Sounds of Blackness is a Grammy Award-winning vocal and instrumental ensemble from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota who perform music from several genres music including gospel, R&B, soul, and jazz. The group scored several hits on the Billboard R&B chart and Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in the 1990s. One of the group’s current members is Cynthia Johnson, who rose to fame with Lipps, Inc.
The group was founded in 1969 by Russell Knighton at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the group was called the Macalester College Black Voices. It was in 1971 when current director Gary Hines took leadership over the ensemble, and the group name was officially changed to Sounds of Blackness (SOB).
The group had acquired local celebrity status throughout the years though never signed with a record company because of various reasons including the fact that many companies were not comfortable with the group’s name. Some companies even suggested to Hines that the group’s name be changed to “The Sounds of Music.”[citation needed]
https://twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/866456440789184512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheobamadiary.com%2F2017%2F05%2F21%2Fchat-away-918%2F
Scoop: Trump budget to slash entitlements by $1.7 trillion
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal on Tuesday won’t reform Social Security or Medicare — in line with his campaign promise — but it will make serious cuts to other entitlement programs. A source with direct knowledge tells me the Trump budget will save $1.7 trillion on the mandatory side over the next ten years.
Expected reaction: In the past couple days I’ve spoken to a number of White House officials about the budget proposal. The best summary, from one White House source: “Conservatives will love it; moderates will probably hate it.” These mandatory cuts — especially to politically-sensitive programs like food stamps — will make some moderate Republicans as nervous as the recent healthcare bill did.
Keep reading … words
Balanced budget: I am told Trump’s budget will balance over ten years. To get there, it will propose tough cuts on both the mandatory and discretionary sides — e.g. to the EPA and State Department — and will assume that the U.S economy will grow at 3 percent instead of the 1.6 percent rate it grew in 2016. The 3 percent growth rate will be reached after a few years, not immediately.
Where the entitlement cuts are made: From programs including SNAP (food stamps), CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), and SSDI (Disability Insurance). The budget proposal will also assume that Trump can sign into law the American Health Care Act — the Obamacare repeal and replace bill that passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate. That bill makes substantial cuts to Medicaid.
How the entitlement money will be saved: The source tells me there’ll be an “emphasis on work requirements for able-bodied people” to save money on these social welfare programs.
https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-budget-to-slash-entitlements-by-1-7-trillion-2416931777.html
https://twitter.com/sparksjls/status/866395493655564289/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fpragmaticobotsunite.com%2Fsunday-afternoon-thread-those-pretty-muthas-week%2F
they’re doing a reboot of Dynasty?
sigh…
https://youtu.be/Uxacuu_vg8Y
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/866437627108626432?
Weekend Box Office May 19-21: ‘Everything, Everything’ Opens with $12M
…….
Among other new releases this weekend was the counter-programmed YA film “Everything Everything” starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by Stella Meghie, which opened with $12 million, which isn’t bad considering that it cost just under $10 million to make. How the film – which is the first of what will be a very tiny few directed by a black woman director to get a major theatrical release this year – will do in the following weeks will depend heavily on word of mouth.
………………..
As for how “Get Out” is doing overseas, the numbers just keep getting better. The film has now grossed over $54 million internationally, bringing its worldwide box office to date to $230 million, and is well on its way to grossing $250-260 million globally. The UK is still far and away the film’s best overseas country performance, and France is very strong coming in second, with Australia at third. And maybe surprisingly, the film is also doing well in Russia where it opened 2 weeks. If the numbers stay strong enough, it’s possible that the film could reach $300 million worldwide.
https://shadowandact.com/weekend-box-office-may-19-21-everything-everything-opens-with-12m
The Rev. William Barber Is Bringing MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign Back to Life
By Dani McClain MAY 19, 2017
The Rev. William Barber II announced last week that he will step down as president of the North Carolina NAACP and lead a new national initiative that aims to end poverty and begin what Barber calls “a national moral revival.” This new Poor People’s Campaign will pick up where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left off 50 years ago when he turned his focus to uniting poor people across lines of race and geography and pushing their priorities onto the federal agenda.
…
Much of the action will kick off next year, when the campaign plans to stage nonviolent direct action in 25 state capitols and Washington, DC, Barber said Monday at an event at the Davie Street Presbyterian Church in Raleigh. The states chosen represent the worst of the nation’s current political climate: Their governors refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Their legislatures have passed voter-suppression laws in recent years. They lack living-wage laws and employment and housing protections for LGBTQ people.
“Extremism is at work in other states and has gained power in all three branches of our federal government, much as it did here four years ago,” Barber said Monday in North Carolina. “We know that the way to change the nation is to nationalize state movements. We have to do it with a state-up model.”
…
Making health care accessible and affordable, addressing criminal justice disparities, protecting and expanding voting rights, creating good jobs — these are moral issues rather than fodder for partisan debate in his eyes. “This is not about left versus right,” he said Monday in Raleigh. “There are certain things that are not left, right, but they are the center of authentic moral values—like love, like justice, like mercy, like caring for the least of these.”
…
“I’m worried by the way faith is cynically used by some to serve hate, fear, racism and greed,” he told the crowd. Instead, it was the low-wage workers on the front lines of the Fight for $15 protests, those advocates fighting to preserve and expand quality public education, those confronting hypocrisy and discrimination who were, as he put it, “reviving the heart of our democracy.” The Poor People’s Campaign is an effort to operationalize the vision he outlined at the DNC.
“This is not a commemoration,” Barber said Monday of his continuation of King’s work, which launched in 1967. “This is a commencement of building a long-term movement to begin shifting our national moral narrative.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/rev-william-barber-is-bringing-mlks-poor-peoples-campaign-back-to-life/
This is real leadership. This is what I mean by talking about the future as if we have one. Rev. Barber has a vision and he’s moving forward.
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
I spotted this comment by someone named Hope Emch, under the YouTube video posted below:
“…Larry King says he’s known trump for decades and admits he doesn’t know him at all. That’s what many trump associates have said about him because trump is who you want him to be for the time you are with him, they said. Basically an empty vessel into which you pour your expectations because there’s no there there. Those associates also said he has had a life long habit of patting you on the back and singing your praises one minute then stabbing you in the back the next. I think that’s what we saw with Obama at the Inauguration because trump was so congenial and full of Bon Homme with Barack and Michelle and the very next day announced his plan to dismantle Obama’s legacy. There is definitely something missing in that guy’s psyche...”
Larry King talking about his pal Trump..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ARy6LdjQYL4
The New York TimesVerified account @nytimes
An investment company run by one of Trump’s top supporters has secured an enormous investment from Saudi Arabia
https://twitter.com/ThomasErdbrink/status/866338399959044096?
https://twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/865664030542659584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balloon-juice.com%2F2017%2F05%2F21%2Fwe-can-write-letters-too%2F
I’ve never really watched Fredericka Whitfield…but if what I saw today is routine with her, may I just beg that if and when she’s removed and replaced, that black folks please not expend too much energy or political capital lamenting or trying to get her another spot..
I realize that most of these folks are trying to keep their gigs, but if that’s the case, and if it’s just so they can keep trotting out nonstop, all manner of alt-right folks and the self-loathing folk who love them….all spewing falsehoods and various versions of alternative facts and allowed to categorically state and misinform, and without any push-back or correction, then, we don’t need these quota, validating blackface folks on t.v…
I’d rather folks who aren’t terribly steeped in all this political stuff not be deceived into buying the bs courtesy of a seemingly familiar face..
Best to quickly recognize the evil purveyors of bs and turn them off, than to be served the same crap by mealy-mouthed black folks ..
https://twitter.com/broderick/status/866318869157294080?
https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/866335865777385475?
With these enabling folks one never knows…
Perhaps as the Saudis were manipulating the buffoon, his alt-right cohorts were busy looking for cover for their bigotry and scheming for their own white nationalist ideology and agenda too – in ways other than the many personally beneficial and self-serving ways the buffoon and his grifting family were calculating and completely wrapped up in…
Couldn’t get the whole ‘who’s zooming who’ out of my head yesterday…
Whatever it is, it’s only a matter of time before the buffoon says or does something to unravel whatever elaborately planned farce they and the Saudis managed to pull off as the world watched today..
But if folks like Qanta Ahmed and the other Muslim lady who’s a ‘proud’ supporter of the buffoon are anything to go by, I’d contend that it’s not so much the alt-right folks Muslims are up against here in America, but some of their own Muslim brethren who want to kick the ladder away now that they’re safely perched –
But just like the woman supporter who never imagined they’d come for her undocumented Mexican husband, some of these folks better beware..
https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/866334183886655490?
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/866296418855657472?
https://twitter.com/amjoyshow/status/866325786633977857?
https://twitter.com/yottapoint/status/866314174133030912?
https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/866315187913199616?
👌🏻👌🏻
World-class shade..
https://twitter.com/latimes/status/866067273244717060?
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/866274141028196354?
Didn’t you hear her slip up and talk about hiring the contractors that built the SA – ‘anti-terror’ facility in 30 days..
The lines are so blurred and corrupted, the entire trip is really all about promoting the family business brand for the short and long-term..
It’s just so obvious..
Selling America to the highest bidder, oodles of pocket-lining personal deals …and one shiny, gold necklace at a time…
For too long the Saudis have effectively gotten their way by dangling dollar bills in the face of easily-impressed, greedy, money-grabbing, salivating Westerners…
The Saudis understand the buffoon well…despite his also transparent attempts at doing his own superficial dangling of hollow daughter-wife and plastic 3rd wife as his version of shiny objects to get and close deals for which he cuts corners on the deliverables…and ultimately under-performs and ends up short-changing business partners…selling cheap crap, peddled insistently – and only by him, as ‘quality’..
But to the Saudis, this eager to be liked and validated subject, has been especially recognizably easy…to figure out and to manipulate…
The Saudis’ successful and instantaneous cultivating and co-opting of buffoon and his greedy, easily hypnotized by shiny objects and gauche opulence family, as (un)witting and useful idiots – despite the buffoon’s well-documented raucous public-maligning of their Islamic faith in general – seeing as the buffoon can’t distinguish between, and hardly knows the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite …a cakewalk too, because they know well that he’s not only ignorant and incurious, but that he has no reference point or sense of history – since he simply hasn’t ever read a book…or listened to/learned enough…even from the equally shallow, greedy, self-serving/separate-agenda driven, mediocre, alt-right cohorts he surrounds himself with…
The Saudis as with others, automatically know to tickle his fancy, temporarily flatter and cater to his ego, shallow whims and base impulses – dazzling with their own versions of shiny gold objects …all while placing documents he hasn’t read and will never read, before him, to sign away America, on the dotted line…All they needed was to effectively appeal to his narcissism and megalomania, as he immediately assumes a ridiculously childish and amusing self-important puffed-up strut …Works every time..
Meanwhile, folks who ought to know better, loudly gush and applaud a 3rd grade level reading of a rehearsed speech …a speech that doesn’t even try to pretend to be in his own voice…and clearly isn’t reflective of anything the buffoon comprehends, embraces, believes or has ever ‘articulated’…the speech, a mostly borrowed, contrived, tightly-woven, Saudi-directed and choreographed event, entirely for their own aggrandizement, is touted as ‘great’ and even heart-tugging and ‘tear-inducing’ by all manner of GOP types – including the dancing hard for their supper Arab/Muslim-American’s self-loathing version of black folks’ self-loathing, look how hard I defend you Massa, Sheriff Clarke…reward my sorry b*tt please..
The theatrics and hollow, hard to believe shallow optics, gratuitous and hollow ‘firsts’ like a visit to the West Bank wall for instance, that accomplish nothing in the long run…and have little to do with anything, even as those applauding also publicly acknowledge that beyond even questionable short-term – day or two – feel-good optics, has zero long-term value besides – and even the potential for seriously and potentially irreversible damaging effect….But still they applaud and tout and gobble up and try to force-feed the low-info masses the empty calories…desperate to normalize the buffoon and once again gunning for yet another reboot and another version of ‘today he became presidential’ moment…
They all sit around alternately cowardly and corruptly co-signing and cheering on blatant falsehoods, deceit and treason …and folks are left head-spinning…and wondering with each passing moment WTF is this crazy alternate universe we’ve been transported to…even as the buffoon announces as Vatican Ambassador-designate, a so-called “devout Catholic”, who without ever blinking, (literally and metaphorically speaking), managed to conduct a 6 year adulterous affair with the married husband of a woman battling cancer…ending up as the 3rd wife to the same despicable, immoral and vile man and callous purveyor of hate she happened to work with…a man who’s spear-headed – and remains one of the architects of the decimation of our democracy and hard-won protections – including for the vulnerable and least among us..
The Saudis as they swarmed around, tweaking, working over and overwhelming the silly, hollow, greedy American buffoons in their midst yesterday and today…not only made a complete arse of them – and by extension, the United States, they publicly showed the world that America as the whole world once knew it, is now officially dead…And only because some in this country – and the world, will sooner embrace and hail a dense, lower than mediocre, integrity-devoid, shallow, corrupt white buffoon and his equally greedy, corrupt, hollow, plastic grifting family complete with imported 3rd wife…over and above a well-educated, brilliant, thoughtful, steady, honorable historic President, and his well-educated, brilliant, upstanding, principled, honorable black wife..
Children of all ages …and even adults, the world over, are watching and scratching their heads…many aghast and others left utterly confused…bewildered at the warped alternative universe we suddenly find ourselves forced to live in…A world gone completely mad variety..
Folks are watching as the world not only legitimizes and normalizes, but effusively praises and celebrates and elevates and revises as equal-part angelic and standard of excellence, a corrupt, hollow, grifting family and the despicable buffoon patriarch who up until yesterday, has conducted himself in the lowest and most dishonest and despicable ways…While dissing and blaming and twistedly casting as bad, failed, unacceptable and unworthy, the brilliant, upright and dignified historic family that just vacated the White House…
P.S:
Hopefully, Arab-Muslim-Americans will cast out this ridiculous Qanta Ahmed woman – usually at FOX, but for some reason all over CNN today…into the same special hell where black folks are sending David Clarke…
Unless of course she speaks for them…In which case, folks who’ve been stepping up to support our Muslim brethren, should just fold up, go home and stop rallying against the buffoon’s Muslim ban…
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/866383102884552705
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/866050911105404929
Seeing this t-shirt really hit me hard as I consider the history of decades of arrests when people have sought their civil rights and equality:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0217/9998/products/freedom1_mockup_Flat-Front_White.png?v=1492415648
The civil rights movement lives on in these times.
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/866321413355036676?
DID THE DNC HELP HILLARY CLINTON BEAT BERNIE SANDERS? FRAUD LAWSUIT TAKES AIM AT LEADERSHIP
BY CHRIS RIOTTA ON 5/17/17 AT 11:40 PM
What is the role of the Democratic National Committee in presidential elections? Is it to sway the vote toward a safe, solid and respected insider who will supposedly drive the party straight into the White House, or is it to provide voters the ultimate decision as to which campaign will take the ballot, without any bias or partiality?
That is the question at the heart of a class-action lawsuit charging the Democratic National Committee with fraud, deceptive conduct and negligent misrepresentation over the course of the 2016 primaries, in which Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was defeated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic ticket. Jared Beck, a Harvard law expert and one of the attorneys backing the suit, has demanded the DNC repay its donors and Sanders supporters for contributions made throughout the election, citing a misappropriation of public funds.
Article 5, Section 4 of the DNC’s charter states the organization will operate with total neutrality throughout the course of the Democratic primaries. Court documents reveal the organization’s lawyers made a lengthy case suggesting impartiality is nothing more than a political promise, however—even though the defense claimed it did not support any specific campaign over another.
Did the DNC rig the election for Hillary Clinton? A class action lawsuit demands retribution for Bernie Sanders’ supporters who donated to his campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election.
…
Attorneys for the DNC and its former chairperson, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, attempted to dismiss the lawsuit on multiple occasions, originally claiming it wasn’t properly served by Beck and his team, before stating there are no enforceable obligations for the organization to practice neutrality during the primaries.
That argument could be deadly to their chances of garnering support from Democrats, liberals and independents who grew inspired by Sanders’ message of change in the Democratic Party last year.
…
http://www.newsweek.com/dnc-fraud-lawsuit-claims-bernie-sanders-would-have-won-rigged-election-hillary-611165
I’m trying to decide what I think about this.
On the one hand, I do not believe that the Democratic party has another Hillary Clinton, certainly not in the near future. So, at least at the presidential level, it does not seem to be likely that the Democratic leadership could repeat 2016 even if they wanted to. This might lead to a conclusion that forcing the DNC to change how they do business is wasted energy while we face the current crisis in the WH.
What I would like to hear from the DNC is something that is not forthcoming and that is an admission that what they did in 2016 was wrong. I guess that’s why people sue, because there is no other way to get these admissions.
But I am compelled to say that if the Democratic leadership does not start believing in fair competition and they think they are better at picking candidates than the voters (and they won’t get rid of their damn super delegates), then they risk losing elections that they shoud be winning.
They haven’t got very long to figure this out.
John Schindler @20committee
Trump’s speech in KSA sounds like it was written by Riyadh. His speech in Israel will drip with Likudisms. He’s merely a conman, get it yet?
8:25 AM · May 21, 2017
https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/866314135629385728
When even those who thought you were the easier option that they could manipulate and cut deals with – and without being held to any moral standards, are looking on in disbelief at how ridiculous and illiterate you look and sound…even while reading from a 3rd party prepared and pre-rehearsed speech …and wondering how on earth the greatest country in the world ended up with the simplest of buffoons at the helm of things…And suddenly wishing for the guy before, who they were mostly jealous and resentful as a result of, but who was at least articulate, smart, and operated with integrity…Even when it wasn’t necessarily in the direction the cunning, opportunistic, self-interested/serving leaders sitting in the room, were hoping for…
https://img.memesuper.com/b898221ac38fd847e301c8d46a685b76_baby-laughing-hysterically-gif-laughing-hysterically-meme_564-511.jpeg
Good Morning, Everyone :)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wuLKvcn-c7A/maxresdefault.jpg
Good Morning Everyone 😐😐😐
Good morning, Rikyrah ☀️
SG2, what a good song for you to post for all who are being affected by the issues and events occurring these weeks.
Good Morning, Yahtzee & Everyone.