“What Child Is This?” is a popular Christmas carol written in 1865. At the age of twenty-nine, English writer William Chatterton Dix was struck with a sudden near-fatal illness and confined to bedrest for several months, during which he went into a deep depression.[1][2] Yet out of his near-death experience, Dix wrote many hymns, including “What Child is This?”, later set to the traditional English tune “Greensleeves“ and retitled as “What Child Is This?”
Mexico: At least 1 of 43 missing students ID’d
The Associated Press
E. EDUARDO CASTILLO and MARIA VERZADec 7th 2014 11:40AM
MEXICO CITY (AP) – At least one of 43 college students missing since September has been identified among charred remains found several weeks ago near a southern Mexico garbage dump, two government officials confirmed Saturday.
The two could not provide more details on how many of the students might have been identified. They agreed to speak about the development only if granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
A family member of a missing student told The Associated Press that the remains were of Alexander Mora. The families were given that information late Friday by an Argentine team of forensic experts working on behalf of the relatives and with the Attorney General’s Office, said the man, who also would speak only on condition of anonymity.
Parents of the students declined comment, addressing a crowd that gathered Saturday afternoon at an already planned protest at the capital’s Monument to the Revolution to demand the return of the students alive.
Omar Garcia, a student at the march who attended the same rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa as the missing young men, relayed the reaction of Mora’s father when he learned the fate of his son: “He will never give up. He will never get over his pain, but what he wants to tell all of you, and what we all want to say is this: We want justice!”
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/07/mexico-at-least-1-of-43-missing-students-idd/21003974/?icid=maing-grid7%7Caol20-os%7Cdl9%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D577354
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541756195435196417/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541741309414084608/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541743304267018240/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541718472288632832/photo/1
FLASH MOB 2014! USAF Band at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum!
http://youtu.be/p4Ola1i28aI
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541727923401924608/photo/1
under the jail
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D.A. Man videotaped himself having sex with stepdaughter’s corpse
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20141207_DA__Gregory_Graf_videotaped_himself_having_sex_with_his_stepdaughter_s_corpse.html#M54wQGWL556r6Xil.99
Chris Rock: The Rolling Stone Interview
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/chris-rock-the-rolling-stone-interview-20141203?page=3
AAmom @AVD911
I like @CharlesMBlow’s answer. Obama Presidency brought racism out into the open.
@BVGamble @CBSNews @JeanneCummings @FaceTheNation
Kasai™ @Kahsai
Yep! You know who else benefits from Obamacare..30% of African Americans with per-existing conditions. How dare he saves lives??
DALAYYYY @TheToast2015
The Democrats catered to the base they want, not the base they had and you see the results if that today.
you know what I find incredible? that they didn’t talk to the local group on campus that supports the victims of sexual assault. when I was in college, there was a group that was called in – other students – that held the hands of the girls that actually came forth to the student health service to say that they were attacked. checked in on them. made sure that they had all the phone numbers and where to go. made sure that they knew they could call these folks 24/7 no matter what.
now, this existed back when I went to school. you’re telling me that UVA, in 2014, doesn’t have something similar? that they couldn’t call on this group who would have hooked them up with all sorts of victims that would have repeated the story in their story…shyt….I knew that story from girls when I went to college….that shyt is oh so real.
Rolling Stone REALLY never went to the group supporting sexual assault victims and asked if there was anyone else who’d like to tell their story….really?
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Friend Quoted In Rolling Stone Story Disputes Details Of Alleged Assault
By CAITLIN MACNEAL PublishedDECEMBER 7, 2014, 2:52 PM
After the Rolling Stone managing editor on Friday said that the magazine had “misplaced” trustwith alleged gang rape victim Jackie, one of her friends quoted in the article disputed some of the details about the alleged assault at a University of Virginia fraternity.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Friday night, Jackie’s friend “Andy” said that Jackie told him she was assaulted the night of the alleged incident.
He said that he and two of her friends did meet Jackie near the the fraternity houses. But he said that her dress was not covered in blood and that they never discussed “the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape.”
“Andy” said that Jackie told them that she was forced to perform oral sex on multiple men. Her friends offered to help Jackie but she wanted to return to her room, he said.
“The perception that I’m gravitating toward is that something happened that night and it’s gotten lost in different iterations of the stories that have been told,” he told the Post. “Is there a possibility nothing happened? Sure. I think the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/friend-interview-rolling-stone-details
Guard
ROME — He has dismissed and demoted cardinals, bishops and the Vatican secretary of state, and now Pope Francis’s reformist zeal has claimed a new scalp – the head of his own private army, the Swiss Guard.
In a dispassionate one-sentence notice, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, announced Wednesday that Col. Daniel Anrig will no longer serve as the commandant of the 500-year-old corps after the end of next month.
No official explanation was given for the decision, but it was widely rumoured that the Argentine Pope, who has established a warmer, more inclusive style of governance since being appointed pontiff in March last year, found the commander’s manner overly strict and “Teutonic.”
The 77-year-old Pope is said to have been appalled recently to have emerged one morning from his private suite of rooms to find that a Swiss Guard had been standing outside all night.
“Sit down,” he told the young guardsman, to which the soldier said: “I can’t, it’s against orders.”
The Pope replied: “I give the orders around here” — and promptly went off to buy a cappuccino for the exhausted soldier. In October, the Pope was photographed shaking hands with a member of the elite corps, breaking years of protocol which demanded that pontiffs should be aloof in their dealings with Swiss Guardsmen….
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/12/04/pope-francis-fires-teutonic-head-of-the-swiss-guard-a-force-that-hasnt-seen-combat-since-1527/
https://twitter.com/TheDemocrats/status/541655048980561920/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/541645234128830464/photo/1
Profitship! Cashing In On Public Schools
https://twitter.com/wsbtv/status/541673593013551104/photo/1
far far far too young
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Unexpected Death of Former BET Host Was Reportedly Due to Heart Attack
POSTED ON DECEMBER 5, 2014 BY MARIA
Reported by Kacie Whaley
Former host of BET’s “Teen Summit” and D.C. Council candidate A.J. Cooper died Wednesday morning, reportedly from a heart attack. He was 34.
His aunt, Peggy Cooper Cafritz, told News4 that he had been feeling ill recently, and collapsed at his mothers house after complaining of chest pains and dizziness. She said his mother tried to revive him with CPR.
Cooper had recently announced that he would be running for the D.C. Ward 4 City Council seat vacated by Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser, according to his campaign page.
“He loved the city, and he loved serving the people in the city, from the elderly to the young,” Cafritz said Wednesday. “Jay was just on the verge of bursting forth.”
Cooper, a D.C. native, was well-known for investing his time and energy into his community. He first became popular from hosting “Teen Summit,” a program focusing on social issues in the lives of the youth. Known as ‘Jay’ on the show, he hosted during his high school and college years, from 2000-2003.
His passion to improve his hometown encouraged him to run for an at-large D.C. Council seat. Politics had run in Cooper’s family, as his father was the first black mayor of Pritchard, Alabama in 1972.
Cooper was really to fight for causes where an injustice was taking place. On Monday, he had attended a Ferguson protest outside the Justice Department building.
“We need to turn all of this energy, all of this passion, all of this pain, into power, into something positive, into real change that will improve outcomes in people’s lives,” he said.
http://iloveblackpeople.net/2014/12/unexpected-death-of-former-bet-host-was-reportedly-due-to-heart-attack/
Jeff Gauvin @JeffersonObama
Follow
Putin has forced hundreds of billions to flee Russia, destroyed the Ruble and the stock market in Moscow. His Fanboys in America oblivious.
8:19 PM – 6 Dec 2014
https://twitter.com/arapaho415/status/541416344357330944/photo/1
Sunday, December 7, 2014
President Obama and the Power of Partnership
Prior to entering politics, Barack Obama taught classes in the community about power. Unfortunately, neither he nor any of the attendees have written much about the content of those sessions. But in watching him over the last seven years, we can begin to understand his view of the topic.
As Riane Eisler pointed out in her book The Chalice and the Blade:
Underneath all the complex and seemingly random currents and crosscurrents, is the struggle between two very different ways of relating, of viewing our world and living in it. It is the struggle between two underlying possibilities for relations: the partnership model and the domination model.
She posits that we are living in the era of the blade (domination), but that archeology tells us that once human beings were more organized around the idea of the chalice (partnership).
When it comes to power, those ideas can be summarized like this:
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2014/12/president-obama-and-power-of-partnership.html
Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Republican Attorneys Generals
By ERIC LIPTON DEC. 6, 2014
The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.
But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers forDevon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oiland gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.
“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”
The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.
They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority — 27 — of attorneys general’s offices.
The Times reported previously how individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more corporate-friendly settlement terms after intervention by lobbyists and lawyers, many of whom are also campaign benefactors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
https://twitter.com/6abc/status/541454222475018240/photo/1
https://twitter.com/abc13houston/status/541462335874154496/photo/1
Good Morning, Everyone :)
I want the campaign for equal justice for Blacks to be successful. I desire that Michael Brown and Eric Garner and so many others receive the justice which they deserve.
BLACK LIVES MATTER!!!
At this point I firmly believe that protesters need to STOP blocking traffic. It is dangerous to motorists who might be in the midst of a medical emergency who are trapped in traffic, to motorists who are parents trying to get home to their children who might need their help, etc.
Here are some ALTERNATIVES for actions by protesters:
1. Create and pass out leaflets to pedestrians on the sidewalk to educate them about the crisis in our justice system. Many, many people across our country do NOT understand what is happening. Many are too busy working and are not aware of what is occurring.
2. Set up local meetings where the general public can come and be educated. Teach them the reasons behind the protest movement.
3. Have clipboards with petitions to sign asking local representatives to take corrective actions.
4. Have strategy meetings with protesters so that they learn how to have effective conversations with the public while they are standing with their protest signs.
5. Create leaflets that address institutional racism and White privilege. Such a leaflet could list seminar locations for follow-up education on these topics.
Again, in my humble opinion, the blocking of traffic needs to STOP.
But, the movement definitely needs to CONTINUE in effective ways that will bring about change and a better society.
We must not rest until we see the change.
Until the killing of Black men, Black mother’s sons,
Is as important as the
Killing of White men, White mother’s sons,
We who believe in freedom cannot rest.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
~Ella’s Song
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
STOP THE INJUSTICE!
Hi Yathzee, I concur. A good friend of mine just had a heart attack, and God forbid the ambulance that came to get him from home to hospital was unable to get to him, because of folks blocking traffic!
Every ACTION you’ve listed is doable. The thing is SOME folks try to take the easy way out.
They don’t want to do the HAVEY LIFTING that is required.
It’s way easier to scream and carry a sign. Or roll into town in a limosine (looking@youcornelwest) and make an appearance, then go back to their comfy armchairs and yell- OBAMA NEEDS TO GET TO FERGUSON! HE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING! GTFOH.
Group Considers Filing Ethics Complaint Against McCulloch
December 3, 2014 4:18 PM
After facing criticism for his handling of the Ferguson grand jury investigation, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch may have his law license threatened.
A group headed by Dr. Christi Griffin with the Ethics Project will meet tonight to determine whether it will file an ethics complaint against McCulloch with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, an agency of the Missouri Supreme Court.
Griffin says initial reports from the Ferguson police chief that Darren Wilson did not know that Michael Brown was suspected in an earlier convenience store robbery were changed in testimony before the grand jury, and she believes that represents perjury.
“He is the one that is allowing that perjured testimony to be presented to the grand jury, and that is a direct violation of the Code of Professional Ethics,” she says.
Griffin also contends McCulloch did not give the grand jury proper instructions – another ethics violation.
http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/12/03/group-threatens-filing-ethics-complaint-against-mcculloch/
Happy Sunday, Everyone! Mr. Andres Bocelli, you rvoice is so majestic and sweet.