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Did President Obama Cave into the Republicans on the Tax Cut Issue?

Watch the video and judge for yourself:

Or read Obama Defends Tax-Cut Plan as ‘Good Deal’ for Americans from The New York Times for more.

Stephen Colbert seems to break down the core issue here pretty succinctly from my point of view: Colbert To Obama: ‘Republicans Just Aren’t That Into You.’

Now hit the jump for a video of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) arguing against extending tax cuts for millionaires. LOVE that dude.

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Maybe Wyclef Jean Could Have Had a Shot at Being Haitian President After All?!

When Mirlande Manigat arrived at Collège Frère Ladauceur on Nov. 28 to cast her vote in Haiti’s presidential election, no cheering mob was there to greet her. She pulled up in a bulletproof SUV, surrounded by police flourishing automatic weapons and slowly, ever so slowly, made her way to the entrance.

Short, with gold-rimmed glasses and hair tied back, the 70-year-old former first lady had a vague air of Miss Marple about her, which shouldn’t completely surprise, given Manigat’s outsized admiration for all things Agatha Christie.

Only an hour earlier, in Pétionville, Michel Martelly had similarly cast a ballot, but his arrival at a three-storey high school was all pop-star pandemonium, with mothers pushing their children forward for a glimpse of the politician formerly known as “Sweet Micky,” bad-boy singer of kompas, Haiti’s version of merengue.

In what once seemed the least likely result of a presidential campaign involving 19 candidates, Haiti’s electoral council is now widely expected to announce Tuesday that Manigat and Martelly will go head to head in a runoff slated for Jan. 16.”

CLICK to read the full article, “Unlikely pair seen as Haiti frontrunners.” [Toronto Star]

Sheeeiiiit, if ‘Sweet Mickey’ is in the running to win right now, imagine what woulda happened if the Preacher’s Son had made it onto the ballot?!! Hit the jump for Wyclef Jean‘s track, “Election Time” for his take on that:

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The Kardashian Sisters Decide they don’t want to be Predatory Lenders after all!

Another WTF??!

A Minnesota lender on Monday halted sales of a prepaid debit card featuring an image of the Kardashian sisters, after Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the card carried “outrageous” fees that unfairly targeted financially unsophisticated young adults.

University National Bank said the 250 consumers who bought the MasterCard-branded “Kardashian Kard” since its November 9 launch may continue using it for 30 days, and thereafter would receive refunds of balances and up-front fees.

The St. Paul-based company said it was reviewing its agreement with the Kardashians’ company Dash Dolls LLC to ensure that card holders get refunds, and would work to ensure that card holders “experience as little inconvenience as possible.””

CLICK HERE to read the full ABC News article, “Kardashian Debit Card Cancelled After Criticism”.

More:

E! Stars, Kim, Khloe, Kourtney Kardashian disavow their Kardashian Kard (K-Kard) debit card. (Ent. Weekly)

Watch the sisters’ ‘K-Kard’ debacle being mocked on Saturday night Live HERE. (I won’t front: embarrassingly enough, SNL is where I learned about this story first!)

Why Have Oxford and Cambridge Admitted No Black Students This Year??!

WTF??! No wonder those British students were rioting!

A bleak portrait of racial and social exclusion at Oxford and Cambridge has been shown in official data which shows that more than 20 Oxbridge colleges made no offers to black candidates for undergraduate courses last year and one Oxford college has not admitted a single black student in five years.

The university’s admissions data confirms that only one black Briton of Caribbean descent was accepted for undergraduate study at Oxford last year.

Figures revealed in requests made under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act by the Labour MP David Lammy also show that Oxford’s social profile is 89% upper- and middle-class, while 87.6% of the Cambridge student body is drawn from the top three socioeconomic groups. The average for British universities is 64.5%, according to the admissions body Ucas.

The FoI data also shows that of more than 1,500 academic and lab staff at Cambridge, none are black. Thirty-four are of British Asian origin.

One Oxford college, Merton, has admitted no black students in five years – and just three in the last decade. Eleven Oxford colleges and 10 Cambridge colleges made no offers to black students for the academic year beginning autumn 2009.

Oxford’s breakdown of its latest undergraduate admissions figures, published on its website, shows that just one black Caribbean student was accepted in 2009, out of 35 applications.

A total of 77 students of Indian descent were accepted, out of 466 applications. Six black Caribbean undergraduates were accepted at Cambridge the same year.”

CLICK HERE for the full article.

More:

Read Afro-Anglo (is that the term there?) British Labour Party MP David Lammy’s Op-ed on the Oxbridge whitewash.

Busted Brazilian Drug Lord Pezao a Huge Fan of Justin Bieber?

Rick Ross must be crying in his glass of Rosé that Canada’s teenybop idol has more street cred in Brazil’s Favelas than him….

More than two thousand heavily armed police operatives swept into Rio’s most notorious shantytown today following a week of explosive confrontations that have left at least 50 people dead.

The operation, unprecedented in the city’s history, began at around 8am and focused on the Complexo do Alemao, a gigantic network of slums that is the HQ of Rio’s Red Command drug faction and houses around 70,000 impoverished residents.

According to police the favela had been “conquered” by around 9.30am, with drug traffickers offering little resistance.

Gang members reportedly attempted to flee the 2,600 police and army operatives through the favela’s sewage system or by disguising themselves as Bible-carrying evangelical preachers.

They left behind “mansions” filled with wide-screen televisions, swimming pools and a sauna. In the home of Pezao, one of the area’s top traffickers, police found a giant poster of the Canadian singer Justin Bieber.”

More:

Read the full article at The Guardian.

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