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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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https://twitter.com/Yahoo/status/566012647402139649
I’ll be got damn! Boot licking hankyhead…
Karl Malone: Black People Need To ‘Stop Looking For A Handout’.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/karl-malone-charles-barkley-black-lives-matter_n_6662246.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000047
Some cops just maim people….
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/565999784289656832
https://twitter.com/FelixArroyo/status/565884828017373184/photo/1
https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/565890591939375104/photo/1
PragmaticObotsUnite @PragObots
.@MadisonSiriusXM The teams that were stripped of their Little League titles were teams of color that beat white teams. #ThirdEarThirdEye
The States That Will Pick the President: The Reach StatesGrowing shares of minority voters have not yet turned these states blue, as many in both parties had once expected.
BY RONALD BROWNSTEIN
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Over the past three decades, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas have testified more to the limits than the possibilities of demographic change to remake the political landscape.
For years, Democrats have hoped that the long arc of growing diversity will carry Arizona, Georgia, and eventually Texas back within their reach as politically competitive states. But those hopes have been repeatedly dashed, most recently in the 2014 midterm elections that produced stark Democratic disappointments on all three fronts.
Yet in the years ahead, these fast-growing and now reliably Republican states are likely to become more important battlefields in national politics. One reason is that each of them—especially Texas—is essential to the modern GOP Electoral College strategy: It’s difficult to imagine what combination of states could allow Republicans to replace Texas’s 38 Electoral College votes if Democrats could somehow pry them from the GOP’s grasp. The second is that these states are experiencing some of the most sustained minority-population growth anywhere; that growth is forcing Republicans to win an ever-larger share of the white vote to survive. Combined, these factors make it likely that Georgia and Arizona in the near term, and Texas in the more intermediate future, will remain high on the list of “reach” states that some Democratic strategists hope to bring back into play in presidential campaigns.
But despite that steady growth in the minority population, Democrats have seen vanishingly few reasons for optimism in each of these states lately. By almost all measures, the Republican grip on all three has only tightened. Since 1992, the sole Democratic presidential nominee to carry any of these states was Bill Clinton, who narrowly captured Georgia in 1992 and Arizona in 1996. In each case, Clinton managed only a plurality victory made possible because independent candidate Ross Perot splintered the vote. In fact, in all three states, no Democratic presidential nominee since 1984 has amassed more than the 46.9 percent of the vote that President Obama attracted in Georgia in 2008. Since 1992, Democratic presidential nominees have averaged 44.5 percent of the vote in Georgia, 43.7 percent in Arizona, and only 40.4 percent in Texas. In 2012, Obama won a smaller share of the vote in all three than he did in 2008.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/newsdesk/the-states-that-will-pick-the-president-the-reach-states-20150211
https://twitter.com/NBCNewYork/status/565928576986660864/photo/1
https://twitter.com/GeeDee215/status/565910528896565249/photo/1
https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/565952211499630592/photo/1
https://twitter.com/GRYKING/status/565954522565324802/photo/1
https://twitter.com/lovebscott/status/565955175605469184/photo/1
After Six Years Of Obstructing Obama Republicans Now Want To Outlaw Senate Filibusters
By: Jason Easley
Thursday, February, 12th, 2015, 4:12 pm
After six years of obstructing every move that President Obama made, House Republicans are demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) outlaw all Democratic filibusters.
The Hill reported:
A growing number of House GOP conservatives are pressuring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday to invoke the “nuclear option” and change the chamber’s rules to pass a bill defunding President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Reps. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) and Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said McConnell should change Senate rules, so the House-passed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which includes language to revoke Obama’s immigration-related actions, can bypass a Democratic filibuster in the upper chamber.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) also endorsed the idea at a Thursday news conference. He said there’s a “way to change the rules to allow us to move forward” and “take away the ability to filibuster.”
For six years, Republicans touted the virtues of the filibuster. They were outraged when then-Majority Leader Harry Reid modified the filibuster rules so that more of the president’s nominees could be confirmed, but that all changed now that the shoe is on the other foot.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/02/12/years-obstructing-obama-republicans-outlaw-senate-filibusters.html
https://twitter.com/Kennymack1971/status/565984908795838464/photo/1
How Conservatives Are Pushing Liberals Out Of Christianity
By ED KILGORE
PublishedFEBRUARY 11, 2015, 6:00 AM EST
For Obama, as for many liberal Protestants, the “fear of God” connotes not only tolerance of other believers (and nonbelievers), but separation of church and state, which he treats as a practical application of the Golden Rule. And that, more than the specific challenge of how to speak about Islamic terrorists, enrages many conservative Christians, both “traditionalist” Catholics and evangelical Protestants. Consider this reaction from conservative blogger, radio talk host and Fox News “personality” Erick Erickson, who is also taking classes at a conservative Calvinist seminary:
Barack Obama is not, in any meaningful way, a Christian and I am not sure he needs to continue the charade. With no more elections for him, he might as well come out as the atheist/agnostic that he is. He took his first step in doing so yesterday in a speech reeking with contempt for faith in general and Christianity in particular….
Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) Christ himself is truth. When we possess Christ, we possess truth. The President is a moral relativist. It was clear in his whole speech…. To suggest that everyone can have some version of God and some version of truth is worldly babbling, not Christianity.
In this respect Obama is, consciously or unconsciously, standing in for liberal Americans—or to some extent, though the overlap is not total, “mainline” Protestants or “modern” Catholics—who do not subscribe to biblical inerrancy, spiritual exclusivity, or the sense that Christians are a besieged or even persecuted community marked by conservative cultural commitments that separate them from a wicked world. Such Christians are quite a large group, even though they are often ignored by secular observers who buy the idea that the only “authentic” Christians (or “Christian music,” or “Christian films”) are conservative. More than 26 million belong to the “mainline” Protestant denominations, and more than 60 percent of American Catholics favor some or a great deal of adjustment to tradition in accordance with “modern needs” (57 percent oppose church teachings on same-sex marriage, to cite one example of the “moral relativism” that involves). And after decades of hearing that liberal Christianity is dying, there’s actually fresh evidence that among millennials the much-discussed trend towards unbelief disguises an even sharper trend towards “moderate” positions among the majority that are believers.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/how-republicans-are-pushing-liberals-out-of-christianity
Morning Plum: Get ready for deeper polarization of our health care system
By Greg Sargent February 11
For a time, it looked as if supporters of the Affordable Care Act had reasons for optimism about the law’s long-term prognosis in red states, as one GOP governor after another accepted the logic of the Medicaid expansion, which promises state lawmakers huge amounts of federal dollars to improve the lives of their own constituents. But it now looks like such optimism may have been premature: That logic is hitting a wall of opposition from conservative legislators even in states where GOP governors had thrown themselves behind versions of the expansion.
All this — taken with the possibility that the Supreme Court could soon gut subsidies in three dozen states – suggests we may be heading for deeper polarization in our health care system.
The New York Times has a good overview of the developing patchwork situation on the Medicaid expansion. In states like Tennessee and Wyoming, conservative legislators have blocked the expansion pushed by GOP governors. In Utah, the GOP governor has negotiated an expansion with the Obama administration, but it faces resistance from the GOP-controlled legislature. Obamacare supporters were cheered when Indiana Governor Mike Pence offered a version of the expansion — if a conservative like Pence embraced it, surely other conservatives would follow! — but the fact that a similar plan died in Tennessee suggests the same fate may await it in Indiana.
While it’s possible that Florida, Alaska, and Idaho may move forward with expansions soon, the big picture is that, if anything, the expansion is proceeding in fits and starts and may be stalling out in many places, at least for now.
As it is, the refusal of many GOP states to expand Medicaid may already be increasing the polarization of the health system. Two studies released last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the refusal of GOP states to opt into the expansion risks worsening geographic disparities when it comes to health coverage, with the burden falling more heavily on southerners.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/02/11/morning-plum-get-ready-for-deeper-polarization-of-our-health-care-system/
With Three Murders in Chapel Hill, America Must Confront Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
By Rabia Chaudry | 02/12/15 2:32pm
Two days ago, three young and promising American Muslims were murdered. Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu Salha, and her younger sister Razan Abu Salha, college students, were shot at close range in the head by a neighbor. Craig Hicks, a 46-year-old white, vehemently liberal anti-theist, had been known to get into altercations with the couple over parking, noise, and other issues, allegedly carrying a visible gun twice when confronting them. This time he put a bullet into each of them, including Razan, a 19 year old who happened to be visiting her sister. The killer then turned himself in to the authorities.
Mr. Hicks’ Facebook page shows a clear disdain for religion, sometimes specifically towards Islam and Muslims. It also features a photograph of his loaded pistol, which may even have been the murder weapon. Yusor had previously told family that Mr. Hicks had said her appearance, in a head scarf, made him uncomfortable. For all intents and purposes, and to the Muslim community certainly, it seems Mr. Hicks was driven by anti-Muslim sentiment. This was probably a hate crime.
While it is clear that Mr. Hicks is responsible for these horrific murders, he does not carry the blame alone. The blame of this and many other hate crimes against Muslims in the US can be traced back to the impunity with which Muslims are demonized in the public discourse.
http://observer.com/2015/02/with-three-murders-in-chapel-hill-america-must-confront-anti-muslim-rhetoric/
Sen. Warren: GOPers Will Concoct A Crisis To Dismantle Social Security
ByDANIEL STRAUSS
Published FEBRUARY 12, 2015, 10:13 AM EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) issued a stark warning to supporters: Republicans are willing to create a crisis pitting “America’s seniors against America’s disabled” in order to gut Social Security.
“We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run low in 2016, and most people assumed that another bipartisan reallocation was coming,” Warren wrote in an email to supporters on Wednesday evening. “But now, thanks to the Republican ideological war on our most important national safety net, disabled Americans could suddenly face a 20% cut in their Social Security checks next year.”
House Republicans quietly passed a rule change last month that would block Congress from being able to make routine tax revenue transfers between the Social Security retirement and disability funds, commonly referred to as reallocation, unless the program’s overall solvency is improved.
Like Warren, other liberal Democrats, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have vowed to strongly resist Republicans’ move.
“They want to dramatically slice Social Security, so we negotiate and compromise a small cut in Social Security,” Brown said in an interview with TPM. “No, that’s not the way you negotiate.”
Republicans’ claim that this is about budget balancing is nonsense, Warren said.
“Republicans want to pretend this fight is all about dollars and cents. But at the end of the day, this is about a lot more than accounting: It’s about our values,” Warren said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/elizabeth-warren-social-security-disability-insurance?utm_content=bufferba089&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
How Black Middle-Class Kids Become Poor Adults
Once they’ve grown up, African American children are more likely than their white counterparts to backslide into a lower economic group.
GILLIAN B. WHITE
JAN 19 2015, 7:40 AM ET
When it comes to financial stability, black Americans are often in much more precarious financial situations than white Americans. Their unemployment rate is higher, and so is the level of poverty within the black community. In 2013, the poverty rate among white Americans was 9.6 percent, among black Americans it was 27.2 percent. And the gap between the wealth of white families and black families has widened to its highest levels since 1989, according to a 2014 study by Pew Research Center.
The facts of this rift aren’t new, or all that surprising. But perhaps what’s most unsettling about the current economic climate in black America is that when black families attain middle-class status, the likelihood that their children will remain there, or do better, isn’t high.
“Even black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder,” writes Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In a recent blog post Reeves says that seven out of 10 black children who are born to families with income that falls in the middle quintile of the income spectrum will find themselves with income that’s one to two quintiles below their parents’ during their own adulthood.
A 2014 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which looked at factors like parental income, education, and family structure, shows a similar pattern: Many black Americans not only fail to move up, but show an increased likelihood of backsliding. According to the study, “In recent decades, blacks have experienced substantially less upward intergenerational mobility and substantially more downward intergenerational mobility than whites.”
The greater probability of slipping back applies to blacks across income groups. According to the Fed study, about 60 percent of black children whose parents had income that fell into the top 50 percent of the distribution saw their own income fall into the bottom half during adulthood. This type of downward slide was common for only 36 percent of white children.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/how-black-middle-class-kids-become-black-lower-class-adults/384613/
Firefighters tell Missouri lawmakers that they couldn’t fight Ferguson fires unprotected
By Virginia Young
JEFFERSON CITY • Two fire district officials from St. Louis County said Wednesday that they had been promised that the Missouri National Guard would protect firefighters called to Ferguson if protests turned violent last fall.
But they learned otherwise when fire district leaders arrived at the
emergency operations center on Nov. 24 to prepare for a long-awaited grand jury announcement.
“That’s when we were told they weren’t able to get the Guard,” said Greg Brown, chief of the Eureka Fire District.
As a result, firefighters abandoned their hoses and left buildings
burning when gunfire and looting erupted that night in the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision that former police Officer Darren Wilson would not face criminal charges in the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown.
“To me, that was the most heartbreaking thing of all of it,” said Matt LaVanchy, assistant chief of the Pattonville Fire District. “We wanted to help that community.”
…The committee also heard Ferguson Mayor James Knowles describe his unsuccessful efforts to get the National Guard to help control the chaos that night. He said he tried to contact two members of the governor’s staff, Jason Zamkus and Peter Lyskowski, but couldn’t reach them.
Knowles said he reached Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Attorney General Chris Koster and State Treasurer Clint Zweifel but “none of them were able to make contact” with the governor’s office that night.
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/virginia-young/firefighters-tell-missouri-lawmakers-that-they-couldn-t-fight-ferguson/article_73652bae-70fd-5749-b579-1a24159aad1b.html?mobile_touch=true
Jennifer Jacobs ✔ @JenniferJJacobs
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In Iowa, Biden has a message to Dems: Run on what Obama and I have done. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/02/12/joe-biden-iowa/23300775/ … #iacaucus #BidenatDrake
GOP Clueless on How to Fund DHS
by BooMan
Thu Feb 12th, 2015 at 02:03:57 PM EST
Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma is the Deputy Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s been on the floor of the House for the last hour insisting that the House Republicans have fully funded the Department of Homeland Security for the next year and that they have no further obligations to do anything to prevent that department from running out of money. He hopes the Senate will pass something and they can take it to conference to hammer out the differences.
This is a combination of spin and happy talk. The truth is that the Senate Republicans cannot pass anything but a clean bill due to Democratic filibusters, and the House can’t pass a clean bill because their own members won’t vote for one.
Despite all the talk, Congress is no closer to solving the DHS funding conundrum. Republicans in both chambers openly admitted they are clueless on how to avert a shutdown at the DHS, slated for Feb. 28.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) told The Hill. “We should not cut off funding for the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Clueless” is actually an apt term here. They do not have a plan, and any obvious plans don’t have the votes.
The root of the problem is pretty simple to understand. The Republicans want to take away the Executive Branch’s ability to set its own deportation policies and they want to insert that language in the DHS appropriations bill. The Democrats will never allow that, and the president would veto the bill if they did. So, the Republicans will either cave in on the issue or the department will run out of money. The House Republicans want the Senate Republicans to cave and the Senate Republicans want the House Republicans to cave.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/2/12/14357/1391
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/565955500249219074/photo/1
THU FEB 12, 2015 AT 09:11 AM PST
Congressman warns that GOP attacks on Obamacare will cause a favorable outcome
by Egberto Willies
A Chinese proverb comes to mind—”He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.” Ed Schultz asked Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) whether the Republican bill to redefine full-time work in the eyes of the Affordable Care Act to a 40-hour week would have a severe impact. McDermott’s answer was thoughtful and reflected what many feel will be Obamacare’s ultimate great outcome.
“Well I think if you take in the big picture, Ed, this is in the longterm good for us. Because they are driving us towards single payer. Employers are trying to get out of participating in the employer mandate. They don’t want to provide for their employees if they can get out of it. So they are all playing all sorts of games. And ultimately this 40-hour week thing means everybody—people are working 38 hours or 35 hours—they are not going to have to offer them health insurance either. They will come in to the subsidized exchanges and be a part of the federal system. I think we are moving to a system where business is trying to offload their responsibility for the health of their workers.”
Ed Schultz responded that companies are racing to the bottom for taking advantage of Obamacare in some states even as they attempt to stymie their responsibilities under Obamacare.
Jim McDermott then got to the core of the issue. “I really think that the whole question here of whether we are going to have 40-hour weeks is whether the employers want to give health insurance to their workers or not. In my view they don’t,” McDermott said. “We are talking about middle-class folks who are working 24 hours a week in two different jobs to hold on to their house and their family and their education. They are struggling like mad. And we are not getting any help from the Republicans.”
That last sentence from Rep. McDermott is important. When you hear many falsely criticize Obamacare for creating a part-time economy or that the Obama job market is full of the underemployed, remember that last statement. Irresponsible employers are using plutocracy-inspired government regulations to tailor the workforce to minimize the benefits corporations must give to their employees. It is a dereliction of civics and citizenship. It is for this reason government, “we the people” must force politicians with the power of our vote, not the power of not voting, to effect middle-class-centric policies. Single-payer healthcare, Medicare for all is just a start.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/12/1364033/-Congressman-warns-that-GOP-attacks-on-Obamacare-will-cause-an-outcome-most-like#
http://youtu.be/WvhNP3Z3pnM
https://twitter.com/Lib_Librarian/status/565922030415921152/photo/1
Tommy Christopher @tommyxtopher
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Aren’t you right-wingers embarrassed that the British *always* ask Republicans about evolution? http://thedailybanter.com/2015/02/electable-scott-walker-still-evolving-evolution … via @thedailybanter
10:47 AM – 12 Feb 2015
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/565912324880736257/photo/1
“Empire” Star Jussie Smollett: Homophobia Is Not Just a Hip-Hop Problem
Jussie Smollett says he jumped at the chance to play Jamal Lyon, the gay son of Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) in Fox’s hit series Empire. “I knew from the moment that my manager and my agent sent me the script that I connected to Jamal,” he told Cosmopolitan.com in a phone interview this week. “I jumped right on Instagram, of all places, and I direct-messaged [co-creator] Lee Daniels, who I didn’t even know, and I said, ‘I sing, I dance, I’m a songwriter, and I act. I’m Jamal Lyon in more ways than one.'” Here, the actor-singer-songwriter — who, trivia-time, starred in The Mighty Ducks back in the day — discusses universality of homophobia, how his character has impacted fans, and what it was like to duet with a legendary guest-star in the finale.
Were you at all uncomfortable with some of your scenes, like sex scenes or when Cookie used the “F” word? And did you discuss these things with Lee Daniels?
Well, Cookie didn’t use the “F” word in a scene with me [it was with the actor who plays a younger version of Jamal]. But, yeah, the character altogether is something that I spoke in depth with Father Lee about, because the character is so close to his heart; it’s loosely based on him. As far as being uncomfortable, I’m a freak. And I’m an artist [laughs]. So it’s like, I wasn’t uncomfortable. It’s all good. “What do you need me to do? You need me to have to have sex over there? Sure.” I mean, you’re going into a project working with Lee Daniels. Don’t go in there being anything less than fearless.
The role of Jamal is especially interesting because while there are now lots of gay characters on mainstream TV shows, this one exists in the world of hip-hop, which is not typically welcoming to gay men. Did you speak with any gay people in the industry about this?
Well, first of all, here’s the thing: I grew up in the business. I know about homophobia in the music industry — not just in hip-hop. Obviously, we’re dealing with homophobia in hip-hop, we’re dealing with homophobia in the black community. We’re dealing with homophobia in the black community and in hip-hop because we’re telling the story of a family that is a hip-hop family that is black. But that in no way is to let any other group of people off the hook, as if this is an isolated issue just simply in the black community. I have Jewish friends, I have Middle Eastern friends, I have Spanish and Italian and British and Scottish and German friends and Austrian friends, and guess what? They all deal with homophobia. It’s an earthling epidemic, it’s not isolated in the black community. So it’s definitely a story that Lee wanted to get out there, and it’s a story that I’m proud that we’re telling. But this is a universal story of people that are not respected and understood, and we all can relate to that, whether we’re gay, straight, bi, transgender.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/q-and-a/a36374/empire-jussie-smollett-interview/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1440_143212886
Things Everybody Does But Doesn’t Talk About, Featuring President Obama
How did we get Obama to use a selfie stick? Oh, because he wants you to go to https://www.healthcare.gov.
posted on Feb. 12, 2015, at 11:02 a.m.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewgauthier/the-president-uses-a-selfie-stick#.ml9aryd86
Consent Isn’t Enough: The Troubling Sex of Fifty Shades
The blockbuster fantasy has become a big movie—and a bigger problem.
Emma Green
Illustrations by Jackie Lay
FEBRUARY 10, 2015
What is a fantasy? From Freud to Ludacris, it’s been an elusive idea, suggesting both an escape from reality and an expression of hidden desire. In culture, fantasy works like a mirror: It reflects who we are, but it also shapes what we become.
Love it or despise it, American culture’s sexual fantasy of the moment is Fifty Shades of Grey. Since Random House bought the rights to the trilogy in 2012, the series has sold well over 100 million copies worldwide. Trailers for the movie adaptation of the first book have been viewed 250 million times, according to an ad aired in early February; it’s expected to gross at least $60 million at the box office in its opening weekend.
And that means the Fifty Shades fantasy is about to become all the more influential. Yes, the story will likely reach an even larger audience, but more importantly, it will be told in a new, visual form. When the movie comes out, the Fifty Shades version of hot, kinky sex will become explicit and precise, no longer dependent upon the imaginations of readers. Early reports say the movie shows at least 20 full minutes of sex, although it’s only rated R.
The story is fairly simple. Anastasia Steele, a middle-class senior at Washington State University Vancouver, meets Christian Grey, an incredibly handsome, debonair 27-year-old multi-millionaire CEO. They fall in love, hard and fast. Theirs is a romance full of drama and passion, and they end up living the conventional American fantasy: love, marriage, and a kid.
What’s not so conventional is their sex. Early on in the first book, Ana discovers that Christian has a “dark secret”: He’s obsessed with BDSM—a condensed abbreviation for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. This is the central tension of the books: Ana loves Christian, but she doesn’t want to be his submissive; Christian loves Ana, but he’s turned on by violent sex.
As several experienced BDSM practitioners emphasized to me, there are healthy, ethical ways to consensually combine sex and pain. All of them require self-knowledge, communication skills, and emotional maturity in order to make the sex safe and mutually gratifying. The problem is that Fifty Shades casually associates hot sex with violence, but without any of this context. Sometimes, Ana says yes to sex she’s uncomfortable with because she’s too shy to speak her mind, or because she’s afraid of losing Christian; she gives consent when he wants to inflict pain, yet that doesn’t prevent her from being harmed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/consent-isnt-enough-in-fifty-shades-of-grey/385267/
As Scott Walker mulls White House bid, questions linger over college exit
By David A. Fahrenthold February 11 at 1:18 PM
MILWAUKEE — Scott Walker was gone. Dropped out. And in the spring of his senior year.
In 1990, that news stunned his friends at Marquette University. Walker, the campus’s suit-wearing, Reagan-loving politico — who enjoyed the place so much that he had run for student body president — had left without graduating.
To most of the Class of 1990 — and, later, to Wisconsin’s political establishment — Walker’s decision to quit college has been a lingering mystery.
Not even his friends at Marquette were entirely sure why he never finished. Some had heard that a parent had fallen ill, or maybe there was some financial strain. Others thought he had simply had enough of school.
Walker clearly liked college politics more than college itself. He had managed to line up 47 campaign endorsements, including ones from the ski team and the varsity chorus, but he had trouble showing up on time for French.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-scott-walker-mulls-white-house-bid-questions-linger-over-college-exit/2015/02/11/8e17ea44-b13e-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html
Jackie Robinson West @TheBoyIllinois
@markmulder20 the players in question without a doubt would of played at Needles Park. 15 years later, still a vacant lot.
Jackie Robinson West @TheBoyIllinois
@markmulder20 ahh cool. Now let’s talk urban little league ball. And, how parks have been torn down forcing players to play elsewhere.
https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/565904677766979584/photo/1
Dan Pfeiffer ✔ @pfeiffer44
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Perhaps the greatest trick Obama ever pulled off was a successful foreign trip as a candidate, luring countless GOPers into trying the same
6:57 AM – 12 Feb 2015
Joy Reid ✔ @JoyAnnReid
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FBI director James Comey is delivering a powerful speech on race and policing right now. Echoes of Eric Holder. Let’s see how it’s received.
9:15 AM – 12 Feb 2015
VIDEO: White man pulls gun on black Minnesota man he assumes is a drug dealer
12 FEB 2015 AT 09:22 ET
A black Minnesota man recorded a tense confrontation with a white man who pulled a gun after apparently mistaking him for a drug dealer.
Demetrius Taylor, of St. Paul, said he was sitting with his nephew in a parked car that he was considering buying when a resident began photographing them.
Taylor got out of the car to confront the man, who has not been identified, while using his own cell phone to record video of the encounter.
That’s when the man pulled a gun and loaded a bullet into the chamber, Taylor said.
“You just pulled a gun – I got it on video, I’m videotaping just like you,” Taylor says on the video. “Make sure you call 911. I got it on video just like you. (You) just pulled a gun on me, for no reason at all. You taking pictures and you recording? I’m doing the same thing – it’s not against the law. I’m not armed.”
The man denied pulling a gun, although he can be seen holding a handgun in the video, and tells Taylor the neighborhood has “a lot of drug dealing going on.”
“We see it all the time,” the man says. “If that’s not the case, I apologize.”
The man angrily denies Taylor’s suggestion that he stereotyped and racially profiled him by assuming he was dealing drugs.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/video-white-man-pulls-gun-on-black-minnesota-man-he-assumes-is-a-drug-dealer/
uh huh
uh huh
……………………….
Gentrification Is the Real Scandal Surrounding Jackie Robinson West
Dave Zirin on February 11, 2015 – 8:16 PM ET
The fact that United States Little League baseball champs Jackie Robinson West have been stripped of their 2014 title, for using “players who live outside the geographic area that the team represents” is a slap in the face to everyone trying to keep baseball, a sense of community, and even public education alive in the cities of the United States. This would read like scabrous satire from the pen of a writer whose DNA was part Runyon and part Baldwin if not for the fact that there are very real children being victimized by this decision in the city of Chicago.
But before we dissect just what exactly is so pugnaciously ignorant about the actions of Little League Inc., a brief request for sportscasters like ESPN’s Karl Ravech to refrain from further comment. This morning, Ravech tweeted, “Beyond unfortunate that few in JRW Little League deemed winning at all costs outweighed fair play. Kids caught in middle of childish adults.”
ESPN both through game broadcasts and breathless SportsCenter coverage of the Little League World Series has made the conscious choice to be a cog in the professionalization of youth sports. They are obviously not alone in this, but anyone who monetizes the amateur experiences of children and then gets moralistic about those breaking the rules needs at bare minimum to choose silence as this story unfolds. These are kids and the intensity that surrounds this story is partially a function of ESPN’s choice to cover Jackie Robinson West like they were the 1998 Yankees. It would be a better look for Ravech and company to either not comment or own their complicity.
As for the decision itself, ironies abound. Jackie Robinson West was the first entirely black team to represent the United States in the Little League World Series. And yes, waiting until Black History Month to strip JRW of their title is at best tin-eared. But that insult shouldn’t blind us to the greater injury. Recall their damnable offense: Jackie Robinson West didn’t use 16-year-old ringers or cork their bats. They had players suit up who lived “beyond their geographical boundary.” The fact that the adults in charge of JRW felt the need to breach this rule perhaps has something to do with the fact that today’s urban landscape supports baseball about as well as concrete makes proper soil for orchids. A plurality of Major Leaguers is made up of people from either the US suburbs or the baseball factories of the Dominican Republic. Many of the few African American players on Major League rosters actually come from the suburbs. This is because twenty-first-century neoliberal cities have gentrified urban black baseball to death. Boys and Girls Clubs have become bistros. Baseball fields are condos and in many cities, Little League is non-existent. The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate. That’s what made JRW such a profound anomaly. In Chicago particularly, which under Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen school closures and brutal cuts to physical education programs, their success made people believe that—with apologies to Tupac—flowers could in fact grow in concrete.
I reached out to Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey who said to me, “Mayor Rahm closed half a dozen schools in Jackie Robinson West’s part of the city, and tried to close the school, Marcus Garvey, where the founder of JRW—Joe Haley—worked. Then Chicago Public Schools cut funding for high school freshman sports, laid off a thousand teachers. CPS put forty kids in physical education classes and doesn’t even put a librarian in most of the school libraries in [the South Side district of] Auburn Gresham.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/197889/gentrification-real-scandal-surrounding-jackie-robinson-west#
https://twitter.com/Interior/status/565656863254253568/photo/1
we would have never known about those three killed in North Carolina without social media. Social media FORCED the MSM to even report the story.
Texas Wants Lots of Medically Uninsured People
by BooMan
Thu Feb 12th, 2015 at 11:04:00 AM EST
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was in New Hampshire yesterday trying to drum up support for his presidential run. What he had to say about health care was revealing:
Perry proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he called “another example of one-size-fits-all coming out of Washington, D.C.” And he noted that Texas chose not to participate in Medicaid expansion.
“Texas has been criticized for having a large number of uninsured,” he said, “but that’s what Texans wanted. They did not want a large government program forcing everyone to purchase insurance.”
Texas wanted “a large number of [medically] uninsured” people in their state.
Why would anyone want that?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/2/12/1140/41521
https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/565905650254114816
CNN really knows how to ask the tough questions that really zero in on the REAL issue. Like, “Do you believe they were targeted because they were Muslim?” Naw, CNN, I doubt that the POS who shot all three of them in the head based on their ethnic appearance that clearly identified them as mid Eastern. And all of the endless hate mongering against Muslims and mid-Eastern peoples that goes on here in the US could not possibly have been a factor. Naw, he’s just some ol’ boy who got a little out of control over the parking of automobiles. Such a shame that he couldn’t have been more diplomatic instead of terminating their young, promising lives.
This reminds me so much of the murder of Jordan Davis. Dunn could have easily killed as many as four young black men that night. He didn’t spray their vehicle with bullets because he hated their music. He tried to kill all four of them because he hated THEM.
When are we going to stop asking questions as though the answers are not obvious?
Amy Goodman’s excellent interview with Bryan Stevenson
As Study Finds 4,000 Lynchings in Jim Crow South, Will U.S. Address Legacy of Racial Terrorism?
A new report has uncovered shocking details about the history of lynchings in the United States and their legacy today. After five years of exhaustive research and interviews with local historians and descendants of lynching victims, the Equal Justice Initiative found white Southerners lynched nearly 4,000 black men, women and children between 1877 and 1950 — a total far higher than previously known. The report details a 1916 attack in which a mob lynched Jeff Brown for accidentally bumping into a white girl as he ran to catch a train. In an example from 1940, a crowd lynched Jesse Thornton for not addressing a white police officer as “mister.” In many cases, the lynchings were attended by the entire white community in an area. We speak with attorney and Equal Justice Initiative founder and director Bryan Stevenson, whose group’s report is “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.” The EJI is calling for the placement of historical markers at sites where lynchings occurred.
http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2015/2/11/as_study_finds_4_000_lynchings
The link is the video of the interview.
Good Morning Everyone
Good Morning 3Chics,
I’ve alwayz loved Gladys. Thanks for this.
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)