Opening statements were heard Friday in the trial of Daniel Penny, a New York City subway passenger who faces charges relating to the death of a homeless man who allegedly threatened other passengers last year. Penny, a 25-year-old former Marine, faces up to 19 years in prison after he put Jordan Neely, who was allegedly threatening passengers, in a chokehold. Neely died at the scene. “This is a case about a young man who did for others what we would want someone to do for us,” said Penny’s attorney Thomas Kenniff, according to Fox News. “Words like ‘I’m ready to die. I’m ready to serve a life sentence,’ when these threats spoken in the confined [space] in a moving subway car, you either bury your head and pray or you stand up and protect thy neighbor. That’s what Danny Penny did.” In his own opening statements, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said that Neely “took his last breaths on the dirty floor of an uptown F train – at the time he died he was 30 years old, homeless, on synthetic drugs, and suffering from mental illness.” “[Penny] did not intend to kill him, but under the law deadly physical force such as a chokehold is permitted only when it is absolutely necessary and only for as long as it is absolutely necessary,” Yoran continued in his 45-minute long opening statement. Yoran said Penny held Neely in a chokehold for an “unnecessarily reckless” 5 minutes and 53 seconds. Penny’s attorneys have argued that their client’s chokehold was justified due to Neely’s threatening behavior, but they also question whether the chokehold caused Neely’s death. The medical examiner never provided specific evidence to support the claim that Neely died of asphyxiation from the chokehold, the New York Post reported. “Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true. I was trying to restrain him,” Penny said previously, according to The Daily Wire. “You can see in the video there’s a clear rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he’s breathing. I’m trying to restrain him from being able to carry out the threats.” MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ The defense will also try to admit evidence of Neely’s abuse of the drug K2, which was found in his system when he died, though the medical examiner’s report didn’t say how much of the drug was found. Penny’s defense has attempted to dismiss the case based on this information, but has been denied. Neely was given Narcan – a powerful drug to combat overdoses – by first responders when they first arrived at the scene, CBS reported. Those first responders also didn’t immediately perform CPR because they found Neely had a faint pulse when they arrived. They did eventually perform CPR. Penny said he took action against Neely because Neely was threatening passengers. Court documents from the incident indicate fellow passengers were afraid of Neely and feared for their lives, The Daily Wire reported. “I want to hurt people, I want to go to Rikers. I want to go to prison,” one woman said Neely was yelling that day on the subway. That woman, who was with her son, said she hid behind his stroller as Neely allegedly charged at other passengers.

The Kamala Harris campaign is allegedly manipulating numerous Internet platforms, and possibly breaking rules, to artificially boost her popularity and evade fact-checks on false content. An investigation from The Federalist uncovered what appears to be a vast astroturfing operation run on Discord by paid Harris staffers. Both Reddit and X, according to the report, have been manipulated to help Harris – allegations that follow reporting about the Harris team engaging in shady practices on Google to effectively rewrite headlines of legacy news media articles, again, to boost Harris. On Reddit, Harris staffers allegedly direct volunteers to post specific content to specific threads, and up-vote or down-vote certain posts – effectively spamming threads and seemingly breaking platform rules. The apparent goal is to make Harris appear more popular than she is, and promote content that helps Harris, even if it’s not true. For example, staffers have allegedly directed the boosting of Project 2025 content, which they tie to former President Donald Trump, even though Trump is not connected to the plan. In the matter of 15 days, the staffers were able to get thousands of posts published, and the content has received more than 5.7 million upvotes, and over 400,000 comments, the report says. It was also uncovered that 126 of the top 1,000 posts on the mega-popular “Politics” subreddit, in just the past month, were allegedly published by Harris campaign volunteers. On X, another hugely influential platform for politics, Harris staffers are directing similar activity from volunteers. One goal from the camp is to block “community notes” that are unfavorable to Harris. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ Community notes are basically fact-checks on X, which appear under misleading or outright false posts. Under Elon Musk’s leadership, contributors can add a community note, which is voted on by users to determine if it will be publicly attached to content or not. When Harris campaign staffers direct volunteers to mass “dislike” an unfavorable community note, it won’t appear. This is likely why pro-Harris accounts have been able to spread falsehoods without fact-checks attached to them. Even CNN, an outlet extremely hostile to Trump, has reported on the routine false information being spewed from “KamalaHQ,” the official Harris camp X account. The same goes for other pro-Harris accounts that appear to be working for the Biden-Harris administration, too. Google has played a role in the deception, too. Aside from the company’s documented bias against Trump, it also permitted the Harris campaign to change headlines and subheadings of mainstream articles to appear more favorable to Harris, left-leaning outlet Axios exposed over the summer. For example, if one were to conduct a Google search related to health care, they might get a link to an NPR story that’s sponsored by the Harris team. The campaign, however, in numerous instances, has edited that headline and subheadline. In one case, the story would now appear with the headline, “Harris will lower health care costs.” In other words, users would think they’re reading a preview for an NPR story, while they’re actually reading content from the Harris camp. The news organizations whose content was being manipulated, such as USA Today, the Associated Press, NPR, and others, were unaware of the changes. Also of note, the Trump campaign does not engage in this shady practice. On Wednesday, “Reddit Lies,” the account that broke the story, said it was banned from the campaign-run Discord server that’s organizing the astroturfing operation, indicating the Harris team is likely aware the operation has been exposed. The Harris-Walz volunteer discord server just banned my account. We expected this. That’s why we quietly archived the server over the past week and are now releasing the files to the broader public. Deadman’s switch.https://t.co/0Sud1WxbqQ — Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) October 30, 2024 Additionally, Musk has already reacted to the allegations concerning X, announcing he’s opened an investigation into the Harris team’s antics. Related: BEN SHAPIRO: I Got A Shocking Text From The New York Times

During his Halloween night concert in Montreal, Bruce Springsteen wanted to shake things up. Instead of starting his set with a classic like Born to Run, Hungry Heart, or Dancing in the Dark, Bruce decided to try something totally new. We hear the E Street Band playing a familiar spooky tune in a fan-shared video on X. As soon as Bruce hit the stage, guitar slung across his chest, fans went wild. Full video performance of tonight’s opener in Montreal by @springsteen and the #estreetband: Ghostbusters!! #springsteen #springsteentour2024 pic.twitter.com/g3CgA5jGqa— Spring-Nuts (@SpringNuts_) November 1, 2024 It May Have Been Halloween, But Bruce Springsteen Wasn’t Scared He sang to the crowd, “If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?,” Of course, the audience screamed Ghostbusters and sang along with Bruce to the nostalgic track. It made a lot of people smile knowing that the Boss loves the classics just like they do. The video made the rounds on social media and fans who were in attendance and those catching the replay all seemed to love it. An X user who posts as @spring-nuts, shared a great video of the performance. This person loves the Boss. “Bruce makes me happy even when I am sad. Happy Halloween!” This Bruce fan agreed, “Having just had a Zumba session full of Thriller, the Addams Family, the Time Warp…I just love this. Face it, if we can’t have a laugh at our age, then it really is a sorry state of affairs. Good on ’em for not taking themselves too serious.” So did this fan, “That’s the kind of surprises, the long time fans go to the stadium for! Awesome!” After finishing the Halloween-style tune, Bruce Springsteen went on to entertain fans with 29 tracks, according to Setlist.com. Those who love the Boss showed up to hear some throwback tunes but had no idea that Ghostbusters, a song Ray Parker Jr. made famous, would start the night off. It was a once-in-a-lifetime concert experience that fans would likely never forget. One thing for certain, Bruce Springsteen ain’t afraid of no ghosts. The source of story’s image can be found here. The post Bruce Springsteen Opens Concert With Surprise Halloween Cover & Crowd Absolutely Loses It appeared first on InspireMore.

'My wife kind of dragged me over here'

The shirtless woman reportedly left the building as police were being called

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HBO’s Bill Maher scolded the media on Friday’s edition of Real Time Overtime for their claims that Donald Trump called for former Rep. Liz Cheney to be shot. Maher’s rebuke was not out of any love for Trump, but a demand that the media not “lie to me” because the real context of Trump’s actual remarks was something that “hippies used to say.” Maher asked his assembled panel, “What do you make of the statement, I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney, and this is what I really don't like about the media: no, he didn't, he didn't, you don't, you don't have to move me to not like Donald Trump more than I—”     The Fifth Column podcast co-host Michael Moynihan interrupted to concur, “He says so many shitty things, why do you have to do that?”  Maher then continued: By the way, what if people don't realize it, he's criticizing her for being a warhawk. I mean, she is Dick Cheney's daughter. He said, ‘She's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay, let's see how she feels about it. You know, they're all warhawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh gee, we'll send tens of thousands of troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’ Now, of course, he expresses himself horribly. He has to add, ‘she's a stupid person’ because he's a moron. Rep. Jamie Raskin couldn’t contain himself and chimed in with, “Well, Trump knows what it's really like from Vietnam.” Maher rolled on, “Just to be clear, this is exactly what hippies always said. This is exactly what peaceniks always said. This is Fortunate Son, the song. It's like, you know what, it's very easy to sit in your building and send young men to die.” He then reiterated, “Just don't lie to me. I don't like Donald Trump, don't lie to me and tell me she was in, he wants -- in front of a firing squad. He was saying something that, by the way, if it came out of the mouth, some of it, not the stupid part, again, sounds like what hippies used to say about not sending people to—” Raskin then interrupted again to argue Trump can’t credibly make the claim, “I agree with you on the lying. I mean, that’s ridiculous and absurd and counterproductive. But when did Donald Trump ever criticize a warhawk the way a hippie did? I mean, was it during Vietnam? He got out of going to Vietnam, but he didn't criticize the war or the Iraq War.” Maher accused Raskin of missing the point, “Jamie, I’m not defending Trump. I’m just saying don’t lie to me.” Moynihan agreed, “the number of Trump people you talk to who talk about the media and giving them any ammunition like this. I mean, I saw headlines, chyrons on television this morning saying that Donald Trump had said that Kamala Harris should be executed. I mean, at the beginning of that kind of rambling, incoherent thing said, ‘Give her a weapon,’ which is not typically something you do to someone getting executed.” Maher wrapped up by observing “the spirit of it is something that if someone with a blue hat said it, people would nod along on the left.“ People can have their own opinions on the merits of Trump’s and Cheney's respective foreign policy views, but it is the media’s job to tell the truth about what Trump said and let the voters decide for themselves. Here is a transcript for the November 1 show: HBO Real Time with Bill Maher Overtime 11/1/2024 11:04 PM ET BILL MAHER: What do you make of the statement, I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney, and this is what I really don't like about the media: no, he didn't, he didn't, you don't, you don't have to move me to not like Donald Trump more than I—. MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: He says so many shitty things, why do you have to do that. MAHER: And by the way, what if people don't realize it, he's criticizing her for being a war hawk. I mean, she is Dick Cheney's daughter. He said, “She's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay, let's see how she feels about it. You know, they're all warhawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh gee, we'll send tens of thousands of troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’” Now, of course, he expresses himself horribly. He has to add, "she's a stupid person" because he's a moron. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, Trump knows what it's really like from Vietnam. MAHER: Okay, just to be clear, this is exactly what hippies always said. This is exactly what peaceniks always said. This is Fortunate Son, the song. It's like, you know what, it's very easy to sit in your building and send young men to die, apropos of Ukraine, because, I don't know, that war doesn't look like it's going in the right direction. But just so, you know, just, just don't lie to me. I don't like Donald Trump, don't lie to me and tell me she was in, he wants -- in front of a firing squad. He was saying something that, by the way, if it came out of the mouth, some of it, not the stupid part, again, sounds like what hippies used to say about not sending people to. Yes? RASKIN: But, Bill, can I, agree with you on the lying. I mean, that’s ridiculous and absurd and counterproductive. But when did Donald Trump ever criticize a war hawk the way a hippie did? I mean, was it during Vietnam? He got out of going to Vietnam, but he didn't criticize the war or the Iraq War. MAHER: Jamie, I’m not defending Trump.  RASKIN: Yeah. MAHER: I'm just saying, don't lie to me.  RASKIN: I agree with that, I mean, that's just a distortion, but read what he really said though. MOYNIHAN: It’s counterproductive, I mean, the number of Trump people you talk to who talk about the media and giving them any ammunition like this. I mean, I saw headlines, chyrons on television this morning saying that Donald Trump had said that Kamala Harris should be executed. I mean, at the beginning of that kind of rambling incoherent thing-- MAHER: Right. MOYNIHAN: -- said, “Give her a weapon,” which is not typically something you do to someone getting executed. MAHER: And the spirit of it – MOYNIHAN: Right. MAHER: Is something that if someone with a blue hat said it, people would nod along on the left.  MOYNIHAN: There’s plenty of things he says. You don’t have to invent them.

When I woke up the morning after Trump’s 2016 victory, it was clear that the world was ending. I was a junior in college, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting. The theater department was housed within the humanities building. We shared space with the students studying women and gender studies.Another student, both gay and black, said, 'Anyone who voted for Donald Trump hates me.'I only knew one other person who, like me, had cast their vote for Donald Trump. We had both filled out our mail-in ballots in guilty silence.When I arrived on campus that morning, I collided with a good friend; she had filled a 7-Eleven Slurpee cup with booze and was drinking it somewhat discreetly in the hallways. She was not the only one, and she was not reprimanded. In the quad, my physical theater professor (yes, that was a real course) was handing out free, consolatory pancakes to students with swollen, red eyes.In my afternoon scene study class, a young woman sat in the corner and cried, “I really thought we would finally have a woman for president.”Another student, both gay and black, said, “Anyone who voted for Donald Trump hates me.”My professor nodded with the bravado of righteous indignation, like a wise elder at the gate watching as the city crumbled to pieces, pitying the young people who would have to go on living. As I ascended the staircase toward my bedroom that evening, my roommate, the one other person who was not utterly demoralized by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, popped his head out, surveyed the room to ensure we could not be overheard, and whispered, “I’m not sad that he won.”“Me, neither,” I breathed.That was all we said. Even in our own home, it was not safe to say more.I kept my vote for Donald Trump a secret for years. There were many days, listening to my friends bemoan the callous inhumanity of Republican voters and the inevitable rise of fascism because Donald Trump wanted to cut taxes, that I would wonder if — at my lowest points, fantasize that — my ballot had been lost in the mail. Maybe I was not culpable in his victory at all.The vigil for American democracy that had taken place in my humanities building had convinced me that if I were to be a conservative traversing among the creative society, I must be a quiet one.But times change, don’t they?Times change when men invade women’s locker rooms. When doctors sterilize children. When Big Pharma lies to us. When free speech is compromised.Today, the conservatives are more classically liberal than the liberals. And I, as someone with classically liberal tendencies, am living in my era. I’m fist-bumping RFK Jr. as he promises to “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again.” I’m vibing with JD Vance’s commitment to the hard-working blue-collar class of America. I’m getting behind Elon Musk’s defense of free speech on the internet. And yes, I am no longer ashamed to say that I really hope Trump can Make America Great Again.But regardless of which way this election goes, I refuse to behave like my humanities department did in 2016. I will not hold a vigil for the bygone American republic. I will not assume the worst of those who voted differently than I did or didn’t even vote at all.What matters to me most this election season is the way we treat one another. At the end of the day, most of us will never meet our president. He or she will not keep our keys for us when we leave for vacation. Our president will not gather with us for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s unlikely our elected officials will come together to pray for our sick mother or celebrate our new child. But our neighbors, our family, our community who may vote differently than us, they will be there.This is America.Go out and vote for the best candidate without shame. Put that campaign sign in your yard, if you want to, because we can handle a nation of people who don’t all vote the same way, and, in fact, we must.

With Ashes of Creation Alpha Two now in full swing, we’re finally getting a much more substantial look at the long-anticipated, ambitious new MMORPG. With the ongoing tests already scheduled to last into the middle of 2025, there’s still a long road ahead. It’s been really fun to see how it’s coming along however, and this weekend has been kicked off in style with the game’s creative director and Intrepid Studios founder Steven Sharif appearing in-game as a godlike figure to fight his own community in a large-scale PvP showdown. Continue reading Ashes of Creation director fights players as a PvP ‘raid boss’ in his own MMORPG MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best MMORPGs, Ashes of Creation interview, New MMOs

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