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.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
“They’ve invested heavily in AI labs. They’ve invested heavily in data centers. So, the first family has a financial stake in this industry, and as a result, the president of the United States is compromised.”
— “Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on Monday said President Trump will likely not heed calls from technology leaders to implement guardrails on the development of artificial intelligence because of his family’s investments in the industry,” NewsNation reports.
“Young Americans today have never witnessed Congress authorize a war, they’ve never seen a U.S. administration balance its books, they’ve never watched a well-funded and empowered state department operate, and they see only mistrust between allies. They assume the situation is normal. It is not. … The real cost of forgetting the pre-9/11 world is not a country that has changed, but one that no longer knows it could be different.”
“We’re working through some political issues in Israel. I think we agree with them on the end state. They just have a crazy election, and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards.”
— Jared Kushner, quoted by CBS News, on the lack of progress in Gaza.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
“Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures at bases across the Middle East, and caused about $184 million worth of damage at U.S. diplomatic facilities, according to a Pentagon watchdog report,” the Washington Post reports. “The inspector general’s report to Congress on Operation Epic Fury — the Trump administration’s name for the war with Iran — also details the extent of U.S. munitions shortages, in the first comprehensive public accounting of the war, which is now in its seventh month.”
Half (50%) of U.S. adults say they are either very concerned (23%) or somewhat concerned (27%) about the possibility that AI will cause the end of humanity, a new YouGov survey finds. Another 39% of Americans say they’re not very concerned (21%) or not at all concerned (17%) about an AI apocalypse, while 11% aren’t sure.
A majority of Americans ages 55 and up and a majority of Republicans of all ages support the use of Flock technologies in their communities, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from August 28 to 31. Split by age, party, education level and gender, no other demographic group had a majority of support for the cameras. Among age groups, younger Americans were the least likely to support Flock, with only 21% of respondents aged 18 to 34 in favor of the technology.
About one-third (31%) of Americans strongly or somewhat approve of how the U.S. Supreme Court is handling its job, according to the latest Economist/YouGov Survey, while 53% disapprove. Almost all Democrats disapprove of the Supreme Court’s job handling (12% approve and 79% disapprove), while most Republicans approve (63% vs. 26%). Republicans who say they’re MAGA supporters overwhelmingly approve of the Supreme Court’s job handling (73% vs. 19%), while non-MAGA Republicans are more closely divided (49% vs. 36%).
Via 
