Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 676
August 30, 2016
LAPD and SWAT surround home of singer Chris Brown
Chris Brown (Credit: Instagram/TMZ)
Los Angeles police have surrounded the house of singer Chris Brown after he refused to exit the premises and be questioned about an incident that occurred early Tuesday morning.
According to TMZ, a woman called 911 and claimed that Brown had threatened her with a gun early on Tuesday. When they arrived at his home at approximately 3 a.m., Brown refused to exit his house to be questioned.
Instead, he took to Instagram and began posting videos like the one above, in which he aligned himself with Black Lives Matter, repeatedly used the title of NWA’s signature song, and attacked the media for saying he’d “barricaded [himself] in his house.”
“Have you seen my house?” he asked.
TMZ also learned that at some point during this slow-motion stand-off, Brown tossed a duffel bag allegedly containing guns and drugs out a window in his home while yelling, “Come and get.”
August 29, 2016
The Anthony Weiner scandal trainwreck: Why we can’t stop gawking at his baffling lack of judgment
Anthony Weiner (Credit: AP/Richard Drew)
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner begins the documentary “Weiner,” released earlier this year, after mumbling about the fact that he’s even participating in such a film, by directly addressing the camera and calmly stating, “I guess the punch line is true about me. I did the things, but I did a lot of other things.” That may be true, but Weiner has now guaranteed that his prophetic name will be forever synonymous with his sexting scandals, given his most recent round of images, sent to a “busty brunette” and exposed in today’s New York Post.
As Jamieson Webster argued convincingly in The Guardian, “Anthony Weiner wanted to be caught, and caught and caught. It isn’t enough that he sent out the pictures himself in 2011. The latest rendition is revealing on a whole number of levels if we look closely.” After all, this isn’t the first or the second or the third time this has happened — or that he’s been caught. Who knows how many incidents of sexting Weiner has engaged in, whether out of lust, boredom, self-sabotage, a power trip or any other number of possibilities?
It seems utterly bizarre that he would continue to do this so often, knowing that he could so easily lose any modicum of political respect that he’s built back up or any semblance of a career. According to CNN, Weiner has been put on “indefinite leave” by TV station NY1, for which he had been a contributor.
And, of course, Weiner was also risking the demise of his marriage, which has now happened. Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton and vice chair of her current presidential campaign, announced this afternoon that she was separating from her husband. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that she had decided long ago that one more scandal would be the one that went too far. Whether this was ever explicitly stated, Weiner had to know that, especially in the midst of a heated election year, the last thing Abedin would want was yet another return to what is likely one of the worst things she has ever faced in her personal life.
The New York Times categorized the documentary, in addition to being about Weiner’s repeated political rise and fall, as also being about “a portrait of a marriage in disarray,” describing Abedin as “present in much of the film, ready to stand by her man but clearly worried. Visibly shaken by the latest revelations of sexting, she doesn’t verbalize her anger, but you feel the tension of her crossed arms.” Though it was, of course, Abedin’s decision to not only stay with Weiner but also to join him when he campaigned for mayor of New York, it’s hard to not feel sorry for her now that she’s being cast back into the spotlight, linked to her boss by her job and their shared status as scorned women.
Given all that was at stake — namely, his marriage and intact family unit, his career and reputation — what made Weiner send what The New York Post described in its headline as “baby-sitting — Anthony Weiner-style,” given that his bare torso and the outline of his crotch are visible right next to his son in an early-morning July 2015 image? It’s impossible to know his exact motivation, but one thing is clear: If there were any way to make himself look worse, Weiner has now managed to do so, by involving his child in such a risqué and inappropriate photo and series of messages. As Webster noted, since Weiner’s specialty isn’t dick pics of the naked variety but rather crotch shots where his bulge is quite visible beneath his clothes, these images don’t need to be censored by media outlets the same way ones of his nude genitals would, lending further credence to his desire to be exposed.
I’ve long wondered whether for men like Bill Clinton and Weiner, their penchant for having extracurricular dalliances (whether of the in-the-flesh or technological varieties) while also maintaining very public marriages and professions of love and devotion to one woman, is not tied in some deep way to their longing for power and adoration by the masses. Even if you start out in politics with a desire to create social change and rise up the ranks, along the way you will have to at some point consider yourself not as a person but as a candidate. You will have to make peace with being a public figure and, along with that, being both venerated and reviled. Perhaps that inherent dichotomy of political life, one rife with supporters and detractors, has led a man like Weiner to want to dissociate from that public, polished image and become, for even a few minutes, just a man with a dick that he wants to show off. Or perhaps there’s a thirst for attention so great it propels you into the public sphere knows no bounds, whether it’s private messages over Twitter or front-page headlines.
I admit that when this story first broke last night, I pretty much rolled my eyes. Again? So what? Doesn’t a scandal lose some momentum when it stops being, well, scandalous? There’s little humor here as far as I can tell; the days of joking about his sexting alias Carlos Danger seem like a faint memory given just how much rope Weiner used to hang himself. Yet as weary as we all are of this type of news, I think we are drawn to Weiner because either he just can’t help himself or he can but chooses not to. Watching someone continue to self-destruct in that way is something we may want to disavow and consider ourselves “above.” But how many of us truly don’t engage in at least a tiny bit of schadenfreude over Weiner?
Though Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has tried to use this scandal for political gain, relying on tortuous logic to take what’s a sad moment for an already embattled marriage and turn it into an example of “just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment,” even Weiner’s most ardent haters must at this point also feel like rolling their eyes to some degree. Perhaps this moment was inevitable, due to whatever compelled Weiner to start sexting in the first place. But that doesn’t make it any less sad. Note: I’m not sad for Weiner personally so much as sad for his wife and child. I’m sad that anyone with the potential to do good in the world has instead simply monopolized his extended 15 minutes of fame in order to glorify his penis.
We also can’t forget that any whiff of scandal for him also inevitably involves Abedin, their 4-year-old son, and Abedin’s boss, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Though I find it abhorrent that both Abedin and Clinton are being judged for their decisions to stay in their marriages (one Twitter user declared them “terrible female role models sticking with cheating deviant husbands”), that’s also an inevitable part of being a political spouse, something both women have to know well by now. We may wonder why Abedin stayed for so long in the marriage. But ultimately, it’s none of our businesses. That we’ve made it our business perhaps attests to the fact that it’s far easier to cast aspersions on other people’s relationships than to look closely at our own. Any woman could be the next Huma Abedin and find herself wondering whether to stay or go, whether to recommit to the person she loves or assume that the worst decisions will be revisited once again.
It’s challenging to find anything sympathetic about Weiner’s situation. Though I don’t tend to pass judgment on anyone else’s sexual activities as long as all parties are consenting, here we have several non-consenting parties: namely, Weiner’s son and his wife. Were he an utterly private citizen, perhaps his wife would never have known of his digressions. But he’s not, and he more than anyone knows he’s not. He’s dragged Abedin deep into his political life when it seems clear from her statements and actions that she would far rather be behind the scenes; at one point in the “Weiner” documentary, Abedin acknowledges that she’s usually in the back of the room, not speaking directly to a crowd as her husband so often does. She does it anyway because she cares about him; he seemingly didn’t have the same courtesy toward her.
Rather than trying to parse why, exactly, Weiner, after so many public statements about his infidelity, dared to chance sexting yet again, I can only hope that he and Abedin can move on to have as amicable a co-parenting relationship as possible — and that from now on, whomever Weiner decides to flirt with, online or off, is his business and his alone. If indeed part of the thrill was that he might get caught, something he obviously has had a penchant for doing (despite all the similarities between him and Bill Clinton, the former president was far savvier about hiding his extramarital adventures), perhaps now that he will be facing life as a single man, whatever excitement he gained from sexting on the sly will dissipate. As for Abedin, Weiner says in the documentary, “She was very eager to get her life back that I had taken from her.” Now that Abedin has taken such a swift and public step toward getting her life back, I can only hope that she can be known for the best of her skill set, rather than as an addendum to stories about her husband’s dick pics.
It’s official: This is the worst movie ending of all time
Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe in "The Sea of Trees" (Credit: A24)
Note: This post heavily discusses the plot of “The Sea of Trees” and pretty much spoils the entire movie. If you have any intention of seeing it, don’t and read on.
If “The Sea of Trees” falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
The latest directorial feature from Oscar-winning director Gus Van Sant (“Drugstore Cowboy”) is set to have one of the most underwhelming stateside debuts ever for a former Cannes contender. It premiered in just two theaters — with a wider rollout highly unlikely. When I saw it at New York’s City Cinema Village East, which caters to microbudget indies that other chains won’t pick up, there were just 10 people in the theater.
Let’s do a word problem: If “The Sea of Trees” averages that level of attendance at five shows a day in two theaters, how much does it make on opening weekend? Just $4,500. (Official weekend numbers have yet to be released.)
This is a strange fate for a film once dogeared as a major Palme d’Or contender.
“The Sea of Trees” coasted into the French fest on a tidal wave of buzz, boosted by its impressive pedigree. Van Sant has been nominated for two Oscars — “Good Will Hunting” in 1997 and in “Milk” in 2008 — and the film’s star, Matthew McConaughey, won one. McConaughey has become a critical darling in recent years with a string of well-received performances in films like “Magic Mike” and “Interstellar.” Meanwhile, his “Sea of Trees” co-star, Naomi Watts, once starred in the best movie of the century.
Upon its debut at Cannes, Van Sant’s film was booed by festivalgoers, but it wasn’t just the notoriously hard-to-please Francophones that hated “The Sea of Trees.” Nobody liked it. The film earned one of the lowest scores in the history of the Cannes Film Festival; the screen jury ranking, which polls critics on their thoughts about the movies they saw, gave the film just a 0.6 rating out of 4. That’s roughly the equivalent of a D-.
If you’re wondering why “The Sea of Trees” sat on the shelf for an entire year before being dumped into theaters, it’s because the movie is not just bad. It features one of the worst endings in movie history — with a third act so jaw-droppingly tasteless that it’s a shitty miracle. Some movies dare not have their secrets spoiled. But should you, as some sort of a twisted punishment, be forced to watch “The Sea of Trees,” you will want to tell everyone you know about it — even strangers on the street.
That’s the thing about a movie this terrible. It induces a kind of madness.
***
“The Sea of Trees” is like Nicholas Sparks meets “The Twilight Zone,” imagining a world where helpful ghosts appear disguised as other ghosts in order to prevent people from killing themselves. (They could start by keeping them from watching this movie.)
After the death of his horrible, cartoonishly shrewish wife (Watts), the grieving Arthur Brennan (McConaughey) visits Aokigahara, Japan’s notorious Suicide Forest, after googling “the perfect place to die.” Holding a mysterious envelope, he has the goal of swallowing an entire bottle of pills.
Arthur instead happens upon the ailing Takumi (Ken Watanabe), who claims that he was driven to commit suicide after losing his job. He can’t go home to his wife and daughter in shame. Arthur is strangely drawn to Takumi, whom he offers to help find his way out of the forest. The two men, however, are lost in a wooded area so vast and unnavigable that travelers who wish to exit commonly tie a string to a tree to help them find their way back.
While Arthur and Takumi wander on their journey to find food and help, Arthur explains that he and his wife, Joan, once loved each other very much, until his inexplicable infidelity came between them. The couple began to argue constantly — he criticized her drinking and she wondered why a man of his talents couldn’t get a better-paying job. Arthur is an adjunct professor at a small college, and Joan, a prolific real estate agent, pays the bills in between swigs of merlot.
The two briefly reconcile when it’s revealed that Joan has brain cancer. An ominous stream of blood dribbles down her face as the overwrought soundtrack tells us what we already know: It can’t be good.
The worst aspect of “The Sea of Trees” is open to debate. Is it the maudlin score, which sounds like a depressed 8-year-old practicing for her first piano recital? Maybe it’s the wooden performances, in which a talented, accomplished group of actors appear to have recently undergone shock-therapy treatments? But for my money, it’s the film’s bevy of M. Night Shyamalan-style twists, which come fast and furious in the final half an hour.
Astute audience members may be able to spot the first twist barreling down the turnpike like a car with no brakes.
Arthur’s wife Joan manages to survive an operation to remove her tumor, and the doctor gives her a clean bill of health. The mass wasn’t malignant. Taking a page from the playbook of the “Final Destination” movies, it turns out that Joan wasn’t able to cheat death so easily. Following the surgery, she rides home — bald and beaming — in the back of an ambulance. Arthur, happy to have a second chance with the woman he loves, drives directly behind the vehicle, smiling and waving optimistically.
Their plans for a happily ever after are thwarted when the ambulance is T-boned by a truck running a red light. Joan is killed instantly.
The manipulation doesn’t stop there. Arthur tells Takumi that his biggest regret is not that he never got the opportunity to make it right with his wife. He felt like he never knew Joan to begin with. When a group of mourners at the funeral claim to have sent Joan a copy of her favorite book while she had been in the hospital, Arthur realizes that he has no idea what it was. Because he is a terrible husband, Arthur also doesn’t know her favorite season or her favorite color — basic information that he should probably know about the person with whom he has spent 20 years of his life.
This sets the stage for the film’s Hail Mary of a twist, which is so absurd it needs no exaggeration.
To get help, Arthur must leave Takumi behind. He is rescued by a group of forest rangers and taken to the hospital. When Arthur insists that they go back for his friend, a social worker informs him that no one else entered Aokigahara that day. He knows this is impossible.
In order to find Takumi, Arthur returns to the forest, where he discovers that the man’s body is missing. Because Arthur apparently has a copy of the screenplay in his back pocket, he begins to put the pieces together: Takumi once told him that Aokigahara acts as a purgatory for lost souls passing to the other side. When his friend explained that Arthur’s wife was still with him, the avowed atheist viewed it as a metaphor — the kind of thing that people say when someone you love dies.
But unfortunately, Takumi was being literal.
The friendly Japanese man is actually the spirit of his dear departed wife, who pretends to be Takumi order to communicate with him from the afterlife — and thus help him find peace. This tactic is extremely confusing. If you died and hoped to get in touch with your husband, wouldn’t you appear as yourself? Why would you choose to reveal your true identity through a series of cryptic clues, like a metaphysical puzzle? Wouldn’t just saying, “Hey buddy; I’m your dead wife” save time?
Ghost Joan, however, didn’t rise from the dead to adhere to logic. She came to deliver knowledge. The first of Arthur’s questions is answered when he opens the aforementioned envelope to reveal “Hansel and Gretel,” Joan’s favorite book. In a flashback, he remembers that Takumi compared their adventure to the classic Grimm fairy tale, in which the titular characters leave a trail of bread crumbs to find their way home.
Believe it or not, the movie actually gets worse. When Arthur returns to the U.S., he meets with a student, Eric (Jordan Gavaris of “Orphan Black”), who just so happens to speak Japanese. This is a movie in which each character is on hand to provide helpful information at the exact right moment. Eric spies the names of Takumi’s wife and daughter scribbled on a piece of paper and helpfully translates. He says they mean “winter” and “yellow” — which, you guessed it, is the name of Joan’s favorite season and color, respectively.
It’s kind of amazing that no one vetted the fact that calling a Japanese character “yellow” is extremely culturally insensitive, but in a movie as bad as “The Sea of Trees,” accidental racism is the least of its problems.
VOTE: Which movie had the worst ending?
Signs (2002)
Titanic (1997)
I Am Legend (2007)
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)
Superman (1978)
Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King (2003)
War of the Worlds (2005)
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Remember Me (2010)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Trump weighs in on Colin Kaepernick controversy: “He should find a country that works better for him”
Donald Trump is adding his criticism to the national uproar over 49er Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest of police brutality, suggesting that the African-American quarterback should instead move out of the United States.
“I think it’s personally not a good thing,” the GOP nominee said of the NFL player’s decision to not stand during the national anthem during pre-season games.
On Friday, after an NFL writer noticed that Kaepernick failed to rise at the onset of the game for a second week in a row, the black player explained his silent protest.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said after the game. “This stand wasn’t because I feel like I’m being put down in any kind of way. This is because I’m seeing things happen to people that don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard, and effect change,” he further explained on Sunday.
Kaepernick also offered his thoughts on both presidential candidates, including his belief that the Republican candidate is a “racist.”
“You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids super predators, you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist. We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?,” Kaepernick told the media.
A photo posted by colin kaepernick (@kaepernick7) on Dec 10, 2015 at 2:19pm PST
Asked by a conservative Washington state radio host about the ensuing controversy surrounding Kaepernick’s one-man protest, Trump offered his opinion Monday.
“I think it’s a terrible thing,” Trump told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. “And maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try. It won’t happen.”
Listen below, via Buzzfeed News:
George Carlin’s dark genius: From his 1957 “dirty, stupid” cop take-downs to the jokes that 9/11 made too raw to release
George Carlin (Credit: Reuters)
Eight years after his death, it’s easy to have warm feelings for George Carlin. However hard-edged some of his comedy was, he mostly seemed to rant with a humanist point of view underneath the cursing. Today he’s remembered as a hero of free speech — his famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” was not just an attempt to shock — and civil liberties. Late in his life, he became a gray eminence who acted in everything from Kevin Smith’s movies to “Cars” and “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.” He’s also a hero to some of the most prominent contemporary comedians, among them Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. No comedian from the past, besides maybe Richard Pryor, has more respect today than Carlin. (Judd Apatow has called Amy Schumer the Carlin of our time.)
If you’ve not listened to Carlin recently, the new album, which comes out on Sept. 16 (Sirius XM subscribers can stream it Thursday at 4 p.m. ET on channel 400 and 7 p.m. ET on 94) will offer a few surprises. The first is that despite Carlin’s association with the counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s, he was performing envelope-pushing material even earlier: It begins with his home-recorded “Boston Rant,” made in 1957 when he was only 20. He starts by greeting the listeners politely and then launches into a takedown of police and firefighters that would have been shocking in any era. “Firemen are pretty close to being as dishonest as the average dirty goddamn cop,” he says. “Your dirty, stupid policeman, who can’t even work at the A&P.” The voice is less gravely than that of the Carlin most people came to know, but the delivery and subject matter are there already.
Most of the rest of the album is derived from two shows in Las Vegas just before Sept. 11, 2001. Despite his warm-George film roles from his last two decades, the material is harsh: about drugs and toilet humor, griping about music and an ode to the pleasures of death and destruction. Oh, and did I mention that it’s called “I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die?” Some of the material was pulled or reworked because of the World Trade Center attacks, and it’s not hard to hear why.
All this material is delivered with force and discipline and perfectly polished. It’s also in almost every case nasty and disturbing. Much of Carlin’s work involved complaining: He hated organized religion, government in general, virtually all authority figures and people who misuse language. He makes BoJack Horseman sound like Oprah Winfrey.
By 2001, his crankiness had come to include the huge amount of music being released. There are too many songs, he said, and too many of them are love songs. “Everything’s a broken heart — fuck that, how about a punctured cheekbone?” By the time he starts suggesting songs about a fire at a crowded church or people suffering from cancer, it becomes clear that had he lived, he might have become one of the comedians uncomfortable with supposed political correctness. (In the disc’s liner notes, Lewis Black called the album “a perfect example of why honest comedy and political correctness always exist in parallel universes and have nothing to do with each other.”)
The most uncomfortable of these bits — and probably the most brilliant — is called “Uncle Dave” but it’s really about Carlin’s glee at mass destruction. Even Carlin probably did not have to think hard about whether it should have been released in the days after Sept. 11, 2001. Of the things he says he really likes, he lists “plane going down” among them. “To me, anything that kills a lot of people is exciting. . . . I’m always rooting for a really high death toll.”
He talks, too, about the pleasures of earthquakes, forest fires and other disasters that are currently a little too close for comfort, with recent news from Italy, California and elsewhere. “Come on,” he adds. “You can’t beat a famine.”
And if you are not into toilet humor — the recording includes pieces called “The Fecal Differential” and “The First Enema,” this might be one to skip.
The recording is also a reminder that while Carlin was primarily a man of the left, his mistrust of government put him closer than he would have probably admitted to the Idaho militias he makes fun of in one of his bits.
Overall in this posthumous release, Carlin is effective, intense and as disturbing as ever. It’s good to hear a voice so intelligent and raw. But it also feels good when he stops. Nobody said comedy was pretty.
Pipeline protests: The fight goes on against project that could jeopardize Native lands in the Midwest
Members of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota participate in a rally to protect water and land from the Dakota Access Pipeline, August 24, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Credit: Getty/Alex Wong)
Kayla Lookinghorse-Smith set out from New York to Washington, D.C. late Tuesday night, driving six hours to attend her first protest on the East Coast against the looming Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.78 billion, 1,100-mile oil project being built by a group of firms led by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners.
Her two young sons, 19 months and 5 years old, slept in the backseat.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” she said, as she drove into the early morning hours. “I just knew that I have to support my tribe, because they are taking a stand for water, an essential to life, in this world.”
The pipeline — already facing immense criticism — will cross hundreds of rivers, creeks and tributaries. And, part of it will run directly under the Missouri River, the only source of water for Lookinghorse-Smith’s tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux. Any leaks could compromise the entire water supply, and tribe members are concerned that sacred sites like burial grounds will be destroyed. DAPL would be the first to transport over 470,000 gallons of fracked, crude Bakken shale per day from North Dakota directly to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast, notably Illinois.
Lookinghorse-Smith is a full-blood Hunkpapa Lakota. Her family and thousands of other supportive people from around the world (including members of my tribe, the Shinnecock Nation of New York) have offered support or camped out across from the DAPL construction site near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, since April 1. They are locked in a tense, politicized, very personal yet peaceful struggle against officers of the law and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has overseen the project.
Many people close to the protest camp, like Lookinghorse-Smith, are upset by media reports of violence against police by Native people.
“This peaceful protesting is happening every day in North Dakota,” she said. “Our drum beats are not gunshots, our canupas (peace pipes) are not bombs, and our war cries are not criminal activity — as mainstream news media clearly misleads the public to believe.” Lookinghorse-Smith says the only loaded guns brought to the protest are those carried by the heavy police presence surrounding the area. Instead of weapons, Native protestors are using their voices, and our violent and oppressed collective history as a guide. They are broadcasting radio from a makeshift station at Sacred Stones (Standing Rock Spirit Resistance Radio @ 87.9 FM), and social media is flush with petitions, commentary and live videos from around the world in support of Standing Rock.
Violence and dangerous racist rhetoric is brewing nearby, however, in Bismarck Mandan, North Dakota.
“Tension is high, and the people of Standing Rock are starting to feel uncomfortable going into Bismarck to get supplies … because there are a tremendous number of threats and KKK mentality. People are talking about killing Indians now,” Lookinghorse-Smith said.
Actress Shailene Woodley (who also traveled to the Washington protest on Wednesday) joined the camp at Standing Rock two-and-a-half weeks ago, and has been sitting on the front lines. “If I thought my life was at risk,” she mused in a recent on-site interview, “do you think I would be sitting here like this?” Woodley paused. “The only thing that is happening are messages of love and peace … and unity. I love how mainstream media can spin a story however they want.”
Outside U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday, things were also calm. Several hundred supporters gathered, including Susan Sarandon and Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archimbault II. Inside, Judge James Boasberg considered the case of the Standing Rock Sioux, who have filed to halt pipeline production and are asking the US to honor long-ago enacted treaties protecting Native lands and water.
And, for Native people, there is a spiritual element to water that goes far beyond the fear of pollution. Besides being a physical necessity for life, in traditional Native American circles water is the “first medicine” in a complex and environmentally respectful belief system that refers to the earth as the mother of all things.
Randy Ross of the Ponca/Oto tribe in South Dakota, which the pipeline will also cross, recalls a prophecy revealed by his late Cheyenne River Sioux tribal Elder Sidney Keith.
“There are many elements of healing brought by Creator, but water is essential to life, it is sacred,” he explained. “Oil, as we discovered after the Gulf Coast BP Oil spill, destroyed so much, and Mother Earth will shake herself to cleanse. Many believe that time is upon us. We see fires, floods, tornados of unheard of frequency and power, earthquakes in greater frequency and power.”
As protesters wait for the judge’s promised ruling Sept. 9, Lookinghorse-Smith worries for her relatives and the others standing firm in the way of development. “It’s starting to get cold in North Dakota right now, and cold weather gear and other essentials are much needed. The camp will sustain as long as they can.”
Watch video, courtesy of SikkestNativez, of the protest below:
Trump uses Huma Abedin’s separation from Anthony Weiner to attack Hillary Clinton: Another example of bad judgment
t (Credit: AP)
After using NBA superstar Dwyane Wade’s personal tragedy to paternalistically shame African-American voters into supporting his campaign, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is already jumping on the newly announced separation of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner from his wife, Huma Abedin.
On Monday, Abedin, a top aide to the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said in a statement: “After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband. Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.”
The announcement came after a report emerged on Sunday that Weiner had apparently sent a woman last year a photo of him shirtless with his toddler son beside him.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” said Trump, his party’s nominee, in a statement following Abedin’s announcement, according to The New York Times.
Trump then went on to link the top Clinton aide and her martial troubles to Clinton’s use of a private, unsecured server while she served as secretary of state, suggesting that she had put America’s national security at risk.
“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” the thrice married Republican candidate continued. “Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.”
Trump's stmt in reaction to Huma news has subject line:"DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON HILLARY CLINTON'S BAD JUDGMENT" pic.twitter.com/fzkpG3bmrN
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) August 29, 2016
Trump earlier this month called Weiner, who resigned from Congress after another sexting scandal in 2011, a “pervert sleaze.”
Some conservative commentators have also breathlessly jumped on the news of the couple’s separation to slam Clinton for remaining with her husband after his infidelity:
@HillaryClinton still with @BillClinton. RT "Huma Abedin says she's leaving Anthony Weiner" https://t.co/4vzeydP7ax
— Monica Crowley (@MonicaCrowley) August 29, 2016
Trump campaign affiliate warns of continued “assault on the unborn” if Hillary Clinton is elected
Televangelist Jim Bakker — of doomsday prepper food buckets fame — had on his show last month Ramiro Peña, a pastor at Christ the King Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, who’s affiliated with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign.
During the primaries, Peña called Trump’s xenophobic message, “uninspiring and off-putting,” but has since settled and become a member of the National Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump, according to Right Wing Watch.
“We’ll continue to see an assault on the unborn,” Peña said when Bakker asked him to describe a world in which Trump isn’t elected. “It’ll be the most gruesome thing. And it is absolutely hated by God.”
“And if we’re waiting for a perfect candidate to come along, don’t hold your breath. We will never have a perfect candidate,” he continued. “People — especially of my culture — say to me, ‘How can you support Mr. Trump when he says these things?’ Look, I know what the other side looks like and it is so bad.”
(h/t Right Wing Watch)
Gene Wilder, star of Mel Brooks movies, dies at 83
In this April 9, 2008 file photo, actor Gene Wilder listens as he is introduced to receive the Governor's Awards for Excellence in Culture and Tourism at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, Conn. Wilder, who starred in such film classics as "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and "Young Frankenstein" has died. He was 83. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File) (Credit: AP)
Gene Wilder, the star of such comedy classics as “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles,” has died. He was 83.
Wilder’s nephew said Monday that the actor and writer died late Sunday in Stamford, Connecticut from complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
The frizzy-haired actor was a master at playing panicked characters caught up in schemes that only a madman such as Mel Brooks could devise, whether reviving a monster in “Young Frankenstein” or bilking Broadway in “The Producers.”
But he also knew how to keep it cool as the boozy sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” and as the charming candy man in the children’s favorite “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”
White man crashed into black woman’s car, then shot her to death, Ohio police say
Matthew Desha (Credit: Solon Police Department)
A white man has been charged with murder after crashing into a black woman’s car and then shooting her dead.
At around 7 a.m. on Saturday, 29-year-old Matthew Ryan Desha ran a red light and slammed into a car being driven by 53-year-old Deborah Pearl.
Desha’s car flipped over. Then he got out of the wreckage carrying a rifle, according to witnesses. Police say Desha shot Pearl with a 5.56-millimeter rifle, Cleveland.com reported.
Officers found Pearl on the ground, bleeding. Paramedics took her to the hospital, where she soon died.
The incident took place in Solon, Ohio, outside of Cleveland.
A witness said that Pearl had her hands in the air when Desha shot her multiple times. “I can’t get her screams out of my head,” she said.
Another witness who lived nearby told local media she heard four gunshots and heard Pearl scream.
A witness also told 911 dispatchers she saw the man shooting the rifle after the crash. “It was a senseless killing,” she said.
Police arrested Desha after the shooting. He has been charged with murder.
Desha appeared in court on Monday on murder charges and his bond was set at $1 million.
The New York Daily News, which also reported the story, noted that Desha had been charged in May with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing drug paraphernalia in his car.
Pearl’s husband said she had been driving to work when her life was unexpectedly taken from her.
