SOCIAL BEING

October 15, 2013

Drake Reportedly Kicks Future Off Tour After Disparaging Comments

Drake kicks off his North American tour this week but days before his first show, he is trying to fire one of his opening acts. The 26-year-old rapper is reportedly feuding with Future, who is scheduled to open the concerts with R&B singer Miguel.

Page Six reports that Drake wants Future pulled from the lineup, after he was quoted in an interview offering his two cents on Drake's latest album, "Nothing Was the Same."

Future was interviewed by Billboard about Drake's work, as well as his own album, "Honest."

"Drake made an album that is full of hits but it doesn't grab you," Future reportedly told the publication. "They're not possessive; they don't make you feel the way I do. I want to make you want to fall in love."

The day the article ran, Future took to Twitter to comment on the interview, saying he was misquoted.

While the original quote no longer appears in the Billboard interview, it was enough to anger the "Started from the Bottom" rapper. An unnamed source told Page Six, "He told his agent either Future gets fired, or he’ll fire him."

According to the publication, Future is now officially out of the tour and is planning to file suit against Drake for $1.5 million in lost wages. There has been no official word from Drake or Future on the rumors.

October 13, 2013

Two senior senators have taken on the fraught process of finding a congressional deal to reopen the US government and raise the country's borrowing limit, just four days before the Treasury is scheduled to run out of money.

The Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, long-time adversaries, met on Saturday morning after it became clear that a separate attempt to broker a deal, between the Republican-dominated House of Representatives and the White House, had failed.

Focus shifted to the Senate when President Barack Obama rejected a plan from House Republicans to extend the so-called debt ceiling by just six weeks and made no offer lift the US government shutdown. Reid told reporters his meeting with McConnell had been "cordial" and added that they were only at preliminary stages.

"We don't have anything done yet – there's a long way to go before something like that will happen," he said, adding that he hoped to achieve a deal "in the next 48 hours".

Reid, McConnell and two other senators – the Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and New York Democrat Charles Schumer – met in Reid's office at 9am on Saturday, for just under an hour. Later in the day, Reid and Schumer met Obama in the Oval Office at the White House.

Senator Mitch McConnell

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are holding the line against Democratic demands for a framework to alleviate the across-the-board spending cuts established by sequestration as part of any deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.

In talks between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the main sticking point is now where to establish funding levels for the federal government and for how long. The Republican offer made on Friday -- to set spending at sequestration levels of $988 billion for the next six months -– was rejected by Reid and others on Saturday on the grounds that it was too favorable to the GOP position and discouraged future negotiations.

By Sunday morning, little notable progress toward a resolution had been made. McConnell, according to sources, was adamant that the spending cuts of sequestration be maintained in any final arrangement.

"Sen. McConnell will defend the commitment Congress made on spending reductions; he'll defend the law that Sen. Reid voted for and the president signed -- and subsequently bragged about in his campaign," said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart. "As I recall, Sen. Reid voted for, and President Obama signed the Budget Control Act [which established sequestration]. They may not like that the supercommittee didn’t act and we’re left with sequester, but under their own rhetoric, it's 'the law of the land.'"

Some of McConnell’s top deputies that echoed sentiment on the Sunday talk shows. "The president and leaders of Congress need to take the responsibility of dealing with the underlying problem and keep the budget caps in place,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told "Meet The Press." "My gosh, we just put them in place two years ago."

"If you break the spending caps, you're not going to get any Republicans in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) said on ABC's "This Week."

So where does that leave negotiations? In a difficult but not impossible place.

Senate Republicans would like to keep spending at $988 billion for one year, though in Friday's offer moderates in the party were demanding only six months. Democrats want spending at $1.059 trillion, but nearly all have said they would be willing to stomach $988 billion in the short term.

Such a deal was the basis of an initial agreement crafted over the summer between Reid and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), which fell apart after Boehner demanded changes to Obamacare as well. And while Democrats want to use that breakdown to reframe the current talks, they also seem open to a short-term deal that keeps sequestration in place with a promise of future negotiations.

"[Reid] gave that [$988 billion offer] to Boehner," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on Saturday. "Boehner reneged on that. He rejected that, so we don’t start there. We clear back to a clean state and start where we were before -- that is where the appropriations and the budget negotiations need to start from. [Senate Budget Chairwoman] Patty Murray (D-Wash.) should start from negotiating from our standpoint -- $1.059 trillion. If they want to start from their standpoint, fine."

Asked specifically whether he could stomach continued sequestration for a short period of time, however, Harkin relented. "If we can have a short-term [continuing budget resolution] to get us through, say, the first of December, that is fine with me," he said.

Race Isn't the ONLY problem we have, stop being distracted by propaganda!

BLACK, WHITE, BLUE, GREEN, it doesn't matter your color, stop sipping the race war Kool-Aid!! Every since the Zimmer/Martin verdict, this country has been tuned into race and race only. I've sat back for a week and watched all these hateful post. Some say Trayvon caused his own death, some say Zimmer is guilty of murder an should be jailed, and the other half just don't care. Some have called the President a racist for addressing the situation, and some say he hasn't done enough. Let's take the President out the equation for a minute, and just look at things from a human point of view, a person who respects life. Had the 17 year old been any race it would have been wrong!! If you're the neighborhood watchman wouldn't you address the kid and say "hey is everything ok, I'm the neighborhood watch guy, I'm here to help you, so if you're lost I'll guide you." Why did that go so wrong? For those who don't get why there's such an uproar from mostly people of color let me just say this. Being born black is an automatic point off your license to say the least LOL. We get pulled over just because. We automatically are looked at with the side eye just for being so. Whether we're in a hoodie or a European suit sitting behind a desk running a company. Most still see Black. I don't want to dwell on it but I'll say this, people of other races say, "why do we say we're not free, they freed the slaves". You can start there, with "slaves" why us, and not any other? Hahahahahahaha!! If that's so, then why is it news when there is a first BLACK anything? Why is that news, I'll tell you why. We are not supposed to succeed in this country, denied human rights, education and much more from the beginning, it's really that simple. So to keep the tension down, stop trying to relate and just know that it exist, but we're not all sitting around angry because of it, it's these situations such as Tryayvon's and countless others that remind us of our daily reality. You don't believe me, check this article on racial profiling, we're not complaining for nothing. http://rt.com/usa/second-nypd-officer-quotas-691/ Ladies and Gentlemen, these kids are our future no matter the color they are better, smarter, and nicer than we are we need to protect them. There are serious situations brewing in this country and race isn't one of them, it's the fog created to stop us from seeing clear. Do me a favor, if you want to help feed information, feed info that's helpful not hateful or hurtful. Stop googling what people have said about the Zimmerman trial and google some real useful information. It doesn't bother you that there are random bomb drills in large cities during televised events, that Russia is practicing flights over the pacific with their fighter planes, that there are 600 plus new prisons that have been built in the past 10 years in this country, most empty, but staffed with guards, and waiting on guest to drop in. NYC has released a so called "harmless gas" in the largest subway system in the past couple of weeks as a practice run. A practice run for what? I mean really, reading is fundamental, and actually understanding what you read is more important. WAKE UP people, life in this country is about to get real, so don't say I didn't put you on!! Stop thinking of yourself because there may come a time very soon where that race you hate so much might be your only refuge. Have a blessed day, enlighten yourself!