On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, ensuring income for elderly Americans and creating a federal unemployment insurance program.
The Social Security Act was the most important domestic legislation signed into law by FDR.
As of February 2024, approximately 67 million people, or about 1 in 5 US residents, received Social Security benefits. This includes retirees and their families, as well as people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or are young survivors of deceased workers.
Joe Biden is a frail old man who means well but is in need of help doing his job and communicating to the public.
This report from the New York Post enforces my opinion.
President Biden was handed a private note during a recent call with Democratic House lawmakers telling him to “stay positive” – and he read it out loud.
A staffer gave the 81-year-old president a note card with tips as he attempted to persuade members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday that he was fit to serve and able to defeat former President Donald Trump on Election Day, the New York Times reported.
“Stay positive, you are sounding defensive,” Biden said on the call, seemingly reading directly from his staffer’s short missive.
One lawmaker told the New York Times that the moment represented how “stage-managed” calls between the president and lawmakers concerned about his re-election chances have seemed.
Biden has long been known to rely on note cards for press conferences, summits and private fundraisers, instructing him where to sit, what to do and who people are.
Still, the lawmaker also interpreted the moment as the president “poking fun at his aides” rather than accidentally reading the private memo.
The president has a history of blurting out instructions meant for his eyes only, including when he read “pause” off a teleprompter during a campaign speech in April.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said the call with Biden was “productive and engaging.”
“We spoke frankly to the President about our concerns and asked tough questions about the path forward. We appreciate his willingness to thoughtfully answer and address our Members,” she wrote on X.
Biden’s call with the CPC came on the same day he reportedly held a “tense” Zoom call with moderate Democrats that was “even worse than the debate,” losing credibility with those on the video chat, according to people in the meeting.
“He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say ‘whatever.’ He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,” one person on the call told Puck.
“The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,” added a second person, who is a member of Congress.
Biden has faced mounting calls from Democrats imploring him to end his re-election campaign in the aftermath of his disastrous June 27 debate against Donald Trump, with several polls showing the incumbent trailing the 78-year-old former president.
The motivation for the attempted assassination is obvious to me. Joe Biden said Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. I have been saying someone with a rifle will attempt to kill Trump. The 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate was responding to the fear Joe Biden has generated.
These are quotes from Joe Biden.
“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally, literally a threat to everything America stands for.”
Next week, for the third time in eight years, Donald Trump will be nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States. A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great.
It is a chilling choice against this national moment. For more than two decades, large majorities of Americans have said they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and the post-Covid era of stubborn inflation, high interest rates, social division and political stagnation has left many voters even more frustrated and despondent.
The Republican Party once pursued electoral power in service to solutions for such problems, to building “the shining city on a hill,” as Ronald Reagan liked to say. Its vision of the United States — embodied in principled public servants like George H.W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney — was rooted in the values of freedom, sacrifice, individual responsibility and the common good. The party’s conception of those values was reflected in its longstanding conservative policy agenda, and today many Republicans set aside their concerns about Mr. Trump because of his positions on immigration, trade and taxes. But the stakes of this election are not fundamentally about policy disagreements. The stakes are more foundational: what qualities matter most in America’s president and commander in chief.
Mr. Trump has shown a character unworthy of the responsibilities of the presidency. He has demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people. Instead of a cogent vision for the country’s future, Mr. Trump is animated by a thirst for political power: to use the levers of government to advance his interests, satisfy his impulses and exact retribution against those who he thinks have wronged him.
He is, quite simply, unfit to lead.
The Democrats are rightly engaged in their own debate about whether President Biden is the right person to carry the party’s nomination into the election, given widespread concerns among voters about his age-related fitness. This debate is so intense because of legitimate concerns that Mr. Trump may present a danger to the country, its strength, security and national character — and that a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that would prevent his return to power. It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate about the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, instead setting aside their longstanding values, closing ranks and choosing to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president have described as his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence.
That task now falls to the American people. We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. The stakes and significance of the presidency demand a person who has essential qualities and values to earn our trust, and on each one, Donald Trump fails.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A new state license plate design refers to Pennsylvania’s critical role in establishing the United States’ independence from England and features the phrase “Let Freedom Ring.”
The red, white, and blue plate design announced this week includes an image of Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell. The design already appears on eight signs that welcome motorists where highways cross various state lines — with 29 more planned for the coming months.
“Let Freedom Ring” is a phrase in the early 19th century song “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”
The Liberty Bell, inscribed with a Bible verse exhorting people to “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto all the Inhabitants thereof,” was in use in Philadelphia before the American Revolution. It became a rallying point for those fighting to abolish slavery in the United States and for supporters of giving women the right to vote and of civil rights.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose name is on the highway signs, said the license plates and welcome signs are being introduced ahead of the country’s 250th birthday celebration in 2026.
The welcome signs are at borders with Maryland on U.S. Route 15 near Gettysburg and Interstate 70 in Fulton County; with New Jersey on Interstate 295 in Bucks County and Interstate 80 in Monroe County; with Ohio on Interstate 90 in Erie County; and with New York on Route 449 in Potter County, Interstate 81 in Susquehanna County and Route 1015 in Tioga County.
Those interested in the new plates can sign up to be notified when they will available early next year.
I did not write this. As a child I visited Winnipeg every summer as baby and until the age of 10 in 1948. My family stayed at my grandparent’s house at 136 Cathedral Avenue. I Remember visiting Eaton’s numerous times.
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WHEN I WAS growing up in Winnipeg in the 1960s, there were essentially two places to shop: Eaton’s and the Bay. Eaton’s was the store my grandmother frequented, checking for bargains in its basement every week, eating lunch in the sedate Grill Room. The Bay was vaguely hipper. I remember it still had elevator operators then as well as its own library and post office, though the in-house orchestra was gone. Both stores had a kind of majesty to them, unaware they had peaked as retail ideas.
The decline of the downtown Winnipeg Bay store resembled Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy—gradual, then sudden. It was the company’s national flagship store until 1974, but with the advent of malls in that decade, it began to lose its currency. By 2019, the downtown core of Winnipeg had largely hollowed out, and some of the Bay floors were closing. What remained felt like a dismal Soviet-era shopping experience under gloomy lights. The store was built in 1926 at a cost of around $5 million; at the time of its closing, in November 2020, Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm, valued the building at $0.
Here in Los Angeles shopping malls have closed and many chains of stores have gone into bankruptcy. Eaton’s is gone in Canada and May Company in the United States is gone. Local California chains are now all gone.
Hudson’s Bay owns Sak’s Fifth Avenue they are now consolidating with Neiman Marcus.
Macy’s net income for the quarter ending April 30, 2024 was $0.062B, a 60% decline year-over-year.
So where did I buy my new sneakers (tennis shoes)? Amazon. It seems everyone is buying on line.
“President Joe Biden told Democratic governors during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday that part of his plan going forward is to stop scheduling events after 8 p.m. so that he can get more sleep, according to three sources briefed on his comments.”
“The remarks, first reported by The New York Times, came as the 81-year-old Biden sought to reassure a group of more than 20 state leaders about his ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in November and govern effectively for another four years.”
The problem for Biden should be obvious to anyone reading news reports. At times the president is sharp minded and at other times he appears to be lost.
The answer to the question should be obvious. “I’d tell him that after a life of service, he can pass the torch with pride, with dignity, and with grace. Someone probably should have done this months ago, out of love or duty, and out of the concern that Biden’s health is likely to get worse in coming years.” wrote Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times.
A decent interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC won’t change the fact that Biden is too old for another four years as president.
Coast Contact 