The Obama administration is ramping up its plans to implement the so-called Obamacare health care law, with speeches from the president, new aides tasked with selling the law to the public and a broad push to get people to enroll for health insurance all coming in the next several months.
To lay the groundwork for the broader public, top administration officials are holding briefings with key members of the press and stakeholders. Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett recently met with more than 100 African-American leaders from across the country to talk about the law. President Obama is increasingly mentioning Obamacare in his speeches.
The White House has hired a special communications adviser, veteran Democratic strategist Tara McGuinness, to help rebut criticism of the law from both Republicans and increasingly some Democrats and improve public opinion about the Affordable Care Act.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A year to the day after kicking off his victorious re-election campaign on this college campus, President Barack Obama returned to Ohio State University and told graduates that only through vigorous participation in their democracy can they right a poorly functioning government and break through relentless cynicism about the nation’s future.
“I dare you, Class of 2013, to do better. I dare you to dream bigger,” Obama said.
In a sunbaked stadium filled with more than 57,000 students, friends and relatives, Obama lamented an American political system that gets consumed by “small things” and works for the benefit of society’s elite. He called graduates to duty to “accomplish great things,” like rebuilding a still-feeble economy and fighting poverty and climate change.
“Only you can ultimately break that cycle. Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we know it can be,” Obama told more than 10,000 cap-and-gown-clad graduates gathered for the rite of passage. “But it requires your dedicated, informed and engaged citizenship.”
The visit to Ohio State — the first of three commencement addresses Obama will give this season — was a homecoming of sorts for Obama, who has visited the campus five times over little more than a year, starting with his first official campaign rally here last May. He made many more stops elsewhere in Ohio as he and Republican Mitt Romney dueled for the Midwestern state which was pivotal to Obama’s victories in both 2008 and 2012.
Tricia Rose, professor of Africana studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, was selected as the next director of the university’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. The Center was established at Brown in 1986.
In accepting the appointment, Professor Rose stated, “My goal is to make the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America a vibrant, historically grounded, yet forward-looking campuswide, nationally recognized site for critical analysis and public engagement on the ways that race and ethnicity shape American culture, society, and policy.”
Professor Rose is the author of the award-winning book, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Wesleyan University Press, 1994). She is also the author of Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop — And Why It Matters (Basic Civitas, 2008).
Dr. Rose is a native of New York City. She is a graduate of Yale University and holds a Ph.D. in American studies from Brown University.
article via jbhe.com
The Truman Scholarship Foundation, established by Congress in 1975, has announced 62 winners of Truman Scholarships for 2013. The 62 winners were selected from a field of 629 candidates nominated by 293 colleges and universities. Each winner receives up to $30,000 for graduate study. Winners also receive an admissions edge at partnering universities, career and graduate counseling, and internship opportunities with the federal government. Since the awards were first made in 1977, there have been 2,906 Truman Scholars. This year it appears that 10 of the 62 winners are African Americans.
Kemi A. Oyewole is a junior at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she is majoring in economics and mathematics. She also is the student representative on the college’s board of trustees. Oyewole plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in economics and hopes to have a career as an economist focusing on poverty issues in sub-Saharan Africa.
Uzoma Kenneth Orchingwa is a native of Chicago but lived for several years in Nigeria. He is a junior at Colby College in Maine, where he is majoring in philosophy and sociology. Orchingwa plans on attending law school and hopes to have a career in civil rights law.
Kevin Krigger’s first-ever mount, as the legend is told, came at the tender age of five when he surreptitiously bolted from a backdoor in his family’s home in St. Croix, bounded onto a horse owned by one of his neighbors and took off down the street.
It didn’t take long for Krigger, the jockey of Santa Anita Derby winner Goldencents, to teach himself at a young age to mount a bareback horse by jumping off the roof of his parents’ car. Near his 10th birthday, Krigger’s grandmother bought him his first horse, a foal he used to win nearly 100 match races against his rivals in their mid-to-late teens on the sandy beaches of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
By then, the headstrong rider already had a singular goal cemented in his mind: It was “not I’m going to be the first African-American to win the Kentucky Derby in 100-something years. It was just, ‘I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby,” Krigger told reporters this week.
On Saturday, Krigger can make history by becoming the first African-American to win the Run for the Roses since Jimmy Winkfield captured the historic race in consecutive years in 1901 and 1902. Krigger, 29, is the first African-American jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby since 2000 and just the third to be entered in the first leg of the Triple Crown since 1920. As Krigger has prepared the son of Into Mischief for the 139th renewal of the Derby this week, he has taped a photo of Winkfield to his locker at Churchill Downs for motivation.
“The look in his eyes,” Krigger told the Associated Press, “was telling me, ‘You’re going to do it.'”
In 1903, Winkfield nearly became the first and only jockey to win the Derby in three consecutive years, when his fortunes turned. While the young jockey reportedly became blacklisted for failing to honor a riding contract with an owner, mounts for African-American riders increasingly leveled off as Jim Crow laws proliferated in the segregated south.
LeBron James is getting his fourth Most Valuable Player award — and the only mystery left is whether the vote was unanimous. The Miami Heat star will be introduced Sunday as the award winner, according to a person familiar with the results and who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the league has not publicly announced the result. James will become the fifth player with at least four MVP awards, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
No one has ever swept every first-place vote in the NBA’s MVP balloting. After the season he had, James could be the first. “I don’t know who else you’d vote for,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said Friday. “No offense to everybody else, but that’s just how good he has played this year.”
James averaged 26.8 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists this season, shooting a career-best 56 percent. It was absolutely no surprise that he won the award, and given the timetable for Miami’s next game — the Heat don’t open Eastern Conference semifinal play until Monday night against Brooklyn or Chicago — it had been widely assumed for several days that Sunday would be the day.
WASHINGTON – President Obama on Wednesday nominated Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, to become the overseer of the government-backed mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If approved by the Senate, Mr. Watt would replace Edward J. DeMarco, who has been acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for more than three years.
Mr. Watt is a lawyer who has represented North Carolina in Congress for the last two decades. If he won Senate confirmation, he would become a powerful economic policy maker, as the housing market recovers and the White House contemplates the government’s future role in it. “Mel understands as well as anybody what caused the housing crisis,” Mr. Obama said in a ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House. “He knows what it’s going to take to help responsible homeowners fully recover and he’s committed to helping folks just like his mom,” who attended the ceremony, and whom Mr.Obama characterized as “Americans who work really hard, play by the rules, day in and day out, to provide for their families.”
Cicely Tyson’s return to Broadway indeed proved “Bountiful,” as she is among the contenders for best actress in a play for her starring role in “The Trip to Bountiful.’’ The others in Tyson’s category are Laurie Metcalf for “The Other Place,’’ Amy Morton for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’’ Kristine Nielsen for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,’’ and Holland Taylor for “Ann.’’
The revival of “Pippin” “Motown: The Musical” each garnered several awards, among them nominations for their respective lead actresses, Patina Miller and Valisia LeKae. Courtney B. Vance also garnered a nomination for his supporting role in “Lucky Guy,” as did Tyson’s “Bountiful” co-star Condola Rashad for hers.
The full list of nominees is below:
Best play
“The Assembled Parties” by Richard Greenberg
“Lucky Guy” by Nora Ephron
“The Testament of Mary” by Colm Toibin
“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” by Christopher Durang
Best musical
“Bring It On, The Musical”
“A Christmas Story, The Musical”
“Kinky Boots, The Musical”
“Matilda, The Musical”
Best book of a musical
“A Christmas Story, The Musical” Joseph Robinette
“Kinky Boots” Harvey Fierstein
“Matilda, The Musical” Dennis Kelly
Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” Douglas Carter Beane
Best revival of a play
“Golden Boy” Producers: Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop, Bernard Gersten
“Orphans”
“The Trip to Bountiful”
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
RELATED: 10 Tony nomination plot twists
Best revival of a musical
“Annie”
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
“Pippin”
“Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Best original score (music and/or lyrics) written for the theatre
“A Christmas Story, The Musical” Music and Lyrics: Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
“Hands on a Hardbody” Music: Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green Lyrics: Amanda Green
“Kinky Boots” Music and Lyrics: Cyndi Lauper
“Matilda, The Musical” Music and Lyrics: Tim Minchin
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play
Tom Hanks, “Lucky Guy”
Nathan Lane, “The Nance”
Tracy Letts, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
David Hyde Pierce, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Tom Sturridge, “Orphans”
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play
Laurie Metcalf, “The Other Place”
Amy Morton, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Kristine Nielsen, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Holland Taylor, “Ann”
Cicely Tyson, “The Trip to Bountiful”
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical
Bertie Carvel, “Matilda, The Musical”
Santino Fontana, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Rob McClure, “Chaplin”
Billy Porter, “Kinky Boots”
Stark Sands, “Kinky Boots”
PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical
Stephanie J. Block, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Carolee Carmello, “Scandalous”
Valisia LeKae, “Motown, The Musical”
Patina Miller, “Pippin”
Laura Osnes, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play
Danny Burstein, “Golden Boy”
Richard Kind, “The Big Knife”
Billy Magnussen, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Tony Shalhoub, “Golden Boy”
Courtney B. Vance, “Lucky Guy”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play
Carrie Coon, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Shalita Grant, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Judith Ivey, “The Heiress”
Judith Light, “The Assembled Parties”
Condola Rashad, “The Trip to Bountiful”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical
Charl Brown, “Motown, The Musical”
Keith Carradine, “Hands on a Hardbody”
Will Chase, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Gabriel Ebert, “Matilda, The Musical”
Terrence Mann, “Pippin”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical
Annaleigh Ashford, “Kinky Boots”
Victoria Clark, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Andrea Martin, “Pippin”
Keala Settle, “Hands on a Hardbody”
Lauren Ward, “Matilda, The Musical”
Best scenic design of a play
John Lee Beatty, “The Nance”
Santo Loquasto, “The Assembled Parties”
David Rockwell, “Lucky Guy”
Michael Yeargan, “Golden Boy”
PHOTOS: 2013 Tonys top nominees
Best scenic design of a musical
Rob Howell, “Matilda, The Musical”
Anna Louizos, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Scott Pask, “Pippin”
David Rockwell, “Kinky Boots”
Best costume design of a play
Soutra Gilmour, “Cyrano de Bergerac”
Ann Roth, “The Nance”
Albert Wolsky, “The Heiress”
Catherine Zuber, “Golden Boy”
Best costume design of a musical
Gregg Barnes, “Kinky Boots”
Rob Howell, “Matilda, The Musical”
Dominique Lemieux, “Pippin”
William Ivey Long, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Best lighting design of a play
Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhauer, “Lucky Guy”
Donald Holder, “Golden Boy”
Jennifer Tipton, “The Testament of Mary”
Japhy Weideman, “The Nance”
Best lighting design of a musical
Kenneth Posner, “Kinky Boots”
Kenneth Posner, “Pippin”
Kenneth Posner, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Hugh Vanstone, “Matilda, The Musical”
RELATED: Tony nomination snubs
Best sound design of a play
John Gromada, “The Trip to Bountiful”
Mel Mercier, “The Testament of Mary”
Leon Rothenberg, “The Nance”
Peter John Still and Marc Salzberg, “Golden Boy”
FULL COVERAGE: 2013 Tony nominations
Best sound design of a musical
Jonathan Deans & Garth Helm, “Pippin”
Peter Hylenski, “Motown, The Musical”
John Shivers, “Kinky Boots”
Nevin Steinberg, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Best direction of a play
Pam MacKinnon, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Nicholas Martin, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Bartlett Sher, “Golden Boy”
George C. Wolfe, “Lucky Guy”
Best direction of a musical
Scott Ellis, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Jerry Mitchell, “Kinky Boots”
Diane Paulus, “Pippin”
Matthew Warchus, “Matilda, The Musical”
Best choreography
Andy Blankenbuehler, “Bring It On: The Musical”
Peter Darling, “Matilda, The Musical”
Jerry Mitchell, “Kinky Boots”
Chet Walker, “Pippin”
Best orchestrations
Chris Nightingale, “Matilda, The Musical”
Stephen Oremus, “Kinky Boots”
Ethan Popp & Bryan Crook, “Motown, The Musical”
Danny Troob, “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella”
Recipients of awards and honors in non-competitive categories
Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Bernard Gersten
Paul Libin
Ming Cho Lee
Regional Theatre Award
Huntington Theatre Company, Boston
Isabelle Stevenson Award
Larry Kramer
Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre
Career Transition for Dancers
William Craver
Peter Lawrence
The Lost Colony
The four actresses who created the title role of “Matilda, The Musical” on Broadway – Sophia
Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.
Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.
Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. Last year’s heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.
NBA center Jason Collins has become the first athlete in a major American team sport to come out as gay during his playing career. In a personal essay set to publish in Sports Illustrated, Collins begins, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.
“I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,” he continues. “But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”
Previously, Collins wore No. 98 in honor of Matthew Shepard, a student at Wyoming who was tortured and murdered just outside of Laramie, Wyo., in October of 1998. During the trial, reports indicated that Sheppard was targeted because he was a gay man.