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Sheriff's Deputies Refuse to Evict 103-year old Woman

Sheriff''s deputies and movers hired by Chase bank, arrived at the home of Vinia Hall on Tuesday after the bank foreclosed on the Atlanta, GA home and obtained an order of eviction. After meeting Ms. Hall -who turns 104 in December - and her 84-year old daughter who had lived in the home together for over 50 years...decided there was no way they were removing the women from the home and left.

Ms. Hall's daughter had to be rushed to a hospital because the possibility of becoming homeless with her mother proved to be just too much for her.

Seems the mother and daughter had been fighting for years with the bank - the loan is held by Deustche Bank but is being serviced locally by Chase - as they had enough money to pay the loan, but were having a difficult time getting Chase to accept a payment.

[WSBTV]



Nights At The Roundtable - Poster Children - 1995

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Poster Children are one of those bands that have gone on for a very long time being underrated. With a healthy catalog of albums and more labels than most people can name, Poster Children have achieved a sort of underground cult status. Another one of those "best bands you've never heard of". Only they have gotten critical and loyal following success. But if you gauge success on the number of "hits" you've had, or the number of million selling albums you've sold, I think you'd be sorely let down as Poster Children just aren't commercial enough for bland tastes.

Blazing the trail of Post-Punk, Poster Children have kept it going since the late 1980's. Tonight's track is from their Sire/Reprise/Twintone period. Junior Citizen was released in 1995 - again, to good reviews and loyal following but not much as far as commercial success is concerned.

King For A Day is just one of the many strong tracks on this album. If you haven't discovered them already, there's a lot more where that came from. If you know who I'm talking about, this is just a gentle reminder there's an unbelievable amount of good music out there just waiting to be rediscovered.

Jus' sayin.



Newt Gingrich: Serial Hypocrisy

Ron Paul lays the wood to serial hypocrite Newt Gingrich. A 30 second tv ad would be appropriate also, but you'd never be able to list everything in that time span.



Newstalgia Mid-Week Concert - Lisa Batiashvili And Friends - Live

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Over to the Theatre des Champs-Elysees this week for a chamber concert featuring Lisa Batiashvili, violin - Francois Leleux, oboe - Sebastian Klinger, cello - Guy Ben Ziony, alto and Milana Chernyavska, piano. Recorded live-and-direct by Radio France Musique on November 23, 2011. The concert features works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Britten.

And the notes:

mercredi 23 novembre 2011

En direct du Théâtre des Champs-Elysées : Mozart, Prokofiev, Britten

Wolfgang-Amadeus Mozart
Quatuor en Fa majeur K.370 (1781)

Serge Prokofiev
Sonate N°1 en Fa mineur Op.80 (1938,1946)

Benjamin Britten
Phantasy Op.2 (1932)

Wolfgang-Amadeus Mozart
Sonate N°42 en La majeur K.526 (1787)

Lisa Batiashvili, Violon
François Leleux, Hautbois
Sebastian Klinger, Violoncelle
Guy Ben Ziony, Alto
Milana Chernyavska, Piano

The concert is broken up between two players - the top player features the Mozart and Prokofiev and the bottom player is the Britten and Mozart. Small technical note: 4 minutes into the Britten there is a bizarre 2 second burst of strange noise which appears to be in the original recording and transmission. I have no idea what it is or what may have caused it. But after the 2 seconds it's gone and the rest of the concert is fine.

Just so you know.

Otherwise - announcements are in French and the recording is, as always, wonderful.

Enjoy - it's Anti-Road Rage Wednesday.



Open Thread

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Original image from The Daily What. Open thread below...



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This piece by the PBS Newshour would have been better titled, support for Republicans declines as voters realize AstroTurf 'tea partiers' are just looking out for the interests of big business and obstructing. They instead decided to completely ignore who's funding these co-called "tea party" groups and or inform their viewers that those voters are nothing more than disgruntled Republicans who probably never took the Bush/Cheney bumper stickers off of their cars yet.

That said, it's nice to see that it looks like the voters have finally started to have a belly-full of them and are realizing that these Republicans are not looking out for their interests or doing anything constructive to improve the economy.

Here's how they framed the segment instead -- Amid Sagging Support, Does Tea Party Have Staying Power for 2012?:

JEFFREY BROWN: Next, the Tea Party burst on the scene as a new political force, but does it have staying power?

Judy Woodruff has our look.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A fresh survey released yesterday by the Pew Research Center found that support for the Tea Party had decreased over the past year. The decline was seen nationally, but also in districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus.

The Pew poll found that 27 percent of Americans now disagree with the movement, while 20 percent support it. In Tea Party-represented districts, 25 percent of respondents said they backed the movement, while 23 percent were against it. [...] Andy Kohut, let me start with you.

We just heard what these numbers say about what support for the Tea Party is like right now. What did it look like a year ago around the time of the midterms?

ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Research Center: At the time of the midterms, we had a plurality of Americans saying they agreed with the ideas of the Tea Party.

Now, keep in mind, most people -- only about half of the people have an opinion, but among the people who do have an opinion, a plurality said, we agree with them. At the beginning of the year, when we asked people, what effect do you think the Tea Party is going to have on Congress, most people who had an opinion said it's going to be a good effect.

By August, we had 29 percent to 22 percent plurality saying, by the way, they're having a bad effect. And so we have seen a deterioration of the view that they're a positive force here in Washington, and we have seen fewer people agreeing with them, both, as you pointed out, in the country nationwide and also in the 60 districts where members of the Republican -- of the Tea Party Caucus come from.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Andy Kohut, you look at the polling numbers all the time. Is this a significant drop?

ANDREW KOHUT: It is pretty significant, given how influential they have been and how intense the views have been about the issues that they take on.

And what adds the significance to it is we see the same trend with respect to the Republican Party. It's not just the Tea Party. Throughout much of this year, the early part of the year, even numbers of people had a favorable and unfavorable view of the Republican Party, just as they have of the Democratic Party.

By October of this year, we have a 36 percent to 55 percent margin saying, I have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

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C&L's Late Night Music Club With The Black Keys

Crossposted from Late Nite Music Club
Title: Lonely Boy

I'm pretty excited about the Black Keys new release, El Camino, which comes out next Tuesday. Here's the video for the first single. Man, this dude's got some moves.

And our sister site Newstalgia has some Baby Lemonade for ya. What are you listening to tonight?



Crossposted from Video Cafe

Stephen Colbert takes a shot at the talking heads at Fox complaining that President Obama supposedly left Jesus out of the Thanksgiving holiday and at Mitt Romney for his lying campaign ad which took President Obama's words out of context as only he can.



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LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter appeared on CNN's John King USA to weigh in on the overnight evictions of the Occupy Protesters in their respective cities.

As Diane already noted Mayor Villaraigosa again claimed the "real reason for the raid was concern for the children sleeping at the camp when as she noted:

Meanwhile, only a few blocks away, hundreds of children are forced to bed down every night in the largest skid row in America, a place literally crawling with drug dealers, violent criminals and pedophiles

Mayor Michael Nutter cited concerns for a nearby construction project and said the protesters had ample notice that they were going to be evicted and said the city gave the protesters another permit for another location to camp across the street from City Hall instead. Both men cited concerns over health and safety of the protesters, which seems to be a running theme now to justify busting up their camps.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Crossposted from Video Cafe

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is so serious about changing the way Washington does business that he is vowing to retaliate against any federal worker who doesn't share his philosophy.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire Tuesday, the Texas governor told supporters that he would reassign civil service workers to "some really God-awful place" if they didn't go along with his ideas, like turning over the Medicaid program to the states.

"Having agencies of government that are there, are going to have individuals that are -- understand my core philosophy, that government should do a few things, but do those few things really, really well," Perry explained.

"Having men and women who share my philosophy, and then giving that clear instruction to those agencies, and if the bureaucrats in those agencies try to block -- for Health and Human Services is a great example," he continued. "If you have Health and Human Service bureaucrats that try to block our being able to block grant dollars back to the states so you all can decide how best to handle health care in New Hampshire -- I don't think you can fire federal bureaucrats, but you can reassign them -- so reassign them to some really God-awful place."

As The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel noted, Perry was incorrect in stating that federal civil service workers cannot be fired.

More importantly, it would probably be illegal to punish workers who do not share his "vision." Title 5 of the United States Code bans discrimination against federal employees for personal conduct which which does not affect on-the-job performance.

Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s White House Liason under President George W. Bush, admitted to Congress in 2007 that she had engaged in the "illegal" practice of making hiring decisions based on political ideology.

"With regard to requests from interim U.S. Attorneys to hire [Assistant U.S. Attorneys], we determined that in two instances Goodling considered the candidate’s political or ideological affiliations when she assessed the request," an Office of Inspector General special report found in 2008.

In one case, an experienced career terrorism prosecutor was rejected by Goodling "because of his wife’s political affiliations."

Goodling was never prosecuted because she was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony.