He went on CNN’s Piers Morgan and began the interview actually sounding smart, talking about the “post traumatic stress disorder” he thinks George Zimmerman is going through after he killed Trayvon Martin. Then Piers Morgan asked the question to Zimmerman’s former neighbor and Watch Block Captain Frank Taaffe, – if George Zimmerman suffers from PTSD, then why is he surrounding himself with all these guns?
Mr. Taaffe put aside his psychology hat and put on his dunce cap instead. He answered, “”Well, boys will have their toys, as they say.”
And that was essentially the end of the interview. Apparently Mr. Taaffe didn’t do his homework before agreeing to the interview with Piers Morgan. He apparently didn’t know that guests siding with murders and guns and showing no respect to the victims and their families, usually end in a shouting match with the CNN host.
In an appearance on BET’s 106 & Park, The First Lady of the United States was asked a question about any regrets she might have with her wardrobe. The First Lady answered;
“I am kind of always happy with what I’m wearing, I think,” she said. “Sometimes I forget I’m the first lady and I’m running around in shorts. I know the first time we went on a family vacation, I had shorts on getting off of Air Force One and that created a huge stink because people were like, ‘She’s wearing shorts getting off of Air Force One!’ And I thought, ‘What? We’re on vacation!’ It was hot!” She added, “So I’ve avoided shorts getting off of Air Force One.”
On Sunday, Sasha Obama wore a sweater with a unicorn on it to a basketball game. By Thursday, unicorn sweaters had gone extinct. (Is “extinct” the word for a sweater selling out?Maybe it should be.)
According to the Huffington Post, as soon as Sasha took her courtside seat at the Maryland Terps women’s basketball game on Sunday, Twitter lit up with adoration of the younger Obama daughter’s chosen top. Where did she get it? WHERE CAN I GET ONE? Are those Obama girls the best or what?
It gets worse: not only is the sweater not currently available for purchase, according to the company’s Twitter account, it might not ever be available for purchase again. But don’t cry, aspiring Sashalikes; luckily, sweaters with animals knit onto them are sort of trendy right now.
Kaboom! Republicans dared Harry Reid to do it, and he just did, finally. The Senate has voted to change the filibuster rules, 52-48. Democrats Carl Levin, Joe Manchin, Mark Pryor voted against changing the rule.
The new rule that will allow just a simple majority vote for all nominees except for the Supreme Court. For the remainder of this Congress, President Obama’s nominees will only need 51 votes to be appointed. What that means immediately is that, while the Republicans continue to play games to delay action on the Defense Authorization, the nominations of Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard, and Roberts Wilkins to the D.C. Circuit can move forward. So can the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt to the federal housing agency. In other words, the Senate can start functioning again. At least on nominations.
This will likely just further enrage Republicans, making them even more obnoxious and obstructionist. So next stop, ending the filibuster on legislation. That will probably happen at the beginning of the next Congress, January, 2015.
Mitch McConnell – remember him? When president Obama was first elected, Mitch McConnell proclaimed that his number one goal was to make sure Mr. Obama was a one term president.
With that goal in mind, McConnell and the rest of his Republican friends went out of their way to make sure the President and his policies failed. Along the way, Republicans blocked every bill supported by the president, and sat on their hands when their help was obviously needed to end the recession and put laid off Americans back to work.
And talk about filibusters!
Thanks to McConnell and his Republican cohorts, President Obama and Senate Democrats received more Republican filibusters than previous administrations. Senate Republicans are presently filibustering court nominees, simply because they have nothing else to do apparently.
And it is because of these unprecedented filibusters that Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid decided to consider using the nuclear option. Simply put, the nuclear option would allow votes to go forward, based on a simple majority vote instead of a super majority, as the Senate rules now stipulates.
This nuclear option consideration by Reid has Senate Republicans up in arms. They just cannot understand why Reid would want to get things done in the Senate, as opposed to their plan of blocking and filibustering everything!
Today, Mitch McConnell had the nerve to step on the Senate floor to explain that there is no need for Reid to use the nuclear option because, well, Republicans have been so darn helpful to this president.
Three people were killed in execution style shooting and two critically wounded after gunfire erupted inside a suburban Houston apartment Wednesday afternoon.
The shooting happened about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Sunbury Downs Apartments in an unincorporated area 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston.
A young man and two young women died after each was shot multiple times, including the head, and another man and woman were airlifted to Memorial Hermann-Texas Trauma Institute in Houston with similar gunshot wounds, said Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia.
Both were in critical condition, and detectives were at the hospital awaiting a chance to interview the two, he said.
He said the victims were in their late teens to early 20s and that their names would not be released until their families could be notified.
‘It’s a waste of human life that we’re talking tonight once again about young people who will not get to fulfill the promise that they were born with,’ Garcia said according to ABC 13.
‘This scene is still very fresh and as we have more progress and perspective on the scene, we will be sharing that with you,’ Garcia said.
Deputies have no description of the gunman. Witnesses say a man shot the victims inside the one-bedroom downstairs apartment, closed the apartment door and fled, Garcia said.
All of those shot were seated when the gunfire started, he said. There were no signs of forced entry or struggle.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, is poised to move forward on Thursday with a vote on what is known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option,” several Democrats said. Mr. Reid and the senators who have been the most vocal on stopping the Republican blockade of White House nominees are now confident they have the votes to make the change.
“We’re not bluffing,” said one senior aide who has spoken with Mr. Reid directly and expects a vote on Thursday, barring any unforeseen breakthrough on blocked judges.
The threat that Democrats could significantly limit how the filibuster can be used against nominees has rattled Republicans. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has brokered last-minute deals that have averted a change to filibuster rules in the past, visited Mr. Reid in his office on Thursday but failed to strike a compromise.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa took to the Senate floor and denounced Democrats, saying that if they changed the rules, Republicans would consider them applicable to all judicial nominees, including those for the Supreme Court. Mr. Reid has said he supports keeping intact the minority party’s ability to filibuster controversial Supreme Court nominees.
“Apparently the other side wants to change the rules while still preserving the ability to block a Republican president’s ability to replace a liberal Supreme Court Justice with an originalist,” Mr. Grassley said.
Senate Democrats appear ready to take a step that members of each party have threatened for the better part of a decade, but have not taken, in part because of the political disruption it would create. But senators know this year’s majority could be tomorrow’s minority, yearning for the filibuster as a weapon.
The problem, as Democrats see it, is that Republicans have effectively rewritten Senate rules to create a supermajority requirement for confirming presidential nominees. Filibustering cabinet-level officials, once extremely rare, is now routine.
Here is a little bit of news Fox and your Republicans in Congress won’t tell you. There is a report showing that health care spending has risen by the lowest rate ever recorded. White House officials said Wednesday a continuation of the trend could lead to more jobs and lower-than-expected costs.
Reduced health care costs for employers could lead to 200,000 to 400,000 new jobs per year by the second half of the decade, said Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“If just half the recent slowdown in spending can be sustained, health care spending a decade from now will be $1,400 per person lower,” Furman said.
The Council of Economic Advisers report released Wednesday also said health care inflation is the lowest it has been in 50 years.
The Affordable Care Act is, in part, responsible for the lower costs, Furman and other health experts agree, while Republicans say the declining rate of increases comes purely because of the slowed economy.
An economy hobbled by the recession and the economic crisis in 2008 played a role in some of the reduced spending growth, Furman said, but the report cited “structural change” caused, in part, by the law.
The report’s release came as President Obama and his administration struggle with the political fallout associated with the problem-filled opening of the federal health care exchange, the online marketplace where uninsured Americans can shop for and buy insurance. The exchange’s website, HealthCare.gov, opened Oct. 1 and has been hampered by outages and delays, particularly in its first weeks of operation.
The report did not surprise health economists, said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT who worked with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s and Obama’s health care laws. But it’s “quite striking” that the growth rate continues to be low.
The White House, Gruber said, “obviously has a point they want to push, but I think they’ve got it right. But I think the health economists are still saying, ‘Wait and see.’ You take the news — it’s great news — but we have to wait and see what will happen in the long term.”
If you teach Language Arts and Mathematics, there are probably some good resources for the effective teacher, but as a high school history teacher, there was nothing on the site. Nada. Zilch. Not even a pretense that teaching history is in any way important or even part of the curriculum. Perhaps more will be added later, but at this point, the state has no interest in engaging anyone who doesn’t teach the tested subjects. And that’s to be expected because it’s been clear for a couple of years that the NJ Department of Education is focused on testing to the exclusion of a rich, varied, integrative curriculum..
Clearly this is still a work in progress and there’s a distinct possibility that it will grow into a valued resource. It has a good deal of competition from other, more established sites and its success will be determined by how well it meets teachers’ needs. The comments on the NJ Spotlight article are negative so far, with this being the most telling:
So, I click on the link in the article, then I click on NJMC, I choose Mathematics, then Kindergarten, I click on Unit 1, then I click on SLO 1 Count by ones up to 10.
Then I click on the 3 lesson plans, choose the first one listed called “Subitizing ” (huh???) and Lesson Seed 7.EE.A.2.
It’s a lesson on area using the expression 25(x+10)-13a.
For Kindergarten?
Another lesson says there are 18 cookies in each batch requiring 2 cups of flower. How much flower for 12 dozen?
Kindergarten?
(AP) — A judge ordered Chris Brown on Wednesday to spend three months in rehab after reading a report that said a facility discharged the R&B singer because he threw a rock through his mother’s car window.
Superior Court Judge James Brandlin also added additional rules for Brown in the coming months, requiring him to perform at least 24 hours of community labor a week and to submit to drug testing as he deals with anger management issues.
Brown and his attorney agreed to the terms, which were suggested by probation officials who are overseeing Brown’s sentence for his 2009 beating of then-girlfriendRihanna.
The Grammy winner threw a rock through his mother’s car window Nov. 10 after a joint counseling session in which she suggested the singer remain in treatment, according to a letter submitted by the rehab facility. The facility’s name was not included in court filings.
“Mr. Brown proceeded to walk outside and pick up a rock and threw it through his mother’s car window and it shattered,” the letter states. Brown was discharged because he had signed a contract agreeing to refrain from violence while in treatment.
Rick Scott is the governor of Florida. But that is not the problem. The problem with Rick Scott is that he’s a Republican, and these days, Republicans are not that popular.
That said, governor Rick Scott took his popularity to a gathering of a few hundred sports fan to announce the formation of a new soccer team, The Orlando City Lions. The formation of this new sports team was a happy occasions for the die-hard fans in attendance, and they were happy. But the very sight of Rick Scott – and did we mention he’s a Republican – yes, the very sight of the man taking the stage to make the announcement, caused the happy fans to boo! And boo they did. Soo much booing in fact, that Rick Scott’s announcement was not heard. It looked as if his mic was turned off, but it wasn’t. In the end, Scott had no choice and had to exit the stage!
In an online video game, players follow shooter Adam Lanza’s footsteps the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary school mass shooting.
Called “The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary School,” the widely condemned simulation takes players through the shootings of 26 children and adults before it shows their “score”:
Game creator Ryan Jake Lambourn claims it has a “gun safety” message, but activists against gun violence are baffled and disgusted by the game. The family of Victoria Soto, a murdered Newtown teacher, took their outrage to Twitter, telling Lambourn, “Please tell us how playing a game that recreates how Vicki died would be beneficial?”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told the Hartford Courant he hopes the “very disturbed person who could think of something like this sees the cruelty of what he’s done and stops it.”
Post-Newtown, the National Rifle Association faulted video games and media, not guns, in its wide cast for blame. But the NRA is not above using controversial shooting games when it can profit from them. One month after the tragedy, the NRA released a game with coffin-shaped targets to promote gun ownership.
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