I’m sure you’ve read about Scott Van Duzer’s pizza place being boycotted and trashed on review sites today by GOPers because of his ‘meeting’ and support for the President yesterday.
The fight-back has been fantastic. For example, on Yelp, where they were rating him down and saying disgusting things about his business, people like this have been responding:
Sorry to hear the GOP propaganda machine learned how to use Yelp to operate possibly the most primitive form of internet trolling – artificial ratings. I have much more pressing chores (grading papers and cooking dinner) now, but I’m sure the GOP have stained the ratings with Faux News horse sh*t as “you didn’t build that”, “communist President” etc.
Just play by the rules, provide healthcare to employees, and give women parity and I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on! I can’t wait to visit my best friend in FL and give Mr Duzer some business.
He’s now received so much support – and so many pizza orders – he’s asking people to donate to his foundation instead.
USA Today: Nuclear weapons are very much on the mind of the Obama administration today as they monitor events in North Korea following the death of dictator Kim Jung Il.
Obama spoke with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak shortly after North Korea announced Kim’s death overnight.
On the domestic front today, Obama aides will wait and see if House Republicans vote down a Senate plan to extend the payroll tax cut for two months. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, says the extension should be for a year, as reported by USA TODAY’s Aamer Madhani.
If the House does reject the Senate plan, lawmakers will resume negotiations — as Obama stresses, the payroll tax cut expires at the end of the year.
Steve Benen: The pieces were in place. Senate leads from both parties agreed to a temporary compromise that looked pretty sensible: Dems would get a two-month extension of the payroll tax break and a clean extension of unemployment benefits, while GOP lawmakers would get an expedited decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. It was quickly approved with overwhelming, bipartisan support, 89 to 10.
…. But Boehner then took this victory to his caucus … the Speaker quickly realized his job is to take, not give, orders from his right-wing members: “It’s pretty clear that I and our members oppose the Senate bill.”
…. Why is it, exactly, that Boehner called the compromise a “good deal” and a “victory” on Saturday, only to say he opposes the deal on Sunday?…
Indeed, the House will likely take up the Senate deal later today, simply to prove it can’t pass the lower chamber. In the bigger picture, it’s pretty amazing: House Republicans are going to kill a bipartisan compromise on a middle-class tax cut, which just passed the Senate 89 to 10, the week before Christmas.
…. If Americans find all of this ridiculous, they should have been a little more careful before the 2010 midterms.
ThinkProgress: The Florida Family Association has managed to do a lot of damage with its All-American Muslim boycott over the last week and a half, whether by convincing companies like Lowe’s and Kayak to absolutely humiliate themselves, or by stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment against the cast of a touching and totally uncontroversial reality show.
But fortunately one thing sanctimonious moralizers do well is make lists, and they’ve kept track of advertisers who stuck to their guns and either continued to advertise on the show after the FFA started its campaign.
So if you’re withdrawing your business from Lowe’s and Kayak and, during the holiday season, looking for new places to spend some money, you can use their list against them. Those advertisers include:
– Big Lots
– Conagra’s Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes
– Discover Card
– Disney for The Muppets
– GeicoHonda North America, for the Accord and Odyssey
– HTC Phones
– Mucinex
– Delsym
– Resolve Clean
– Drano
– Glade
– Scrubbing Bubbles
– Kay Jewelers
****
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NYT: Almost 13 years ago, Mitt Romney left Bain Capital, the successful private equity firm he had helped start, and moved to Utah to rescue the Salt Lake City Olympic Games and begin a second career in public life.
Yet when it came to his considerable personal wealth, Mr. Romney never really left Bain.
In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain’s profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney’s political aspirations.
President Barack Obama, Ruby Bridges, and representatives of the Norman Rockwell Museum view Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” hanging in a West Wing hallway near the Oval Office, July 15, 2011. Bridges is the girl portrayed in the painting. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
AOL (2010): When Ruby Bridges arrived for her first day at William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans 50 years ago, she thought it was Mardi Gras. People lined the streets, shouting and throwing things – just like a Carnival parade. But these people weren’t celebrating.
At 6 years old, Bridges had been unwittingly thrust onto the grand stage of American history. Her parents had volunteered her to be the first black child to attend an all-white school in the South. Local law enforcement refused to protect her from the unruly mobs that surrounded her school, so every day she was escorted by four federal marshals – the scene immortalized by Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With.”
That first day, all the parents had rushed into the building and taken their kids out — effectively boycotting the school. The school didn’t quite know what to do; Ruby was told to just sit in the principal’s office until it was time to go home.
“I remember thinking, ‘This school is easy,'” Bridges told AOL News.
Since then, Bridges grew up, raised four sons and worked as a travel agent before returning to a career as an educational activist that she had started at such a young age. But while her educational career eventually subsided into a normal New Orleans childhood – albeit one charged by forced integration – those exceptional first days in school had shaped her for life.
Media Matters: At least 300 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck’s Fox News program since he called President Obama a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Here are his April 4 sponsors, in the order they appeared:
Rosland Capital … Solar Solutions (mysolarbackup.com) … Lifestyle Lift … Schiff Nutrition International, Inc. (Move Free Advanced) … Law Offices of Pulaski and Middlemen … Foundation for a Better Life … News Corp. (Fox News’ Glenn Beck) … Goldline … International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (Passoverfoodbox.com) … EasyWater (Zerowater.com) … Sokolove Law, LLC … News Corp (Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor) …. Merit Financial … Can-Am … EasyWater … Lifestyle Lift … People Media’s OurTime Network (OurTime.com) … Tax Masters (txmstr.com) … Lear Capital … Realtybid.com … News Corp. (Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Breaking In) … News Corp. (Fox News’ Fox & Friends) … Lifestyle Lift … Law Offices of Pulaski and Middlemen (1-800-Bad-Drug) … Am Med Direct/Better Care … Rosland Capital … News Corp. (Wall Street Journal) … Sokolove Law, LLC … Solutions from Science (Survival Seed Bank)
Law Offices of Pulaski and Middlemen (1-800-Bad-Drug) – contact them here
Treehugger: Want to boycott the Koch Brothers’ products and not have your money going to support the Tea Party? Here’s a quick list of the companies you should be avoiding.
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger – Parks’ action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Parks’ act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and she became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.
“My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest…I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.” Parks had her first run-in on the public bus on a rainy day in 1943, when the bus driver, James F. Blake, demanded that she get off the bus and re-enter through the back door. As she began to exit by the front door, she dropped her purse. Parks sat down for a moment in a seat for white passengers to pick up her purse. The bus driver was enraged and barely let her step off the bus before speeding off.
After a day at work at Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus at around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the “colored” section, which was near the middle of the bus and directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she had not noticed that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded.
Blake noted that the front of the bus was filled with white passengers and there were two or three men standing, and thus moved the “colored” section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks said, “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats ….
…… I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”
By Parks’ account, Blake said, “Y’all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” Three of them complied. Parks said, “The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn’t move at the beginning, but he says, ‘Let me have these seats.’ And the other three people moved, but I didn’t.” The black man sitting next to her gave up his seat. Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the newly repositioned colored section. Blake then said, “Why don’t you stand up?” Parks responded, “I don’t think I should have to stand up.” Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize, a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, “When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ And he said, ‘Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.’ I said, ‘You may do that.'”
The Obama Diary 
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