kpete
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EXCLUSIVE: Obama's high school pot dealer who he thanked for the 'good times' was beaten to death with a hammer by his gay lover
Raymond Boyer was known as 'Gay Ray' to Obama and his marijuana smoking 'Choom Gang' of privately-educated kids at Hawaiian high school
Ray was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in 1986, seven years after he supplied the future president and his friends with drugs
Lover Andrew Devere, a male prostitute, gave police a variety of reasons for the murder
He said surfer Boyer put him down constantly and broke wind in his face
Court documents uncovered for the first time by MailOnline
Choom is island slang for pot smoking and group went on excursions to countryside to get high and party, sometimes in Ray’s surf van
Devere is now living on the mainland after serving his life sentence
Obama last week said marijuana was no more dangerous than alcohol
Devere's new wife Elizabeth told MailOnline doing drugs is fine if you are rich and 'have the tools to deal with it' but not if you are poor with problems
MORE RAG:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547667/EXCLUSIVE-Obamas-high-school-pot-dealer-future-president-thanked-good-times-yearbook-beaten-death-gay-lover-fights-flatulence-drugs.html#ixzz2rpBM7beX
Song of the corporation
We own the judges
We own the courts
We own the soldiers
We own the forts
We own the land
We own the sky
There's nothing you can see
That we can't buy
We own the future
We own the past
Who cares if we destroy the world
Nothing lasts, nothing lasts
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/01/myra.html#comment-1222329646
Why Christie Cared So Much About Fort Lee
Why Christie Cared So Much About Fort Lee
New York Times: "His campaign called them 'the Top 100,' the swing towns that Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey wanted to win as he prepared for a re-election campaign. Capturing these towns, sometimes referred to as mini-Ohios or mini-Floridas, would validate the governor's argument that he would be the most broadly appealing Republican choice for president in 2016."
"Staff members in the governor's office created tabbed and color-coded dossiers on the mayors of each town -- who their friends and enemies were, the policies and projects that were dear to them -- that were bound in notebooks for the governor to review in his S.U.V. between events."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/nyregion/for-christie-politics-team-kept-a-focus-on-two-bids.html?_r=0
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2014/01/29/why_christie_cared_so_much_about_fort_lee.html
What Congress Looks Like When You Average All Of Their Pictures Together
The 113th Congress is the most diverse in history -- but how diverse is that, really?
Looking at this composite image of the 535 members of congress created by Matthew Skomarovsky, the answer is clearly "not very." (Indeed, Congress was 82 percent white and 81 percent male in 2013).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/congress-average-picture_n_4688163.html
Fox News host: Women don’t want equal pay, they already get ‘exactly what they’re worth’
“Exactly what they’re worth?” Colmes exclaimed. “Are they not worth the same amount of money for the same job as men?”
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Carlson accused Colmes of being angry at the “biological reality” that women were paid less because they had to take time off work for pregnancies.
“I wonder how that would have been different if we had two women doing it,” MacCallum said as the segment concluded.
“Women get paid exactly what they’re worth,” MacCallum declared.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/29/fox-news-host-women-dont-want-equal-pay-they-already-get-exactly-what-theyre-worth/
Best critique of last night’s SotU address that I’ve seen so far comes from Mr. Charles P. Pierce
Best critique of last night’s SotU address that I’ve seen so far comes from Mr. Charles P. Pierce:
… Once again, he was the only obvious president in the room, much good may that do him. He did not rile up the base. He was not combative. He did not dwell on issues that his base wanted to hear. (If you had “Keystone XL,” or “NSA,” or “TPP” in your State of the Union drinking game, you probably wound up as the designated driver.) But he was firm on one thing. He is not going to be a lame duck as long as he can still walk. There were a lot of sentences that began with some variation of, “If Congress won’t act…”
This promise to use the powers of his office is what likely is going to raise all those hackles that were going to be raised in any case unless he got up there and abdicated in favor of Mitt Romney but, really, he couched these assertions in the mildest fashion, making of himself just a guy who was just trying to do the job to which he had been elected. He would like to have done it a different way but, darned it the regular way just didn’t work, and now it’s time to take out the tire iron and give the old machine a good bash. There wasn’t a scintilla of anger in his voice all night. There was just a rueful tone to it, as though he had finally gotten the joke that history had played on him with the election in 2010 of the opera boufee that is our current House of Representatives…
He was extraordinarily strong in spots, particularly on voting rights, where he plainly had a lot to say, and said it all, and on the process of getting the country off what he rather daringly described as the “permanent war footing” it had been on since 2001. Some of the economic ideas, particularly the expansion and strengthening of the Earned Income Tax Credit, were sound and worthy of immediate action, which they won’t get. I’m still a little vague on the MyRA thing, which smacked a little bit of the gimmick, and which, in any case, is just another stop-gap by which the country can forget that, once, everybody had a guaranteed pension, before the unions broke down and the sharpers on Wall Street looted what was left.
But, if this speech burned no barns, it didn’t sound anything like a last chance, either. The president seemed to have a pen in one hand, and that well-worn olive branch still in the other. He is what he always has been, the coolest head in the room. You can never say he isn’t that.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/state-of-the-union-address-012814
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/01/29/wednesday-morning-open-thread-16/
The REAL State Of The Union Is CRAP.
The Real State of the Union
Lambert Strether
Naked Capitalism
January 29th, 2014
By Hugh, who is a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally posted at Corrente.
The state of the Union is crap. 20% of the country is doing OK. 1% is doing fantastically. 0.001% is doing so well it’s criminal, literally. They don’t own everything yet but they do own the politicians, judges, regulators, academics, and reporters. So they’re getting there. The other 80%, the rubes, the muppets, the serfs, are mired in an undeclared, ongoing depression.
50 years on I can safely state that the War on Poverty has been won. The poor have been defeated, the middle class conquered. They just don’t know it. Many sense that something is wrong, even drastically wrong, but few realize they have been totally and thoroughly betrayed by those they trusted with the governance of the country and themselves. They cannot admit –they have been admirably taught not to admit — even the possibility of the class war waged against them and which they have definitely and definitively lost. They continue to look to those who did this to them to fix things and make them better. They may grumble but there is no hint of real opposition or organized rebellion. Theirs is a Union of misery, lost hopes, lesser lives. The Union of the rich and elites is triumphant.
So we have two states of the Union because we have two Unions, one of the many and one of the few, the haves and have-nots, the winners and the losers. We have one Union based on reality and hard work and another which feeds off it.
For most Americans, their wages minus inflation have stayed flat every day of their working lives, that is for the last 35 years. College is no longer a passport to a better life but a trap of lifelong debt. Hard work avails nothing as millions of American jobs have been sent abroad in “free” trade agreements. These agreements are not free for those who lost their jobs. And they make all of us among the many poorer because it has all become not about how hard you work but how cheaply. The meltdown of 5 years ago destroyed much of the wealth of the middle class and virtually all the wealth of the lower classes. But those who drove the economy over the cliff in 2008, the rich, have come roaring back. They have made back the money they lost and more as the government and Fed have thrown trillions at them and encouraged them to blow new and bigger speculative bubbles. Stock markets are at or near historic highs. Statistics have been bent and twisted until they scream. As a consequence, GDP is up. Unemployment is down. Life is good. The numbers prove it. So suck it up, ignore reality, and stop complaining.
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MORE:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/real-state-union.html
Christie's brother invested in houses near new PATH station in Harrison slated for $256 million reno
Governor Christie's brother invested in houses near new PATH station in Harrison
TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY JANUARY 29, 2014, 7:18 AM
BY SHAWN BOBURG AND JEAN RIMBACH
Governor Christie’s brother, Todd Christie, and two business partners have bought and sold a handful of properties within walking distance of the PATH station in Harrison, slated for a $256 million renovation funded by the Port Authority and championed by the governor, records show.
Todd Christie and his partners — one the owner of Ferreira Construction, a large firm that has done tens of millions of dollars of work for state agencies since Christie took office — created a company and began buying small residential lots in early 2011, about a year before the train station renovation was approved by the Port Authority.
The company built three homes on those lots in the first year and sold each of the improved properties — after the announcement of the station overhaul — for nearly triple the property’s original price. The company also demolished a home and sold the vacant lot to the school board in Harrison, where Todd Christie’s partners grew up and have worked in real estate for the past decade.
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- See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/Governors_brother_invested_in_houses_near_new_PATH_station_in_Harrison.html#sthash.ueMwMVQQ.ogt3MEbm.dpuf
CEO tells Daily Show ‘mentally retarded’ could work for $2: ‘You’re worth what you’re worth’
People don’t go hungry in a capitalist economy, Schiff claimed.
“It’s socialism that creates, you know, scarcity, that creates famine,” he said. “In a free market, there’s plenty of food for everybody – especially the poor.”
Schiff argued that eliminating the minimum wage law would allow more people entry to the workforce, and Bee asked him to identify someone whose work might be worth just $2 an hour.
“You know someone that might be? Maybe someone who is – what’s the politically correct word, you know, for mentally retarded,” Schiff said. “I believe in the principles this country was founded on.”
“I’m not going to say that we’re all created equal,” he said. “You’re worth what you’re worth.”
MORE:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/29/ceo-tells-daily-show-mentally-retarded-could-work-for-2-youre-worth-what-youre-worth/
TPM: Obama’s State Of The Union: Enough Of This Reagan Stuff
Obama’s State Of The Union:
Enough Of This Reagan Stuff
Twenty-five years after the Ronald Reagan era ended, Democrats are anxious to move past his conservative vision that is premised on the evils of government. The mentality has continued to permeate the national debate even as Republicans have lost four out of the last six presidential elections, aided by a Democratic Party that has admittedly ceded it too much ideological ground.
No more, they say. The American economy remains in a slump, middle class incomes have stagnated, social mobility is in decline and income inequality has soared to unprecedented heights. Democrats' prescriptions to heal these wounds were again thwarted by Republicans in Congress last year despite their defeat in the 2012 election. If Democrats can't make a compelling case for government to play a larger role in solving these problems now, then when?
It'll be a crucial subtext of President Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union speech Tuesday night. A desire to fight back against the Reagan-era mentality, which is alive and thriving in the modern tea party movement, was also the subject of a lengthy speech last week by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the third-ranked Democrat.
"Since the progressive and populist eras, Democrats have believed that without a strong, smart, and forceful government, the people suffer. With government, society can advance," said Schumer, a top Obama ally. "Republicans generally believe the opposite. But since the days of Ronald Reagan, we have been quiet, defensive and even ashamed of our view."
More:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/democrats-reagan-era-obama-state-of-the-union
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