This election year is so much bigger than this election. It is about what kind of society we want to live in, and what kind of human beings we want to be.To be sure, the responsibility to vote, voice, and act won’t end after Nov. 8, but let’s get some hard practice in now. After all, think about what low voter turnout might actually get us? In the words of poet-activist Audre Lorde: “Your silence will not protect you.” Indeed, it just may cause us inexorable harm.
All posts by nedhamson
Trump Still Thinks The (Exonerated!) Central Park 5 Are Guilty: Gothamist
One of the many wonderful things America’s #1 Ambulatory Shitstain Donald Trump did before he attempted to destroy Planet Earth was get involved in the Central Park 5 case. Back in 1989, Trump took out ads condemning the five teenagers who were (wrongfully) convicted of attacking a jogger in the park, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. All five men have since been exonerated by DNA evidence and received a collective $41 million settlement from the city—but Trump has no time for scientific proof, and he still says they’re guilty.In a statement to CNN this week, Trump claimed the DNA evidence didn’t prove anything, and the men are still guilty. “They admitted they were guilty,” he said. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, and Korey Wise spent years in prison for the rape and near fatal assault of Trisha Melli. But in 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, and his DNA matched the DNA found at the crime scene. Then-Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau had the five men’s convictions vacated, and they received their settlement in 2014—a settlement which Trump, then just a bigoted reality-TV idiot instead of a bigoted presidential candidate idiot, called “politics at its lowest and worst form,” in a Daily News op-ed. “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels,” Trump opined, in his now-familiar racially loaded way.Trump shows a blatant disregard for our country’s legal process, just as he shows a blatant disregard for our political process, tax system, Constitutional rights, and hair sensibilities. These men wasted years behind bars for a crime our courts have since asserted they did not commit.
Source: Trump Still Thinks The (Exonerated!) Central Park 5 Are Guilty: Gothamist
Taking the self out of selfie – most pictures not about vanity, says study | Media | The Guardian
Most of the selfies posted, however, were simply visual records of everyday life, shared for the straightforward enjoyment of the self-and-subject and their friends, family and followers.
Source: Taking the self out of selfie – most pictures not about vanity, says study | Media | The Guardian
Friday Open Thread
TGIF, EVERYONE. Just getting around to seeing this speech. DAMN <iframe width=”640″ height=”390″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/P4HxE-TaYOU?version=3
Source: Friday Open Thread
Ken Burns Blasts Donald Trump Over Comments on Central Park Five: “The Height of Vulgarity” | Hollywood Reporter
I suppose you’ve seen the comments made by Donald Trump saying he believes the Central Park Five are still guilty and have gotten away with a heinous crime. After having spent so much time with them making your 2012 documentary, The Central Park Five, how do you respond to that? It’s just so patently untrue — and he knows it’s untrue. This is out and out racism. This is a man who finds it impossible to apologize and so he needs to double-down on what we know is untrue. We know this: They were exonerated by a court of law for the crime they served full sentences for. The reason they served the full sentences is because they refused to take a plea bargain and they refused at parole hearings to admit their guilt because they were innocent. They were proved innocent by DNA evidence and the judge vacated their convictions. Several years after that, the City of New York settled with them for time that no amount of money could possibly repay them for. In In his statement, Trump says the Central Park Five “admitted they were guilty” back in 1989.The original thing that they “admitted it” is so specious that it barely warrants a response. They had coerced confessions. They were subjected to questioning by seasoned detectives. These were two 14-year-olds, two 15-year-olds and one developmentally challenged 16-year-old. They were interrogated for up to 30 hours, without food, water or parents. They were lied to and told that if they implicated someone else they would be able to go home. When they finally did, at their parents’ urging, they not only did not go home, they went to jail for between seven and 13 years. And in fact every single one of their “confessions” has the absence of the sixth person — whose DNA was the only DNA found at the scene. As the eldest, Korey Wise, sat in jail at a maximum security prison, this sociopathic murderer named Matias Reyes, who because of police incompetence went on to murder other people that year — a woman and her unborn child, as well as rape other women — he confessed. His DNA matched the DNA, 13 years old, that they had been sitting on unable to match with anyone else. And none of the boys statements suggested that there was anyone else at the scene of the crime.
German prisoners (LOC)
The Library of Congress posted a photo: Bain News Service,, publisher. German prisoners [between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920] 1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.Notes: Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards. Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).Format: Glass negatives.Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print General information about the Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbainHigher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.27895Call Number: LC-B2- 4765-13Original enclosures:
Interlogix Recalls to Inspect Personal Panic Devices Due to Failure to Operate in an Emergency | CPSC.gov “Funny and not so funny, if you bought one.”
Name of product:
Interlogix ® wireless personal panic devicesHazard:The wireless personal panic devices can fail to operate, which could result in the device not communicating with the security system if activated in the event of an emergency.
Six Reasons Conservatives Should Not Vote for Donald Trump
I come before you today, Hillary haters, as one of your standard-bearers. I find her utterly loathsome. I literally wrote a book on her failures — you can buy it for the low, low price of 99 cents on Amazon dot com. I started the first anti-Hillary super PAC of the presidential cycle back in 2013. My bona fides are real.But here is the painful reality. As truly awful as Hillary Clinton is, Donald Trump is far, FAR worse. It is not even close. Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic. And no matter how deep and abiding your mistrust is of Hillary, you cannot pull the lever for Trump. Let a charter member of the vast, right-wing anti-Clinton conspiracy convince you.
Source: Six Reasons Conservatives Should Not Vote for Donald Trump
Did President Obama’s 2011 birther lampoon set in motion Donald Trump’s presidential run? Brent Larkin | cleveland.com
The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dorothy Rabinowitz is clearly no sellout, concluding a Sept. 29 column endorsing Clinton this way, “Her election alone is what stands between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit president ever to enter the White House.” Trump only claims to be a Republican. He might be a much better fit with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Parts of the Nazi platform were vintage Trump: Only those born here count as real citizens; purge the country of foreigners; eliminate all press freedoms; annul treaties; and treat “positive Christianity” as the only real religion. Trump is no Hitler. But there are enough similarities in their rise to prominence to frighten us all.Those similarities were brilliantly noted by the esteemed and feared New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, in a review of a new book titled, “Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939.” With nary a mention of Trump’s name, Kakutani told how the book described Hitler as an “egomaniac” who practiced “a doctrine of hatred.” Hitler, she wrote, “rose to power through demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses.” He was, she added, a man whose “manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control.” Two peas in a pod. Trump’s the one without the armband.
N.S.A. Suspect Is a Hoarder. But a Leaker? Investigators Aren’t Sure. – The New York Times “The real problem is outsourcing government work to private firms that began with President Ronny DeRegulator.”
Harold T. Martin III, described by his ex-wife as a hoarder, broke rules by taking home top-secret material, officials said, but they struggled to connect him to leaked documents.
Source: N.S.A. Suspect Is a Hoarder. But a Leaker? Investigators Aren’t Sure. – The New York Times





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