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Sequester
Posted in Thoughts of the Soul Brother
Tagged business, congress, economy, government, Obama, politics, sequester, The Progreesive Caucus, United States
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Harry Connick, Jr. Confirms Talks to Join American Idol as Judge
by Rob Moynihan
As American Idol’s 12th season winds down towards the May 16 finale, speculation is growing about another judging shakeup, and a serious contender has now entered the race. 25 Bubble Shows: Which will be canceled? Crooner Harry Connick, Jr. confirmed to reporters after Thursday’s results show that he has been talking with producers about joining next year’s panel. “They wanted to know if I would be interested and it’s a blast, but I don’t know, it’s hard to make a commitment like that,” Connick said backstage.
The actor and performer, who will release a new album called Every Man Should Know on June 11, served as an opinionated mentor to the Top 4 contestants this week and even had a heated argument at the judge’s table with Randy Jackson during Wednesday’s live show. “You need to be completely honest and diplomatic,” Connick said of his judging method. “There’s no reason to be mean, but it’s called being a judge. You have to judge, that’s what you do.”
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged American Idol, entertainment, Harry Connick, Programs, Randy Jackson, Reality-Based, television
1 Comment
Scandal Postmortem: Will Olivia and Fitz Finally Get Together?
by Natalie Abrams
[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Thursday’s Scandal. Read at your own risk!]
Olitz fans, rejoice!
Thursday’s episode of Scandal featured the moment Olivia (Kerry Washington) and Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) fans had always hoped for, but weren’t really sure would ever happen: Fitz chose Olivia once and for all!
After Mellie (Bellamy Young) put a deadline on their marriage, Fitz decided to run the clock out alongside Olivia, proving that his heart was with her, instead of the First Lady. Despite the outcome, Mellie didn’t falter, going on live news at the deadline and revealing to the nation that the President had been unfaithful in their marriage. Does this mean Olivia and Fitz finally get to be together?
Meanwhile, after OPA deduces that Charlie (George Newbern) is behind the attack on Huck (Guillermo Diaz), they all suspect Cyrus (Jeff Perry) is the mole, but — twist! — someone else is the mysterious Albatross. Who is it?! TVGuide.com caught up with Goldwyn, who also directed the episode, to get the scoop on the future of America’s favorite couple and what’s in store for the finale:
Now that the news is out there that Fitz has been unfaithful, what’s the immediate fallout like?
Tony Goldwyn: Mellie has taken a nuclear option. She’s really blown things up. Fitz is willing to take responsibility for that. He takes what he says to Liv very seriously when he relays to her what Cyrus had said: You have to sacrifice for what you love. Fitz is done. He believes that he’s gone so far off the rails in terms of being true to himself that it’s only resulted in literally death and destruction. The only path he sees is to get real, and it began with that conversation he had with Mellie where she said their marriage is a lie and when he confronts her with the true story of how they met. Fitz has committed himself to facing the truth. He confessed to Cyrus about killing Verna (Debra Mooney). Whatever the fallout is, he’s willing to take the responsibility for that.
When Mellie went on air, she made it seem like they would be trying to repair their marriage. Was that part of her game plan — trying to force his hand into making it work?
Goldwyn: I think so. At the end of the day, Mellie wants Fitz and wants to hang onto power. Mellie is an incredibly clever woman, in many ways cleverer than Fitz. She wants to have her cake and eat it too.
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged Bellamy Young, entertainment, Fitz, hit show, Jeff Perry, Kerry Washington, Mellie, Olivia, Scandal, Shonda Rhimes, television, Tony Goldwyn
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Gwendolyn Brooks – The Mother
“The Mother” by Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks is as poignant today as it was when she wrote it in 1963. In fact, it may have been even more so in 1963; Roe vs Wade was not decided until 1973. The speaker in the piece, “The Mother” lays bare her internal struggles for all to see. Powerful. Relevant. Emotional.
The Mother
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?–
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
Posted in Soul Brother Presents
Tagged abortion, art, classic, Gwendolyn Brooks, message, Mother, poetry, Pulitzer Prize, womens health
3 Comments
Ex-Pope Benedict returns to Vatican
He was flown by helicopter from the Castel Gandolfo papal summer residence to live permanently in Vatican City.
Greeted by Pope Francis as he arrived, he was driven the short distance to his new accommodation.
Benedict, 86, was last seen in public on 23 March and there has been speculation about his health.
Observers said at the time he appeared more frail than when he stepped down on 28 February.
However, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said this week that Emeritus Pope Benedict was not ill.
Hours after his arrival, the Vatican issued a photograph of Benedict shaking hands with Pope Francis. However, unlike his departure from the Vatican, there was no live TV coverage of his return.
BlackBerry CEO: Tablets will be dead in five years
By Hayley Tsukayama
Forget the death of the PC: BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins thinks tablets are on their way out as users shift to doing more through their smartphones.
In comments Monday at a Milken Institute conference, Heins said smartphones will become users’ main source of computing power in the next five years. People will simply plug whatever display, keyboard or other accessory they need to do their work into a smartphone. For many workers, a smartphone will be the only device they need, he said.
“I doubt whether there’s a tablet a few years from now,” Heins said. “You can just connect it to a big screen, and off you go.”
Heins has switched all of his computing to a smartphone and BlackBerry’s own PlayBook tablet, he said. And while he acknowledged that some jobs require other devices — for example, he said, he doesn’t work a lot with spreadsheets — he thinks “40, 50 percent” of people will only use their phones.
There is a consumer push to reduce gadgetry, with many people expecting that the market for laptops will continue to dwindle as users favor tablets more heavily. There’s also a trend toward consolidation with larger “phablet” phone-tablet hybrids — though it’s up for debate whether that’s an indication that tablets are taking over the phone market, rather than the other way around.
Read More BlackBerry CEO: Tablets will be dead in five years – The Washington Post.
Time Warner Cable CEO wants to slim cable bundles, eyes Aereo’s technology
By Cecilia Kang
Time Warner Cable’s chief executive said his company may consider capturing television content from public airwaves and delivering them to customers over an Internet connection, a practice that has shaken the entertainment industry. The idea was pioneered by a Web start-up called Aereo, whose business model sparked lawsuits from all of the nation’s broadcasters, including NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC. Their complaints in courts have failed.The entry of Time Warner Cable into Aereo’s space would be a game changer, with broad implications for how television is created and delivered to households. Unlike Aereo, which serves only two markets, Time Warner is the country’s second-largest cable company and has broad influence over how TV content is delivered into millions of living rooms.“What Aereo is doing to bring broadcast signals to its customers is interesting,” Time Warner Cable chief executive Glenn Britt said in an interview. “If it is found legal, we could conceivably use similar technology.”Part of Britt’s interest in Aereo stems from his belief that the traditional model of television — in which broadcasters bundle together hundreds of channels and force cable companies to buy and distribute them to consumers as a package — is under siege. Fed up by monthly bills that typically reach more than $100, millions of consumers have canceled their cable service and turned to Internet video where they can buy shows one at a time or pay a very low monthly subscription fee. But a major gap of the online content is that it is does not offer live programming, such as sports and local news.Aereo fills that void, offering everything that appears on CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS and about two dozen other channels. For less than $10 a month, its customers can see the latest episodes of “Dancing With the Stars” or “NCIS” — and save those shows on digital recorders. Aereo said it is expanding its service to 22 metropolitan regions across the country, including the Washington area, this summer.Time Warner Cable’s interest in Aereo’s technology is preliminary, Britt said. The cable giant, which serves 12 million video customers in 29 states, does not have concrete plans but is simply watching the legal battle closely.That fight has gone in Aereo’s favor. Two judges have ruled that Aereo’s model is legal. Last month, the nation’s broadcasters asked a New York federal district court for a full review of their case.If the courts continue to rule in Aereo’s favor, some broadcasters said they would simply take their shows off public airwaves and make them available only to cable subscribers. On Wednesday, CBS chief executive Les Moonves joined Fox and Univision in threatening to take this step.
Read More Time Warner Cable CEO wants to slim cable bundles, eyes Aereo’s technology – The Washington Post.
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged Aereo, Cable television, CBS, Glenn Britt, Les Moonves, NBC, technology, television, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable, Univision, Washington Post
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Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord
In “A Song for Assata,” rapper, Common asks “I wonder what would happen if that would’ve been me?” Common wonders aloud what readers of Assata Shakur’s gripping autobiography, Assata, must ask themselves as they are confronted with the miscarriages of justice at the core of Shakur’s life as a black revolutionary.
Published in 1987, the autobiography chronicles Shakur’s emergence as an activist at the center of America’s racial conflict. She ultimately affiliated with the Black Panther Party and the black liberation movement in the 1960s. Her case and her bouts with the criminal justice system recall all of the angst and murkiness within which the battles for black freedom were fought in the mid-20th century: brutal prison conditions, falsified evidence, conflicting statements, frenzied media panic, and violent racists posing as officers of the law.
In spite of these at times unlawful and regularly dehumanizing experiences, Assata Shakur has been living in exile with asylum in Cuba since 1984.
Read More Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord | theGrio.
Pregnant T-Mobile Employee Clocked Out to Use Toilet
By Abby Ellin
Kristi Rifkin had been working at T-Mobile Call Center in Nashville for four years when she got pregnant with her third child. She says she loved her job.
“I had a great run,” Rifkin, 40, told ABC News. “I was making bonus. T-Mobile was good to me. I never had a problem getting a schedule I wanted. I enjoyed it. I had even left another company to work at T-Mobile because they had great benefits.”
But her good will toward the company changed once she got pregnant.
According to Rifkin, the pregnancy–her second (she has one stepson)–was a difficult one, and she was going to the doctor twice a week, seeing both a regular obstetrician and a high-risk obstetrician. She was also required to drink “tons and tons” of water – which, in turn, resulted in frequent trips to the bathroom. This did not sit well with T-Mobile, she said.
“They give you two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch,” said Rifkin. “If you can’t take care of your biological needs in that time period, you don’t go.”
Before her pregnancy, this wasn’t an issue. But as she explained in a blog post on MomsRising.org, frequent jaunts to the bathroom would cut into what was known in the call center world as ”adherence” — a metric that measures the degree to which employees meet their quota for being on the phone.
Read More Pregnant T-Mobile Employee Clocked Out to Use Toilet – ABC News.
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged Call centre, discrimination, employment, job, Kristi Rifkin, MomsRising.org, Nashville, pregnancy, pregnancy discrimination, T-Mobile, Tennessee, work
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High School Rapper Arrested and Facing Terrorism Charges For Rap About Boston Marathon Bombing
The suburban teenager is being held on $1 million bail, and faces possibly 20 years.
A Massachusetts high school student faces felony charges for allegedly posting on social media rap lyrics that police say amount to terrorist threats, the Valley Patriot reports.
“He posted a threat in the form of rap where he mentioned the White House, the Boston Marathon bombing, and said ‘everybody you will see what I am going to do, kill people,” said Joe Solomon, who is police chief of Methuen, a city in north Massachusetts.
According to a press release from the Methuen Police Department, 18-year-old Cameron D’Ambrosio posted the alleged threatening rap on Facebook. Police investigated the teenager after one of D’Ambrosio’s classmates reported to Methuen High School authorities the “disturbing verbiage” on his Facebook page. The press release notes that the alleged threats “were in general and not directed towards another person or the school.”
According to the Eagle Tribune, D’Ambrosio was charged with communicating a terrorist threat and faces up to 20 years in jail. He is being held on $1 million bail. All this, for writing some scary rap lyrics on Facebook.
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