Tag: Martin Luther King Jr

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(President Biden expressed doubts ex-President Trump would accept a loss, in an interview taped for CBS Sunday Morning. Scroll down the center column for details.)

Ukraine Takes Kursk – Although not officially connected to Ukraine’s invasion of the western Russian region of Kursk, a column of Russian military vehicles and personnel “was destroyed” there, The Kyiv Independent reports Friday, citing Suspilne and the independent Russian media outlet Agentstvo. Kursk Oblast is the location of the Ukrainian military’s incursion this week into Russia. 

The report was corroborated by pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar, which said that a local resident who filmed the attack handed the video over to Ukrainian media but has been arrested by Russian authorities. In the BBC’s report on the incursion, a reporter says Russian media have been unusually frank in reporting on Ukraine’s success in the region.

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That Mar-a-Lago Presser – Ex-President Trump’s hour-long press conference at Mar-a-Lago Thursday was “rambling and chaotic” according to NPR’s Morning Edition and by now you’ve heard the highlights. 

This one stands out: “Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours – same real estate, same everything, same number of people if not – we had more.”

That’s right, Donald J. Trump was comparing the peaceful 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to his January 6, 2021, speech at the Ellipse leading up to the attack on the US Capitol. He described his White House departure in the presser as “peaceful.”

The country is in mortal danger if Trump does not win the November 5 presidential election, he said, predicting war and a depression on the level of the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

Asked about his remarks before the National Association of Black Journalists last week suggesting that his Democratic challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris changed her ethnicity, Trump called her “very disrespectful” of both her mother’s Indian heritage and her father’s Jamaican heritage. 

Describing Harris’ appeal, Trump said; “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.” (Direct quotes per The New York Times.)

--TL

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THURSDAY 8/8/24

Trump Agrees to Three Debates -- Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump announced at a "rare" Mar-a-Lago press conference that he has agreed to three debates with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris (per Politico). They are to be on Fox News September 4, ABC on September 10 and NBC on September 25.

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It’s About Cars? – President Biden is pretty sure Donald J. Trump will resist defeat in the November 5 presidential election. On CBS Sunday Morning Robert Costa asks Biden if he’s “confident there will be a peaceful transition of power in January of 2025?”

“If Trump loses, no I’m not,” the president responds. “I’m not confident at all. He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about if we lose it’ll be a bloodbath … Look what they’re trying to do in the local election districts where the people count the votes … putting people in place where they’re going to count the votes.”

The full interview runs Sunday morning, August 11, between 9 am and 10:30 am Eastern time. 

Republican reaction: Trump defenders say his statement earlier this year that there “will be a bloodbath” was a warning about the US auto industry if Chinese automakers are allowed importation without serious tariffs (Biden has imposed a 102.5% tariff on Chinese-built EVs). The former president’s comments came after the United Auto Workers’ leadership endorsed the Democratic ticket. 

Flashback: In the Trump-Biden debate in late June, the one that led to Biden stepping down from his re-election campaign, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Trump three times whether he will accept the results of this November’s election.

After some evasion and downplaying of his role in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, when Bash asked; “yes or no?” on that third attempt, Trump replied, “absolutely” he would accept results if the election was “fair and good.”

NOTE: Don’t miss Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary, “Letter from the President” in the right column.

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Reports: Ukraine Pushes Into Russia – Ukraine forces launched on Tuesday “an ambitious operation” across Russia’s western border at Kursk Oblast in large numbers,” The Kyiv Independent reports, citing a mix of sources. Officials in Kyiv have so far been silent about the offensive.

But Russia’s defense ministry says the invasion involves a Ukrainian force likely involving 100s of troops and dozens of vehicles, according to the report. A “visibly frustrated” Vladimir Putin called the offensive a “large-scale provocation” and accused Ukrainian forces of shelling residential areas, in a short, televised address on Wednesday.

The Independent reports no official announcements from Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken to his commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, and said “details would follow later.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

(President Biden expressed doubts ex-President Trump would accept a loss, in an interview taped for CBS Sunday Morning. […]

For Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day

Sunday, the 94th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth and the day before the nation celebrates the civil rights leader, Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to deliver the Sunday sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  Biden’s sermon came at the invitation of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), the church’s senior pastor. 

“It’s still the task of our time to make that dream a reality because it’s not there yet,” Biden told the congregation (per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “To make Dr. King’s vision tangible, to match the words of the preachers and the poets with our deeds.

“On this day of commemoration, service and action, let us hold up a mirror to America and ask ourselves: What kind of country do we want to be? Will we honor Dr. King’s legacy by rising together – buttressed by each other’s successes, enriched by each other’s differences and made whole by each other’s compassion? I believe we can.”

Biden was to deliver the keynote address to the National Action Network at the civil rights group’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast Monday.

--TL

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FRIDAY 1/13/23

Max Fine for Trump Organization – The Trump Organization has been fined $1.6 million over its conviction for tax fraud and other crimes involving off-the-books perquisites for top executives. A judge for the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered the maximum fine, though “a pittance” to ex-President Trump’s real estate business, The New York Times reported Friday. On Tuesday, the Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in the case, was sentenced to serve five months at Rikers Island jail, which is by no means a country club prison.

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So Much for Touting Lowered CPI – President Biden tried to make Thursday about celebrating improving inflation numbers (graph above) but instead his administration spent the day playing defense over a sprawling scandal involving his holding on to government papers, some of them confidential, at his office between his vice presidency and presidency, and now his home about 100 miles northeast.

No One Messes with Biden’s Vette: And maybe that’s an explanation for why additional government documents, some of them confidential, were discovered in the car’s locked garage at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home in December, one month after about 10 confidential documents were found in the president’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

No Mar-a-Lagogate … But: Biden turned over the documents to the National Archives after they were found and he did not “declassify” them with his mind. But the brewing scandal does give ex-President Trump some relief on one of his myriad scandals. 

And So, DOJ Investigation: Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland Thursday appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur special counsel in the documents case, to investigate “extraordinary circumstances,” The Washington Post says. Hur, a Justice Department official in the Trump administration, will examine whether “any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter,” and Garland is confident he will tackle the assignment “in an even handed and urgent matter.”

Investigation in the House: “I think Congress needs to investigate this,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), said Thursday (per PBS News Hour). “Here’s an individual that sat on 60 Minutes that was so concerned about President Trump’s documents, and now we find that this is a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations.”

About That Timing: Confidential documents in the closet in Biden’s post-VP Washington office were discovered November 2, six days before the midterm elections, and the additional documents found in the garage next to his ‘67 Corvette were discovered about a month later.

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Ricketts to Senate – Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pullen has appointed the state’s former Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, to take retiring Sen. Ben Sasse’s seat. Sasse, a moderate Republican, left to become president of the University of Florida two years before the remainder of his term. Ricketts will have to run in 2024 if he seeks a full six-year Senate term.

--TL

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THURSDAY 1/12/23

Still High, but Getting Better – The Consumer Price Index fell 0.1% in December over November, lowering the annual rate to 6.5%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports Thursday. New vehicle prices fell for the first time in years last month, down 0.1% for an annual rate below that of the entire CPI, at 5.9%. But gas price relief led the way, down 9.4% in December for a -1.5% annual price adjustment. 

“The index for gasoline was by far the largest contributor to the monthly all items decrease, more than offsetting increases in shelter indexes,” the BLS said. Shelter prices were up 0.8% for December, for a +7.5% annual rate.

Gas Prices Stall: The national average for unleaded regular gas was $3.272 per gallon Thursday, AAA says, still under the year-ago average of $3.301 per gallon. AAA says recent pump price spikes have stalled since the holidays.

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How About a Biopic? -- Armando Iannucci is creator-director of the television political satire Veep and the big-screen political satire The Death of Stalin. We sincerely hope he is already hard at work on a script for The George Santos Story. Wednesday New York Republican officials called on freshman Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to step down from office. Santos has declined, saying nothing he has done amounts to criminal behavior and newly gaveled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who traded his support for Santos in exchange for Santos’ vote for speaker, told reporters that “A lot of people” including some of those in the Senate have fabricated parts of their resumes, (per the left-leaning Talking Points Memo).

“Is there a charge against him? You know, in America today, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” McCarthy added.

But Nassau County’s Republican county executive, Bruce Blakeman, counters, “I do not want to deal with someone who is a liar.” Speaking on NPR’s Morning Edition Blakeman, who is Nassau County’s first Jewish county exec said the most egregious lie Santos has told is that his parents were Holocaust survivors, which “trivializes everything the families went through.” Turns out Santos is not even Jewish, while 300,000 residents of Nassau County are. 

When NPR’s A Martinez asked Blakeman about the possibility Santos would be replaced by a Democrat if removed from office (and reduce the GOP’s already thin majority in the House), the county exec replied; “This has transcended politics. This is about good government.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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