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Biden’s speech offered a stark contrast to Clinton’s address, when she named Trump 21 times as she accepted the party’s nomination. She offered a scathing view of her then rival, saying he was offering “empty promises,” in contrast to “real change.” Biden similarly criticized Trump, despite not referring to him by name, saying he had “cloaked America in darkness for much too long,” but also focused sharply on his own character throughout his address....

Wherever one turns in Iran, everything is broken. The regime has two plans to avoid the wrath of the people—repression and sanctions relief. And the Biden administration is giving the Iranian regime every reason to believe that it can pull off both. In the not-so-distant past, Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s decision to elevate Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi to serve as Iran’s next president beginning next month would have been greeted with stunned revulsion....

On January 14, days before his inauguration, Biden unveiled a sweeping new relief plan that includes a third stimulus check of $1,400, increasing federal unemployment payments from $300 a week to $400, $160 billion in further funding for the national vaccination program and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The administration said that it would hold a call by the end of the weekend with lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle after Senate Republicans expressed opposition to the proposal....

According to Biden’s tax returns, which he released publicly in July 2019, the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden paid $1.5 million in federal income taxes in 2016 and $3.7 million in 2017. The New York Times, which obtained nearly two decades of Trump’s closely guarded tax returns, reported on Sunday that the president paid just $750 in both years. That means the Bidens paid 2,000 times as much in federal income taxes in 2016 and more than 4,900 times as much in 2017....

Biden made his comments during an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. The interview, broadcast Wednesday night, was Biden’s first since the Islamic extremist militant group seized control of Afghanistan. Stephanopoulos pointed out that in July, Biden said a Taliban takeover was highly unlikely. “Was the intelligence wrong or did you downplay it?” Stephanopoulos asked Biden. Biden replied, “I think there was no consensus. You go back and look at the intelligence reports....

“We do not feel that it is necessary for a President-elect like Biden to speak with President Trump in order to get that information,” said Bedingfield, referring to details on issues such as national security, foreign policy and COVID-19 planning, among other things. “We believe that we’ve been getting the information that our teams need.” She continued: “You know certainly should President Trump want to speak with President-elect Biden, that’s something we would work out in the future....

“Joe Biden wants to impose the highest capital gains tax rate since the Jimmy Carter era known for its economic stagnation,” according to a press release from the group. “Biden wants to take the current capital gains tax rate of 20 percent and double it to 39.6 percent. That’s the highest rate since 1977, when the highest possible capital gains rate was 39.875 percent.” Americans for Tax Reform offered several different examples of Biden suggesting that he wants to increase the capital gains tax, in a video posted by the organization on YouTube....

The Trump Plaza casino was opened in 1984, but has gone to seed since it closed in 2014 after it was beset by financial troubles for years. For the last four years, billionaire developer Carl Icahn has owned the property which has been deemed by local officials as a public safety hazard. In the entrepreneurial spirit the New Jersey gambling seaside town is known for, a call has gone out for people to place their bids to implode the building for charity....

If it’s going to take hold for Bielema at Arkansas, it’s going to take hold this weekend against Texas Tech. “This is where our plan overall as a program kicks in,” Bielema said. Heaven help the rest of the SEC if it does. Here’s what makes this whole Bielema experiment at Arkansas and the SEC so intriguing: He’s the perfect coach for the brash, loud and proud conference. When his team is on, there’s no more spectacularly obnoxious winner in the game....

MORE: SN’s power rankings | 10 teams making playoff push early The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled it wouldn’t accept Northwestern University football players seeking to form a union. “I’m glad the unionization process has cooled for right now,” Bowlsby said (via USA Today). “But the fact is — and it probably will be in the sport of men’s basketball — there will be a day in the future when the popcorn is popped, the TV cameras are there, the fans are in the stands and the team decides they’re not going to play....

From lost cause, the 11th hour save, to an uneasy marriage of 10, to an iron-clad Grant of Rights, to not being bullied back into a championship game, to staying at 10 teams, thank you, to, inevitably, a weaker non-conference schedule. It’s simple math. When you go from four non-con games to three, the eventual loser isn’t the teams. It’s the fans. Frankly, with the depth of the Big 12, every team needs wins....

“This will be a high profile non-conference series on our networks in the middle of the league season,” Nick Dawson, ESPN’s senior director of programming and acquisitions, said in a press release. “It will be a special showcase for the challenge and be a great day of college basketball action on the ESPN networks.” In this season’s Big 12/SEC Challenge, held from Dec. 3-6, seven of the teams were ranked in the AP Poll at the time of the event including matchups between No....

Yet this double response–horror at atrocity, amused contempt for stupidity and Dickensian rascality–is appropriate. Orwell, still the sanest observer of the totalitarian mind, would have relished this book; his nightmare regime in ““1984’’ knew ““day-to-day falsification of the past . . . is as necessary . . . as the work of repression and espionage.’’ And he would have understood why these faked photos look so shamelessly bogus: they express contempt for the ignorant masses while warning sophisticates that the regime will stop at nothing....

The Sporting News’ first-team All-American sat at a table in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Dec. 15 fielding questions. He talked about the miraculous eight-yard reception where he reversed field to set up fourth-and-1. He recounted every detail of “29 lead,” the 15-yard touchdown run in a 30-27 double-overtime victory against No. 3 Michigan that pushed the Buckeyes into the College Football Playoff. Samuel will be compelled to talk about every detail of those two plays the rest of his life....

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming held a fundraising call with roughly 50 Republican donors on February 5 to discuss her 2022 re-election campaign after she joined House Democrats in voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. Michael Epstein, a top Maryland GOP donor, told The Guardian that many donors on the call are expected to give the maximum amount of $5,800 to Cheney’s campaign to quash Trump’s effort to oust her....

On Thursday, Aiko released the music video for the track, “None of Your Concern,” in which the rapper can be heard dropping an X-rated verse about the more intimate details of the former couple’s relationship approximately three minutes and 28 seconds in. The pair, who split in 2018, are no strangers to collaborations with one another. They first teamed up in 2013 with the hit, “Beware,” before going on to create TWENTY88, their full-length studio album in 2016—when the two began dating....

But don’t tell that to Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth or Joey Logano. There were five wrecks at Talladega Sunday, but the Big One included just 14 cars. They are often bigger — much bigger. MORE: Keselowski causes big wreck | Johnson can’t explain spin | Earnhardt makes bad move | Hamlin wins And there were just two big crashes, the 14-car pileup and one that collected eight cars. There’s usually more....

The conference-only schedule begins Sept. 3 and concludes with the Big Ten championship game Dec. 5. Each Big Ten team will have two bye weeks built into the schedule to account for possible changes because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. MORE: Notable college football players opting out in 2020 The most noticeable item? Michigan will play at Ohio State on Oct. 24 — the eighth week of the proposed schedule....

This week’s USA Today TOP 25 Coaches’ Poll reflected as such, with the Spartans and Buckeyes tumbling seven and 11 spots in the rankings, respectively. All together, losses by three ranked teams scrambled the polls while several others tumbled after close-call wins. MORE: Mariota leads impressive Ducks | Big Ten’s poor weekend all but ruins playoff hopes | Kessler next big Pac-12 QB? The week’s biggest climber was Virginia Tech, which handed Ohio State its 35-21 loss....