That'll work.He's joking, of course.
Another winner from the House of Ideas.
Also at E! Online, "Salma Hayek's Controversial Comment Regarding Her Mexican Roots Spurs Backlash."
The "Savages" star was saddened that her thoughts about her native country were misinterpreted.
Salma Hayek wants the world to know she is proud of her Mexican roots.
The Savages star, 45, has issued a statement in response to a new interview in German Vogue magazine in which she is quoted as saying that she hardly has "any memories of what it is to be Mexican. My life is completely different now."
The comments ruffled some feathers, particularly in Mexico, where Hayek is adored as a national treasure.
"Let me tell you what's really bad, Sean. The president is running the real risk, every time you keep lowering the standard, breaking tradition -- this is Chicago politics. We don't care, we are going to disrupt your convention. For all the times we have had conventions, we have honored the idea in politics, you have yours, we have ours; then we engage a campaign. They're taking down all of this, just like the president's campaign; he has been the most negative personal campaigner in the oval office -- ever, ever," former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said on FOX News' Hannity" tonight.Watch it at the link.
"You know what?" Caddell asked. "Winning matters more and that's what he is risking."
The irony of President Barack Obama is best captured in his comments on the death of Trayvon Martin, and the ensuing fray. Obama has pitched his presidency as a monument to moderation. He peppers his speeches with nods to ideas originally held by conservatives. He routinely cites Ronald Reagan. He effusively praises the enduring wisdom of the American people, and believes that the height of insight lies in the town square. Despite his sloganeering for change and progress, Obama is a conservative revolutionary, and nowhere is his conservative character revealed more than in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity—race.Keep reading --- and remember, when your entire existence revolves around race and racism, any disagreement --- and hesitation to speak out on tough issues --- can be blamed on white supremacy, the enduring legacy of slavery, or whatever other RAAAAACISM! slogan-of-the-day of the shuck-and-jive grievance hustlers.
Nearly four years into the Age of Obama, is there anybody — anybody – interested in reading a 9,582-word “What It Means” essay about the racial significance of Obama’s presidency?Keep reading.
Would you be more interested if I told you that Ta-Nehisi Coates uses the Trayvon Martin shooting as the contextual prism through which he seeks this wisdom? Would your interest be whetted if I told you that Coates name-checks a list of right-wing villains — Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. — en route to a rather nebulous conclusion about the persistence of white racism as the dominant and defining reality of America’s past, present and future?
Admit it, honky: You don’t want to read it.
"Seniores" and "Señoritas" events held at an Anaheim high school — in which students dressed as gang members and a pregnant woman pushing a baby stroller — have been canceled after officials concluded the activities were demeaning toward Latinos and their culture.RTWT.
The events, which have been held for at least three years at Canyon High School, took place during senior activity week in June and were approved by campus administrators, according to school district officials.
I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epics of our heritage. It represents struggle on the highest level of dignity and discipline.And the progressives today are so undignified and undisciplined ... I don't think MLK would recognize what's happened to the so-called forces of "tolerance."
WASHINGTON — Rep. Paul D. Ryan has cultivated his "affable wonk" persona into an effective moneymaker, winning over CEOs and K Street lobbyists to build a fundraising machine that has boosted his standing on Capitol Hill and helped make him one of the GOP's most influential figures.RTWT.
In 2002, the Wisconsin congressman established a so-called leadership PAC, a fund that allows him to raise money to give to other lawmakers, but the fund did little until 2006, when he began his rapid rise in the House Republican hierarchy. That year, Ryan's PAC distributed $322,000 to Republicans, a 607% increase in giving from the cycle before, according to the nonpartisan campaign finance group Center for Responsive Politics.
After the 2006 election, Ryan, who is now the GOP vice presidential candidate, became the top Republican on the House Budget Committee.
"Part of what you do when you're a member of Congress who has ambitions and wants to become committee chair is you start raising money and you start giving money to your colleagues," said Steve Northrup, a Republican healthcare lobbyist who has hosted several Ryan fundraisers.
"You can't divorce that from his personality and his smarts," Northrup added.
The high-profile post and the exposure it has brought has helped Ryan raise even more, which, in turn, has allowed him to cement ties to his congressional allies. In this election cycle, he has brought in $8.5 million to his campaign account and political action committee combined. Of that, Ryan still has more than $6 million in the bank, a notably high reserve compared with his congressional colleagues.
The PAC so far has given more than $539,000 to Republican candidates and lawmakers, a figure that ranks among the top 10 leadership PACs in contributions to federal candidates, alongside prolific congressional fundraisers Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).
"Even the most idealistic members of Congress realize that the way to power is to raise money and to spread it around to your colleagues," said David Donnelly, executive director of Public Campaign Action Fund, a campaign finance reform group. Ryan "certainly learned that early on."
Ryan has become one of the most requested fundraising surrogates for House Republicans. And he has invested in a multimillion-dollar direct mail campaign that has bolstered his name recognition and given his finance network a national scope.
With an eye on Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments and the GOP's mad dash away from the sinking Missouri Senate candidate, the Democrats are turning their upcoming presidential convention into a pro-choice assault on the Republicans with the help of major abortion supporters.
Just as the Akin crisis was reaching a crescendo, the Democrats on Wednesday announced that three starlets of the pro-choice movement will be featured at the convention, an event that will now drive the liberal charge that the Republicans are anti-women.
Democrats said that they will feature Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parent Action Fund, Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAL Pro-Choice America and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whose plea for federal birth control funding drew the ire--and a subsequent apology--from Rush Limbaugh.
What's more, the Democrats are expanding their list of women ready to assail the GOP on women's issue, adding Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and actress Eva Longoria to the list that already includes Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.
Democrats led by party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz believe that the Akin controversy--and his refusal to leave the Missouri Senate race--has revived their chances of winning a majority of women in the presidential race, key to re-electing President Obama. On Wednesday, for example, the party turned their homepage over to the affair with the headline: "The GOP is dangerously wrong for women." And with a devilish move, they included pictures of Mitt Romney, running mate Paul Ryan and Akin.
"Romney, Ryan, Akin and the GOP want to take women back to the dark ages," the Democrats add.
LONDON — A 58-year-old British man suffering from so-called locked-in syndrome died Wednesday, six days after a panel of High Court judges rejected his request for help in ending his life. His death is certain to galvanize the already contentious debate about assisted suicide in Britain.More at the link.
The man, Tony Nicklinson, a former rugby player and sky diver who suffered a stroke in 2005, died at his home in Melksham, 80 miles west of London, at 10 a.m., according to a statement issued by the law firm that represented him.
Mr. Nicklinson’s family used his Twitter account to say that he died of natural causes. At a news conference, Saimo Chahai, the family lawyer, said Mr. Nicklinson had been refusing food since the court ruling and had declined rapidly over the weekend after contracting pneumonia. “The fight seemed to go out of him,” she said.
After having a stroke while on a business trip to Athens, Mr. Nicklinson, a civil engineer, developed locked-in syndrome, an incurable condition in which a patient loses all motor functions but remains awake and aware, with all cognitive abilities. He had spent the last seven years paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak, feed himself or even clean his own teeth, communicating through a system that allowed him to write messages on a computer screen by blinking his eyes.
He had argued in court that he would be physically unable to administer a lethal drug to himself, and that his only path to release from his “living nightmare” would be permission from the court to have somebody else — in his suggestion, a doctor — administer the necessary dose without fear of prosecution.
Under British law, anybody, including a doctor, who knowingly helps a terminally ill person to die faces possible criminal prosecution and a lengthy jail term if convicted.
In an essay he wrote before the court case, Mr. Nicklinson said, “It cannot be acceptable in 21st-century Britain that I am denied the right to take my own life just because I am physically handicapped.” He added, “It is astonishing that in 1969 we could put a man on the moon, yet in 2012 we still cannot devise adequate rules for government-assisted dying.”
WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago.Continue reading.
Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker.
With energy an increasingly pivotal issue for the Obama White House, a review of Exelon’s relationship with the administration shows how familiarity has helped foster access at the upper reaches of government and how, in some cases, the outcome has been favorable for Exelon.
White House records show that Exelon executives were able to secure an unusually large number of meetings with top administration officials at key moments in the consideration of environmental regulations that have been drafted in a way that hurt Exelon’s competitors, but curb the high cost of compliance for Exelon and its industry allies.
In addition, Exelon, which provides power to more than 6.6 million customers in at least 16 states and the District of Columbia, was chosen as one of only six electric utilities nationwide for the maximum $200 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department. And when the Treasury Department granted loans for renewable energy projects, Exelon landed a commitment for up to $646 million allowing it, on extremely generous financial terms, to finance one of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar projects.
Exelon’s seemingly easy access to top administration officials has hardly gone unnoticed among competitors.
“I would like to get some treatment in Washington like that,” said Ken Anderson, general manager at Tri-State G&T, a Colorado-based power supplier that has been at odds with Exelon over environmental regulations. “But Exelon seems to get deference that I can’t get.”
Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the “rich”? Well, brace yourselves. You’ll be hearing much more from the White House about the “wealthy few” who aren’t paying their “fair share” as Obama’s re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery.Right.
As usual, there’s always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who’ve reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.
Obama’s State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the “middle class.” But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies — all under Obama’s watch — helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants?
*****
My scouring of White House visitor logs shows nine visits from another Green Robber Baron, Illinois-based Exelon’s CEO John Rowe, who met with the president and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel multiple times. As Forbes magazine reported: The clean energy company “has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for president and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon” — where he raked in more than $16 million over two years.
... one person who met with Exelon representatives as a federal official, and requested anonymity because the discussions were confidential, said that while the company’s connections did not guide specific decisions, federal officials knew to handle Exelon carefully.Oh brother.
“It is not necessarily unethical or immoral,” he said, “it is just a fact of life that Exelon has more relations with senior administration officials than others, which means Exelon has a direct line to fairly high places in the White House if they need to.”
Even without any political connection, as a nuclear energy producer Exelon was well positioned to take advantage of the administration’s drive to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The administration’s tightening of clean air rules was a particular boon, since it took aim at Exelon’s main competitors — coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions. In 2010, Exelon estimated it would earn an extra $400 million annually because the regulations would force dozens of coal-burning plants to close.
“We were the hyena looking for the dead stuff on the road,” John W. Rowe, Exelon’s recently departed chief executive, told Wall Street analysts this year.
While other nuclear and natural-gas-focused energy producers also stood to benefit, Exelon stands out for its size. Last December, the Justice Department approved its $7.9 billion merger with Constellation Energy of Maryland, despite objections from Maryland’s consumer advocate. Although Exelon agreed to sell three Maryland power plants, among other concessions, it still emerged as the nation’s largest unregulated electricity generator, meaning that in many of the states its rates are not set by government officials but by what customers will pay.
The Teachers Union may ... have been upset about Marcus’s coverage of some of their protest marches, particularly the documentation of their collaboration with Occupy and Anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian...More at "Hating Breitbart" on Twitter.
The 27-year-old flew into the UK today amid a storm surrounding the saucy snaps published on a US website.
A coal train derailed and tumbled from a bridge in Maryland early Tuesday morning, crushing cars in a nearby parking lot and killing two women who were on the tracks, officials said.More at the link.
Just after midnight Tuesday, 21 of the train’s 80 cars flipped over on a bridge in Ellicott City, about 12 miles west of Baltimore. Some cars spilled coal across the town’s Main Street, and seven cars fell onto vehicles in a county-owned parking lot nearby, Howard County Police Department spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn told The Los Angeles Times.
"All you could see was train cars tumbled every which way and coal everywhere,” Benjamin Noppenberger, a chef at restaurant on Main Street, told the Baltimore Sun. “Cars were on the road and parking lot and everything in the lot was crushed.”
As officials cleared the scene Tuesday, using cranes to pry the train cars from the wreckage, they found the bodies of two young women, Llewellyn said.
The victims have been identified as Elizabeth Conway Nass and Rose Mayr, both 19 from Ellicott City. Nass was studying at James Madison University in Virginia and Mayr attended the University of Delaware, police said.
Two train operators were not harmed in the accident, officials said. The cause of the crash is not yet known.
Howard County officials declined to comment further, saying the National Transportation Safety Board had taken charge of the investigation.
