Welcome to your Thursday open thread. It’s another short work week for me this week. We actually have New Years’ Eve off as a holiday this year. Hooray for 3 day weekends!
Congratulations to Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, she is soon to be the longest-serving female Senator in U.S. history.
At noon on Wednesday, Jan. 5th, a new Congress will be sworn in. At that very moment, a feisty, powerful, 4 foot 11 inches, 74-year-old woman, Barbara Mikulski, will become the longest serving woman senator in U.S. history, eclipsing Margaret Chase Smith by two days.
Mikulski, D-Md., grew up in a blue-collar Polish neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks where her family owned a grocery store. She didn’t go to the right schools, or belong to the right clubs. ”
I was born in a generation where women didn’t go into politics, where women didn’t even know about a glass ceiling,” Mikulski has said. “We didn’t think in our family about going into politics because in Baltimore during those days politics was run by political bosses, political machines, pot bellied guys with cigars who made backroom deals… It’s very unlikely someone like me would ever come to the United States Senate.”
Thank you Senator Mikulski for being a trailblazer for women in politics.
Country music legend Merle Haggard was honored this year at the Kennedy Center Honors. He was interviewed about the honor and call out Fox News for its distortion and misinformation:
In an interview with Rolling Stone about receiving the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement, outlaw country legend Merle Haggard reflected on meeting President Obama. He blasted “the media,” for making up and spreading lies about Obama, “It was also nice to meet Obama and find him very different from the media makeout. It’s really almost criminal what they do with our President.” It is obvious that Haggard was talking about Fox News.
When asked by Patrick Doyle of Rolling Stone about the highlight of the Kennedy Center Honors Haggard talked about meeting both former President Clinton, and President Obama. Haggard said of Obama, “It was also nice to meet Obama and find him very different from the media makeout. It’s really almost criminal what they do with our President. There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he’s doing certain things that he’s not. It’s just a big old political game that I don’t want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down. I’m sure some of it’s true and some of it’s not. I was very surprised to find the man very humble and he had a nice handshake. His wife was very cordial to the guests and especially me. They made a special effort to make me feel welcome. It was not at all the way the media described him to be.”
When asked what is the biggest lie out there about Obama, Haggard answered, “He’s not conceited. He’s very humble about being the President of the United States, especially in comparison to some presidents we’ve had who come across like they don’t need anybody’s help. I think he knows he’s in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot.”
Most country music fans are probably not readers of blogs but will someone like Haggard get them to start questioning Fox Propaganda?