As part of her Joining Forces initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama visited the Fisher House located at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and participate in a pre-Easter celebration with military families and children. The Fisher House program supports military families by welcoming them to stay at the House while their loved one is receiving specialized medical care.

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NMAAHC public programs in March and May 2013

03/25/2013 Nativegrl77

NMAAHC public programs in March and May 2013 Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, A Conversation between Deborah Willis and Lonnie Bunch

Monday, March 25, 2013, 7:00 pm

Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, will moderate a discussion with Deborah Willis, chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, about her latest work Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery. The publication is a collaboration with Barbara Krauthamer, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Through rare photographs and documents, the book focuses on black enslavement, emancipation and life from 1850 to1930. Recipient of Guggenheim, Fletcher and MacArthur fellowships, Willis is a founding member of the museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee.

Books will be available for sale and signing following the program. For more information, visit http://nmaahc.si.edu/Events/calendar or call (202) 633-0070. Admission is free and on a first come, first serve basis.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland walking beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Mulholland, film screening and discussion

Wednesday, March 27, 2013, 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm

The Artisphere 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22209

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland grew up in the segregated South and emerged as an activist who fought fervently for the rights of others. Attacked and beaten during the courageous Freedom Rides of 1961, Joan was imprisoned and hunted but never wavered in her beliefs. An Ordinary Hero is a moving chronicle of Mulholland’s life, containing rare images and footage from the Civil Rights Movement. Following the film will be a panel discussion featuring Mulholland, her son, Loki Mulholland, who is the writer and director of the film, and William Pretzer, Senior Curator of History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Co-sponsors of the event are NMAAHC and the Arlington Public Library.

For more information, visit http://nmaahc.si.edu/Events/calendar or call (202) 633-0070. Admission is free and on a first come, first serve basis.

On Art and History: Natasha Trethewey Reads and Discusses Native Guard

Monday, May 6, 2013, 7:00 pm

National Museum of American History, Warner Bros. Theater 14^th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC First floor, enter through Constitution Ave doors Metro: Smithsonian or Federal Triangle
Natasha Trethewey, appointed the U.S. Poet Laureate in June 2012, will read from her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poems titled Native Guard. Trethewey gives an impressive interpretation of the Native Guard, one of the first mostly black regiments to fight in the Union Army. The Native Guard was composed mostly of former slaves who enlisted and were assigned to guard Confederate prisoners of war. According to Trethewey’s poem “Elegy for the Native Guards,” the presence of the African American soldiers has gone unrecognized. She also explores her life from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, a time of tremendous upheaval in Mississippi. Native Guard provides a thoughtful, long view of a tumultuous century in American History. The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band led by Sharde Thomas of Sardis, Miss., will open and close the program.

Books will be available for sale and signing following the program. For more information, visit http://nmaahc.si.edu/Events/calendar. Admission is free, but reservations are suggested, call (202) 633-0070.

~ FDA/USDA ~~ Alerts & Safety

U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)

03/25/2013 Nativegrl77

Jones Natural Chews Co Recalls Woofers Dog Treats Because Of Possible Salmonella Health Risk

03/21/2013 03:58 PM EDT

Jones Natural Chews Co of Rockford, IL is recalling 245 boxes of Woofers (beef patties) because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. Salmonella can affect animals and there is risk to humans from handling contaminated pet products.

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Radio stations offering progressive talk in Seattle

03/25/2013 Nativegrl77

Update on Progressive Radio now available in Seattle

KLAY 1180 AM: http://www.klay1180.com/

Station Manager, Bruce Bond says his station can be heard “from Seattle to Olympia,” and adds that “We have terrestrial listeners that tune in regularly and report good reception in Burien, Silverdale, Kent, Factoria and Georgetown.” The station also streams at klay1180.com.

Stephanie Miller is on KLAY 1180 AM from 9 AM – noon and Thom Hartmann is on 4 PM -7PM weekdays.

KBCS 91.3 FM http://kbcs.fm/site/PageServer/index.html

Bruce Worth the Program Manager for KBCS reports that, following five years of patience and persistence, KBCS is now broadcasting from its new location atop Cougar Mountain. At 1400 feet above sea level, the signal coverage has increased over 40% and reaches more than 2.5 million potential listeners across the Puget Sound. Their signal can now be heard as far east as Fall City, as far south as Tacoma, west to Poulsbo and the Kitsap Peninsula, and north up to Everett.

Thom Hartmann is heard weekdays from noon to 3 PM; Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now is on three times at 6 AM, 8AM and 5 PM.

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Senators …

03/25/2013 Nativegrl77

By ThinkProgress War Room

10 Terrible Amendments Offered Today by Senators

The Senate has been debating the Democratic budget for the past few days. One of the quirks of Senate rules means that the amendment process on the budget is completely open, allowing senators to file and request a vote on an unlimited number of amendments. They don’t even have to say what their amendments are in advance, but many still choose to file them in advance. Since the process is so open, a rarity in the gridlocked Senate, senators often use this opportunity to file highly political message amendments. We sifted through the more than 400 amendments filed and found dozens that are terrible, ridiculous, nonsensical, damaging, or just plain crazy. Here’s a look at ten of those proposals.

BOSS IN YOUR BEDROOM: Sens. Fischer (R-NE), Cruz (R-TX), Johanns (R-NE), and Enzi (R-WY) introduced an amendment to put your boss in your bedroom by allowing them to deny you birth control coverage based on their beliefs, not yours. This is just one of numerous anti-Obamacare amendments offered by Republicans. Incidentally, the law turns three tomorrow. 42 GOP senators and 2 Democrats voted for this amendment.
NRA-FUELED CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) offered an amendment that would prevent the U.S. from signing on to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The NRA and other right-wing groups falsely claim that this is some backdoor gun grab, which led the Senate to fail to ratify the treaty last year. The NRA is currently making a full court press to kill or at least gut the treaty. Sen. Vitter (R-LA) offered a similar amendment that would prohibit the U.N. from registering or taxing Americans’ guns, something the organization obviously has no plans to do.
HOUSE GOP BUDGET: While Republicans found time to cook up hundreds of other amendments, it seems no Republican senator wanted to vote on the House GOP budget as a substitute for the Senate Democratic plan. When Democrats offered the draconian Ryan plan that ends Medicare and raises taxes on the middle class in order to slash them on the wealthy, a measly 40 GOP senators voted for the plan from their counterparts in the House. Three GOP senators, however, voted against it because it wasn’t extreme enough.
GIVEAWAY TENS OF BILLIONS TO WALL STREET BANKS: In the same so-called “reconciliation” bill that was necessary to finish passing Obamacare was a provision that stopped routing federal student loans through the big banks. Previously, the banks acted as a middleman between the federal government and borrowers, reaping billions in fees each year even though they bore no risk because the government was the one guaranteeing the loans. The banks role was eliminated in 2010 and the money was shifted to Pell grants. Earlier today, Republicans put forward an amendment to repeal all of the Obamacare bill, including the student loan reforms. This would literally take money away from students and hand it over to the Wall Street banks. 45 Republicans backed this proposal, which also was the third time this week that GOP senators forced a vote on repealing Obamacare.
OBAMAPHONE: One of the more racially-charged moments in last year’s presidential campaign came when Republican groups promoted a video of an African-American woman proclaiming her support for Obama because, she said, the government was giving out free cell phones, among other things. The Drudge Report and other right-wing media immediately dubbed this the “Obamaphone” controversy. As it turned out, the FCC’s Lifeline program offering free cell phones to low-income Americans began under President George W. Bush and is based on a Reagan-era program to provide low-income Americans with subsidized telephone service. Sen. Coburn (R-OK) offered an amendment to “reform” or, more likely, eliminate, this otherwise obscure program that is important to low-income Americans.
MITT ROMNEY’S TAX PLAN: The Democratic plan raises close to $1 TRILLION in revenue just by closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporate special interests like Big Oil. Republicans wanted to replace this with revenue-neutral tax reform that used the money to pay for huge new tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations instead of using it to reduce the deficit. This is almost identical to the Romney-Ryan tax plan that raised middle class taxes and which voters soundly rejected last year. All 45 GOP senators voted for this recycled Romney plan, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) also included in this year’s House GOP budget.
KILL WIND JOBS, SEND CLEAN ENERGY INDUSTRY TO CHINA: Sen. Alexander (R-TN) wants to repeal the vital tax credits for wind power, just as Mitt Romney proposed last year. This would kill 37,000 jobs more or less immediately and effectively cede the clean energy industry to China and our other foreign competitors.
LEAVE THE UN: Sen. Paul (R-KY) proposed one measure to save a very small amount of money: withdraw from the United Nations.
RACE-BAITING WELFARE LIES: You may remember that Mitt Romney and other Republicans advanced the outright lie that President Obama “removed the work requirement from welfare.” This was categorically untrue, but that didn’t stop Republicans from airing millions of dollars in ads about it. In any case, the GOP campaign of distortion around the amendment has resulted in no states taking advantage of the flexibility requested by some Republican governors that the Obama administration offered to grant. Nevertheless, Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) is still so concerned that he offered an amendment to address the non-existent problem of the work requirement having been removed from welfare. For good measure, he offered a second mean-spirited amendment that mandates drug testing for welfare recipients.
CREATE A PERMANENT IMMIGRANT UNDERCLASS: Sen. Sessions (R-AR), who has faced charges of racial prejudice in the past and was once denied a seat on the federal bench as a result, put forward a proposal to bar even those immigrants who receive legal status from receiving numerous tax breaks directed at the working poor. This would even prevent immigrants from receiving tax breaks that they are claiming on behalf of their American citizen children.