Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970)[1] is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She rose to prominence after releasing her self-titled debut studio album Mariah Carey in 1990; it went multiplatinum and spawned four consecutive number one singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Under the guidance of Columbia Records executive and later husband Tommy Mottola, Carey continued booking success with followup albums Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993), and Merry Christmas (1994), and was established as Columbia’s highest-selling act. Daydream (1995) made music history when its second single “One Sweet Day“, a duet with Boyz II Men, spent a record sixteen weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and it remains the longest-running number-one song in U.S. chart history. During the recording of the album, Carey began to deviate from her R&B and pop beginnings and slowly traversed into hip hop. This musical change became evident with the release of Butterfly (1997), at which time Carey had separated from Mottola.
Hope this hasn’t already been posted, but I had to share. These are my father’s people, and I can tell you even worse stories:
“..My saying is — again, I’m not racist — every black person has a price. The average price for a black person here in Bed-Stuy is $30,000 dollars. Up over there in East New York, it’s $10,000 dollars. Everyone wants them to leave, not because we don’t like them, it’s just they’re messing up — they bring everything down. Not all of them.
Most of them don’t believe you at first. “Oh, you Jewish people you’re a bunch of thieves, you’re never going to give me my money.” But once you start actually having a base of people who know you, who you actually gave the money, it’s better. Sometimes it’s really tricky because you’ll have one person willing to leave for $2,000 and another wants $20,000. And the second this guy finds out that guy is getting 20 he says, “Hell no, I’m not leaving. I want 20, too.”
They don’t know — here he lowers his voice — that even if they get the money and they left, they could always come back. They don’t know that part. And it’s so scary sometimes because they could come up in the middle of construction and say, “It’s my property, I didn’t understand what I was signing, and I want to come back.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/grim-racist-methods-of-one-brooklyn-landlord.html?mid=facebook_nymag
“..Again, I don’t want to be a racist, but when I have a building—I can’t even say it because it’s not going to sound right.
He lowers his voice again:
If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it. They see black people and get all riled up, they call me: “We’re not paying that much money to have black people live in the building.” If it’s white tenants only, it’s clean. I know it’s a little bit racist but it’s not. They’re the ones that are paying and I have to give them what they want. Or I’m not going to get the tenants and the money is not going to be what it is…”
Keep spreading the word. Tell this truth
You should read some of the comments Rikyrah, it’s really something. Some are mad that this was exposed, while others are validating the story by arrogantly basking in glee at how true it is. Anonymity guarantees that sort of letting down of ones guard and spewing.
Somedays I want to weep for my country. The racism, the blindness to it and just the worst unfairness one suffers because they were born the way they were born – with absolutely no say so. But are continually punished and demeaned by society for it.
https://twitter.com/APEntertainment/status/601077309844533248
https://twitter.com/black_ishABC/status/601204577342361600/photo/1
Tom and Lorenzo’s final Mad Men recap:
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MAD STYLE: PERSON TO PERSON
Posted on May 20, 2015
For this, our final Mad Style entry, we’re about to get high-falutin’ on your asses. But come on, you would expect no less from us, right? Give us one last chance to utilize all that crap Tom learned in film school.
The central question surrounding the ending of the story of Don Draper is what happened to him after his moment of enlightenment on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Did he go on to write the most famous and arguably most influential advertisement of all time? And if he did, what does that mean, both for him and for the world he inhabits? Or did someone else write that ad and its inclusion at the end of the story indicates that the monolithic entity known as the advertising industry will always and forever package people’s fears, hopes and experiences into catchy moments to sell products; like some sort of eternal zeitgeist engine? The answers come down to whether you think Mad Men is a Freudian reality or a Jungian one.
Oh, yeah. We said it. PRETENTIOUS FILM SCHOOL SPEAK AHEAD. Brace yourself.
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/05/mad-style-person-to-person/
4 Clips from Chocolate City
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/get-your-fill-of-sexy-chocolate-in-4-new-clips-from-chocolate-city-20150520
Media Alert:
Don’t forget the Season Finale of Black-ish tonight!!
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Watch ‘black-ish’ Season Finale Sneak Peek – Will Be Set During the Harlem Renaissance
Photo of Tambay A. Obenson
By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act
May 18, 2015 at 12:21PM
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/watch-black-ish-season-finale-sneak-peek-will-be-set-during-the-harlem-renaissance-20150518
https://twitter.com/CapehartJ/status/601168551471263744
https://twitter.com/wsbtv/status/601125593665675264/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TPM/status/601140013213036544/photo/1
Here is the tea on this, told by Town.
Get your popcorn – this story is worthy of a Lifetime Movie:
https://twitter.com/petesouza/status/601126321008181248/photo/1
they do not want to answer the question about how this obviously unqualified man became a police officer. answering that question will lead to all sorts of people losing their jobs. so, they slander and defame a 12 year old boy. I know it seems as if I am obsessed by this point, but I can’t leave it. I think it’s the whole key. Any other city would have already cut the check to make it go away….that they continue down this road reinforces my belief about this man’s Human Resources record.
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handtomouth
@handtomouth1
Cleveland police charged 12-year-old Tamir Rice with ‘aggravated menacing’ and ‘inducing panic’ http://www.dailykos.com/story/… … via @dailykos
Could our POTUS have more swag? I didn’t think it was possible.
Did Martin O’Malley just Snapchat his presidential announcement location? Yes he did.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/19/politics/martin-omalley-snapchat-2016/
ALSO TOO…PLEASE RUN VP BIDEN, RUN.
Check your email.
NEBRASKA?
NEBRASKA?
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Nebraska state legislature votes to abolish the death penalty.
LINCOLN — In a monumental vote Wednesday, the Nebraska Legislature passed legislation to end the death penalty.
With Gov. Pete Ricketts vowing to veto the repeal bill, attention now turns to an override vote that will likely take place next week.
Lawmakers voted 32-15 Wednesday to give third-round approval to Legislative Bill 268, which replaces lethal injection with a maximum punishment of life in prison. A minimum of 30 votes is needed to override a veto.
http://www.omaha.com/news/legislature/nebraska-lawmakers-vote-to-repeal-death-penalty-ricketts-has-promised/article_b1036632-fefa-11e4-8fed-77aa55beae0d.html
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
President Obama Moved the Overton Window to the Left
Here’s how Wikipedia defines the Overton Window:
In political theory, the Overton window is the range of ideas the public will accept. According to the theory, an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within that window, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences.
I was reminded of that when I read the article by Anne Gearan titled: Clinton is Banking on the Obama Coalition to Win.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is running as the most liberal Democratic presidential front-runner in decades, with positions on issues from gay marriage to immigration that would, in past elections, have put her at her party’s precarious left edge…
Clinton’s full embrace of same-sex marriage in the first days of her campaign was followed by clear statements in favor of scrapping get-tough immigration and incarceration policies — many of which took root during her husband’s administration. She has also weighed in with liberal takes on climate change, abortion rights and disparities in income and opportunity between rich and poor.
Essentially she is saying that the reason Hillary Clinton can run on these issues is because the Overton Window has moved to the left. How did that happen? The truth is that the answer to that question is very complex and the movement can be accredited to a lot of different people and factors. But I’ll give you two ways that President Obama contributed.
First, the President demonstrated in both 2008 and 2012 that what we now call the Obama coalition is capable of electing someone to the highest office in the land. Instead of chasing after the so-called Reagan Democrats (as conventional wisdom would have dictated at the time), he bet his cards on his own ability to expand the electorate with people of color and young voters. It worked! Now it’s possible for someone like Hillary Clinton to run for president on the issues that matter to this expanded electorate – which is significantly father to the left that it was when her husband ran in ’92 and ’96.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/05/president-obama-moved-overton-window-to.html
The Problem with Saying ALL Lives Matter
May 20, 2015 • Shantel Buggs •
We don’t want to stop at just “black lives matter” because all lives matter. To look at Tony and say that he’s just black, based just off his appearance, is something we’re basing legislation that is 150 years old almost now – less than that. I’m referring to Plessy v. Ferguson, okay. Terrell is a mixture of everything. You can’t look at him and say he’s black. He’s black, white, he’s a mixture of everything because we all have our own complex heritage.” ~ Turin Carter, uncle of 19-year-old Tony Robinson, shot and killed by police
In the wake of a Mother’s Day that seemed to weigh more heavily than those of past years, I found myself returning to comments made in March of this year. When I first read of Turin Carter’s remarks on the fatal shooting of his nephew, Tony Terrell Robinson, Jr., I found myself equally saddened and frustrated. Yet, in the midst of my empathy, I found Carter’s heart-wrenching admission that Tony was a “misfit” and that he “just wanted to be loved” to be troubling.
Virtually all American blacks are considered to be of “mixed” descent due to rape during slavery and a long history of interracial relationships, but Carter’s comments suggest that to talk about black lives mattering is to not be wholly inclusive of his nephew’s life.
The narrative of mixed-race children who can find no place because they are so ambiguous perpetuates the stereotype of the “tragic mulatto” who can never find love. Alongside Robinson’s “need to be loved,” Carter repeatedly insists in his drafted statement – and in response to the questions that follow – that Tony is not “just” black. And yet, he describes Tony as one of several “black children” of a white mother. The emphasis on Tony’s mixedness and how it caused him a particular kind of emotional duress – even while acknowledging that Tony was a “black child” – reifies Tony’s differentness from other young black men who have been killed by police.
As Carter notes, “we don’t want to stop at just black lives matter because all lives matter.” As well-intentioned as I’m sure his comment was, it reinforces the “all lives matter” rebuttal that pushes back against the #blacklivesmatter movement and serves as a means of erasure. Insisting that “all” lives matter suggests that a focus on black lives – which are being disproportionately snuffed out – is not inclusive of the various ways that state-sanctioned violence impacts our society. The push for recognition of “all lives” implies a universality of experience, rooted in a universal humanism that is less anti-racist and more colorblind. To say that black lives matter is not to say that other lives do not.
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2015/05/20/problem-with-all-lives-matter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racismreview%2FnYnz+%28racismreview.com%29
3 words
ONE.DROP.RULE
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Acting Director of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ: Vanita Gupta
I’ve made the case previously that the turn-around of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ after it was politicized and decimated by the George W. Bush administration is one of President Obama’s most unsung accomplishments. Initially, the President and AG Holder appointed Thomas Perez to head that division. When he became the Secretary of Labor, Debo Adegbile was nominated to be his successor. You might remember that his nomination was derailed when the Fraternal Order of Police objected because he had worked as part of a legal team on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal. Since then, the position has technically been vacant.
But pay attention to that word “technically.” Because the “acting” director is a woman named Vanita Gupta.
But Gupta absolutely GOES THERE when she addresses the question of how we got here.
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Mistrust can’t be explained away as the kneejerk reaction of the ill-informed or the hyperbolic. It’s in part the product of historical awareness about the role that police have played in enforcing and perpetuating slavery, the Black Codes, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation. As FBI Director James Comey noted, “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”
It is also the product of lived experience, of negative interactions that individuals — or their family members, friends, or neighbors — have had with law enforcement. Something as quietly humiliating as being mistreated during a traffic stop, or being followed in a retail store. These stories can circulate through a neighborhood — or these days, across the nation via the web and social media — and they can build up over time into a painful narrative that divides community members and police.
The lack of trust also undeniably results from our criminal justice policies over the last few decades, and the concentrated impact they have had on communities of color and people living in poverty. Law enforcement practices such as the stopping and frisking of young black men based on stereotypes. Sentencing policies that result in mass incarceration, particularly of people of color. And the devastating consequences that convictions have had on individuals’ ability to find work, secure stable housing and reintegrate as full members of society. These are deliberate policy choices that we made over the last several decades. We bear the responsibility to confront their consequences.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/05/acting-director-of-civil-rights.html
https://twitter.com/TheRoot/status/601076216695803904/photo/1
Wow…This is incredibly admirable!
May 20, 2015 9:11 AM
Chris Christie In Denial
By Ed Kilgore
No phenomenon in politics is more simultaneously amusing and bathetic as the spectacle of a presidential candidate who has clearly blown his or her chance but cannot seem to hear the cues to move off the stage. That’s where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appears to be right now, as evidenced by an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly (suddenly a terrifying figure to GOP presidential candidates!) wherein he tried to spin a disastrous New Jersey poll into some sort of veiled expression of home-state support.
I devoted my TPMCafe column this week to a careful accounting of exactly how poorly Christie is doing in the Invisible Primary, and to various theories as why he’s in such deep denial, ranging from the need to keep a trickle of contributions coming in to the committees supporting him, to a decision to adopt the perennial role of the Doomed But Brave Truth-Teller. I don’t know exactly where the truth lays, but it’s fun, if a bit ghoulish, to speculate.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/chris_christie_in_denial055649.php
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeed/status/601084084421578752/photo/1
How Black-ish Went From WTF? to Must-See TV in 10 Easy Steps
As the series heads into its season 1 finale, we look back at how the family comedy became one of America’s favorite new sitcoms.
As we prepare for the season 1 finale of ABC’s Black-ish, let’s take a look back at how Black-ish quickly became one of America’s favorite new sitcoms.
1. Remember when the Black-ish trailer first aired, promising the story of a well-to-do African-American father grappling with how to ensure that his family maintains a sense of cultural identity in the face of his and his wife’s success? The premise was met with reservations, side eyes and several questions, like, was Black-ish going to be the new Cosby Show? And what exactly did they mean by “Black … ish”?
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/how_black_ish_went_from_wtf_to_must_watch_tv_in_10_easy_steps.html
and yet….it wasn’t a RIOT
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About 1,000 weapons found at scene of deadly Texas gang fight
AUSTIN, Texas | By Jon Herskovitz
About 1,000 weapons including firearms and knives have been recovered from the scene of a deadly Sunday battle between rival motorcycle gangs in the Texas city of Waco that left nine people dead, a police spokesman told broadcaster CNN on Wednesday.
Gang members hid weapons in bags of potato chips and in bathrooms at the Twin Peaks restaurant, where they attacked each other with guns, knives, brass knuckles, clubs and chains, Waco Police Sergeant Patrick Swanton said.
“These were vicious gang members that were in our city Sunday,” he told CNN, adding an AK-47 rifle was among the weapons recovered.
The Central Texas Marketplace Shopping Center, with about 50 stores and restaurants located along a major highway that was shut after the deadly brawl, reopened on Wednesday, police said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-usa-texas-bikers-idUSKBN0O51Q420150520
THIS is how you shut down a slave catching coon
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Hakeem Jeffries GRILLS Sheriff David Clarke on “Blue Wall Of Silence”, “White On White Crime”
https://youtu.be/VoNN3Fo7duw
BRAVO! Hakeem Jeffries dropped THE ELEPHANT TURD on Sheriff Clarke.
This slave-catching, tap-dancing, hanky-headed MOFO.
David Clarke is such an idiot; He’s the reason a lot of racists have the nerve to spout off in polite company these days. He validates them just so they will prop him up. Sickening!
https://youtu.be/dGidYBqBHVw
Hilarious!
Do You Need to Wash New Clothes Before Wearing Them?
A dermatologist has advice on how to handle clothing you just bought
http://www.wsj.com/articles/do-you-need-to-wash-new-clothes-before-wearing-them-1431955513?mod=WSJ_GoogleNews
What Every 30-Year-Old Should Know About Money
The Root Live: Bring It to the Table tells 30-year-olds to “act their wage, not their want.”
BY: HARRIETTE COLE
Posted: May 19 2015 8:03 PM
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/the_root_live_bring_it_to_the_table_on_what_every_30_year_old_should_know.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26
https://twitter.com/USCGNortheast/status/581499668850483200/photo/1
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/601082858497830913/photo/1
https://twitter.com/WHLive/status/601051815996719105
Tom and Lorenzo with a Mad Men fashion recap:
First and Last Looks at Mad Men
Posted on May 20, 2015
The final “Mad Style” is going to be like Pete Campbell’s commute to Cos Cob, an epic poem. It’s coming, but you’ll have time to have several Cokes before then. To tide you over, and because we wanted to do this for the final “Mad Style” but realized the post would be too long, here are the first and last times each of the major characters appeared on the show. Reflect upon change and the relentless march of time while you wait. That’s always fun.
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/05/first-and-last-looks-at-mad-men/
This is interesting. I noticed that some folks are complaining about Peggy getting set up for a future with Stan and I kind of agree. Stan is a great office husband but do you really want to take him home to meet mom? Maybe she can get him to cut his hair and shave and wear clothes that fit properly.
Joan has an interesting future. After all those years of working for the white men, she finds a way to turn her skills and connections into money. I hope she moves to a nicer apartment or at least gets rid of those tangerine walls and turquoise drapes. Of course, it’s the 70s so here comes the harvest gold and avocado green and the shag carpeting, but maybe the folks in NYC were more stylish.
I’m still conflicted about Don’s ambiguous future. I guess it’s the best that Matt Weiner could do for him, give him a way to confront his self-hatred, have a few more good years on Madison Ave, and one great campaign for Coke. Eventually he has to die from lung cancer or liver disease.
LOL Have to admit, I never saw where there was any kind of chemistry between Stan & Peggy.
I do believe those neon colors were a by-product of LSD & other drugs back in the day. What else would explain those colors?
Stan is man enough and confident in his own skill level to be happy doing what he’s doing, and be happy being Mr. Peggy Olsen. He will be her rock and support system as she soars.
Joan will be a millionaire before 1975. She won’t move out of the city, but she will get a better place. And, it will all be on her terms. Eventually she’ll marry, but it will be a successful divorcee with kids around Kevin’s age.
Don, will never get his private life together. He has one, if not two more ex-wives in the pipeline. The only possible personal contentment he will get will be if he lives long enough to see his grandchildren. Don is a rotten father, but the qualities that make him a bad father would make him an adoring grandfather.
Ha ha. Rikyrah, I believe you’re right on all counts.
Ametia, I can’t explain some of the horrible colors in the clothing of the 1970’s. There were a lot of guys who looked like Stan, as I recall. It must have been the psychedelic drugs and somehow they got everyone to want this stuff.
Good morning, Chicas!
Afternoon, SG2!!
Monday, May 18, 2015
They May Take Our Bear Claws, But They Will Never Take Our Freedom
Posted by Zandar
The next great conservative outrage is coming, one baker’s dozen at a time.
The Obama administration is expected to all but ban trans fat in a final ruling that could drop as soon as next week, killing most uses of an ingredient that has been put in everything from frozen pizza to Reese’s Pieces but since deemed harmful to human health.
The agency may create some very limited exemptions, but the ruling could force food companies to cut trans fat use beyond the 85 percent reduction already achieved over the past decade — a key piece of the Obama administration’s broader agenda to nudge Americans toward a healthier diet.
The food industry believes low-levels of trans fats are safe. Industry leaders have banded together behind-the-scenes to craft a food additive petition that will ask FDA to allow some uses of partially hydrogenated oils, such as in the sprinkles on cupcakes, cookies and ice cream. The industry hasn’t shared details, but officials maintain the uses will represent “very limited amounts.”
For more than 60 years, partially hydrogenated oils have been used in food products under the status generally recognized as safe, which does not require FDA’s approval. But since the 1990s, reams of studies have linked trans fat consumption to cardiovascular disease, causing somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 premature deaths before the industry started phasing it out.
In late 2013 the Obama administration issued a tentative determination that partially hydrogenated oils are not generally recognized as safe. The move sent shock waves through the food industry, which has already brought down average consumption from more than 4 grams per day to about 1 gram per day — an exodus largely fueled by mandatory labeling imposed a decade ago. Scores of popular products, including Oreos and Cheetos, have quietly dropped partially hydrogenated oils over the years, but it remains an ingredient in many products, including Pop Secret microwave popcorn, Pillsbury Grands! Cinnamon Rolls and Sara Lee cheesecake, as well as some restaurant fryers and commercial bakery goods.
If FDA sticks to its guns in its final determination — and most in food policy circles assume it will — the agency will be taking a firm step toward pushing out more of the remaining uses of trans fat.
“This is a massive win for public health,” said Sam Kass, the former senior adviser for nutrition at the White House and executive director of Let’s Move!, noting that FDA has estimated removing trans fat could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and some 7,000 deaths.
“There are few targeted actions you can take in this space that have that kind of direct impact,” said Kass. He said he expects FDA will ultimately allow negligible uses of trans fat, because there’s no science that shows such levels are harmful.
Prepare to hear stories about how this will wipe out millions and millions of food industry jobs and heroic restaurant and bakery owners, even though as the article says, the move away from trans fats has been a nationwide trend for years. And the reason why food companies have been moving away is because they are dangerous, and there’s plenty of lawsuits in the works over them. The industry is also expected to have years to phase the rest of trans fats out.
Needless to say, the right is going to go bonkers for weeks over this. Watch
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2015/05/they-may-take-our-bear-claws-but-they.html
Thank you Madam First Lady for saving Americans and their hearts, from themselves!
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Thanks, O-Bee-Ma!
Posted by Zandar
The White House has released a strategy this week to help the country’s honeybee supply, which has seen sharp drops every winter for the last ten years or so. For now, the nation’s beekeepers have been able to breed enough honeybees to cover losses, but that’s not a sustainable practice. It’s good to see some help coming for them.
The White House strategy lays out a goal to reduce winter losses of managed honeybees to no more than 15 percent in the next 10 years. Winter losses of managed honeybees for the 2014-2015 season topped 23.1 percent, according to a survey released last week. Beekeepers say that the maximum level of losses they can experience and still remain economically viable is 18.7 percent. Part of the White House’s strategy to reduce bee losses will be ramping up research and surveying efforts on honeybees, in an attempt to determine what stressors are most dangerous to bees and what are the best ways to manage bees’ habitat.
The strategy, which grew out of a pollinator task force created by executive order last year, doesn’t just tackle managed honeybees — bees that are kept by beekeepers to pollinate crops around the country. It also singles out monarch butterflies, another pollinator that has been facing serious declines over the last several years.
Over the last two decades, monarch populations have declined by 90 percent, a drop that has been precipitated in part by removal of milkweed — a key food source for monarch larvae — along with changing weather patterns, and deforestation. The White House wants to increase the eastern monarch butterfly population to 225 million butterflies by 2020, a goal it aims to accomplish through public-private partnerships and actions in both the U.S. and Mexico, where the butterflies spend the winter.
The strategy also spells out a goal to “restore or enhance” seven million acres of pollinator-friendly habitat over the next five years. That goal will help native pollinators, such as wild bees and butterflies, as well as managed honeybees. Last year, summer losses for managed honeybees exceeded winter losses for the first time, and Dennis VanEngelsdorp, assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, told ThinkProgress that poor bee nutrition due to meadows being plowed under for crops might have contributed to the summer losses.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2015/05/thanks-o-bee-ma.html
From BJ:
https://twitter.com/nlbmprez/status/600848390738423809
where are our cooning gifs?
https://twitter.com/mediaite/status/600860204440387584
https://twitter.com/BAM_FI/status/600969704958754816/photo/1
GOP senator might trust Ayatollah over Obama
05/19/15 02:31 PM—UPDATED 05/19/15 02:59 PM
By Steve Benen
About a month ago, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei publicly disagreed with the U.S. interpretation of the recently negotiated nuclear framework. The White House didn’t much care, seeing it as meaningless posturing for a domestic audience, but Republicans took a very different tack.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, questioned the Obama administration’s reliability, even when compared to the Ayatollah’s. Asked specifically if he considered the Iran supreme leader’s version of the truth more believable than Secretary of State John Kerry’s, McCain added, “I don’t know…. I don’t know who’s more believable.”
BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reports today on another Republican senator pushing a similar line.
Sen. Ron Johnson, the Homeland Security Committee chairman, says when it comes to a nuclear deal with Iran, he’s “not so sure” he trusts President Obama over the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Now, a President who was awarded the 2013 Politifact Lie of the Year, if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it, period. If you like your doctor you can keep it, period. They lied boldfaced to the American public repeatedly with Obamacare,” the Wisconsin senator said at a recent town hall in Cerdarburg, Wisconsin.
“I don’t know, I hate to admit it, but in terms of this framework, do I trust President Obama, or do I trust the Ayatollah? In terms of what the framework actually says? I’m not so sure I’m trusting President Obama on this.”
Even for congressional Republicans, this is reaching new levels of inanity.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-senator-might-trust-ayatollah-over-obama
May 19, 2015 12:41 PM
Straw Poll Revisionism
By Ed Kilgore
To be clear, I don’t think the Iowa GOP Straw Poll is necessarily a big deal, much less that it ought to be. I write about it because, well, I write about just about everything in the political news, and also because an awful lot of people seem to get an awful lot wrong about Iowa.
All this is by way of explaining that I’m doing another post about the upcoming Iowa Straw Poll in August partly because it’s traditionally been the starting gun for the GOP nomination fight; partially because there’s going to be endless speculation about who’s in and who’s out during the next few weeks; and most immediately because people are writing misleading things about the history and implications of the event.
Here it is in a National Journal piece by Adam Wollner, which in turn was quoted by WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin in urging all the candidates to boycott the Straw Poll:
Tim Pawlenty’s fate in the 2011 straw poll, however, offers a cautionary tale of what can happen if leading candidates perform worse than expected. A third-place finish so badly bruised the front-running Minnesota governor that he was forced [to] drop out of the 2012 GOP primary race altogether.
Well, not exactly. Tim Pawlenty was forced to drop out of the 2012 race because he spent all his money pursuing that third-place finish in Ames, as was understood at the time, per this report from Politico’s Martin and Cogan in August of 2011:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/straw_poll_revisionism055633.php
Rubin is caping for Bush…who hasn’t even declared yet and has said phuck Iowa.
She’s a Zionist right-wing nutcase. She was part of the first wave of integrating insanely mediocre crazy partisan nuts into what was formerly ‘sane’ mainstream television and print media.
Today, it’s pretty much par for the course. The NY Times, WaPo etc. don’t just hire from FOX news, they dig deep into the gutters of Breitbart, WND etc. for ‘talent’.
Marco Rubio Wants to Scare Americans into Voting for Him
By Jeet Heer @heerjeet
The 2014 midterm was the election of fear, and offered a likely foreshadowing of the strategy the Republicans will use to try and win the White House in 2016. In the midterms, the GOP stacked up impressive victories by brilliantly stoking a nightmare vision of an America about to be overrun by Ebola patients, anchor babies, and ISIS assassins. In their quest to replace Barack Obama, Republican presidential hopefuls are making the starkest possible case that security is the primary issue, eclipsing all others.
Yesterday, Marco Rubio announced the new theme of his campaign: “The fundamental problem we have in America is that nothing matters if we aren’t safe.” According to Rubio, “The world has never been more dangerous than it is today,” which means “the economic stuff” has to take a backseat to national security. Rubio’s emphasis on safety echoed a remark made by his rival Chris Christie the same day: “You can’t enjoy your civil liberties if you’re in a coffin.”
These statements are startling in the all-or-nothing choices they offer. Without security, “nothing matters.” If we don’t have security, we’ll be in a coffin. This black-and-white language negates the possibility that security is one value among others, that it needs to be balanced against competing values such as liberty or peace. It’s hard to imagine cruder appeals to fear.
And by appealing to fear in the name of security, they only ensure they’ll get less of what they say they want.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121840/marco-rubio-and-chris-christie-are-playing-fear-politics
Uh, golly, Jeet. I’m shocked that Republicans use fear to get votes. I mean, they’ve onlyl been doing this crap since 1968. (Southern Strategy, how does that work?)
May 18, 2015 11:00 AM
The End of the Worst For-Profits?
By Daniel Luzer
Here at the Monthly we’ve been concerned with the role of for-profit colleges in this country’s education system for many years.
During the administration of George W. Bush changes in the regulations regarding federal financial aid made it possible for many proprietary colleges to really cash in on low-income, unprepared students. They wouldn’t get much of a career out of these “career” colleges, but they’d fork over a lot of money, mostly in the form of loans they didn’t understand. Through a quirk of the student loan market, the colleges got the money even if the students couldn’t really afford to pay.
The Obama administration’s Department of Education has cracked down on some of the worst for-profit colleges and issued stronger regulations, making it more difficult for many institutions to continue to operate.
And so, wrote David Halperin at the Huffington Post, predatory for-profit colleges might be a thing of the past:
…We saw the final collapse of Corinthian Colleges, as well as dramatic contractions by fellow for-profit college giants EDMC and Career Education Corp. In March, industry leader the University of Phoenix admitted it has less than half the number of students it had five years ago
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/this_is_the_end_of_the_worst_f.php
May 19, 2015 3:08 PM
Growing Coverage of Middle-Class Parents “Stealing” a Better Education for Their Children
By Alexander Russo
Some vast majority of school systems assign students to schools by strict geographic (and thus economic) boundaries known as local school districts and neighborhood attendance zones. The exceptions — magnet and themed schools, most charter schools, and districts with universal choice — are relatively few and far between.
That’s why parents “stealing” a better education for their children when moving into a better school district or neighborhood attendance zone isn’t possible (for financial reasons) or necessary (when easy loopholes are available) is to me one of the most fascinating (and under-covered) topics in education.
The latest story on this phenomenon comes from Kyle Spencer in the Hechinger Report (Can you steal an education?). Spencer is a regular contributor to the Report but also writes for other outlets including the New York Times. She also co-produced a 2014 Frontline documentary about school segreation. Read all about her here.
This latest story updates us on Hamlet Garcia, a Pennsylvania parent who first came to my attention in an Al Jazeera America segment (Getting Schooled) last year when he and his wife were charged with theft of services by a school district claiming that they were faking an address in leafy Lower Moreland rather than northwest Philadelphia in order to get a better education for their daughter Fiorella. (See video embedded above).
According to Spencer’s story:
The Garcia case is one of a handful in recent years in which families living in districts with failing schools have been accused of “stealing an education.” Some have been heavily fined for lying about where they live on official district documents. Others have been criminally charged and, in some cases, jailed.
These may be extreme examples, but they are worrying civil rights activists, parent advocacy groups and some local politicians, who say strict enforcement strategies like these unfairly impact poor families of color, who cannot easily pay their way out of trouble by refunding the value of their children’s allegedly stolen schooling.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/the-grade/2015/05/growing_coverage_of_middleclas055636.php
Yes; according to the charter school scams and the elite, you can steal an education, especially when it’s for $ale and siphoned off to the white neighborhoods and out of reach to other POC.
THIS IS THE ONLY CRIME HERE.
this airbag recall is a big thing
Takata air bag recall doubles to nearly 34M
MARCY GORDON & TOM KRISHER
May 19th 2015 3:15PM
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/05/19/takata-air-bag-recall-becomes-biggest-ever-in-us/21185140/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D1270890905
WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure from U.S. safety regulators, Takata Corp. has agreed to declare 33.8 million air bags defective, a move that will double the number of cars and trucks included in what is now the largest auto recall in U.S. history.
The chemical that inflates the air bag can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal inflator and sending shrapnel into the passenger compartment. The faulty inflators are responsible for six deaths and more than 100 injuries worldwide.
The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon by the heads of the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which reached an agreement with Takata after sparring with the company for the past year over the size of the recalls and the cause of the problem.
DAMN, this is like driving with a loaded weapon you paid for.
Man, I love our First Lady
https://twitter.com/FLOTUS/status/600837307919302656
Fierceness! This is how you shake off the foolishness & keep it off
WAY.TO.GO.FLOTUS!
https://twitter.com/PragObots/status/600858688773967873/photo/1
Lol…
I kept saying to myself, this is a 51 year old mother of two with unimaginable stresses…
And yet, she has the discipline, focus and determination to keep herself not just fit and healthy, but doing it the serious ultimate boss way at Olympic levels.. How can that be.
Me..? I would be drowning in chocolate, cake, ice cream, pasta, and I’d lie in bed all day stuffing my face with food and watching silly movies… My personal trainer would instead turn into my snack run person..
I love FLOTUS for her super human effort to get folks to wake up to the importance of exercise. Excellent video.
Total respect! You know I simply died and went to heaven when I saw this today. How is it that she can do this, and I can barely drag my lazy you know what out for a bike ride?
Fierce Dude Loses 400 Pounds With Some Help From Taylor Swift
In 2013, Ronnie Brower of Syracuse, New York, weighed 675 pounds due to a diet of excessive drinking, pill-popping, and eating. The 28-year-old was told by his doctor if he didn’t make changes to his lifestyle, he’d be dead by 35. That’s when Taylor Swift stepped in. (Figuratively. Although imagining Taylor Swift as a Jillian Michaels-style personal trainer is my new favorite thing.)
Speaking to The Daily Dot, Brower’s friend and teacher, Joe Bufano, opened up about Brower’s relationship with Taylor:
He told me in his darkest days…he would often listen to Taylor, and it was the messages in her music that kind of gave him some source of joy and happiness. It kept him buying into life.
Um, I think we can all say that Queen Taylor’s music has kept us buying into life for some time now. And it made a huge difference. Two years later, and he’s down to 250 pounds.
From The Daily Dot:
Soon, he’ll go in for a consultation to have his excess skin removed, which should bring him down another 30 or so pounds. He even has a girlfriend. He hopes to help others by becoming a personal trainer, and he’s even having a documentary made about his story.
Bufano promised Brower that he would take him to see Taylor perform after he lost 400 pounds and since he just achieved that goal, it appears they’re off to her June 3rd Cleveland show to shake it off together. Have fun, boys!
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/weightloss/fierce-dude-loses-400-pounds-with-some-help-from-taylor-swift/ar-BBjVsn2?ocid=anscosmopolitan11
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Final HC.gov #ACATaxTime: 147K QHPs; grand total: 12.0M CONFIRMED
Posted on Tue, 05/19/2015 – 3:27pm
Thanks to Margot Sanger-Katz for the heads up.
After all the fuss and bother made over the #ACATaxTime Special Enrollment Period by myself and others, the final number of QHP selections was announced in the most understated way possible:
http://acasignups.net/15/05/19/final-hcgov-acataxtime-147k-qhps-grand-total-120m-confirmed
Happy HUMP day, Everyone! :-)