Tag Archives: videos

The Most Heroic Response To The Susan G. Komen Foundation You Will Ever See

Posted on February 3, 2012 by ABL | 17 Comments

What breast cancer is, and what it is not!

This woman is a true inspiration. I cried, I laughed, and then I clapped at the end:

Bravo!

(h/t @findbenjamin)

[via MoveOn]

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Posted in Body/Health Shenanigans, Kick Ass, Lady Bits, Respect

Tagged breast cancer, Komen for the Cure, MoveOn, videos

Mitt Romney Likes Firing People (video)

Posted on January 9, 2012 by ABL | 10 Comments

Oh dear lurd.

Someone at OFA headquarters saw this and yelled “Eureka!” or “Oh snap!” or something of that nature:

You know what’s hilarious (in a “makes me want to punch the sky” kinda way?) The fact that he keeps saying “firing.” It’s not “I like hiring people who provide the best service,” or “If someone screws up providing a service to me, I take my business elsewhere.”

No. For Romney, it’s “firing people.” ”I like firing people.”
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Posted in Election 2012? Oy vey!, Magic Underpants

Tagged Mitt Romney, videos

In a powerful MLK dedication speech honoring the struggles of our past and those of our present, Obama says 'our work is not done'

Posted on October 17, 2011 by ABL | 1 Comment

President Barack Obama has been called a sellout.

He has been called a crook. He has been called a Muslim. He has been called a terrorist, a “lion African,” a Kenyan, an illegal alien, a Manchurian candidate, a socialist, a racist, a Communist, and a dick.

His motives have been questioned. His legislative victories for women’s rights, for gay rights, for children’s health and the health of 9/11 first responders have been called into question, downplayed, excused and opposed even by those who claimed to support the type of change he knew was necessary and thought was possible during his 2008 campaign for the presidency.

The one caveat of his mission, the one point he knew he had to emphasize daily both for those who stood with him and those who doubted him from day one, was that change would not come easily.

During the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial, President Obama renewed his request for patience, persistence and continued dedication in a speech that both honored the Civil Rights hero and contextualized the fight for equality that continues to this day.

The following excerpt of Obama’s speech is worth reading a thousand times over. I ask only that you read it once, and that while so doing you think of the wars, the budget cuts, the attacks on women’s rights, the right’s resistance to both social and economic justice, the growing economic inequality, the opposition to health care reform and financial regulation reform, and the hundreds of other actions he’s taken in an effort to curb the injustices of both the minorities and the masses in America who have been unequally represented in government, and that you put these individual battles into the context they require for fully grasping the real historical significance of electing our first black president.

[Read the transcript and watch the video after the jump]

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Posted in Election 2012? Oy vey!, Miscellany, Nicholas Wilbur, Obama 2012: Yes We Will!

Tagged Barack Obama, healthcare reform, MLK Memorial, Obama, politics, President Obama, racism, videos

VIDEO: President Obama to the CBC: "Put on your marching shoes… We've got work to do." [Updated!]

Posted on September 25, 2011 by ABL | 20 Comments

Preach!

President Obama was in rare form last night at the CBC’s annual Phoenix awards.

Speaking in thundering tones with a rolling cadence, President Obama spoke directly to the CBC members ::coughcoughMaxineWaterscoughcough:: who have been running around cable news griping and moaning all summer. He told them to stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying, and press on. (No, he did not tell “blacks” to stop “complainin’.” He was speaking directly to members of the CBC, but nice try CBS News.)

The speech was a fiery thing of beauty. At the end, I half-expected him to drop the mic, raise his arms and say “I’m out. Big ups to Brooklyn!” (He did pound the podium, though, so close enough.)

From The Root:

The president closed by telling the audience not to give in to discouragement. “Throughout our history, change has often come slowly. Progress often takes time,” he said. “It’s never easy. And I never promised easy. Easy has never been promised to us. But we have had faith. We’ve had that good kind of crazy that says, ‘You can’t stop marching.’”

Obama continued in this vein, with knowing references to the civil rights heroes honored during the night’s awards ceremony. “Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop,” he said, building into an oratory crescendo that had the crowd cheering him on.

“With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

“I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.”

[video and photo gallery after the jump -- At a minimum, you need to watch Part 2 -- TRUST.]
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Posted in Obama 2012: Yes We Will!, Political Shenanigans

Tagged #JobsNow, bedroom slippers, CBC, Congressional Black Caucus, marching shoes, photos, President Obama, videos

My friend Natasha Wang is a kickass National Championship-winning pole dancer [Updated]

Posted on May 26, 2011 by ABL | 9 Comments

Pole Cricket Reigns Supreme

Every time I look at this picture, I think "Holy shitsnacks! She's got crazy legs!"

Last month, one of my BFFs4Lyfe¹ won the United States Pole Dancing Federation pole-off. (Dance-off? I don’t know. She’s number one and that’s all that matters. ::raises foam finger::)

As a result she’s been thrust into the spotlight. She was featured in Huffington Post (which I won’t link because bite me, Arianna; but if you use the Googlez, you can find it quickly enough); she’s been contacted by TMZ, she’s going to perform on The View*** next week (I’m going to try to convince her to slip some Colon Blow in to Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s coffee — she’d never do it though. She plays by the rules); and this past Monday she performed on Good Day LA.

I have seen Natasha perform at competitions a bunch of times and I have never seen her fall, nor have I been nervous that she might fall. So when my neighbor Rio texted me “Your friend is on Good Day LA. She fell but she played it off really well…Would have seemed like less but the stupid news casters rushed over and were like “r u ok” a billion times..idiots” I thought, “Oh noes!”

I rushed to turn on the TV, but of course, I missed the performance and only caught the tail end of her trying to convince the newscasters that she was fine. I then rushed to call her and she was, as she had reiterated to the newscasters, totally fine. A bit embarrassed, but fine. I told her she looks hot on TV. I don’t think that really helped at the moment.

I wanted to blog about this yesterday, including a funny picture that she took in the Green Room [after the jump] which demonstrates that she has an awesome sense of humor about her “so not a big deal” fall, but I was too nervous to watch the Good Day LA video. What if it was a total face plant? Like one of those “Greg Louganis hits his head on the diving board” moments that will replay in my mind FO-EVAH. (I’m not kidding about ol’ Louganis. He went from “hot” to “damn, he busted his head” in two seconds flat — two seconds of video that would be replayed ad nauseum during the 1980-whatever Olympics. LEAVE LOUGANIS ALOOOOOONE!!)

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Posted in Celebrity Shenanigans, I Heart Ye, Kick Ass, Personal Tales

Tagged kickass, Natasha Wang, Pole Cricket, pole dancing, the Olympics, The View, USPDF, videos

The Joplin Tornado Video Shot From Inside a Store

Posted on May 24, 2011 by ABL | 3 Comments

I finally watched it, and it’s TERRIFYING.

A group of people were trapped inside a convenient store when the tornado — the deadliest single tornado in the US since 1947 and the ninth-deadliest tornado of all time — ripped through Joplin, Missouri. The video is horrifying.

It sounds like something out of a disaster movie.

Unimaginable:

Commenter jinxtgr at Balloon Juice got me thinking (his comments are after the jump): whether or not you believe that the recent floods, hurricanes, and tornados are the result of natural or human-caused climate change, it seems fairly obvious that the weather as of late has been bizarre, to put it mildly; so the question becomes what now?

The below explanation about the patterns of weather I find fascinating and compelling. As I understand it, his argument boils down to this: Weather is a chaotic system, but falls into predictable chaotic patterns. There are no weather flukes or outliers, only weather indicators. Climate change simply shifts the weather patterns (like an Overton Window, if you will), creating storms more destructive than we’ve ever seen because it pushes the outer limits of how destructive a storm can be to Really Fucking Destructive.

This doesn’t mean that every storm is going to be as destructive as the one in Joplin. It means that Mother Nature is telling us “This is how bananas I can get. Just you wait and see.” In any event, the weather tomorrow is supposed to be terrible throughout the Midwest, so there’s that.

I don’t know what to take away from all of this. After the tsunami hit in Japan, I stayed awake all night, reading about the Ring of Fire, waiting for an earthquake to hit, and wishing I had some earthquake insurance. I spent the following days watching every Discovery Channel program I could find on tsunamis.

Needless to say, I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I find it fascinating:

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, What the Crap!?

Tagged climate change, Joplin, tornado, videos, weather, YouTube