Art of Noise (also The Art of Noise) were an English avant-garde synthpop group formed in early 1983[2][3][4] by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn and music journalist Paul Morley.[5] The group is perhaps best known currently for the international Top 20 singles “Kiss” and the instrumental “Peter Gunn“, the latter of which won a 1986 Grammy Award.
The group’s mostly instrumental compositions were novel melodic sound collages based on digital sampler technology, which was new at the time. Inspired by turn-of-the-20th-century revolutions in music, the Art of Noise were initially packaged as a faceless anti- or non-group, blurring the distinction between the art and its creators.
The band is noted for innovative use of electronics and computers in pop music and particularly for innovative use of sampling. From the earliest releases on ZTT, the band referred to itself as both Art of Noise and The Art of Noise. Official and unofficial releases and press material use both versions.
http://time.com/3746562/rihanna-christian-dior/
https://youtu.be/EYco1RQw66I
https://twitter.com/deray/status/577570603240050688/photo/1
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/577173506472984576/photo/1
Why I didn’t call the police when I saw two black boys with guns next door
Victoria Brown
My husband’s instinct was to call law enforcement, but that didn’t seem like the solution. Especially after Tamir Rice
On the first day of winter’s thaw, I saw two teenage boys on the roof next door holding guns. I don’t know much about guns, except that they kill and that young black men holding them are likely to be killed. I called my husband, trying to keep panic out of my voice so as not alarm my own children. He looked out the window. “Jesus. Call the police”.
After Michael Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice – especially after Tamir – calling the police didn’t seem like the solution here.
“Don’t you see who it is”? I told him. “Eddie and Aaron”.
The boys’ lower-income apartments squat dwarfed by the shadow of our larger middle-income building. An invisible red line and a bright blue spiked fence separate us. Any of our fourth floor neighbors could see them as well we could. I’ve known both since they were small children, but I could see them through the eyes of a stranger, or through my husband’s first glance: two young African-American men, in hoodies, armed.
We watched them galloping with the guns, skipping over the low walls separating the units, and hiding behind TV satellite dishes. Every so often one boy stopped and picked something off the ground.
“Ah, they’re BB guns,” my husband said. “See? They’re reloading the pellets.”
My husband grew up in a neighborhood of long driveways, of single houses screened by large trees on private land. He still has that suburban instinct of detachment, a wait and see attitude. I couldn’t stand the tension of watching. Too much has happened recently. Too much continues to happen. We know how this one unfolds. I kept expecting the wail of police sirens, seeing the scene play out. No call to drop their weapons. Shots. Eddie and Aaron. More dead boys. “Where are my shoes? I’m going down.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/16/why-i-didnt-call-the-police-black-boys-with-guns-tamir-rice?CMP=share_btn_fb
https://twitter.com/mydaughtersarmy/status/576762971289972738/photo/1
https://twitter.com/okayafrica/status/576856996160344067/photo/1
Israel’s Gilded Age
MARCH 16, 2015
But wait: Why are Israelis discontented? After all, Israel’s economy has performed well by the usual measures. It weathered the financial crisis with minimal damage. Over the longer term, it has grown more rapidly than most other advanced economies, and has developed into a high-technology powerhouse. What is there to complain about?
The answer, which I don’t think is widely appreciated here, is that while Israel’s economy has grown, this growth has been accompanied by a disturbing transformation in the country’s income distribution and society. Once upon a time, Israel was a country of egalitarian ideals — the kibbutz population was always a small minority, but it had a large impact on the nation’s self-perception. And it was a fairly equal society in reality, too, right up to the early 1990s.
Since then, however, Israel has experienced a dramatic widening of income disparities. Key measures of inequality have soared; Israel is now right up there with America as one of the most unequal societies in the advanced world. And Israel’s experience shows that this matters, that extreme inequality has a corrosive effect on social and political life.
……………………………….
At the other end, while the available data — puzzlingly — don’t show an especially large share of income going to the top 1 percent, there is an extreme concentration of wealth and power among a tiny group of people at the top. And I mean tiny. According to the Bank of Israel, roughly 20 families control companies that account for half the total value of Israel’s stock market. The nature of that control is convoluted and obscure, working through “pyramids” in which a family controls a firm that in turn controls other firms and so on. Although the Bank of Israel is circumspect in its language, it is clearly worried about the potential this concentration of control creates for self-dealing.
Still, why is Israeli inequality a political issue? Because it didn’t have to be this extreme.
You might think that Israeli inequality is a natural outcome of a high-tech economy that generates strong demand for skilled labor — or, perhaps, reflects the importance of minority populations with low incomes, namely Arabs and ultrareligious Jews. It turns out, however, that those high poverty rates largely reflect policy choices: Israel does less to lift people out of poverty than any other advanced country — yes, even less than the United States.
Meanwhile, Israel’s oligarchs owe their position not to innovation and entrepreneurship but to their families’ success in gaining control of businesses that the government privatized in the 1980s — and they arguably retain that position partly by having undue influence over government policy, combined with control of major banks.
In short, the political economy of the promised land is now characterized by harshness at the bottom and at least soft corruption at the top. And many Israelis see Mr. Netanyahu as part of the problem. He’s an advocate of free-market policies; he has a Chris Christie-like penchant for living large at taxpayers’ expense, while clumsily pretending otherwise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/opinion/paul-krugman-israels-gilded-age.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
First lady Michelle Obama to make historic visit to Cambodia
By David Nakamura March 16 at 5:46 PM
First lady Michelle Obama could confront difficult politics when she makes a historic trip to Cambodia this week.
Obama will become the first sitting first lady to visit that Southeast Asian nation during a five-day trip to Asia to promote her new “Let Girls Learn” global education initiative, White House officials said Monday. (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Hillary Clinton both visited after their husbands were president.)
The tour, which also includes a first stop in Japan, will mark the first lady’s fourth official trip abroad without the president, following visits to Mexico and Haiti in 2010, South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China last year. Her daughters and mother, who accompanied her last year, will not be on the trip this week, officials said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/03/16/first-lady-michelle-obama-to-make-historic-visit-to-cambodia/
Oregon Governor Signs Sweeping Automatic Voter Registration Into Law
Reuters
Posted: 03/16/2015 3:39 pm EDT Updated: 2 hours ago
By Shelby Sebens
PORTLAND, Ore., March 16 (Reuters) – Sweeping first-in-the nation legislation making voter registration automatic in Oregon was signed into law on Monday by Governor Kate Brown, potentially adding 300,000 new voters to state rolls.
The so-called Motor Voter legislation will use state Department of Motor Vehicles data to automatically register eligible voters whose information is contained in the DMV system, with a 21-day opt-out period for those who wish to be taken off the registry.
Supporters say the legislation’s goal is to keep young voters, students and working families who move often from losing their right to vote. Republican lawmakers, who unanimously voted against the bill, complain it puts Oregonians’ privacy at risk.
“I challenge every other state in this nation to examine their policies and to find ways to ensure there are as few barriers as possible for citizens’ right to vote,” said Brown, a Democrat who took office last month after John Kitzhaber stepped down amid an ethics scandal.
The current legislation, which Brown had pushed for as secretary of state, goes further than a 1993 federal motor voter law that required states to make voter registration available for people getting or renewing a driver’s license.
Under the state law, the Oregon Secretary of State will use the DMV data, which includes information on whether a person is a citizen, to register voters, who would then be sent a postcard with information on how to opt out of registration altogether.
The postcard will also instruct voters on how to choose a political party, and those who do not choose will be registered as unaffiliated under the law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/oregon-voter-registration_n_6880598.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000016
https://twitter.com/NoShock/status/577601544377491458/photo/1
Chicago Doctor Makes House Calls In Dangerous Neighborhood Because They Need It Most
Remembering where you come from nowadays seems like it’s just a saying. With ambitions of a family, wealth and better health, most of those living in low-income neighborhoods move away and rarely have time to give back. But a Chicago doctor decided to do something different.
Dr. Fred Richardson returned to the neighborhood where he grew up to specifically provide care to those who need it most: his old neighbors.
Dr. Richardson was raised in Englewood, a low-income area on Chicago’s South Side with once one of the highest unemployment and crime rates in the Midwest. After finishing medical school, for the past 25 years, Richardson’s given back by making house calls in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods so residents can get proper medical support.
http://blackdoctor.org/454893/doctor-makes-housecalls-in-dangerous-neighborhood-to/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Black%20Doctor%20Subscribers&utm_campaign=BDO%20-%202-16-15&omcamp=es-bdo-nl
Republican Governor Hopes Obamacare Lawsuit Fails In Supreme Court
In a rare move, a Republican governor said the Supreme Court should uphold Obamacare against a major legal challenge that threatens to unravel the law by wiping out federal exchange subsidies in nearly three-dozen states.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said that although he opposes Obamacare, a defeat for the law in court would cause “a lot of turmoil” and leave states like his “scrambling,” according to theWyoming Tribune Eagle.
“If on June 30, if that’s when the case comes down, and they say no more subsidies for federal exchanges … it is going to cause a lot of turmoil,” he said at a press conference, as quoted by the paper. “Not just for the state, and for those people, but for the private sector as well.”
Mead added: “We will see what the decision is, and if the Supreme Court upholds the federal government’s position, that is one thing. If they don’t, I think we will be one of many, many states that will be scrambling, trying find an answer and seeing whether Congress can provide the statutory fix that would be needed.”
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/court-case-puts-thousands-of-wyoming-subsidies-at-risk/article_5e1fd559-512c-5d00-b563-fd90f5a7595b.html
Republican governors=FAIL
https://twitter.com/Simas44/status/577489602581147648/photo/1
What? Tom Cotton Warns Iran Has To Be Stopped Because ‘They Already Control Tehran’
By David
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Sunday cited Iran’s control of their own capital, Tehran, as a reason that the country had to be stopped from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
In a interview on CBS, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer pointed out that Cotton’s letter to Iran, which was also signed by 46 other Republican senators, may have undermined President Barack Obama’s ability to get a nuclear deal with Iran.
“Let’s say the deal falls through, then what?” Schieffer wondered.
Cotton replied by quoting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The alternative to a bad deal is a better deal,” the freshman senator insisted. “The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions.”
“Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance,” he continued. “They already control Tehran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana’a as well.”
“They do all that without a nuclear weapon. What they would do without a nuclear weapon.”
Cotton told Schieffer that he had “no regrets at all” about sending the letter to Iran.
“If the president and secretary of state were intent on driving a hard bargain, they would be able to point to this letter and say, ‘They’re right — as Secretary Kerry said on Wednesday in his Senate testimony — any lasting deal needs to be approved by Congress.'”
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/03/what-tom-cotton-warns-iran-has-be-stopped
Walker’s tall tales about Reagan
By Steve Benen
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) recently insisted that Ronald Reagan firing air-traffic controllers in 1981 was “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime.” It was at that point that an important truth became clear: Walker’s Reagan worship is just a little creepy.
But taking a step further, listening to the governor, it also became clear that Walker didn’t quite have his facts straight, either. But when it comes to the Republican icon, it appears the details aren’t especially important to the Wisconsin governor.
At a 2013 Reagan Day dinner in Milwaukee, Walker told a Reagan story that he said “gives me a little bit of a shiver.”
He described being invited by Nancy Reagan to give a speech at the Reagan Library near Los Angeles in November 2012, five months after he won a recall election that stemmed from his successful effort to curtail the union rights of public employees in his state. […]
Walker went on to describe how, during a tour of the library before the speech, the library curator “unbeknownst to me” had taken the Reagan family Bible out of its display and readied it for him to look at.
The Progressive magazine highlighted this YouTube clip of Walker’s remarks, in which the GOP governor said that officials at the Reagan Library “brought over a pair of white gloves to me and they said, ‘No one has touched this since President Reagan. It is his mother’s Bible that he took the oath of office on. Mrs. Reagan would like you to hold it and take a picture with it.’”
The AP report added that audience members “can be heard gasping” in response to Walker’s comments.
The problem is, the facts of the story aren’t quite in line with the governor’s anecdote.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walkers-tall-tales-about-reagan
Being Tom Cotton means never having to say you’re sorry
03/16/15 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
A week after attempting to sabotage American foreign policy and doing real damage to U.S. credibility on the international stage, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sat down with Bob Schieffer yesterday to explain himself. True to form, the right-wing freshman boasted he has “no regrets at all.”
Of course not. Being Tom Cotton means never having to say you’re sorry for undermining your own country’s attempts at international diplomacy.
At one point, towards the end of the interview, the “Face the Nation” host asked the Arkansas senator about his alternative solution if the talks collapse. Cotton didn’t offer any specifics, but he did express concern about Iranian influence in the region.
“[W]e have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance. They already control Tehran. Increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad, and now Sanaa as well.”
The fact that Iran maintains influence in other countries with Shia majorities in the region is hardly a new development, but the fact that Cotton is concerned about Iranians “already controlling Tehran” seemed like an odd thing to say. Tehran, of course, is the capital of Iran. In effect, the Republican senator was lamenting Iranian dominance of Iran, concerned that Iranians “control” the capital of their own country.
Making matters slightly worse, if Cotton is troubled by Tehran’s influence in Baghdad, he should probably know that Iran’s dominance is the direct result of the U.S. invasion he supported and participated in. In other words, it was the senator’s own preferred foreign policy that created the conditions he now finds so alarming.
Which should probably raise some questions about his judgment now.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/being-tom-cotton-means-never-having-say-youre-sorry
Iran policy trips up Rand Paul
03/16/15 10:46 AM—UPDATED 03/16/15 12:57 PM
By Steve Benen
Last month, in honor of Valentine’s Day, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) thought it’d be funny to create a fake Pinterest page to mock Hillary Clinton – because there’s nothing more amusing than jokes that combine Valentine’s Day and Benghazi conspiracy theories. The page, dismissed as “sexist, unfunny and painfully lame,” was taken down soon after.
The Republican senator is not, however, done playing little online games. His political action committee’s Facebook page launched a quiz late last week, asking visitors “to guess whether remarks over U.S.-Iranian negotiations are from Hillary Clinton or a spokesman for Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei.”
Of course, given the larger context, Paul’s latest Internet enterprise might be more compelling if he hadn’t just signed on to the Senate GOP letter intended to sabotage American foreign policy, side with Iranian hardliners, and end international nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
The reason Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) signed onto a controversial letter to the leaders of Iran was to give President Barack Obama more leverage in his negotiations over the country’s nuclear program, the would-be presidential candidate said Sunday.
“There’s no one in Washington more against war and more for a negotiated deal than I am,” Paul said in an interview at SXSW in Austin, Texas. “But I want the negotiated deal to be a good deal. So my reason for signing onto the letter, I think it reiterates what is the actual law, that Congress will have to undo sanctions. But I also signed onto the letter because I want the president to negotiate from a position of strength which means that he needs to be telling them in Iran that ‘I’ve got Congress to deal with.’”
In some respects, this might be the worst of both worlds. For far-right politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), last week’s unprecedented stunt was at least coherent – he and other Republicans wanted to derail the diplomatic efforts, betray President Obama, undermine American foreign policy, and push the world closer to a military confrontation with Iran. Putting aside whether or not the letter was disgusting, there was at least an obvious parallel between the letter and its objectives.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/iran-policy-trips-rand-paul
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/577496840746053632
I love this.
https://twitter.com/RevYearwood/status/577327567327219713
I meant to say last week that I really enjoyed Cicely Tyson week. She is one of the most beautiful and definitely one of the most interesting American actresses. I saw her once in San Diego. She was the keynote speaker at a womans’ conference I attended, must have been in the early to mid-90s. Very attractive lady, good speaker too.
Thank you Liza. Always heart-opening to know that you and others enjoy our posts!
Taken from the headlines: Madam Secretary last night.
I swear, the who Iran thing takes me back to the movie Syriana with the scene of the ‘ Free Iran’ Meeting in Washington….
with a room full of White people.
Well, it is their world, after all
/SNARK
Pro-Likud campaign call warns voters of ‘Hussein Obama’
Campaigner said that voters should remember that “Hussein Obama” is in the White House and only a strong Likud can stand up to him.
March 15, 2015
A pro-Likud campaign phone call seeking to get out the vote among supporters referred to the US President as “Hussein Obama.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have had a notoriously tense relationship, which may have hit its nadir two weeks ago when Netanyahu, at the invitation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner, delivered an address to a joint session of Congress raising concerns over a possible Iran deal that Obama, a Democrat, is negotiating.
In the phone call, made to a Jerusalem Post reporter, the campaigner warned that polls put Likud close to the Zionist Union and failure of Likud supporters to vote in Tuesday’s election could end in a government led by the competing party’s leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.
The campaigner then said voters should remember that “Hussein Obama” is in the White House and only a strong Likud could stand up to him before asking whether “we can count on you for your support on election day.”
When told that referring to the US President as “Hussein Obama” was insulting, the caller responded, “Why?” It remains unclear if the call was an official Likud call or whether the caller was precisely following the script. A Likud spokeswoman said she would look into the matter, but had not responded by press time and stopped answering phone calls seeking further clarification.
The use of Obama’s middle name in the US has been politically contentious, with Obama supporters accusing detractors of using it to raise questions about his religion, foment distrust and highlight his “otherness.”
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Pro-Likud-campaign-call-warns-voters-of-Hussein-Obama-393987
In the months since Republicans took charge of Congress, GOP divisions have given the upper hand to Obama.
3/16/15 5:41 AM EDT
The White House is declaring victory over Washington — at least in terms of setting the agenda for Republican leaders, rank-and-file members of Congress and even the GOP presidential field.
Three months into the expanded Republican majorities on the Hill, White House aides see a landscape in which President Barack Obama is more in charge now than he was before the midterms. Rather than moving forward on their own priorities as Republican leaders promised after their midterm sweep, the House and Senate find themselves reacting to Obama.
So far, most legislation hasn’t moved at all, and the most prominent votes have been on bills they already know Obama won’t sign. Even the political flare-ups over Iran, White House aides say, are more evidence of a Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — that is reacting to the president’s agenda.
But even if it’s just fulminating about what Obama’s doing wrong, the
conversation is still about what Obama’s doing.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/white-house-calling-the-shots-116091.html#ixzz3UYh9Uqi9
https://twitter.com/LukeDCoffey/status/577442760111890432/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Michellelesley3/status/575014875677749248/photo/1
https://twitter.com/BAM_FI/status/577419477484216321/photo/1
https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/577423018718298112/photo/1
https://twitter.com/africanathena_/status/553260859741732864/photo/1
I have no sympathy for them because they vote against their own best interests
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Sunday, March 15, 2015
Sunday Long Read: Down And Out in Beattyville
Posted by Zandar
When most people think of “poverty in America” images of boarded up inner city schools and black families on welfare immediately come to mind. The reality of poverty is that one of the poorest counties in America is just 2 hours from my apartment, in Lee County, southeast of Lexington. Lee County is 97% white, and the county’s per capita income is under $14,000 a year. But the idea here is that everything is the federal government’s fault, and more specifically President Obama’s problem, for structural issues that have been around for decades.
Bob Smith, editor of the local Three Forks Tradition newspaper, looked out the window of his Main Street office, resting one hand on his prodigious paunch and twisting his handlebar mustache with the other.
“The reason this town is struggling,” he said, “rests squarely on the current administration in Washington. The potential for this town is here. There’s opportunity for tourism, and a population that’s ready to work—but there aren’t any jobs.” Smith doesn’t buy the official job growth numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “If there were all these jobs they say are being created, you wouldn’t see all these stores closed down. This town has potential, but the liberal media up in Lexington [Kentucky] won’t credit us ‘mountain folk’ with being able to chew gum and walk down the sidewalk at the same time.”
On his desk sat a mountain of paper, books, and office supplies. A large dictionary was bookmarked with an array of objects—pens, flyers, a pair of scissors—and a decorative wooden box at the corner of the desk read, “All a man really needs out of life is three squares a day, a roof over his head, a reasonably good woman, and a damn good shotgun.”
“In 1964, when I left Beattyville for a short while, there wasn’t a soul that didn’t have work in this town,” he recalled. “There was no welfare, no unemployment. Whoever thinks this War on Poverty hasn’t cost us is out of their mind. Do you know what the national debt is? Seventeen and a half trillion. And do you think it’s any coincidence that the cost for the War on Poverty has totaled seventeen and a half trillion? I don’t think so. It’s the same exact figure.”
This is the prevailing attitude in a lot of small town flyover country, the kind of place I grew up in back in North Carolina, you’ll meet a dozen Bob Smiths just walking down the street. Most importantly, these are the folks who honestly believe all the “real” money being used to fight poverty is a massive giveaway going to inner city black kids and not poor Appalachian towns like Beattyville.
Never mind that Beattyville has a major drug problem, and people find the money to pay for their habits around here.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2015/03/sunday-long-read-down-and-out-in.html
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Last Call For Obstruction Construction
Posted byZandar
Meanwhile, over in the GOP Senate…
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday said he plans to hold up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch’s confirmation until the Senate passes a now-controversial human trafficking bill.
“This will have an impact on the timing of considering a new attorney general,” McConnell told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can’t finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again.”
Democrats are now holding up the trafficking bill, which glided through the judiciary committee, after they noticed an abortion provision embedded in the bill that would prevent victims of human trafficking from using restitution funds to pay for an abortion.
“We have to finish the human trafficking bill,” McConnell said. “The Loretta Lynch nomination comes next.”
A vote on Lynch’s nomination was slated to take place this coming week, more than two weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Lynch’s nomination.
Democrats have pointed out that Lynch’s nomination has been held up in the Senate longer than any U.S. attorney general nominee in three decades
To recap, Republicans are insisting that a woman raped by her captors while held as a slave cannot use US government money to get an abortion, because that is apparently worse than being raped a victim of human trafficking and to make this point, they’re going to stop the nomination of an AG until they make this an actual frigging law.
Because this, America, is what you voted for in November.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2015/03/last-call-for-obstruction-construction.html
https://twitter.com/Dudette9t9/status/577443943605874688/photo/1
Beleaguered Chris Christie sees presidential hopes fading
Rachel Maddow reviews some of the political scandals that continue to cling to Chris Christie, as well as poor poll numbers, and seemingly insurmountable fundraising challenges against Jeb Bush, all of which does not bode well for Christie’s 2016 campaign .
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/beleaguered-christie-sees-2016-hopes-fading-413089347893
McConnell subjects Lynch to ransom-based governing
03/16/15 08:40 AM—UPDATED 03/16/15 09:03 AM
By Steve Benen
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed last week that the delay over Loretta Lynch’s Attorney General nomination would soon end, but his promise lacked specificity. The Republican leader announced Lynch would finally get a vote “next week” – which is to say, this week – but for reasons that no one could explain, McConnell wouldn’t say which day, exactly.
Yesterday, the GOP strategy became clearer. McConnell seems to have kept things vague because he intended to break his word.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there’ll be no vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general until Republicans and Democrats resolve a dispute over a human trafficking bill.
“If they want to have time to turn to the attorney general,” then “we have to finish the human trafficking bill,” McConnell said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Majority Leader added that he “had hoped” to allow the Senate to vote on Lynch, whose nomination has, by most measures, already waited longer than any other A.G. nomination in American history, but Lynch “will be put off again” unless Democrats agree to pass the human-trafficking bill that stalled last week.
McConnell went on to say, “We have to finish the human trafficking bill. The Loretta Lynch nomination comes next.”
Just so we’re clear, there’s no procedural concern or rule that must be followed. McConnell could bring Lynch’s 128-day wait to an end this morning, and by all appearances, she’d have the votes necessary to be confirmed.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mcconnell-subjects-lynch-ransom-based-governing
https://twitter.com/IrelandEmbUSA/status/577433929403207680/photo/1
KARMA…
REMAINS UNDEFEATED
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Jeb Bush’s email troubles grow more serious
03/16/15 08:00 AM—UPDATED 03/16/15 08:32 AM
By Steve Benen
The political world knew that the 2016 presidential race would take shape early this year, but few could have guessed that email access and email security would be one of the dominant issues in the nascent election cycle.
Hillary Clinton’s private email account during her tenure as Secretary of State has been the subject of enormous interest to the media and Republicans, with former Gov. Jeb Bush (R) helping lead the charge. “For security purposes, you need to be behind a firewall that recognizes the world for what it is, and it’s a dangerous world, and security would mean that you couldn’t have a private server,” the Republican complained last week. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process.”
It’s equally baffling that Bush had no idea how vulnerable he was on the issue he’s chosen to complain about.
Jeb Bush used his private e-mail account as Florida governor to discuss security and military issues such as troop deployments to the Middle East and the protection of nuclear plants, according to a review of publicly released records.
The e-mails include two series of exchanges involving details of Florida National Guard troop deployments after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the review by The Washington Post found.
The Washington Post’s report on the security risks surrounding Jeb Bush conducting official business on his private account coincided with a New York Times article, which noted that it took the former governor more than seven years “to comply fully with a Florida public records statute” on email disclosure.
The report quoted a non-partisan expert with the Florida-based First Amendment Foundation who said Bush’s disclosure policy was “a technical violation of the law.” The governor was required to turn over records pertaining to official business “at the expiration of his or her term of office,” and the Republican waited more than seven years to meet these obligations.
And while the revelations are themselves noteworthy, what seems especially problematic for Bush is the broader context in which these details appear.
If, for example, the Clinton story never existed, and we were just now learning about Bush’s emails, my suspicion is the revelations would be treated largely as an afterthought. To be sure, transparency and sunshine laws matter, but it’s hard to imagine the Beltway media creating a feeding frenzy, featuring breathless coverage of Jeb’s email “scandal.” Even his Democratic detractors would probably prefer to focus their energies elsewhere.
But the Clinton email story does exist, and collectively, the political world decided this is an important national issue, crucial to evaluating the competence and credibility of a leading presidential contender. Bush himself encouraged this heightened scrutiny, talking publicly about how “baffling” Clinton’s actions were on the issue.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jeb-bushs-email-troubles-grow-more-serious
LOL
Detroit-area man who walked miles to work gets new apartment
Associated Press
DETROIT — A man who said he walked 21 miles to and from work each day is settling into a new, suburban Detroit apartment after receiving thousands of dollars in online donations.
James Robertson said he feels more secure in Oakland County’s Troy after moving north from his Detroit home to escape people asking him for money, the Detroit Free Press said Sunday (http://on.freep.com/1x6cWZd ).
The 56-year-old gained celebrity after the newspaper reported earlier this year that he began walking to a job at an auto parts factory when his car stopped working in 2005 and bus service was cut back.
A local college student launched a modest crowdfunding campaign to a buy a new car. It led to $360,000 eventually being raised and Robertson receiving a new, $35,000 Ford Taurus from an auto dealership.
“I may have been born there, but God knows I don’t belong there anymore,” Robertson said about his old neighborhood near Detroit’s New Center area.
The plastic-molding operator also said he didn’t tell people in his old neighborhood where he was moving.
He still works at the same factory in Rochester Hills, which pays him $10.55 an hour, but the hours-long walking trip now is done in a 20-minute drive.
“I’m going to keep working — that’s for sure,” he told the newspaper.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/detroit-area-man-who-walked-miles-to-work-gets-new-apartment/ar-AA9O2sm?ocid=HPCDHP
Vlad is back
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Russia’s Vladimir Putin makes first public appearance in 10 days
By Madison Park, Alla Eshchenko and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
Updated 8:45 AM ET, Mon March 16, 2015
Moscow (CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared in public Monday for the first time in about 10 days as he met with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.
Putin isn’t generally one to shy away from the limelight — posing with a (tranquilized) tiger, riding a horse while shirtless, earning a karate black belt.
So his unexplained absence fueled speculation about his health, grip on power and even his love life.
Although the Kremlin and the Russian state media released photos and video footage of Putin last week, they did not quell the rumors about his whereabouts, because it was unclear when they were taken.
So all eyes were turned to St. Petersburg on Monday for Putin’s scheduled meeting with Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/16/world/russia-putin/index.html
Good Monday Morning, everyone! Hope your day is wonderful.
Good Morning, SG2 & Everyone! :-) ART OF NOISE… Me LIKEY A LOT.
I’m going to enjoy this week’s music.
Good Morning, Everyone :)