The family of English teacher Aijalon Gomes, 31, whose release from North Korea was secured by Pres. Jimmy Carter this week, released this statement:
First, we want to express heartfelt gratitude to former President Jimmy Carter and the staff of the Carter Center for taking on Aijalon’s release as a private humanitarian mission. Thank you, President Carter, for traveling to North Korea to bring Aijalon home…
For Aijalon, although returning home, the journey toward healing really just begins today. Our family hopes that everyone will understand our strong need and desire to secure Aijalon the privacy necessary to recover fully from this episode in his life. We thank you in advance for respecting that privacy and sharing in our joyful homecoming today.
Boston.com has more about Gomes and his homecoming here.
They’re gathering on the Washington Mall,
The right-wingers, tea-baggers and all.
No matter how peaceful it seems,
This wasn’t MLK’s dream —
It’s the nightmare of Glenn Beck’s goddamn gall.
In Florida, the primary was hot,
With candidates trading potshots.
The voters, of course,
Might feel some remorse,
When they sell the governorship to Rick Scott.
Via Roger Ebert, Wednesday, amid the other goobledy-gook he spews, GOP-Fox News’ Glenn Beck uttered this barely comprehensible string of phrases:
We are from Washington, D.C., where this Saturday, we will be gathered here at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial and we are going to be — as you see in the corner — oops, in this corner. Can you put it back up? This corner is the merit badge. I have been wearing it. I’m all screwed up because I can’t — television is backwards.
The merit badge — there it is in the bottom of your screen. It is George Washington’s original Purple Heart, but it was just given for merit, for doing something of honor. We didn’t even know about it until 1933 when FDR found three. There were only three of them in existence.
Okay, so that made no sense, but it certainly sounded like he planned to wear George Washington’s Purple Heart to his konklave at the “feet of” the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow, which Andy Borowitz has dubbed the “Million Moron March.”
Actually, Beck has invented a new “badge of merit” (not, mind you, a merit badge) to replace the Purple Heart which he dislikes, he says, because it rewards people for being victims, which is Beck’s Orwellian newspeak for being wounded in the line of duty.
— Known bigot and old school Jewish comedian Jackie Mason, speaking at a protest rally at the Empire State Building. The skyscraper’s owner, Anthony E. Malkin, declined to light the landmark to honor the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth, leading anti-Islamic voices to claim a link to plans to build a Muslim community center in Manhattan.
George Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Monday, Aug. 29, when Hurricane Katrina made landfall at 7 a.m. Of course, he wasn’t completely off duty — he had some politicking to do in the west that day. During the morning he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff who was in Washington — but the topic was not the disaster, it was immigration. At around that same, mid-morning on Monday, the first levee failed and the flooding began, but it would be 24 hours before Chertoff was made aware of it.
Meanwhile, Bush stopped briefly at the Phoenix airport to cut up for the cameras with GOP Sen. John McCain, his bitter rival from the 2000 presidential primaries. It was McCain’s 69th birthday, and Bush’s people had supplied him with a birthday cake to use as a prop. Later, Bush stopped at two senior citizens centers for some politicking — he was out promoting his unfunded Medicare drug benefit.
Bush made a quick stop in Phoenix to clown around with his frenemy Sen. John McCain, whose birthday is Aug. 29. Inset: Meanwhile Americans were drowning in New Orleans
That day, Bush received an urgent request from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, that read, “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” But that night, as thousands of Americans huddled in the attics of their flooded homes in New Orleans, Bush turned in early without responding to the governor’s request.
The next morning, Aug. 30, Bush gave a speech promoting his status as a wartime president at a naval base in Colorado. About noon, Chertoff was finally informed that the levees had failed 24 hours earlier.
Tuesday afternoon, Bush promoted his unfunded Medicare drug benefit at another senior center. After the event, at around 2 p.m., Bush was photographed goofing around with a guitar given to him by country singer Mark Willis.
Left: Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country singer Mark Wills, right, backstage after Bush gave a political speech. Right: At the time of the speech, people were wading through the flooded streets of New Orleans
Aides will later claim that Bush had refused to watch television news coverage of the disaster. At 4 p.m., he made his first public statement, during which he seemed “casual to the point of carelessness,” according to the New York Times. At 7 p.m., Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice attended a performance of “Spamalot,” the Monty Python musical, on Broadway.
The votes today have been tallied and I accept the voters’ decision…No one could have anticipated the entrance of a multimillionaire with a questionable past who shattered campaign spending records and spent more in four months than has ever been spent in a primary race here in Florida. While I was disappointed with the negative tone of the race, I couldn’t be more proud of our campaign and our supporters for fighting back against false and misleading advertising…
— Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, conceding victory in the Republican primary for the governor’s seat, but not endorsing former opponent tea bagger Rick Scott, despite attempts by Florida Republicans to claim unity after the slugfest.
Well, you know, take the consideration, though, that’s Massachusetts, and perhaps they’re not going to look for such a hardcore constitutional
conservative there, and they’re gonna put up with Scott Brown and some of the antics there. But up here in Alaska, and so many places across
the U.S., where we have a pioneering, independent spirit, and we have an expectation that our representatives in D.C. will respect the will of
the people and the intelligence of the people — well, up here, we wouldn’t stand for that.
— Sarah Palin, in an interview on Fox Business News, responding to whether Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is “on notice” for voting with Senate Democrats on recent legislation.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
Via 
