President Obama used this week’s address to thank and encourage all the dads of America to continue doing what is necessary for their family. And he spoke about the upcoming White House Working Family Summit, where families will discuss the challenges they face in the workplace and ways to improve workplace policies to match those challenges.
That’s why, earlier this week, we brought working dads from across America to the White House to talk about the challenges they face. And in a few weeks, I’ll hold the first-ever White House Working Families Summit. We’ve still got too many workplace policies that belong in the 1950s, and it’s time to bring them up to date for today’s families, where oftentimes, both parents are working. Moms and dads deserve affordable child care, and time off to care for a sick parent or child without running into hardship. Women deserve equal pay for equal work – and at a time when more women are breadwinners for a family, that benefits men, too. And because no parent who works full-time should have to raise a family in poverty, it’s time for Congress to follow the lead of state after state, get on the bandwagon, and give America a raise.
The President of the United States spoke today about the unfolding crisis in Iraq and America’s role, if any, in bringing some form of stability to the country.
Usually, one remembers the dates that’s important to them. Their birthday, their anniversary, the year they graduated from high school or college, the year they invaded another nation and declared war on that nation… well, maybe that last one is not that important, especially when thousands of Americans died and tens of thousands of Americans lost limbs in said war. And who cares that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens lost their lives? Remembering the year we invaded Iraq is not a big deal.
Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George Bush, could not remember when he and the administration he worked for took this country into war. In an apparent attempt to criticize the Obama administration for the present security situation in that nation, Fleischer took to Twitter and tweeted this:
Just for the record, and in case other Bush mouthpieces wanted to get into this conversation, George Bust invaded Iraq in March of 2003.
After TalkingPointsMemo pointed this out in a post, Fleischer responded with a casual “thank you,” then stated that he must have hit the wrong key on his keyboard.
Five teenagers and one 20-year-old could spend the rest of their natural life in prison for the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl. According to a report by the Waco Tribune, the men where indicted on a total of 91 counts. If convicted, the young males could be sentenced to 1,300 years each.
On April 23, Douglas Canada,19, and Da’Juan Degrate, 18, convinced the 15-year-old girl to cut school at Waco High School. The girl agreed to hang with her classmates at a home, but she soon discovered that four other men where also inside.
Canada took the girl to a restroom and allegedly raped her. The girl told police that after Canada finished, the other males took turns having sex with her in a bedroom.
Along with Canada and Degrate, the other men who were at the home include Devoric Javon Evans, 20; Lamont Tray Davis, 19; Day’tron Derrell Smith, 18; and Cory Darnell Hall, 18.
After the sexual act, Davis drove the girl back to her high school. She reported the assault and was taken to a hospital. Canada faces a maximum of 1,360 years in prison while the others face 1,340 years in prison.
The men face steep sentences because of a Texas law known as “acting in concert.” It makes every person at the scene of a crime responsible for the crime committed.
According to TMZ, an irate Michael Jackson fan is suing his Estate because she thinks MJ was not the lead singer on 3 of his songs on the 2010 CD, “Michael” … the first release after his death.
The woman filed the suit today in L.A. claiming she bought the disc in 2011, but didn’t hear enough Michael on 3 particular tracks.
In the suit she claims she hired an audio expert to analyze her CD and he determined it was very likely that MJ did not sing lead vocals on “Breaking News” … “Monster” … and “Keep Your Head Up.”
The woman wants this to be a class action — meaning if the allegation is true the Estate would owe money to everyone who bought the full album, or any of the 3 tracks in question.
The Estate’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman, has previously said Michael did provide lead vocals for all the tracks on the album.
He’s rude. He’s a pundit. Put those two together and you get rude punditry that, after you’ve past the rudeness, the punditry makes a whole lotta sense.
So Iraq is apparently falling into the hands of some very bad people and like expected, Republicans found their scapegoat.
As with everything else in their eyes, president Obama is to be blamed. After all, it was he who ended the decade old war in Iraq, a war that cost Americans over a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives. Obama even had the nerve to bring the remaining troops back home to their families. The Audacity!
So the uprising in Iraq now is obviously Obama’s fault. This according to Republican Senator John McCain.
“Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced,” the Arizona Republican warmonger said. “It’s a colossal failure of American security policy.”
Of course, Senator John McCain and all of his warmongering buddies in Congress who decided to invade a country that had nothing to do with September 11th, are now deflecting blame to Barack Obama, the one man in Washington that stood against the Iraq invasion from the very beginning.
But the Republicans and their deflection game is being called out, and no one calls them out better than The Rude Pundit!
Once more, Barack Obama’s presidency is swallowed and squandered by the devastated landscape George W. Bush left behind.
Obama is already getting the blame for the uprisings, the Sunni on Shiite violence, the radical Kurds taking what they always wanted (aided by average, everyday Kurds). It’s like blaming your current lover for the herpes you got from some dude ten years ago because he’s there and why the fuck not direct your rage at someone who is convenient instead of yourself and your own stupid decisions.
Nicole Goodlett of Spartanburg, SC, missing since March 2014.
When nearly 300 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram and went missing in April, the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls became a rallying call to draw attention to the crime and to demand action.
Nations, including the United States, sent resources to Africa in hopes of finding those girls while every day, here in America, scores of black people go missing with little or no fanfare or calls to action.
The National Crime Information Center reports that more than 270,000 minorities have been reported missing since 2010. Almost half of that number is made up of African-Americans, and roughly 64,000 are African-American girls and women.
Where’s the hangtag? Where’s the media attention? Where’s the movement?
The New Jersey governor – presently involved in multiple sandals involving the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge and political retribution using federal Sandy relief funds – was apparently told that staying out of the spotlight and allowing the scandals to fester would harm his 2016 presidential prospects. So he began a comedy routine to take people’s mind off the damages caused by his administration.
He made a scheduled stop at the Jimmy Falcon show last night and felt the need to dance. Things must be great in the Christie camp!
After an awkward dance off, Chris Christie was asked questions regarding the Republican Party. Topics included Eric Cantor, leadership in the party, and a question about whether he could win if he went up against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Conversation went something like this with Fallon asking a hypothetical.
“Hypothetically, you run for president. Hypothetically, Hillary Clinton runs for president. Hypothetically, do you think you can beat her?”
“Hypothetically? You bet,” Christie said.
“In a dance-off,” Fallon responded.
“That’s what I was talking about,” Christie said. “What were you talking about?”
If Bowe Bergdahl only knew the hate and venom being spewed about him here in America by the Republicans and the conservative media, he would kindly ask his Taliban captors to please take him back. But instead, the unsuspecting American troop, a prisoner of war, has boarded a plane from Germany and is on his way back to the land he calls home!
Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left a military hospital in Germany on Thursday afternoon and will arrive in the United States early Friday, officials said.
The former Taliban prisoner is expected to land in San Antonio overnight and be taken to the Brooke Army Medical Center.
Bergdahl will not make any public appearances during Phase 3 of his reintegration process, and there will be no media access to his return or his stay at Brooke Army Medical Center.
‘Our first priority is making sure that Sgt. Bergdahl continues to get the care and support he needs,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
Just lay off the lady already. NPR got the chance to interview the potential 2016 candidate, Hillary Clinton, and things kinda got out of hand. The NPR interviewer pushed and pushed Mrs Clinton to the point where the former Secretary of State had to put her foot down and explain that if her position changed on gay marriage, it wasn’t done for political reasons like was being implied.
“I have to say, I think you are being very persistent, but you are playing with my words and playing with what is such an important issue,” Clinton said.
“I’m just trying to clarify so I can understand …” Gross said.
“No, I don’t think you are trying to clarify,” Clinton snapped back. “I think you’re trying to say I used to be opposed and now I’m in favor and I did it for political reasons, and that’s just flat wrong. So let me just state what I feel like you are implying and repudiate it. I have a strong record, I have a great commitment to this issue, and I am proud of what I’ve done and the progress we’re making.”
The exchange comes the same week that Clinton began her book tour and accompanying media rollout, during which there has already been at least one other rocky moment: When she said that after leaving the White House, she and former President Bill Clinton were “dead broke,” a remark she has since sought to clarify.
A recording of the NPR interview was shared with POLITICO by America Rising, a Republican research group that’s spent the majority of its time focused on Clinton. “Fresh Air” is a favorite program among progressives.
“I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage, and I don’t think you probably did, either,” Clinton said to Gross. “This was an incredibly new and important idea that people on the front lines of the gay rights movement began to talk about and slowly, but surely, convinced others of the rightness of that position. And when I was ready to say what I said, I said it.”
Clinton was lauded at the State Department for focusing on LGBT issues related to agency personnel and also in other countries. But she formally stated her support for gay marriage only after a number of prominent Democrats, such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and even some Republicans, such as Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, had already done so.
Her allies have attributed her timing to the need for her to stay apolitical while at the State Department.
“You know, somebody is always first, Terry,” Clinton said. “Somebody is always out front, and thank goodness they are. But that doesn’t mean that those who join later, in being publicly supportive or even privately accepting that there needs to be change, are any less committed. You could not be having the sweep of marriage equality across our country if nobody changed their mind, and thank goodness so many of us have.”
This little missed piece of nugget came after the Washington Post contacted the school asking for information on The Brat. The response from the school was a tad bit shocking!
“We have no record under that name.” said the University spokesman, Martin Mbugua.
As it turns out, he did obtain his masters in divinity in Princeton, which is a well respected theological institution but not the prestigious Ivy League school that Princeton University is recognized as.
Mbugua says that occasionally people “make an association between the institutions here in Princeton — an incorrect association.” Although the two institutions are located in the same town there is no connection between the two.
The WaPo has sent an e-mail to Brat’s campaign requesting a comment on the discrepancy, but has not yet received a reply.
Interestingly, Brat appeared on Mark Levin’s radio show and accused Cantor of making false statements about him during his primary campaign. Levin was one of the-far right talk radio personalities who supported Brat, saying that most of the party “sound alike, they look alike almost” and that the rank and file wanted a “Constitutional conservative in the leadership, not just the next guy in line.”
Family member confirms death. Dee was living in New Rochelle.
AFRO NEWSPAPER/GADO/GETTY IMAGESRuby Dee in 1960.
Stage and screen legend Ruby Dee, who personified grace, grit and progress at a time when African-American women were given little space in movies and on stage, died Wednesday in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 91.
The death was confirmed Thursday by a family member, who declined to answer any questions pending the release of a statement.
“She died late (Wednesday) with her whole family around her,” family friend Latifah Salahudin told the Daily News. “All three kids and seven grandkids were there, surrounding her with so much love. She went peacefully from natural causes. We should all be so lucky.”
“She was so full of life and so strong. Such a powerful woman. We’re all going to miss her,” Salahudin added.
The Cleveland-born, New York-raised actress and activist — winner of an Emmy, a Grammy and a Screen Actors Guild award, among others — not only starred on Broadway (“Take It From the Top!” “Two Hah Hahs and a Homeboy”), film (Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever”), and TV (“All God’s Children,” “Feast of All Saints”), but, with her husband and collaborator Ossie Davis, was a major figure in the Civil Rights movement.
THE WASHINGTON POST/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES
Ruby Dee gives a reading at the March on Washington in 1963.
In 2005, Dee and Davis received the National Civil Rights Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Freedom award. Davis died in February of that year.
Dee’s first film role came in 1949, in the musical drama “That Man of Mine.” She played Rachel Robinson in “The Jackie Robinson Story” in 1950, and costarred opposite Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt and Cab Calloway in “St. Louis Blues” (1958).
She appeared in the 1979 TV movie “Roots: The Next Generations,” and costarred with Davis in their own short-lived 1980-81 show, “Ossie and Ruby!”
The two played contentious neighbors who embodied, and recalled, the social unrest of the ’60s in Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989). She earned her sole Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, for “American Gangster” (2007).
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