Wednesday Open Thread | Sweet Soul Music Week

Posted on September 16, 2015 by rikyrah

It’s HUMP DAY! Queen of Soul, Ms. Aretha Franklin

This entry was posted in Current Events, Music, News, Open Thread, Politics and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

84 Responses to Wednesday Open Thread | Sweet Soul Music Week

  1. eliihass says:
    September 16, 2015 at 9:12 pm

    Ben Carson had to reassure his massas that he is not in touch with the blacks in the White House…He even stressed just how much he’s ‘hated’ by suggesting that he would have to hire a ‘food taster’ if he ever had to visit with the Obamas…

    What a lying, shameless, pathetic, spineless desperate suck-up…Ugh…

    Reply
  2. eliihass says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:58 pm

    When “Christian” Dr. Ben Carson is walking back and putting in disclaimers regarding his statement that the minimum wage ought to be raised, one wonders how he reconciles his delusional quest for power he’ll never have, with throwing poor and disadvantaged families in our society under the bus to appease the stone-cold hearts of those he willingly allows to exploit his dark skin in exchange for momentarily boosting and enriching him and making him a poster child of the good black we ‘like’, to offer brazen justification for their unabashed racism..

    Reply
  3. eliihass says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:42 pm

    As a Californian, I have a lot to say about the very off-putting and repellent Ms. Hot air, Fake Bluster Carly Fiorina…

    I know so many former HP folks who will always abhor her with the heat of a thousand suns – she not only destroyed a company, she destroyed careers and lives. A narcissist of the first order – and as inept as they come, rising through undeserved positions she wasn’t qualified for – and only due to privileges of birth, whiteness and entitlement – and perpetually whipping out the misogyny card when she didn’t get what she wanted. When she was ousted at HP – which still has never recovered by the way, from Fiorina’s ‘magic’ touch – and she broke down crying, it gave a few whose careers she’d tried to destroy, if nothing, a little bit of satisfaction..

    It’s so easy to see who the establishment and the Neocons who comprise the audience in that room, want – and it’s obvious who’s been prepared by the Neocons in this debate…

    But no matter, Carly Fiorina should never be allowed near power or the semblance of it ever again…and especially not near the White House…This woman epitomizes the very worst of Ms Ann – hard to believe that anyone could make our Hillary look feeble – or exhibit more bluster – or that well-oiled sense of entitlement…and demonstrably overblown sense of self and ability…

    Reply
  4. eliihass says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:00 pm

    Watching the republican ‘debate’…oy vey..

    Such bad actors all around…

    Worse still, it feels like Jeb was pre-fed the questions before hand, and he still managed to come up with (or more like his handlers did) and memorize some of the lamest responses…

    Reply
  5. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 5:35 pm

    MSNBC has been FELATING TRUMP since June 2015, and trying to make us swallow the foolisheness. I’m sure his sperm counts down to null about now.

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      September 16, 2015 at 5:39 pm

      All well and good Twitter, but you need to get more POC interning in there, and not try and use this moment to check your box on diversity.

      Ahmed would get swallowed up from all that WHITENESS. Those white frat boys… well, you know.

      Reply
  7. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 5:32 pm

    Just so we’re clear, these GOP debates are SPECTACLE only..

    The Republican Party seems to get away with acting, poor acting, I might add, when it comes to saying or doing anything meaningful in the way of SERVING OUR COUNTRY.

    I REFUSE TO WATCH

    Reply
  8. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 4:53 pm

    Sep 16, 2015 @ 11:21 AM
    News & Politics
    Politics With Charles P. Pierce

    Reminder: All of These Republican Candidates Are Horrible

    The clown car parks itself at the Reagan Library tonight.

    Let’s see if I have the Morning Line straight here. Tonight, in a shrine to a man who thought catsup was a vegetable, who blamed trees for air pollution, and who believed he had been there for the liberation of Buchenwald when actually he had been liberating martinis at the Brown Derby at the time, we will have the following people contesting each other for the presidential nomination of one of the only two political parties that we have allowed ourselves to have.

    A brilliant neurosurgeon who believes that the Medicaid expansion was the Nuremberg Laws.

    A guy who was governor of Florida shortly after Ponce de Leon blew town whose brother pretty much wrecked the country.

    A bass-playing Bible-banging hayseed, who’s presently campaigning for the rights of faith-based goldbricks to slough off on their government jobs.

    Two incredibly unpopular governors, only one of whom is under active criminal investigation at the moment.

    One governor who is popular in his state, but unloved by the fans of all these other clucks.

    And three senators: a rookie from Florida with a pole up his ass the size of El Capitan; a former brogressive hero who can’t make up his mind on the Civil Rights movement, and a Canadian-born, Tex-Mex Joe McCarthy whose only achievement in political office is pissing off Mitch McConnell which, while admirable, is hardly a qualification to have the guy with the nuclear codes sitting outside your office.

    A frontrunner whose entire platform, as reinforced by a completely whackadoo collection of random sentences that he spouted on Tuesday night, is that he’s him and you’re not, and neither are the Supreme Leader of Iran, the president of Mexico, or the CEO of the Ford Motor Company.

    A woman who nearly destroyed a hugely respected American brand and got paid something north of $20 million just to go away.

    http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37982/all-republican-candidates-horrible/

    Reply
  9. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 4:41 pm

    Irving McArthur is getting CLOCKED!

    Reply
  10. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 3:21 pm

    It’s the ONLY language they understand

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reply
  12. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 2:41 pm

    The 2015 National Book Award nominees, for nonfiction

    The nominees include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sally Mann and Pulitzer-winning poet Tracy K. Smith.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me” (Spiegel & Grau, 152 pp., $24)

    “‘Between the World and Me’ is written as a letter to the author’s teenage son, conveying the personal and historical struggle to ‘live free in this black body,’ a body that faces the constant, exhausting threat of state-sanctioned violence. But the book also reads like an open letter to white America, to the well-meaning sorts who at some point might have said, ‘Yes, things are bad, but they’re getting better, right?’ ” (Washington Post essay, Carlos Lozada)

    Coates “is firing on all cylinders, and it is something to behold: a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers at the very moment national events most conform to his vision. It is hard, perhaps impossible, not to be enraptured by his righteous and. . . loveless indignation.” (Washington Post review, Thomas Chatterton Williams)

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/09/16/the-2016-national-book-award-nominees-for-nonfiction/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_popns

    Reply
  13. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 2:37 pm

    Erica Jong and Why Critiquing White Feminism is Necessary
    September 15, 2015 • Jessie Daniels • whites, women

    I first read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying some time in the 1990s, way of out context from the time it was published. The novel recounts the adventures of Jong’s alter-ego Isadora Wing, who is on a quest to find meaning outside a deadening marriage. When the book was published in 1973, Jong was a relatively young 30-years old and the book, with its shocking-for-the-time embrace of the zipless f-ck and women’s (hetero) sexuality was a dramatic departure for mainstream understandings of feminism. Leading (male) literary figures at the time – like John Updike and Paul Theroux – said horrible, sexist things about the book, while Henry Miller declared it the “female equivalent” of his novel Tropic of Cancer. It was, for certain women, at one point in time, a revelation and a necessary intervention. It’s hard to overstate the success of Jong’s first novel: it’s reportedly sold more than 20 million copies and been translated into 27 languages.

    SNIP

    The Decatur Book Festival

    It was this outsized success of Jong’s 1973 novel, along with the release of a new book Fear of Dying, that got her invited to be the recent Decatur Book Festival, Jong was billed as the keynote speaker. Gay, an associate professor of English at Purdue University, joined her as interviewer and host, fielding questions from a near-capacity crowd and answering some questions herself. This conversation was meant to “celebrate feminism” but according to multiple reports, the format eventually evolved into a casual exchange that became “testy,” “awkward” and “uncomfortable”. That awkwardness is worth exploring for what it reveals about white feminism and why it requires critique.

    http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2015/09/15/erica-jong-why-critiquing-white-feminism-is-necessary/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racismreview%2FnYnz+%28racismreview.com%29

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    I’m Ahmed. Except I’m Not Brown.

    I’m disgusted by this story, reported by the Dallas Morning News tonight. A 14-year-old high school freshman named Ahmed Mohamed…

    Do I need to fill in the details? I’m outraged about a story involving a kid named Ahmed Mohamed. Can you live in America today and not already understand the basic shape of what happened at his school?

    He’s a kid with a keen interest in engineering. He made a simple digital clock at home and brought it to school so he could show it off to one of his teachers. After a different teacher subsequently saw it and thought it looked like a bomb, the school administration called the police and Ahmed was led out of the school in handcuffs in full view of the student body.

    I recognized this kid immediately. This was me when I was in public school. Even in sixth grade, my classroom cubby contained a lunchbox filled with batteries, wires, and random circuits. In later years, I had technical manuals and printouts filled with arcane symbols that I knew were 6502 assembler opcodes but could have been coded German Army ENIGMA signals for all my teachers knew. I might have had the components of busted floppy drives in my bookbag. During a frustrated, failure-filled period when I was trying to master photographic printmaking, my bookbag might have contained brown bottles filled with stinky chemicals.

    I twisted doorknobs and walked into unlocked, dark rooms. On one occasion, this led to my discovering a long-disused DEC minicomputer.

    Then there was the time I looked at my locker combination dial and realized that it was a total sham. The little paper sticker told me that the first number in my combination was “17.” But…this is a crappy little lock. Can’t I be off by one or two, and it’ll still be good? Fast-forward through a period of theories and experiments and trial and error, and I’d figured out how to determine the combination through guesswork.

    My hobby was breaking the copy protection on commercial games; yes, technically, theft. The knowledge I gained in this pursuit allowed me to create my own heavily-patched (but innocent) version of Apple DOS, which was running on all of the computer lab’s Apple //es without anybody’s knowledge. Yes, technically, distributing malware.

    All of these stories come across as Charming and Nostalgic tales of a nerdy little kid on his way to a predestined career in science, math, or technology. There was never any negative fallout. Yes, partly because it was more than a decade before 9/11.

    But they’re happy stories mostly because I was a white Catholic kid named Andy Ihnatko. Not a brown kid named Ahmed Mohamed, and not a black kid named anything.

    http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/

    Reply
  16. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 2:16 pm

    HELL hath no FURY like a clock-toting Muslim teenager!

    Reply
  17. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    Meanwhile, ya’ll remember that media is plugging RACISM & HATE via the Trumpster, who should have long been put in a DUMPSTER.

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      September 16, 2015 at 2:07 pm

      Ha! How you gone start off with the rules of the game being all players getting $1,500, and BLACKS don’t get their $1,500?

      YOU BETTER TELL IT.

      Reply
  19. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:46 pm

    These tweets show the enormity of the RIDICULOUSNESS IDIOCY that has permeated America through WHITE FEAR.

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reply
  22. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    If anyone needs to be detained and handcuffed, it’s Donald Trump, for terrorizing American with that rat-nest hair and vulgar BIGOTRY & RACISM!

    Reply
  23. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

    …………..

    Shameful Lehman Brothers legacy taints Jeb Bush, John Kasich

    Rachel Maddow reminds viewers of the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent meltdown of the entire global financial system, and points out the deep, very lucrative involvement of Jeb Bush and John Kasich in Lehman Brothers as its catastrophic collapse nearly wiped out the U.S. economy

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/shameful-lehman-legacy-taints-bush–kasich-526278723805.

    Reply
  26. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    Jail Says Man Tried to Hang Himself — Apparently, They Didn’t Expect He’d Survive

    Claire Bernish
    September 15, 2015
    (ANTIMEDIA) St. Louis County, MO — An arrest for minor traffic violations and brief time spent in jail led to such highly peculiar and suspect circumstances — including police turning away a desperately needed ambulance and an attempted hanging by shoelace — 44-year-old Bernard Scott is lucky to be alive.

    In September 2014, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bernard Scott was being held on $360 bail in the Pine Lawn jail in St. Louis County when he began to complain of abdominal pain and bleeding. Jailers summoned paramedics, who immediately tried to transport him to the emergency room.

    http://theantimedia.org/jail-says-man-tried-to-hang-himself-apparently-they-didnt-expect-hed-survive/

    Reply
  27. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:09 pm

    Daniel Drezner @dandrezner

    @AdamSerwer @michellebvd FACT CHECK: the engineering teacher was the only one who didn’t freak out. It was the English teacher who wigged.

    Reply
  29. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:07 pm

    PragmaticObotsUnite @PragObots

    Let MacArthur High School Principal Daniel Cummings that you support Ahmed Mohamed:
    972.600.7370 dacummings@irvingisd.net #IStandWithAhmed

    Reply
  31. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    If The Modern Media Covered The Civil Rights Movement

    September 15, 2015 by Oliver Willis

    Mark Halperin, Bloomberg:

    Governor George Wallace gets the optics just right with his photo-op in front of the schoolhouse doors. He recognized this segregation wedge issue and got ahead of it. A+

    Ron Fournier, National Journal:

    It hurts me to say this because I think he’s right in his heart, but Dr. King’s message is just too divisive and strident. Why can’t he meet the segregationists half way? Please Dr. King, please lead. Find a way to heal this nation without being so pigheaded about this “freedom” thing.

    Chris Cillizza, Washington Post:

    President Johnson gets our award for the Worst Week in Washington after signing the Civil Rights Act. Major fail as he jettisons the south from the Democratic coalition.

    Chuck Todd, NBC:

    The polling on this civil rights stuff is all over the place. Depending on the wording, some believe blacks should be equal to whites, while others say no. Navigating these issues will be tricky, but the left could suffer some backlash with their push for human equality. Might be time to slow down.

    Joe Scarborough, MSNBC:

    I don’t get why the looney left is pushing this civil rights thing so hard. It’s just radical far left stuff. Isn’t the abolition of slavery enough for this crowd? We’ll have Governor Christie on next to comment.

    http://oliverwillis.com/2015/09/15/if-the-modern-media-covered-the-civil-rights-movement/

    Reply
  37. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 11:59 am

    Apparently, white guys walking around with GUNS in open & carry states is SAFER than a 14 year old Muslim boy bringing a homemade clock to school.

    FUCKED UP

    Reply
  39. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 11:57 am

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reply
  40. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 10:59 am

    Ahmed

    12011309_10207170934289860_4635627187374355777_n

    this is ALL KINDS OF WRONG, RIGHT HERE

    Reply
  41. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 10:03 am

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOBRPuUMnJY&feature=player_embedded#t=0

    “This whole anti-immigrant sentiment that’s out there in our politics right now is contrary to who we are. Because unless you are a Native American, your family came from someplace else,” Mr. Obama said. “Don’t pretend that somehow 100 years ago the immigration process was all smooth and strict. That’s not how it worked.” The grandparents and great-grandparents of politicians taking a hard line on immigration, he said, were also “somehow considered unworthy or uneducated or unwashed.”
    “When I hear folks talking as if somehow these kids are different from my kids or less worthy in the eyes of God, that somehow they are less worthy of our respect and consideration and care, I think that’s un-American,” Mr. Obama said.

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      September 16, 2015 at 9:50 am

      Just like Palin did in 2008, Trump is adding fuel to the ugly fire of Xenophobia and downright ugly racism & bigotry.

      Fuck the media for showcasing it for ratings.

      Reply
  43. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 9:28 am

    Outraged Dad Wonders If a Public Speaking Class Is Only for Rich Kids
    September 15, 2015 7:57 AM

    Back in 2006 media mogul Oprah Winfrey conducted a provocative experiment for an episode of her eponymous talk show: She swapped kids from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, a well-heeled Chicago suburb, with kids from Harper High School in Englewood, an impoverished, violence-filled neighborhood on the city’s South Side, just 35 miles away.

    It wasn’t only the Olympic-size pool at Neuqua Valley that shocked and angered the kids from Harper. They were stunned by the academic offerings—including more than two dozen AP classes, compared with the two offered at Harper.

    Nearly a decade later, Frankie Adao, a dad in Newark, New Jersey, who is active in progressive education reform efforts there, is wondering why his son is only being taught ELA/SS,—a combination of English language arts and social studies— while his peers in other parts of the state are being offered a more plentiful selection of advanced-sounding courses: Google Hacks, Civics, Media/Public Speaking, Sports Statistics, Creative Writing, and a whole stable of other art, language, and music electives. That’s just at one school.

    “A bit of jealousy came over me,” Adao wrote on his blog late last week about his reaction to seeing the schedules being offered at other schools. “I wanted for my son what their kids had! Fair and equal opportunity to a great education.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/outraged-dad-wonders-public-speaking-class-only-rich-115727369.html

    Reply
  45. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:31 am

    With shutdown looming, Boehner finds himself stuck
    09/16/15 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Funding for the federal government expires in just two weeks, and for now, the leadership in the Republican Congress have no idea how to prevent it. House leaders would love to get some constructive cooperation from their far-right, rank-and-file members, but as we were reminded yesterday, that’s not happening.
    A leading conservative lawmaker eager to dethrone House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is ratcheting up the pressure for a shutdown battle over Planned Parenthood that neither Boehner nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) want and are trying desperately to avoid.

    “I cannot and will not fund a vile, racist organization who specializes in convincing mothers to kill their children and then selling their baby parts to the highest bidder,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) said in a written statement to TPM Tuesday. […] Huelskamp is a signatory to the letter circulated by conservative House lawmakers pledging not to fund Planned Parenthood, even if that means a government shutdown at the end of this month.

    To the extent that reality matters, Planned Parenthood is not racist; it does not convince women to commit murder; and it does not sell baby parts.

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/shutdown-looming-boehner-finds-himself-stuck

    Reply
  46. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:17 am

    This case gets stranger and stranger.

    …………………………..

    Police, coroner keep clashing in Fox Lake cop case

    WRITTEN BY BY RUTH FULLER SPECIAL TO SUN-TIMES POSTED: 09/15/2015, 04:49PM

    nvestigators looking into the death of a Fox Lake Police officer met with the pathologist who performed his autopsy without the knowledge of the Lake County coroner, underscoring the strained relationship between the police and the coroner in the case, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

    The meeting concerning slain officer Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was held last week, at 10 a.m. Wednesday, at the Round Lake Police Department, where Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Cmdr. George Filenko is police chief.

    Pathologist Manny Montez confirmed that he attended the meeting, along with Filenko, other members of the task force and members of the FBI. Representatives of the Lake County state’s attorney’s office also attended.

    “They called me and told me to be present, so I showed up,” Montez said. “We went over my findings. They had copies of my sketches because I haven’t finalized my [autopsy] report yet.”

    Lake County Coroner Thomas A. Rudd said he was “totally confused” when he learned about the meeting.

    I was not invited to the meeting and I have just found out that the meeting occurred,” Rudd said. Montez is a contracted employee of the coroner and reports his findings to Rudd, who makes the final determination on the cause of death.

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/962114/hold-police-coroner-continue-clash-fox-lake-cop-case

    Reply
  47. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 8:15 am

    BUT, they can go around closing schools.

    ……….

    CPS spent millions on outside food; can’t say who got a third of it

    WRITTEN BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK AND TINA SFONDELES POSTED: 09/15/2015, 06:55PM

    More than $150,000 in pizza from Connie’s and Lou Malnati’s.

    More than $200,000 in Subway sandwiches….

    Those are just some of the expenditures that a cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools made during the last school year, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars on fast food, according to public records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

    But CPS can’t say, for the most part, whether CPS students or bureaucrats got to eat it.

    Within hours of CPS’ release of the records Tuesday, which was late by about two months under state law, the district announced plans to reform its food spending policy.

    CPS said its own audit showed that the district spent a total of $2.9 million on food from outside vendors between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, and nearly $1.5 million of that was authorized by the central office. CPS also said more than a third couldn’t be accounted for because the spending was miscoded or lacked detail.

    “That’s inexcusable at a time when we’re cutting nurses and counselors and, you know, they should have a zero line-item budget allowance for any kind of food for central office,” said Wendy Katten of the parent group Raise Your Hand, which has been calling on CPS for months to cut wasteful spending.

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/962515/cps-spent-millions-outside-food-cant-account-got-third

    Reply
  52. rikyrah says:
    September 16, 2015 at 7:50 am

    Good Morning, Everyone :)

    Reply
  54. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 7:42 am

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioTX8uyGUJ0

    Rosalynn Carter gets emotional over Jimmy’s cancer diagnosis

    Rosalynn gave an update on his condition Tuesday night after revealing he had cancer last month.

    Carter says he’s received two of four cancer treatments already.

    He says doctors will not allow him to go Ghana for a four-day meeting focusing on women’s rights.

    But Carter says he is looking forward to celebrating his 91st birthday in just a few weeks.

    Channel 2 political reporter Lori Geary was at the Carter Center Tuesday night as he spoke with his wife by his side.

    Former first lady Rosalynn Carter choked up as she thanked so many people for the outpouring of support and prayers.

    “In spite of what’s going on, it’s been kind of wonderful just to know we have that kind of support, and also Jimmy’s attitude is helping,” Rosalynn Carter said.

    It was the first time Rosalynn has spoken publicly about her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

    http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/rosalynn-carter-gets-emotional-over-former-preside/nnf72/

    Reply
  55. Ametia says:
    September 16, 2015 at 7:32 am

    HUMP DAY! Good Morning, Everyone. :-)))

    Reply

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