I’m only posting one video this Friday and I hope you will watch it.
It’s the story of Edie Windsor and her late spouse, Thea Spyer, and why Edie is suing to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.
It’s both inspiring and educational and very personal….
It shows that this isn’t just a political issue, but a very personal issue of equality and fairness…
Filed under Gay, Politics, Uncategorized
North Carolina’s new Republican Governor is succeeding nicely in his quest to infuriate as many people as possible and lead the march to GOP irrelevancy….
This shows just how seriously the Governor and the GOP take the concerns of one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the state and the country…
It’s really quite unbelievable how fast this man is moving to alienate people. I just hope they remember this is his- and all the Republican’s agenda- come the next election.
There are fewer and fewer old white people left who support his kind of politics….
From the Charlotte Observer:
WASHINGTON North Carolina’s Latino advocates are voicing alarm following the governor’s decision to eliminate the state’s office for Latino affairs.
The closing of the Office of Hispanic/Latino affairs was sudden and caught many by surprise. The move appears to have exacerbated the already tense relationship between Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the Latino community, including criticism over a driver’s license plan for young immigrants.
Advocates say it sends a message that McCrory and Raleigh conservatives are less concerned with the needs of the Latino community. Paradoxically, it comes at a time when issues of deep concern, such as immigration, are at the political forefront.
via McCrory eliminates Latino outreach office | CharlotteObserver.com.
Filed under North Carolina, Politics, Uncategorized
When I was young, more than once I said: ” I wish I was stupid; life would be so much easier.”
I vividly remember saying that to my friend, Bob, one night during a low period of my life in college at Washington and Lee University.
Of course, knowing how I always applied my vision of life as seen by F. Scott Fitzgerald to my life at W&L, I was probably only being melodramatic and paraphrasing Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” when she says she hopes her daughter will be a “pretty little fool.”
Now, I just have a paranoid suspicion that the Republicans just may be putting this mythical drug in the drinking water in the South….
Still, this video offers a modern solution- and outlines the possible outcomes of what life might be if you could lower your IQ to better deal with modern life….
Hat Tip to John Aravosis at Americablog.com, where I first saw this….
Filed under Politics
The new- I refuse to say “our”- Governor of NC, Pat McCrory, is shaping up to be the most anti-education Governor North Carolina has ever seen.
One of the things North Carolina is known for is its excellent, affordable public Universities. McCrory and his GOP friends in the Legislature seem intent on destroying this…
Of course, Republicans barely try to hide how anti-education their programs are….They value ignorance much more highly as educated voters don’t vote Republican. In fact, they count on ignorance….
And they seem determined to both show it and drive it in North Carolina….
And the NC Democrats can’t seem to run a campaign or get their acts together to oppose them….
Scary times in my adopted home State….
Jesse Helms would be proud of them….
From WRAL Raleigh:
Lawmakers are considering the possibility of eliminating one or two campuses in the University of North Carolina system, a top Senate budget-writer said Thursday.
Gov. Pat McCrory called for a $135 million cut in funding for the UNC system in the 2013-14 budget proposal he rolled out on Wednesday.
As lawmakers began reviewing the spending plan Thursday, Sen. Pete Brunstetter, R-Forsyth, co-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he and his colleagues are more concerned about how money for higher education is spent than the actual size of the appropriation.
Lawmakers want to trim duplicative programs across UNC campuses, which Brunstetter said could reduce the overall system’s footprint.
“I think our members definitely envision that there could be some consolidation between campuses, and we might need to go from 16 down to 15, 14, something like that,” he said.
The university campuses in the system include UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University, Fayetteville State University, East Carolina University, UNC-Greensboro, North Carolina A&T State University, Winston-Salem State University, the UNC School of the Arts, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Pembroke, Elizabeth City State University, Appalachian State University, UNC-Asheville and Western Carolina University.
Brunstetter didn’t elaborate on which campuses might close.
Filed under North Carolina, Politics
Oh, this would have been fun!
Only the GOP could view this as a “Unity Ticket”….
It would have unified the country alright- against their ticket and given President Obama a real landslide….
From Bloomberg BusinessWeek via Huffington Post:
Pegged as an early frontrunner for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination, the Republican primary results were showing a different picture. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) claimed the Iowa caucus and a clean sweep of three Feb. 7 contests. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) snagged the conservative foothold of South Carolina on Jan. 21, sparking questions of whether Romney was capable of inspiring the party to victory against President Barack Obama.
A Friday Bloomberg Businessweek report reveals that things could have been worse. Santorum and Gingrich were close to forming a “Unity Ticket,” aimed at knocking Romney out.
Santorum’s stock surged after that February 2012 rally, to a point where there was talk he could capture Romney’s home state of Michigan. According to the Businessweek report, that’s when the “Unity Ticket” discussion reached its peak. But negotiations collapsed just before Michigan’s Feb. 28 primary.
“Everybody thought there was an opportunity,” John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist, told Businessweek. “It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign.”
At the heart of the Gingrich-Santorum breakdown was a battle over who would be the eventual presidential candidate. Based on what Gingrich told Businessweek, it appeared to be a deal-breaking factor.
“In the end, it was just too hard to negotiate,” Gingrich said.
MORE: Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum Nearly Agreed To Form 2012 ‘Unity Ticket:’ Bloomberg Businessweek.
Filed under Politics
Great message today on Facebook from former Labor Secretary and all around brilliant man Robert Reich…
Sometimes politics and politicians just seem too ridiculous to take seriously. That’s one of the reasons I slowed down on blogging for a few months. I had to take a break from the foolishness.
But I realized we all have to stay engaged and stay in the game. The Conservatives, the Rich, the 1% , the crazy Evangelical fringe, the haters, the Gun Nuts and the neanderthal’s certainly will. They aren’t going away- well, at least until they die out….
With the Supreme Court on the verge of throwing out section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Republicans are going to do even more to gerrymander their way into keeping power and finding ways to suppress the vote.
I hope all my Progressive friends and readers will read this message from Secretary Reich and keep it in mind:
In light of the standoff in Washington — and the continuing dysfunction in our nation’s capital — many of you are angry and frustrated. Some of you say you’ve had it with politics. Others feel powerless and hopeless. A number blame both parties, seeing Democrats as no different from Republicans.
All these reactions are exactly what the regressives want. This is the heart of their strategy. They want you to see all of politics and all politicians as crooks and con-artists, fools or knaves. They want you to give up. That way, they can have it all. They can turn the clock back on America. They can shred every safety net, eviscerate every regulation, prevent any investment in the health and education of future generations. They can hammer the poor and middle class with lower wages, fewer jobs, and less security, and create a plutocracy of the privileged and powerful. Get it? They want you out of the way so they have America to themselves. The showdowns and standoffs and gridlock in Washington are part of their plot.
We must not let them. The progressive forces in this country are stronger than the regressive ones, but only if we are united and determined. Don’t stop making a ruckus. Don’t stop writing and calling your representatives. Don’t stop mobilizing others, and organizing at the grass roots. 2014 will be a key election year. We must take our democracy back.
via Robert Reich.
Filed under Elections, Politics, Uncategorized
Facts are so inconvenient for some folks….
Some very interesting information from RawStory.com that shows how the NRA, among other interests groups, tries to stop scientific studies that might go against their interests.
And this shows just how explosive facts might be….
But the Right Wing will do all it can to suppress or ignore the facts….
So, they figure it’s best just not to have any….
Saves them so much time and effort to kill or misrepresent them or convince people to ignore them…
President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn’t pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We’ve interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency’s gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
_______________________________________________
One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.
What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.
It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.
But in this case, we’re talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.
MORE: What researchers learned about gun violence before Congress killed funding | The Raw Story.
Filed under Guns, Politics, Uncategorized
Now, who wants to see this crap?
Although it is interesting that “W” has this “artistic” side….
I just wonder if he was standing naked over the picture of the Church. That part is not clear….
And who was he sending them to?
The mind reels…
Excerpt from and link to full story on RawStory.com:
Photos included in an information dump turned over to The Smoking Gun include President George H.W. Bush in the hospital, the elder Bush posing with President Bill Clinton, a family photo of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and even President George W. Bush posing with a cardboard cutout of himself wearing a mustache and beret.
Three of the images also show paintings Bush created, including one of himself in the shower, another of himself in a bath, and a third of him crouched over a canvas depicting a church.
A hacker going by the name “Guccifer” claimed the stolen messages include addresses, phone numbers and email addresses that go directly to both former presidents and their families, along with a security code for a gate outside the younger Bush’s home in Dallas.
via Hacker reveals George W. Bush’s naked self-portraits | The Raw Story.
Filed under Politics
If you go by the old Southern “One Drop Rule”, she just may have been!
Of course, if you applied the One Drop Rule, meaning even one Black ancestor or one drop of “Black Blood” makes you Black, there would be a lot of Klansmen committing suicide. Not that that’s a bad thing….
Still, I think of Jackie as more like Ava Gardner in “Show Boat.” Not really Black, but now being asked to play the part….
But it’s all open to debate.
Oh, by the way, this standard also means Anderson Cooper is Black.
Anyway, this is part of a fascinating article at AlterNet.org about unknown facts for Black History Month.
Jackie O, perhaps America’s most emulated and admired First Lady, descended from a family known as the van Salee’s, who were described as “mulatto” in the 17th century. This family traced its lineage in part to a Dutch mariner named Jan Jensen, who turned Turk (what some Europeans called “going native”), which was more popular than common history reveals.
It is widely believed Jensen fathered two children, Anthony and Abraham van Salee, by a Moorish concubine. Following a dispute with his white wife, Anthony van Salee was exiled to territory across the river, where he became Brooklyn’s first settler. Until a few decades ago, this property adjoining Coney Island was called Turk’s Island after Anthony van Salle — the term “Turk,” in his day being synonymous with Moor (North African). A descendant, John van Salee De Grasse, born in 1825, was the first black American formally educated as a doctor. When Jackie Kennedy was asked about her van Salee roots during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, she called her ancestors “Jewish.” Of course, her socialite father, born in 1891, was nicknamed “Black Jack” Bouvier for his swarthy complexion. In the 1960s, journalists described the First Lady’s features as “French,” earning her the cover page of countless magazines, including film and fan publications. Not only Kennedy Onassis, but well-borns Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Vanderbilt (and thus Anderson Cooper), are van Salee descendants.
Filed under Entertainment, Race
From Howard’s mouth to God’s ear….
We can only hope his predictions are true.
This is a really fascinating article on the rise and, hopefully, fall of Karl Rove and the current far-right, Tea Party infused Republican Party. It offers a great historical perspective.
Here is a brief excerpt and a link, which I encourage you to follow, to the full story by Howard Fineman at the Huffington Post:
The party of Paul, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and many others is a throwback to the nativism and principled know-nothing-ism of conservatives whom the likes of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan purged from the party long ago, making it safe for the Roves of the world to advance.
It took the likes of Buckley and Reagan two decades to rid the GOP and the mainstream conservative movement of the John Birchers, ultra-isolationists and flat-out segregationists and to create a party and a platform that would win a national election.
Now leaders and potential leaders such as Cruz (a rising force to be reckoned with) and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida need to perform the same cleansing task — and will probably have to take on the Paulites (who are paranoid conspiracy theorists at heart) to do it.
The war for the soul of the Republican Party is real, deep and reminiscent of that earlier conflict. For the GOP it ended well: they harnessed the energy at the grassroots to take over Washington.
This equally bitter GOP civil war may end in the party’s revival, too. But it won’t be Rove, or one of his clients, who is able to end it.
He’s done.
Filed under Politics
Lost in the 21st Century 