Nashville Officer Charged with Criminal Homicide in Shooting of Black Man

Nashville officer Andrew Delke was charged with criminal homicide for fatally shooting Daniel Hambrick, 25, in the back as he ran from the officer. Delke’s attorney says he plans to plead not guilty in the case.

In late July, Delke was in the area looking for stolen vehicles and became suspicious of an Impala who he says “conceded the right of way by not pulling out in front of him.” After running the plates on the car and determining it wasn’t stolen, Delke continued to follow the car to develop a reason to stop it. When Delke parked his car in a nearby apartment complex, he says that’s when he saw Hambrick running away.

Video footage shows Delke chasing Hambrick and in a matter of seconds, the man falls to the ground after being shot. Delke claims that Hambrick was holding a gun, which he told him to drop, and when he didn’t, the officer shot four times, hitting Hambrick in the head, back, and left torso. Authorities recovered a gun from the scene.

Delke turned himself in on Thursday (September 27) and he was released on $25,000 bail.

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UN General Assembly Laughs at Trump’s “Extraordinary Progress” Speech

Donald Trump garnered some unexpected laughs after telling the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (September 25) about the “extraordinary progress” of his administration in a speech.

He started off by saying, “One year ago I stood before you for the first time in this grand hall. I addressed the threats facing our world, and I presented a vision to achieve a brighter future for all of humanity. Today I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we’ve made.”

He added, “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America’s… So true.”

After hearing laughter in the crowd, Trump responded by saying, “I didn’t expect that reaction but that’s okay.”

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Nike has donated three times as much money to Republicans as Democrats this year

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between Nike’s branding and the sporting good giant’s political leanings.

While Nike has caught heat from right-leaning supporters for its decision to feature Colin Kaepernick in the company’s latest ad campaign, a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics — a non-profit, non-partisan research group focusing on money in politics — shows that Nike employees and its political action committee have donated more than three times as much money to republican candidates as democratic challengers for the 2018 election season.

In all, Nike has given $424,000 to the GOP compared to $122,000 to Democrats. The findings follow a recent trend showing Nike has donated more to Republicans than Democrats in every election cycle since 2010 with the exception of 2016.

According to the report, nearly half of all donated funds from Nike employees has come from co-founder Phil Knight and his family.

The Knight family has also given $1.5 million to republican Knute Buehler in his race for Oregon governor against incumbent democrat Kate Brown. The contribution is the largest individual donation to an Oregon candidate since the state started electronically tracking such dealings in 2006.

Nike World Headquarters are located Beaverton, Oregon.

Among Buehler’s platforms are lower corporate taxes and repealing Oregon’s sanctuary state laws for undocumented immigrants.

Compared to its rival companies, Nike has donated far more to politicians than it’s competitors. Both Nike and New Balance have each given more than $1.2 million to Republican candidates since 2010, however Nike has also donated more than $900,000 to Democrats over that same time span. By comparison, Adidas and Under Armour have donated less than $600,000 combined to both parties since 2010.

Whatever blowback Nike received following the unveiling on the ad campaign with Kaepernick, it hasn’t done nearly anything to slow down the company’s growth. Nike’s stock recently hit an all-time high and has gone up nearly five percent since the Kaepernick ads launched in early September. That translates to an additional $6 billion in market value, per CBS News.

On the year, Nike is up 36 percent and is performing better than any other company listed on Dow’s index of 30 blue-chip stocks.

Kaepernick is currently signed on a long-term deal with Nike that pays him millions each year and is on par with contracts for other star NFL players.

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Long Beach Rapper “Mario C” Facing 3 Years for Threating Mayor on Twitter

Long Beach rapper Mario C admits that his online trolling may have gone too far, as he’s now facing years in prison for threatening Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia.

Back in July, Mario, real name Mario Chheng, wrote, “Run up into your city halls n let off a thousand rounds.” A few hours later, he wrote, “I’ll join lbpd soon. N I’ll murk our mayor within a year.”

Chheng told the Long Beach Post that he was just trolling and didn’t intend to do anything to the mayor. He explained, “I was saying it, but there was no real intent behind it. On the scale of probability it wasn’t anywhere near above the 50 percent mark. It was just more so having the balls to say it, but at the same time I’m saying it behind a computer screen, so there’s no real balls involved.”

During his interview with the Post, Chheng admitted that he was annoyed that his posts weren’t getting the attention he wanted, so he decided to take his trolling to a different level. He stated, “I feel like people are watching my stuff but nobody is responding or reacting, so I’m just thinking it’s kind of weird, so it kind of forces me to say more and more outrageous stuff — just to get a reaction. I got a reaction. It just wasn’t the one I was expecting.”

The rapper also admitted that he was jumped by a group of people after previously claiming to be “the biggest Crip in Long Beach.”

Chheng was released on $50,000 bond after being charged with charged with one felony count of threatening a public official, which faces up to three years in prison.

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Omarosa Leaks New Tape of Trump Talking About Hillary and “Russia Story”

Omarosa Manigault-Newman released another tape of Donald Trump on Monday, September 10, and this time around, the president is speaking about Hillary Clinton and the “real Russia story.”

In the tape, Trump can be heard accusing Hillary Clinton of colluding with the Russians ahead of the 2016 election. He states, “I think Hillary is getting killed now with Russia. The real Russia story is Hillary and collusion,” adding, “Somebody told me it was $9 million they spent on the phony report. Yeah, someone just said she’s far worse for the country than we thought, she didn’t know her own campaign was spending 9, did you see?”

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Nike’s Colin Kaepernick TV ad is inspirational, not controversial

The question Friday morning wasn’t whether President Trump would tweet about the debut of Colin Kaepernick’s Nike commercial but whether it would be the first thing he would tweet about after waking up.

And there it was, first thing on the presidential docket at 6:56 a.m.

“What was Nike thinking?” Trump tweeted rather briefly and directly.

But if you actually watched the commercial that aired on NBC during the third quarter of season-opening games between the Falcons and Eagles, it’s pretty obvious what Nike is thinking – and it’s not whether to take a knee during the national anthem.

All you need to know about Nike’s ultimate goal with the Kaepernick campaign is contained in the ad’s first minute. It begins with a skateboarder falling off a rail, a child with no legs on a wrestling mat, an African-American boy who couldn’t be 10 years old running down a dirt road, a young shadowboxing woman wearing hijab, a surfer, a Pop Warner football game and a blond girl playing high school football against boys.

This isn’t about consumers Nike might lose in their anger over Kaepernick. It’s about cultivating an entire generation of consumers who are up for grabs at a moment where the lines between culture, politics and activism are blurry – a notion that might make older people uncomfortable but is now the coming-of-age reality for anyone under 18.

Ironically, if you take Kaepernick out of the ad, there is nothing controversial about the images and words contained inside of it. “Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy; ask if they’re crazy enough” seems like it could be a tag line to practically any Nike ad campaign, a direct link to the “Just Do it” slogan the company is celebrating with a 30th anniversary push.

Every one of those images connects to the overall theme of being different, of overcoming some type of obstacle or stereotype, which fits in well with why Kaepernick is here in the first place rather than playing quarterback in the NFL.

But it also seems designed to appeal to teenagers, without making it necessary to align with Kaepernick’s political and social justice views.

Yes, it’s Kaepernick’s voice and his image at the end, walking down a city street wearing a black mock turtleneck underneath a tan coat. But there is nothing in the ad that connects him to football or the NFL, even though his own backstory – being adopted by white parents, getting one college scholarship offer from Nevada and ultimately quarterbacking a team to the Super Bowl – contains some of the same inspirational threads as the people he’s narrating over.

Moreover, the commercial’s only allusion to the protest he sparked is subtle. As the camera brings Kaepernick into view from behind – you recognize him by his Afro – he’s standing and looking at a waving American flag being projected onto a building.

Then, as Kaepernick walks out of the frame, the images of the young people from earlier in the ad appear on those buildings and the words are flashed on the screen: “It’s only crazy until you do it. Just do it.”

Casting Kaepernick in this light is interesting because he’s the only person in the ad who isn’t shown playing a sport or wearing some type of Nike gear. That seems intentional, as if to acknowledge that he’s moved beyond the sports context and into the zeitgeist of these political and cultural times.

And when you think about what Nike’s actually trying to accomplish here, it makes perfect sense.

Though Nike has been the country’s preeminent sneaker and sports apparel company for a generation, Adidas has steadily been making headway, particularly with younger people. In the second quarter of 2018, Adidas posted a $485 million profit, shattering Wall Street expectations. That followed nine consecutive quarters in which the company’s sales increased by at least 20%.

Fueled by its alliance with pop culture stars such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, Adidas has made up significant ground and surpassed Jordan Brand (a Nike subsidiary) last year as No. 2 in the sneaker game.

Nike didn’t really have a comparable face, and many of its preeminent athletes they’ve been associated with outside the NBA (such as Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Serena Williams) are at the back end of their careers and don’t necessarily identify with teenagers. But that’s what shoe companies have to do: Figure out not just who their customers are now, but who their customers are going to be in five years, 10 years and beyond.

That’s who this is aimed at. We’re on the cusp of welcoming a generation of kids into adulthood who grew up with politics being injected into practically every area of their lives. Whether that’s a good thing will be for others to determine, but it’s a moment that’s happening and Nike is looking for a way to capitalize on it.

Kaepernick probably won’t sell a lot of shoes to my contemporaries. But would the ad that played Thursday night resonate with high school kids who are growing up in a confusing, polarized, politically active era? Nike is counting on it.

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Officer convicted in killing of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards — a rare outcome in police shootings

A former police officer in Texas has been found guilty of murder in the high-profile shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards — a rare victory for civil rights activists seeking justice for the dozens of unarmed African American men and boys who have been killed by police officers in recent years.

As Judge Brandon Birmingham read the verdict Tuesday against Roy Oliver, who worked in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs, sobs came from the gallery of the packed courtroom. The last time an on-duty police officer in Dallas County was convicted of murder was in 1973. Oliver could be sentenced to life in prison.

“I’m just so thankful,” Jordan’s father, Odell Edwards, told reporters. “Thankful, thankful.”

Daryl Washington, an attorney representing the family, said the verdict meant more than justice for Jordan.

“It’s about Tamir Rice. It’s about Walter Scott. It’s about Alton Sterling,” he said, naming victims of police shootings in recent years. “It’s about every, every African American, unarmed African American, who has been killed and who has not gotten justice.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a link to a news story about the conviction, saying that Jordan’s “life should never have been lost.”

On the night of April 29, 2017, Oliver fired an MC5 rifle into a Chevrolet Impala carrying Jordan and two of his brothers as it pulled away from a high school house party. Jordan, who was struck in the head, died later at a hospital.

Police initially said the vehicle had backed up toward Oliver “in an aggressive manner,” but body camera video showed the car was moving away from him and his partner. Days after the shooting, Oliver, who had served in the department for six years, was fired.

Jordan’s stepbrother, Vidal Allen, was driving the car the night of the shooting.

“I was very scared,” Allen testified. “I just wanted to get home and get everyone safe.”

Oliver, 38, has said he feared for his life and his partner’s safety.

“I had to make a decision. This car is about to hit my partner,” Oliver testified in the trial. “I had no other option.”

After a weeklong trial, it took the jury one day to reach a verdict.

Jordan’s death echoes other police shootings involving black boys and men. But no convictions were handed down in most of those cases.

In November 2014, Cleveland police got a 911 call about someone brandishing a pistol near a park — the weapon, the caller said, was “probably fake.” But in an incident captured on camera, a police cruiser pulled into the park and Officer Timothy Loehmann jumped out and opened fire. Within seconds, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who had a toy gun, was dead.

Even before Tamir’s death, the U.S. Department of Justice had been investigating the Cleveland Police Department. A month after his shooting, it released a report saying Cleveland police displayed a pattern of using unnecessary force.

A year later, a grand jury decided not to indict Loehmann in Tamir’s death, saying he had reason to fear for his life.

In September 2016, in Columbus, Ohio, police shot and killed Tyre King, 13, who was carrying a BB gun while running from police. A grand jury declined to file criminal charges against the officer who killed him.

And in May 2017, an Oklahoma jury acquitted an officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher, 40, as he stood with his hands above his head along a rural highway.

Those cases and others illustrate the difficulty of convicting police officers. The law in most places gives them the benefit of the doubt.

Prosecutors usually must show that an officer knowingly and intentionally killed without justification or provocation. A fear of harm has been successfully used as the justification for many shootings, even when the victim turned out to be unarmed.

The most recent case that ended in a conviction came last year when Michael Slager, a former officer in North Charleston, S.C., was first tried on murder charges in the April 2015 shooting of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was stopped for a driving with a broken taillight. But after those proceedings ended in a mistrial, Slager pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The last Dallas County police officer convicted for murder while on duty was Darrell Cain, who shot and killed 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez after forcing him to endure a version of Russian roulette while handcuffed inside a patrol car.

There was no immediate reaction to Thursday’s verdict from local or national police groups.

John Fullinwider, a longtime Dallas activist and co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, said Oliver’s conviction came as a surprise.

“I expected to see an angel fly over City Hall before I saw this murder conviction,” he said. “This is a victory, but we really need independent federal prosecutors in all fatal police shootings.”

Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney who represents the Edwards family, said the conviction was justice for the country.

“We’ve seen time and time again, no charges, let alone convictions, in these high-profile shootings,” he said. “It is my hope that this is a turning point in the fight against police brutality against blacks.”

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McCain requested Obama and George W. Bush deliver eulogies at funeral

John McCain requested that former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush deliver eulogies at his funeral, CBS News has confirmed. McCain, who had been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, died Saturday at the age of 81 at home in Arizona. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush will deliver their remarks during a service at the National Cathedral.

Former Vice President Joe Biden will speak at a separate service honoring the senator in Arizona.

McCain had long feuded with President Trump and, according to The Associated Press, two White House officials said McCain’s family had asked, before the senator’s death, that Mr. Trump not attend the funeral services. Vice President Pence is likely to attend, said the officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The New York Times says, “Mr. McCain quietly declared before his death that he did not want Mr. Trump to take part in his funeral.”

According to Gov. Doug Ducey, McCain will lie in state at the Arizona Capitol on Wednesday, his birthday, before his body will be brought to Washington to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

The senator asked that he be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, near the grave of a long time friend, something he told Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” in September 2017.

“I want, when I leave, that the ceremony is at the Naval Academy. And we just have a couple of people that stand up and say, ‘This guy, he served his country,'” McCain said.

Mr. Obama, who defeated McCain in 2008 presidential race, issued a statement shortly after McCain’s death saying that “we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher — the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”

“Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did,” Mr. Obama continued. “But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt.”

John McCain remembered: Obama, family and more pay tribute
Mr. Bush, who defeated McCain for the GOP nomination in 2000, issued a statement hailing McCain as a “a man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order.”

“Some lives are so vivid, it is difficult to imagine them ended,” Mr. Bush said. “Some voices are so vibrant, it is hard to think of them stilled.”

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Trump Tweets False Claims About Attacks of White Famers in S. Africa

After tweeting about the legal troubles surrounding his former personal lawyer and his campaign chair, Donald Trump grabbed attention with a tweet about South Africa. He wrote, “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers. @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews.”

Trump tagged Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in the Tweet after he criticized the State Department for not addressing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s proposed land reforms. The country’s official government Twitter page responded with a message that read, “South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”

Black South Africans make up 80% of the population in the country and only 4% own fertile land, and redistribution of land has been a key point for the ruling party, the African National Congress. The ANC is pushing for accelerating the redistribution of land ahead of an election, and expropriate some land seized by white South Africans during apartheid.

However, the South African government is not “seizing land from white farmers” as Trump’s tweet states. Earlier this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa made a statement about the situation, stating, “We still have a festering wound in terms of how the land was taken from our people and that wound needs to be healed and the only way to heal that wound is to give land to the people. Doing so will ensure a fair and prosperous future for all of our people.”

The part of Trump’s tweet about “large scale killing of farmers” has also been condemned. South Africa’s largest farmers’ organizations, AgriSA, states that the number of murders is at a 20-year low.

The Anti-Defamation League also released a statement on Trump’s tweet, which read, “It is extremely disturbing that the President of the United States echoed a longstanding and false white supremacist claim that South Africa’s white farmers are targets of large-scale, racially-motivated killings by South Africa’s black majority.

“We would hope that the President would try to understand the facts and realities of the situation in South Africa, rather than repeat disturbing, racially divisive talking points used most frequently by white supremacists.”

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Michael Cohen pleads guilty to 8 federal crimes

President Donald Trump’s former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal charges on Tuesday, including campaign finance violations related to hush money payments he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

What’s more, Cohen admitted that he did so at the direction of Donald Trump, and with the goal of influencing the election.

Cohen pleaded guilty to a total of eight counts, including five counts of tax evasion involving nearly $4 million, one count of making a false statement to a financial institution, one count of willful cause of unlawful corporate contribution from June 2016 to October 2016, and one excessive campaign contribution on October 27, 2016.

The last charge — one excessive campaign contribution — is related to a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen arranged to Stormy Daniels to keep her silent about an affair she says she had with Trump in 2006. Cohen wired the $130,000 to Daniels’s lawyers on October 27, 2016.

Cohen has been in deep legal trouble since April 9 — when the FBI raided his residence, office, and a hotel where he was staying and seized several of his electronic devices.

And though Cohen’s conduct has been examined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference with the 2016 election, this indictment is separate from the Mueller investigation.

Several months ago, federal investigators in New York convened a grand jury to investigate Cohen for “criminal conduct that largely centers on his personal business dealings” and “finances,” as they put it in a court filing. They also secretly obtained search warrants on several of his email accounts.

This led to the high-profile April 9 raids. At that point, prosecutors were looking for information on Cohen’s hush money payment of $130,000 to Daniels on Trump’s behalf, hush money payments to other women, efforts to suppress negative information about Trump during the 2016 campaign, and information about taxi medallions Cohen owns.

ow Cohen appears to have reached a deal with prosecutors. It’s not quite clear what this might mean for President Trump, now that the man who’s been one of his closest associates for decades may be facing serious legal consequences.

Cohen, who once said he’d take a bullet for Trump, seems to have soured on his old boss as the months wore on. He gave several public signals that he might be willing to cooperate with prosecutors, including releasing a secret recording of himself and Trump discussing a payoff to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. A CNN report also suggested Cohen was considering telling Mueller that Trump had advance knowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton — something the president has repeatedly denied.

Cohen’s plea agreement doesn’t call for cooperation with prosecutors, including those on Mueller’s team. But Cohen’s revelations in court certainly deal a blow to the president, and Trump is clearly listed as “Individual 1” in the charging documents.

“There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen,” Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s attorney, told the New York Times.

But it’s not good news either. Cohen is the latest member of Trump’s inner circle charged with federal crimes, and Cohen’s plea came just as a jury returned a partial guilty verdict in the trial of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

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