Lupe Fiasco reportedly created a bit of a row on Sunday by insulting President Obama during an inaugural event.
Although Fiasco was booked as the headliner for the StartUp RockOn concert in celebration of Obama’s reelection, the 30-year-old Chicago rapper apparently had no plans to cheer the current administration. Instead, after taking the stage at The Hamilton in Washington, he reportedly announced that he didn’t vote for the president in the 2012 election and spent more than 30 minutes performing an anti-war song. (more…)
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spoke out about the racist attack on a network camerawoman at the Republican national convention on Wednesday. On Tuesday night, two attendees threw nuts at a black CNN camerawoman and said, “this is how we feed the animals.” Multiple witnesses saw the incident, and police immediately removed the two attendees from the convention center. CNN confirmed that the incident happened via a statement released on Tuesday, but did not have further comment at the time.
Blitzer described the “very ugly exchange” on Wednesday afternoon, in the first time that the network addressed the incident on-air. He said that the incident was “truly shocking” and “hit home” for people at the network.
“It’s just an ugly reminder that there is an element of hatred that still exists in our country,” he said. Speaking to Blitzer, CNN political analyst Donna Brazile said that she hopes the two attendees have their convention credentials revoked.
That same afternoon, CNN’s Don Lemon was incredulous that another news outlet reported the incident before CNN did. “Another network http://lnkd.in/p7uWrP tweeted & reported the camerawoman story before #CNN did. Wait, what?!!” he wrote.
Under Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s sweeping new school voucher program, tens of millions of Louisiana taxpayer dollars will be used to offer vouchers to more than half of the state’s poor and middle-class public school students. These students can in turn use these vouchers to attend more than 120 private schools, including a number of small, Bible-based learning institutions that boast extreme anti-science and anti-history curriculums while championing creationism.
Earlier this week, C. Welton Gaddy, the president of a national multi-faith religious group, blasted Jindal’s program in a letter to the governor, claiming the effort represents “a ruthless attack on public education” and violates the separation of church and state.
“Let me be clear: I am not appalled that a Christian school is teaching its students that God created the Earth … Children in my church learn that every Sunday,” Gaddy wrote. “I am appalled that these schools are teaching theology as science, and they’re doing so with government money, my tax dollars.” (more…)
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It’s usually the host delivering the political snark, but last night on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” it was the house band that provided the pointed message. As US Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made her way across the stage, The Roots, who back Fallon each night, played a coded message of a song for her introduction music. Astute ears — or Twitter followers of drummer Questlove — could identify the song: “Lyin’ As* B*tch” by Fishbone.
While the audience only heard a “la la” refrain, the message was sent. Before the show, Questlove tweeted, “aight late night walkon song devotees: you love it when we snark: this next one takes the cake. ask around cause i aint tweeting title.” Following the performance, he retweeted a number of fans who praised the choice of snark — including one who called it the “perfect entry song for her” — and then wrote, “take a guess. buy the record anyway. its classic and should be in your vocabulary,” and provided a link to buy the album on iTunes.
Keith Olbermann tore into President Obama for contemplating a compromise with the Republicans over the debt ceiling that includes cuts in Social Security and major changes to Medicare.
Obama has repeatedly offered to raise the age of Medicare eligibility, and has put Social Security cuts firmly on the table in his attempts to craft a deal with the GOP to raise the debt ceiling.
In a Special Comment on his Monday show, Olbermann spoke out strongly against any tinkering with Medicare and Social Security. He delivered what he called a “sermon” about what he called America’s “greatest accomplishment”: the social safety net that includes the two programs.
Olbermann then issued a stinging warning to President Obama about what might occur if he agreed to alter Medicare and Social Security:
Homeowners Foreclose On Bank Of America
Sweet justice.
That’s how foreclosure defense attorney Todd Allen described the feeling of going to a Bank of America branch in Naples, Fla. to seize their assets. (more…)
Rev. Grant Storms, a renowned anti-gay Christian pastor from Louisiana, was arrested last week for masturbating at a public park, in the vicinity of a carousel and playground where children were present.
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, one woman saw Storms parked in his van “looking at the playground area that contained children playing, with his zipper down…,” the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office report read. After judging that Storms was masturbating, the woman and another mother who witnessed the event both alerted deputies. (more…)
Card 2.0 is the computing platform powering the new Citi cards that re-write the magnetic strip depending on whether you want to spend you cash or your rewards points. The technology fits snugly in your credit card, is waterproof, has a battery life upwards of four years, allows multiple accounts on a single card, and even can be used to require a PIN before displaying the card number. This is pretty amazing but for this to really work, you have to know this also has a lot of drawbacks but we will let you think about why? We won’t taint your idea/opinion.This time around.
Smith’s critique began when he cut into Wednesday’s briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. He opened by naming a long list of participants in the Sherrod affair, from the White House to the NAACP to the Big Government website, which posted the edited video, to “this network,” Fox News — which, he said, was one of the places where the video had been played “totally out of context.”He went on to explain why his program, unlike others on Fox News, had not covered the story: