Archives for April 2024

Trump Couldn’t Help but Smile, Nod Along at Potential Juror’s Response to Question Light moments have been few in the thunderous collision of former President Donald Trump and the legal system. But one incident Tuesday put a brief smile on Trump’s face. Trump faces 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is prosecuting as felonies. The allegations against Trump are that ahead of the 2016 election, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000, so she would not go public with claims of an affair with Trump. Trump has denied the affair ever took place. On the second day of jury selection, one potential juror said he had read Trump’s books “The Art of the Deal” and “How to Get Rich,” according to Newsweek. After mentioning the second book, the juror asked if he got the title right. Trump smiled and then nodded. The incident was not videoed because no cameras are allowed in the courtroom. Although Monday was not very productive, with more than 50 of 96 potential jurors dismissed for saying they could not be fair and impartial, six people made the cut Tuesday, according to the New York Post. The names of jurors are being withheld. The Post said the foreman of the jury is a married person from West Harlem who came to America from Ireland; another juror is a corporate lawyer who is an Oregon native; one is a female nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering; and another is a female software engineer. A juror described by the Post as a “young black woman” said during selection that she respected Trump because he “always speaks his mind.” Also joining the jury is a 40-year-old from the Lower East Side who said Trump was “fascinating and mysterious.” “He walks into a room, and he sets people off one way or another,” the IT consultant said. “I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy can do all of this. Wow, that’s what I think.” On potential juror was rejected for having posted in 2017 on Facebook, “Good news!! Trump lost his court battle on his unlawful travel ban!!!” He added, “Get him out, lock him up.” Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, asked if the man still thinks Trump should be locked up. The man drew a smirk from Trump when he replied that he no longer thinks so. UPDATE: One potential juror in the Trump trial for questioning after she claimed she had no biased against Donald Trump, even though several social media post proved otherwise. When she entered the courtroom the Judge claimed Trump muttered something under his breath and… pic.twitter.com/NaSZCVEWYf — 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_in_Flint) April 16, 2024 Judge Juan Merchan was irritated once with Trump and warned Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche that Trump mumbled something toward a potential juror “12 feet away from your client.” “Your client was audibly uttering something,” the judge said. “I don’t know what he was uttering …” “I won’t tolerate that. I won’t have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I will be crystal clear,” he said. Truth and Accuracy We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Every day, firefighters go to great lengths to save cats. Usually, it’s an incredibly heartwarming feeling to see them posed with their rescued feline. But every so often, the animals reactions can be something quite unexpected!  Recently, firefighters in the UK received some funny responses when they shared the story of one rescued kitty. Lancashire Cat Stuck Between a Wall and a Hard Place A calico cat looked distinctly disturbed at having been rescued by Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service in the UK. In the picture, Crew Manager Friar is holding the unnamed grumpy kitty, who has instantly become famous in media around the world. Hmm. Can you see why? Somehow, this kitty had managed to get between two walls. So it was no easy task to get the curious calico out. Firefighters had to chisel apart the wall before they could catch the kitty and bring them to safety. But in return, the cat didn’t appear so grateful! “Between a wall and a hard place – literally! Our crews from Preston safely rescued this curious cat from their tight squeeze earlier this week. They found themselves stuck between two walls, and our firefighters carefully chiseled them out safe and sound. Cats always like to keep us on our toes 😂. 📸 CM Friar cuddling our curious cat,” the department shared on Facebook. The rescuers were rightly proud of the difficult rescue, but the cat’s funny reaction stole the show. Of course, this kitty had been through an ordeal, was dirty, and we don’t know how long they had been stuck in the wall. You might take a bad picture too if you had been through such an ordeal. Off the Wall Responses to Cat’s Rescue After making the post, the rescuers couldn’t have expected the hilarious responses. Instantly, everyone zeroed in on the cat’s agitated look. Was the cat about to find the motherload of all rodent dens right before the rescue? “The cat is fuming 😂😂😂😂,” said Kayleigh W. “If gratitude had a face it wouldn’t be this kitty cat 🤣♥️,” said Nidi H. “The level of gratitude in that cat’s face 😂😂😂,” said Tash B. “Curious cat looks fuming. He was the reigning hide n’seek champion until you guys turned up. Now Fred from two alleys down is the newly crowned victor 🙂‍↔️😳,” said Jo T. “The level of grump on this ‘lil fluffy Mcmurder mittens face is epic,” said Rachel W. The same funny responses happened on the rescue’s  Instagram. “By the looks of its little face you foiled the cunning plan the cat was in the midst of 😂,” said Em. “That cat looks furious. 😂 Bet it’s glad to be rescued,” said Andie B. Although this picture became unexpectedly hilarious, we applaud the rescuer’s fine job. And we know the cat has received care and must be extremely relieved to be free and safe again!

Watch: Dem Rep Blames Trump for Death of Putin’s Opponent Alexei Navalny, Says He Gave Russia ‘Green Light’ to Do ‘Crazy Stuff’ How low can Ted Lieu go? The radical Democrat from California has a record of hating former President Donald Trump that’s impressive even for a leftist that keeps him familiar to fans of MSNBC and the like. But his take on the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was a new nadir. In an interview Saturday on MSNBC’s “Alex Witt Reports,” Lieu tried to make the case that the Novalney death could somehow be blamed on Trump. And he started with Trump’s comments from a South Carolina campaign stop last week when the former president emphasized, as The Hill reported, that NATO allies need to keep up their mandatory spending on national defense or the United States, under Trump, would not feel obligated to defend them from a Russian attack. Trump said he would not only use the American military to defend a NATO ally who failed to devote at least 2 percent of its GDP to national defense (which is most of NATO, according to Reuters), but that he would actually encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” “You gotta pay your bills,” he said. Now, a normal person would understand that the idea of an American president telling Russia to “do whatever they hell they want” to longtime allies comes under the heading of hyperbole. A normal person who follows the news might even remember a few years back when then-President Trump’s confrontational approach about NATO members not fulfilling their obligations actually spurred then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel to change her tune on the topic. But Lieu, a fifth-term congressman who was a prosecution manager for the 2021 Democratic impeachment of Trump, is apparently not normal. His memory of the Trump presidency is probably cherry-picked to leave out everything but “Russia collusion” and “impeachment.” (Even on “Russia collusion” Lieu was from the grassy-knoll wing of his party when it came to conspiracy theories.) So, it’s almost to be expected that Lieu has no problem interpreting Trump’s call for NATO members to do their part as a dog whistle to tell Putin that Trump was A-OK with Russia killing a dissident. Check out Lieu’s appearance here: OF COURSE! Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) claims TRUMP is responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny pic.twitter.com/QlVS01At1j — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 18, 2024 “Why did Navalny all of a sudden die at this point in time?” Lieu asked. “I first of all, agree with President Biden that Russia is responsible for his death. Also, what happened in a few days leading up to his death? Well, we had former President Donald Trump essentially say that Russia should attack European countries. “That is crazy. That is traitorous language. Russia certainly was listening, and I think they thought, hey, we now have a green light to do all sorts of crazy stuff.” First of all, let’s stipulate that Biden and Lieu are right about Russia being to blame for the death. (Stopped clocks and Democrats are right once in a while.) And let’s leave aside the fact Lieu’s weird idea of what “traitorous” means. (Not wanting to lay down American lives and treasure for European socialist freeloaders apparently qualifies.) What’s really astounding here is that Lieu is actually claiming that Vladimir Putin, an utterly ruthless dictator whose opponents have an astonishing habit of ending up deceased in various way, a man who first took the helm of Russia when Bill Clinton was still president, was looking to a former president of the United States for permission on when to get rid of a troublesome prisoner. Only a true victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome could come up with that. More likely, Putin has long ago sized up President Joe Biden as an international weakling — whose three years in office so far have established a global reputation for cravenness, from his surrender of the southern border immediately upon taking office to his surrender of Afghanistan in August 2021, to his effectively greenlighting the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to his backstabbing Israel during its war of existence against Hamas today. With that in mind, he did away with Navalny when he chose to, for his own reasons, and knowing full well that his country would suffer no consequences — at least not from the Biden administration. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows the doddering, almost certainly corrupt husk of a president in the White House is a symbol of weakness for the world to see — physically, intellectually and morally. Ted Lieu has both eyes and ears and, presumably at least reads headlines on his Facebook feed, so he knows it, too. Yet he has no problem heading to the friendly confines of MSNBC to offer a spin on the death of one of the world’s most prominent dissidents that panders shamelessly to progressive political needs of the moment. It’s a perfect picture of the Democratic Party in 2024: Unserious, finger-shallow, and utterly undeserving of power in the greatest nation the world has ever seen. And as November gets closer, it’s only going to go lower. Truth and Accuracy We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Neil Young to Perform Lost ‘Cortez The Killer’ Verses on Summer Tour With Crazy Horse
When Neil Young hits the road this summer with Crazy Horse, he’s planning on performing “Cortez The Killer” with verses that have been missing from the song for 50 years. “Just a couple of days ago, I found the other verses,” Young told fans Monday afternoon during a Zoom with paid subscribers to the Neil Young Archives . “Just the lyrics…We may have those lost lyrics in the show, which will be fun for me.” When the band cut the song originally in a California house near Zuma Beach, the power to the recording console died in the middle of the take, though the band was completely oblivious. They felt it was a prefect performance. “Don’t shoot yourselves,” producer David Briggs told them when they came out of the studio. “But the power went off, and we missed one verse.” Briggs told them which verse they had lost. “I never liked that one anyway,” Young replied. “It was a good take,” Young told fans on Zoom. “So what we did was take the master tape and find ways to cut it together so that it would work, but we lost a couple of verses. They were gone. Now that I’ve found the lyrics, I’m trying to find exactly where they come in the song. I need to look at the tape and see where the cut is, where we lost some. I’ll insert them there.”
In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone , Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro recalled cutting “Cortez The Killer” shortly after he joined the band. “It was a sunny day at Zuma Beach, and this guy came by, and I smoked angel dust with him,” he said. “And then Neil came up and said, ‘Let’s try this song,’ We never played it, and I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’ If you listen to the first recording, I thought the second chord was the first chord. Neil was emphasizing the first one, I was emphasizing the second one. [Laughs]. But you know, it goes around in a circle, so it doesn’t really matter too much.”

Young has played the song in concert over 540 times, but this will be the first time anyone has heard the lost lyrics. At a May 29, 2003, show in Hamburg, Germany, Young did add this additional verse: “The ship is breaking up on the rocks/With a sandy beach so close/The ship is breaking up on the rocks/With a sandy beach so close/Dancing across the water/Dancing across the water/Breaking up on the rocks/Sandy beach so close.” It’s unclear if those were spur-of-the-moment ad-libs or memories of the lost words from 1975.

Editor’s picks

After Covid hit in 2019, Young took a break from the road for three years. When he emerged last summer for a solo tour, he played only outdoor venues. He’s playing 24 shows with Crazy Horse over the next few months, and they’re all outdoors as well. “We gotta be careful,” Young said on the fan Zoom. “I don’t know the stats on it, but I imagine if you look at a regular group of 15,000 or 20,000 people, just randomly from around the world, and then look at 15,000 or 20,000 people that all went to a show, and how many of them got Covid, I think you’d found people that went to a show inside have a lot more of a chance of getting sick. I don’t really need to do that. Willie Nelson told me he’s only playing outside now. I felt that was a good idea, so that’s what I’m doing.” Hearing that Graham Nash recently came down with Covid for a fourth time just reinforced his views on this matter. “I just sent him the acetate for the new CSNY Fillmore East in 1969 double vinyl, all mixed analog,” Young said. “He was going to listen to it yesterday, but he came down with Covid, and he’s out for a while.”
This live album is a holy grail for CSNY fans since it was recorded during their peak as a live band and was captured in pristine sound quality. “I’ve been hanging out with [Stephen Stills],” Young said on the Zoom. “We just finished the CSNY Fillmore East 1969 live album. We did it together with John Hanlon engineering and mixing. Rhino had almost completed a digital thing made of digital copies of all the original tapes. It was so depressing that I couldn’t even listen to it. You could hear that we were playing great, but I just didn’t want to hear that anymore, where you know you have a lot more sound than what you’re hearing. We found the original analog tapes, and we mixed them. It sounds like God. It’s amazing. There’s an 18-minute ‘Down The By The River’ on there that’s maybe the best ‘Down By The River’ ever. Stills is just smokin’ it. I think I might have already smoked when we started off, so it was a lot of fun.”

Related

Young largely dodged questions about what songs he plans on playing this summer with Crazy Horse, though he noted that he enjoyed playing Tonight’s The Night, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere , and Ragged Glory at intimate club gigs late last year. “The songs that the Horse plays are so simple you can go almost anywhere with them,” he said. “A lot of them only have two or three chords in them, and they just repeat. There’s another song that has four chords in it. We’re going to try that. The Horse has [rarely] played ‘I’m The Ocean’ before. I think we’re going do that one. But we should be able to jam for a long time on all that stuff. I’m looking forward to that.” He’s also looking forward to playing with Micah Nelson, who will be taking over from Nils Lofgren for the summer. (The guitarist has prior commitments with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band.) “Micah is fantastic,” Young said. “He’s really the right guy for the job. He plays great guitar. He sings really well. The music is in his blood. And it keeps things simple. The Horse is a simple four-piece rock and roll band, and still is. The fourth member has changed a few times because of various lifetime events, but I think we’re in great shape.” Trending O.J. Simpson Executor Clarifies Stance on Goldmans Receiving Money From Estate Supreme Court Justices Compare Bribes to Taking a Teacher to Cheesecake Factory Trump Reportedly Nods Off While Attending First Day of Criminal Trial Drake Responds to Rick Ross’ Nose-Job Claim, Warns Rapper After Diss, ‘Don’t Worry We’ll Handle It’
Young also gave an update on the upcoming Archives III box set. “It’s different from the other two,” he said. “It has a different approach. There’s more audio vérité in it. We have real-time things happening that people haven’t heard. There’s one scene is myself and Nicolette [Larson], Linda [Ronstadt], and [David] Briggs. We’re sitting around a table, and I’m singing all the songs that are on the next record to them for the first time. And then they start singing along. It’s just a live thing of people sitting around a table. I think it’s very interesting to hear them…There’s really a really cool film in there called Across The Water that is a great Crazy Horse film. It’s really big. It’s bigger than the other volumes.”
According to current plans, Volume III will cover a 30-year time span. Volume IV will do the same. “Rather than keep putting out volumes that are smaller,” he said. “We’re going to put out IV and that’ll be it. We’re starting on the last one. It’s a monumental task.”

Riley Strain’s Mom Says He Told Her His Drink Tasted Funny Before Death Riley Strain’s Mom Says He Told Her Drink Tasted Funny … Suggests Foul Play Riley Strain ‘s mom claims her son complained about his drink not tasting right ahead of his disappearance and subsequent death … and the implication is that he was roofied. Michelle Whiteid and her family sat with NewsNation for an interview that’s airing in full later Tuesday — and she says Riley was texting her the night of his disappearance, where she says he told her his rum and coke did “not taste good.” Michelle says Riley claimed the beverage tasted like barbecue … reiterating it was not an enjoyable cocktail. Michelle says she told Riley he probably shouldn’t be drinking it then. This exchange has left Michelle seemingly convinced her son’s drink was spiked with something at Luke Bryan ‘s 32 Bridge bar in Nashville — the last place he was seen before wandering off into the streets, where he vanished. She adds … “Maybe there was something in it that shouldn’t have been.” Remember, the bar previously claimed Riley was only served one drink and 2 waters before being escorted out of the bar. Of course, this isn’t a smoking gun by any means — but it does lead to the possibility he was roofied … as Nashville’s nightlife has been the target of multiple drugging attempts in recent years. It’s definitely a thing, and it’s not outside the realm of what might’ve happened. The other possibility, of course, is that Riley was in fact heavily intoxicated that night … and showed up to Luke’s already drunk. The bar itself has said they booted him for that exact reason … claiming he was acting up. They say they have surveillance video to back it up too, which they have yet to release. While Riley’s cause of death appears to be accidental , per the autopsy report — the toxicology report is still pending … and several questions remain unanswered for now. Riley’s family has consistently said they believe something else happened to their loved one that night … refusing to accept the police’s investigation, which determined there was no foul play. The one new thing Riley’s mom is expected to do in this interview … slam his friends. As we all know … none of them went with Riley that night, saying he told them he was good and that he’d meet them back at the hotel. Now, it seems his mother is angry with them.