The brutal shooting of Jacob Blake. 9/3/20: Biden, in Kenosha, says U.S. confronting 'original sin' KENOSHA, Wis.
(AP) — Joe Biden told residents of Kenosha, Wisconsin, that recent turmoil following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, could help Americans confront centuries of systemic racism, drawing a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump amid a reckoning that has galvanized the nation. “We’re finally now getting to the point where we’re going to be addressing the original sin of this country, 400 years old … slavery and all the vestiges of it,” Biden said at Grace Lutheran Church, where he met with community leaders after a private session with Blake and his family. The visit marked the former vice president’s first trip to the battleground state of Wisconsin as the Democratic presidential nominee and was a vivid illustration of the contrast he offers to Trump.
While Biden spent more than an hour with the Blake family, Trump didn’t mention Blake during his own trip to Kenosha on Tuesday. Wisconsin Gov. 9/3/29: Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ & ‘Suckers’ Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. 9/4/20: Trump Canceling Contracts 4Govt Sensitivity Training. President Trump has directed administration officials to make significant changes to sensitivity training sessions across the government, calling such efforts that often focus on promoting awareness of racism “divisive” and “un-American propaganda.”
The directive was laid out on Friday afternoon in a memo from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell T. Vought, to executive branch agency heads. The brief memo — which repeatedly referred to “press reports,” not government documents — tells the agencies to “begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.” The memo comes at a time of a national discussion about race, in which Mr. Again, citing news reports, Mr.
9/4/20: Trump denies calling US war dead 'losers,' 'suckers' WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump defended himself Friday against accusations that he mocked American war dead as his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, intensified efforts to frame the election as a referendum on the president’s character.
The allegations, sourced anonymously in The Atlantic, describe multiple offensive comments by the president toward fallen and captured U.S. service-members, including calling World War I dead at an American military cemetery in France as “losers” and “suckers” in 2018. The reported comments, many of which were confirmed independently by the AP, are shining a fresh light on Trump’s previous public disparaging of American troops and military families and opening a new political vulnerability for the president less than two months from Election Day. “This is more made up Fake News given by disgusting & jealous failures in a disgraceful attempt to influence the 2020 Election!” On a call with reporters hosted by the Biden campaign Friday, Illinois Sen. 9/4/20: Blake's father says paralyzed son optimistic after shooting. MADISON, Wis.
(AP) — Jacob Blake’s father said Friday that his “happy-go-lucky” son is optimistic for his future, although he remains paralyzed from the waist down after being shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer. A clearly exhausted Jacob Blake Sr., speaking by video chat from a Milwaukee hotel, told The Associated Press that the past two weeks have been “surreal” and “like a dream” and he’s mentally worn out.
He said he’s been receiving death threats, which he said he couldn’t talk about in detail. “It’s been hard on everybody,” Blake Sr., who drove from North Carolina to be with his hospitalized son, said. Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot Aug. 23, setting off days of protests that made Wisconsin the epicenter of the nation’s ongoing debate over police violence and racial injustice. 9/5/20: After 6 Trials, Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Curtis Flowers.
9/9/20: Don't Be Shocked Trump Lied About COVID On Tape. Be Horrified That It Won't Matter. Wednesday confirmed something that most of us already suspected: Donald Trump knew all along exactly how deadly COVID-19 was.
9/11/20: Firefighters struggling to contain wildfires in California, Oregon & Washington. 9/19/20: Justices Remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 'A Jurist Of Historic Stature' 9/25/20: Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Passes US House w/Bipartisan Support. In a huge win for reproductive justice advocates, The House of Representatives passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act late last week.
The new legislation ensures pregnant people are not denied reasonable accommodations in the workplace. In the recent past, pregnant workers have been fired for needing accommodations as simple as the ability to carry a water bottle to prevent bladder infections. Other workers were reported to have had their employment terminated for needing to limit their shift to eight hours, or for needing reasonable accommodations for some physical requirements of their job. (Egregiously, in June, a New York City MTA employee, Jillian Williams, was pregnant but miscarried while at work due to a lack of accommodations provided by her employer.) “What had been happening, and still unfortunately happens too often, is that when an employee requests an accommodation, they’re summarily put out on unpaid leave, or told to come back after they have the baby. Dr. 9/23/20: Costco pulls Palmetto after founder calls BLM 'terror organization'
Brian Henry, founder of the pimento cheese brand, also made a public Facebook post criticizing the "senseless killings in Georgetown.
" Wochit Costco has reportedly removed Palmetto Cheese from store shelves after the owner of the pimento cheese brand called Black Lives Matter a "terror organization. " Brian Henry, the founder of Palmetto Cheese and mayor of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, made a public Facebook post on Aug. 25 saying he was “sickened by the senseless killings in Georgetown.” Screenshots of his now-deleted post circulated on social media and called on shoppers to #BoycottPalmetto. "2 innocent people murdered. Job market remains sluggish: More than 824,000 Americans file for unemployment. 9/27/20: CDC pressured 'from the top down' to change Covid-19 testing guidance, official says. "It's coming from the top down," the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was in surgery and not part of the discussion during the August 20 task force meeting when updated guidelines were discussed. "I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr.
9/28/20: Navy updates SEAL ethos with gender-neutral language. The U.S.
Navy SEALs and the Navy Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC) recently changed their ethos and creed statements to reflect a gender-neutral presentation of the elite Navy outfits, doing away with gendered terms like “brotherhood.” One change to the SEAL ethos was to alter a sentence in the first paragraph of the ethos to say, “Common citizens with uncommon desire to succeed” instead of the original, “A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.”
Naval Special Warfare spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Stroup confirmed the changes to the ethos and creed statements in an emailed statement to American Military News. 9/29/20: Trump/Biden POTUS debate #1. 9/30/20: The 9 discarded ballots weren't fraud, state election chief says. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — It appears that an election worker’s decision to throw out nine military ballots in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, amounted to a mistake and not “intentional fraud,” the state’s top elections official said Wednesday. Workers in the elections office in Luzerne County are getting training on handling mailed-in military and overseas ballots, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said during an online news conference. “The investigation is still going on, but from the initial reports we’ve been given, this was a bad error,” said Boockvar, a member of Democratic Gov. Trump's taxes: the most brazen trick he tried to pull on the IRS.
The explosive New York Times report on Donald Trump’s tax returns confirms a great number of things about the president’s finances we’ve only been able to speculate about for years. We now know that Trump really was telling the truth when he claimed, beginning in the 2016 presidential campaign, that he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (though such an audit would not prevent him from releasing his returns—that part he really did make up). We also now know—though we basically already did—that while Trump made a lot of money from The Apprentice, he really does love debt, and most of the businesses he’s actually run have lost a lot of money.
All told, Trump has personally guaranteed about $421 million in debt, most of which will come due within the next four years.