Saturday Open Thread

Posted on August 20, 2016 by rikyrah

I hope you’re enjoying this weekend with family and friends.

This entry was posted in Open Thread, Politics and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

63 Responses to Saturday Open Thread

  1. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 10:36 pm

    Fortitude1913 @Fortitude1913
    And there it is: all of this is so @USASwimming doesn’t ban @RyanLochte & so his sponsors won’t drop him. A show to save his own ass.

    Reply
  2. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 10:35 pm

    Kevin Grüssing @KevDGrussing
    “I don’t want them to think I’m a drunk fratboy…”
    Too late for that shit mothafucka…
    #ThePasswordIsLied

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 8:48 pm

    Tika Sumpter on Playing the Future First Lady, Michelle Obama
    By ROBERT ITO
    AUG. 18, 2016

    WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Tika Sumpter knew the screenplay was something special. It was, at its core, a romance, with two charming leads slowly falling for each other over the course of a single Chicago day. They speak passionately — at some points, angrily — about moral courage and racial politics and the struggles of staying true to oneself. They take sides on “Good Times” versus “The Brady Bunch,” ice cream versus pie. They quote the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (“We Real Cool”) from memory, while sizing up Ernie Barnes’s painting “Sugar Shack.” They watch “Do the Right Thing.”

    It didn’t hurt that the two characters were Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson, in a fictionalized account of their first date, in 1989, when Spike Lee’s film was in theaters and Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much” was in the air.

    “I loved that it was an origin story about the two most famous people in the world right now, and about how they fell in love,” Ms. Sumpter said. “You don’t see a lot of black leads in love stories, and you definitely don’t see a lot of walk and talks with black people.”

    In “Southside With You,” which opens Aug. 26, Ms. Sumpter plays the first lady-to-be at 25, a corporate lawyer who is also an adviser to a young man named Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), an up-and-coming, Harvard-educated summer associate. The film received rave reviews when it had its premiere at Sundance, where it was one of the festival’s breakouts, in large part because of Ms. Sumpter’s performance. But “Southside With You” may not have been made if Ms. Sumpter hadn’t also pitched in as one of three producers.

    As much as Ms. Sumpter coveted the meaty role of Michelle Robinson, once she secured the part, reality set in. “At first it was overwhelming,” she admitted. “I’ve never been to Harvard, I’ve never been to Princeton. I didn’t even finish school because I couldn’t afford it. But once I stripped away that ‘Michelle Obama,’ I was able to take it back to that girl from the South Side.”

    The actress was here at the London Hotel on a recent morning, holding forth on the challenges of playing the young Ms. Robinson. Dressed in a black sundress and high heels, Ms. Sumpter, 36, would occasionally and animatedly slip into Mrs. Obama’s distinctive speech patterns to describe a scene or illustrate a point. “You feel like she’s talking just to you,” she said. “And she enunciates everything, to show that she really means what she says.”

    Born Euphemia LatiQue Sumpter in Queens, the actress was the fourth child of six. Her mother was a corrections officer at Rikers Island; her father died when she was 13. “My mom said I was quiet and observant,” she said. “I always wanted to impress her, so I’d always clean the house.” In school, she was on the cheerleading squad, ran for student council, befriended skinheads and “the preppy girls,” spoke up for the bullied. “I was that girl in high school,” she said.

    Ms. Sumpter caught the acting bug in grade school while watching episodes of “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World.” “I was like, I want to be in that box,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get in there, but I want to do that.” At 16, after her family moved to Long Island, she would take the train into Manhattan, paying for acting classes with money she earned working the concession stand at a local movie theater. “I’d go to open calls and be totally wrong for everything,” she remembered. “My hair would not be right.”

    At 20, she booked a commercial for Curve perfume. “They probably still sell it at Rite Aid,” she said with a laugh. It was her first gig, and it was filmed in Times Square, and she couldn’t have been happier.

    Reply
  9. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 8:37 pm

    Affluent and Black, and
    Still Trapped by Segregation
    Why well-off black families end up living in poorer areas
    than white families with similar or even lower incomes.

    By JOHN ELIGON and ROBERT GEBELOFFAUG. 20, 2016

    MILWAUKEE — Their daughter was sick and they needed family around to help care for her, so JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir took an unexpected detour.

    They had spent years blowing past mileposts: earning advanced degrees and six-figure incomes, buying a 2,500-square-foot Victorian with hardwood floors. Yet here they were, both 37, moving to a corner of town pocked by empty lots, cramming into an apartment above Ms. Sabir’s mother, in the very duplex that Ms. Sabir’s grandparents had bought six decades earlier.

    Their new dwelling was in a part of the Lindsay Heights neighborhood where more than one in three families lives in poverty; gunshots were too often a part of the nighttime soundtrack. They planned to leave once their daughter, Ameera, was healthy.

    But then, reminding them of why they feel at home in communities like this one, their new neighbors started frequently checking on Ameera: Is she doing O.K.? And on their son, Taj: When’s his next basketball game? Mr. Sabir’s car stalled in the middle of the street one night, and it was the young men too often stereotyped as suspicious who helped him push it home. So many welcoming black faces like their own, they thought.

    “It felt like that’s where we should be,” Ms. Sabir said.

    Now, two years later, Ameera, 14, is healthy. And the Sabirs have not left. They have, in fact, only strengthened their resolve to stay after a fatal police shooting last weekend led to fiery unrest that was also fueled by frustrations over race and segregation. Rooted where they are, the Sabirs point to a broad yet little explored fact of American segregation: Affluent black families, freed from the restrictions of low income, often end up living in poor and segregated communities anyway.

    It is a national phenomenon challenging the popular assumption that segregation is more about class than about race, that when black families earn more money, some ideal of post-racial integration will inevitably be reached.

    In fact, a New York Times analysis of 2014 census figures shows that income alone cannot explain, nor would it likely end, the segregation that has defined American cities and suburbs for generations.

    The choices that black families make today are inevitably constrained by a legacy of racism that prevented their ancestors from buying quality housing and then passing down wealth that might have allowed today’s generation to move into more stable communities. And even when black households try to cross color boundaries, they are not always met with open arms: Studies have shown that white people prefer to live in communities where there are fewer black people, regardless of their income.

    The result: Nationally, black and white families of similar incomes still live in separate worlds.

    In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, black families making $100,000 or more are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than even white households making less than $25,000. This is particularly true in areas with a long history of residential segregation, like metropolitan Milwaukee.

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 7:54 pm

    The evidence is mounting that Donald Trump isn’t as rich as he claims as an investigation into his business holdings revealed twice as much debt as he reported on his federal disclosure forms.

    The New York Times looked into Trump’s business interests and found a mountain of debt:

    But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’s inquiry also found that Mr. Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.

    For example, an office building on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, of which Mr. Trump is part owner, carries a $950 million loan. Among the lenders: the Bank of China, one of the largest banks in a country that Mr. Trump has railed against as an economic foe of the United States, and Goldman Sachs, a financial institution he has said controls Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, after it paid her $675,000 in speaking fees.

    Reply
  23. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 7:01 pm

    Eyezora @eyezora
    Billy Bush thought Al Roker was just gonna say “now here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods” but Uncle Al brought the receipts

    Reply
  24. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 7:00 pm

    PragmaticObotsUnite @PragObots
    Listen white people…never, EVER tell an older Black person to calm down. That’s a trigger that will land you in the hospital!

    Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      August 20, 2016 at 6:03 pm

      LOL

      Alma98
      I sooo love this, Al stirring his drink is the new Kermit sipping tea hahahaha.

      Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      August 20, 2016 at 6:08 pm

      Brandan Tate @MarlonBrandan
      Al Roker was stirring his drink to keep that Queens, NY from coming up outta him. Billy Bush don’t even now how close he was. Stir on, AR.

      Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      August 20, 2016 at 7:29 pm

      From VSB:

      Ari
      Al was stirring his drink to keep from f**king him up on national T.V. like my mom used to do when she hummed to herself to avoid giving us a back hand.

      BWA HA HA HA H AH AHA

      Reply
  47. SouthernGirl2 says:
    August 20, 2016 at 10:27 am

    Oh Chicas!

    I got the surprise of my life last night. Josh and Brittany came over and Josh walks in says Hi Mama, I bought you a lottery ticket. I was smiling and said ok, thank you. I asked him where’s Brittany? I went to front door and Brittany had camera up..I thought what’s going on? Why y’all taking pictures out here..it’s dark outside & then Josh says..I bought you a car. I nearly fainted. I said WHAT? Stop it, Josh. For real? He says,,yes, it’s real, I bought you a car. I started crying.
    I am so grateful. I love this little boy. He’s such a loving boy.

    Reply
  48. Ametia says:
    August 20, 2016 at 8:32 am

    Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone. Enjoy your day.

    Reply
  49. rikyrah says:
    August 20, 2016 at 5:28 am

    Good Morning 😊, Everyone 😆
    Off to swim 👙 and run errands ☺

    Reply

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