July 27, 2015

Letter from Kenya: Dreaming of Obama

The Kenyan-American president inspires the land of his father to extremes of devotion.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere

7/26/15 9:52 AM EDT
Updated 7/26/15 11:54 AM EDT

NAIROBI — The woman danced on the sidewalk by herself, singing, her right hand clutching a flag with President Barack Obama’s picture and the day’s newspaper with him on the front page. Her left hand moved to her own music, keeping the beat, waving over her head.

“Obama, Obama!” she said. “Our most powerful cousin!”

Even some Kenyans — including a few extra police officers who’d already closed down the side street leading to central Nairobi’s Kenyatta Avenue, started taking pictures and videos on their cellphones. She saw them. She kept dancing and singing.

Across the street, the message was bigger and more corporate, but still exultant: a building-wide, three-story banner from Pioneer Holdings (Africa) Ltd. with a giant photo of Obama making a point at a news conference, captured between images of a Kenyan and a waving American flag: “Welcome Home President Obama!”

“Relax, Mr. President. We’ll build you a Kenyan home for free!” reads a sign along the highway from the airport. Obama, pictured from behind, looks on in the picture at a wooden frame under construction, his thumb up.

“President Obama, welcome to Tusker Country,” says another, from the country’s biggest, most popular beer.

He’s the president of the United States. But to many here, he’s “our son,” to the point that there’s a rumor going around among some that Obama will return after he’s done in Washington to run for president here and clean things up in his father’s country. <---- right wing brains


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/president-obama-kenya-visit-120629.html#ixzz3h3kP11vL

July 27, 2015

Obamacare repeal vote fails in Senate

Source: Politico

By JENNIFER HABERKORN 7/26/15 4:10 PM EDT

The Senate on Sunday voted down a Republican effort to repeal Obamacare, the GOP’s first attempt to get rid of the president’s health law since the party took control of the chamber in January.

The effort fell 49-43, exactly along party lines, with eight senators not voting in the rare weekend session. Third-fifths of the Senate would have had to vote to add Obamacare repeal to a highway funding bill.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is expected to ask the Senate — likely Monday — to reconsider the Obamacare amendment. He would propose a procedural motion to change Senate rules in order to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act with just 51 votes.

Such a momentous change in the Senate’s rules is unlikely. But conservatives have suggested that they would chastise Republicans who would block a rule change that could lead to repealing the health law that they detest.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obamacare-repeal-vote-fails-in-senate-120638.html#ixzz3h3gL6xja

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obamacare-repeal-vote-fails-in-senate-120638.html?ml=ri

July 27, 2015

NY Magazine Puts Cosby Accusers on Cover (Powerful cover image included)

New York magazine published this week's cover on Sunday featuring 35 women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape or sexual assault. All 35 women were interviewed separately over the past six months for the explosive photo essay, which provides comprehensive accounts of their trauma and signals a shift in public perception of Cosby's accusers. "I think his legacy is going to be similar to OJ's legacy," Joan Tarshis, one of Cosby’s accusers, said. "When you hear OJ Simpson's name, you don’t think: 'Oh, great football player.' That doesn’t come to mind first. I'm thinking it’s not going to be: 'Oh, great comedian.' It’s going to be, 'Oh, serial rapist.' And that will be our legacy." More than 50 women have so far accused the embattled comedian of sexual assault.

New York Magazine ✔
@NYMag

35 women speak about being assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the culture that wouldn't listen: http://nym.ag/1Izta21

9:05 PM - 26 Jul 2015

Read it at New York magazine

July 27, 2015

Ring of Fire’s Official Position on Bernie and Hillary – Because You Asked

We at ROF have received numerous inquiries regarding our position, and possible involvement, with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Here is our official position, as it stands today.

First, Ring of Fire is not affiliated with any politician or corporation or anyone else. Ring of Fire was founded fifteen years ago, and continues to be run, by Mike Papantonio, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Sam Seder. Its purpose is to expose Wall Street thugs, environmental criminality, corporate media failure, and political back stories. ROF is totally self-funded, and does not accept marketing revenue, donations, or even articles written by anyone other than our staff. We do this out of respect for our readers.

We at ROF identify ourselves as Progressive, as we most often identify with the current Progressive agenda. However, we will not hesitate to call out anyone (including Progressives) for what we perceive to be unjust. We see ourselves as an umpire calling balls and strikes, where we have no interest in the result of the game, other than to make sure it’s being fairly played.

In regard to the current candidates for President, we endorse Bernie Sanders. The reason is simple. He has a strong record and voice supporting the issues we most stand for and write about. The reason we have been vocal against Hillary is that she has enjoyed a very close relationship with Corporate America, receives significant funding and donations from Fortune 500 companies and America’s wealthiest individuals. She also has favored virtually every American military invasion, including Iraq.

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With the above said, if the decision comes down to Hillary versus any of the GOP candidates, we will support Hillary. Why? Because we believe in the end her sense of social justice will lean more Progressive than any of the GOP candidates. Additionally, we think it’s possible that Hillary might surprise us if her lifetime dream of becoming President comes to fruition. As President, she would be in a position to allow her true colors to shine, and we at ROF hope those colors are a lot more bright than she has been showing over the past two decades in her quest to appease what she perceives as the centrists.

-snip-

more
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/07/ring-of-fires-official-position-on-bernie-and-hillary-because-you-asked/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

July 26, 2015

Boy Scouts expected to lift ban on gay scout leaders on Monday: report

Source: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES

Lifting a ban on open gay leaders by the Boy Scouts of America would be an incomplete victory for equality advocates. The organizations board Monday is expected to adopt an end to the ban Monday, the New York Times reported, but the change in policy still allows troops run by churches to "choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own," an internal memo said.

"There are differences of opinion, and we need to be respectful of them,” California leader Michael Harrison told the Times. “It doesn’t mean the Mormons have to pick a gay scoutmaster, but please don’t tell the Unitarians they can’t.”

The Boy Scouts of America’s national executive committee unanimously approved a resolution allowing gay adult employees and volunteers July 13. The national executive board will vote Monday, according to advocacy group Scouts for Equality.

If passed, openly gay or bisexual adults would no longer be prohibited from being leaders. Each troop will create its own policy, but regional councils cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation. Gay leaders who previously had to leave the troops can rejoin.

-snip-


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/boy-scouts-expected-to-lift-ban-on-gay-scout-leaders-on-monday-report/

July 26, 2015

Barack Obama in Kenya: 'no excuse' for treating women as second-class citizens

Source: The Guardian

‘Just because something is part of your past doesn’t make it right’, Obama says

Rousing address in Nairobi also offers insight into his African heritage

Barack Obama wrapped up his visit to Kenya on Sunday with a strong condemnation of female genital mutilation and other “bad traditions” that treat women as second-class citizens, in a speech that also a offered a poignant glimpse into his African heritage.

The US president, whose ancestry has at times been a politically awkward part of his identity, looked at ease as he embraced his status as a “Kenyan American” in a major speech that also condemned corruption, tribalism and terrorism.

Obama earned vociferous applause from 4,500 Kenyans at a sports arena in the capital, Nairobi, by throwing down the gauntlet over the rights of women and girls. He gave short shrift to those in Africa who hide behind arguments defending tradition and culture against values they say are imposed by the west. Considering his heritage, it was a case he could make better than any previous US president.

“Every country and every culture has traditions that are unique and help make that country what it is, but just because something is part of your past doesn’t make it right; it doesn’t mean it defines your future,” Obama said, citing the recent debate in America over the Confederate flag.

“Around the world there is a tradition of oppressing women and treating them differently and not giving them the same opportunities, and husbands beating their wives, and children not being sent to school. Those are traditions. Treating women and girls as second-class citizens. Those are bad traditions. They need to change.”

-snip-

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/26/barack-obama-condemns-tradition-women-second-class-citizens-nairobi

July 26, 2015

Brother of Lafayette shooter says rampage was ‘no surprise’

By Joe Kovac Jr. July 25 at 9:05 PM

COLUMBUS, Ga. – Rem Houser was sound asleep when his phone rang at 3 a.m. Friday. An FBI agent was on the line. There was trouble three states away involving Rusty, Houser’s little brother, the agent said. Houser immediately knew it was bad.

“They were looking for answers,” Houser, 61, said Saturday in a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview with The Washington Post at his house overlooking Lake Harding on the Alabama border.

Houser was not able to offer any. Two days after John Russell “Rusty” Houser, Rem Houser’s 59-year-old middle sibling, allegedly shot up a movie theater in Lafayette, La., before killing himself, the crime still wasn’t adding up.

Rem Houser had seen the news almost nonstop on Fox News and CNN. He’d heard his brother’s name over and over. But that hasn’t helped him make any sense of the rampage that killed two women and wounded nine other people.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/brother-of-lafayette-shooter-says-rampage-was-no-surprise/2015/07/25/9f72bafa-3319-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html?hpid=z9

July 26, 2015

What Kenya’s Barack Obamas are saying about President Obama

Last month, ahead of President Obama's visit to Kenya, my colleague Kevin Sieff journeyed to his ancestral village in western Kenya where his father was born.

There Sieff encountered Barack Obama Okoth, one of many Barack Obamas named after the U.S. president in the wake of his political success. Here's what the young Barack Obama told the Post about the man in the White House:

“He lives in America, and he’s a king,” the 7-year-old said after a long pause. It’s easy to understand why the young Barack would think so. He attends Senator Barack Obama Primary School, a stop on the Barack Obama Safari Tour, near a hotel that offers a Barack Obama Suite.

The young lad, who says he wants to be a doctor, is far from the only kid in town named Barack Obama.

A Guardian reporter this week met some others, including 5-year-old Barack Obama Oyoo.

"When I’m president like Obama I’ll ride in big cars and big plane," said Oyoo. The U.S. president's name seems to a carry a totemic power on its own.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/07/25/what-kenyas-barack-obamas-are-saying-about-president-obama/?tid=hpModule_04941f10-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e&hpid=z9

July 26, 2015

Bernie Sanders is in with the enemy, some old allies say

By David A. Fahrenthold July 25 at 3:57 PM

BURLINGTON, Vt. — It was one of the first political events Bernie Sanders ever went to in Vermont: a 1971 discussion by a small group of left-wingers, the Liberty Union Party.

These people were not winners, in the electoral sense. The closest they had come to winning a statewide race, at that point, was losing by 56 points. So someone in the audience asked: Why don’t you become Democrats? Why not sacrifice third-party purity for a chance at actual power?

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“He felt strongly that you worked outside the Democratic Party,” said Jim Rader, a longtime friend who took Sanders to the meeting. “He felt there were too many compromises that had to be made, too many compromises of political principles.”

Last week, 44 years later, a group of socialists gathered in a Vermont library to have a strikingly similar debate. This time, they were deciding whether they could support Bernie Sanders himself.

-snip-

“When Sanders decided to run as a Democrat,” that was the last straw, said Jim Ramey at the meeting of the International Socialist Organization’s Burlington branch. “People on the left should not support him.”

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-says-hes-a-socialist-his-old-socialist-buddies-say-not-so-much/2015/07/25/a3948256-3145-11e5-97ae-30a30cca95d7_story.html?hpid=z1

July 26, 2015

Sanders says he could support banning some weapons, universal background checks

Source: Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS -- Last week’s mass shooting in a Louisiana movie theater has prompted renewed attention on presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders’s record on gun control, an area where his rivals for the Democratic nomination think he is vulnerable with liberal activists.

Sanders, who is campaigning in Louisiana this weekend, was pressed about his record by reporters Saturday night and again Sunday morning during an appearance on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” In both cases, Sanders -- who voted against the landmark Brady bill in 1993 but said he could support universal background checks for gun purchasers today -- argued that he could help the nation find common ground.

“I think I am in a good position to reach out to urban American and rural America,” said Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who was backed by the gun lobby in his first successful run for Congress. He told the audience at a statewide gathering of the Louisiana Democratic Party that people on both sides of the issue need to “stop shouting at each other and come up with sensible legislation.”

Sanders was the only 2016 hopeful to speak in person at the party dinner, but both Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley appeared in pre-recorded videos shortly before Sanders spoke. O’Malley devoted most of his message to the tragedy in Lafayette, which left two people dead and nine injured. The shooter also took his own life.

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/26/sanders-says-he-could-support-banning-some-weapons-universal-background-checks/?tid=hpModule_f8335a3c-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z8