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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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Wesley Lowery ✔ @WesleyLowery
45 times so far this year 9-1-1 was dialed seeking medical help only to have the police show up and kill the person http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/06/30/distraught-people-deadly-results/ …
A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared
By PATRICIA COHEN
JULY 31, 2015
There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.
The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-against-the-raise-that-roared.html?_r=0
https://twitter.com/iboudreau/status/627665394690428928/photo/1
Robert Costa @costareports Jul 30
Walker lands JOE RICKETTS, billionaire conservative whose family owns the Cubs. $5m super PAC haul: http://wpo.st/jlyS0
the casting of this show is off the hook…
I might have to give it a chance.
………………………..
MAY 21, 2015 1:00pm PT by Lesley Goldberg
‘American Crime Story: People vs. O.J.’ Reveals First Cast Photos
FX’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson may not premiere until 2016, but production is already underway on the series.
Here, The Hollywood Reporter unveils a first look at the stars of the anthology based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson. The drama will be told through the perspective of the lawyers involved in the case and will explore the behind-the-scenes dealings on both sides of the court.
Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as O.J. Simpson; John Travolta is set as Robert Shapiro; David Schwimmer will playRobert Kardashian; Courtney B. Vance is Johnnie Cochran; Sarah Paulson is Marcia Clark and Billy Magnussen will portray Kato Kaelin. Check out first-look photos of the primary cast below
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/american-crime-story-people-oj-797408
http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-documentary-the-donald-suppressed-free-at-last/
A documentary that Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, killed 25 years ago with threats of litigation is now available for all to view on the Internet.
Trump: What’s The Deal? paints a powerful and disturbing picture of a financial Dorian Gray whose public image bears little resemblance to his conduct away from the cameras, including hiring actors for $50 each to applaud at his campaign announcement.
In public, Trump presents himself as a businessman so skilled his deals are an art form. The 80-minute documentary peels back this façade. Hidden from public view, the documentary shows Trump manipulating politicians and the criminal justice system, pocketing millions in taxpayer welfare, not paying people he hired, doing some of his biggest deals with mobsters, retaining a cocaine dealer as his helicopter pilot, and evidently benefiting from having his sister working in the Justice Department before winning appointment as a federal judge. Former advisors and employees describe furious tirades that no one, not even his family, could escape
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/627482775289901056
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/627576355484385280
https://twitter.com/EricWolfson/status/627508352533307392
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/627634304646930434
https://twitter.com/mateagold/status/627630428363448320
Harriet…..we miss you and you are needed, even today.
https://twitter.com/FeministaJones/status/627637944287916032
Well, I always tell myself that, except for death, nothing is 100%. Everything else has outliers. I hope that the grand kids are not influenced by this in any permanent way.
https://youtu.be/l2-W7GAEfUg
The heat here is terrible. Not going back outside today. No!
stay in, SG2.
stay in!!
A review of the GOP candidates from across the way
……………….
The Candidates
(good grief)
Chris Lehmann on the race for the Republican nomination
It is a cliché of American electioneering for candidates to advertise their humble beginnings and unstinting ascent in the face of adversity. Even George W. Bush, with his Andover and Skull-and-Bones East Coast Brahmin pedigree, offered up his own version of the log cabin myth, alluding to his drunken youth and subsequent soul-saving entry into the evangelical fold, and taking self-deprecating potshots at his tricky time as part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. The message was that these episodes were tests of the candidate’s resolve, temporary setbacks in the higher drama of his journey to the Texas governor’s mansion. (It didn’t matter that Bush’s gubernatorial track record was decidedly dismal, since the log cabin myth is about how you attain great office, not what you actually do when you get there.)
But the emerging field of Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election is something else altogether. Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure. These are people who, in most cases, have been granted virtually every imaginable advantage on the road to success, and managed nevertheless to foul things up along the way.There is, for starters, George’s younger brother Jeb: not yet a formal candidate, but already on course to raise $1 billion in campaign funds. (He has deliberately delayed his official entry into the field in order to wring every dollar he can from big-money political action committees; once he becomes a runner, the rules forbid him from dealing directly with them.) Jeb has dined out for most of his career on his image as the clever Bush brother, but as his quasi-campaign heated up and the press started to ask questions about actual policies, he immediately undermined this unearned plaudit by saying he would have followed to the letter George’s catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq. After realising that this was a position now seen as insane even by most Republicans, he tried to retreat from it with a series of flailing clarifications.
Jeb Bush’s own track record is terrible. He was elected as governor of Florida in 1998, touting his ambitious plan to ‘reform’ – i.e. privatise – the state’s underperforming schools. The actual returns of his ‘education miracle’ are equivocal at best: it’s hard to tell how individual schools are performing because the letter-grade system he instituted (from A to F) is recalibrated almost every year in an attempt to improve the figures. The unregulated charter schools are paid for with taxpayers’ money. Florida statutes require the organisations administering the schools to be non-profits, but, Florida being Florida, all that energetic for-profit concerns had to do was set up non-profit shell companies as nominal administrators. By 2002, according to the St Petersburg Times, three-quarters of all newly established charter schools were managed by for-profit companies. One such edubusiness, the Richard Milburn Academy, has been forced to close seven failing schools across the state since 2006, but is still allowed to operate two campuses in Daytona Beach with $2.8 million in tax subsidies. In all, 30 per cent of the state’s charter schools have gone under; meanwhile, the people in charge of them have often simply gone on to set up new schools under new corporate letterheads.
Bush’s other accomplishments in office include two curiously complementary policy fiascos: signing the nation’s first ever ‘stand your ground’ gun law (the legislation that gave us the Trayvon Martin killing and countless other instances of unpunished citizen bloodletting); and prolonging the life of the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo in a cynical bid to burnish his culture wars résumé. Also disgraceful was the disenfranchisement of Florida’s black electorate on his watch. Florida election officials, ostensibly looking to prevent felons from casting ballots, worked from lists riddled with errors and mistaken entries, with the result that more than 12,000 qualified black voters were purged from registration rolls during the 2000 election cycle. In addition, majority black and Hispanic districts were plagued with antiquated and malfunctioning polling machines – breeding grounds for the ‘hanging chads’ that made the Florida ballot in 2000 a global byword for gross electoral negligence.
Bush’s private-sector CV has been no more inspiring. He co-led a shady Florida company called Bush-El, which marketed water pumps in Nigeria. On one occasion, before his time as governor, a pilot reported seeing Bush and other company managers travelling on a plane to Nigeria with a briefcase full of cash, presumably earmarked for government bribes. Bush denied having been on the plane. After 2007, when he retired from office, he served on the board of a building materials company called InnoVida, which paid $15,000 a month to Bush’s consultancy firm. InnoVida declared bankruptcy in 2011 and was charged with defrauding investors. Its CEO, Claudio Osorio, had misappropriated investor cash to buy himself a Maserati and a mansion, and is now serving a 12-year sentence in federal prison. Bush has claimed he knew nothing of InnoVida’s wrongdoing. Bush was also on the board at Swisher Hygiene, a soap-making concern. When the senior brass confessed they had been doctoring financial documents and practising dodgy accounting, the company’s stock valuation plunged by three-quarters. Once more Bush denied any knowledge of what was going on (this claim won’t now be tested in court, since the firm settled a class action brought by its investors without having to acknowledge any wrongdoing).
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n12/chris-lehmann/the-candidates
https://twitter.com/CarlosLozadaWP/status/627564215201628161/photo/1
https://twitter.com/iamheysoos/status/627558018289414144
from POU:
another honest question, as I watch tv this afternoon, and am not able to ff the commercials:
who, at Lays, thought that someone would want GYROS or RUBEN flavored potato chips?
how does this go from a bullshytting session to actual research and production, to bagging it and putting it on shelves. I saw it at the store and went WHAT DA PHUQ?
Honest question:
who, at Headquarters, thought it was a good idea to resurrect Colonel Sanders to try and sell KFC?
Saturday afternoon fun for white, southern knuckle draggers at Stone Mountain, GA.
Republicans slam brakes on voting rights bill
By Mike Lillis – 08/01/15 06:00 AM EDT
House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal.
House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor.
That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a central provision of that law.
http://itk.thehill.com/homenews/house/249959-republicans-slam-brakes-on-voting-rights-bill
So sad. Of course she was not the target. Most never are. Seems for every gangbanger taken out, there are at least two, if not three people who contributed positively to the community….which is why I feel the soul of the community crying with each of these deaths. For we know what loss we have . We know the imprint that they will never make.
…………………………………
Death of a Young Black Journalist
BY SARAH STILLMAN
JULY 30, 2015
On the night of May 27th, Charnice Milton, a twenty-seven-year-old journalist, was heading home from an assignment. She’d stopped to transfer buses in Anacostia, in Washington, D.C., after covering a neighborhood meeting for a Capitol Hill paper called the Hill Rag. According to police, Milton took a bullet aimed at another passerby, in a neighborhood that’s seen much of the twenty-per-cent increase in homicides in D.C. from this time last year. Her killing remains unsolved.
At Syracuse University, where Milton received a master’s degree in journalism in 2011, one professor remembered her unusual response to his question of where each student hoped to land in the next ten years. “Some said the New York Times, some said Esquire or Rolling Stone,” hetold Syracuse.com. “Charnice said she wanted to be writing stories that mattered in the community where she grew up.” After graduating, she churned out copy as a stringer for the Hill Rag and its hyper-local sister paper, East of the River, covering her native southeast D.C., including Anacostia.
The most basic instinct of a local reporter is to take the importance of her neighbors as a given. In a community like Anacostia—where more than ninety per cent of residents are African-American, one in two kids lives below the poverty line, and incarceration and unemployment rates are among the nation’s highest—this is another way of saying that black lives matter. Sometimes, for Milton, that meant writing up community meetings, where neighbors protested shoddy development projects or called out the predations of banks. Other times, it meant documenting the impact of mass incarceration block by block. Milton covered the “Ban the Box” campaign to keep employers from freezing out applicants with criminal records, and the launch of a support group to help people leaving prison. She laid out local battles over funding for city fire and emergency medical services and plans to build the city’s first Wal-Mart, on the block where she was later shot.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-of-a-young-black-journalist
https://twitter.com/theGrio/status/627505842514890753
Mission Accomplished: Planned Parenthood Attacks Coordinated by High-Ranking Republican Operatives
…They Called Themselves “Groundswell”
Just after Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, disappointed conservative thought leaders came together at the annual CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. to strategize. Demoralized but determined, they formed a plan to fight a “30-front war to fundamentally transform the nation.”
In early 2013, they formed an email group to begin the process of organizing for action and messaging coordination. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ key aide Danielle Cutrona was part of the group, as was Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Breitbart News Editor John Nolte, Family Research Council officials Jerry Boykin and Ken Blackwell, Tea Party Patriots Founder Jenny Beth Martin, Washington, D.C. attorney and public relations expert Diana Banister, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, former Congressman Allen West, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, Frank Gaffney, and Ted Cruz staffer Max Pappas rounded out the top-tier of group participants, according to David Corn’s report.
They met weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch to hone their message and action plans. One meeting was secretly recorded, getting them on the record with regard to their desire to get a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack, mostly for the purpose of obtaining unlimited subpoena power.
Their goal was not merely to function as a messaging machine, but to “sync messages and develop action from reports and information exchanged,” according to the minutes of their March 27, 2013 meeting. “Going forward there should be an action item accompanying each report,” they concluded.
The purpose of the group was to collaborate and coordinate strategy and action for their multiple “fronts.” Shadow government assignments were made, committees were formed, and strategies were developed. All of this was done with participation and input from key congressional staffers working in the House and the Senate. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), now House Majority Whip, was the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee at the time. His staff routinely dropped in to tip off the group as to upcoming votes on key issues. One of the most active participants on the email list was Danielle Cutrona, who was a key staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions.
Whenever there was a need for support or for opposition to legislation, or an investigation or opposition to a judicial nominee, these staffers would reach into the group in order to recruit members for messaging or action support.
Immigration reform, religious liberty, and judicial appointments were high on their list of priorities, and they enjoyed some successes. They got their Select Committee on Benghazi, they successfully opposed one of the president’s judicial nominees who was not sufficiently steeped in their idea of Second Amendment interpretation, and they were wildly successful with their attack on the Internal Revenue Service’s procedure for approving nonprofit organizations.
Blueprint for Activism
After David Corn broke the story of this group two years ago and audio of one of their weekly meetings became public, a blueprint for how to track coordination to advance its agenda, via messaging and action with key congressional aides, emerged.
One such example can be found in their effort to push the idea that the president was putting “politics over public safety” with regard to immigration reform.
Corn laid out the pieces:
Frank Gaffney penned a Washington Times op-ed titled “Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Tom Fitton headlined a Judicial Watch weekly update “Politics over Public Safety: More Illegal Alien Criminals Released by Obama Administration.” Peter List, editor of LaborUnionReport.com, authored a RedState.com post called “Obama’s Machiavellian Sequestration Pain Game: Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Matthew Boyle used the phrase in an immigration-related article for Breitbart. And Dan Bongino promoted Boyle’s story on Twitter by tweeting, “Politics over public safety?” In a message to Groundswellers, Ginni Thomas awarded “brownie points” to Fitton, Gaffney, and other members for promoting the “politics over public safety” riff…
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/07/31/mission-accomplished-planned-parenthood-attacks-coordinated-high-ranking-republican-operatives/
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Nickname Caused Her To Brush Up On Biggie Smalls
Professed opera lover and Supreme Court associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a newfound love of hip-hop, she said in remarks on Wednesday at Duke University.
Her nickname, the Notorious R.B.G., caused her to broaden her musical horizons, according to the New York Times.
The name comes from rapper Notorious B.I.G, or Biggie Smalls, who was the face of New York hip-hop in the 90s.
“Both of us were born and raised in Brooklyn,” she said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rgb-notorious-big
Love or Let Me Be Lonely
Good morning, Ladies. SG2, thanks for posting this song. I loved the Friends of Distinction. Also, thanks to everyone for the great 80’s music week.
Morning, Kathleen! Friends of Distinction is the business!
I see you, young Lady!
Do what you’re told negroes & you won’t get hurt. Taney’s law: Blacks have no rights which the white man is bound to respect.
tell it, SG2
This is so sad. My heart just aches for the family.
I know that this Donald Trump is not going to be the GOP nominee, but it’s too bad. He, together with other members of his family, seem to represent every character deficit that is humanly possible and this makes him the ideal GOP candidate, in my opinion. I loathe these people.
Here’s Your Reminder That Donald Trump’s 2 Sons Are Also Big-Game Hunters
By Inae Oh | Wed Jul. 29, 2015 4:28 PM EDT
On Tuesday, an American dentist admitted to paying $50,000 to hunt and kill Cecil the lion, a beloved animal and popular tourist attraction in Zimbabwe. News of the killing sparked swift condemnation on social media, with many calling for Walter Palmer to be extradited to Zimbabwe to stand trial.
Amid the outrage, photos quickly resurfaced of Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, posing with the dead bodies of several exotic animals, including an African elephant and leopard, they had previously hunted for sport.
When the photos initially emerged online back in 2012, the Trump brothers staunchly defended themselves, taking to Twitter to “make no apologies.”
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/07/donald-trumps-kids-are-also-big-game-hunters
It’s a blood sport for these white men. They don’t kill black men, but their thirst to kill & for blood falls in the same category. Fucking COWARDS, the lot of them.
The thirst that white American men have to shoot at things is quite unsettling.
Truth. They kill with total disregard for the humanity of other people or the right to life of other beings.
Nothing but the truth, Ametia!
Good Morning Everyone.
Off to swim and run errands.