Category: News

The Washington Wizards were in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, which was for the best given what transpired during the day in the nation’s capital as the U.S. Capitol building was stormed by pro-Trump terrorists who occupied the building for four-plus hours in an effort to stop the certification of election results.

The NBA chose to continue with games on Wednesday night, including the Wizards facing the Sixers, as players chose to play after spending the day, like most everyone in the country, watching what was unfolding in Washington and reacting in real time — with many calling out the hypocrisy of the very different police response to an actual insurrection compared to Black Lives Matter protests over the summer. Heat and Celtics players even issued a statement saying they chose to play to provide entertainment for the people, but also wanted to make sure they kept speaking out on injustices.

In Philly, Bradley Beal and Joel Embiid certainly put on quite the show as the Wizards star guard put up a career-high 60 points, but it wasn’t enough to take down the Sixers who got a 141-136 win behind 38 points from Embiid.

Beal did most of his damage in the first three quarters of play, as he had 57 going into the final quarter and had everyone thinking about an historic type of night.

He rested for almost half of the quarter, though, as Scott Brooks rode with his three point guard lineup as they helped finish erase what was once a 21-point deficit to take the lead in the fourth. Beal returned but was unable to find the hot hand he’d become engulfed in in the third, finishing with “just” 60 points on 20-of-35 shooting (7-for-10 from three) with five assists and seven rebounds. As the Sixers found ways to get just enough stops late, Washington was unable to keep pace and Philly pulled away for the win.

That was largely the result of the play of Embiid and Seth Curry, as the newest member of the Sixers had 28 for his best night yet with his new team, hitting 6-of-7 from three-point range, all of those threes coming in the first half.

Embiid did a lot of the closing work for the Sixers, most notably this three-point play in a tie game followed by a great look to Ben Simmons out of a double team to help seal it.

The All-NBA center finished the night with 38 points, eight rebounds, five assists, three steals, and three blocks, doing a little bit of everything for a Philly team that needed all of it against the offensive onslaught from Beal. The win moves the Sixers to 7-1 on the season as they continue their hot start, and despite the best efforts of Beal, Washington falls to 2-6.

There’s a lot to unpack about the events of Wednesday, January 6, which was supposed to be a simple one: A joint session of Congress was supposed to formally declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. But supporters of Donald Trump ruined it, storming the Capitol, rioting and looting, even leading to one person’s death — all while DC police did next to nothing. Many Republicans, including ones who’d questioned the legitimacy of the election, unequivocally denounced the violence and called for civility. Others, though, tried to spin it.

Fox News’s coverage of the day’s events were a hotbed of rabid speculation, with numerous commentators parroting this idea: maybe outside groups infiltrated the violent mob of Trump supporters. On Lou Dobbs Tonight, for instance, the defiantly pro-Trump host let Representative Mo Brooks try to blame Antifa.

“Obvious videotape suggests that Trump supporters themselves were involved,” he admitted. “But it could any number of other groups — anarchists, what have you — that could have taken advantage of this opportunity, to try and vandalize the United States Capitol.”

Dobbs seemed to agree, though he couldn’t help but admit there was “no evidence or proof,” and that they “have nothing more than speculation at this point.”

Fair enough! Sarah Palin, famous for being the late John McCain’s failed running mate in 2008, also swung by the network to offer her two cents. She blamed the media for “a lot of it,” then repeated the idea of instigators that made things somehow worse than it was already. “I think a lot of it is the Antifa folks,” she said. She also had no evidence, but she claimed she’d “been sent pictures of the same characters who were captured in images today, stormed the Capitol, as had been protests on the other side of politics earlier in the summer.”

And of course, Tucker Carlson was not going to let the night’s show end without repeating that line as well. He interviewed someone who’d been involved in the protests, who claimed that “the rumor is that possibly Antifa insurrectionists possibly could have infiltrated some of these movements, maybe instigated some of this.”

So there you go! Of course, it’s hard to figure out which ones were maybe Antifa when so many of the rioters in the many videos openly brag about what they’re doing, all while praising Trump. But at least they got that speculation out on the air before there was any evidence to support it.

It was a disturbing scene in Washington on Wednesday, as a group of far-right Trump supporters forced their way into the U.S. Capitol building just as officials were preparing to certify the results of the Electoral College votes that will officially make Joe Biden the next President of the United States, an outcome that is inevitable despite futile efforts from a segment of Republications to overturn those results.

As the scene descended into chaos, the NBA world responded to the images they were seeing in the media and didn’t hesitate to call out the hypocrisy in the double-standard that was applied to Black Lives Matter protesters, as they were roundly vilified, fired upon, and arrested en masse amid demonstrations against police violence around the country in the past year. The contrast was particularly stark and fresh as it came a day after the officers who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back were announced to be facing no charges.

Before tip-off of the Heat-Celtics game in Miami on Wednesday night, news emerged that the Celtics were preparing a statement on the day’s events, but that they were still planning on participating in the scheduled game.

As they have in the past, the two teams joined in kneeling during the national anthem, a symbolic gesture showing the stark contrast in the widespread vitriol they have received for that peaceful form of protest.

NBA players and teams have set something of a precedent for how to respond to fraught political situations like this, having banded together in Orlando to show solidarity as a group in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting and others like it.

Missouri Senator Joshua Hawley’s rise to the top of the MAGA pile has been quick. Not long ago he was an obscure figure on the far right. Now he’s gotten so big that he’s been denounced by one of his hometown papers, who called him out for playing a key role in what turned out to be the failed coup by fellow supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump.

The Kansas City Star, published in the town where Hawley attended private school, released a scathing op-ed about someone who’s become one of the state’s least favorite sons. “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley,” wrote the paper’s editorial board. “Hawley’s actions in the last week had such impact that he deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that’s been shed.”

The Star points out that Hawley, who sworn in as a Missouri senator last January, was the first to say he would oppose Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. That joint session that was interrupted by Trump supporters, who stormed the Capitol, bringing Washington to its knees, even resulting in the death of a woman.

“That action,” the Board wrote, “motivated by ambition, set off much that followed — the rush of his fellow presidential aspirant Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other members of the Sedition Caucus to put a show of loyalty to the president above all else.”

They also claimed that Hawley and his fellow Republicans “knew all along that his claims were bogus.” They added:

“Now that they’ve seen exactly where those lies have landed us, decency demands that they try to prevent further violence by making clear that Joe Biden did not win by cheating. Please, gentlemen, surprise us.”

They also pointed out that Hawley sent out a fundraising email in the middle of the chaos that resulted.

As the grim day wore on, a picture taken of Hawley that morning went viral. It showed him raising a defiant fist-bump to the Trump supporters who would soon start one of the darkest days in D.C. history.

The Orlando Magic hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night looking to build on their 5-2 start to the season that has been, in part, the result of the excellent play of Markelle Fultz thus far.

The fourth-year point guard has averaged 14.3 points, 6.1 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game as he has been asked to take on the largest role of his career as the Magic saw veteran point guard D.J. Augustin leave in free agency this summer. Fultz’s aggression going downhill and initiating the Orlando offense has been huge this season, and while his field goal percentage is still just 39.6 percent he is showing great improvement at the free throw line (88.9 percent) and is the point of attack for the Magic’s excellent defense.

In the first quarter against the Cavs, the Magic saw disaster strike as Fultz planted his left leg on a drive and fell to the ground grasping at his left knee that appeared to bend awkwardly.

Fultz was helped to the back, not putting any weight on his left leg, and for now we simply hope it isn’t as bad as it looked in real time. The Magic quickly ruled him out for the rest of the game with a left knee injury, with tests to come to determine the severity.

We will provide further updates on Fultz’s status when they become available.

Twitter has let Donald Trump get away with a lot, on the argument that he’s the president and his comments, no matter how many violate their rules, are always in the public interest. But on Wednesday, they decided he’d finally crossed a line. Trump’s account was suspended over a pair of tweets pertaining to his supporters violently storming the Capitol, trying to stop a joint session of Congress that sought to formally name Joe Biden the 46th president. The suspension only lasts 12 hours, and it requires the removal of the offending tweets.

Two Trump tweets were singled out as being too rich even for his special account. The first was a video in which he called for an end to the violence but spend most of the time repeating baseless voter fraud allegations, as well as praising the people who’d caused havoc — including a woman’s death — in the Capitol. The second found him doubling down on that praise, saying their actions were the result of the 2020 election not being overturned.

On top of suspending Trump’s account, they also issued a stern warning: Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.” The social media giant had previously stated that, soon as his presidency is over on January 20, Trump is no longer protected by presidential rules, suggesting his account may not last much longer than his presidency.

Twitter has been harder on Trump of late. Since the election, they’ve regularly flagged Trump tweets spreading misinformation about ballots. Moreover, the two tweets that prompted the suspension were removed from his feed.

The eyes of the world were on Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Amid what was supposed to be a procedural event in which the United States Congress certified the results of the 2020 presidential election, a number of pro-Trump, anti-democracy terrorists engulfed the Capitol Building it what will go down as one of the darkest days in the nation’s history.

Words cannot put into context the sheer horror of a number of individuals, egged on by a president who refuses to accept that he lost the election to Joe Biden, breaking into the building, forcing their way into congressional offices, and marching through the Rotunda, some of them armed, all of them eager to overthrow democracy via an act of sedition. It caused the country to come to a screeching halt, and in the aftermath, a number of NBA coaches used their platforms before Wednesday’s slate of games to opine on what happened.

As is always the case when the time comes for coaches to speak out on societal issues, two of the most thoughtful, incisive answers that were given about the day’s events came from Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers and Atlanta Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce. Both spoke out about race and the current state of politics in America, with both remarking that the demonstrations were “sad.”

While his team is not in the nation’s capital on Wednesday, Wizards coach Scott Brooks also chimed in on what occurred in the city that his franchise calls home. Brooks said that “on many different fronts, it’s sad” what happened, and that everything that happened in D.C. was “disgusting.”

And in the news that will come to no surprise to people who are aware of the political leanings of NBA coaches, both Stan Van Gundy of the New Orleans Pelicans and Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors use their platforms to offer up skating rebukes of the President of the United States. While the Warriors have off on Wednesday, Kern used his Twitter account, as he is so comfortable doing, to retweet a call that Donald Trump should be removed from the presidency immediately. Van Gundy also used his Twitter account to speak out, but expressed that he viewed everything as “discouraging” before the Pelicans host the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The coaches joined a number of current and former players in speaking out throughout the day.

On Wednesday, what was supposed to be a mere formality — a joint session of Congress counting the nation’s electoral votes and officially naming Joe Biden president — dissolved into chaos. Supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building, disrupting the session. Congress members ran for their lives. Someone was shot. Close Trump associates, like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Jim Jordan — who had fanned the flames of baseless voter fraud accusations — tried to talk the rioters down. But when Trump recorded his own video, he spent most of his time making it worse.

That video isn’t as easy seen as it once was. Facebook and YouTube removed it, mere hours after it was posted. Guy Rosen, Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity, released a statement, saying, “We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.”

In the video, Trump didn’t condemn his supporters but praised them. “I know you’re pain,” he began, seeming to channel Bill Clinton. He repeated false claims that the election was “stolen,” that it was “fraudulent,” and that it was a “landslide,” not a mere win. “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order,” he said, adding, “We love you. You’re very special.”

Facebook has mostly refrained from removing Trump’s posts. An exception came in August, when they deleted a video in which he spread COVID-19 misinformation, claiming, falsely, that children are “almost immune,” and that they “have much stronger immunes system than [adults].” On the other hand, they refused to do the same to a post in which the 45th president suggested using violence on Black Lives Matters demonstrators.

In strange-but-true news, the last known surviving spouse of a Civil War veteran just died last month.

How is that even possible? The U.S. Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865, and no one who survived the war is still alive. However, there are two things that make it possible: 1) As much as we might like to imagine that Americans fighting over the right to own Black people was super ancient history, the Civil War was just 160 years ago. That’s two 80-year-olds living back to back. 2) Some people live long lives and have unlikely marriages, which makes for fascinating historical stories like this one.

Helen Viola Jackson died December 16 at age 101. She was 17 when she married 93-year-old James Bolin, a widower who had served as a private in the 14th Missouri Cavalry of the Union army, in 1936.

A 17-year-old marrying a 93-year-old definitely raises some eyebrows, but the story is actually kind of sweet.

A statement shared by the Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival offers context to the union:

“She remained largely silent, even among her close family and friends about her link to the 19th century War Between the States, until three years ago, when she decided to share her complete life story as she was working on the details of her funeral with her minister.

Jackson grew up in a family with 10 children and met her husband at church near her home during the height of the Great Depression.

The Daughters of the Union Veterans confirmed Jackson’s marriage using historical documents, including a signed affidavit from the last living witness to the nuptials.

‘I never wanted to share my story with the public,’ Jackson said in an oral history recording in 2018. ‘I didn’t feel that it was that important and I didn’t want a bunch of gossip about it.’

James Bolin was a 93-year-old widower when Jackson’s father volunteered her to stop by his house each day and assist him with chores as she headed home from school.

Bolin who was a private in the 14th Missouri Cavalry and served until the end of the war in Co. F, did not believe in accepting charity and after a lengthy period of time-asked Jackson for her hand in marriage as a way to provide for her future.

‘He said that he would leave me his Union pension,’ Jackson explained in an interview with Historian Hamilton C. Clark. ‘It was during the depression and times were hard. He said that it might be my only way of leaving the farm.’

Jackson, who was 17 years old, married Bolin in front of a few witnesses at his Niangua, Missouri home on September 4, 1936. Bolin recorded the wedding in his personal Bible, which is now part of a rotating exhibit on Jackson that has traveled to several museum locations, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri.

Although the two were married, Jackson explained that the nuptials were on her terms. She still wanted to live on her family farm with her immediate family and she wanted to keep her last name, sharing the information with few individuals outside of those who had served as witnesses.

‘How do you explain that you have married someone with such a difference in age,’ she said at the 2018 Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. ‘I had great respect for Mr. Bolin and I did not want him to be hurt by the scorn of wagging tongues.’

Jackson was wed to Bolin from 1936 until his passing on June 18, 1939. However, she never officially applied for his pension as one of her step-daughters threatened to ruin her reputation.

‘All a woman had in 1939 was her reputation,’ she continued in her oral history interview. ‘I didn’t want them all to think that I was a young woman who had married an old man to take advantage of him.’

Jackson did not share her story from 1939 until the winter of 2017. She never remarried and no children were born to the union.

‘Mr. Bolin really cared for me,’ she said in an interview for ‘Our America Magazine’. ‘He wanted me to have a future and he was so kind.'”

It’s a bit sad that Jackson never applied for the pension that was the reason for the marriage in the first place, but life is complicated.

More than anything, this story is a reminder that it just wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. nearly split in two over the southern states’ desire to maintain the evil institution of slavery. Someone who was married to a soldier in that war was alive a month ago.

Today, we watched a violent storming of the U.S. Capitol by people carrying the Confederate flag, in a surreal throwback to the people who marched on the wrong side of history 160 years ago.

Tomi Lahren isn’t right about a lot of things. She’s also prone to meltdowns when she is. But on Wednesday, as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some people dug up tweets that proved just how wrong she was. Back in early November, after the election but before the presidential race was called for Joe Biden, the far right commentator had a prediction:

“If @realDonaldTrump were to lose (he won’t) his supporters will go to work tomorrow just as we do everyday,” Lahren tweeted on November 3. “When Biden loses, his ‘supporters’ will likely loot and riot. Tells you everything you need to know!”

Well, for starters, Donald Trump did lose. But got something even more glaringly wrong: She thought it was Biden supporters who would loot and riot. What happened instead was Trump supporters attempted to stop a joint formality in which Congress amasses each state’s certified election results and officially declares the winner — in this case, Joe Biden.

Things got ugly quickly. Armed Trump supporters ran amok inside. Members of Congress were forced to flee for their lives. Someone was reportedly shot and killed. Eventually — some two hours too late — the National Guard were called in. In short, whatever Lahren fantasized Biden supporters would do was nothing compared to what Trump supporters actually did.

And so social media came for the Tomi Lahren of only two months ago, to show how she was more wrong than usual.

But there was more! People dug up another tweet from around the same time, in which Lahren predicted this: “No we aren’t going to loot or riot, but we are for damn sure going to keep fighting! You’re not gonna steal this so brazenly.”

That also got torched.

And then there was the Tomi tweet from the summer, during the Black Lives Matter protests, which never got close to devolving into the kind of mess still happening.

In short, Tomi’s probably mad

But she actually wasn’t. Instead, she tweeted through the terror unfolding in Washington, making bad false equivalencies instead of acknowledging that she is just wrong.