Stephan: White supremacist racists like Donald Trump don't like the actual facts about America's racial history so completely consistent with his early racism Trump has ruled by fiat that diversity education funded at the federal level will cease. It's anti-American, don't you know, he says, to talk about racial diversity. How a Black or Brown person can vote for Trump is beyond me. And note that this report is appearing in a conservative publication.
President Trump just made a major announcement that will surely have a huge impact on the diversity, equity and inclusion industry. Trump is now prohibiting federal agencies from conducting cultural sensitivity trainings because, according to the report, they are “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” Diversity trainings that focus on educating participants about white privilege, critical race theory and the racist origins of the United States apparently create “division and resentment” amongst federal employees. What is deeply problematic about this new ban is that the U.S. has a habit of avoiding the country’s dark and racist past. Evading the issue will not make it go away. It will grow more insidious and resilient as each year passes. In June of 2020, America was finally willing to look in the mirror, acknowledge the past and start the long process to make amends in order to move to a point of racial reconciliation and healing. The momentum was building and setting the stage for progress to be made. But with the Trump administration’s recent announcement, the racial equity […]
Stephan: The real history of racial diversity in the United States is horrifying and, in my opinion, ought to be taught in every school so that what is happening in this country is properly understood. The slave trade was very profitable, and I wonder had he lived in the 18th or early 19th-century whether Trump would have been a slave trader?
Much of what we know about the horrors of slavery in the Americas comes from historical records. But new research shows that evidence of the slave trade’s atrocities can also be found in the DNA of African Americans.A study conducted by the consumer genetics company 23andMe, published Thursday in theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics, offers some new insight into the consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, from the scale at which enslaved Black women were raped by their White masters to the less-documented slave trade that occurred within the Americas.It’s one of the largest studies of its kind, thanks in part to the massive database of 23andMe customers that researchers were able to recruit consenting participants from.
Stephan: And here we have Sunday's Republican Scum Report. God, I hope Biden gets elected and the Congress radically changes, cleaning out Republicans, so I can stop having to do these racist, sexist, Republican reports, and can get back to focusing on positive trends shaping our future.
A GOP New Hampshire state lawmaker is being investigated by law enforcement officials after he publicly called for the burning of Black Lives Matters supporters’ houses.
Local news station WCVB reports that four-term GOP state Rep. James Spillane wrote in a Facebook post this week that anyone who has a Black Lives Matter sign on their lawn deserves to have their house burned and looted.
The post has since been deleted, but that hasn’t stopped the New Hampshire Department of Justice from launching an investigation into his advocacy of violence against political opponents.
Specifically, the New Hampshire DOJ is probing whether Spillane violated the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act, which states that “all persons have the right to engage in lawful activities and to exercise and enjoy the rights secured by […]
Stephan: All you Trumpers, between Trump's comments about the military, and his subservient deferential behavior in regards to Putin, how much clearer does it need to get for you that Donald Trump is a traitor? How can you vote for a traitor, and yet claim you love your country?
WASHINGTON — An hour into his rally Thursday night in a Pittsburgh suburb, President Trump slammed states that have expanded mail-in voting, a familiar target for his reelection campaign.
“These mail-in ballots are a disgrace, and they know it,” he scoffed.
But Trump isn’t alone in trying to undermine faith in absentee ballots. U.S. officials say a Russian disinformation campaign is pushing the same disruptive message to Americans four years after the Kremlin sought to help Trump win the White House.
A Homeland Security intelligence bulletin issued hours before Trump spoke in Latrobe, Pa., warned that a Moscow-backed operation involving state media and proxy websites had “denigrated vote-by-mail processes, alleging they lack transparency and procedural oversight, creating vast opportunities for voter fraud.”
U.S. officials say Russia’s operation includes false allegations that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s health is failing and that he acted improperly in Ukraine when he served as vice president. Trump has made the same allegations.
The overlap in messaging between Trump’s rhetoric and Russian disinformation in some ways echoes the symbiotic relationship between the president’s first White House bid and […]
Stephan: Even Trumpers should remember that Republicans used to bray on and on about the national debt, never seeming to remember that the national debt goes down when Democrats are in power, and up when Republicans are in power, largely because Republicans are always trying to rig the Tax structure to favor their rich patrons. The last time we didn't have national debt was under Bill Clinton's administration. Unfortunately, it went completely off the rails again under Bush but was brought under control during the Obama administration, only to go crazy again under Trump.
But I don't think most Americans realize how really bad the national debt issue has become; it is now the worse such World War II and, because of the Republicans' incompetence in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is projected to get even worse than that previous historic high in the coming months. Biden is going to have to spend much of his first term, assuming he wins and the Senate flips just sorting out the mess Trump and the Trumpers will leave.
So when they do polls showing that an overwhelming majority of Republicans think Trump is better at handling the economy than Biden would be, you know that what you are really seeing is not a poll on economics, but one on Trumper willful ignorance.
WASHINGTON—U.S. debt has reached its highest level compared to the size of the economy since World War II and is projected to exceed it next year, the result of a giant fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that federal debt held by the public is projected to reach or exceed 100% of U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of U.S. economic output, in the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. That would put the U.S. in the company of a handful of nations with debt loads that exceed their economies, including Japan, Italy and Greece.Borrowing BounceU.S. government debt is expected to exceedthe size of the economy for fiscal year 2021.U.S. federal debt as a share of GDPSources: Office of Management and Budget, WendyEdelbergNote: 2021 is an estimate%RECESSIONFY2021: 104.4%’70FY1941’50’60’80’902000’10’20020406080100120
This year the ratio is expected to be 98%, also the highest since World War II.
The surge in borrowing so far isn’t creating angst among investors or hampering the U.S.’s ability to borrow more. Investors have gobbled up U.S. Treasury assets, drawn to their relative […]
