Hunter Biden admitted in an interview that his name was “gold” to Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Biden defended his appointment as a director on Burisma’s board while his father was vice president, which has drawn scrutiny in the past, BBC News reported.
However, he acknowledged he “missed … the perception that I would create.”
“I know that it is hard to believe with 20/20 hindsight how I could possibly have missed that,” Biden said.
A report from Republican senators in September found Biden’s role with Burisma was “awkward” and “problematic,” but said there was no evidence U.S. policy toward Ukraine was influenced by his position, according to The Washington Post.
Eric Nelson—Derek Chauvin’s defense counsel—raised the issue of “camera perspective bias” during the trial.
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo agreed that Chauvin’s knee appeared to be on Floyd’s neck in the bystander video, but on his “shoulder blade” in the body-cam video.
If the problem of “woke capitalism” wasn’t apparent before, the battle over Georgia’s new election-integrity law has drawn it out into the open.
The law, which adds voter-ID requirements to absentee voting, extends some early voting, and places some restrictions on activist activities at polling places, has been billed by Democrats and President Joe Biden as Jim Crow 2.0.
Regardless of the merits of the law or the offensive absurdity of comparing it to the actual rampant voter suppression under Jim Crow, it’s clear that opposition to the law is coming almost entirely from the left.
This issue is being used to seek to persuade Americans to support HR 1, a bill before Congress that would effectively amount to the federal takeover of elections.
These are political matters to be decided by the people of Georgia and by members of Congress.
However, in response to the Georgia law, a long list of big corporations have stepped into the debate and condemned the law.
Perhaps most dramatically of all, Major League Baseball on Friday announced that it would move the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta, costing the state over $100 million and likely many jobs tied to tourism.
JUST IN: @MLB announces it’ll move the All-Star Game and Draft out of Atlanta due to the state passing a new elections law last week. pic.twitter.com/rBVUQ6FMJG
Citi Group said on Friday that it hired Erika Irish Brown from rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc to lead its global diversity strategy, according to an announcement on the bank’s website.
Brown joins Citi as its chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer from Goldman Sachs, where she had led that bank’s diversity and inclusion efforts since mid-2018. Brown previously worked at Bloomberg in the same role.
Goldman named Megan Hogan to replace Brown, according to a memo sent to staff and seen by Reuters.
The role of chief diversity officer has taken on renewed prominence as corporations work to address inequality and systemic racism roughly one year after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.
Wall Street banks have taken steps to increase recruitment, hiring and retention of diverse employees in recent years, but diverse and female employees still comprise a small percentage of the workforce.
Under Brown, Goldman set a goal that 11% of all new analysts and entry-level associates hired in the United States and 9% hired in the U.K. be Black professionals, for 14% to be Latino professionals and half to be women.
Man taken into custody at ‘Magic Kingdom,’ despite forking over $15,000.
A man was arrested for refusing a temperature check at Orlando’s Disney World theme park.
In police body cam footage of the incident, which took place outside The Boathouse restaurant at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa in February, Kelly Sills, 47, is approached by officers who inform him he’s being trespassed for refusing the Covid-19 screening.
“He’s gonna have to go for the day,” an employee tells an officer.
“We are going to escort you out now, sir,” the officer tells Sills, adding, “You are officially being trespassed.”
“I spent $15,000 to come here,” Sills tells the officer.
“You telling me I spent 15 grand,” he argues, before promptly being told to put his hands behind his back and being placed under arrest.
“All you had to do was get temperature checked. That’s it!” someone can be overheard telling him.
Sills reportedly insists, “If I take $15,000 from you, I can’t kick you out,” as he’s being led away. “Bring me to jail for 15 grand, I’m fine… In front of my kids, too, at Disney World.”
“So 44% of America has bought into tyrannical fascism. Got it.”
A Rasmussen poll has revealed that almost half of Americans support the introduction of vaccine passports in order to get “back to normal.”
The findings were released over the Easter period, and noted that 44% of Americans said that a government run system requiring proof of vaccination is a “good idea.”
NASHVILLE (RNS) — The company owned by Christian financial guru and radio host Dave Ramsey is no longer one of the best places to work in America, according to Inc. magazine.
The national business publication dropped Franklin, Tennessee-based Ramsey Solutions from its 2020 “Best Workplaces” list after the company was sued by a former employee, Caitlin O’Conner, for discrimination. O’Connor claims she was fired from Ramsey Solutions after applying for family leave because she was pregnant.
Her lawsuit claims Ramsey Solutions “discriminates against employees who do not strictly adhere to Ramsey’s interpretation of ‘Judeo-Christian’ values for non-work related behavior.”
In court documents, Ramsey Solutions said O’Connor, who is not married, was fired for having premarital sex, which violated the company’s “righteous living” policy.
“There is no dispute that Plaintiff was aware of this rule and terminated for violating it,” Ramsey’s lawyer said in a March filing. The company also said that, since 2016, it has disciplined eight other employees, both men and women, for having premarital sex.
After learning of the lawsuit, Inc. dropped Ramsey Solutions from the “Best Workplaces” list.
“Ramsey has the right to manage its business in accordance with its values, and the court system will determine the merits of the lawsuit,” Inc. assistant editor Sophie Downes wrote in announcing the decision. “Upon learning about the company’s ‘righteous living’ policy and how it is applied, we believe that it is incompatible with our standards of organizational excellence and have made the editorial decision to remove the company from our 2020 Best Workplaces list.”
About 3,000 companies applied to be included on Inc.’s annual Best Workplaces list. The list seeks to recognize companies where people love to work, one that sets the standard for excellence in company,” according to Inc.
How is a baby supposed to eat food with a mask on? The answer doesn’t concern Spirit Airlines
Disturbing footage from a Spirit Airlines flight shows a family getting kicked off the plane because their two-year-old was eating — without a mask.
The video captured by a nearby passenger shows a flight attendant ordering the family off the flight, prompting the confused parents to ask how an infant child is supposed to eat with a mask over her face.
As we’ve reported, airlines have been some of the most ardent virtue-signalers of the mask, with dozens of videos coming out over the last year showing many more such incidents.
Prosecutors are now asking the jury to effectively dismiss the findings of the only official autopsy in the case and insist, contrary to those findings, that Floyd died from asphyxia, or, lack of oxygen. Some new disclosures may make that claim more difficult for the prosecution.
Last week, special prosecutor Jerry Blackwell admitted to jurors that Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker pointed to cardiac arrest as Floyd’s cause of death. However, he insisted that the state would prove that “was … not a fatal heart event,” but asphyxiation.
It is a bold move since it could invite reasonable doubt on the cause of death. The question is whether a case of manslaughter could have been advanced without the need of opposing the state’s own coroner on such findings. The failure of Chauvin to respond to a medical emergency speaks more to manslaughter than murder but it could be framed consistently with these findings. Instead, the prosecution has asked the jury to effectively reject the coroner’s findings — a risky maneuver.
We have previously discussed key defense elements in the case:
When called to the scene due to Floyd allegedly passing counterfeit money, Floyd denied using drugs but later said he was “hooping,” or taking drugs.
The autopsy did not conclude that Floyd died from asphyxiation (though a family pathologist made that finding). Rather, it found “cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by law enforcement officer(s).” The state’s criminal complaint against Chauvin said the autopsy “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease.” He also was COVID-19 positive.
Andrew Baker, Hennepin County’s chief medical examiner, strongly suggested that the primary cause was a huge amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s system: “Fentanyl at 11 ng/ml — this is higher than (a) chronic pain patient. If he were found dead at home alone & no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD (overdose). Deaths have been certified w/levels of 3.” Baker also told investigators that the autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting Floyd died of asphyxiation.
The toxicology report on Floyd’s blood also noted that “in fatalities from fentanyl, blood concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 ng/ml.” Floyd had almost four times the level of fentanyl considered potentially lethal.
Floyd notably repeatedly said that he could not breathe while sitting in the police cruiser and before he was ever restrained on the ground. That is consistent with the level of fentanyl in his system that can cause “slowed or stopped breathing.”
Floyd’s lungs were two to three times the normal size and filled with fluid. “Pulmonary edema is a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs” and it is symptomatic of an opioid overdose, according to Mayo Clinic.
Finally, the restraint using an officer’s knee on an uncooperative suspect was part of the training of officers, and jurors will watch training videotapes employing the same type of restraint as official policy.
What is interesting is that the prosecution is putting on experts like they are making a defense case. It is usually the defense that brings in a host of doctors to challenge official autopsy findings. Here however the state doctor’s findings contradict the prosecutor’s case.
Conversely, Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, sounds more like the typical prosecutor noting that there is only one official autopsy and one official report on the cause of death. He told the jury “Dr. Baker found none of what are referred to as the telltale signs of asphyxiation. There was no evidence that Mr. Floyd’s airflow was restricted and he did not determine [it] to be a positional or mechanical asphyxia death.”
Nelson can rely on other aspects of the official record. When Baker went over findings in a meeting last December with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, he specifically noted that the knee restraint was not likely to produce asphyxiation: “[I]t appeared to Dr. Baker that the pressure to the neck was coming from the back or posterior lateral portions of the back, and none of these strictures would impact breathing or cause loss of consciousness,” said a document summarizing the meeting.” He noted a study that found that placing 200 pounds of weight or more on a healthy person did not have an “observable impact on breathing.”
I sense an attitude of friendliness, and camaraderie with strangers rather than fear of them. Normality is alive and well in Florida, as much as corporate media don’t want to admit it.
If your perception of the world is based on what corporate media tells you, you might think Florida is overrun by wild spring break revelers who are running around killing people by flaunting COVID precautions.
“How spring break in South Beach spun out of control,” the Washington Post blared. The Associated Press reported “deaths” and “violence,” while “police have arrested hundreds of partiers involved in violence and property destruction” in South Beach.
Business Insider lumped “street fights, arrests, and maskless crowds” together in its description of the debauchery. On March 20, the city of Miami Beach established a state of emergency, complete with an 8 p.m. weekend curfew.
The narrative that “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ‘open-for-business’ policy is backfiring in Miami Beach,” as Slate suggested, is as lazy as it is inaccurate. I’m sure there are some ne’er-do-wellers in Miami, as in any other place on earth. But the corporate media is so busy trying to dunk on DeSantis’s successful and freedom-centric COVID-19 response, they won’t tell you what’s really going on in the Sunshine State.
I’ve spent the past week in Florida, and visited beach towns on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. I’ve seen cheerful street musicians, sailboats unloading in marinas, kids on playgrounds, and moms pushing strollers in seersucker dresses. I’ve seen a few groups of what look like spring breakers too, walking down sunny sidewalks or sitting at beachfront bars enjoying fresh fried seafood.
