests on Americans before they’re allowed to cast a ballot. For much of American history, so-called “literacy tests” were used as a voter-suppression technique, specifically targeting African Americans.
Such tests were common, most notably in the Jim Crow South, starting in the 1890s and still lingering as recently as the 1960s. Whites were generally exempted from taking these state-mandated quizzes – note, for example, the origin of the phrase “grandfather clause.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/literacy-tests-were-outlawed-reason
Shugah @Shugah
Charles Barkley, Ben Carson, & Don Lemon are why Harriet Tubman carried a gun along the Underground Railroad.
Mum Bette @PostRacialMyAss
The new blacks have a severe case of stockholm syndrome
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom
Civil rights movement ignited over black kids being killed at horrific rates. @JoeNBC likens it to “flying saucers.” Show some respect, Joe.
Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom
I missed the memo from black America asking a bunch of white folks to sit around a TV studio and wag fingers at them. But not @JoeNBC
Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom
.@DonnyDeutsch says (and @JoeNBC seems to agree) Mike Brown was a “thug” –a dead kid who can’t defend self + who had no advocate in GJ room
Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom
.@JoeNBC If you concede massive racial bias in justice system, how do you not see it here? Or have you not read the grand jury transcript?
Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite
Shugah @Shugah
Charles Barkley, Ben Carson, & Don Lemon are Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh & Hannity with melanin.
Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite
LiberalPhenom @LiberalPhenom
@daveweigel @PragObots @DCGopGirl Still trying to protect the grown woman who attacked children.
PragmaticObotsUnite @PragObots
.@daveweigel Yes becuz a man speaking from a place pain is totally the same as an adult slut shaming a teenager. @DCGopGirl #DudeBroLogic
https://twitter.com/TheWrap/status/540143428231626754/photo/1
Detroit WaterBrigade @DETWaterBrigade
While they were shutting off the water on children & elderly, city officials gave $34K to this guy just to fly around http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2014/12/02/bankruptcy-legal-fees/19815475/ …
Awesomely Luvvie @Luvvie
So the person behind the @UnitedBlackout account is a white man named Mike Latt. He bought the URL BlackOutForHumanRights on Oct 16, 2014.
The right’s ‘State of the Union plan’ continues to percolate
12/03/14 09:23 AM—UPDATED 12/03/14 09:30 AM
By Steve Benen
Last week, shortly before Thanksgiving, the idea that congressional Republicans might block President Obama from delivering a State of the Union address first crossed the political world’s radar. The New York Times published a quote from a prominent figure in conservative media pushing the argument; Breitbart News ran a column endorsing the move; and Politico noted unnamed “GOP aides and lawmakers” who like the idea.
Dan Holler, the communications director for Heritage Action, said last Wednesday that he suspects “we’ll hear a lot” about the move.
That hasn’t happened quite yet, but the issue certainly seems to be percolating. The Washington Post reported this morning:
Late Tuesday, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-Ga.) called for Boehner to not invite Obama to deliver the State of the Union address next year. […]
On the State of the Union, [Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.)] added: “In the spirit of George Washington, he could send it to us in writing. It’d save some time.”
The far-right Washington Times ran an op-ed on this today from a Republican operative. The headline read, “Cancel Congress’s role in the State of the Union address.”
Here is a modest proposal: The Speaker of the House should declare a state of Constitutional emergency in which the President’s specific unlawful actions … have cumulatively provoked the legislative branch into a bold but measured legislative response. That response will be to cancel – for 2015 – the traditional end-of-January joint session of Congress to which the President is normally invited to deliver his annual State of the Union Address.
Well, at least it’s a “modest” and “measured” approach, right?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-rights-state-the-union-plan-continues-percolate
All I know is that I’m paying more for a gallon of milk these days than a gallon of gas.
……………….
Saudi Arabia Declares Oil War on US Fracking, hits Railroads, Tank-Car Makers, Canada, Russia; Sinks Venezuela
by Wolf Richter • December 1, 2014
When OPEC announced on Thanksgiving Day that it would maintain oil production at 30 million barrels per day, chaos broke out in the oil market, and the price of oil around the globe spiraled into a terrific plunge. The unity of OPEC, if there ever was such a thing, was in tatters with Saudi oil minister smiling victoriously, and with a steaming Venezuelan oil minister thinking of the turmoil his country is facing [OPEC Refuses to Cut Production, Oil Plunges off the Chart].
The bloodletting in the oil markets on Thursday led to some wobbly stability on Friday, and for a while it seemed oil had found a bottom, but then the US stock market closed early while crude continued trading, and suddenly all heck re-broke loose, and the US benchmark WTI plunged again and broke the $66-a-barrel mark before coming to a rest at $66.06. After a near 10% dive in two days, WTI is now down 37% since June!
This chart shows the Thanksgiving plunge following OPEC’s decision, the deceptive stability Friday, and the afterhours plunge:
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/12/01/saudi-arabia-declares-oil-war-on-us-fracking-hits-railroads-tank-car-makers-canada-russia-sinks-venezuela/
ACA is saving lives in more ways than one
12/02/14 12:45 PM
By Steve Benen
When we talk about the Affordable Care Act as a life-or-death issue for many Americans, we tend to focus on the issue of access: families without coverage too often go without treatments, leading to easily avoidable, life-threatening ailments.
But “Obamacare” was a massive undertaking precisely because it did far more than just expand access to insurance. The reform law also took deliberate steps towards improving the health care system itself, and as Jason Millman reported, those measures appear to be saving thousands of lives, too.
Wide-ranging efforts to make hospital care safer have resulted in an estimated 50,000 fewer patients dying because of avoidable errors in the past three years, according to a new report presented by government and industry officials on Tuesday.
Hospitals reported 1.3 million fewer hospital-acquired infections in all between 2011-2013 compared to the rate of mistakes that hospitals made in 2010, according to the report from the Department of Health and Human Services. That represented a 17 percent drop in hospital errors from 2010, but about 12 percent of all hospitalizations as of 2013 still experienced an adverse event during the course of care.
What does this have to do with the Affordable Care Act? A senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the Washington Post, “We made major investments in quality improvements. We made investments in the research and understanding of patient safety.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/aca-saving-lives-more-ways-one
Charles Pierce on Rand Paul:
……………….
Kentucky Fraud, Chicken
By Charles P. Pierce on December 3, 2014
It’s been an interesting few weeks in the life of Senator Aqua Buddha, bold brogressive mancrush and sworn enemy of people who want to drop a drone in your double-chai soy latte 30-weight blobbaccino. First, he takes a complete dive on the USA Freedom Act, the only legislation on offer that even meekly would restrain the surveillance state that so bothers his sleep at night. (His alibi? It didn’t go far enough.) Now, as befits a Libertarian Superhero Who Can Talk To The Young, Aqua Buddha has weighed in against net neutrality on the grounds that it is an impermissable “government intrusion” and an example of genius-stifling “government regulation.” (For the moment, we will leave aside the fact that the Internet itself is a “government intrusion” in everyone’s life.) This, of course, is all in the name of…wait for it…freedom.
When asked by The Huffington Post on Tuesday morning whether he has concerns about a plan backed by President Barack Obama, which would reclassify the Internet as a utility and ban companies from charging for better Internet access, Paul said, “Yeah, I don’t want to see regulation of the Internet. I think it’s the wrong way to go about it.”
4:57…4:58…4:59…
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Rand_Paul's_Great_Deception
The wrong thesis applied to the wrong president
12/02/14 04:43 PM—UPDATED 12/02/14 05:01 PM
By Steve Benen
About a week before the midterm elections, Dana Milbank published a column blasting President Obama, endorsing the argument that the president is a “passive bystander.” The columnist argued, “The real problem with Obama is not overreach but his tendency to be hands-off.”
Soon after, the entire thesis looked wildly off the mark – Obama, far from the hapless spectator described by Milbank, took charge on issues ranging from immigration to the climate crisis to net neutrality. The president wasn’t just watching events pass him by, content to do nothing while circumstances unfolded around him, Obama did the exact opposite, taking the reins and showing real leadership.
Which makes it all the more curious to see Milbank re-commit to the same mistaken thesis again today.
[O]n this issue [violence in Ferguson] as on many others – notably the fight against the Islamic State and the need to find a new defense secretary – Obama has demonstrated a preference to mull rather than to act. Former Obama Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, in his memoir, wrote that Obama too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” […]
Over time, such a cerebral process probably produces the best results. But crises don’t wait for cogitation.
In this case, Milbank was disappointed that the president “had a meeting” at the White House to discuss developments in Ferguson. What the Beltway columnist would have preferred is to see the president go to the St. Louis area … where Obama presumably could have had more meetings.
I’ll confess to being mystified by the entire argument. Milbank sees the response to ISIS as an example of Obama preferring thought to action, but in reality, the president began launching airstrikes on ISIS targets in August – long before Congress even considered authorizing force – and soon after he unilaterally took the controversial step of expanding the mission into Syria. How is this an example of inaction? Isn’t this actually evidence of the opposite?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-wrong-thesis-applied-the-wrong-president
Milbank risks losing his Villager Secret Decoder Ring if he doesn’t maintain his quota of “Obama is not a leader” columns.
When Ted Cruz huddles with his House counterparts
12/03/14 08:35 AM
By Steve Benen
Following up on an earlier item, House Republicans are still weighing their options when it comes to a possible government shutdown next week, but as the process unfolds, there will be quite a few meetings behind closed doors.
Take this one, for example, scheduled for this morning.
A cadre of the House’s most conservative members will meet Wednesday morning at the Capitol Hill Club for Rep. Steve King’s regular breakfast to discuss lame duck legislation. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who often serves as a de facto spokesperson for congressional hardliners, is expected to attend.
It’s worth pausing to appreciate just what a combustible mix Ted Cruz and far-right House Republicans can be. They tend to gather quite often, and the results are rarely pretty.
In early September, with a shutdown deadline looming, President Obama was preparing executive actions on immigration. Cruz huddled with his House GOP allies to strategize. As it turned out, no plot was necessary – Obama delayed his immigration announcement until after the elections – but the fact that the Texas senator was ready to hatch a scheme with House Republicans was a reminder about the role he plays on Capitol Hill.
Indeed, I’m amazed by just how much time Cruz spends with his House counterparts – almost as if he were the Shadow Speaker of the House.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/when-ted-cruz-huddles-his-house-counterparts
Netanyahu Fires Ministers and Calls for Elections
By ISABEL KERSHNERDEC. 2, 2014
JERUSALEM — In a decisive move after days of intense political bickering, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel fired his centrist finance and justice ministers on Tuesday and called for the dissolution of Parliament and early elections.
“I will no longer tolerate opposition from within the government,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised news conference that signaled the opening of his re-election campaign.
Mr. Netanyahu has essentially accused Yair Lapid, the finance minister, and Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, of making the country ungovernable with their frequent public criticism of his policies in recent weeks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-cabinet-elections.html?via=newsletter&source=CSMorning&_r=1
House GOP still stumbling towards a shutdown
12/03/14 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
Just 24 hours ago, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the House Republican leadership team thought they’d come up with a credible plan to prevent a government shutdown. It was clearly a little convoluted, but the blueprint seemed likely to get Congress out of a jam of its own making.
Part One of the plan would include a House vote this week on a symbolic, far-right bill to undo President Obama’s new immigration policy. This is designed to make conservatives feel better, despite being a hollow gesture. Part Two would be a second vote next week on a spending bill that would fund nearly all of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year in September. And Part Three of the plan would isolate funding for the Department of Homeland Security, funding the agency for only a few months, opening the door to a new fight in early 2015.
The point is to thread a ridiculous needle – preventing a shutdown, placating angry, right-wing House members, and approving a measure acceptable to a Democratic-led Senate. (The whole package has become known as the “CRomnibus,” combining the omnibus spending bill with a continuing resolution, or “CR.”)
But as the afternoon progressed yesterday, it became clear that the right is not satisfied. Politico reported overnight:
The “Hell No” caucus is once again causing headaches for Republican leadership.
A cadre of the House’s most conservative members will meet Wednesday morning at the Capitol Hill Club for Rep. Steve King’s regular breakfast to discuss lame duck legislation. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who often serves as a de facto spokesperson for congressional hardliners, is expected to attend.
These hardline Republicans are already expressing their dissatisfaction with the plan outlined by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) during a closed door meeting Tuesday morning…. These conservatives estimate the number of Republican “no” votes near 30 to 40 – enough to derail a vote on the government funding bill if Democrats oppose the measure.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/house-gop-still-stumbling-towards-shutdown
Happy HUMP day, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)