WIKIPEDIA: Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James (June 9,^[1] 1902 – October 3, 1969^[2]) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His guitar playing is noted for its dark, minor sound, played in an open D-minor tuning with an intricate fingerpicking technique. James first recorded for Paramount Records in 1931, but these recordings sold poorly due to the Great Depression, and he drifted into obscurity. After a long absence from the public eye, James was “rediscovered” in 1964 by three blues enthusiasts, helping further the blues and folk music revival of the 1950s and early 60s. He is hailed as “one of the seminal figures of the blues.”^[3] James was known to be an aloof and moody person.^[9] “Skip James, you never knew. Skip could be sunshine, or thunder and lightning depending on his whim of the moment” commented Dick Spottswood on James’s personality.^[9] He seldom socialized with other bluesmen and fans. Like John Fahey, James loathed the so-called “folkie” scene of the 1960s. He held a high regard for his own work and was reluctant to share musical ideas with other performers. Though the lyrical content of some of his songs led to the characterization of James as a misogynist, he remained with his wife Lorenzo (niece of Mississippi John Hurt) until his death. He is buried with his wife at a private cemetery (Merion Memorial Park) just outside of Philadelphia in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. MORE

MSNBC: Mitt Romney could face new questions about his overseas investments after a campaign official acknowledged to NBC News that his campaign is revising his financial disclosure forms to report more than a half dozen offshore holdings, including income from a multi-million dollar Swiss bank account that was not disclosed last year. The tax returns released by the Romney campaign this week showed that the Ann Romney Blind Trust had reported $1,783 in interest income from a bank account held at UBS in Switzerland in 2010. But the Swiss bank account — as well as other offshore investments in the Cayman Islands, Bermudas and Ireland that appear in the trust fund’s tax returns — were not disclosed in Romney’s financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics last August. A Romney campaign official emailed Thursday afternoon that Romney’s financial disclosure form is now being amended with the government ethics office “to address this minor discrepancy” and “to deal with some other minor issues.” MORE

RELATED: A Rasmussen poll conducted on Sunday, the day after the South Carolina primary, showed Newt Gingrich leading Mitt Romney by 9 points — 41 percent to 32 percent — in Florida. Rasmussen’s poll conducted on Wednesday now shows Romney leading Gingrich by 8 points: The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Republican Primary Voters, taken Wednesday night, shows Romney with 39% support to Gingrich’s 31%. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum earns 12%, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul runs last with nine percent (9%). MORE

Read more at: http://times247.com/articles/new-polls-mitt-surges-ahead-of-newt

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade.

Or once a lifetime.

In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to perform or discuss the album or record a follow-up. Over the course of his decade-long Salinger-like hermitage, succeeding generations have discovered and come to revere the album, and as such it has become something like The Catcher In The Rye of indie-rock.

Two years ago he emerged from seclusion and started performing again, refusing to offer any explanation for his mysterious disappearance or sudden return. No matter. The ambiguity only seems to heighten the intrigue of his legend. Thursday night’s performance at the Irvine Auditorium, at Penn, sold out in 35 seconds.

Taking the stage dressed in a white cranberry-checked cowboy shirt and a droopy gray Mao cap, the 41-year-old Louisiana-born Mangum waved hello, took a seat, strapped on an acoustic guitar and tore into the slashing, Who-like opening chords of “Two-Headed Boy,” blaring the agony and ecstasy of the lyric with his trademark, heart-tugging yelp like it was 1998 all over again. MORE

ROLL CALL: House conservatives head to Philadelphia today for the annual Heritage Foundation Conservative Members Retreat as their movement faces a critical test of its ability to shape the Republican Party agenda. It also comes at a delicate time for House Republicans, who pledged that their Conference members were unified coming out of their own retreat last weekend but still bear the scars of last year’s intraparty battles over the debt ceiling and government spending. “I am much more confident this year that you’re not going to be in a reactive mode the way you were last year,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said at the House GOP retreat in Baltimore. The Virginia Republican also predicted there would be no government shutdown fights this year, a nod to the fact that a large part of 2011 was consumed with such battles, distracting from other parts of the new majority’s agenda. MORE

PHAWKER: Dear #OccupyPhilly, it doesn’t say so in the above story, but we have it on good authority that they are at the Four Seasons. You would be remiss if you didn’t send the welcoming committee over to greet them. Just sayin’.

We’ll have a full report, look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!

SALON: Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, is now the poster boy for what’s terribly wrong with our campaign-finance system. Adelson, you may recall, had, before the South Carolina Republican primary, donated $5 million to the pro-Gingrich Super Pac “Winning Our Future” – giving Newt a pile of money for negative advertising against Mitt Romney in South Carolina. Adelson has done it again. He and his wife Marian have cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. The money won’t go as far as it did in South Carolina – TV ads cost a lot more in Florida – but it’s enough to give the Grinch a solid footing. And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. The point is, there’s no limit. Do you know who Sheldon and Marian Adelson are? Do you know what Gingrich has promised them, or what they think they’ll get out of a Grinch presidency? I don’t. Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact – all courtesy of the Supreme Court and its grotesque decisions that speech is money and corporations are people under the First Amendment. MORE

RELATED: Two years ago, Justice Scalia cast one of the five votes necessary to unleash unlimited corporate money on American democracy in the Supreme Court’s egregious Citizens United decision. Yet, at a panel in South Carolina this weekend, Scalia tried to lay the blame for the absurd campaign finance system he created at everyone’s feet but his own:

Super PACs have raised more than $30 million just three races into the 2012 presidential race, according to the website opensecrets.org, run by The Center for Responsive Politics. TV advertising alone in South Carolina, which is voting Saturday, is estimated at $12 million, or nearly $27 per voter when calculated using the 2008 Republican primary turnout numbers. […]

Scalia said the blame for this type of system shouldn’t fall on the Supreme Court, which he said decides merely whether the system is legal under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, he said the ones who have to change things are the politicians who created the system and the voters who often reward the candidates who spend the most money. “If the system seems crazy to you, don’t blame it on the court,” Scalia said, during a discussion in front of South Carolina lawyers that lasted for more than an hour. MORE

RELATED: Last year, in perhaps the “most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades,” the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) invalidated a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate and union money directly funding individual candidates in federal elections. The SCOTUS decision sent shockwaves throughout our democracy, with many fearing that it would lead to an overwhelming amount of corporate money flooding out the voices of ordinary people. Now, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has put out a comprehensive analysis to assess the flood of campaign money in last year’s election. One of the most shocking results of the analysis finds that the decision appeared to have a sharply partisan and ideological result. The group found that spending by Super PACs and all outside spending strongly tilted towards conservatives, and that spending by undisclosed donors actually was eight times higher for conservatives than liberals, with conservatives spending $119.6 million to liberals’ $15.7 million. MORE

They play Johnny Brendas Feb. 15th with Air Waves and locals Hurry.

THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT: Could they be the UKs answer to The White Stripes? Charles And Rebecca Are Slow Club. They hail from Sheffield and are a sort of one man band. Only with two people. He strums guitar and sings and she plays drums and all sorts of weird instruments, like water-filled glass bottles, spoons and the back of a wooden chair. And sometimes an organ called MIles. Not something you get to see and hear every day. The effect is rockabilly and somewhat folksy but thankfully their songs are fairly jolly affairs without a bit of teenage angst in sight.

CBS SEATTLE: Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices. A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.” Created for mobile phones, the technology uses the latest crime statistics and weather data and includes them when calculating a route.The patent, written in a combination of tech-speak and legalese, was awarded to Microsoft earlier this week. It also described other uses for the new GPS technology. One section of the patent mentioned that advertisers can use the technology to navigate a user through a newly set up ad campaign. MORE

ATLANTIC: Let’s get one thing straight: Microsoft wasn’t actually stupid enough to call their new GPS feature the “avoid ghetto” app when they applied for a patent. That term was apparently coined by a local Seattle TV station. But it immediately became the name of choice for a smartphone function that mines violent crime stats to help users avoid an “unsafe neighborhood.” The app isn’t on the market yet, but it didn’t take long for the Internet to come down hard on Microsoft. The Root called it “ludicrous.” Jezebel wondered whether it was “dude-centric.” Sarah E. Chinn, author of Technology and Racism, was quoted saying, “A more useful app would be for young black men to be able to map blocks with the highest risks of their being pulled over or stopped on the street by police.” MORE

MSNBC: In a daring nighttime raid Tuesday, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued two hostages, including one American, who were being held by kidnappers in Somalia, U.S. officials tell NBC News.American Jessica Buchanan, 32, [pictured, above] and a 60-year-old Dane, Poul Thisted, were working for a Danish relief organization in northern Somalia when they were kidnapped last October. U.S. officials described their kidnappers as heavily armed common criminals with no known ties to any organized militant group. According to the U.S. officials, two teams of Navy SEALs landed by helicopter near the compound where the two hostages were being held.  As the SEALS approached the compound on foot gunfire broke out, the U.S. officials said, and several of the militants were reportedly killed. There is no word that any of the Americans were wounded. The SEALs gathered up Buchanan and Thisted, loaded them onto the helicopters and flew them to safety at an undisclosed location. The two hostages were not injured during the rescue operation and are reported to be in relatively good condition. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: According to NBC News, as the president stepped into the House chambers, he pointed to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta standing in the crowd and said, “Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight.” The president made no mention of the rescue in Somalia, but he did refer to the killing of Osama bin Laden last May in a similar operation conducted by Navy Seals. Somalia is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world, infested by pirate gangs and countless militant groups, a lawless space that has languished for 21 years without a functioning government. Several Westerners have recently been kidnapped, typically for ransom, and it seems that as Somalia’s pirates have a harder time hijacking ships on the high seas, because of the beefed up naval efforts, they are increasingly turning to snatching foreigners on land. MORE

[via THE WHITE HOUSE]

Sara Ferguson teaches literacy and math at Columbus Elementary, and has worked for the Chester Upland School District for 20 years.  She is a third generation educator in Chester Upland, and a proud product of that district.  When the Chester Upland School District faced bankruptcy earlier this year in light of severe state budget cuts, Ms. Ferguson vowed to continue teaching even without being paid, saying “we are adults; we will make a way. The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.” […]

Debbie Bosanek has worked for Berkshire Hathaway for 37 years and has been Warren Buffett’s secretary for almost two decades.  Last September, the President proposed the “Buffett Rule” as part of comprehensive tax reform, and is working to build an economy that works for everyone, including Americans like Ms. Bosanek, not just a wealthy few.  Ms. Bosanek lives in Bellevue, Nebraska with her husband of 23 years and their son, and spends most of her time and energy trying to keep up with her boss. 

Complete First Lady’s box guest list after the jump…

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RELATED: Let Me Clear My State Of The Union (Reprise)

[Courtesy of SUBSPACE BIOGRAPHIES]

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*By ‘Santa Claus’ we of course mean Bruce Springsteen

What we told you way, way back on Jan. 19th has just been officially announced: The Boss will be at Wells Fargo Center March 28th. Tickets go on sale January 28th. Details after the jump…

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PASTE: The band has said that the upcoming release is more a rough-around-the-edges rock album that’s more in tune with their earlier material, and many of the members found that to be pretty liberating. “It was reminiscent of when we were starting out and were these fearless weirdoes in a basement, so confident and reckless and bold,” guitarist-vocalist Scott McMicken said. MORE

Dr. Dog - Lonesome by antirecords