Thursday Open Thread | Christmas Jams

beautiful-christmas-candles-8Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is a Christmas holiday song originally sung by Darlene Love and included on the 1963 Christmas compilation album, A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records. The song was written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry along with Phil Spector, with the intentions of being sung by Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes. According to Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector was not able to put as much emotion into the song as needed. Instead, Love was brought into the studio to record the song which became a big success over time and one of Love’s signature tunes.

In December 2010, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Songs, saying that “nobody can match Love’s emotion and sheer vocal power.”

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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35 Responses to Thursday Open Thread | Christmas Jams

  1. rikyrah says:

    Fuck You and Your “Democrats Have to End Identity Politics to Win” Bullshit

    by John Cole
    at 2:57 pm on December 8, 2016.

    f I read one fucking more thinkpiece, blog post, semi-literate tweet, or facebook forward blaming whatever the fuck “identity politics” is for Democrats losing the election I am going to lose completely and totally lose my shit and climb a fucking bell tower. I don’t even know what people mean when they say identity politics anymore. So let me ask you:


    Is it identity politics when you cater to white supremacists, the Klan, and neo-nazis to win an election?

    Is it identity politics when you say white lives matter or blue lives matter?

    Is it identity politics when you cheer building a wall to keep out rapey Mexicans?

    Is it identity politics when you intentionally close voting districts in minority areas to suppress the vote?

    Is it identity politics when you pass bills saying you can legally discriminate against the LGBT community?

    Is it identity politics when you threaten a cop for wearing a hijab or try to rip the hijab off people in public?

    Is it identity politics when you call for a ban on Muslims and claim that a government list of Muslims is a good idea?

    Is it identity politics when your healthcare bills do nothing for women’s health but hand out Viagra like skittles?

    Is it identity politics when children of color are disciplined more frequently and severely than white schoolchildren?

    Is it identity politics when your #1 priority is passing bills telling what women can and can’t do regarding their reproductive health decisions?

    Is it identity politics when the justice system systematically incarcerates minorities or when cities set up nuisance policing policies in minority communities?

    Is it identity politics to insist that everyone say Merry Christmas?

    Is it identity politics when you cheer stop and frisk in minority communities?

    Is it identity politics when you claim “coastal elites” aren’t real Americans and that the heartland is where the “real people” live?

    Is it identity politics to pay women less than men (and women of color even less)?

    Is it identity politics to totally lose your fucking shit over a black Santa Claus or a black Jedi or boycott Rogue One because WHO FUCKING KNOWS THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING NUTS?

    ***
    No. Of course not. What you mean when you say “identity politics” is you mean all those groups you want to systematically oppress try to stand up and defend themselves and it hurts your feelings because you can’t have your way. In politics, it’s called COALITION BUILDING.

  2. rikyrah says:

    RIP John Glenn.

    2016 -BRUTAL

  3. rikyrah says:

    A Voluntary Army of Union Intimidators
    by Martin Longman
    December 8, 2016 11:57 AM

    Let’s look up Blackshirts on Wikipedia:

    The Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN, “Voluntary Militia for National Security”), commonly called the Blackshirts (Italian: Camicie Nere, CCNN, singular: Camicia Nera) or squadristi (singular: squadrista), was originally the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party and, after 1923, an all-volunteer militia of the Kingdom of Italy. Its members were distinguished by their black uniforms (modelled on those of the Arditi, Italy’s elite troops of World War I) and their loyalty to Benito Mussolini, the Duce (leader) of Fascism, to whom they swore an oath. The founders of the paramilitary groups were nationalist intellectuals, former army officers and young landowners opposing peasants’ and country labourers’ unions. Their methods became harsher as Mussolini’s power grew, and they used violence and intimidation against Mussolini’s opponents.

    So, these folks were nationalists who volunteered to intimidate and use violence against their leader’s opponents, with a particular view toward smashing labor unions. That doesn’t seem too hard to understand. These were the first fascists.

    Let’s fast-forward to yesterday.

    Half an hour after Trump tweeted about [president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, Chuck] Jones on Wednesday, the union leader’s phone began to ring and kept ringing, he said. One voice asked: What kind of car do you drive? Another said: We’re coming for you.

    He wasn’t sure how these people found his number.

    “Nothing that says they’re gonna kill me, but, you know, you better keep your eye on your kids,” Jones said later on MSNBC. “We know what car you drive. Things along those lines.”

    “I’ve been doing this job for 30 years, and I’ve heard everything from people who want to burn my house down or shoot me,” he added. “So I take it with a grain of salt and I don’t put a lot of faith in that, and I’m not concerned about it and I’m not getting anybody involved. I can deal with people that make stupid statements and move on.”

  4. rikyrah says:

    Jeff Sessions’ record on desegregation draws fresh scrutiny
    12/08/16 10:42 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Shortly after Donald Trump chose Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as his choice for Attorney General, the president-elect’s team put together talking points for Senate Republicans, urging them to sing the senator’s praises. In particular, Team Trump asked GOP lawmakers to say Sessions has a “strong civil rights record.”

    Given the senator’s actual civil rights record, it’s a tough sell.

    But as Politico reported., the talking points were also more specific in some cases, noting that Sessions also “led desegregation lawsuits in his home state.” Trump’s spokesperson pushed the same line with reporters recently, claiming the Alabama Republican “filed a number of desegregation lawsuits in Alabama” during his tenure as a U.S. Attorney.

    But did that actually happen? The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer did some interesting digging into Sessions’ record.

    The Atlantic could not find evidence Sessions filed any new school desegregation lawsuits. Searches of the legal databases Westlaw and PACER found no evidence that any new school-desegregation lawsuits were filed in Alabama’s Southern District by Sessions between 1981, when Sessions became U.S. attorney in Alabama, and 1995, when he became Alabama attorney general, though it is possible that the records exist but are not in those databases. The Atlantic could find no reference to the claim in the transcripts of his 1986 confirmation hearing.

    Former Justice Department officials and civil-rights experts expressed puzzlement when asked about the claim, in part because nearly every school in Alabama was under desegregation orders by the 1970s, years before Sessions became U.S. attorney.

  5. Liza says:

    This is going to be a moment of truth for the Democrats. Are they going to be inclusive and let go of the old ways, or are they going to go for a last gasp for the establishment elites?

    JUST IN: AFL-CIO endorses Ellison for DNC chairhttps://t.co/lQaB6OTfxB pic.twitter.com/MFSRisiS54— The Hill (@thehill) December 8, 2016

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  6. Temperature is dropping. 42 degrees. It’s official. I am cold.

    https://twitter.com/CollinMyers_/status/806894944422166528

  7. Liza says:

    Democrats Drop A Bombshell Report That Exposes Trump’s Planned Devious War On Seniors
    By Jason Easley on Mon, Dec 5th, 2016 at 12:43 pm

    The first peek at what the incoming Trump administration has planned can be found in HHS nominee Rep. Tom Price’s budget plan, and what the new administration is signaling is nothing less than a war on the nation’s seniors.

    The report by the Senate Budget Committee Minority Staff provided a great deal of insight into four areas of Prices’s budget that equal a war on seniors:

    Sneaking massive benefit cuts through the back door – The Price proposal includes a devious plan that would likely trigger deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other priorities, while avoiding the need for members of Congress to vote directly for the cuts. The Price plan does this by automatically triggering a process to establish caps on spending and debt levels upon approval of a budget resolution, with the threat of sequestration cuts to enforce those limits. This, for the first time, would allow the Republican majority to ram through cuts to Social Security (among other programs) using a special fast-track process that denies Senate Democrats their normal rights to defend these programs and ensure an adequate opportunity for public input. If Republicans were to pass President-Elect Trump’s tax plan, the resulting increase to the deficit, under this plan, could require cuts to Social Security and Medicare of 13.5 percent, meaning the average Social Security beneficiary would lose more than $2,000 a year. [CAP,10/18/16]‎

    Rigging the budget process to cut earned benefits– Currently, if Congress fails to offset the cost of mandatory spending or new tax breaks, this can trigger across-the-board cuts, or sequestration. However, Social Security is exempt from these cuts, and Medicare is subject to only limited cuts (of 2 or 4 percent, depending on the type of sequestration). Meanwhile, consistent with a previously long-standing bipartisan consensus, most assistance to Americans with the greatest needs is completely protected. By contrast, the Price plan would subject “all programs” to sequestration, “with limited exceptions such as interest payments, Article I judges’ salaries, and intragovernmental payments.” On its face, this could mean that in the future, seniors, the disabled, and others in need could be forced to pay the price, with deep cuts to promised benefits that many earned through a lifetime of hard work.

    Unraveling longstanding guarantees to those who rely on Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and other Benefits – Price’s proposal calls for a non-amendable fast track process to end longstanding guarantees to our nation’s middle-class workers, seniors, children, the disabled and millions of others who rely on Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. Instead, these Americans would have to fight annually for these benefits in the uncertain appropriations process, with no assurance their hard-earned benefits will be there at the end. Given the Republican Congress’s long record of failure to even consider appropriations bills on time, this could threaten the security of millions who rely on promised benefits. Meanwhile, Price proposes no similar process to eliminate wasteful special interest tax loopholes.

    Rigging the budget with a fast-track for billionaire tax breaks – The Price proposal would repeal the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, which imposes fiscal discipline by restricting Congress’s ability to enact deficit-financed tax breaks and direct spending. This would free Congress to hand out massive new breaks for billionaires and large corporations, while driving up the deficit and laying the groundwork for future Republican demands for additional cuts to middle class benefits.

    One gets the sense that many Americans went to the polls without the future of Social Security and Medicare in mind. Perhaps, voters took these beloved institutions that help millions of Americans for granted.

    Maybe, they made the mistake of believing Donald Trump when he said that he wouldn’t cut the programs, but as Ranking Budget Committee member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pointed out while commenting on the report, Trump is a hypocrite, “Donald Trump asked workers and seniors to vote for him because he was the only Republican candidate who would not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – programs that are of life-and-death importance for millions of Americans. But instead he has nominated Rep. Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has a long history of wanting to do exactly the opposite of what Trump campaigned on. What hypocrisy. Trump needs to tell the American people that what he said during the campaign were just lies or appoint an HHS secretary who will protect these programs from cuts and do what the president-elect said he would do.”

    The Price budget provides insight into the incoming administration’s plans for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. What it looks like the Trump administration is planning for is a destruction of the social safety net while handing massive tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2016/12/05/democrats-drop-bombshell-report-exposes-trump.html

  8. rikyrah says:

    Stung by criticism, Trump goes after local union leader
    12/08/16 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Donald Trump should be incredibly busy. The transition period is limited, as we talked about the other day, presidents-elect are expected to maintain a rather grueling schedule, choosing a cabinet, attending security briefings, staffing a White House, speaking to international leaders, shaping a policy agenda, and even preparing for his inauguration. Every hour of every day counts.

    Trump, however, hasn’t yet learned the value of focusing his attention on what matters most. He instead likes to take time complaining about Broadway productions, sketch-comedy shows, and as of last night, local union leaders.
    President-elect Donald Trump pledged to be “so presidential you will be bored” during the election, but he continues to keep Americans on their toes after again taking to Twitter to battle his most recent critic.

    Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers 1999, told NBC News that he had been harassed and threatened in the wake of Trump’s latest attack – a broadside against Jones leadership of union workers at a Carrier manufacturing plant in Indiana that took center stage last week.

    It should’ve been a relatively minor story. Trump made claims about the Carrier deal that were demonstrably untrue, and Chuck Jones spoke up about it – as American citizens are still free to do. Last night, the labor leader appeared on CNN to “correct some of [Trump’s] math,” and soon after, the president-elect who lacks impulse control decided it’d be a good idea to go after Jones directly.

  9. Liza says:

    This Mich. man has filed a lawsuit after police assault left him blind in one eye: https://t.co/z5zq6T9inx pic.twitter.com/WgBZUis8CB— The Root (@TheRoot) December 8, 2016

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  10. rikyrah says:

    Quick Takes: Republicans Still Can’t Agree on a Plan to Repeal Obamacare
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    December 7, 2016 5:27 PM

    When I wrote yesterday about the chaos among Republicans on the particulars of their “repeal and delay” strategy on Obamacare, it was before top Senate Republicans met with Pence to hash things out. Apparently meeting with the vice president elect didn’t help much.

    After meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Tuesday to hash out plans to repeal Obamacare, top Senate Republicans are no closer to resolving an issue that’s splintering the GOP heading into the start of Donald Trump’s presidency: how long to give themselves to replace the law…

    “The view on that probably is in a constant state of evolution, based on who you talk to,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 GOP leader. “The question is: What’s that duration? Structurally, it’s at this point an open question. We’re hoping to get some direction.”…

    The length of the transition is pitting hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz and members of the House Freedom Caucus, who favor a relatively speedy replacement, against Senate leaders who are pushing the three-year option.

    “It took six years to get into this mess; it’s going to take us a while to get out of it,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). “One thing I know for sure is we can’t fail to deliver on the promise to repeal Obamacare.”…

    “The sooner we can get rid of it, the better,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the outgoing leader of the Freedom Caucus.

  11. rikyrah says:

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    The Right’s War on Unions Will Finish Us Off
    by Martin Longman
    December 7, 2016 4:25 PM

    Of course the Republicans are going to launch a new assault on unions, and it’s going to be devastating. Unions are a key pillar on the left, especially among progressives. It took me a little while to learn this. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey in a family filled with professors. My progressive values stemmed not from firsthand knowledge of the plight of the coal miner or steel worker or government bureaucrat, nor from any personal experience of being a racial or religious minority, or even a woman. The scientific ethos of academia was my point of entry to opposition to the right-wing in this country. Everyone starts from some place.

    When I left my hometown, I moved to Los Angeles where I found an even more diverse community than the one I had grown up in, and one with a wider chasm between the rich and poor. I went on to work for ACORN and expand my knowledge about what the urban poor and minorities face in terms of our criminal justice system, local governance, education, and employment opportunities.

    Working with labor was my last stop along the way. I didn’t originally see unions as necessarily my natural allies or see their causes as my causes. There was overlap in many areas, but maybe we didn’t see eye to eye on the importance of the environment, for example. It was only when I realized how essential they were to getting political power that I began to understand that I needed them to be strong and motivated and effective.

    It was then that I understood that academic progressives don’t have the option of picking and choosing which labor issues to support, but we need to have their backs so that they’ll have our backs.

  12. rikyrah says:

    From BJ’s Richard Mayhew:

    Death spirals all around
    by Richard Mayhew
    at 6:04 am on December 8, 2016.

    We’re going to see how the Republican Party can create a death spiral in the individual market in sixty days or less. They have a few choices:

    First Philip Klein in the Washington Examiner wants to create one the old fashion way:

    In contrast, Republicans could immediately freeze enrollment — allowing those who already have insurance through Obamacare to continue receiving subsidies, but preventing new enrollees from receiving any (though they’d still be free to purchase insurance on their own if they aren’t seeking subsidies). The current open enrollment period for privately-administered insurance ends on Jan. 31, so that would be a natural cutoff point.

    Do you know who is extremely likely to buy community rated, guaranteed issue insurance with a subsidy? People who are very sick.
    Do you know who is extremely unlikely to buy community rated, guaranteed issue insurance without a subsidy? People who have reason to believe they are very healthy.

    This proposal will get the individual insurance market to look like the individual markets from the mid-90s in the non-subsidized, non-mandated guarantee issue states. Super high premiums and very sick risk pools. And since insurers set their 2017 rates with the assumption that subsidies are available for Special Enrollment Members, they will lose a lot of money.

    Means #2 is just pulling the Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies. Insurers will flee the market. The American Academy of Actuaries have their hair on fire as they look at the impact of Congress not funding Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies after January 20th.

    • Liza says:

      “In contrast, Republicans could immediately freeze enrollment — allowing those who already have insurance through Obamacare to continue receiving subsidies, but preventing new enrollees from receiving any (though they’d still be free to purchase insurance on their own if they aren’t seeking subsidies).”

      This is what concerns me. They could just stop the subsidies after the January 31 cutoff date and the effects of that would not be felt for a few months at least. Those most affected, at least initially, would be those who lose their insurance after Jan 31 and need to buy new insurance through the ACA. That is a relatively few number of people that would grow over the course of the year. Then November 1, 2017, rolls around and then the sh!t hits the fan. That’s when millions of people are affected.

      But the evil monsters from the pits of hell (aka GOP congressmen / women) have a done deal. That’s how they’d present it, no going back.

    • Liza says:

      I may be wrong, God knows it won’t be the first time, but I think the weak link in all of the evil being planned and perpetrated by the GOP is Trump himself.

      Trump needs to be held responsible for every evil thought that goes through their heads. He needs to be hit with a constant barrage of criticism every time one of them so much as opens their mouth. Trump, as we know, does not like criticism.

      The fight for the ACA needs to start right now. Anyone think the elected Dems will do it? Ha ha ha, just the thought of them standing up for Obamacare makes me laugh (in a very cynical way). I did hear on MSNBC last night that the Dems are going to fight tooth and nail for Medicare.

      Ain’t that grand? If you manage to live to 65 without health insurance or with health insurance that doesn’t pay for much of anything because it’s all you can afford, then you’re home free.

    • Liza says:

      SG2, are you there?

      Are my comments starting to sound as though I’m becoming unhinged? I kind of think I am.

  13. rikyrah says:

    Morning, Everyone😐😐😐

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