Jonathan Butler (born October 10, 1961, Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa) is a singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music is often classified as R&B, jazz fusion or worship music.
Born and raised in Cape Town during Apartheid, Butler started singing and playing acoustic guitar as a child. Racial segregation and poverty during Apartheid has been the subject of many of his records.[1] His first single was the first by a black artist played by white radio stations in the racially segregated South Africa and earned a Sarie Award, South Africa’s equivalent to the Grammy Awards.
Y’all need a treat on Sunday evening. John Mayer…
https://twitter.com/angela_rye/status/858672004387536896?
Two Major Credit Reporting Agencies Have Been Lying to Consumers
A CFPB investigation concluded that Transunion and Equifax deceived Americans about the reports they provided and the fees they charged. Mike Stewart / AP
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/credit-scores-cfpb/512162/
https://twitter.com/patrickgaspard/status/858827930281136129?
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/858484208389337088
This latest Klan rally really speaks to Trump’s state of mind. He keeps returning to his campaign glory days for the reassurance that he is still the hero of the white “working class” (whether they are employed or not).
Strange behavior.
https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/858727332298752000
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/858675146705571842
REPORT: Argentina Drops Humanitarian Award For Jimmy Carter Upon Demand Of Trump Administration
April 30, 2017 News, Politics
The Buenos Aires Herald reports:
The Mauricio Macri administration reverted a decision to award former US president Jimmy Carter the Order of the Liberator General San Martín — the maximum distinction that the country can give to a foreign personality — under the pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration, CNN Español reported this week.
The official tribute, which had already been approved by the foreign ministry and was published in the Official Gazette, was cancelled after receiving a specific request by the US government, which suggested it would be better to delay it. Carter was to be given the award for his work in promoting human rights during Argentina’s last military dictatorship.
After being informed about the decision, the foreign ministry had again requested that President Macri give the award in spite of the rejection by Trump’s government since it had been made official, according to an anonymous foreign ministry official consulted by CNN’s David Cox.
Like Trump, the Argentine president was born into wealth and the New York Times reports that they’ve long had a “personal relationship” via business dealings.
Macri met with Trump in the White House on Thursday and it seems likely that Carter’s award was spiked so that the spotlight remained on Trump during his visit.
And you know that the relentlessly petty Trump would want to take revenge on Carter, who last year denounced Trump’s “lack of moral and ethical principles.”
http://www.joemygod.com/2017/04/30/report-argentina-drops-humanitarian-award-jimmy-carter-upon-demand-trump-administration/
https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/857647407416434688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2017%2F4%2F29%2F1657215%2F-Republican-approach-to-Trumpcare-insanity-incredibly-frustrating-divorced-from-reality
Author and death penalty opponent Bryan Stevenson: We do not deserve to kill
Glenn Coin on April 29, 2017 at 6:30 AM, updated April 29, 2017 at 11:17 AM
Syracuse, N.Y. — The rush to execute eight prisoners in Arkansas this month shows how “perverse” the death penalty is in America, said civil rights lawyer and author Bryan Stevenson.
“I do think there is something really perverse that has emerged in in our thinking that we would kill people to avoid expiration dates on drugs that are deemed cruel,” said Stevenson, who will speak in Syracuse Tuesday night. “I think this says something deeply disturbing.”
…
The numbers are startling – half of all inmates in America suffer from mental illness, one innocent person sits on death row for every nine that are executed – but Stevenson’s stories of his clients are even more compelling.
…
Near the end of “Just Mercy,” Stevenson says the real question behind the death penalty is not whether people deserve to die for their crimes, but: “Do we deserve to kill?”
“When you have a system so compromised by error, and so weighted against the poor and people of color, I don’t think you deserve to kill people,” Stevenson told Syracuse.com this week. “Taking someone’s life requires a kind of perfect judgment. If you take someone’s life, you don’t have the ability to recover from that.”
Stevenson argues that we are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done, and that requires us to treat others with compassion and to dispense justice with mercy.
“If someone tells a lie they’re not just a liar. Even if someone kills someone, they’re not just a killer,” he said. “But that means the rest of us have to be willing to care about what else that person is before we judge them. That requires a commitment to human dignity.”
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2017/04/bryan_stevenson_author_and_death_penalty_opponent_to_speak_in_syacuse.html
I know that Mr. Stevenson is right about this. When the “system” is viewed in its entirety, too many mistakes are made for there to be irreversible punishment. And there is also the whole other issue about mercy.
But then there are those cases of “perfect judgement” like Dylann Roof, for example. Death certainly seems like the right punishment for him.
To avoid irreversible mistakes in a system that is weighted against the poor and POC, we have to be willing to let someone like Dylann Roof live the remainder of his life in prison.
That’s a hard pill to swallow, isn’t it?
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
Van Jones: Obama should do ‘poverty tour’
04/30/17 01:31 PM EDT
Former Obama adviser and CNN political analyst Van Jones suggested President Obama go on a “poverty tour” as a way to mitigate some of the criticism surrounding news he’ll make $400,000 for a speech at a Wall Street firm’s healthcare conference.
“We need a Bobby Kennedy in this country,” Jones said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
He suggested the former president “go to Appalachia, go to Native American reservations where they’re shoving these pipelines down their throats and they don’t even have clear, running water. Go to South Central, go to the Arizona border where you have a lot of poverty.”
He noted that most recent presidents have made such paid remarks after leaving office, and said Obama “should not be the first president to have to be broke.”
But, he added, “If he would do a poverty tour first, from a moral point of view, it would be great for him to do.”
I think my head will explode if another one of these professional opinionators tells President Obama what he should do.
Good Lord, why can’t they all just sit down and shut up?
HUH?
https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/858730985004953600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefault%26f%3Dpragmaticobots%26t_i%3D59104%2520http%253A%252F%252Fpragmaticobotsunite.com%252F%253Fp%253D59104%26t_u%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fpragmaticobotsunite.com%252Fsunday-open-thread-p-o-u-sunday-jazz-brunch-61%252F%26t_e%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26t_d%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26t_t%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26s_o%3Ddefault%26l%3D%23version%3Dd3a5970415e73b8455175a98b1861579
LIE
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/858736208838524928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefault%26f%3Dpragmaticobots%26t_i%3D59104%2520http%253A%252F%252Fpragmaticobotsunite.com%252F%253Fp%253D59104%26t_u%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fpragmaticobotsunite.com%252Fsunday-open-thread-p-o-u-sunday-jazz-brunch-61%252F%26t_e%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26t_d%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26t_t%3DSunday%2520Open%2520Thread%253A%2520P.O.U.%2520Sunday%2520Jazz%2520Brunch%26s_o%3Ddefault%26l%3D%23version%3Dd3a5970415e73b8455175a98b1861579
Another perspective about Boente:
President Obama may have been baiting Donald Trump by demoting DOJ’s Dana Boente
Near the end of President Obama’s tenure, he signed an executive
order which changed the line of succession at the Department of Justice for the sole purpose of demoting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente in that line.
It seemed odd, both because Boente was a fairly recent Obama appointee, and because it was an uncharacteristically feeble move which Donald Trump was quickly able to undo. But based on recent developments, Obama may have been baiting Trump into doing precisely that.
After a series of chaotic moves including the recusal of Jeff
Sessions and the departure of Mary McCord, yesterday it was rather
predictably announced that Dana Boente has taken over the Trump-Russia investigation at the DOJ. The development seemed inevitable. After all, Obama had telegraphed that Boente was the one guy he didn’t trust to prosecute Trump-Russia properly, so of course Trump eagerly put Boente in charge of the investigation. But here’s the thing.
Hours after Boente took over, a report leaked out that multiple
Trump-Russia grand juries are underway. Based on initial impressions, it appears Boente is handling the investigation properly and aggressively.
And in hindsight, perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise. After all,
Boente is someone whom President Obama clearly trusted when he appointed him back in 2014. So why on earth did Obama make a big show of demoting Boente before leaving office? That’s the key here.
Obama’s executive order didn’t actually remove Boente from his job or
change anything about his position. All it did was state that Boente
would be passed over if recusals began. So Obama did’t punish Boente in any real world sense; he merely created the appearance that he had. And it may have been enough to bait Trump into concluding that Obama didn’t trust Boente, and therefore Trump should trust Boente. If this was the plan all along, it means the person in charge of prosecuting Trump-Russia is precisely whom Obama wanted in charge of it all along – and now it’s realistically too late for Trump to stop it.
Interesting question posed at BJ:
BERNSTEIN & WOODWARD=DISCOURSE ON HOW TO DO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM to the DC JACKALS
HASAN MINHAJ SLAYED LAST NIGHT
https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/858748744648577024
Folks were not having it from the Boston Globe
https://twitter.com/JamieEldridgeMA/status/858690858035666944
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/858704008420052992
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/858741221820387337
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/858638288789413888
https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/858568610498973697
Pence is up to his NECK in this. Paper trail! Paper trail!
https://twitter.com/funder/status/858693353952743424
https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/858720744582377473
https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/858721424495837185
https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/858722136252403712
https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/858702365918191616
https://twitter.com/TheAvgBlackMan/status/858699494958956544
https://twitter.com/MrStinkFingers/status/858698747022368768
What is POC?
People of Color
Thanks. Now what planet is this jerk from? Boy is God going to deal with him! Why do these kinds of ‘people’ thinks they are above reproach?
AMEN!
https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/858701459835166721
WHAT? Just shut the entire network DOWN
https://twitter.com/KwikWarren/status/858699490043285504
https://twitter.com/postandcourier/status/858701745366720512
File this under life goes on or too adorable for words…
Little Boy Steps Up for His Cousin After She’s Stood Up for Prom
Hayley FitzPatrick
Yahoo Style April 27, 2017
A high school student in Prescott, Arkansas was left without a date for prom when she was stood up right before the big dance. In a heartwarming turn of events, her 5-year-old cousin came to her rescue.
https://www.yahoo.com/style/stood-prom-little-boy-steps-cousin-170705510.html
So sweet!
Yeah, kids can be so amazing. It really does lift my spirits.
What a great heart that 5 year-old-cousin has!! So precious.
https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/858697027739430912
https://twitter.com/TPM/status/858694994202431488
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/858673623871229952
Look at this ISH, folks. This is disturbing.
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/858668017126965249
Good Morning , Everyone 😄😄😄
Good morning, everyone!
Good Morning, SG2. Thanks for posting We Need You, Lord.
Good morning. You’re very welcome. I know I need him….