Today’s Gem is Ella Fitzgerald.
UNSPECIFIED – JANUARY 01: Photo of Ella Fitzgerald; Agency: Redferns (Photo by Gilles Petard/Redferns)
Ella Fitzgerald Biography
Singer (1917–1996)
Ella Fitzgerald, known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist who interpreted much of the Great American Songbook.
Synopsis
Following a troubled childhood, Ella Fitzgerald turned to singing and debuted at the Apollo Theater in 1934. Discovered in an amateur contest, she went on to became the top female jazz singer for decades. In 1958, Fitzgerald made history as the first African-American woman to win a Grammy Award. Due in no small part to her vocal quality, with lucid intonation and a broad range, the singer would go on to win 13 Grammys in total and sell more than 40 million albums. Her multi-volume “songbooks” on Verve Records are among America’s recording treasures. Fitzgerald died in California in 1996.
Early Years
Born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, singer Ella Fitzgerald was the product of a common-law marriage between William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Williams Fitzgerald. Ella experienced a troubled childhood that began with her parents separating shortly after her birth.
With her mother, Fitzgerald moved to Yonkers, New York. They lived there with her mother’s boyfriend, Joseph De Sailva. The family grew in 1923 with the arrival of Fitzgerald’s half-sister Frances. Struggling financially, the young Fitzgerald helped her family out by working as a messenger “running numbers” and acting as a lookout for a brothel. Her first career aspiration was to become a dancer.
After her mother’s death in 1932, Fitzgerald ended up moving in with an aunt. She started skipping school. Fitzgerald was then sent to a special reform school but didn’t stay there long. By 1934, Ella was trying to make it on her own and living on the streets. Still harboring dreams of becoming an entertainer, she entered an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She sang the Hoagy Carmichael tune “Judy” as well as “The Object of My Affection,” wowing the audience. Fitzgerald went on to win the contest’s $25 first place prize.
First No. 1: “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”
That unexpected performance at the Apollo helped set Fitzgerald’s career in motion. She soon met bandleader and drummer Chick Webb and eventually joined his group as a singer. Fitzgerald recorded “Love and Kisses” with Webb in 1935 and found herself playing regularly at one of Harlem’s hottest clubs, the Savoy. Fitzgerald also put out her first No. 1 hit, 1938’s “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which she co-wrote. Later that year Ella recorded her second hit, “I Found My Yellow Basket.”
In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight. Following Webb’s death in 1939, Ella became the leader of the band, which was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra. (Some sources refer to the group as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Band.) Around this time, Fitzgerald was briefly married to Ben Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and hustler. They wed in 1941, but she soon had their union annulled.
Rising Star
Going out on her own, Fitzgerald landed a deal with Decca Records. She recorded some hit songs with the Ink Spots and Louis Jordan in the early 1940s. Fitzgerald also made her film debut as Ruby in 1942’s comedy western Ride ‘Em Cowboy with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Her career really began to take off in 1946 when she started working with Norman Granz, the future founder of Verve Records. In the mid-1940s, Granz had started Jazz at the Philharmonic, a series of concerts and live records featuring most of the genre’s great performers. Fitzgerald also hired Granz to become her manager.
Around this time, Fitzgerald went on tour with Dizzy Gillespie and his band. She started changing her singing style, incorporating scat singing during her performances. Fitzgerald also fell in love with Gillespie’s bass player Ray Brown. The pair wed in 1947, and they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald’s half-sister whom they named Raymond “Ray” Brown Jr. The marriage ended in 1952.
Queen of Jazz
The 1950s and ’60s proved to be a time of great critical and commercial success for Fitzgerald, and she earned the moniker “First Lady of Song” for her mainstream popularity and unparalleled vocal talents. Her unique ability to mimic instrumental sounds helped popularize the vocal improvisation of scatting, which became her signature technique.
In 1956, Fitzgerald began recording for the newly created Verve. She made some of her most popular albums for the label, starting out with 1956’s Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. At the very first Grammy Awards in 1958, Fitzgerald picked up her first two Grammys—and made history as the first African-American woman to win the award—for best individual jazz performance and best female vocal performance for the two songbook projects Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book, respectively. (She worked directly with Ellington on the former album.)
A truly collaborative soul, Fitzgerald produced great recordings with such artists as Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. She also performed several times with Frank Sinatra over the years as well. In 1960, Fitzgerald broke into the pop charts with her rendition of “Mack the Knife.” She was still going strong well into the ’70s, playing concerts across the globe. One especially memorable concert series from this time was a two-week engagement in New York City in 1974 with Sinatra and Basie.
Later Years and Death
By the 1980s, Fitzgerald experienced serious health problems. She had heart surgery in 1986 and had been suffering from diabetes. The disease left her blind, and she had both legs amputated in 1994. She made her last recording in 1989 and her last public performance in 1991 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Ella Fitzgerald died on June 15, 1996, at her home in Beverly Hills.
In all, Fitzgerald recorded more than 200 albums and some 2,000 songs in her lifetime. Her total record sales exceeded 40 million. Her many accolades included 13 Grammy Awards, the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
While some critics complained that her style and voice lacked the depth of some her more bluesy counterparts, her success and the respect she garnered from the biggest names in the music industry showed that Fitzgerald was in a class all her own. Mel Torme described her as “the High Priestess of Song” and Pearl Bailey called her “the greatest singer of them all,” according to Fitzgerald’s official website. And Bing Crosby once said, “Man, woman or child, Ella is the greatest of them all.”
Since her passing, Fitzgerald has been honored and remembered in many ways. The United States Postal Service honored the late singer with an Ella Fitzgerald commemorative stamp celebrating the 90th anniversary of her birth. That same year, the tribute album We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song featured such artists as Gladys Knight, Etta James and Queen Latifah performing some of Fitzgerald’s classics.
When the victims of terrorism are black Africans we get deafening silence from the US media. #PrayForNigeria
https://twitter.com/TheRoot/status/713102030714310657
https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/713067997129269249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/713092027278229504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The GOP Committee Obsessed With Planned Parenthood Just Took A Darker Turn
BY ALEX ZIELINSKI
MAR 24, 2016 11:28 AM
The federal investigation into the unfounded claim that Planned Parenthood profits off of fetal tissue donations has taken an even darker turn.
A House committee led by anti-abortion Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is on the verge of issuing 17 subpoenas to medical companies to gather the names of medical researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians, and administrative staff who are in any way involved in fetal tissue research.
According to Blackburn: “We are going to review the business practices of these procurement organizations and do some investigating of how they have constructed a for-profit business model from selling baby body parts.”
The committee — called the “Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives” by the conservative representatives behind it — was originally created by former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to find out if Planned Parenthood has any involvement with the sale of fetal tissue, an idea sparked by a now-discredited undercover video campaign. Nearly 30 states that conducted similar investigations failed to turn up any evidence to support this claim.
This new focus — that many say threaten the lives and livelihood of anyone involved in research that uses fetal tissue — openly exhibits the GOP’s wild mission to find someone to hold accountable for a baseless accusation made in a few discredited attack videos. The attack has spiraled so far into broad areas of the medical industry, it’s almost hard to remember it’s solely rooted in lawmaker’s beliefs about abortion.
The researchers and technicians in question fear this attack could effectively halt critical research that depends on fetal tissue samples — including researching cures for the Zika virus, Parkinson’s disease, HIV, and many other fatal conditions. Of course, many also fear that making the researchers’ names public could seriously endanger their lives.
This isn’t the first round of subpoenas issued by the committee. Earlier in the year, Blackburn issued requests for documents to more than 30 agencies to dissect the conversations between medical supply companies and researchers.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/24/3763048/baby-parts-committee-subpoena/
Conservative justices struggle to understand ACA basics
03/24/16 08:40 AM
facebook twitter 5 save share group 59
By Steve Benen
Four years ago this week, when the U.S. Supreme Court first took up the issue of the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality, then-Justice Antonin Scalia raised an argument that made clear that he literally didn’t know what he was talking about.
Scalia argued at the time that the “Cornhusker Kickback,” added to the ACA to earn then-Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb.) support, was legally dubious and central to passage of the legislation. The problem, of course, is that the controversial provision wasn’t in the law at all – Scalia had heard about this in conservative media, rather than the legal briefs, but he didn’t realize the measure was removed from the bill before passage.
During the same oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito asked a question that was “painfully detached from an understanding” of the underlying issue, or even “how insurance works.”
Yesterday, as TPM’s Tierney Sneed reported, something similar happened during oral arguments in the case related to contraception coverage.
“What type a burden does that impose? Is it because these exchanges are so unworkable, even with the help of a navigator, that a woman who wants to get free contraceptive coverage simply has to sign up for that on one of the exchanges?” Justice Samuel Alito asked, snarkily, about the Obamacare health insurance exchanges used by those without employer-based health care plans.
[Solicitor General Donald Verrilli] pointed out that those sort of contraceptive-only policies don’t even exist on the exchanges.
Later, Chief Justice John Roberts insisted that women could simply purchase contraceptive coverage through exchange marketplaces. It fell to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to explain, “They’re not on the exchanges. That’s a falsehood.”
It’s tempting to think justices do their homework, read submitted legal briefs, and familiarize themselves with basic substantive details ahead of the oral arguments. But we’re occasionally reminded that some justices form beliefs borne of confusion, and don’t brush up on the facts ahead of time.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservative-justices-struggle-understand-aca-basics
https://twitter.com/LWV/status/713058803550265345?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I have to admit, I can’t believe that they’re going through with this. that they think this is going to turn out ok is pure pony and unicorn nonsense.
…………………
Shadow campaign to deny Trump his delegates begins
Kasich and Cruz quietly work to persuade delegates to break with GOP voters in a contested convention.
03/24/16 05:21 AM EDT
When South Dakota’s Republican activists convened in Pierre to pick their delegates to the Republican National Convention, they got an unexpected visitor.
Merle Madrid, senior aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, had flown in from Columbus to make an appeal: If the convention fails to elect front-runner Donald Trump on the first ballot, consider Kasich on the second — even if the state’s Republican voters sent them there to back Trump or Ted Cruz.
Madrid was polite and earnest, but, according to interviews with 17 of the state’s 29 delegates, he came up empty.
“Kasich will not get my vote no matter what he does. That ain’t gonna happen,” said delegate Allen Unruh, a Sioux Falls chiropractor and tea party activist.
Madrid’s visit to South Dakota on Saturday marked one of the earliest signs that the shadow campaign for the Republican nomination has begun. Kasich and Cruz are scrambling to secure commitments from bound delegates to break off on a second ballot and vote against Trump. In many cases, that means asking delegates to buck Republican primary voters in the name of settling on a nominee.
https://twitter.com/travelmammal/status/713054535946735620/photo/1
House Seeks Names of Fetal Tissue Researchers, Prompting Claims of Intimidation
MARCH 24, 2016
WASHINGTON — A special House committee empaneled to investigate fetal tissue research is preparing to issue 17 subpoenas to medical supply companies and laboratories, seeking the names of researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians and administrative personnel.
The House investigation into how some of the nation’s most prestigious universities acquire fetal tissue has prompted charges of intimidation and coercion, escalating a battle that some researchers fear could shut down studies seeking cures for Parkinson’s disease, the Zika virus and a host of other conditions.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, who opposes most fetal tissue research because of its association with abortion, intends to issue the subpoenas on behalf of the Republicans on the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. The panel was created to investigate fetal tissue research after the release of surreptitiously recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to profit illegally from the sale of such tissue.
LOL
https://youtu.be/r0wLebH0GGM
How Republicans are gaming the voting system to tip the 2016 election in their favor
By Paul Waldman
March 24 at 12:05 PM
In all the discussion of Donald Trump’s romp to the Republican nomination, you might have missed that there was actually an electoral catastrophe in Arizona on Tuesday, and it didn’t involve Trump’s victory. It was about polling places, a seemingly mundane topic that threatens to put a thumb on the scale for Republicans in the fall. And it’s just as they planned.
People all over Arizona are livid about the fact that they had to wait as much as five hours to vote on Tuesday, because Republicans in the state drastically cut back on the number of polling places. In Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix and is home to about 4.2 million people, the number of polling places was slashed from 200 a few years ago down to 60, or one polling place for every 70,000 residents. Many voters, faced with hours-long waits, simply walked away in frustration. And why did this happen? In part, you can thank John Roberts and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Ari Berman explains:
Previously, Maricopa County would have needed to receive federal approval for reducing the number of polling sites, because Arizona was one of 16 states where jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination had to submit their voting changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This type of change would very likely have been blocked since minorities make up 40 percent of Maricopa County’s population and reducing the number of polling places would have left minority voters worse off. Section 5 blocked 22 voting changes from taking effect in Arizona since the state was covered under the VRA in 1975 for discriminating against Hispanic and Native American voters.
But after the Supreme Court gutted the VRA in 2013, Arizona could make election changes without federal oversight. The long lines in Maricopa County last night were the latest example of the disastrous consequences of that decision.
In that 2013 decision, the Supreme Court conservatives said that key parts of the Voting Rights Act are no longer needed because discrimination in voting is a thing of the past. As soon as the decision came down, Republican state legislatures moved swiftly to pass new voting hurdles that previously would have required Justice Department approval before. Here’s a summary of the Republican voting program:
Impose voter ID requirements
Shorten early voting periods
Eliminate early voting on Sundays, when many African-American churches organize “souls to the polls” voting drives after services
Eliminate same-day registration
Restrict the ability of citizen groups to conduct voter registration drives
Reduce the number of polling places
Especially since the GOP sweep of 2010, Republican-controlled states have selected from this menu to restrict voting rights in any way they could. Here’s a map produced by the Brennan Center for Justice showing where voting restrictions have passed since then:
Imagine President Al Gore. Voting matters, elections have consequences, sometimes spanning decades and with tentacles into so many issues. In this case, voter suppression that seems to be spreading like a wildfire.
He is so on the pole:
https://twitter.com/goldietaylor/status/713044430362710016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is who they are to the core
https://twitter.com/paulwaldman1/status/713038835404374016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/713036414745575424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Amazing. Not what I would guess, seems very optimistic. I think my state, Arizona, will most definitely go to Trump if he is the nominee. Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina seem mighty unlikely. I’ve noticed that a lot of folks are expecting a tsunami of Democratic voters to suddenly materialize if Trump is nominated. I guess I’m not that optimistic.
Meant to say that FL, GA, and NC seem unlikely to go blue in 2016.
I sorta disagree with you, Liza. I see the same negatives with Latinos that others see. Willard only won, what, 27% of the Latino vote?
Trump’s negatives are in the 80% with Latinos.
I believe we keep Florida. Never had Georgia, and North Carolina – eh.
Wish I could say we keep Florida….I live here and I say we lose it….there is a lot of bitter people with Obama derangement syndrome out here. Hillary isn’t trusted even a little bit. The youth is with Bernie but I believe this state goes red this year:(
I think Florida might go blue by a slim margin if there is a massive voter turnout in the southern part of the state. The north is Deep South and the non-coastal innards are full of rednecks. But I can see where Hillary as the nominee could be a real problem.
https://twitter.com/FranklinFoer/status/712990010300039168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/nationalpost/status/711954729299914752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/fusetv/status/712747327128256513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
So much for the separation of church and state…..lets make a law to protect religions right to hate and discriminate. Hmmmm…this country is so full of shit!
If you are interested in cutting edge Alzheimer’s disease research, this is fascinating.
DR. COSTANTINO IADECOLA HAS LONG BEEN AT THE VANGUARD OF UNDERSTANDING THE VASCULAR DRIVERS OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
Blood-Brain Barrier
Today Dr. Costantino Iadecola is known as one of the world’s leading experts on dementia, stroke and the aging brain. Twenty-five years ago, he was considered something of a heretic.
Read more…
http://weill.cornell.edu/news/news/2016/03/blood-brain-barrier.html
Amy Crawford
This story first appeared in Weill Cornell Medicine, Vol. 15, No.1.
Posted March 4, 2016 11:40 AM | Permalink to this post
DR. IADECOLA’s collaborator mentioned in this article is my nephew. This article is actually quite readable for laymen. It’s not often that I get to read something about his work that I can actually understand. His grandmother, my mother, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about eight years before she died.
Poll: 6-in-10 Republicans say no majority of delegates needed for nomination
By NICK GASS 03/23/16 05:35 PM EDT
Republican voters appear to agree with Donald Trump: Whoever has the most delegates should win the GOP nomination — never mind if he racks up a majority.
Sixty-three percent of Republican voters said the candidate with the most delegates should win the party’s nomination, even if he does not get an outright majority before the Republican National Convention in July, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll out Wednesday. Just 33 percent said the delegates should decide who is the nominee with no restriction on who they could select.
“While I believe I will clinch before Cleveland and get more than 1237 delegates, it is unfair in that there have been so many in the race!” Trump tweeted shortly after the poll’s release.
Continuing a long-running streak, Trump still tops the Republican field among voters nationwide, earning the support of 40 percent of the 366 people who said they are likely to vote in their state’s Republican primary or caucus or who have already done so, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 31 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 25 percent, with 5 percent not sure. Kasich’s share of support is up seven points from his Real Clear Politics average nationally over the last week.
Voters also indicated that they would support Trump over both Cruz and Kasich in a head-to-head matchup, with Trump leading Cruz 48 percent to 44 percent and ahead of Kasich 51 percent to 43 percent.
Of the 149 people who indicated that they have voted against Trump or plan to do so, 34 percent said their vote is more to stop the current front-runner, compared with 57 percent who said it was to support either Cruz or Kasich, while 8 percent were not sure.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/republican-nomination-delegates-trump-221175#ixzz43pu4KJpH
Liza, Eliihass
Clinton Email Scandal: Here’s One Thing Hillary Was Trying To Hide
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clinton-email-scandal-heres-one-thing-hillary-was-trying-to-hide/
Corruption: Newly released documents reveal part of what Hillary Clinton was hoping to hide by using a personal email account for official government business. With the Clintons, it’s all about building an empire.
Judicial Watch released 276 documents Tuesday that had been obtained through one of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Among the material are emails that show the State Department under Clinton was coordinating with the Clinton Foundation staff and how foreign governments sought favor through the intertwined State Department-Clinton Foundation link.
As we’ve said before, it looks as if Clinton used her job at the State Department to funnel cash into her family’s nonprofit organization.
The latest batch of emails shows that foreign interests in Libya and Syria were among the many that took advantage of the State’s close ties to the Clinton Foundation. It was previously discovered that governments in Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman made donations to the foundation in return for, as far as we can tell, favorable treatment by the State Department.
Judicial Watch reminds us that the Clinton Foundation has “accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state,” including “a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state (that) violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration.”
“…it looks as if Clinton used her job at the State Department to funnel cash into her family’s nonprofit organization.”
Unbelievable, yet very believable because it’s the Clintons. And they engage in this kind of thing as though they can never be held accountable, because they are above the law, because THEY are the CLINTONS.
I wish I could put into words how weary I am of these people.
Funnel money into the Clinton Foundation. Was she running a political operation within the State Department?
Sure is starting to look like it. What is interesting is that Clinton supposedly is thoroughly vetted, all her baggage is out there they say. Well, maybe not. Who was paying attention to the Clinton Foundation?
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/712973508029100032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
just because they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, no need for them to get mad because the President can multitask
https://twitter.com/CapehartJ/status/712980305557061632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/712776051378622464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
So what good is a conviction? “I CONVICT YOU, now go home and be a good boy.” That is not a punishment nor is it a deterrent to wanna-be killers.
https://youtu.be/CCbWyYr82BM
https://twitter.com/BlackPplVines/status/712807084472012801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: An Urgent Call to Action
03/22/2016 02:52 pm ET
The explosion of Type 2 diabetes following the epidemic of obesity in Western countries is well known. The implications for a rise in heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure and amputations is overwhelming. Type 2 diabetes is to a large part a food-borne illness associated with excess calories and processed foods. Logic would have it that if poor food choices and obesity result in Type 2 diabetes, then better food choices and weight loss reverse the disease.
The ability to reverse Type 2 seems so obvious that further scientific studies might seem superfluous. Dr. Neal Barnard previously demonstrated the superiority of a plant-based diet and weight loss to standard diets in Type 2 diabetes. My friend Marc Ramirez, a former University of Michigan right guard, developed Type 2 diabetes following weight gain in his 30s. On multiple medications for “management” of his disease, he was not aware of the potential to reverse it. After viewing the documentary Forks Over Knives he immediately transitioned to a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet just over four years ago. He lost weight easily and within a few months was off all medications with normal lab results. He remains free of medication to this point and has normal laboratory values.
More hope comes from new data available this week. The new study involved 30 volunteers with Type 2 diabetes who followed a 600-700 calorie diet consisting of three diet shakes a day and 240 grams of non-starchy vegetables for eight weeks. Some had been treated for diabetes for up to 23 years. After eight weeks their usual diet was resumed but at one-third of their prior caloric intake and they were followed for six months. They were seen monthly.
What was found? Thirteen of the volunteers were free of Type 2 diabetes after six months of maintenance diet. Participants lost on average 30 pounds. Many remained overweight or obese but had lost enough to allow normal insulin production and action.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-kahn-md/reversing-type-2-diabetes_b_9522354.html?utm_content=buffer97d82&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
https://twitter.com/BAM_FI/status/712961492128292864/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/BAM_FI/status/712935662719279104/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/712853416670789634/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Uh huh
Uh huh
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/23/16
‘Family values’ governor mired in sex scandal
Rachel Maddow reports on the increasing pressure and scrutiny on Alabama Governor Robert Bentley as evidence of an affair with his senior political adviser has become more explicit.
Alabama’s ‘family values’ governor mired in sex scandal
03/24/16 08:00 AM—UPDATED 03/24/16 08:25 AM
By Steve Benen
While running for governor in 2010, Alabama’s Robert Bentley emphasized his “family values” credentials. The Republican candidate not only ran ads featuring his wife and family, but Bentley also said he believes so strongly in the sanctity of traditional marriage that as far as he’s concerned, when same-sex couples wed, their marriages should be dismissed as “social experiments.”
Given what we learned yesterday, the GOP governor probably shouldn’t have made his family such a centerpiece of his platform.
Alabama’s Sunday school-teaching governor was accused by his former top cop on Wednesday of breaking the Seventh Commandment – thou shalt not commit adultery.
Spencer Collier claims he was fired from his post as head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency on Tuesday because he refused to cover up Gov. Robert Bentley’s alleged affair with top political adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason.
3/18/2016
Note to Republicans: You Own Trump, You Psychopaths
Let’s get this straight. The party that:
1. Has declared that the President should have no say in choosing a Supreme Court justice in his final year in office;
2. Has elected officials who support a man who led a group that pointed guns at federal employees doing their duty to enforce the laws;
3. Shut down the government because President Obama wouldn’t agree to defund a program that had been passed by a previous Congress;
4. Refused to pass even the mildest of gun regulations in the wake a mass shooting that killed 20 grade school children even though over 90% of Americans supported such action;
5. Supported a government employee who refused to do her job because she didn’t like what she was legally obligated to do;
6. Once passed legislation to force doctors to keep a brain-dead woman alive;
– See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/03/note-to-republicans-you-own-trump-you.html#sthash.6I7DsqtE.dpuf
3/22/2016
Donald Trump Is a Dangerously Dumb Man Who Will Get Us All Killed
Last night, through a thick whiskey and opium haze, the Rude Pundit’s bedtime reading was the full transcript of Republican presidential candidate, and man most likely to challenge you to a thumb war, Donald Trump’s interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post (motto: “No, really, people want to read what Joe Scarborough has to say about shit”). He was alternately appalled and amused by the rambling, incoherent series of non-statements, bullshit, braggadocio, and ego that passed for “answers” to the questions. How can you not laugh when a buffoon who wants to be president seems to think that good foreign policy has to do with surprising people, saying, “President Obama, when he left Iraq, gave a specific date – we’re going to be out. I thought that was a terrible thing to do,” as if no one would notice tens of thousands of troops packing up?
And then he awoke this morning, and Brussels had been attacked by fucking savage assholes so deluded by religion and hatred (towards them and against others) that they blew themselves up in crowded spaces. And the fact that Donald Trump is going to be a nominee of his party, with a sizable chunk of Republicans saying that they will support him in a general election– 82% said they support him enthusiastically, with reservations, and only because he’d be the party’s nominee– isn’t funny. It’s fucking frightening. At this point, Trump has revealed himself to be so stupid that he makes George W. Bush look like a fucking sage.
Asked about how he would deal with ISIS, which murdered people in Belgium today and Turkey last week, and whether he would use nuclear weapons to prevent a ground war, Trump responded that he would handle them like he did his political opponents: “I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me.” The problem with being a counterpuncher, of course, is that the first punch might knock you out.
– See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/03/donald-trump-is-dangerously-dumb-man.html#sthash.RcqLs1e0.dpuf
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/712629063605739520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/712862337095639041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/tcmassie/status/712815114320289793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
He is such and embarrassment! I just watched him sputter and stutter. My husband cannot stand him I mean never liked him from day one!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good morning, everyone!