This is not the real Harlem Shake. We’ve detailed what the real one looks like here already. But as long as these people keep making these videos, well, we’ll thing about showing their video.
This is North Carolina’s basketball team’s version.
Author: Ezra Grant
I'm just tired of the lies and nonsense coming from the GOP, so this is my little contribution to combat the nonsense!
He had a great seat! Courtside, close enough to hear what the commentators were saying. A seat that was sure to set him back a few hundred dollars. And as the camera focused on Chris Webber for his opening statement, the nose digger, we’ll call him Mr. Bugga – went in for the gold.
And to cap it all off, he looked right into the camera at the end of his adventure and winked at the audience.
New York Assemblyman Steve Katz is the Putnam County politician who just last year voted down a bill to legalize medical marijuana in New York. Now fast forward to yesterday at 10 a.m., when Katz was pulled over for doing 80 in a 65 on I-87. The officer who pulled Katz over reportedly smelled pot in the car, at which point he discovered that Katz had a small bag of weed in his possession.
It’s too bad Katz, who is a Republican, is so anti-marijuana in his professional life, because he sounds like he’d be a blast to smoke a joint with.
Yes, we’ve heard it all before. This is story-line is quite frankly beginning to sound like a broken record – another republican rejects the president’s outreach.
While doing his outreach to Republicans AGAIN on Wednesday, President Obama invited the Head of the Republicans in the House of Representatives to travel with Vice President and a delegation from the United States, to witness installation of the new Pope.
Boehner refused, stating that he had better things to do.
The Ohio Republican says in a statement that he’d like to go, but it’s impossible with his duties including the budget debate and hosting the Irish prime minister at the Capitol.
Vice President Joe Biden, the first Roman Catholic to be elected vice president, is leading the delegation. Boehner’s office said that after Obama spoke to House Republicans Wednesday, the president invited Boehner, who is Catholic, to accompany Biden.
Boehner says he is grateful for the invitation. He wished the vice president well and said he hopes Biden will send prayers and warm regards from all Americans, especially Catholics, to the first pope from the Americas.
So ObamaCare was passed by the United States Senate, it was approved by the House of Representatives, it was signed into law by the President of The United States, and the case was adjudicated by The United States Supreme Court. All three branches of government approved of the law.
ObamaCare is now being implemented throughout the land. But Republicans in Congress are still wagering their fruitless battle lying to their followers by promising to repeal it.
Earlier in the week, Paul Ryan wrote a budget calling for the repeal of ObamaCare. His budget will be expected to perform a mystifying leap of faith, because while it calls for the repeal of ObamaCare, Ryan’s budget can only be balanced using funds that ObamaCare is saving the nation.
And now Mitch McConnell, using his CPAC speech, McConnell is promising to repeal ObamaCare.
Md. — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is vowing to repeal President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care law.
McConnell spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference next to a tower of 20,000 pages of health care rules and regulations. He calls it a “monument to liberalism” and says Republicans will not back down from the fight.
McConnell faces re-election next year. He says Republicans need to rebound from election losses last year and, quote, “punch back.” He says Democrats haven’t had a new idea, quote, “since the days of the Studebaker.”
He compares the possibility of Democrats nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton or Joe Biden for president in 2016 to, quote, a “rerun of ‘The Golden Girls.'”
After 34 tries at Repeal, Republican voters are still being fooled into thinking that the 35th time will be the charm. And the sad part of all this is, these unfortunate voters who apparently depend only on Fox for news, continue believing the empty rhetoric from their leaders.
Buzzfeed is reporting that failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will use his speech at CPAC today, to apologize to the conservative movement. He just wants to say, he’s sorry.
Friends and former advisers of the failed Republican presidential candidate told BuzzFeed that Romney has come to CPAC as a good-faith effort to renew some measure of goodwill between himself and the conservative movement — many of whom blame him for their party’s current stagnant state.
“I don’t think the governor is concerned about creating a faction in the party; some sort of Romney bloc,” said Robert O’Brien, a longtime friend and adviser who stays in touch with the ex-candidate. “He really doesn’t have a personal political agenda, and he’s not trying to raise his profile.”
While many CPAC speakers — Sarah Palin, Herman Cain — come to the conference in pursuit of political celebrity, Romney’s friends say he has no such ambitions.
“I think he’s going to speak out on issues that are important to him because he cares about this country, as opposed to trying to advance some type of platform in the party,” O’Brien said, adding, “Frankly, I think he enjoys business more than politics.”
One source said Romney hadn’t even considered speaking at CPAC until organizers approached him personally. He accepted, sources said, to thank the conservative conference-goers who were present at every turn of his five-year bid for the presidency, and in hopes of warming the frigid relationship he has with the party’s base.
A person familiar with the speech said his remarks will be more personal in nature, invoking humor and some light self-deprecation, which the governor’s most loyal fans hope will endear him to conservatives.
We’ve seen this story played out many times in the past. If a Republican is not directly affected by something, then they are going to be against it. That was Ohio’s Senator Rob Portman’s position on gay marriage until the gayness came knocking on his door.
Portman’s change of heart came in February 2011 when he found out that his own 21 year old son was gay. “That isn’t how I’ve always felt,” Portman said, acknowledging that he was once against the very idea that two people in love should get married. He revealed to CNN. ““I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, personally, I think this is something that we should allow people to do, to get married, and to have the joy and stability of marriage that I’ve had for over 26 years. That I want all of my children to have, including our son, who is gay.”
And in an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch, Portman wrote, “I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married. As a Congressman, and more recently as a Senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.”
So why is Portman coming out now in support of gay marriage? He is directly affected. Portman explains;
“Now it’s different, you know. I hadn’t expected to be in this position. But I do think, you know, having spent a lot of time thinking about it and working through this issue personally that, you know, this is where I am, for reasons that are consistent with my political philosophy, including family values, including being a conservative who believes the family is a building block of society, so I’m comfortable there now.”
John Fugelsang said it best today on the Stephanie Miller Show, when he said that we can’t wait for Portman’s son to come out as the middle class. Maybe then, Portman will be inclined to do more for the jobless and suffering in this country.
Portman was on the short list to be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate. He admitted to telling Romney that he had a gay son. Romney eventually chose Paul Ryan as his VP.
The assault weapons ban was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but is expected to die on the Senate floor because of Republican opposition.
WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee passed an assault weapons ban in a party line vote after an at times angry hearing in which Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., invoked her own experience with gun violence and lectured committee Republicans on the Constitution.
“I saw people shot” said Feinstein who was feet away from the famous 1978 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and fellow Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk by another board member. Feinstein rarely speaks of the event, which made her the city’s mayor.
“I cannot get out of my mind walking into a crime scene and seeing brain matter all over,” she said.
The 10-8 vote came on the four month anniversary of the massacre in Newtown.
It may mark the high water mark for the proposal to ban hundreds of semi-automatic weapons opponents argue are meant for military use, not self-defense or recreation.
Committee Republicans unanimously opposed the proposal, and opposition from their party, along with that of some Democrats, is expected to sink the bill in the full Senate.
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Google Feed Reader Will Retire In July
For those of us who depend on Google Reader for news, this is both a shock and a surprise. Google has announced that beginning in July, Google Reader will be no more.
From the Reader’s Blog;
We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.
There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.To ensure a smooth transition, we’re providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternative feed-reading solution. If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.
Thank you again for using Reader as your RSS platform.
Chris Hayes will take over the 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC in the next month, the channel is expected to announce on Thursday morning, the day after the current host of that hour, Ed Schultz, said he was moving from the weekdays to the weekends.
Mr. Hayes, a liberal intellectual who has hosted a well-regarded weekend morning program on MSNBC for the past 18 months, is a protégé of Rachel Maddow, the highest-rated host on the channel. He will become the lead-in for her 9 p.m. program, “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
The change is predicated on the belief that MSNBC can win a wider audience with Mr. Hayes than it did with Mr. Schultz, a champion of the working class whose bluster didn’t always pair well with Ms. Maddow and the channel’s other prime-time program, “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Mr. Hayes, on the other hand, is just as wonky as Ms. Maddow and Mr. O’Donnell, and is a regular contributor to both of their programs.
h/t Times
Last time we checked, the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%, the lowest jobless rate since December of 2008. And now, first time jobless claims are also falling.
First-time jobless claims fell by 10,000 to 332,000 in the week ended March 9, the fewest since mid January, according to data today from the Labor Department in Washington. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an increase to 350,000. The four-week average declined to a five- year low.
Managers are maintaining staffing levels as consumers sustain spending even after a two percentage-point increase in the payroll tax at the start of the year reduced paychecks. Nonetheless, there remains a risk that the recent pickup in employment will be cut short as federal budget cutbacks prompt companies and government agencies to trim payrolls.
“The rate of job destruction is pretty low,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, who projected the number of claims would drop to 338,000. “The labor market is in continued-recovery mode, though there is still a lot of ground to make up.”
The economy is improving, in spite of all the road blocks Washington politicians are putting up.
If Mitt Romney had only kept his big mouth shut, then none of this would have happened. He thought he was in his comfort zone among his millionaire friends, and he felt safe. And that was fine. Scott Prouty, the man who taped Romney’s infamous 47% statement, did not intend to make news when he took his camera and began recording the Republican president nominee. No, Scott just wanted to take a picture with Romney after the event was over.
But some things Romney said to his millionaire friends rubbed Scott the wrong way. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with the recording. He went back and forth in his mind for a couple of weeks trying to figure out his next move.
Romney’s words however, kept ringing in his head. That 47% claim and Romney’s story about travelling to China to buy a factory that employed what we would call, slave labor. Prouty explained these two factors helped him make the decision to share his video.
“I knew where he came from” Prouty said, when asked about his initial feeling to Romney’s 47% comment. “The day-in day-out struggles of everyday Americans, that guy [Romney] has no idea and I don’t think he’ll ever have an idea.”
Prouty explained how he lost sleep for two weeks before deciding that he needed to release the tape so that “as many people hear [Romney’s] words.” He explained how he contacted James Carter through YouTube and Twitter, because of some research that Carter had done for a David Corn story on Mother Jones.
“I wanted the conversation,” Prouty said, explaining that fame was not his intention. “I wanted Mitt Romney’s words to be the absolute center of attention.” David Corn of Mother Jones put out a partial recording showing the 47% comment and the rest of the media picked up on it.
Romney opened his mouth again. Back in September Romney was forced to respond to a reporter’s question about his 47% claim. Romney called the piece a “snippet” suggesting that if the full content of the tape was heard, then his statement would make more sense to the rest of America. Prouty said that hearing Romney’s lame excuse prompted him to release the rest of the tape in its entirety to Mother Jones. “He asked for the full content” Prouty said, “so we I told David Corn to release the tape.”
Prouty, who is an Independent, said he voted for President Obama in the November election and is “proud to call him my president.” And hearing President Obama referenced the 47% in the second Presidential debate was the pinnacle.
“It was the last line of the debate and I think I was sitting at the edge of my couch waiting. I watched the first debate and there was no mention of it. There was certainly a cheer erupted in the room at the time. I was thrilled that he hit him with it when he did. It was well done.”
Then yet again, Romney opened his mouth earlier this month in an interview with Fox News and continued blaming President Obama. That was the moment that Scott Prouty decided to come forward and tell his story. Asked why come forward now, Prouty answered that Romney still doesn’t get it. And in his response, Prouty offered some advise for the Republican Presidential loser;
I think the guy needs to respect the will of the voters. The election wasn’t even that close. I think he needs to take personal responsibility for his campaign, take personal responsibility for the words he said. And move forward. A good start would be to go back to some of those towns that Bain Capitol shipped jobs, you know, closed down plants. If he went back to Freeport Illinois, maybe start a business. Hire some people. Create a product. Build something in America. Do something other than vulture capitalism. Do something for America other than making another million dollars for himself. I would have a lot of respect for him if he went forward that way.
Video below.
