A California school groundskeeper was awarded $289 million from Monsanto.
A California groundskeeper may not live to see his children grow up. However, his family will be taken care of for the foreseeable future. A federal judge awarded Dewayne Johnson nearly $300 million after the jury found chemical company Monsanto was liable in his terminal cancer.
The jury also found that Monsanto had "acted with malice or oppression" and ruled that it knew or should have known the weedkiller was dangerous. During the trial, the court heard that Johnson may have just months to live and his wife had been forced to work two jobs to help pay for his treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Johnson has stage four cancer from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He is in his mid-40s and may not live much longer. The federal court pushed his case ahead to make sure he would see the jury make a decision that could impact companies that push out products that cause side effects.
Monsanto, the company that owns Round Up weed killer. The herbicide is known for killing weeds and crabgrass. The chemicals are powerful. But within those chemicals was glyphosate, an active chemical that could cause allergens to infect open wounds. Longtime exposure could serious damage skin and could be cancerous.
Monsanto disputes the claims and vows to appeal this decision.
In a statement to the newspaper, Scott Partridge, Vice President of Monsanto, said "glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer" adding, "We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective, and safe tool for farmers and others."
Monsanto is facing about 2,000 other lawsuits from cancer patients, their families or their estates who claim their products also gave them cancer.
Johnson is an African American man who has two children.
Trump fires Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who handled matters with Russia.
Just three weeks after he testified to the Congress for 11 hours, the FBI agent handling matters with Russia was fired out the cannon.
Peter Strzok was fired out the cannon.
This certainly will raise flags.
The Republicans are trying to dismantle the Robert Mueller special probe and they are willing to destroy careers to stop the federal probe.
Donald J. Trump forced FBI director Christopher Wray to fire the longtime agent. This firing was driven by Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekalow, Mark Levin, Greg Jarrett, John Solomon, Sean "Softball" Hannity and his alleged mistress Sara Carter. He is on a vindictive attack against those investigating him and his allies colluding with Russia.
The former agent exchanged a series of anti-Trump tweets with former FBI attorney Lisa Page. The two had a brief affair.
Trump has been pretty clear that he is attempting to meddle in the FBI probe.
Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!
Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!
Trump even developed the talking points of Sean "Softball" Hannity.
Strzok was escorted out the FBI building after he became a focus of an Inspector General's report that found the senior counterintelligence official was biased.
Strzok's lawyer fires back. He said that this was politicially motivated firing. This went against a FBI recommended punishment. The punishment that the FBI induced was a 60 day suspension and demotion. This was overruled by the deputy FBI agent.
The deputy agent David Bowdich handled the cannon firing. He was confirmed by Congress this year after Trump fired Andrew McCabe, 21 hours before his retirement.
As Sara Haines departs for GMA Three with Michael Strahan, a seat is being filled with another former Fox News host.
Meghan McCain who joined the daytime talk show in 2017 will see her good friend Abby Huntsman join her as well as CNN panelist Ana Navarro (during fill-ins). Huntsman will be the newest conservative voice to be added to the panel.
Huntsman is the daughter of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntman. Huntsman served as ambassador to Singapore for George Bush, ambassador to China for Barack Obama and currently ambassador to Russia for Donald J. Trump.
He ran for president in 2011-12. He was considered the rational Republican.
Abby Huntsman is a journalist, pundit and activist. She was considered a rational conservative like McCain. She got her start in journalism through outlets like MSNBC, HuffPost Live and Fox News.
She left the Mormon church
They both support LGBTQ rights, they are pro-choice and somewhat critical of Donald J. Trump.
She started her job in journalism at a young age. She worked behind the scenes at GMA. She was so stressed working at that job, she almost gave up on it. After getting a pep talk from Diane Sawyer, Huntsman decided to continue forth.
Huntsman managed to get her gig on MSNBC with The Cycle. She would join MSNBC hosts Ari Melber, Toure and Krystal Ball for the three seasons. When The Cycle ended, Huntsman continued as a commentator for shows like The Rachel Maddow Show, All in With Chris Hayes, AM Joy and Hardball.
She would soon leave MSNBC to join the imbeciles over at Fox News. She was the host of Weekend Fox & Friends. She occasionally did assignment reporting for daytime and primetime programming.
Huntsman leaves tearful remarks on Fox & Friends.
In August, she announced she was leaving the weekend show to join The View.
Whoopi Goldberg Hilary Estey McLouoghlin and Barbara Walters are the executive producers of The View. The show has been on for over 20 years and it still has hot topics.
Sonny Hostin, ABC and CNN legal analyst, Joy Behar, comedian and progressive pundit and Meghan McCain, writer, daughter of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and conservative pundit.
Huntsman is a mother of a daughter and is married to college sweethart Jeffrey Livingston.
Here's a memorable moment this year. When Donald J. Trump met Kim Jong-Un, Huntsman said the meeting of two dictators. Laugh riot.
The Undisputed Queen of Soul and R&B is not doing so well. Family and friends are preparing for her departure.
The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin is "gravely ill" according to reports. The 76-year old entertainer is
The family and her publicist ask for prayers and privacy for the singing legend.
She was performing non stop for the last few years. It was at least around 2017 when her doctors ordered her to end performing. She took off for "health issues." Her last appearances publicly were in New York for the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Philadelphia Mann Center.
Aretha Franklin fist bumps Barack Obama.
She said that she is retiring from singing late last year.
"I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert," she announced on Detroit radio. "This is it."
She had struggled through life with alcoholism and smoking. Franklin family have died from cancer.
Aretha Franklin was the first ever woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and topped Rolling Stone's Greatest Artists of All Time list.
She won 20 Grammys in throughout her career, including her three special honors, the Legend Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award and the MusiCares Person of the Year award.
We will get more developments as soon as the come.
Aretha Franklin with Donald Trump in 1980s.
Major news ahead this week. I will describe the two in our next postings. The #UniteTheRight2 rally was on an popping. The white extremist leader Jason Kessler decided to take his carnival to Washington, DC.
We got Omarosa Manigult-Newman who went to GOP Sundays to describe her messy ouster from the White House. She cause a national security crisis. She recorded her conversations with Chief of Staff John Kelly and it was leaked to the junk food media. This was in the super secret Strategist Room, where electronic devices were prohibited from use.
The Republicans are freaking out over this. The Democrats are laughing at both Omarosa and Donald J. Trump.
Omarosa Manigult-Newman speaks out against her old boss.
Omarosa Manigult-Newman now turns against Donald J. Trump.
She has a book coming out and it seems like she's going to share her experience working with him during their time on The Apprentice and at the White House.
In an interview with NPR, the former reality television star and White House liaison shares some dirty about her former friend.
She says that Trump is unhinged. She believes he is a racist and sexist. Omarosa said that Trump some inappropriate stuff about people.
She said, "there are tapes."
"Hearing it changed everything for me," former White House aide told NPR on Friday.
Omarosa was referring to what she calls the "N-word tape" — a long-rumored but never surfaced tape of Donald Trump on the set of The Apprentice allegedly using the racial slur. In her interview with NPR's Rachel Martin, Manigault Newman claims to have heard the tape and heard Trump using that slur on the tape.
But that's not what it says in her tell-all book, Unhinged, due out on Tuesday.
When asked by Martin about the discrepancy during the interview, Manigault Newman insisted Martin must not have read the book (she had) and pointed to a section at the very end of it.
But in that section, Manigault Newman doesn't actually describe hearing the tape. She writes of calling one of her "sources" who had a lead on the "N-word tape."
In Unhinged, Manigault Newman writes as both a Trump world insider, overjoyed at his election, and as a voice of the liberal resistance airing concerns about his rhetoric, policies and mental state.
Omarosa is considered shady by the White House.
Wonderful woman she be...
The once-loyal Trump aide, who often appeared on cable news defending her boss and singing his praises, was dismissed from the White House in December 2017; now, she says he is a racist, misogynist and may have dementia. Among other things, the book also claims Trump wanted to take the oath of office on a copy of The Art Of the Deal rather than the Bible and that she saw him swallow a piece of paper after an Oval Office meeting with his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. The book represents an effort to repair her reputation and settle scores with her former colleagues.
"I had a blind spot where Trump was concerned," she writes, later explaining that in her effort to help Trump win the election, "I focused my mind and energies on short-term Trump problems, which allowed me to avoid thinking about my own long-term Trump problem of having given him the benefit of the doubt for more than a decade, despite having many reasons not to."
Asked why she has now turned on Trump, Omarosa told Martin it wasn't turning on him as much as putting the country first.
"I made a commitment to uphold the values of this country and unfortunately being a part of this administration, I was very complicit with actually undermining those things, and I regret that," she said in the interview.
Even I have to question some of the stuff. Omarosa endorsed Trump despite his comments. She was the standout Black supporter of Trump.
Yeah, I know that Trump is a racist. I see it everyday whenever he says stuff about people of color, Muslims, immigrants and those in the LGBTQ community.
Wesley Bell has a lot of challenges ahead. He has to avoid being called the status quo.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch was voted out in the Democratic primary. He
was beaten by a candidate who was endorsed by Black Lives Matter, the Color of Change, March for Our Lives and the family of Michael Brown.
Wesley Bell, a mild mattered Black activist who rose to fame in the wake of the decision not to charge the dirty cop who shot Brown won the primary to become the county prosecutor.
McCulloch came under scrutiny after he failed to investigate Darren Wilson, the former Ferguson cop who confronted Michael Brown after an allegation of theft in a store. Wilson shot the unarmed teen six times after a confrontation that wasn't recorded on dash camera and body camera.
McCulloch was ousted by Bell. His 27 years as the county prosecutor ended when Michael Brown's killer walked free. There is no Republican challenger and Bell will likely win the general election.
McCulloch was taken aback from this. He was a shoe-in for victory.
It seems like the establishment isn't working for Black America.
It's going to challenging for Bell to change the status quo. He wants to change the county's cash bail system and implement diversionary programs so low-level, nonviolent offenders are not placed in the iron college.
Bob McCulloch was defeated. The St. Louis County prosecutor's 28 years of allowing cops to walk free ended on Tuesday.
He wants to eliminate the crime rates in the county and city of St. Louis.
St. Louis is an independent city. It's population is 304,000 residents. There are 1.1 residents in St. Louis County. Bell will cover one of the largest populated counties in Missouri.
Rep. [William] Lacy Clay, Jr. (D-MO) survived a primary challenger as well. The candidate Cori Bush almost defeated the longtime lawmaker. Bush was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Clay was elected in 2000 and succeed his father Bill Clay, Sr., who served the district for 32 years.
Lezley McSpadden announced she is running for Ferguson city council. The mother of Michael Brown had enough of the status quo and the city's leadership. She never ran for office before.
She endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. She and Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Michael Brown spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
The Michael Brown death happened on August 10, 2014. The incident happened around the time where Black Lives Matter became synonymous with progressive activism.
Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown, Sr. The mother of Michael Brown is running for Ferguson city council.
Brown was confronted by Darren Wilson. The cop allegedly claimed that Brown attacked him and left him no choice but to use deadly force. For nearly four hours, the cops didn't cover the body.
Many residents believe that Wilson deliberately lied about the confrontation.
Wilson on his part resigned from the police after it became clear he would be a distraction to the force. He wasn't charged with a crime and it lead to nights of unrest.
Four years ago, Mike Brown was gunned down by police. His death sparked a movement.
Black Lives Matter became famous that year. The group demanded Ferguson to change course. They want police reform, a better criminal justice system and accountability for police officers who choose to use deadly force when engaging suspects.
Conservatives have vilified activists for years. Many on the right have called Black Lives Matter, a terrorist group. That annoying conservative agitator Sean "Softball" Hannity has often played the New Black Panthers chant "Pigs in a Blanket, fry 'em like bacon." loop to associate the group. Fox News have put on Black conservatives to denounce the group and blamed Barack Obama for the tension between Black America and the police.
Shaun King and DeRay McKesson both became famous for activism. They are vilified for being outside agitators and it gave rise to foes like Kevin Jackson and David Clarke, the former Milwaukee County sheriff who rose to fame. These guys have called the group, Black Lies Matter.
The people of England, Arkansas have to deal with this shit.
Two men filming a music video in the town were followed by the cop. When the two decided to ask the cop why he was following them, he directly told them, "they don't belong in his town."
Demarcus Bunch and Shannon Scribner were confronted by Michael Moore. The two were filming a music video when they noticed the cop was nearby. Bunch said he was told Moore was watching them as soon as they entered the town.
Bunch said the officer slowed down to see what the group was doing when he decided to approach the officer. Bunch said his uncle is a cop.
"I'm Mike Moore," said the cop.
"We just noticed you've been following us everywhere," Bunch says to Moore.
"Are you recording right now?" Moore asks.
Bunch said "Yes, sir."
"You know why? Because you don't belong in my city," Moore replies.
"We're from here," Bunch says.
Demarcus Bunch and his cousin were filming a music video when they were confronted by a cop.
"But you understand, I know who my people are, right, who belongs here and who doesn't? We've got gang wars going on, we've got all kinds of stuff. I come from the big city where this stuff is small, okay? So, that's cool. Do your thing," said Moore.
"You said we don't belong in your city, though?" Bunch ask.
Bunch said he spoke to his uncle who told them to speak to the chief about the incident. The men filed a complaint to the city chief Danna Powell. They didn't hear a thing for about 15 days. Bunch subsequently decided to upload the video to his Facebook. It went viral.
By the end of the week, Moore was fired out the cannon. This wasn't the first time he was fired out the cannon with local law enforcement agencies. He was employed with Lonoke County boys but was fired from there before working for the England Police Department.
Lonoke County sheriff John Staley said that Moore had issues. According to the sheriff, Moore was fired out the cannon "because he couldn't get along with other officers and other agencies" not a race issue.
Right?
You don't belong........ is pretty racially tinged.
This is Donald J. Trump's Amerikkka.
Folks, I've said it too many times.
BAD COPS WILL GET GOOD COPS KILLED. GUN VIOLENCE IS THE NUMBER ONE THREAT IN THE UNITED STATES. HOLD THESE PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE.
