I just returned from a trip to Boston. While waiting for my return flight, I had breakfast at an Au Bon Pain cafe at Logan airport and noticed that the people working there consisted of a black woman, a white man, a Latino, an east Asian woman, and a South Asian man, all working together in seeming harmony.
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Lost in the hoopla surrounding Donald Trump’s recordings boasting of sexual assault were the vile remarks he made about the Central Park Five. For those who don’t recall the case, Wikipedia describes what happened. On April 19, 1989, a female jogger was brutally raped and beaten almost to death. That same night, five teenagers were arrested as part of a sweep in response to a large number of young people who had been randomly attacking people. They were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault but later the actual guilty person was found. The convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 after all had served their sentences and the city settled a lawsuit against it for $41 million.
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Donald Trump boasts about himself incessantly, talking in superlatives about his achievements, many of which cannot be substantiated and for which he refuses to reveal supporting information. We already know that he has refused to release his tax returns, something that every major party candidate has done for the last few decades and which would reveal, among other things, his annual income, the amount of tax he pays, and his charitable contributions.
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Among the many awful things that the Bush-Cheney administration did was to normalize torture, coming up with various convoluted rationales as to why the ghastly practices they carried out did not constitute torture and thus were not war crimes. Alex Emmons writes about an important unanimous ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday that has been largely overshadowed, like so much else, by this weird election season.
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On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver reviewed Donald Trump’s performance at the last debate and at the charity event the following night at the Al Smith dinner, a white-tie exclusive affair hosted by the Catholic church at which the two presidential candidates are expected to indulge in largely self-deprecatory humor. Of course, Trump did not do that, instead seeing the occasion as one in which he could score off Hillary Clinton and say the things that he wished he could have said at the debate but didn’t. His performance was not well received, to put it mildly.
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They captured the essence of the debate and Tom Hanks did a remarkably accurate impression of moderator Chris Wallace. Alec Baldwin’s impression of Donald Trump is so accurate that when I try to imagine Trump, it is Baldwin’s version that first comes to mind and I have to consciously reject it and replace it with the real person. It is similar to Tine Fey and Sarah Palin. I would not be surprised if many people think that Palin actually said, “I can see Russia from my house!”
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The 2015 film Eye in the Sky starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman is about a joint British-US operation using drones to spy on and kill suspected terrorists in Kenya. The central tension is created by a child who sets up a stand to sell home-made bread in the vicinity of the target and the film deals with the debate in London as to whether the possible death of the child is worth it to stop a pair of suicide bombers from carrying out attacks that will kill many more. It is the equivalent of the trolley problem commonly used in ethics discussions. It is the British who are in charge of the operation, though the drones are operated by the US.
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The latest accuser of Donald Trump’s aggressive actions towards women is Jessica Drake, an actor in adult films, who claims that in 2006, after she rejected his advances, Trump offered her $10,000 to change her mind and have sex with him. She turned that down too, even though he sweetened the deal with an offer to fly her in his private plane.
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The ‘sovereign citizen’ movement consists of people who have their own interpretation of their rights and obligations under the US constitution. Via Mark Frauenfelder, I came across this fascinating video of a woman who, at a traffic stop, challenges the right of a California police officer to detain her, saying that because she is a sovereign citizen, she can claim all the rights of citizenship without obeying any of its laws. The driver of the car apparently did not have a license, presumably because as a sovereign citizen, he does not need the state’s permission to drive.
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