TRENTON, N.J. — Funeral services have been held for the New Jersey woman and boy whose bodies were found in their home after a 37-hour hostage standoff last weekend.
The Times of Trenton (http://bit.ly/113Q2dJ) reports Carmenlita Stevens’ four surviving children were among those attending Saturday’s service for the 44-year-old woman and her 12-year-old son, Quavon Foster. Stevens’ boyfriend had held three of the surviving children hostage during the standoff.
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When Bob Woodward publishes the definitive history of Barack Obama’s second term (maybe sooner rather than later), this will be presented as the week that Politico pwned the news cycle—and the president lost the village.
I mean that both literally and literarily.
A reliable source of mine deep inside the industry (codename: Imaginary Friend) leaked me the outline of a book proposal that Woodward is shopping around.
Below are Bob’s unedited notes (talking points, if you will) covering this week:
First They Came for the "Patriots"
Utilizing research conducted by Harvard Ph.D. candidates, in this chapter I will compare the IRS' scrutiny of "non-profit" Tea Party groups (among others) to the Nazis' persecution of Jews and homosexuals. SPOILER: This doesn't end well, but it isn't Watergate.Then They Came for Me
This chapter will focus on the DOJ's decision to secretly subpoena the AP's phone records. For context, I will again recount the harrowing details of the time that White House economic adviser Gene Sperling threatened to kill me. SPOILER: I'm still alive; just like Watergate.Watergate 2: Electric Benghaziloo
These chapters (plural) will consist of nothing but the redacted transcript of a conversation between myself, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzales. The four of us will meet at an undisclosed location for a freewheeling discussion about the numerous crimes that President Obama committed in Benghazi, and where in the world he should be tried for them. I will be played by Matthew McConaughey, or a Matthew McConaughey type. SPOILER: ██████ █████████, █████'█ ███████ ██ ███ ████.Watergate 3: Watergate Harder
In what is certain to be the final chapter of Barack Obama's presidency, I will reveal the sinister connection between "Umbrella-gate" and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. SPOILER: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the brain.
Developing…
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Oct 17, 2012.
In Part 5 of Hubris: Selling the Iraq War, Rachel Maddow shows how Secretary of State Colin Powell was given flawed evidence to make the case for war with Ir…
Video Rating: 4 / 5
We’re back, once again. The kids once again dominated the week, with seven kids under 16 years of age who either shot themselves or were shot by other kids under 16. The youngest victim of GunFAIL this week was just 13 months old, shot by her dad while cleaning his guns. A shocker, to be sure, but then again it was the second time in the space of as many months that a dad had done the same, in Tennessee alone.
Three concealed carry ninjas had accidental discharges this week, as did five cops. Two accidental discharges were in school settings, with one student injured. The first involved a cop on a school bus, whose weapon was discharged into the floor of the bus when a student grabbed at the trigger while his gun was still in his holster. But of course, that will never happen once we quadruple the number of officers in our schools, or whatever it is people are proposing these days. The other incident involved a school employee who’s apparently not a teacher, but who holds a second job as a security guard elsewhere, and who gave a student a ride home after school, but accidentally shot him trying (unsuccessfully, evidently) to put the gun in the glove compartment. I never imagined that would prove so difficult a task, and very likely, neither did he. But life—and especially life around firearms—is always full of surprises. Though sometimes those lives are a little shorter than usual.
We also recorded two folks (the 109th and 110th of 2013) shot while cleaning loaded weapons, plus three more home invasion shootings. You’re still not allowed to make a list of your neighbors who own guns, out of an abundance of concern for their privacy and liberty and such. But sometimes, they just can’t help but make a public declaration of it, such is their pride.
Florida continues its dominance of the Derp Crown Sweepstakes this week, thanks to the woman in St. Petersburg who accidentally shot her friend while on a Starbucks run, with a gun she had forgotten was in her purse and which went off when she dropped her bag. The state’s top run status was cemented when another concealed carry ninja in Jupiter shot himself in the leg while bowling with a loaded pistol in his pocket.
Finally, we note the passing of a young and relatively new gun enthusiast from Colorado, a 22-year-old woman killed this week with a newly purchased AK-47 style assault rifle that she apparently fumbled after sharing a few beers with friends. The very young kids are of course a special kind of tragedy, but it seems particularly sad when the victims are of an age when they’re likely to have left behind Facebook photos of themselves posing with their guns, as was the case here.
Below the fold, you’ll find this week’s list.
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Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez is in full freakout mode.
BOSTON, MA. – Gabriel Gomez, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in the Massachusetts open seat special election, today issued the following statement on Congressman Ed Markey’s latest attacks:
“First, Congressman Markey slandered me by comparing me to Osama bin Laden. Now in his most recent TV ad, Markey blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting,” Gomez said.
“I guess after 37 years in Congress you lose your sense of decency. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick.”
Wow, that would be a really low blow, saying that Gabriel Gomez was responsible for Newtown. If that’s what Ed Markey’s ad really says. Which, of course, it doesn’t.
Narrator: “Gomez is against banning assault weapons.”
Gomez: “I don’t believe we need to do an assault weapon ban.”
Narrator: “Gomez is against high-capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.”
Gomez: “I don’t believe you should have a limit on the high-capacity magazines.”
Pathetic, Mr. Gomez. Just pathetic. You’re on the wrong side of this debate for your state, and you know it. It might have worked to win a Republican primary, but now that you’re in the general election, you’re trying to run away from your opposition to common sense gun regulations. And it’s not going to work.
Here’s your first lesson in how running for election works. You say something on camera, it’s there forever. False outrage won’t make it go away.
Please donate $ 3 to Ed Markey.
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More information at https://www.facebook.com/FarRightOfLeft http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/05/White-House-prepares-to-defeat-NRA-with-Speedy…
Video Rating: 4 / 5
“The Trending 20″ is a regular series where we round up interesting, informative and hilarious tweets from worldwide Twitter trending topics, fueled by young tweeters on the interwebs. Have a tweet to submit? Give us a shout @HuffPostTeen.
On Thursday, One Direction announced dates for their upcoming “Where We Are” world tour, dropping hints on Twitter for days beforehand with the hash tag #OneBigAnnouncement.
Some fans apparently expected more from 1D than the release of tour dates, so they took to Twitter and started another trending topic: #OneBigDisappointment. Tweets like “we aren’t amused” and “#ONEBIGWASTEOFTIME” dominated the Twitterverse from Directioners with dashed hopes. Click through a sampling of the very sad — and, we’ll admit it, kinda funny — tweets in the slideshow below.
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As President Barack Obama was being inaugurated in DC this past January, Virginia Senate Republicans took advantage of the absence of one of their members, civil rights veteran Henry Marsh, who was attending the festivities in the nation’s capital, and attempted a disgusting heist. David Nir has the gory details:
With Marsh gone, Republicans had a momentary 20-19 edge, and they used it to full effect, ramming through a bill to redistrict the Senate’s own lines for the second time in less than two years. Legislators had already passed a revised map following the decennial census in 2011, but Republicans wanted a brand new map to consolidate their power. Their plan would increase the number of seats they were likely to win and shrink those the opposition would have had a chance of capturing.
State House Republicans and the Republican governor eventually killed the plan, but not before two House Democrats expressed their willingness to support the plan. You read that right—two Democrats were ready to back a GOP scheme so egregious that it was killed by Republicans themselves.
One of those Democrats was Rosalyn Dance, and it wasn’t the first (or last) time she gave Republicans cover despite representing an overwhelmingly Democratic district. I’ll talk more about Dance in future posts—for now I want to focus on her challenger, Evandra Thompson.
Thirty-year-old Evandra spent five years as an Air Force medic, and was at the Pentagon the day it was hit in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Her actions as a first responder earned her this medal.
After her military stint, the single mother went to college and grad school, and graduated just this past September. Now, despite her youth and political inexperience, she suddenly finds herself facing the most bizarre of primary battles—being cheered on by much of the area party establishment as she takes on the incumbent.
Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Henrico, and the former mayors of Petersburg and Hopewell announced Monday that they will pitch their support to political newcomer Evandra Thompson, who is running against Dance.
Morrissey said in an interview that he expects many of Virginia’s top Democrats to follow suit in the coming weeks and endorse Thompson in what he calls a move to oust an incumbent accused of voting against her own party line too many times.
We haven’t often engaged in state-level legislative races, but we have a fantastic opportunity here: get rid of a turncoat Lieberman-esque Democrat who has done way too much to empower her state’s reactionary Republicans, while also building our bench with a potential future star.
And given that both candidates currently have just $ 2,000 cash-on-hand, your dollars will have far more direct impact here than pretty much anywhere else.
The election is June 11, so it’ll be a sprint to the end. Since we don’t have a state-level questionnaire, we created this one-off, touching on the issues where federal and state issues intersect: same-sex marriage, choice, and Medicaid expansion. She’s golden on all of those, and of course she also opposes the redistricting plan that Dance was ready to support.
So contribute $ 3 to Evandra Thompson. With 100 of us doing that, we’d raise the equivalent of 15 percent of her cash-on-hand. That’s some serious bang for your buck! So let’s deal a blow against GOP-enabling Democrats, helping our progressive friends in the Commonwealth of Virginia stave off The Crazy.
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Yet another major market scandal may be in the works:
The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have “colluded” to rig oil prices for more than a decade. [...]
Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.
At issue is the LIBOR-like method of voluntary reporting of oil prices:
“The suspected violations are related to the Platts’ Market-On-Close (MOC) price assessment process, used to report prices in particular for crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels, and may have been ongoing since 2002.” [...]
The EC said the big oil companies may have “prevented others from participating in the price assessment process, with a view to distorting published prices”.
The ongoing lesson here seems to be that in every financial market that relies on “voluntary” price reporting, the market can and will be manipulated by the largest players—and as it turns out, that consists of nearly every financial market, period, full stop. As Matt Taibbi says, everything is rigged.
The entire world’s financial market suffers from a single, fatal flaw: The largest companies within it, the companies that therefore manage and govern it, either implicitly or explicitly, can make very, very large amounts of money at no perceptible risk simply by being crooked.
In market after market, such behaviors appear to be not merely commonplace, but woven into the very design of those marketplaces themselves. The reason the one percent have gained so much, so fast in these last few decades is simply because they rewrote the rules until they could. They’ve got their thumb on every scale.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Stepping up Pressure on Iraq:
| The Feingold-Reid amendment, expected to come up tomorrow morning, will be for the Senate what the McGovern amendment was in last week’s House vote on the Iraq supplemental–the baseline vote for how committed Democratic senators are to ending this war before the next election.
What’s more, as noted in this AP story it:
The vote will show the willingness of Clinton and Obama, and all the Democratic Senators, to exercise their most important Congressional power–the power of the purse–to check the executive. Obama announced today that he will support Feingold-Reid, though in his statement he doesn’t address the concept of ending the funding. |
Many Americans are getting their very first dose of Louie Gohmert. Now they understand that this really ISN’T their fathers’ GOP
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin’s round-up sampling on the three “scandals” of the week, the 37th attempt to repeal Obamacare, and Stanley Fish’s question, “Is the N.R.A. Un-American?” Meanwhile, what’s suddenly missing from the conversation? Debt & deficit hawkery. Is it the “scandal” feeding frenzy? Or is the narrative just falling apart? Next, the continuing child-on-child shooting spree, and fact-finding on gun show #GunFAIL. Then, back to the IRS story, featuring the 2011 Mother Jones series, “Tea Party Patriots Investigated.”
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.
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Sweet Little Jesus Boy sung at Parkwood Baptist Christmas 1994.
Gov. Rick Perry Executed an Innocent Man Hardball Chris Mathews.
