When he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel last week, the President spoke about a number of important issues facing this country today. One of those issues was Ferguson, the recent DOJ report detailing the unbelievable level of racism by the Ferguson Police Department, and the rights of the community to protests and the rights of the police officers to do their job.
“I think that what had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable, and was worthy of protest,” the President said. “But there was no excuse for criminal acts… In the same way that you can’t generalize about police officers who do an extraordinarily tough job, overwhelmingly they do it professionally, you can’t generalize about protesters who, it turns out, had some very legitimate grievances.”
16.4 Million to be exact! This, despite the constant barrage of attacks from the Republicans in Congress and the Republicans sitting in the Supreme Court. And for your information, the healthcare act is still under attack as the Supreme Court ponders whether they will gut the act and drop millions of Americans from receiving coverage!
Yay America!
A whopping 16.4 million people have gained health insurance coverage since Obamacare passed, according to a new government report released Monday.
The breakdown: 14.1 million adults insured since Obamacare’s first open-enrollment period which began in October 2013, and 2.3 million young adults aged 19-25 covered on a parent’s plan since the policy took effect in 2010.
The two-page report by the Department of Health and Human Services provides fresh evidence that the still-unpopular law has sharply reversed the trend of Americans losing their coverage. The uninsured rate fell from 20.3 percent to 13.2 percent as of March 4, 2015, a drop of 35 percent.
The reduction in uninsured is steeper among blacks (9.2 percentage points) and Hispanics (12.3 percentage points) than among whites (5.3 percentage points).
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took another shot at Fox News in an interview that aired this week, saying the channel’s reporting that there were Muslim “no-go zones” in her city was “a lie at a very, very serious time.”
Hidalgo spoke to CNN about the city’s planned lawsuit against Fox News for its coverage of the supposed “no-go zones” in the wake of terror attacks by Islamic extremists earlier this year in Paris. Fox eventually issued multiple corrections and said there was “no credible information” to support the idea that non-Muslims are not allowed in parts of England or France.
“We are in a world that can very dangerously tip over, as we’ve seen,” Hidalgo said, according to CNN’s translation. “And we should not accept this type of talk that only adds difficulty.”
Though she did not explain details of the lawsuit against Fox, she said the city “took legal action at the Paris high court.”
She said she remained angry about Fox’s reporting and that “it has economic consequences because some in the United States suddenly become afraid of Paris.”
“What Fox News did was to lie,” Hidalgo said, according to CNN. “It wasn’t opinion or legitimate criticism. We are in a democracy, so real criticism is normal. But it was a lie at a very, very serious time. And some like Fox stigmatized a portion of the population and they wanted to show something that doesn’t exist.”
We are truly in deep PARCC mode now. Perhaps the April/May test administration should include readings from the Pentagon Papers.
Pearson Education, the company that produces the PARCC tests, and is reportedly being paid over $22 million dollars in New Jersey alone, is monitoring social media to check for security breaches and other untoward activity. The latest example is in the Watchung Hills Regional school district, where evidently a student tweeted a test question and Pearson was able to flag it. The company then contacted the New Jersey Department of Education, which then contacted the school district. A fuller discussion is here. I can certainly understand test security because every teacher in New Jersey is warned annually that any data breach can result in the loss of their teaching license.
In the new testing world, though, the students may control the balance of power. Think about it: The new tests are being given exclusively on computers to an audience that, shall we say, is less than enthusiastic about sitting for hours to complete them. Students also have access to the Internet on their own devices. Mix in the politics of test refusal and the widely acknowledged fact that these tests count for zilch to the people who are taking them, and you have a messy brew that was just waiting to foam over. And think again if you think this is only happening in New Jersey.
Testing has always been a part of education and the PARCC is just another in a long line that stretches back decades. What’s upset many more people about these particular tests is that they are tied to the Common Core Curriculum Standards, which are unpopular on both the right and the left, and which most school districts just implemented formally this past September. That means that students in grades 3-11 have only had six months with which to work with some new, sophisticated concepts. How are these tests going to do anything except tell us that we have more work to do? What’s worse, many parents and teachers with college educations and advanced degrees have taken the practice tests and have been flummoxed by what PARCC says are the correct answers.
The tests are also unpopular because they are being administered over a couple of weeks in two separate time frames; one now and one during late April or early May. This is taking an extraordinary amount of time away from classroom teaching and learning that is, presumably, the point of having children go to school and hiring teachers to instruct and mentor them. As someone who teaches Advanced Placement courses, I can tell you that this schedule has put enormous pressure on me to find time to properly prepare students for the early May AP tests while they are also taking the PARCC.
Then there is Pearson Education (remember Pearson Education? This is a column on Pearson Education). They will be paid about $22 million dollars for the tests in NJ, which is below the original estimate, but it’s still a great deal of money. Now the company is trolling through social media, monitoring student behavior and expecting that nobody will ever talk about the tests in a world where we are all connected.
This will not help schools and states that are trying to limit the number of students who are refusing to take the tests, and could possibly lead to more students not taking them in April/May. In the high school where I teach, approximately 35% of eligible students are not taking the tests. When I was proctoring the tests last week I did notice that a number of students were logging on to the test program on their computers, cycling through the pages in about 30 seconds, then taking out a book to read. Civil disobedience is alive and well.
Every social movement has its tipping point. This could be the one for Pearson and PARCC.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces have reclaimed more than 25 percent of ISIS-held territory inside Iraq, according to a U.S. assessment that also determined that Kurdish fighters are responsible for the majority of the territory retaken from ISIS in northern Iraq, ABC reports.
“We assess ISIL’s front lines have been pushed back in northern and central Iraq,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said at a Pentagon briefing today, referring to the militant group also known as ISIS. “ISIL no longer has complete freedom of movement in roughly 25 percent of populated areas of Iraqi territory where they once operated freely.”
The recaptured areas represent an area between 4,100 and 5,200 square miles or 11,000 and 13,500 square kilometers, Warren said. At its peak, ISIS was in control of 55,000 square kilometers in northern and western Iraq, Pentagon officials said.
“ISIL lost large areas where it was once dominant in the governance of Babil, Diyala, Nineveh, Salahadin and Kirkuk,” Warren said.
Here we go again with the FREEDOM loving Republicans. In Texas, this particular FREEDOM loving Republican wants to limit Texans from using their own personal cell phone to videotape a police officer.
A bill restricting the rights of citizens to record the police was filed in Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday.
The House Bill 2918 introduced by Texas Representative Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) would make private citizens photographing or recording the police within 25 feet of them a class B misdemeanor, and those who are armed would not be able to stand recording within 100 feet of an officer.
“My bill,” he tweeted on Thursday, “just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement.” He disagreed with people who said the measure makes filming police illegal.
Villalba introduced his measure to the Texas House this week. His office didn’t immediately respond to msnbc’s request for additional comment.
In a preview for his Vice News interview, President Obama was asked about the recent backlash to the 47 Republican Senators who took it upon themselves to send a letter to Iran, urging the nation not to negotiate with President Obama because any nuclear agreement between the two parties may not last. Since making that ghastly mistake, Republicans have endured a national and international ridicule for their foolish decision.
The President was asked and weighed in.
“I’m embarrassed for them,” Mr. Obama said. “For them to address a letter to the Ayatollah, who they claim is our mortal enemy, and their basic argument is ‘don’t deal with our president because you can’t trust him to follow through on an agreement. That’s close to unprecedented.”
One by one, the signers to the letter have tried to distance themselves from the letter, but the damage has already been done as the Republican party is not only seen as a disappointment here in America, but a mockery worldwide.
If you are a mean person and sent an evil and mean tweet to President Obama… in other words, if you are a Republican and tweeted your unfounded frustrations at the president, then chances are you got your tweet read… by the president himself!
In an appearance Comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s NBC show, the president followed in the footsteps of many other Kimmel guests and read mean and nasty tweets about himself.
If you haven’t signed the petition yet, well here’s your chance. The petition is here, just click on this link.
The petition is accusing the 47 Republicans who sent a letter to Iran, with treason.
The petition, created on Monday, accuses these Republicans of violating the Logan Act (which, if you’ve been following the news at all this week, you’ve heard about at least once). The Logan Act forbids unauthorized American citizens from “carr[ying] on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof.”
The petition reads, “This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason.”
You just can’t keep this racist out of the lime-light. Just days after attacking President Obama for “not loving America,” the former mayor of New York went home to Fox News and this time, attacked a 17-year-old dead black teenager named, Mike Brown.
Of course Mike is not around to defend himself and we will never get his side of the story, but that is not necessary for the likes of Rudy Giuliani who repeated the talking points of Officer Darren Wilson, the man who killed Mike Brown. And although it is a known fact that Darren Wilson did not have any information about Brown robbing a convenience store, Giuliani used this insignificant detail to justify killing the teenager.
“A man committed a robbery, attempted to assault a police officer, and the police officer, to save his life, shot him,” Giuliani told Fox News on Thursday. “The police officer did his duty. The police officer should be commended for what he did. He did exactly what you should do.”
He is no longer working at Univision, but a spot may have just opened up on Fox News. This is the people Fox adores!
Rodner Figueroa, the host of “El Gordo Y la Flaca,” said in Spanish, “You know Michelle Obama looks like she is of the cast of “The Planet Of The Apes” as he pointed to a photo of Obama. Figueroa made the comment in a segment about makeup artist Paolo Ballesteros.
Figueroa was quickly fired in response, according to NBC News.
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