“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― W.B. Yeats, “The Land of Heart’s Desire”
In honor of our very own GoBrooklyn, who will have a long life of dancing ahead of her, some videos from the “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching” meme on Youtube.
Where: LAX; Artist: The Black Angels; Song: “Telephone”
John Gallagher: The anonymous benefactor who recently paid the entire $142,000 balance in taxes to prevent Detroit’s Masonic Temple from falling into foreclosure was revealed today to be musician Jack White. The Detroit-born White has performed on stage on several occasions at the Temple and partly grew up there when his mother served as an usher there.
In announcing Jack White’s identity as the anonymous donor, Detroit Masonic Temple Association President Roger Sobran stated: “Jack’s donation could not have come at a better time and we are eternally grateful to him for it. Jack’s magnanimous generosity and unflinching loyalty to this historic building and his Detroit roots is appreciated beyond words.”
@PeteSouza: POTUS embraces Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers, in Oval Office today
Thank you LovelyPlains
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BooMan: I told you Chris Christie had no good options. He called a press conference today to announce that he had set the general election for Frank Lautenberg’s Senate seat for October 16th, just two weeks before his own general election day. Why would he do that when he could have set it on the same day as his own and saved the state 25 million dollars? Because the likely Democratic nominee, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, is black, and Christie fears that Booker’s candidacy will drive higher than normal black turnout…..
“Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You’re no more mature, just more burned.” ― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
I was, in my callow youth, a practiced cynic. Perhaps it was due to the crowd with which I hung out, perhaps due to my own struggles, a combination of the two, or merely the condition of youth where one thinks oneself wiser than one really is. But my view of the world was dark, depressing, and pretty hopeless.
Or, at least, that’s what I put out. At a certain age, it’s quite hip and cool to pose with an cynical insouciance: you know the game, you know it’s rigged, there’s nothing you can do aside from letting “Them” know that you know. It’s your only power.
10:30: The President delivers a statement, The Rose Garden
11:10: The President and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera hold a bilateral meeting; the VP also attends
1:0: Press Briefing by Jay Carney
2:20: The President departs the White House
2:30: Arrives Bethesda, Maryland
2:50: Visits the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
4:35: Departs Bethesda
4:45: Arrives at the White House
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From left: Cornelia Pillard, Patricia Millett and Robert L. Wilkins
NYT: President Obama will nominate a slate of three candidates on Tuesday to fill the remaining vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a White House official said Monday.
The president will name Cornelia T. L. Pillard, a law professor; Patricia Ann Millett, an appellate lawyer; and Robert L. Wilkins, a federal district judge, to fill out the appeals court, which is often described as the second most powerful court in the country because it decides major cases and often serves as a launching pad for future Supreme Court justices.
By making his choices in a group, the president and his strategists are hoping to put pressure on Senate Republicans to confirm them.
Steve Benen: …. At the outset, let’s emphasize how uncontroversial this is – there are vacancies on an important federal bench, so the president is sending qualified nominees to the Senate for consideration. Republicans are characterizing this as a scandalous power-grab, while many political reporters are describing this as Obama thumbing his nose at his political rivals. In reality, it’s neither – presidents filling judicial vacancies is basic American governance. It’s Civics 101. That today’s announcement is seen as somehow remarkable is evidence of just how broken the process has become.
…. This is far more consequential than much of the public realizes …. the D.C. Circuit is likely to have considerable influence over the future of the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street reform, immigration reform, and perhaps most importantly, efforts to combat the climate crisis.
This is, in other words, a fight worth having, and the outcome will have a lasting impact for many years to come.
It’s increasingly clear that the president has steered the country back from the brink – and, in the process, exposed (yet again) the central lie of conservative economics…..
Greg Sargent: As I’ve been saying here for some time, behind all the GOP noise and hoopla about Beltway scandal-palooza is a stark reality that can’t be obscured. House Republicans are confronting two major challenges – what to do about the debt limit and about immigration reform, both of which will require cooperation from House conservatives that they aren’t prepared to give — and they don’t have an answer to either one.
This is driven home in fresh and vivid detail by today’s big Post story on the deep divisions within the House GOP caucus.
Steve Benen: We talked yesterday about the new report from the College National Republican Committee, detailing their party’s difficulties in connecting with younger voters. As the College Republicans explained, it’s a “dismal present situation” with focus groups, led by GOP pollsters, finding that voters under 30 consider the party “closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and] old-fashioned”…..
…. In focus groups in January, the report said, young voters were asked to list leaders of the Democratic Party. “They named prominent former or currently elected officials: Pelosi, the Clintons, Obama, Kennedy, Gore. When those same respondents were asked to name Republican leaders, they focused heavily on media personalities and commentators: Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.”
The Obama Diary 
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