Asked on the “Today” show whether she thought her son Jeb should run for president in 2016, as W. has urged, the famously candid and caustic Silver Fox offered the most honest assessment of her oldest son’s legacy.
Aside from the cascading disasters that the country is still struggling to recover from, a key W. legacy is derailing the path of the son Poppy and Barbara Bush dearly wanted to be president: Jeb.
For the first time, the 87-year-old former first lady acknowledged, in essence, that W. had worn out the family’s welcome in the White House. “He’s by far the best qualified man, but no, I really don’t,” she said when asked if her second son should aim to be the third Bush in chief. “I think it’s a great country. There are a lot of great families, and it’s not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified and we’ve had enough Bushes.” READ More
You are invited to a Chatham County Jubilee Day Celebration, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The East Chatham NAACP Branch 5377 celebration will take place on Sunday, January 6 at 3:00 PM at Hamlet Chapel, 2855 Hamlet Chapel Road (next to Perry Harrison School), Pittsboro.
The Reverend Curtis Everette Gatewood is a community organizer and social justice minister in Durham and has been active with the NAACP for many years. From 1995 to 2003, Rev. Gatewood was President of the Durham NAACP. He also served as 2nd Vice President of the NC Conference of the NAACP from 2005 to 2011.
In 2011, Rev. Gatewood was hired by the NC NAACP to serve as the “HKonJ Coalition Coordinator,” a position he continues to hold today. The group’s “Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People’s Assembly Coalition is made up of more than 140 partnering social justice organizations and focuses on the HKonJ 14-Point People’s Agenda. The most recent HKonJ rally in 2012 brought together 15,000 demonstrators to march down the streets of downtown Raleigh in support of the People’s Agenda."
Jubilee Day: On January 1, 1863 people waited anxiously to hear that the document signed by President Abraham Lincoln would go into effect and declare that slaves in rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The document was signed at midnight and word began to spread. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free anyone, but it laid the foundation for freedom and its signing is celebrated all over our country today.
Freedom was finalized by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House of Representatives on Jan. 31, 1865, and adopted on Dec. 6, 1865.
An American child grows up in a married household in the suburbs. What are the chances that his family keeps a gun in their home?
The probability is considerably higher than residents of New York and other big cities might expect: about 40 percent of married households reported having a gun in their home, according to the exit poll conducted during the 2008 presidential election.
But the odds vary significantly based on the political identity of the child’s parents. If they identify as Democratic voters, the chances are only about one in four, or 25 percent, that they have a gun in their home. But the chances are more than twice that, almost 60 percent, if they are Republicans.
Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics.
Ever since Darden Restaurants — the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains — first announced its anti-Obamacare campaign, the company has had a tough couple of months. Darden admitted as muchwhen it revised its predictions for latest quarterly earnings down in December, attributing the drop to “recent negative media coverage on Darden [...] and how we might accommodate healthcare reform.”
The negative press led the company to reverse course on its threat to shift employees to part-time status to avoid covering them under Obamacare. The latest report on Darden’s earnings prove that was a good move, since the restaurants did take a turn for the worse as a result of their bad publicity. Its net income fell 37 percent:
When we first collected much of this data, it was after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”
Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.
Since then, there have been more horrible, high-profile shootings. Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, took his girlfriend’s life and then his own. In Oregon, Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a semi-automatic rifle and yelling “I am the shooter.” And, in Connecticut, at least 27 are dead — including 18 children — after a man opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
Another day, another mass shooting in America. When, and how, will this end? In fact, will it ever end?
On Friday, a gunman identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 26 people, including 20 children between the ages 5 and 10, at a Connecticut elementary school. He is reported to have also killed his mother, a kindergarten teacher at the school, and committed suicide.
This comes after Jacob Roberts, a 22-year-old man, armed with a semiautomatic AR-15, carrying extra magazines and wearing a hockey mask walked into a shopping mall in Oregon filled with 10,000 people and began shooting. He killed two people, and then took his own life.
A visibly shaken President Obama said after the shooting at the school, “As a country, we have been through this too many times.” He continued, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
I agree. I only hope that in coming days we flesh out what “meaningful action” means in policy terms. If not now, when? After the next shooting?
“I’m sorry,” said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, her voice breaking. “I’m having a really tough time.”
She’s the former nurse from Long Island who ran for Congress in 1996 as a crusader against gun violence after her husband and son were victims of a mass shooting on a commuter train. On Friday morning, McCarthy said, she began her day by giving an interview to a journalist who was writing a general story about “how victims feel when a tragedy happens.”
“And then 15 minutes later, a tragedy happens.”
McCarthy, whose husband died and son was critically wounded, is by now a practiced hand at speaking out when a deranged man with a lot of firepower runs amok. But the slaughter of 20 small children and seven adults in Connecticut left her choked up and speechless.
“I just don’t know what this country’s coming to. I don’t know who we are any more,” she said.
President Obama was overwhelmed as well, when he attempted to comfort the nation. It was his third such address in the wake of a soul-wrenching mass shooting. “They had their entire lives ahead of them,” he said, and he had trouble saying anything more.
