This year's festivities won't look anything like those of Halloweens past. After all, the events of 2020 have been straight out of a horror movie. Still, pandemic be damned, Halloween isn't cancelled — it's just going to be a little different this time around, and so are the costumes.
The Link LonkCoronation Street alumni Catherine Tyldesley is a pro at dealing with online trolls. Last month she used the classic 'kill them with kindness' method, but this time around she decided to give one man a proper putting down.
In a video on her Instagram Stories, the former Eva Price actress and Strictly Come Dancing contestant said: "It's not often your Auntie Cath gets trolled. I'm very lucky like that. I've got lots of wonderful, positive people in my life.
"You do get the occasional twonk, so to the guy yesterday who said I had 'big fat legs'... babes, I've been training these legs for seven years. This s**t don't wobble. And I guarantee I could deadlift or squat your entire body weight, my love.
Catherine TyldesleyInstagram
"So things just got really awkward, really fast, didn't they? God bless ya, darling. Find the light, come on. "
Catherine has been using her Instagram to post lots of fun content over lockdown, such as an amusing anniversary throwback photo involving a grumpy camel, and a look back at the first Corrie role she played (yup, she was someone else before she was Eva).
The actress admitted that she left the soap because she wanted to see her child grow up, feeling like she would miss out on those all-important formative years if she was working on a 6-episode a week TV show.
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Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have released their state and federal tax returns ahead of the first presidential debate following reports of how little Donald Trump paid to the federal government in recent years.
The Biden campaign released online Mr Biden’s federal and Delaware tax returns from 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Mr Biden said 22 years of tax returns would be available for the public to review in total.
Additionally, Ms Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, released their federal and California tax returns from 2019.
Mr Biden and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, reported receiving $985,233 in adjusted gross income in 2019, of which they paid nearly $300,000 in federal taxes. In 2019, Ms Harris and her husband reported receiving just over $3m in adjusted gross income, and they owed $1,185,628 in taxes.
This starkly contrasted what Mr Trump paid to the federal government based on a bombshell report from The New York Times.
According to the report, Mr Trump failed to pay federal taxes in recent years and paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017. The president avoided paying taxes from 10 of the 15 years reviewed by the newspaper because his businesses lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, allowing him to reduce his tax burden.
The report also detailed a series of questionable expenses Mr Trump wrote off, including nearly $700,000 as a “consulting fee” to his daughter Ivanka Trump and $70,000 for hair styling.
Mr Trump dismissed the report as inaccurate but has declined to detail the specific errors.
The president, in stark contrast to past presidents, has refused to release his tax returns on his own to the American public. His campaign has claimed he’s not released his returns as they are currently under audit.
The Biden campaign choosing to release Mr Biden and Ms Harris’ taxes comes just 48 hours after the bombshell report about the president’s taxes was released and hours before the first presidential election.
“The American people deserve transparency from their leaders, it's why as of today, I've released 22 years of my tax returns,” Mr Biden wrote in a tweet.
When speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kate Bedingfield, Mr Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, alluded to the move as a way to show how the former vice president stands for “honesty and transparency” compared to Mr Trump.
“Look, Trump’s tax returns and what we learned from that reporting I think reinforces what we already knew about Donald Trump, which is that he looks down on working people,” Ms Bedingfield said.
“It reinforces how much of a choice there is in this campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” she added. Mr Biden has made the same comparison between himself and Mr Trump in recent weeks while on the campaign trail.
Trump accused reporters this weekend of mischaracterizing comments he made in July 2016 publicly encouraging Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton. But the way he described those comments is completely at odds with reality, and there’s video to prove it.
“Do you remember when I said, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, find her emails,’ or whatever the hell I said? ‘Find her emails,’ and then we all laughed together, 25,000 people in a stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “They cut it off exactly before we all started to laugh together, right? And for two years they’ve been saying, ‘He dealt with Russia. He asked Russia to please get her emails,’ or whatever the hell we were asking ... the whole place cracks up with me ... this is how dishonest these people are.”
This is no doubt part of his never-ending effort to discredit the media.
Watch:
Trump lies and says his infamous July 2016 call for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton happened in front of "25,000 people in a stadium," when in fact it happened at a news conference. pic.twitter.com/P1GsqVLUSY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 27, 2020
Trump made the remarks in question during his first campaign, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”
But Trump did not say this to a cheering and laughing crowd at one of his rallies. He actually said it in front of a handful of reporters during a news conference at his Doral property in Florida. That news conference wound up being his final one before the election, in large part because of the negative stir his remarks generated.
Furthermore, nobody laughed when Trump said it, and his comments are just as bad in context as they are when the “Russia, if you’re listening” line is considered on its own. Here’s the footage:
Jim Acosta of CNN, the reporter who asked the question that prompted Trump to say “Russia, if you’re listening” at the July 2016 news conference, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “the reporters at the news conference didn’t laugh. And Trump didn’t appear to be joking.”
The president seems to be trying to turn reality on its head, even though there’s tape to prove otherwise.
Retconning the incident has become a staple of Trump’s campaign speeches. On September 19 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for instance, Trump brought it up and claimed “everybody laughed” and “it was a joke,” then added the lie about it happening at a rally for the first time over the weekend.
Even if Trump didn’t mean for his comments to be taken seriously, Russian hackers apparently did. According to Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officials, on the same day Trump made those comments, Russian hackers “attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provided and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.”
Trump has made clear in the years since that he doesn’t think foreign interference in American elections is a bad thing, insofar as it helps him. In October 2019, Trump flatly told reporters that he thought the Chinese and Ukrainian governments “should investigate the Bidens.” Those comments were widely condemned but were defended as just a joke by Republican members of Congress like Kevin McCarthy and Roy Blunt, even though footage of the comment showed Trump was serious.
REPORTER: What exactly did you hope the Ukrainian president would do about the Bidens?
TRUMP: "I would think that if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation ... they should investigate the Bidens ... China likewise should start an investigation." pic.twitter.com/gLVBjmSs3q
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 3, 2019
Trump’s comments about the July 2016 news conference were especially shameless, but they were far from the only brazen lie he pushed in Middletown. He told his supporters that just prior to the coronavirus hitting the US, “we were coming together ... I was getting calls from stone-cold, hard-line Democrats,” even though in reality he had just been through an impeachment trial. He claimed 35,000 people attended his Friday evening rally in Newport News, Virginia, but local reports indicate there were around 4,000. And he appeared to fabricate stats about excess mortality in order to mislead people about how hard the US has been hit by Covid-19.
Trump once advised his supporters in 2018 to “just remember — what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” He’s not subtle about it.
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The Link LonkWe are writing in response to the recent incident during the Brookline Police Reform Committee on September 16th where, on video, the Select Board Chair and Chair of the Police Reform Committee, Bernard Greene made a gesture of choking himself, gagging, and then laughing while turning the committee discussion to the banning of police chokeholds. Chair Greene then made a brief apology on video; “I know it wasn’t funny,” he said. Chair Greene also wrote a brief apology the following day in the Brookline Town Meeting email group where he described his behavior as “a lapse and I apologize.” He then went on to accuse those complaining about his cruel behavior as “weaponizing” his actions. This is no apology, and it pivots to an imagined status as victim.
Since then, the Town’s Select Board, with the exception of Dr. Raul Fernandez, has sought to minimize his behavior. Moreover, the local Brookline group PAX expressed their support for Mr. Greene’s continuation of chairing the Police Reform Committee and then admonished town “anti-racist activists” for “severely overreacting” and urging the “resignation of our first … African-American Select Board member.” This largely White organization then accuses Black residents of bullying, and “near-mimicking of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.” In effect, PAX is supporting racist behavior by their complicity and the words “bully” and “weaponize” are in danger of becoming meaningless hyperbole in Brookline.
What if, instead of making a chokehold joke, Chair Greene had mocked a disabled person, said something homophobic, anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic? The fact that Mr. Greene is Black should not mean that he can say something that hurts Black and Brown people. For many people of color, a police chokehold is not a laughing matter. No one should ever forget George Floyd and the countless other Black people killed by a police chokehold.
We do not view Mr. Greene’s “chokehold joke” as a “lapse” or a forgivable gaffe. Instead, we view this appalling “joke” as only the most recent example of Mr. Greene’s insensitivity to Black and Brown Brookline residents’ and visitors’ numerous complaints over the years about racism and unfair practices in the Brookline police department. Many people are capable of writing the chokehold ban Greene says he has worked on since June; his doing so confers no proof of impartiality or great effort. And what policy matters when the practice is abnegation of police oversight, as practiced by Police Commissioner Greene?
As a police commissioner and Select Board Chair, Mr. Greene’s joke and apology are not enough. We ask PAX members and those who support their statement to step back and imagine the harm this “joke” inflicted on Black and Brown people in our community and how this continued support of Chair Greene only contributes to their pain. Think about the many people that his gross insensitivity hurt. What Mr. Greene did was wrong and unforgivable.
Note that it is Mr. Greene’s actions that exacerbated our concerns and it is Mr. Greene who should be held responsible. He should step down at once from Chair of the Police Reform committee and also step down as Chair of the Select Board effective immediately. One’s race should not be a justification for allowing unconscionable behavior. And one’s willingness to hide behind race only lengthens the struggle for Black and Brown people in this country, and in this town.
Respectfully,
Deborah Brown, Donelle O’Neal Sr., Raj Dhanda, Arthur W. Conquest III, Savyon Cohen, Adena Gabrielle Walker, Zahriyannah Karakashian-Jones, Jaymmy Colon, Luciana Schachnik, Mariela Ames, Josh Anyaosah, Cece Huggins, Scot Huggins, Anne Weaver, Miriam Aschkenasy, Bonnie Bastien, Ryan Black, Laura Bradford, Abby Erdmann, Martha Gray, Anne Greenwald, Kendall Harcourt, Donna Healey, Eric Hyett, Lara Jarrell, Robert Lepson, Kim Loscalzo, Jessica Morris, Emma Nash, Maya Norton, Elaine Shannon, Naomi Sweitzer, Emy Takinami, Ean Towsner, Kea van der Ziel
The Link Lonk
NBC, Getty Images
The Friends Season 4 premiere, "The One With the Jellyfish," is probably most iconic for Ross (David Schwimmer) hollering the classic, "We were on a break!" line after he and Rachel almost rekindle their on-again-off-again relationship. But before he has a chance to fully leave the fight, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) delivers the zinger that has left fans laughing, but confused, for decades. Now, Friends writers are explaining the joke, and it might not be exactly what you think.
So, what the heck is Rachel referring to? Obviously, it's some sort of inside dig at Ross's masculinity—perhaps a jab at his sexual performance? According to Friends executive producer Greg Malins, that's a close guess.
"It was the only time I'd ever written down my [joke] before I pitched," Malins told Entertainment Weekly on September 25th. "I remember thinking, 'If I don't pitch this exactly right, it's not gonna get in.'" After Malins pitched the joke, executive producer Adam Chase added in the final nail in the coffin: the "it is a big deal" line.
"They were insulting each other back and forth," Malins continued, "and I had this idea in my head, [Rachel] says, 'Well one time, when you prematurely ejaculated, I told you it was okay and it wasn't.'"
Chase explained that this was actually a callback to a Friends Season 2 episode, "The One Where Ross and Rachel...You Know," better known as "the juice box moment." The juice box in the scene was a visual metaphor for Ross's early ejaculation. So, to quote another '90s sitcom, yadda yadda yadda, the joke is a dig at Ross being a bit too excited.
"On Friends, it was so wildly collaborative," Chase said, adding that during the brainstorm session for this scene, "I remember yelling at each other in the room as the characters."
Although "it is a big deal" could be seen as a throwaway joke, it actually has layers. Friends trivia junkies, eat your heart out.
cucun.indah.link Xbox Game Pass is a good deal, but did it really need the free publicity? Image: Microsoft Fact: If you cover gam...
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