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U.S. Congress
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U.S. Congress
They are at it again. Standing on the opposite in of the same track, those Washington politicians who we affectionately call Congress are racing against the clock to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
As the critical Aug. 2 deadline approaches, the two parties continue to fight over ways to reduce the deficit.
President Obama held five straight days of meetings with congressional leaders at the White House, but none of the three options he proposed (deficit cuts of $4 trillion, $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion over 10 years) enticed the two sides to go in the same direction and increase the debt ceiling by the $2.4 trillion.
What is all this fuss about? Is it politics as usual, or will be something here to cry about if they miss the Deadline on raising the debt ceiling?
Ron McClain, a Maryland Certified Public Account (“CPA”) sat down with Febone1960.net and shared his thorough knowledge of the Debt Ceiling and Consequences in failing to meet the August 2 deadline.
The interview is broken down in a two part series Day one can be heard by clicking the video player above.
Day 2 will be posted tomorrow. If you have any questions on comments, please feel free to let us hear from you.
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In January of this year, the Federal Communications Commission blessed the merger of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable and residential Internet provider, with NBC-Universal. The Justice Department immediately followed suit, removing the last obstacle to the unprecedented consolidation of media and Internet power in the hands of one company.
In response to this huge merger, Josh Silver, co-founder and former President/CEO of the Free Press posted an article in the Huffington Post exclaiming at the top of his lungs that we should be afraid and mad as hell.
Silver pointed out that the new NBC Comcast Corporation now controls an obscene number of media outlets, including the NBC broadcast network, numerous cable channels, two dozen local NBC and Telemundo stations, movie studios, online video portals, and the physical network that distributes that media content to millions of Americans through Internet and cable connections.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts called it “a proud and exciting day for Comcast. It was not a proud day for Danny Bakewell and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Bakewell who is President of the National Newspaper Publishers Association and President and CEO of the Bakewell Company is now understanding the warning bell sounded by Mr. Silver and the Free Press.
July 1st, 2011, NBC News and Interactive One announced a partnership that will form the premier African-American digital news alliance with the widest audience reach in the industry. This reach will be carried out through NBC News’ TheGrio.com and Interactive One’s NewsOne.com. Both fall under the umbrella of NBC Comcast. NBC owns theGrio, and Comcast owns an interest in TVONE which owns NewsOne.com. TVONE is the brain child of RadioOne mogul, Cathy Hughes and her son Alfred Liggins who are African Americans.
Based on comScore measurement, the combined net audience of NewsOne and TheGrio was 2.1 million in May 2011, up from 661,500 in May 2010. As the online usage of Black Americans continues to grow, this digital alliance between TheGrio and NewsOne presents a new opportunity to better connect, inform and engage the African-American audience.
TheGrio.com, a division of NBC News, is a daily online news and opinion platform devoted to delivering stories and perspectives that reflect and affect African-American audiences. The video-centric interactive community is populated with both aggregated and original content on topics ranging from breaking news and politics to health, business, and entertainment.
Interactive One has more than 15 million members and reaches millions of Black Americans each month. With approximately 3 billion annual page views on its suite of sites, the company has become the definitive social network for Black America through BlackPlanet, as well as a number of leading content sites. These sites include: NewsOne (www.NewsOne.com), which provides up to the minute, comprehensive coverage of newsworthy events relevant to Black Americans across the country and the world; TheUrbanDaily (www.TheUrbanDaily.com), the eyes and ears for Black Americans looking for what’s hot online, on the airwaves, in theaters, and on the street; HelloBeautiful (www.HelloBeautiful.com), the definitive lifestyle resource for today’s Black woman; and Elev8 (www.Elev8.com) a site devoted to elevating the mind, body and spirit.
Interactive One was launched by Radio One in 2008 to complement Radio One’s existing portfolio of media companies targeting the African American community.
Although this relationship opens up the potential for co-marketing and promotional opportunities that includes Interactive One’s various digital assets such as Radio One’s 52 radio stations, TV One and Reach Media (Tom Joyner Morning Show), and the many platforms of NBC News, it pulls the rug out from an already struggling, near death Black newspaper business that got it’s start when John Russwurm along with a minister by the name of Samuel Cornish established the first African American newspaper, the Freedom’s Journal in 1827 in New York City. See One Way Ticket
Danny Bakewell made his feeling known recently when he confronted Comcast’s David Cohen at the 40th anniversary conference of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow coalition.
Cohen responded to Bakewell by indicating that the new NBC Comcast Corp has hired Burrell Advertising agency giving it $7 million to spend with Black newspapers.
You can listen to their exchange in the video above.
The bottom line? Cathy Hughes and her son along with their shareholders make out very well. Hopefully this means original programming of quality from TVONE. This in turn will give BET more competition. Even though we might see the extinction of the Black newspaper as it existed in a non digital format, it will be good to see better programming for the African American community.
Further, we won’t cry too much for Mr. Bakewell. Aside from being a community activist, Bakewell is a minority media owner and businessman. His most recent media acquisition is the purchase of WBOK Radio station in New Orleans, Louisiana, which adds to his family’s growing media holdings, which includes the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper, the oldest and the largest Black-owned newspaper on the West Coast and the recently named nation’s Number One Black Newspaper.
Also, as Chairman of the Bakewell Company, one of the largest African-American owned development companies in the United States, Mr. Bakewell brokers and heads multi-million dollar revitalization efforts in the cities of Los Angeles, Compton, Pasadena, and other California communities.
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Remember Lorena Bobbitt? Lorena was the Ecuador born wife who severed her husband’s penis as he slept in 1993. Lorena now has company in the category of penis severing.
Yes folks, it has happened again! By the way, this one tops the Bobbitt case.
It appears that a dispute over an “inappropriate relationship” may be the motive behind a Garden Grove woman who has been charged with cutting off her husband’s penis.
A law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity in the ongoing case said the couple had argued earlier in the day and that the wife was angry at the husband over a relationship. Police said that when they confronted the woman, she said her husband “deserved it.”
Authorities had earlier alleged that the wife, Catherine Kieu Becker, got into an argument with her husband about “friends staying at the residence,” according to a statement by prosecutors.
On Wednesday, Orange County prosecutors charged the wife with two felony counts for allegedly cutting off her husband’s penis and throwing it in a garbage disposal after drugging him and tying him to a bed.
The couple who had been married for a year and half began divorce proceedings in May. The court record suggests that the husband initiated the divorce.
Becker, 48, faces one felony count each of torture and aggravated mayhem with sentencing enhancements for great bodily injury and personal use of a knife. If convicted on all counts, she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
She has been held without bail since her arrest Monday night. Her arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday in Westminster, where she is expected to plead not guilty.
Becker, a real estate broker, lived with her husband, identified by prosecutors only as John Doe, in a Garden Grove apartment.
The husband told police that his wife served him dinner and that he went to bed about 9 p.m. While he was sleeping, she “tied the victim’s legs and arms to the four corners of the bed with nylon ropes,” prosecutors said.
The victim told authorities that when he woke up, his wife pulled down his pants, “grabbing the victim’s penis and severing it with a knife.” She then took the penis to the kitchen and threw it in the garbage disposal, “turning it on and mutilating the organ.”
She then called 911. On arrival the officers who probably thought that they had seen everything, found penis-less John tied to a bed and bleeding from his crotch. Ouch!
John Doe was taken to UCI Medical Center, where he underwent emergency surgery, but the severed mangled organ pulled from the garbage disposal could not be reattached.
In addition to Lorena Bobbitt an Alaskan woman severed her boyfriend’s penis. In 2005, Kim Tran cut her boyfriend’s penis off and flushed it down the toilet. Authorities somehow managed to recover the member and reattach it. As you remember authorities searched a field to recover John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis. It was also reattached.
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