Is cool a racist terms?
Racism underlies why conservatives oppose Obama’s policies says Angela Rye, Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus.
She argues that President Obama has struggled during his first term due to racially-motivated opposition from conservatives who dislike having a black president.
“This is probably the toughest presidential term in my lifetime,” Rye said during CSPAN’s Q&A yesterday. Angela Rye argues that calling Obama 'cool' is racism
“I think that a lot of what the president has experienced is because he’s black. You know, whether it’s questioning his intellect or whether or not he’s Ivy League. It’s always either he’s not educated enough or he’s too educated; or he’s too black or he’s not black enough; he’s too Christian or not Christian enough.
She said that “a lot” of conservative opposition is racially-charged, citing the use of the word “cool” in an attack ad launched by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC.
“There’s an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there’s this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses,” Rye said. “And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren’t asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that’s the number one person they’d love to have a beer with. So, if that’s not cool I dont know what is.
She added that “even ‘cool,’ the term ‘cool,’ could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance].”
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yellow haze in China A thick green and yellowish haze in China caused by straw? Young and old residents of the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan were advised to stay indoors on Monday after a thick haze blanketed the city of nine million people, official media said.thick haze covers Chinese city of 9 million supposedly caused by straw
Described by residents as opaque with yellowish and greenish tinges, the fug descended suddenly in the morning, prompting people to rush to put on face masks, witnesses told AFP.
The official Xinhua news agency quoted the environmental protection department of Hubei province saying in a statement: “Children, the elderly and people with heart or respiratory diseases are advised to stay indoors.”
Xinhua said straw burning was the cause and denied there had been any industrial accidents in or near Wuhan, after Internet rumours suggested there had been an explosion at a chemical complex northeast of the city.
Obama out of touch with Secretary of Commerce Bryson
Obama out of touch with his Commerce Secretary John Bryson.
On Monday morning, Washington awoke to learn that Commerce Secretary John Bryson had been involved in a series of auto accidents in southern California on Saturday evening, and cited with a felony hit-and-run by responding police. This news was of course shocking.
For several hours, the White House and the Commerce Department declined comment. In this vacuum, the rumors took a life of their own. Some speculated there was alcohol involved, despite initial police accounts that this was not the case. After official statements reported the cause of the accidents on seizures, the ire turned on that initial speculation, blaming the sardonic culture of Twitter.
Part of the blame surely lay at the feet of an inept White House communications operation, unable to provide the general public with any answers to the health and well-being of a cabinet secretary. This media stonewall continued in Press Secretary Jay Carney’s daily briefing.
In Carney’s first answer, we learned that President Obama had not spoken with Secretary Bryson. This seemed odd. A cabinet secretary is hospitalized following serious traffic incidents and a police citation and the president does not pick up the phone to check on his welfare?
Pressed for details, Carney continually directed questions to the Commerce Department. As if this matter had nothing to do with the White House. On the fifth question, Carney was asked: “So as the matter stands right now, is the Secretary healthy and fit to serve?†Carney referred the question to the Commerce Department.
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C’mon big guy pick up the phone. Or is this a preview of Obama-Care?
Maine gives real HOPE that damage of ObamaCare can be reversed
Maine has reversed the damage of ObamaCare. So maybe the rest of the states can avoid going down the ObamaCare path? Romney promises to get rid of ObamaCare on the first day of office. Below article is from the Wall Street Journal.
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“One tragedy of the Affordable Care Act is that we already know what its regulations will do to insurance markets, because the states have been conducting policy experiments since the 1990s. But we also know from the states that the damage is reversible, as shown by Maine’s emerging insurance turnaround.
In 1993, Augusta passed coverage laws that resemble those that ObamaCare is about to impose nationwide: Insurers could only vary premiums within narrow bands regardless of age or health status, a regulation known as community rating. Four of Maine’s five insurers in the individual market stopped offering coverage and fled, and the state entered an insurance “death spiral” in which premiums don’t cover underlying medical costs. That leads to higher premiums, consumers dropping coverage as a result, and still higher premiums in turn.
Then the 2010 electoral wave carried in Republican Governor Paul LePage and a GOP legislature, and they took modest steps to deregulate the insurance market. Insurers are now allowed to sell policies for premiums that range from 3 to 1 on the basis of age, rather than the prior 1.5 to 1, and to offer incentives or discounts for consumers to choose high-value providers.
The state also created a reinsurance fund that taxes all health plans by $4 a month. If someone ends up requiring extremely expensive care, the fund picks up some of the costs, which means insurers can better manage their future liabilities and pass the savings on to individuals.
The returns are now rolling in for the new coverage that can be offered starting on July 1, and premiums are falling by as much as 69% for Maine’s dominant insurer, Anthem.
According to the Maine Bureau of Insurance, a married couple age 40 to 44 with one child will pay $1,919 a month for a policy with a $2,250 deductible in 2013 if they choose to re-up their current policy. If the same family switches to the new health plan, or buys the plan for the first time, their premium will fall to $920, a 52% decrease. A couple over 60 could buy the same policy for $1,290, down from $2,466 under the old system. Or a young adult 25 to 29 could buy a high $10,000 deductible plan for catastrophic expenses for $232, previously $665.
The old and new products are not identical, so the comparison isn’t perfect. On top of the rule changes, the benefits are slightly different, such as separate deductibles for in- and out-of-network services. And many of the year-over-year reductions are less dramatic, in the range of 10% to 20%, while a few older consumers will see rate increases.
Still, any premium decrease is remarkable on the U.S. health cost escalator, which is being accelerated by ObamaCare. Maine consumers who choose to stay with their current policy (same benefits, old rules) will see an average premium rate increase of just 1.7% from 2012 to 2013—compared to an historical trend of about 10%. Some 46% of the existing book of business will see a rate decrease.
The major irony is that Maine’s reform merely brings its community rating rules into compliance with ObamaCare, which is actually less restrictive than the rules the state passed in 1993. The new national health law will block a further Maine liberalization that is due for 2016.
Maine learned the hard way that the most heavily regulated insurance markets are the most expensive. But the more ominous lesson out of Vacationland is for the 33 states that had the wit never to make the Maine-ObamaCare mistake. They’re the ones that are about to see premiums spike under the Affordable Care Act—perhaps by as much as 69%, and likely by far more.
A version of this article appeared May 31, 2012, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: ObamaCare in Reverse.
pension reform is possible in two California cities so how about the entire state? Hey there is hope and change in golden California!
The referendum process has proved its democratic worth by letting voters leap over union special interests.
Whereas Democrats in Sacramento won’t even bring Gov. Brown’s pension proposals to a vote, voters in two big CA cities — San Diego and San Jose – did. Any hope for San Francisco where unions have a stanglehold?
Gov. Brown says “pension reform is imperative”. But what has he done?
woman charged with raising money for terrorist group does not have to stand for the judge says Court of Appeals Has U.S. Court of Appeals gone nuts allowing a Muslim woman charged with raising money for a terrorist group to follow her interpretation of Islamic law and therefore refuse to stand during her trial?
A Rochester, Minn., woman who refused to stand when a judge entered the courtroom during her trial last year may have had a religious right to keep her seat, a federal appeals court has ruled. woman charged with raising money for terrorist group refuses to stand for judge in her trial
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling Monday, June 4, threw out 19 of 20 contempt citations that Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis had levied against Amina Farah Ali because she wouldn’t rise when court was called to order.
On the first day of her trial on charges of raising money for the terrorist group al-Shabaab, Ali ignored Davis’ order to rise, telling him she interpreted Islamic teachings to mean she didn’t have to stand for anybody.
The judge disagreed, saying that rising was a show of respect to the legal process and that court decorum demanded she stand.
The woman told Davis that the Prophet Muhammad once told a group of followers they didn’t have to honor him by standing. She said that if she didn’t have to rise for the founder of her religion, she didn’t have to rise for anybody….
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Does this court know what idiocy they are peddling. JAJ48@AOL.COM
young Sudanese mother sentenced to death by stoning after beaten by brother
Death by stoning for a teenage illiterate woman who committed adultery in Sudan. Sudan is run by Islamist Omar al-Besir accused of genocide. The young woman does not speak Arabic and has no lawyer. Only evidence is her confession after being beaten by her brother. The Sudanese media is not covering the story. Amnesty International and Human Watch report the latest developments:
A Sudanese woman, believed to be around 18 to 20, has been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery, and is being held near Khartoum, shackled in prison with her baby son, rights groups and lawyers said on Thursday.
The woman, Intisar Sharif Abdalla, was sentenced by the Ombada criminal court on April 22, court documents seen by Reuters showed.
“She’s in dire need of a psychiatrist because she appears to be in a state of shock from the social and family pressures she’s under,” one lawyer said.
Abdalla was illiterate and did not have a lawyer or interpreter in the courtroom. And Arabic is not her native language, the lawyers and activists added.
In 2010, the case of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese U.N. official, sparked international furor when she was sentenced to flogging for wearing trousers.
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Dear lawyer: Intisar Sharif Abdalla doesn’t need a psychiatrist, she needs a file and a saw. JAJ48@aol.com
No records exist whether Elizabeth Warren was first woman while breastfeeding to take Bar Exam in New Jersey There’s no records whether Elizabeth Warren was — or was not — the first nursing mother to take the New Jersey bar exam.
In addition to her unsubstantiated distinction as Harvard’s first woman of color, it turns out that Elizabeth Warren may have also participated in a landmark event for women’s liberation. I’m of course referring to her status as the first nursing mother to take the New Jersey bar exam.
Unfortunately, Warren’s place in history as a feminist icon is in limbo because, once again, her claims can’t be substantiated. The Boston Herald reports:
“I was the first nursing mother to take a bar exam in the state of New Jersey,†Warren told an audience at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2011, in a video posted on the CHF website. When asked how Warren knows that, her campaign said: “Elizabeth was making a point about the very serious challenges she faced as a working mom — from taking an all-day bar exam when she was still breast-feeding, to finding work as a lawyer that would accommodate a mom with two small children.â€
Winnie Comfort of the New Jersey Judiciary, which administers that state’s bar exam, said there’s no way to verify Warren’s claim. Comfort said women have been taking the New Jersey bar exam since 1895, but she’s not aware their nursing habits were ever tracked.
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Why do politicians need to bloviate so? Elizabeth Warren simply cannot know if she was or wasn’t the first woman taking the Bar while nursing a child. So why lie? JAJ48@aol.com
The trial of Roger Clemens is in its fifth week — with Brian McNamee, the government’s star witness, now on the stand — and already, two jurors have been dismissed for falling asleep.
The first juror excused by the judge, Reggie Walton of United States District Court, was a 27-year-old chronically unemployed man who was let go last week. During juror questioning, he told prosecutors that he would “rather be asleep†than serve on the jury. In the end, he tried to do both but failed.
But another juror, a young woman who works as a cashier at a supermarket, failed to heed that warning. She nodded off on Monday — the day McNamee, Clemens’s former trainer, began his testimony — and was dismissed by Walton on Tuesday.
It was just last week that Walton scolded the prosecutors and the defense lawyers for asking too many unnecessary questions and boring the jurors so much that they had begun to discuss the case among themselves, which they were told not to do. He even threatened to put a time limit on the trial.
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What a nightmare strategy–bore the jury to sleep. JAJ48@aol.com
Muslim sharia law, which dictates permissible dress and speech for women, caused cancellation of Lady Gaga’s concert in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Lady Gaga has canceled her sold-out show in Indonesia over security concerns after Muslim hard-liners threatened violence if the pop diva went ahead with her “Born This Way Ball,” promoters said Sun
The Islamic Defenders Front said Lady Gaga’s sexy clothes and provocative dance moves would corrupt youth in the world’s most populous Muslim country.
The group said supporters had bought tickets to the concert and planned to enter and force it to be stopped. It also threatened that thousands of protesters would confront the singer on her way from the airport.
Police had said they would only issue the required permits for the concert if Lady Gaga agreed to tone things down. Instead, she pulled the plug on the show, which had sold out with more than 50,000 tickets.
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