John Kinsel Sr, who served in the Marines as a Navajo code talker transmitting key messages in unbreakable Navajo code in the Pacific, died peacefully [at 107 years old] in his sleep on Saturday.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) engaged in a tense text exchange last week, Axios has learned. read more
Moldova's pro-Western president Maia Sandu said her camp "won fairly in an unfair fight" on Monday after a referendum found voters to be narrowly in favor of joining the European Union, despite allegations of Russian interference. With all votes counted by Monday evening, the "yes" vote for future EU membership emerged with a wafer-thin majority of 50.46%, according to Moldova's electoral commission.
In a biography set to publish a week before the election, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell backed special counsel Jack Smith and said he hopes former President Trump will "pay a price" for his role in Jan. 6th.
After having its hottest summer on record, Phoenix saw an unprecedented and sustained heat wave during parts of September through mid-October. read more
@#34 ... Then how could he be calling for their deaths when they are no murderers ...
Simple.
At the time he was calling out for their execution, they had not yet been exonerated.
But after they had been exonerated ....
... Which is why it is a nonsense case. ...
But, what has fmr Pres Trump said after they were exonerated?
imo, that is the basis of this case.
Much like fmr Pres Trump being unable to, I'll be blunt, shut up.
Donald Trump Can't Keep His Mouth Shut. It's Getting Him in Trouble. (2023)
www.motherjones.com
... Donald Trump was summoned to appear Tuesday before a Manhattan judge, who warned the former president that he could face additional legal trouble if he publicly rants about the evidence against him in his criminal fraud case"a recurring problem during the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault lawsuit earlier this month. Trump's virtual appearance was brief, and New York judge Juan Merchan spoke to him gently. But the message was clear: Do not try to mess with this trial.
The Tuesday hearing came one day after Carroll"who recently won a federal civil judgment against Trump for sexual assault and defamation -- sought additional damages from Trump over comments he made about her on CNN following that verdict. And on Tuesday morning, hours before his lecture from Merchan, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to repeat his attacks on Carroll and to complain that the sexual assault trial had been unfair. ...
@#14 ... Trump NEVER called for the death penalty for those involved ...
Not specifically.
But...
Trump Will Not Apologize for Calling for Death Penalty Over Central Park Five (2019)
www.nytimes.com
... Mr. Trump's remarks about the Central Park Five were strikingly similar to comments he made in reaction to the deadly violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. A woman was killed after a driver slammed his vehicle into counterprotesters. At the time, the president said, "There was blame on both sides."
In 1989, Mr. Trump placed full-page advertisements in four New York City newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the state to adopt the death penalty for killers. He made clear that he was voicing this opinion because of the rape and assault of Trisha Meili, a woman who had been jogging in Central Park.
"I want to hate these murderers and I always will," Mr. Trump wrote in the May 1989 ad. "I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
He wrote in all caps: "Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!" ...
So, a distinction without a difference?
Navajo Code Talkers - World War II Fact Sheet
www.history.navy.mil
... Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima: the Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language a code that the Japanese never broke.
The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languages notably Choctaw had been used in World War I to encode messages.
Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II.
Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language's value as code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos.
In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.
Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers' primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios. They also acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties.
Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle.
Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. ...
@#2 ... Yeah, no. Turtle is a fucking lying cowardly bitch. ...
Apparently, the main goal of his rule as Senate Majority Leader was to be the longest-serving person in a leadership position. That, apparently, brought him to tears.
Mitch's private tears and sweet college revenge
www.axios.com
... Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is known for his stoic public face. But in private, he cried tears of joy when he broke a record he long chased: Longest-serving Senate party leader.
Why it matters: McConnell's teary moment is one of several revealing scenes unearthed by Michael Tackett in his new McConnell biography. "The Price of Power," out later this month ...
Exonerated Central Park 5' member Yusef Salaam wins New York City Council seat (November 2023)
www.pbs.org
... Exonerated "Central Park Five" member Yusef Salaam won a seat Tuesday on the New York City Council, marking a stunning reversal of fortune for a political newcomer who was wrongly imprisoned as a teenager in the infamous rape case. ...
@#5 ... It is not like they confessed to doing it or anything... ...
My guess would be the current issue may be fmr Pres Trumps comments after they were exonerated.
'They admitted their guilt': 30 years of Trump's comments about the Central Park Five (2019)
www.usatoday.com
... President Donald Trump has repeatedly commented on a case that wrongly accused a group of black and Latino men of assaulting a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989.
Trump's comments surrounding the case, many of which were made in his capacity as a New York business mogul, have resurfaced following a Netflix series on the men who were charged with the assault. The men are commonly referred to as the Central Park Five.
Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise were all boys when they were convicted of raping Trisha Meili. They were then found innocent of the crime after convicted murder Matias Reyes in 2002 confessed to raping Meili, which was confirmed by DNA evidence. The city awarded the men $41 million in 2014, a decade after some of the men initially sued the city for how it handled the case.
Trump, now president, has doubled down on his stance that some involved in the attack were guilty.
On Tuesday, he dodged questions about apologizing for a 1989 ad calling for the death penalty for those involved in an assault.
'You have people on both sides of that':Trump doesn't apologize to Central Park Five
Here is a history of Trump's comments and actions surrounding the Central Park jogger case:...
"Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done" ...
The men who had since been exonerated for the crime were in an ongoing legal battle with New York City for how they handled the case. Richardson, Santana, and McCray sued the city in 2003. ...
Trump in a June 5, 2013 tweet referred to the Central Park Five as "muggers."
When asked by a Twitter user how Trump felt that the five men who were convicted of the crime were actually innocent, Trump in a tweet on June 29, 2013 responded: "Innocent of what-how many people did they mugg?" ...
"It's a disgrace"
After the city awarded the five men $41 million in a settlement, Trump maintained that the men " who were young teenagers when convicted " were still guilty.
Trump in an op-ed published in the New York Daily News suggested that "settling doesn't mean innocence."
"My opinion on the settlement of the Central Park Jogger case is that it's a disgrace," Trump began his op-ed. "A detective close to the case, and who has followed it since 1989, calls it "the heist of the century."
"Forty million dollars is a lot of money for the taxpayers of New York to pay when we are already the highest taxed city and state in the country," he continued in the op-ed. "The recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city." ...
Elon Musk's PAC Is Paying $47 For Each Solicited Petition Signature From A Swing State Voter -- Here's Why It's Controversial
www.forbes.com
... Is It Legal To Pay Someone To Recruit Petition Signatures?
Yes. It is legal to compensate signature gatherers, or circulators, who collect petition signatures, though the exact laws vary by state. Some states, like Arizona, Florida and Utah, have made it illegal for campaigns or other employers to pay based on the number of signatures gathered"known as pay-per-signature compensation"but it is almost always legal to pay by the hour for time spent soliciting signatories. The America PAC is based in Texas, where there are no specific laws about pay-per-signature compensation. ...
Is It Legal To Pay Someone To Register To Vote?
No. Federal law prohibits anyone from paying or offering to pay someone to vote or register to vote, but, like paying petition circulators, it is legal to pay people to encourage others to do so. The America PAC, for instance, pays $30 per hour to people working to increase voter turnout. Earlier this year, the Biden Administration said it would pay college students to help register voters through the Federal Work-Study Program. ...
@#38 ... But, what has fmr Pres Trump said after they were exonerated? ...
'Central Park 5' members file defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump over comments during ABC News debate
[emphasis mine]abcnews.go.com
Interesting.