I've started this blog as an open forum to discuss current topics in the news in a "Point - Counter Point" manner. By using this method of debate, I seek to encourage all to lend their voices and opinions by weighing in on the current days topics up for discussion. Welcome to POINT - COUNTER POINT.
Rookie pol and pro-wrestling tycoon Linda McMahon body-slammed two rivals Tuesday night to coast to an easy victory in Connecticut's GOP Senate primary.
The founding partner of the WWE wrestling league was declared the winner, garnering an insurmountable 49% of the vote with more than half the precincts reporting.
Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons had 29%, and financial commentator Peter Schiff followed with 22%.
A one-time front-runner, Simmons couldn't keep up with McMahon's television ad buys - she pumped some $50 million of her own money into the race - and last spring shelved his bid to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Chris Dodd.
McMahon also tapped into the conservative anti-government Tea Party movement to help her gain traction and catapult her to the top of the polls.
Schiff trailed McMahon and Simmons during nearly the entire campaign.
The winner takes on state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who was unopposed in the Democratic Senate primary.
In Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet defeated former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in the Colorado Democratic Senate primary, which had become a proxy war between President Obama and ex-President Bill Clinton, who backed opposing candidates.
Obama was behind Bennet, appointed last year when Ken Salazar resigned to become Obama's interior secretary. Clinton endorsed Romanoff, who backed Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential bid.
There was another behind-the-scenes battle in Georgia, where former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed ex-Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel for governor. Late last night the race between Handel and ex-Rep. Nathan Deal for the GOP nomination was too close to call, with both candidates claiming 50% of the vote.
Fired-up flight attendant Steven Slater was walking on air as he emerged from jail Tuesday night as a folk hero.
"I knew there was a brouhaha about this, but while I was on the inside I didn't realize how much attention it got," said Slater, wearing the same T-shirt and plaid shorts he had on when arrested a day earlier.
"I think something about this resonated with people. The outpouring of support is very appreciated. I'm overwhelmed, very thankful," Slater said after being released from the Vernon C. Bain Center in Hunts Point, the Bronx, after posting $2,500 bail.
Slater, 38, was transformed into a folk hero after he cursed out a nasty passenger over a plane intercom, grabbed some beer and fled down an emergency slide at Kennedy Airport Sunday.
"It's been a good time," a beaming Slater said, as employees leaving the lockup shouted, "You're a hero" and "You're a celebrity."
Relishing in his cult status, Slater even joked about his short stay in the slammer. "I feel tired, I feel about how I did when that suitcase fell on me."Then he pointed to cuts and bruises on his forehead that he called "aviation-related."
But Slater's flight to freedom hit a little turbulence. Freaked out by the media horde following his livery car, Slater's driver returned him to the jail after a 10-minute ride.
"The food was just too good," Slater deadpanned about why he returned.
A lot of people agree that Slater didn't commit a crime, and that includes his mother, his lawyer - and about half the world.
"I can understand why he snapped. I would have snapped, too," Diane Slater said Tuesday after her son pleaded not guilty to criminal charges.
"I think he just had a very small meltdown, and I think he deserved to be able to have that meltdown."
And she isn't the only one.
"I lost patience after a female passenger had an argument with another passenger and then opened the bin door, hitting me on the head without apologizing," Slater told cops.
In his announcement to passengers on the flight out of Pittsburgh, Slater referred to the woman as "the f-----g a--hole that told me to f--k off."
He then declared, "I've had it. That's it," witnesses said.
Slater's Legal Aid lawyer, Howard Turman, said his client was trying to defuse a testy situation when the passenger, who has not been identified, started giving him hell after the plane landed.
"He was trying to do his best in providing safety and you have rudeness and lack of courtesy among the traveling public," Turman said.
"The woman was outraged and cursed him out a great deal. At that point, I think, he just wanted to avoid conflict with her."
Through his lawyer, Slater pleaded not guilty to criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing charges.
Authorities said Slater endangered jetBlue employees under the aircraft when he activated the emergency slide, which costs more than $25,000 to replace.
JetBlue suspended Slater even as Facebook fans began raising money for his legal defense and demanding he get his job back.
He has quickly become a global sensation. MySpace photos of him posing on planes - one with a Bud Light in his hand - hit the Internet. His ex-wife, married to him in the '90s, also came out of the woodwork.
In the leafy Thousand Oaks, Calif., neighborhood where Slater grew up and his mother still lives, neighbors were shocked by his newfound notoriety.
"I've never seen any display of that kind of conduct before, so I have to believe to some extent there must have been some severe provocation," said Ron Franz, who lives across the street.
One Tree Hill' star Jana Kramer has officially split with her husband Johnathon Schaech, whom she tied the knot with on July 4.
"Jana and Johnathon have agreed to dissolve their marriage," Kramer's rep told E! News. "Jana is humbled by the outpouring of support from her fans, friends and family, and appreciates the respect of her privacy."
The couple met on the set of the movie' Prom Night' and on December 22, 2009, Schaech popped the question. Schaech proposed to his fiancee in an elaborate ice rink proposal, which he posted on Facebook. They married in Michigan.
Schaech was previously married to actress Christina Applegate, but the pair divorced in 2007.
Kramer is most known for her role in The CW's 'One Tree Hill' as Alex, an actress who becomes the new face of Brooke's fashion line, "Clothes Over Bros".
Schaech's career in movies and television dates back to 1993. He has appeared in movies such as 'Prom Night' and 'That Thing You Do!'
The flight attendant who slid off a landed plane via inflatable slide at JFK Monday after telling a disrespectful passenger to f--- off is already a folk hero.
How many of us have wanted to say Take This Job and Shove It? I'm As Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore?
Slater did it, and he did it with flair, cursing back over the plane's public address system at the obnoxious passenger who conked him on the head with his suitcase, then releasing the emergency exit slide and jumping out and disappearing across the tarmac. He even had the presence of mind to toss his carry-on luggage down the slide first.
Cops must have been scratching their heads to come up with the charges of "criminal mischief" and "reckless endangerment."
Who was he recklessly endangering? It's not as if he opened the doors when JetBlue Flight 1052 was in the air.
Did Slater fantasize this for years or did he just snap?
Flight attendants have to take a lot of guff for things they don't control, like airline cutbacks, minuscule food offerings and charges for checked luggage, earphones, even pillows and blankets on some planes.
It's part of the frustration all over the country as employees take pay cuts and have to do double the workload as they take on the responsibilities of their laidoff co-workers.
Forget raises. I know hardworking people who haven't had a raise in 10 years - don't you?
A friend of mine just got laid off and went to her appointment at the unemployment office and walked in to meet her counselor, a former co-worker, who'd taken the job at one of the few places that are a growth industry these days.
I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, but you gotta eat.
Steven Slater is a bit like John Henry, who became a folk hero years after hammering his way through a railway tunnel faster than a machine. There'll probably be a song about him online today.
Fantasia Barrino has been leading one of the most over-explained lives in modern pop. In just the last four years, the third season winner of "American Idol" published her autobiography, took part in a TV movie about her life, and starred in her own VH1 reality show.
That's a lot of telling without much showing.
It may seem perplexing at first, then, that Fantasia titled her third and latest album "Back To Me," as if the focus ever strayed to any other subject.
Luckily, the disc doesn't so much offer another "back to me" fit of narration as it does provide a striking reminder of why we cared about her back story to begin with. Namely: a voice that's imbued with as much history and character as Fantasia's hyper-dramatized life.
Never has that voice found a more sure setting than now. "Back To Me," Fantasia's first release in 4 years, far outperforms the singer's first two works, with meatier hooks, firmer melodies, and a more shrewdly focused point of view. Yet none of those qualities outshine the strange and fascinating voice that lies at the album's core.
No one can call Fantasia Barrino a pretty singer. Her vocals can be gutteral and wheezy, or pinched when she strains for the big notes. Her phrasing often veers into the blunt and wild. And her timbre has an odd tang to it.
But like the best "character singers," Fantasia uses her mangier qualities to assert her individuality, and to prove her conviction. It's a quality she shares with two other ungainly divas of soul: Patti Labelle and Mary J. Blige. None have voices of conventional beauty, but all win us over by aiming high and swinging wild.
The songs on "Back To Me" give Fantasia a wide berth for her patented wails. They're catchy but not overly formal. Many weave in bits of older soul songs, either via allusions or outright samples from Isaac Hayes, The Stylistics, and Ashford and Simpson. "The Thrill Is Gone" (not the B.B. King song) makes good use of Hayes' scene- stealing drum beat from his 1970 cover of "Walk On By." It serves as a set up for Fantasia's own wrenching disclosures. "Teach Me" nicks a Bob Marley lick, only to work it into a cool melody of its own. The CD's sole stumble recycles a song from "The Color Purple," the musical Fantasia starred in for an entire year. It's too starchy and self-consciously theatrical to jive with the rest.
The album's lyrics retain a tight focus, stressing Fantasia's connection to emotionally- reluctant men, while making sure to explain how she's no longer the kind that loves them. But Fantasia can kick up her heels too, as in "Collard Greens and Cornbread" (not the Anthony Hamilton song). A pure sex piece, the song allows the singer to luxuriate in the earthiness of her style. It's a southern, humid, and grinding approach she has, qualities that makes her sounds even more compelling than her story.
