President Obama attends an interfaith healing service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston for victims of Monday’s Boston Marathon explosions
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The complete Interfaith Prayer Service from Boston today:
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Back at the White House: At the end of a painful day, you just need somebody to love…..
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President Obama being updated on Boston investigation by Lisa Monaco early this morning at White House (Pete Souza)
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So John King is apoplectic that people are questioning if he’s a racist or not, too bad, he signed up for it when he went on national t.v. and said the Boston bombing suspects were black….I mean dark skinned. Let me tell you what I didn’t sign up for, I didn’t sign up to be followed around a department store, I didn’t sign up to have women clutch their purses as they walk in my direction, I didn’t sign up to hear the sound of car doors being locked as I crossed the goddamn street with bags of groceries in both arms, I didn’t sign up to walk in a bank to get some money out of my account and have the teller walk in a back room with my I.D. and have me wait for twenty fucking minutes just to get money out of my account, I didn’t sign up to have some white guy ask me I if was from this country just because I knew who Leon Panetta was, I didn’t sign up to have a realtor question me about my credit score and whether or not I’ve ever been arrested before I could finish saying hello, I didn’t sign up to have a waiter tell me the food in the restaurant I was in was expensive before he gave my wife and I the fucking menu. I’m not telling you these things because I’m looking for sympathy, I’m just telling you about the shit that the average black man has to put up with, so when John King gets upset at getting called out for an error he made, he should get on his goddamn knees and pray to his god that he doesn’t have to go through the same bullshit that the average black guy walking down the street does. Am I angry, hell yes, have I given up hope about the idea that a person should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, hell no.
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Chat away
This has been a hard week.
It began with the terrorist attack in Boston.
The middle of the week brings us the continued terrorist attacks which occur on our streets every day due to gun violence and the easy availability of Time to turn the world rightside upguns. The Senate took up a measure to expand background checks for gun purchases. Although it had majority support, it didn’t have the magic number of 60 yeas, and thus died. (Also killed outright were bans on assault weapons and large magazines. More on that later.)
Let’s not kid ourselves: the background check legislation was, at best, a small step. As Brad Plummer writes in the Washington Post:
The Manchin-Toomey compromise bill was a scaled-back version of earlier proposals to extend background checks to unregulated private gun sales. Many gun experts argued that the slimmed-down proposal would have only marginal effects on gun violence. But even that small step couldn’t get through the Senate.
“But even that small step couldn’t get through the Senate.”
Let that sentence sink in. Our political culture is in such straits that a minor, flawed reform to gun laws could not get through the Senate. Never mind the stricter legislation on magazine size and a ban on assault weapons—legislation which went down to decisive defeats before the background check bill came up. And, of course, the GOP-controlled House has consigned Newtown to the memory hole. It has played no meaningful role in trying to ameliorate the gun violence epidemic infecting the nation; it’s quite happy allowing the carnage to continue. It is, a priori, the price of “freedom”.
It would be quite easy to throw in the towel. A significant chunk of politicians are bought and paid for by deep-pocketed special interests—and at a very cheap price. The worst among them sail to re-election time and again, thanks to that flow of money, and to an electorate which, let’s face it, is too stupid to realize that the men and women for whom they vote couldn’t give a damn about their real needs. Or, maybe they do realize it, but they hold those needs beneath the need to maintain a fiction of a country that never existed and is threatened by the hordes of “Others” about to swamp them.
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama depart the White House for a memorial service in Boston
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11:0: President Obama delivers remarks at Healing Our City: An Interfaith Service dedicated to those who were wounded or killed in Monday’s bombing. First lady Michelle Obama also attends
12:0: President Obama speaks to Boston Athletic Association Volunteers
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White House live * C-Span * Boston CBS * CBS * CNN
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Today (all times ET):
8:20 AM: President Obama and Michelle Obama depart the White House
9:55: Arrive in Boston
11:0: President Obama delivers remarks at Healing Our City: An Interfaith Service dedicated to those who were wounded or killed in Monday’s bombing. Michelle Obama also attends
2:55: Depart Boston
4:30: Arrive at the White House
5:30: President Obama hosts a reception for Greek Independence Day; VP Biden also attends
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“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington. But this effort isn’t over… I see this as just round one.” —President Obama
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 17, 2013
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Gabrielle Giffords: Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.
On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.
More here
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