Trump started his answer by saying he "would do that," then name-dropped his daughter Ivanka and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has talked about child care and introduced legislation he says would improve access.

"It's a very important issue," Trump said. "But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that - because - child care is child care ... It's something, you have to have it in this country. You have to have it."

"But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly, and it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country," he said.

"Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care," Trump continued. "We're going to have - I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country."

"We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it's - relatively speaking - not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in," he said.

"I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about," he said.

Exactly how all of this was supposed help working parents find or pay for child care wasn't clear, especially given widespread predictions from economists that Trump's tariffs would actually lead to higher deficits and a weaker economy, as well as higher costs to families who would pay more for imported goods.

Greta Thunberg is always perpetually pissed, always angry about something, and always the angry little climate wench.

I do agree that the media tends to ask gotcha questions but some policy and position questions do get sprinkled in.

THAT's the criticism! Thanks for finally acknowledging that. As the author wrote:

It's a shame that more political press people don't acknowledge their own roles in why some candidates, like Harris, might be reluctant to speak with the press and instead try to reach voters directly through other means.

Even if I believe she should be met with hard questions, I wouldn't encourage her to waste her time doing formal interviews full of dumb and biased ones.

And here's what Fox News' White House correspondent really wants Americans to know about Harris' policies:

At Tuesday's press briefing, Doocy had asked Jean-Pierre, "Since when does the vice president have what sounds like a Southern accent?"

"Is that how she talks in meetings here?"

The reason it's important for presidential candidates to do interviews and hold pressers is so that the media can pin them down on policies and position toons so that voters have the information they neeed to make an informed vote.

According to you, not voters. You obviously haven't read the criticism in the article or you wouldn't be posting tangential garbage unrelated to what the media actually asks as questions.

I found myself genuinely frustrated for Vice President Kamala Harris when CNN's Dana Bash asked her about presidential rival Donald Trump's inane claim that she only "turned Black" in recent years out of political expediency.

Harris' response was perfect: "Same old tired playbook. Next question, please."

I found the interview a bit disappointing given all Bash ultimately did was pose questions framed around GOP talking points.

The question about Harris' identity is one example. Another is Bash's insistence on pressing Harris about why she no longer backs a fracking ban she proposed four years ago during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.

One more is Bash's questions to Walz in the final third of the interview, specifically the one about his wife's fertility treatments.

"I wish I didn't have to do this, but I spoke about our infertility issues because it's health, and families know this. I spoke about the treatments that were available to us," Walz explained. "That's quite a contrast with folks that are trying to take those rights away from us. I don't think Americans are cutting hairs on IVF or IUI; I think they're cutting hairs on the idea of an abortion ban and the ability to deny families a chance for a beautiful child."

His answer on fertility treatments was more dignified than the question posed to him.

Bash's questions, like those of so many other reporters of her ilk, suggest the real aim was to catch the candidate in a "gotcha" moment as opposed to enlightening the voters about any specific policy proposals from the Harris/Walz ticket.

If policy were such a concern, we would have heard less about fracking and perhaps more about Harris' housing policy, which she just gave a speech on.

And the beauty of that is she has the money to do so.

Putin backs Harris for president
Posted by gracieamazed

I love seeing the rationalization of Harris dodging the press as a good thing

Does she dodge voters, or does she take her case directly to them instead of dealing with idiots like you who only want to ask questions in hopes of getting a "gotcha" take?

If I were her, I wouldn't do interviews either. She's asking voters for their support, not the US media.

Funny how that concept escapes your incessant griping Strawlighter. No, actually it isn't funny, it's simply on brand for a biased tool such as yourself.

Why do you care? You have no intention of even considering voting for her anyway.

Exactly. His only interest in the question is the belief that if enough voters find Harris' ignoring of the media off-putting it will harm her electoral chances.

As the author noted:

And isn't this all supposed to be about informing voters?

It's a shame that more political press people don't acknowledge their own roles in why some candidates, like Harris, might be reluctant to speak with the press and instead try to reach voters directly through other means.

Even if I believe she should be met with hard questions, I wouldn't encourage her to waste her time doing formal interviews full of dumb and biased ones.

they need to be able to actually talk to her.

They have.

I thought

No you didn't. You seldom do before jamming your foot into your mouth.

DEI

Polly wanna cracker? Oh I forgot, Polly is a cracker.

The article makes a salient point: When are white presidential candidates asked questions about their racial identity simply because an opponent has made a remark about it, and how do such questions help inform voters about the issues that actually concern their own lives instead of the tripe coming from Trump's bigoted mouth?

The correct answers would be 'never' and 'they don't'.

Trump attacked Joe Biden for any number of things, but questioning his "whiteness" was never one of them. This nation has now seen two individuals who identify as black win the Democratic nomination for President. Donald Trump has not only questioned each person's, racial composition, he's questioned their citizenship - solely because each had a parent (or parents) that weren't born in America.

So take your 'DEI' take and shove it were the rest of your insipid ideas emanate.

Ernesto Apreza, special assistant to Biden and press secretary to Harris, noted via his personal X account, by the time Harris sat down with Bash last Thursday, she had already "done 80 interviews this year alone."

I suppose I can align with Joan Walsh of The Nation's categorization that Bash "did adequately," but overall I found the interview a bit disappointing given all Bash ultimately did was pose questions framed around GOP talking points.

Bash's questions, like those of so many other reporters of her ilk, suggest the real aim was to catch the candidate in a "gotcha" moment as opposed to enlightening the voters about any specific policy proposals from the Harris/Walz ticket.

If policy were such a concern, we would have heard less about fracking and perhaps more about Harris' housing policy, which she just gave a speech on.

Again, here we have a presidential candidate running ads on an issue often largely ignored in national politics (in spite of the national housing crisis), but instead of hearing more questions about that, viewers were subjected to ones about Trump's attempt to reboot birtherism and semantics over what treatment Tim Walz's wife underwent to help expand their family.

Yet, in post-interview critiques, Harris remains the main target.

The Wall Street Journal's Molly Ball claimed that Harris didn't really answer questions about "flip-flopping" and described the interview as "mid." (For what it's worth, she described "mid" as Gen Z lingo when in fact it is just Black lingo that white people found hella late.)

As for Ball and the co-host's quip that Harris "might have to start answering some questions" in future interviews, here's hoping she will be asked better, more thoughtful ones. I'm glad Harris did the interview if only to shut some people up, but for all the hype placed on Harris doing this interview and even though CNN may have gotten a small but much-needed ratings bump, the public is no better informed about what kind of president she might be after its completion.

Harris is also setting a goal of receiving 25 million new small business applications in her first term, up from the record 19 million that were filed under the Biden-Harris administration."

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley was slow to agree. "Well, that may be a good idea. It's hard to see how she's going to move forward with it."

The Harris campaign's official X account shared a video clip of Varney praising the vice president's new plan.

They weren't having any of that. IOW, they didn't value getting a better education for their kids.

I understand completely. Private schools don't put up with what public schools have no choice but to deal with. And parental involvement is expected in most parochial school settings that I've been in.

MBlue hits on why the voucher program in practice can very well be discriminatory towards the very communities it was supposed to serve. Private schools aren't idiots. They will always keep their tuition costs higher than the state stipend, giving them a non-race based, financial shutoff valve to keep students they don't want outside their gates.

CC finished tonight's game against LA with 24 points, 10 assists, and 10 rebounds for her 2nd triple double of the season as the Fever win 93-86.

Ho hum ....

1-3 is glorious?!?

And that single Sky win was by a single point after they overcame a 15 point deficit.

Friday night's game found the Fever up 27 midway thru the 4th before benching their starters.

However, Angel Reese was left in the game to chase points to maintain her double-double record totals. And she succeeded, scoring a lay up with about a minute left that got her above 10 points, long after the outcome was decided - against the Fever's bench players.

Clark is obviously a key reason for the ratings jump across the WNBA this season, as out of the 21 games that have drawn at least one million viewers, 18 of them have included Clark and the Fever. Reese has brought plenty of fanfare of her own to the WNBA, so it's no surprise that the late-season matchup featuring the duo shattered WNBA television records.

It's been a particularly strong season for WNBA basketball on the ION network, as games this season have averaged 639,000 viewers, which represents a 123% increase compared to the average of 287,000 viewers last year.

Just another signpost on the road being traveled by one of the most popular athletes on the planet and her team, now playoff bound for the first time in 8 seasons.

Ebs,

My parents paid for my Catholic school education for 9 years - Kindergarten thru 8th grade. They wanted me to go to a Jesuit high school that cost $5,000 per year back in 1974. I said, that's crazy and went to my then public suburban high school and ended up at Notre Dame anyway. Truth is my dad was then a school teacher and mom didn't work. Either we didn't eat or they'd have had to go into debt for me to stay in a private high school.

That aside, one other aspect of how the voucher program morphed from something designed to help disadvantaged blacks into a funding-sucker of the public schools where 91 percent of black students actually attend, making it harder still for them to compete with white students receiving objectively superior educations offering a greater variety of class choices - especially for advanced, higher achieving students.

This is a "system" that was originated to assist lower income and minority students that now primarily serves wealthier white families have their private school tuitions subsidized by all taxpayers. And since it has a disproportionate impact on blacks and other minorities, it has become another example of a government-instituted, unintentionally-biased program that harms mainly blacks/poor and helps predominantly whites.

This is what systemic racism/bias/classism looks like and it still exists in today's society just like it has since America became America.

"He's taken himself out of [the election], he's entered legacy territory with some voters, they've seen he's passing the torch," David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center told HuffPost. "So in that sense, it's not point in time job approval, it's more the totality of his administration over the last four years."

Paleologos compared Biden to a retiring athlete getting a last round of applause from the hometown fans: "You forget the bad games and you remember the time when the athlete performed to your liking or exceeded your expectations. It's the same kind of dynamic."

Beyond Suffolk, polling from Quinnipiac University and Gallup has also found big increases in Biden's standing. In Quinnipiac's polls, he went from a net -18 approval in mid-July to -7 in a survey conducted last week. Gallup had him jumping from -22 net approval in July to -10 in August.

Paleologos pointed to Biden's gains with independent women, who have tilted increasingly Democratic since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Biden went from 47% approval to 58% approval with the group in Suffolk's polling.

It's turning out that Biden isn't quite so despised as Republicans contend as Joe's popularity is leaving Trump's wallowing in the dust of his overused bronzing powder. If these trends were analogized into a Magic 8-Ball answer to the question is Kamala Harris going to be elected President(?), the answer - at this moment - most certainly would be "Signs point to yes".

[T]he program has become a subsidy for predominantly wealthy, white suburban families. The program's average recipient is a white female, who has never attended public school, from a family earning more than $99,000 a year. The shift has taken a huge bite out of state funding for public school - an estimated $600 million this year.

Looking forward, experts and critics in Indiana question whether the state can afford to subsidize sometimes wealthy private schools to the tune of $1.6 billion (since the program started) without devastating the public schools that provide the vast majority of the state's education.

When the voucher program first launched in 2011, 24 percent of voucher users were black students. Today, that demographic has dropped to 9 percent. At the same time, the number of white students on vouchers has increased from 46 percent to 64 percent as the program has expanded.

In 2023, the eligibility was changed again to include families with incomes up to 400 percent of the free and reduced lunch threshold. The result was that a family of four that makes over $222,000 now qualifies. Today, there are more students receiving vouchers whose families make more than $100,000 than those making less than $50,000.

"It started out low-income, but it is no longer low-income," State Rep. Cherish Pryor said. "It's now a way for some of the wealthiest individuals or upper-income individuals to pay for their child's private education."

Pryor also voiced concern for a lack of diversity and fairness. The fact that private schools do not have to "let in every student that presents themselves to the school" raises equity issues.

"You're getting taxpayer dollars - you should be accountable for every single penny that you spend," she said. "But I don't think it's fair to starve our traditional schools and then expect for their performances to be stellar when we haven't given them the proper resources to have a stellar educational system."

This is another example of how something supposedly implemented to help minority - nominally poorer black students - has been transformed into another wealth-transfer to predominately upper-middle class white families who previously paid 100% of the cost to send their kids to private/parochial schools. Instead of helping disadvantaged minorities - as these voucher programs were originally sold to the public - now the program benefits whites at the expense of poorer blacks, and becomes another example - whether intentionally or unintentionally - of tacit systemic bias, nee racism, in its usage.

What are her platform planks?

Biden has spent nearly 40% of presidency on vacation.

Yet again, more creative fiction from the halls of Fox News. Doesn't a $783M payout for lying prove to you not to believe anything they tell you?

Guess you're not that smart.

From legalization until 2019, Organized Crime charges for weed distro went up 400%

Not in Colorado. I'm surprised at you, presenting anecdotes without any links to confirmed studies.

In terms of crime, law enforcement agencies continue to combat illicit market activity. Because of the nature of this type of activity being inherently hidden from regulation and oversight, it remains challenging to quantify the size of the illicit market in Colorado; the state can only track and report the indicators of illegal activity, such as arrests and seizures. The number of plants seized on public lands and the number of out-of-state seizures of marijuana sourced from Colorado has fluctuated significantly over time. The number of court filings for marijuana-related felonies or charges related to the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act has also fluctuated -- in 2019, the number of charges was close to or slightly below 2012 numbers.

I'm not doubting the gist of what you're saying, but the most comprehensive studies done in Colorado do not support what you imply.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, and Rep. Robert Garcia (Calif.), the top Democrat on its subcommittee for national security, the border and foreign affairs, wrote to Trump that they were making the request as a result of a Washington Post article published last month.

"Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president - and a current candidate for president - took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator," the letter signed by the two Democrats reads. "Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any fund from the Egyptian president or government."

Trump campaign officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump campaign declined to answer detailed questions from The Post for the story last month but said the Justice Department investigation found no wrongdoing and was closed.

In early 2019, as Mueller was preparing to deliver his report on Russian interference and close his office, his team obtained records from Egyptian banking officials. The records revealed a cash withdrawal of nearly $10 million - an amount almost identical to what the intelligence indicated - from an account tied to the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, The Post reported. The withdrawal occurred in January 2017, five days before Trump took office.

The discovery intensified the probe. Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in D.C. who took over the case from Mueller proposed subpoenaing Trump's bank records from a period that included Trump's first months in the White House to see if any of the money from Cairo could be seen landing in Trump's accounts, The Post reported.

But months after the handoff, The Post's investigation found, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining those records. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump's then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probe. Michael Sherwin, the then-acting U.S. attorney who closed the case, told The Post he did so for lack of evidence.

There simply is no bottom to Trump's corruption of America's government in service of his own greed and avarice. Trump's DOJ really was his personal defense team and it will only get worse if he gets another try at it.

And the FBI is saying they can overcome VPNs to find the originating IPs as well.

Wow, I wouldn't want to be a Russian propaganda pusher trying to influence our elections on political news based sites. Club Fed is allegedly quite unforgiving these days ... or at least that's what some are saying ....