Using racism, it is politically correct? Her great grand parents were probably driving the bus, not riding in the back. It amazes me that they have the nerve to even bring it up.
At Black Caucus dinner, Michelle Obama urges members to get out the vote
Michelle Obama used a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on Saturday night to urge delegates to register voters and encourage African Americans to turn out in November’s election.
Speaking in Washington at the foundation’s annual Phoenix dinner, the first lady likened turning out the vote to the civil rights struggles of previous eras.
“Make no mistake about it, this is the march of our time,” Obama told the audience at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. “Marching door-to-door registering people to vote, marching everyone you know to the polls every single election.” That effort, she said, “is the movement of our era — protecting that fundamental right, not just for this election but for the next generation and generations to come.”
Obama did not refer explicitly to voter-ID laws that that have been passed or proposed in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, but she warned against being dissuaded from voting.
“We cannot let anyone discourage us from casting our ballots,” she said. “We cannot let anyone make us feel unwelcome in the voting booth. It is up to us to make sure that in every election, every voice is heard and every vote is counted. That means making sure our laws preserve that right.”
Republicans have backed voter ID laws, which often require photo identification, arguing that they help prevent ballot fraud. Democrats and voter advocates say the measures could be used to keep some poor and minority voters away from the polls because it can be more burdensome for them to get the required IDs. Opponents have mounted several legal challenges to the laws.
This year’s dinner issued honors to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; film director George Lucas; Harvey Gantt, the first African American mayor of Charlotte; and Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.).
Earlier at the convention center, issues of faith dominated the final day of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference
Faith leaders discussed one of the most controversial issues facing them in the black community: President Obama’s public support for same-sex marriage.
Opening a roundtable session by calling for a civilized discussion, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) noted that the president “has not asked anybody to introduce legislation on same-sex marriage. What the president did is stand up one day and say, ‘This is my position.’ That’s it.”
Views on the issue differed. The most unequivocal opposition to the president’s stance on same-sex marriage came from the Rev. Annette Wilson.
“When God says a man should not lie with another man as a woman, that’s what he meant,” she said. “When He says that two women should not lie together as a man would a woman, that’s what he meant. He meant what he said, and we have to give an account for it. . . . When we know what God says and then go against it, there are consequences.”
Another panelist who disagreed with Obama explained why she would not let her view change her support for him. The Rev. Mankekolo Mahlangu-Ngcobo said that “even though I was not in favor of what the president has said,” she supported Obama “because as an African immigrant, his immigration policy is what I can support. I am an educator — his education platform is what I can support. I am in health care, and his health-care — Obamacare — he really cares.”
Jesse L. Jackson, by contrast, said that he supported same-sex marriage but that he could not see why the issue had gained prominence.
“I support the proposition. I cannot put it on the front of the line,” he told the assembled delegates. “Don’t win the same-sex debate and lose the right to a house, health and education.”
This was a view echoed in remarks from the Rev. S. Todd Yeary of Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, who said the issue was being used as a wedge to divide black voters.
“David slew Goliath with five stones,” he said. “We’ve got to decide when we’re going to stop stoning one another for the issues we really don’t all understand.”
The final day of the 42nd conference opened with the caucus’s annual prayer breakfast, addressed by Noel Jones, pastor of the City of Refuge Church in Gardena, Calif., who preached that God alone empowers people to make a difference in someone else’s life.
“We are living in a time when we as African Americans have given everybody else the rights to our lives because we believe that we need everybody to make our lives work,” Jones said in an interview after his sermon. “At the end of the day, we are responsible for whatever happens in our lives to make our lives work.”
With the November election only weeks away, the Rev. Barbara Williams Skinner reminded people in her prayer that lawmakers represent those who have no voice. She prayed for the children for whom “nobody checks their homework, nobody looks at their report card, nobody cares whether they come home or not.”
Drawing applause more than a dozen times during her speech later that evening, Michelle Obama’s remarks fared better than the president’s did at the same event last year.
Calling on the caucus to back his jobs bill, the president urged the audience in 2011 to “take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes” and support him, comments that were not well received by some present.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/at-cbcf-conference-faith-leaders-discuss-same-sex-marriage/2012/09/22/9cb60d0e-04ea-11e2-9146-c0cef8e81262_story.html
Michelle Obama to Congressional Black Caucus: "our journey is far, far from finished" Transcript
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/09/michelle_obama_to_congressiona.html
I have been over the Verrazano bridge a number of times. It is testing the waters, they throw a high number out to get them to settle for a lower increase and they will be thankful when they get the lower increase, people are so gullible.
Staten Islanders Furious As MTA Considers A $15 Toll To Cross Verrazano Bridge
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – One woman told 1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg that she doesn’t even have to leave Staten Island to feel the burden of high tolls.
“It’s actually cheaper for tolls in Brooklyn than for tolls in Staten Island,” she said Saturday.
Now, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to hike the Verrazano Bridge toll to $15, and Staten Islanders are banding together to say “enough is enough” with all these tolls.
“It’s totally ludicrous,” one man said. “It keeps on going up. There’s no (stopping it). When is it going to end?”
“No matter which way we go we have to put our hand in our pocket to leave the island, and I think it’s unfair,” another man added. “And it’s a burden on us.”
But the toll hike won’t happen if Congressman Michael Grimm gets his way. He hopes to put up a roadblock — a federal law to cap toll hikes at 10 percent over five years, or lose millions.
“If this is enacted by 2013, they will have to roll their toll back to $12.10 for five years for them to be eligible for that federal funding,” Grimm said. “In 2008, the Verrazano Bridge (toll) was $10. So in 2013, that bridge could not be raised more than $1 — 10 percent of the $10 — to $11. In 2013, the next five-year period, they can raise it another 10 percent.”
Grimm’s bill would force a toll cut.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/09/22/staten-islanders-furious-as-the-mta-considers-a-15-toll-to-cross-verrazano-bridge/
No comments:
Post a Comment