#The Senator From Texas
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The Senator From Texas
Featuring Sen. Ted Cruz
I was now ready to start my plan of seducing the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, an arrogant, married, hard-drinking former corporate attorney and political commentator. A so-called real “man’s man” who rarely passes up an opportunity to grandstand, to troll the left or deliver right-wing talking points. He’s also my boss, thirty plus years my senior and one of those family men I suspect with a hidden side that his bleach blonde wife and daughters know nothing about. A side that needs to be exposed. That’s where I come in, the trusted aide who can’t keep his eyes off the ever-present VPL in his trousers and who’ll give him the dirty sex his wife won’t/can’t.
Anyway, because some news about his re-election campaign came up that couldn't wait til morning, Ted was at my apartment. He still had on his suit, minus the tie slacks he had on earlier today. And of course he was still wearing his black ostrich “arguing boots.”
After a few minutes going over some paperwork, Ted noticed what I had playing on my laptop nearby. Some straight porn on mute with no plot, just fucking. I wanted the movie to get right to the point quickly. Ted was trying to ignore it, but obviously liked the movie and I noticed he was getting hard. I casually put my hand on his leg and he did not resist as moved down to Joe's crotch.
"What are you doing?" Ted asked as I slowly massaged his dick through his pants which was nice and hard from watching the movie.
"Just relax Ted. I'm not going to hurt you. Feels good doesn't it?"
"Yes but…" The senator's words were choked off by a lump in his throat.
I could tell he didn't know what to make of the situation as I unzipped his pants and took out his stiff cock.
"You like it, don't you Ted?" He didn't reply as he was too busy enjoying me jerking him off.
Making him stand up, I began to slowly lick the lightly dripping dick.
"Oh god, that's good."
I slowly undressed the senator. First, completely removing his pants and underwear. Of course I keeped his boots on. Then moving up, I removed his jacket. God! It was wonderful. I felt a surge of pure power flash through my body as I pulled his shirt off exposing his broad chest and belly. I smiled at his nipples. They were tiny like most straight men's. I found it amusing that his short thick circumcised dick was still rock hard.
"Damn you smell nice." I said as I bent down and took the beautiful head of his dick in my mouth.
He tried not to moan, but my cock sucking skills were too much for him. I deep throated his old cock and he let out a loud, deep moan, the first of many. I tongued the old man's dick shaft until he started moaning continuously.
Fearing that I was going to make him cum, I stopped and placed a wet kiss on Ted's lips. He started to pull away, but I grabbed him behind the head, held him and forced my tongue into the senator's resistant mouth. Slowly, in spite of himself, he started to respond. Weakly at first, but then as I emptied my soul into the kiss he response became almost passionate.
"Let's go to my bedroom.” I told him when I finally pulled my tongue out of his mouth.
As we broke our embrace, Ted was nervous and almost hyperventilating as I pointed him to my bedroom while I stared at his gorgeous body, almost overcome with lust. His ass cheeks were firm and melon shaped, inviting that I slapped his ass as he went past. As I stripped naked, I found it amusing that his short thick circumcised dick was rock hard as he sat down on the edge of bed waiting for me.
Pushing him back onto the bed, parted the senator's legs and started to suck his cock. He started moaning as I tongued and sucked his thick little dick. His moans were music to my ears. I wanted to make Ted scream and beg for more. He wanted him to come back for more again and again as I started licking his balls to see what he liked best. From there I lightly licked between his thighs as a teaser. Ted was squirming now and clutching the bed sheets to keep from screaming out loud.
“Oh, God! That was wonderful,” The senator said, when I stopped and lifted Ted's legs so I could get fully at his ass.
Pushing my mouth against the rose bud of his asshole, I forced my tongue inside his tight old asshole, he practically squealed with pleasure. He started arching his back and bucking when I began to twist and turn my tongue deep inside his asshole. And damn me if he wasn't reaching down and stroking my head as his dick jerked uncontrollably. I knew I was well on my way to completely subjugating the senator as it wouldn't be long before he was my sex slave. Now I thought it was time to completely win Ted over.
"Fuck me Ted. Fuck me just like you fuck your wife." I said as I crawled on the bed onto my stomach without waiting for him to respond.
Ted looked at me for a long moment as I could almost see the gears in his head, debating if he should take things further. But I guess he was being so worked up and the sight of my ass caused him to continue, pausing for a moment to pull a tube of KY from the nightstand. I tensely watched as Ted applied the lubricate to his cock with the expectation of getting fucked exciting me.
“You got a tight hole.” Ted told me as he rubbed some of the KY onto my asshole.
“Please take it easy with me.” I faux begged as Ted slowly mounted me.
I could tell he was suprised at how easily he slip in before he fucked in and out of my tube. Slowly at first but the tightness of my tube soon got to him and he stabbed his cock in and out of me at a furious pace.
"Damn, Ted that's good. I never felt anything so good. Keep going. Keep going." I said to feed the senator's ego.
I wanted him to think he was really good, although he was indeed better than most. I was trying his best to pump up Ted's ego, even though I was really enjoying the fucking that Ted was giving me.
"Let me up on my hands and knees so you can fuck me doggy style. My dick is rubbing against the bed. I might cum in this position." I said as I eased up to a position on my hands and knees as Ted continued to fuck my ass. Still slowly at first.
He pulled out till the head almost slipped out then thrust it smoothly back in, each entry into me made me catch my breath and made my chest tight. His rhythm began to pick up speed and he grunted with pleasure. I gasped out loud with each thrust into me as his grip tightened.
"Damn, your ass is tight and hot. I think I'm gonna cum. I can't hold back." Ted said, thrusting fully into me, digging his fingers into my hips and grunted holding himself deep in me.
He began spraying my insides with his hot cum.
"Yes… Give it to me. Give me your load. Damn, that's good!" I screamed as Ted blew his load up his ass.
As he lay on top of me and we started to relax, I was thinking now he was going to go into a big guilt trip. Not Ted Cruz, he seemed to want more. He seemed to want to extend our lovemaking and see what would happen next. Meanwhile, I was going over in my mind how I was going to hook Ted on fucking and sucking. I had already convinced him that he was the best fucker in town, now the next part was to get him in bed and fuck the cum out of him. Once that happened without him getting scared off he would then belong to me.
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Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune :: @Patbagley
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
December 11, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
DEC 12, 2023
As is sometimes the case in American politics, a bill that many people are likely not paying a great deal of attention to is likely to have enormous impact on the nation’s future.
That $110.5 billion national security supplemental package was designed to provide additional funding for Ukraine in its war to fight off Russia’s invasion; security assistance to Israel, primarily for missile defense systems; humanitarian assistance to citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and elsewhere; funding to replenish U.S. weapon stockpiles; assistance to regional partners in the Indo-Pacific; investments in efforts to stop illegal fentanyl from coming into the U.S. and to dismantle international drug cartels; and investment in U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enhance border security and speed up migrant processing.
President Joe Biden asked for the supplemental funding in late October. Such a package is broadly popular among lawmakers of both parties who like that Ukraine is holding back Russian expansion that would threaten countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). If Russia attacks a NATO country, all NATO members, including the U.S., are required to respond.
Since supplying Ukraine with weapons to maintain its fight essentially means sending Ukraine outdated weapons while paying U.S. workers to build new ones, creating jobs largely in Republican-dominated states, and since Ukraine is weakening Russia for about 5% of the U.S. defense budget, it would seem to be a program both parties would want to maintain. Today, even Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “If Ukraine loses, the cost to America will be far greater than the aid we have given Ukraine. The least costly way to move forward is to provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to win and end the war.”
But now that former president Trump has made immigration a leading part of his campaign and a Trump loyalist, Mike Johnson (R-LA), is House speaker, Republican extremists are demanding their own immigration policies be added to the package.
Those demands amount to a so-called poison pill for the measure. The House Republicans' own immigration bill significantly narrows the right to apply for asylum in the U.S.—which is a right recognized in both domestic and international law—and prevents the federal government from permitting blanket asylum in emergency cases, such as for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. It ends the asylum program that permits people to enter the U.S. with a sponsor, a program that has reduced illegal entry by up to 95%.
It requires the government to build Trump’s wall and allows the seizure of private land to do it.
When the House passed its immigration measure in May 2023, the administration responded that it “strongly supports productive efforts to reform the Nation’s immigration system” but opposed this measure, “which makes elements of our immigration system worse.”
And yet House Republicans are so determined to force the country to accept their extreme anti-immigration policies, they are willing to kill the aid to Ukraine that even their own lawmakers want, leaving that country undersupplied as it goes into the winter.
When he brought the supplemental bill up last week, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) promised the Republicans that he would let them make whatever immigration amendments they wanted to the bill to be voted on, if only they would let the bill get to the floor. But all Senate Republicans refused, essentially threatening to use the filibuster to keep the measure from the floor until it includes the House Republicans' demands.
This unwillingness to fund a crucial partner in its fight against Russia has resurrected concerns that the Trump-supporting MAGA Republicans are working not for the United States but for Russian president Vladimir Putin, who badly needs the U.S. to abandon Ukraine in order to help him win his war.
Media outlets in Moscow reinforced this sense when they celebrated the Senate vote, gloating that Ukraine is now in “agony” and that it was “difficult to imagine a bigger humiliation.” One analyst said: “The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone!” Another: “Well done, Republicans! They’re standing firm! That’s good for us.”
Today, allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán were in Washington, D.C., where they are participating in an effort to derail further military support for Ukraine (an effort that in itself suggests Putin is concerned about how the war is going). Flora Garamvolgyi and David Smith of The Guardian explained that the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, which leads Project 2025—the far-right blueprint for a MAGA administration—and which strongly opposes aid to Ukraine, is hosting a two-day event about the war and about “transatlantic culture wars.”
This conference appears explicitly to tie the themes of the far right to an attack on Ukraine aid. Orbán has dismantled democracy in his own country, charging that the equality before the law established in democracies weakens a nation both by allowing immigration and by accepting that women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people should have the same rights as heterosexual white men, principles that he maintains undermine Christianity. In Hungary, Orbán has cracked down on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights while gathering power into his own hands.
In the U.S. the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and its allies—including former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson and Arizona representative Paul Gosar—openly admire Orbán’s Hungary as a model for the U.S. Indeed, some of the anti-LGBTQ+ laws Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pushed through the Florida legislature appear to have been patterned directly on Hungarian laws.
Orbán—a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, who embraces the same “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” Orbán does—is currently working to stop the European Union from funding Ukraine. Now Orbán’s allies are openly urging their right-wing counterparts in the U.S. to join him in backing Putin. A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy told Garamvolgyi and Smith: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul today noted that even the delay in funding has hurt the U.S. “Delaying a vote on aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan will do great damage to America's reputation as a reliable global leader in a very dangerous world. Delay is a gift to Putin, Xi, and the mullahs in Iran,” he wrote. “The stakes are very high.”
Republican determination to push their own immigration plan seems in part to be an attempt to come up with an issue to compete with abortion as the central concern of the 2024 election. As soon as he took office, Biden asked for funding to increase border security and process asylum seekers, and he has repeatedly said he wants to modernize the immigration system. To pass the national security supplemental appropriation, he has emphasized that he is willing to compromise on immigration, but the Republicans are insisting instead on a policy that echoes Trump’s extreme policies.
Immigration, on which Orbán rose to power, has the potential to outweigh abortion, which is hurting Republicans quite badly.
We’ll see. The story out of Texas, where 31-year-old Kate Cox has been unable to get an abortion despite the fact that the fetus she is carrying has a fatal condition and the pregnancy is endangering her health and her ability to carry another child in the future, illuminates just how dangerous the Republicans’ abortion bans are. Under Texas’s abortion ban, doctors would not perform an abortion, so Cox went to a state court for permission to obtain one.
The state court ruled in Cox’s favor, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton immediately threatened any doctor who performed the abortion, and appealed to the Texas Supreme Court to block the lower court’s order, saying that allowing Cox to obtain an abortion would irreparably harm the people of Texas. All nine of the justices on the state supreme court are Republicans.
Late Friday night the Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court’s order, pending review, and today, Cox’s lawyers said she had left the state to obtain urgently needed health care. This evening the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Cox, saying she was not entitled to a medical exception from the state’s abortion ban.
The image of a woman forced by the state to carry a fetus with a fatal condition at the risk of her own health and future fertility until finally she has to flee her state for medical care is one that will not be erased easily.
Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has disappeared. His lawyer says he was told Navalny was “no longer listed” in the files of the prison where he was being held, and Navalny’s associates have not been able to contact him for six days.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Letters from An American#Heather Cox Richardson#MAGA#support for Ukraine#Russia#Texas Supreme Court#Orban#Senate Republicans#$110.5 billion national security supplemental package#NATO#national security
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I thought Ted Lasso was a real ass man hes a comedy character I cant believe this
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I'm gonna say this: While I am fucking terrified and moreso absolutely livid to be a black lesbian in the US, as I am actively watching my rights get stripped away in real time, it's going to be very interesting to see Clarence Thomas try to backpedal when they go for Lovings v. Virginia.
#like obviously i hope it doesn't get to that point#but not only has Thomas said they are coming for lgbt+ marriage AND relationships next#but we already have a Texas senator wanting Brown v. The Board of Education AND Plessy v. Ferguson looked into next#i think this man doesn't think about or actively blocks out the fact that he is a BLACK MAN in the nation's HIGHEST COURT#my guy a lot of those same people you are out here rubbing elbows with and trying to get approval from DO NOT WANT YOU THERE TO BEGIN WITH!#roe v. wade
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URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023
April 28, 2023
I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this
What is the EARN IT Act?
The EARN IT Act (s. 1207) has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country.
This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.
Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)
This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.
If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.
NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.
The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.
EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.
As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.
This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.
This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.
Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.
It will make CSAM much much worse.
One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.
(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)
The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.
I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.
HOW TO FIGHT BACK
EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.
This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.
(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.
2. Sign these petitions!
Link to Petition 1
Link to Petition 2
3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE
If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.
Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.
DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT
TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.
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i saw someone point out the frequency with which liberals back social justice movements... how, for instance, when ferguson happened under obama it was not popular and there were many, many liberals who found the blm movement, in a sense, "in violation of [liberal] sensibilities" (when liberalism as a rule does not challenge the status quo, only maintains it and sees any call for revolution or real change as disruptive or 'bad for optics' and therefore not acceptable) but then when trump became president and he opposed blm a lot more liberals decided that the blm movement had merit because they viewed it from a team-sports perspective rather than a worldview based on morals and an understanding of the systems in place in the U.S. - that it was more comfortable for them to operate from a "trump bad" basis rather than "the american justice system and the police are inherently white supremacist, which are inherently, automatically, and always violent"
+ that, if trump was president while israel is carrying out its genocide, liberals would have NO problem denouncing israel and demanding for a ceasefire because they're comfortable operating from the 2-party system basis, NOT from a framework based on material conditions or factors or any acknowledgement or analysis of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism. but because biden is a democrat, and democrats are supposed to be "the decent party" "the lesser evil" "more respectable" when, in functionality - in real practice, they don't want to disrupt the status quo. (internally, maintaining systems of white supremacy and capitalism; externally, furthering U.S. imperialism by maintaining hegemony and continuing the practice of exploitation and extraction of labor+capital+resources from the global south)
which is why we're here, a month into a genocide, and liberals are so cowardly and gutless that, in the face of our democrat president allowing and funding the genocide of palestinians in order for the U.S. to maintain its military base in the middle east, liberals IMMEDIATELY jump to "well, you HAVE to vote for him still, because trump will be worse!" and go "well im powerless there's nothing i can do", immediately folding like a wet paper bag in the face of the american empire rearing its ugly head in the most blatant, naked way in years, instead of thinking "this is unacceptable, i should pressure my elected officials and do everything i can - be it combating propaganda, contacting my congresspeople or senators, protesting, or engaging in direct action - to ensure this stops as quickly as possible".
there are liberals STILL IN MY NOTIFICATIONS who go "well you'll be electing a fascist if you vote for trump" not realizing that YOU CAN'T SIMPLY VOTE FASCISM AWAY. (which is not to say you should vote for republicans; that's not what i'm saying. none of us have said it.) we're pretty much already there. it's 2003 all over again, with the patriot act and all. the american war machine is pumping out racist, orientalist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide propaganda on behalf of the ethno-state america and its allies have backed since the so-called state's inception. people are being doxxed, fired, harassed, and attacked for visibly supporting palestine/opposing israel. islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise; a 6 year old boy was murdered not one month ago, an arab doctor in texas was stabbed to death. antisemitism is on the rise as well, thanks to the conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism (which nazis have and will attempt to co-op in order to 'justify' + then act on their antisemitism, racism, and genocidal worldviews). our government is silencing people, brutalizing protestors, and arming and funding an ethno-state committing genocide - everything that would have been called fascist if it was under trump. but because it's a *democrat* liberals place "vote blue no matter who" and "optics" over the extremely basic moral stance that "genocide is wrong and people have the right to self-determination, autonomy, and life". arabs and muslims are already so dehumanized in the west that liberals (whether they consider themselves liberals or not) consider it an inconvenience to talk about the ongoing genocide that is happening with the blessing of OUR government. in this they expose their selfishness, the shallowness of their morals, their chauvinism, and their racism/orientalism/islamophobia/et cetera.
for example, if you see israeli troops waving a gay pride flag and the israeli state touting its support of gay people while said iof soldiers are murdering men, women, and children en masse every single day and you somehow????? think that because gay people are the ones doing the killing or a state claims to support gay people is doing the killing is ok then 1) you have fallen for pinkwashing propaganda and 2) that you find the murder of palestinians, or any people, permissible by a colonial force that uses causes liberals may genuinely care about in order to disguise, whitewash, or "lessen" the severity of the injustices it does unto usually black and brown people outside of the U.S., then you are just as bloodthirsty and depraved as anyone you would personally assign those descriptors of.
once again, it goes back to resorting to a team-sport understanding of the world rather than approaching it from a material one.
#uspol#another mini-essay directed specifically at usamerican liberals.#pre-emptively blaming left-wing people or arabs or muslims for the inevitable loss of joe biden#instead of the fact that biden IS SUPPORTING GENOCIDE and also has been. generally a failure within the US as well.#like bitch look around you! look at the state things are in! AND A DEMOCRAT IS PRESIDENT!!!#📁.zip
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A bipartisan bill would give the secretary of the treasury unilateral power to classify any charity as a terrorist-supporting organization, automatically stripping away its nonprofit status. The bill, H.R. 6408, already passed the House of Representatives in November, and a companion bill, S. 4136, was introduced to the Senate by Sens. John Cornyn (R–Texas) and Angus King (I–Maine) last week.
In theory, the bill is a measure to fight terrorism financing. At least, that's what sponsor Rep. David Kustoff (R–Tenn.) claimed. "I urge the swift passage of this legislation that will significantly diminish the ability of Hamas and other terrorist groups to finance their operations and carry out future attacks," he said in a November statement.
Financing terrorism is already very illegal. Anyone who gives money, goods, or services to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization can be charged with a felony under the Antiterrorism Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And those terrorist organizations are already banned from claiming tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Nine charities have been shut down since 2001 under the law.
The new bill would allow the feds to shut down a charity without an official terrorism designation. It creates a new label called "terrorist-supporting organization" that the secretary of the treasury could slap onto nonprofits, removing their tax exempt status within 90 days. Only the secretary of the treasury could cancel that designation.
#yemen#jerusalem#tel aviv#current events#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#news on gaza#palestine news#news update#war news#war on gaza#students for justice in palestine#fascism#pro palestine#us senate
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The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.
“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.
A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.
“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.
.......
The new $2.5 billion program, known as Summer EBT, passed Congress with bipartisan support, and every Democratic governor will distribute the grocery cards this summer. But Republican governors are split, with 14 in, 13 out and no consensus on what constitutes conservative principle.
One red-state governor (Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas) hailed the cards as an answer to a disturbing problem. Another (Kim Reynolds of Iowa) warned that they might increase obesity. Some Republicans dismissed the program as obsolete pandemic aid. Some balked at the modest state matching costs. Others hinted they might join after taking more time to prepare.
The program will provide families about $40 a month for every child who receives free or reduced-price meals at school —$120 for the summer. The red-state refusals will keep aid from about 10 million children, about a third of those potentially eligible nationwide.
......
As with Medicaid, poor states are especially resistant, though the federal government bears most of the cost. Of the 10 states with the highest levels of children’s food insecurity, five rejected Summer EBT: Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.
Like the school lunch program, it serves families up to 185 percent of the poverty line, meaning a family of three would qualify with an income of about $45,500 or less.
......
Some Republicans, in rejecting the aid, found critics in their own ranks. After Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina dismissed Summer EBT as a duplicative “entitlement,” State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, wrote a column with a Democratic colleague warning that “hunger does not stop during summer break.”
In an interview, Ms. Shealy said the state should not reject $65 million “just because Biden is president,” and perhaps just partly tongue-in-cheek wrapped her plea in Trumpian bunting: “Everyone wants to say, ‘America First’ — well, let’s feed our children first.”
Oklahoma initially said it rejected the program because federal officials had not finalized the rules. But responding to critics, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, sharpened his attack, calling Summer EBT a duplicative “Biden administration program” that would “cause more bureaucracy for families.”
Tribal governments, which have influence over large parts of the state, stepped in. Already feuding with Mr. Stitt, they promised to distribute cards to all eligible families on their land, regardless of tribal status, while bearing the $3 million administrative cost. The five participating tribes will cover nearly 40 percent of Oklahoma’s eligible children, most of them not Native American.
“I remain dumbfounded that the governor of Oklahoma would turn down federal tax dollars to help feed low-income children,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
-------------------------
some of the most stunning highlights of this story.
All I got to say is, let's feed the children? every single Democratic Governor took the money to feed the kids, every governor who rejected it, every single one, is a Republican. If you don't vote for Democrats you are STEALING food out of kids mouths.
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(soph4president on tiktok)
Speaker (if you know this person please let me know so I can credit them) testifies against anti-trans and anti-drag bills at the Texas Senate while another pro-trans demonstrator triea to keep a Republican goon from trying to prevent them from speaking.
"We may not win today and we may not win tomorrow, but we will presist as we always have in defiance of your oppression.
"If you wish to eradicate transgenderism from public life as members of you party have said, you can pry that from my cold dead hands!" ���️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
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The Senator From Texas
CHAPTER TWO: Fucking the Senator From Texas
Featuring Sen. Ted Cruz
The night before, I had seduced the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz who I found a little reluctance at first but became a very willing lover. At 52 years of age, he stood at 5'10" with a full head of thick greying black hair, brown eyes and an greying full beard. He also had a prominent ass which only made him that much more attractive in my eyes. But he was an arrogant asshole that needed to be knocked down a few pegs. During the day, I flattered him unmerciflully to get him come back to my apartment tonight. And of course he did.
At 8:30 there was a light tap on my door. I opened it to find those brown eyes looking at me has he flashed that warm smile.
"Come on in." I said, stepping back so he'd follow me in.
Ted did a quick check up and down the corridor. There was no one around to see as he entered. I lead him by the hand to the living room were we fell into an embrace, sharing a long passionate kiss. Ted who no longer protested, returned my loving kisses. We began frantically pulling off our clothes. I didn't know if he was eager or just didn't have much time to "fuck around" before getting back home to the wife, but he wasn't waiting for any conversation. I certainly didn't mind.
"I think I'm falling for you Ted. I've never felt this way about a man before." I said still flattering him as we hurried to the bedroom, falling on top of the bed with Ted in his arms.
I was was actually enjoying myself as I rolled on top of Ted and held him in a tight embraced, our mouths glued together. Both of our cocks were extremely stiff at this point and both of us wanted to do something to blow a load. Taking the lead, I lowered myself to Ted's cock and began to suck vigorously, but was careful not to get him off too quickly. Just as the night before, my tongue found it's way to his asshole. I gave him quite a licking that had Ted tossing and turning and basically squirming all over the bed. He really needed to blow a load, but I would not allow it, not yet.
"Ted, roll over on your stomach for a minute."
Ted complied. As he did, I reached for some lube for my dick. The senator was on his stomach and did not know what I was doing. Then I crawled on top of him, but did not insert my cock. I just nibbled lightly on Ted's ear, kiss his neck, and massages his shoulders to get him to relax.
"Ouch. What's that? What are you doing?" Ted questioned when all of a suddenly he felt a slight stinging pain.
"Relax Ted this won't hurt a bit." I said as I expertly at inserting my fat cock into his virgin hole without hurting him.
"Relax, don't tighten up." I encouraged as I continue to push very slowly.
My patience finally paid off as I was able to get my fat dick in Ted's ass with little or no pain. Now was the time to give him a good fucking I thought as I started humping slowly, withdrawing my thick dick out and slowly penetrating again. Ted began to get into the swing of things as my fat dick finally started to feel good.
"Damn this is good. Keep going. Ahh. Just like that. Do that again. Whatever that was it felt great, do that again." Ted moaned as I shifted my cock left and right, picking up my pace.
"I want you up on your hands and knees so I can fuck you doggy style." I said as I grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Anything. Anything you say." Ted said as he rise to his hands and knees.
The room now was filled with the sound of my hips smacking against Ted's thighs. SMACK, SMACK, SMACK, echoed loudly throughout the room. Ted was really feeling it now, but was holding back to keep from screaming out loud. Wanting to change positions again, I rolled him on his back and lifted his legs, putting his ankles on my shoulders. Then I lifted his ass off the bed so I could plunge straight down into his waiting ass.
Just then, he rolled his head and shoulders up so I could see my cock sliding in and out of him. It was so erotic, feeling his large solid body tremble with the force of each thrust. He was panting and looking at me as I fucked him hard and fast with so much energy, desire and hate. Soon the fast pumping and loud fucking sounds that filled the room were too much for Ted as he began to clutch the bed sheets and grit his teeth. Despite this he starting screaming at the top of his voice, "Oh God you're so fucking big! YESYESYES! Fuck me damn it FUCK ME! Damn it, fuck my hole, fuck me harder!"
This was all the invitation I needed. I wrapped my arms around him tighter while fucking him at an increasingly harder pace. He was moaning and babbling incoherently with pleasure, while his cock left trails of precum all over my belly. I could tell from the far away look in his eye that the old man was as lost in me. Maybe he had always wanted to be fucked? I continued at this pace for what seemed like eons when suddenly he blew a warm load of cum over the both of us. I just keep pounding away and only after his cock was almost empty, cum dripping out of the head that I slowly pulled my dick out of the sucking asshole.
"Damn. I never felt anything like that before." Ted said with a smile.
"Well… if you like that, then you'll love the next step."
"The next step?" Ted asked.
"Yeah. I want you to suck my dick and swallow my cum."
After some hesitation, I explained to him how I wanted him to suck my dick. Laying on my back with my legs legs spread and gave detail instructions.
"Don't try to take too much. Open your mouth wide and make a tight rim."
Then I watched as he struggled with himself while he grimly guided my dick head toward his mouth. He sort of shuddered and opened his mouth. Damn, his mouth was hot as a moan escaped me when he closed his moist mouth around the head of my dick. My pleasure moan caused him to roll his eyes up to look at me. I grinned down at him.
" That's it. Now lick up and down like you're licking a lolly pop. Good that's it. Not bad for a beginner. Now lick my balls. Good, that's it just like that. Lick 'em nice and good. Now suck on my balls. Gently now. Don't get in too much of a hurry. Now git back to sucking my dick. Clean off all the pre cum. That's it, you're good."
As Ted continued to suck, I feed his ego regarding how good he was even though he was off to a really good start. Soon I was feeling the cum swell in my balls. The fucking earlier had loaded my balls with cum. It didn't take much for him to unleash a gush of cum that choked Ted at first as he was surprised at the amount of juice I could shoot. He managed to swallow much of my cum, but some dripped down the side of my dick and there was a long white stripe on the senator's beard. I now knew I had the senator from Texas hook, line, and sinker.
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From: Occupied Democrats
BREAKING: Indicted 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is hit with devastating news as the biggest and most influential newspaper in the entire state of Texas endorses President Biden and tears Donald Trump to pieces.
But it gets even WORSE for Donald Trump…
The editorial board of The Houston Chronicle not only ripped into the MAGA cult leader, they laid out in plain black and white exactly why every American should vote for Joe Biden.
They write that Biden will "make life better" for the American people, has made our economy "healthier," and will crucially prevent the "chaos, corruption and danger to the nation" that would so clearly come from Trump getting a second term in the White House.
They state that the Biden administration has "performed remarkably well, despite the rancor and divisiveness that have afflicted this nation for nearly a decade."
The board concedes that Biden "has his shortcomings" like every other president, but says that he has a historic number of achievements that serve as a "potent reminder to his fellow Democrats, to independents and to those Republicans who have somehow resisted Trump's cultish appeal that the nation has a viable alternative."
In addition to his massive economic victories, they praise Biden's effort to curtail gun violence, his introduction of a price cap on insulin, and his astonishing success at uniting the world against Putin's "brutish" invasion of Ukraine.
When mentioning the situation along the southern border, the board writes that "blame primarily belongs to caviling and cynical MAGA Republicans in the House.
"In servility to Trump, they torpedoed a bipartisan border-security plan painstakingly crafted in the Senate. Biden can't solve the crisis by executive order; he needs Congress to act," the board writes.
At another point in the piece, the board easily dispatches the bad faith attacks on Biden's age, saying that he has "forgotten more than his presumed Republican rival will ever know. That's not saying much, and at the same time, it says it all."
Predictably, prominent MAGA figures are completely melting down over the editorial — because they know precisely how influential this newspaper is in Texas. Clearly, The Houston Chronicle has struck a nerve.
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MY MEDICAL SCHOOL IS RENAMING A ROOM AFTER TRANSPHOBIC, ANTI-PALESTINE ASSHOLES - PLS SIGN THIS PETITION AND HELP US STOP IT FROM HAPPENING!
LINK TO PETITION
Hello everyone. I’ve been seething these days because the medical school I go to is renaming a room after some transphobic, racist and misogynistic texas congresspeople that assisted our school with obtaining federal funding (basically making it so that student doctors don’t have to pay as much tuition, which really helps out low-income medical school students.) They are texas state senator Creighton and representative Metcalf.
HOWEVER as nice as this assistance was, I am vehemently against the naming of the room after these clowns.
1. Senator creighton supports legislation that is vehemently Anti-Healthcare.
these are some of the “certain treatments” prohibited for trans kids btw:
just purely hateful, knowing that gender confirming care SAVES THE LIVES OF TRANS CHILDREN. and we are training to be DOCTORS. with the goal of NOT ending lives. extending them even. there’s an oath about it and everything.
ALSO— NAMING A ROOM IN A MEDICAL SCHOOL AFTER A DUDE THAT OPPOSES CHILDRENS HEALTHCARE IS INSANE
2. BOTH creighton and metcalf are pro-israel
Again. We’re a medical school. training doctors to help people live longer, healthier lives. we do not support genocide.
I don’t even understand how making bills like this is even fucking allowed.
3. helping their representative community is their fucking job. We literally Voted Them Into Office For This Purpose. They are otherwise useless.
Honestly, their voting record gets worse. You can verify metcalf and creighton’s voting records at the links on their names.
the petition also has a much clearer and cleaner explanation about why this means so much to our school.
I know this feels like a relatively minor thing, but it means a lot to us. We want our school to be represented by those with a positive outlook on humanity. not a hateful one.
LINK TO PETITION: https://www.change.org/p/oppose-the-renaming-of-the-alc-and-teaching-theater-at-shsu-com?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0BMQABptQdaxLhejc49avWCzCpcrbVC7OzNmFOW8ihi-k6QjRLKBY18J6rkwIgXA_aem_AeheFM0DMHyuVsnbb611qTWiAQ4q9NNy-4ZEjjUW6ZB9Pyc3M2mMzOWxHY-Gg6B5gic
THANK YOU FOR READING PLEASE REBLOG AND LIKE AND SHARE and also sign the petition please it will take like 30 seconds.
#trans#trans rights#palestine#lgbtq#israel#I know I also do not like change dot org I’m sorry#I didn’t author the petition tho#pls pls pls help
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🚨🚨🚨URGENT PLEASE READ AND REBLOG
dec 13, 2022
we literally have just a few days to act. the senate is debating about putting KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, into the omnibus spending bill. if it is added, it WILL pass. despite the title and content of the bill seeming to be about protecting kids, we know everytime someone claims they are "saving the children" they have more sinister goals
which is why Senator Blumenthal is working with one of the biggest transphobes in the senate, Marsha Blackburn, to force this bill through, and claiming they are listening to LGBT voices when they are blatantly ignoring us.
essentially this bill gives every state attorney generals the power to remove anything they deem 'harmful' to kids online. you can see how a state like Texas or Florida would run with that, yes? it also forces you to upload your government ID online to access the internet. the bill will create a 'commission' led by handpicked members of the govt to oversee what is and isn't allowed online. it will lead to mass censorship of anything related to race or LGBT content. in a post-Roe world too? say goodbye to any abortion/sex-related info.
they are doing a shit ton of PR for this, including claiming they are listening to LGBT voices. i mean just look.
two weeks ago, 90+ human rights, LGBT, and tech orgs signed onto an open letter telling Senators NOT to pass this bill. in response, over 230 orgs led by the American Psychological Association signed a letter urging senators to. it's really fucking bad. like i can't sleep because of this. i didn't expect this to happen. we really really need people to speak up.
if this bill goes through it will literally kill off the internet as we know it
sign the open letter and petitions against KOSA here
the best way to fight against this bill is to call these specific senators (if you have dem senators, call them too)
nancy pelosi (202) 225-4965
roger wicker (202) 224-6253
chuck schumer (202) 224-6542
maria cantwell (202) 224-3441
call script below:
For Wicker only:
I'm calling because I'm asking the Senator to vote no on KOSA S.3663 from being added to the omnibus and being put through the Senate. The re-released text of the bill is still not adequate enough, and it's being rushed. This bill does not belong in an omnibus anyway. As a Gen Z, I also want to protect kids. I've been there. But this language is not ready yet. It should not move forward at all.
Hello Senator __:
My name is _, and I strongly urge you to oppose the dangerously misguided KOSA bill from being added to the omnibus spending bill. Bills like this should not be included in spending bills. Over 90 human rights and LGBT organizations have spoken out against this bill.
KOSA gives state attorney generals full power to sue any website if they see it has anything that is “inappropriate for children”'. For the past year, Republicans claimed everything LGBT is “grooming” children and we ended up with a shooting in Colorado and bomb threats sent to hospitals, NO senator should support a bill with vague phrasing like this. Before that, they successful removed books on race due to "CRT". This gives them a pass to do this to the entire internet. KOSA will only lead to more harm towards minorities and LGBT youth across the nation by censoring everything online.
The Heritage Foundation said they will use KOSA to target LGBT kids, specifically trans kids. In a post-Roe world, they will even use KOSA to censor resources on abortion. Anything they dislike will be targeted.
A bill this huge and this impactful should not be added to any spending bill. Even if it was a small bill, it has nothing to do with the omnibus spending bill and shouldn't be added at ALL. It needs more time being discussed. There should be hearings on it as well
We all care about kids mental health. We all want to hold Big Tech accountable, but this is NOT it. This will give Big Tech more power while taking away resources from the most vulnerable children. It is not the solution.
Please, do NOT support this bill. Do the right thing, and VOTE NO on KOSA.
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1968 [Chapter 9: Dionysus, God Of Ecstasy]
Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.
Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.
Word Count: 5.9k
Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰
💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜
The October surprise is a great American tradition. As the phases of the moon revolve towards Election Day, the candidates and their factions seek to ruin each other. Lies are told, truths are exposed, Tyche smiles and Achlys brews misery, poison, the fog of death that grows over men like ivy. The stars align. The wolves snap their jaws.
In 1844, an abolitionist newspaper falsely accused James K. Polk of branding his slaves like cattle. In 1880, a letter supposedly authored by James Garfield—in actuality, forged by a New York journalist—welcomed Chinese immigrants in an era when they were being lynched by xenophobic mobs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1920, a rumor emerged that Warren Harding had Black ancestry, an allegation his campaign fervently denied to keep the support of the Southern states. In 1940, FDR’s press secretary assaulted a police officer outside of Madison Square Garden. In 1964, one of LBJ’s top aids was arrested for having gay sex at the Washington D.C. YMCA.
Now, in 1968, Senator Aemond Targaryen of New Jersey is realizing that he will not be the beneficiary of the October surprise he’s dreamed of: his wife’s redemptive pregnancy, a blossoming first family. There is a civil rights protest that turns into a riot in Milwaukee; this helps Nixon, the candidate of law and order. For every fire lit and window shattered, he sees a bump in the polls from businessowners and suburbanites who fear anarchy. Breaking news of the My Lai massacre—committed back in March but only now brought to light—airs on NBC, horrifying the American public and bolstering support for Aemond, the man who has vowed to begin ending the war as soon as he’s sworn into office. The two contestants are deadlocked. Election Day could be a photo finish.
Nixon is in Texas. Wallace is in Arkansas. In Florida, Aemond visits the Kennedy Space Center and pledges to fulfill JFK’s promise to put a man on the moon by 1970. He makes a speech at the Mary McLeod Bethune Home commending her work as an educator, philanthropist, and humanitarian. He greets soldiers at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola. He feeds chickens to the alligators at the Saint Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park.
But it is not the senator the crowds cheer loudest for. It is his wife, his future first lady, here in her home state where she staunched her husband’s hemorrhaging blood and appeared before his well-wishers still marked with crimson handprints. In Tarpon Springs, she and Aemond attend mass at the Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral and pray at an altar made of white marble from Athens. Then they stand on the docks as flashbulbs strobe all around them, watching sponge divers reappear from the depths, breaking through the bubbling sapphire water like Heracles ascending to Mount Olympus.
~~~~~~~~~~
You kick off your high heels, tear the pins and clips out of your hair, and flop down onto the king-sized bed in your suite at the Breakers Hotel. It’s the same place Aemond was almost assassinated five months ago. He has returned in triumph, in defiance. He cannot be killed. It is God’s will.
You are alone for these precious fleeting moments. Aemond is in Otto’s suite discussing the itinerary for tomorrow: confirmations, cancellations, reshufflings. You pick up the pink phone from the nightstand on Aemond’s side of the bed and dial the number for the main house at Asteria. It’s 9 p.m. here as well as there. Through the window you can see inky darkness and the kaleidoscopic glow of the lights of Palm Beach. The Zenith radio out in the kitchenette is playing Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. No intercession from Eudoxia is necessary this time; Aegon answers on the second ring.
“Yeah?” he says, slow and lazy like he’s been smoking something other than Lucky Strikes.
“Hey.” And then after a pause, twirling the phone cord around your fingers as you stare up at the ceiling: “It’s me.”
“Oh, I know. Should I take off my pants, or…?” He’s only half-joking.
You smile. “That was stupid. Someone could have bugged the phone.”
“You think Nixon’s guys are wiretapping us? Give me a break. They’re goddamn buffoons. They’re too busy telling cops to beat hippies to death.” You hear him taking a drag off his joint, envision him sprawled across his futon and enshrouded in smoke. “Everything okay down there in the swamp?”
You shrug, even though Aegon can’t see you. “It’s fine.”
“Just fine?”
“My parents were there when we stopped in Tarpon Springs. They kept telling everyone how proud they are of me, and I just felt so…dishonest.”
“Of course they’re proud. If Aemond wins, the war ends and more civil rights bills get passed and this hell we’ve all been living in since 1963 goes away.”
“I miss you,” you confess.
“You’ll be back soon to enjoy me in all my professional loser glory.” He’s right: Aemond’s entourage will spend Halloween at Asteria. You’ll take the children trick-or-treating around Long Beach Island—with journalists in tow, of course—and then host a party with plentiful champagne and Greek hors d’oeuvres, one last reprieve before the momentous slog towards Election Day on November 5th, a reward for the campaign staffers and reporters who have served Aemond so well. “What are you going to dress up as?”
“Someone happy,” you say, and Aegon chuckles, low and sardonic. “Actually, nothing. Aemond and Otto have decided that it would be undignified for the future president and first lady to be photographed in costumes, so I will be wearing something festive yet not at all fun.”
“Aemond has always been somewhat confused by the concept of fun.”
“What are you going to be for Halloween?”
You can hear the grin in his voice as he exhales smoke. “A cowboy.”
“A cowboy,” you repeat, giggling. “You aren’t serious.”
“Extremely serious. I protect the cows, I comfort the cows, I breed the cows…”
“You are mentally ill. You belong in an asylum.”
“I ride the cows…”
“Cowboys do not ride cows.”
“Maybe this one does.”
“I thought you liked being ridden.”
Aegon groans with what sounds like genuine discomfort. “Don’t tease me. You know I’m celibate at the moment.”
“Miraculous. Astonishing. The Greek Orthodox Church should canonize you. What have you been doing with all of your newfound free time?”
“Taking the kids out sailing, hiding from Doxie, trying not to step on the Alopekis…and playing Battleship with Cosmo. He has a very loose understanding of the rules.”
“He does. I remember.”
“He keeps asking when you’ll be back.”
“Really?” you ask hopefully.
“Yeah, it’s cute. And he calls you Io because he heard me do it.”
“Not an appropriate myth for children, I think.”
“Cosmo’s what, seven years old?”
“Five.”
“Close enough. I think I knew about death and torment and Zeus being a slut by then.”
“And you have no resulting defects whatsoever.” You roll over onto your belly and slide open the drawer of the nightstand. Instead of the card Aegon gave you at Mount Sinai—you’ve forgotten that you’re on Aemond’s side of the bed—you find something bizarre, unexpected, just barely able to fit. “Oh my God, there’s a…there’s a Ouija board in the nightstand!”
Aegon laughs incredulously. “There’s a what?!”
“A Ouija board!” You sit upright and shimmy it out, holding the phone to your ear with one shoulder. The small wooden planchette slides off the board and clatters against the bottom of the drawer. “Why the hell would Aemond have this…?”
“He’s trying to summon the ghost of JFK to stab Nixon.”
“Oh wow, it’s heavy.” You skim your fingertips over the black numbers and letters etched into the wooden board. There’s something ominous about the Good Bye written across the bottom. You can’t beckon the dead into the land of the living without reminding them that they aren’t welcome to stay.
“Aemond is such a freak. Is it a Parker Brothers one, like for kids…?”
“No, I think it’s custom made. It feels substantial, expensive. Hold on, there’s something engraved on the back.” You flip over the Ouija board so you can see what your hands have already felt. The inscription reads in onyx cursive letters: No ghosts can harm you. The stars were never better than the day you were born. With love through all the ages, Alys.
“What’s it say?” Aegon asks from his basement at Asteria.
You’re staring down at the Ouija board, mystified. “Who’s Alys?”
Instead of an answer, Aegon gives you a deep sigh. “Oh. Yeah, she would give him something like that. Fucking creepy witch bullshit.”
“Aegon, who’s Alys?” She’s his mistress. She has to be. It fills your skull like flashbulbs, like lightning: Aemond climbing on top of another woman, conquering her, owning her, binding her up in his mythology like a spider building a web. And what you feel when the shock begins to dissolve isn’t envy or pain or betrayal but—strangely, paradoxically—hope. “She’s his girl, right?”
“Please don’t be mad at me for not telling you,” Aegon says. “There wasn’t a good time. When I hated you I didn’t care if he was fucking around, and then after what happened in New York I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t know how you’d take it. It’s not your fault, there’s nothing wrong with you. She was here first. He’d have kept Alys around if he married Aphrodite herself.”
“I’m not mad.” You’re distracted, that’s what you are; you’re plotting. “Where is she?”
“She lives in Washington state. I’m not sure exactly where, I think Aemond moves her a lot. He doesn’t want anyone to see him around and start noticing a pattern. Neighbors, shopkeepers, cops, whoever.”
“Washington.” Just like when Ari died. Just like when Aemond didn’t come back. “Who knows about her?”
“Just the family. Fosco and Mimi found out because when they married in, the fights were still happening. Otto and Viserys demanding he give Alys up, Aemond refusing. It’s the only thing he ever did wrong, the only line he drew. He said he needed her. She could never be his first lady, but she could be something else.”
“His mistress.”
“Yeah,” Aegon says reluctantly. “Are you…are you okay?”
“I’m okay. What’s wrong with Alys?”
“What?”
“Why couldn’t Aemond marry her?”
“I mean, she’s the type of psycho who gives people Ouija boards, first of all,” Aegon says. “And she’s…she’s not educated. Her family’s trash. She’s older than Aemond. Hell, she’s older than me. She would be an unmitigated disaster on the campaign trail. She unnerves people. But Aemond, he…”
“He loves her,” you whisper, reading the engraving on the back of the board again. “And she loves him.”
“I guess. Whatever love means to them.”
A thought occurs to you, the first one to bring you pain like a needle piercing flesh. “Does she have children?”
Again, Aegon sounds reticent to disclose this. “A boy. Aemond’s the father.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know, I think he’s around ten now.”
And that’s Aemond’s true heir. Not Ari, not any others he would have with me. That place in his heart is taken. He couldn’t mourn the loss of our son because he already has one with the woman he loves.
Out in the living room of the suite, you hear the front door open. There are footsteps, Aemond’s polished black leather shoes.
Aegon is asking: “Are you sure you’re okay? Hello? Babe? Hello? Are you still there?”
“I’m fine. I gotta go.”
“Wait, no, not yet—!”
“Bye.” You hang up the phone and wait for Aemond to discover you. You’re still clutching the Ouija board. You’re perched on the edge of the bed like something ready to pounce, to kill.
Aemond opens the bedroom door, navy blue suit, blonde hair short and slicked back, his eyepatch covering his empty left socket. He’s begun wearing his eyepatch in public more often—not for every appearance, but for some of them—and whoever finally convinced him to concede this battle wasn’t you. His right eye goes to you and then to the Ouija board in your hands. He doesn’t speak or move to take the board, only studies you warily.
“I know about her,” you tell him.
Still, Aemond says nothing.
“Alys,” you press. “She’s your mistress. You’re in love with her.”
“I did not intend to hurt you.” His words are flat, steely.
“I’m not hurt, Aemond.”
“You shouldn’t have ever known about this. I apologize for not being more discrete. It was a lapse in judgment.” But what he regrets most, you think, is that his secret is less contained, more imperiled.
“What we have is a political arrangement,” you say. The desperation quivers in your voice. “You don’t love me, you never have, and now we can be open about it. You need me to win the White House, but that’s all. Your true companion is elsewhere. I want the same thing.”
He steps closer, eye narrowing, iris glinting coldly, puzzled like he couldn’t have understood you correctly. “What?”
“I want to be permitted to have my own happiness outside of this imitation of a marriage.”
“No,” Aemond says instantly.
Your stomach sinks, dark iron disappointment. “But…but…why?”
“Because I don’t trust you to not get caught. Because I need to be sure that I am the father of the children you’ll give birth to. And because as my wife you are mine, and mine alone.”
Tears brim in your eyes; embers burn in your throat. “You’re asking for my life. My whole life, all of it, everything I’ll ever experience, everything I’ll ever feel. I get one chance on this planet and you’re stealing it away from me.”
“Yes,” Aemond agrees simply.
“So where’s my consolation?” you demand. “You get Alys, so where’s mine?”
“What do you want?”
You don’t reply, but you glare at your husband with eternal rage like Hera’s, with fatal vitriol like Medusa’s.
“You think I don’t know about that little card you keep in your nightstand?” Aemond is furious, betrayed. “You used to hate him.”
“I was wrong.”
“Because he was at Mount Sinai and I wasn’t? Three days undid everything we’ve ever been to each other? Our oaths, our ambitions?!”
“No,” you say, tears slipping down the contours of your cheeks. “Because he’s real. He doesn’t try to manipulate people into loving him, he doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not, when he’s cruel it’s because he means it and when he’s kind that’s genuine too. And he wants to know me, who I really am. Not the woman I have to act like to get you elected. Not who you’re trying to turn me into—”
Aemond has crossed the room, grabbed the front of your teal Chanel dress, and yanked you to your feet. The Ouija board jolts out of your hands and lands on the carpet unharmed. Your long hair is in disarray, your eyes wide and fearful. You try to push Aemond away, but he ignores you. You can’t sway him. You’ve never been able to. “Aegon has nothing to his name except what this family gives him,” Aemond snarls, hushed, hateful. His venom is not for his brother but for you. You have upended the natural order of things. You have dared to deny Zeus what he has been divinely granted dominion over. “You would jeopardize his wellbeing, his access to his children? You would ruin yourself? You would doom this nation? If you cost me the election, every drop of blood spilled is on your hands, every body bag flown home from Vietnam, every martyr killed by injustice here. What you ask for is worse than being a traitor and a whore. It is sacrilege.”
“Let go of me—”
“And there’s one more thing.” Aemond pulls you closer so he knows you’re paying attention. You’re sobbing now, trembling, choking on his cologne, shrinking away from his furnace-heat wrath. “Aegon isn’t capable of love. Not the kind you’re imagining. He gets infatuated, and he uses people, and then he moves on. You think he never charmed Mimi, never made her feel cherished by him? And look how she ended up. I’m trying to carve your name into legend beside mine. Aegon will take you to your grave.”
Your husband shoves you away, storms out of the bedroom, slams the door so hard the walls quake.
~~~~~~~~~~
Parading down streets like the victors of a fallen city, jack-o-lanterns keeping watch with their laceration grins of firelight. Hecate is the goddess of witchcraft, Hades rules the Underworld, Selene is the half-moon peeking through clouds in an overcast sky. The stars elude you.
The children—ghosts, pirates, princesses, witches—dash from doorstep to doorstep like soldiers in Vietnam search tunnels. They smile and pose in their outfits when the journalists prompt them, beaming and waving, showing off their Dots, Tootsie Pops, Sugar Daddies, Smarties, Razzles, and candy cigarettes before depositing them in the plastic orange pumpkins that swing from their wrists. Only Cosmo, dressed as Teddy Roosevelt with lensless glasses and a stuffed lion thrown over one shoulder, stays with the adults. He is the last one to each house, approaching the doorway reticently like it might swallow him up, inspiring fond chuckles and encouragement from the reporters. He clutches your hand and hides behind you when towering monsters lumber by: King Kong, Frankenstein, vampires with fake blood spilling from their mouths.
Aemond wears a black suit with orange accents: tie, pocket square, socks. You glimmer in a black dress dotted with white stars, clicking down the sidewalk in boots that run to your knees, silver eyeshadow, heavy liner. You almost look your own age. There are large star-shaped barrettes in your pinned-up hair, bent glinting metal. As the reporters snap photos of you and Cosmo walking together, they shout: “You’ll be such a great mother one day, Mrs. Targaryen!”
Fosco is Ettore Boiardi—better known as Chef Boyardee—an Italian immigrant who came through Ellis Island in 1914 with a dream of opening a spaghetti business. Helaena, Alicent, and Ludwika are, respectively, Alice, Wendy, and Cinderella; Ludwika clops along resentfully in her puffy sleeves and too-small clear stilettos. Criston is Peter Pan. Aegon wears a white button-up shirt, cow print vest, ripped jeans, brown leather boots, a cowboy hat that’s too big for him, and a green bandana knotted around his throat. He stays close to you and Cosmo because he can, here where the journalists expect to see him being a devoted father and active participant in the family business of mending a tattered America. Teenagers are fleeing their families to join hippie communes and draftees in Vietnam are getting their limbs blown off and junkies are shooting up on the streets of New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, but here we see a happy family, a perfect family, a holy trinity that thanks the devotees who offer them tribute. Otto, who neglected to don a disguise, glares at you murderously. You have failed to give Aemond a living child. You have dared to want things for yourself.
Back at Asteria in the main house, the children empty their plastic pumpkins on the living room floor and sort through their saccharine treasures, making trades and bargains: “I’ll do your math homework if you give me those Swedish Fish,” “I’ll let you ride my bike for a week if I can have your Mallo Cup.” While the other adults ply themselves with champagne and chain smoke away the stress of the campaign trail, Aegon gets his Caribbean blue Gibson guitar and sits on the couch playing I’m A Believer by The Monkees. The kids clap and sing along between intense confectionary negotiations. Cosmo wants to share his candy cigarettes with you; you pretend to smoke together as sugar melts on your tongue.
Now the children have been sent to bed—mollified with the promise of homemade apple pies tomorrow, another occasion to be documented by swarms of clamoring journalists—and the house becomes a haze of smoke and indistinct conversation and music from the record player. Platters of appetizers have appeared on the dining room table: pita, tzatziki, hummus, melitzanosalata, olives, horiatiki, mini spanakopitas, baklava. Women are chattering about the painstaking labor they put into costumes and men are scheming to deliver death blows to Nixon, setbacks in Vietnam, Klan meetings in Mississippi. Aemond is knocking back Old Fashioneds with Otto and Sargent Shriver. Fosco is dancing in the living room with drunk journalists. Eudoxia is muttering in Greek as she aggressively paws crumbs off of couches and tabletops. Thick red candles flicker until wax melts into a pool of blood at the base.
Through the veil of cigarette smoke and the rumbling bass of Season Of The Witch, Aegon finds you when no one is looking, and you know it’s him without having to turn around. His hand is the only one that doesn’t feel heavy when it skims around your waist. He whispers, soft grinning lips to your ear, rum and dire temptation like Orpheus looking back at Eurydice: “Let’s do some witchcraft.”
You know where Aemond keeps the Ouija board. You take it out of the top drawer of his nightstand in your bedroom with blue walls and portraits of myths in captive frames. Then you descend with Aegon into the basement, down like Persephone when summer ends, down like women crumbling under Zeus’s weight. You remember to lock the door behind you. You’re not high—you can’t smoke grass in a house full of guests who could smell it and take it upon themselves to investigate—but you feel like you are, that lightness that makes everything more bearable, the surreal tilt to the universe, awake but dreaming, truth cloaked in mirages.
Aegon has stolen three red candles from upstairs. He hands one to you, keeps a second for himself, and places the third on his end table beside a myriad of dirty cups. You glimpse at his ashtray and a folded corner of the receipt that’s still tucked beneath it, and you think: I have my card, Aegon has his receipt, Aemond has his Ouija board. I wonder what Alys likes to keep close when she sleeps. Then Aegon clicks off the lamp so the only light is from the flickering candles.
He tosses away his cowboy boots, hat, vest and is down on the green shag carpet with you, his hair messy, his white shirt half-unbuttoned. He’s taking sips of Captain Morgan straight from the glass bottle. He’s lighting a Lucky Strike with the wick of his candle and then giving it to you to puff on as he places the planchette on the board. “Wait, how do we start?”
You exhale smoke, setting your candle down on the carpet and then tugging off your own boots with some difficulty. “We have to say hello.”
“Okay.” Aegon places his fingertips on one side of the heart-shaped planchette and you rest yours lightly on the other. He begins doubtfully: “Hello…?”
“Is there anyone who would like to send us a message from the other side this evening?”
“You’ve done this before,” Aegon accuses.
“I have. In college.”
“With a guy?”
You chuckle, taking a drag as the cigarette smolders between your fingers. “No, with my friends. It’s not really a date activity.”
“I think it’s very romantic. Candles, darkness, danger, who’s gonna protect you when the ghosts start throwing things around…”
“You’d fight a ghost for me?”
“Depends on the ghost. FDR? You got it. I can take a guy in a wheelchair. Teddy? No ma’am. You’re on your own.”
“Which ghost should we summon?”
Aegon ponders this for a moment. “John F. Kennedy, are you in this basement with us right now?”
“That is wrong, that is so wrong.”
“Then why are you smiling?” Aegon says. “JFK, how do you feel about Johnson fucking up your legacy?”
“That is not the kind of question you’re supposed to ask. We’re not on 60 Minutes.”
“JFK, do you haunt the White House?” Aegon drags the planchette to the Yes on the board. “Oh no, I’m scared.”
“You are a cheater, this is a fraudulent Ouija board session.” You put your cigarette out in the ashtray and then take a swig from Aegon’s rum bottle. “JFK, are we gonna make it to the moon before 1970?”
Aegon pulls the planchette to the No. “Damn, Io, bad news. Guess the Russians win the Space Race and then eradicate capitalism across the globe. No more beach houses. No more Mr. Mistys.”
“Give me the planchette, you’re abusing your power.”
“No,” Aegon says, snickering as you try to wrestle it away from him. In his other hand he’s clutching his candle; scarlet beads of wax like blooddrops pepper your skin as you struggle, tiny infernos that burn exquisitely. Red like paint splatter appears on Aegon’s shirt. You grab the green bandana around his throat, but instead of holding him back you’re drawing him closer. The Ouija board and all the world’s ghosts are momentarily forgotten.
“You’re dripping wax on me—”
“Good, I want to get it all over you, then I want to peel it off and rip out your leg hair.”
You’re laughing hysterically as you pretend to try to shove him away. “I’m freshly shaved, you idiot.”
“Everywhere?” Aegon asks, intrigued.
You smirk playfully. “Almost.”
“Okay, let’s get you cleaned up.” Aegon sets his candle down on the carpet and strips away tacky dots of red wax: one from your forearm down by your wrist, another from your neck just below one of your silver hoop earrings, wax from your ankles and your calves and right above your knees. His fingertips are calloused from his guitar, from the ropes of his sailboat. They scratch roughly over you, chipping away who you’re supposed to be.
Then Aegon stops. You follow his gaze down. There is a smudge of wax on the inside of your thigh, extending beneath the hem of your dress, glittering black and white fabric that hides what is forbidden to him. Aegon’s eyes are on you, that troubled opaque blue, drunk and desperate and wild and afraid. With your fingers still hooked beneath his bandana, you say to him like a dare: “Now you’re going to stop?”
His palm skates up the smoothness of your thigh, and as he unpeels that last stain of red wax his other hand cradles your jaw and his lips touch yours, gently at first and then with the ravenousness of someone who’s been dying of thirst for centuries, starving since birth. You’re opening your legs wider for him, and his fingers do not stop at your thigh but climb higher until they are whisking your black lace panties away, exploring your folds and your wetness as his tongue darts between your lips, tasting something he’s been craving forever but only now stumbled into after four decades of darkness, trapped in you like Narcissus at his pool.
You are unknotting his green bandana and letting it fall to the shag carpet. You are unbuttoning the rest of his shirt so you can feel his chest, soft and warm and yielding, safe, real. The candlelight is flickering, the thumping bass of a song you can’t decipher pulsing through the floor above. Now beneath your dress Aegon’s fingers are pressing a place that makes your breath catch in your throat, makes you dizzy with need for him. He looks at you and you nod, and he reads in your face what you wanted to say months ago in this same basement: Don’t stop. Come closer.
Aegon lifts your dress over your head, nips at your throat as he unclasps your bra, and you are suddenly aware of how the cool firelit air is touching every part of you, how you are bare for him in a way you’ve never been before. You catch Aegon’s face in your hand before he can see the scar that runs down the length of your belly and say, your voice quiet and fragile: “Don’t look at me.”
Pain flashes in his eyes, furrows across his brow. “Stop,” he murmurs, kissing your forehead as you cling to him. Then he begins moving lower and you fall back onto the carpet, no blood on Aegon’s hands this time, only your sweat and lust for him, only crystalline evidence of a betrayal you’ve long ago already committed in your mind.
You’re combing your fingers through his hair and gasping as Aegon’s lips ghost down your scar, not something ruinous or shameful but a part of you, the beginning of your story together, the origin of your mythology. Then his mouth is on you—yearning, aching wetness—and you thought you knew what this felt like but it’s more powerful now, more urgent, and Aegon is glancing up to watch your face, to study you, to change what he’s doing as he follows your clues. And then there is a pang you think is too sharp to be pleasure, too close to helplessness, something that leaves you panting and shaking.
You jolt upright. “Wait…”
Aegon props himself up on his elbows. His full lips glisten with you. “What? What’d I do wrong?”
“No, it’s not you, it’s just…it’s like…” You can’t describe it. “It’s too…um…too intense or something. It’s like I couldn’t breathe.”
Aegon stares at you, his eyebrows low. After a long pause he says: “Babe, you’ve come before, right?”
I’ve what? “Yeah, of course, obviously. I mean…I think so?”
He’s stunned. He’s in disbelief. Then a grin splits across his face. “Lie back down.”
You’re nervous, but you trust him. If this costs you your life, you’ll pay it. He pushes your thighs farther apart and his tongue stays in one spot—where you touched yourself in the bathtub in Seattle, where you wanted him when he slipped his fingers into you for the first time—and suddenly the uneasy feeling is something raging and irresistible like a riptide in the Atlantic, something better than anything you knew existed, and you keep thinking it’s happened but it hasn’t yet, as you cover your face with your hands to smother your moans, as your hips roll and Aegon’s arms curl under your thighs to keep you in place so he can make you finish. It’s a release that is otherworldly, celestial, terrifying, divine. It’s something that rips the curtain between mortals and paradise.
It’s always like this for men? That’s what Aemond has been getting from me, that’s what I’ve been denied?
As you lie gasping on the carpet Aegon returns, smiling, kissing you, running his fingers through locks of hair that have escaped from your pins. “Not bad, right little Io?” he purrs, smelling like rum and minerals, earth and poison. Now he’s taking off his jeans, but before he can position himself between your legs you have pushed him onto his back and straddled him, pinning his wrists to the floor, watching the amazement ripple across his flushed face, the desire, the need. You tease Aegon, leaning in to nibble at his ear and bite gingerly at his throat, never harming him, never claiming him, grinding your hips against his and listening as his breathing turns quick and rough. Then you slip him inside you, this man you once hated, this man who was a stranger and then a curse and now a spell.
Aegon wants to be closer to you. He sits up as you ride him, hands on your face, in your hair, kissing you, inhaling you, shuddering, trying not to cry out as footsteps and laughter and thunderous basslines bleed through the ceiling. You know he’s been high on so many things—things that corrupt, things that kill—and you hope you can compare, this brief clean magic.
He can’t last; he finishes with a moan like he’s in agony, and as the motion of your hips slows, you take his jaw in your grasp and gaze down at him. “Good boy,” you say with a grin. Aegon laughs, exhausted, drenched in sweat, his hair sticking to his forehead. He embraces you so tightly you can feel the pounding of his heart, racing muscle beneath bones and skin.
He’s murmuring through your disheveled hair: “I gotta see you again, when can I see you again?”
You don’t know what to say. You don’t have an answer. You unravel yourself from Aegon and dress yourself in the red candlelight: panties, bra, dress, boots, all things that Aemond chose for you, all things he bought with his family’s money, all things he owns. Aegon has nothing to his name and neither do you. You are—like Fosco once said—pieces of the same machine.
“Where are you going?” Aegon asks, like he’s afraid of the answer.
“I have to go back upstairs to the party before someone realizes I’m missing.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.” You kneel on the carpet to kiss him one last time, your palm on his cheek, his fingers clutching at your dress as he begs you not to leave. “I have to, I have to,” you whisper, and then you do.
You grab the Ouija board and planchette off the green shag carpet, hug them to your chest, and hurry up the steps. The first floor of the Asteria house is a maze of cigarette smoke and clinking glasses, guests who are dancing and cackling and drunk. From the record player strums Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire. You slip unnoticed to the staircase.
In the blue-walled bedroom you share with Aemond, you carefully place the Ouija board and planchette in the top drawer of his nightstand exactly as you found them. Then you go to your vanity to try to fix your hair. As you’re rearranging clips and pinning loose strands back into place, the door opens. Aemond is there, feeling beloved and invincible, looking for you. He crosses the room and closes his long fingers around your wrist. He wants you: under him, making children for him, possessed by him.
“Come to bed,” Aemond says.
“Not right now. I’m busy.”
“You aren’t busy anymore.”
“I told you no.”
He wrenches you from your chair. Instead of surrendering, you strike out, hitting him in the chest. You don’t harm him, you’re not strong enough, but genuine shock leaps into his scarred face.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” you hiss. You can’t let Aemond undress you; he will find the evidence of your treason, he will see it, feel it, taste it. But that’s not the only reason you stop him. “Every goddamn night I give you what you want, and exactly how you want it. Tonight I’m saying no. You want to take me? You’ll have to do it properly. I’m not going to give you the illusion of consent. You remember what Zeus did to all those women, right? Go ahead. Act like the god you think you are. But I’m going to fight you. And if those people downstairs hear me screaming, you can explain to them why.”
Aemond stares at you in the silvery light of the half-moon. You glare boldly back. At last he leaves and descends the staircase into an underworld of churning smoke, returning to the party to sip his Old Fashioneds and decide what to do with you.
#aegon ii targaryen#aegon targaryen#aegon targaryen ii#aegon ii#aegon targaryen x reader#aegon x reader#aegon ii x you#aegon ii fanfic#aegon ii x reader#aegon targaryen x you#aegon ii x y/n
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A group of influential Republican senators has sent a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan, warning him not to issue international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, and threatening him with “severe sanctions” if he does so.
In a terse, one-page letter obtained exclusively by Zeteo, and signed by 12 GOP senators, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Florida’s Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz of Texas, Khan is informed that any attempt by the ICC to hold Netanyahu and his colleagues to account for their actions in Gaza will be interpreted “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
“Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators tell Khan, adding that they will “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.”
Rather ominously, the letter concludes: “You have been warned.”
In a statement to Zeteo, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said, “It is fine to express opposition to a possible judicial action, but it is absolutely wrong to interfere in a judicial matter by threatening judicial officers, their family members and their employees with retribution. This thuggery is something befitting the mafia, not U.S. senators.”
#yemen#jerusalem#tel aviv#current events#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#news on gaza#palestine news#news update#war news#war on gaza#icc#international criminal court#gaza genocide#genocide
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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #9
March 9-15 2024
The IRS launched its direct file pilot program. Tax payers in 12 states, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona, Massachusetts, California and New York, can now file their federal income taxes for free on-line directly with the IRS. The IRS plans on taking direct file nation wide for next year's tax season. Tax Day is April 15th so if you're in one of those states you have a month to check it out.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into the death of Nex Benedict. the OCR is investigating if Benedict's school district violated his civil rights by failing to protect him from bullying. President Biden expressed support for trans and non-binary youth in the aftermath of the ruling that Benedict's death was a suicide and encouraged people to seek help in crisis
Vice President Kamala Harris became the first sitting Vice-President (or President) to visit an abortion provider. Harris' historic visit was to a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul Minnesota. This is the last stop on the Vice-President's Reproductive Rights Tour that has taken her across the country highlighting the need for reproductive health care.
President Biden announced 3.3 billion dollars worth of infrastructure projects across 40 states designed to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure. Communities often split decades ago by highways build in the 1960s and 70s. These splits very often affect communities of color splitting them off from the wider cities and making daily life far more difficult. These reconnection projects will help remedy decades of economic racism.
The Biden-Harris administration is taking steps to eliminate junk fees for college students. These are hidden fees students pay to get loans or special fees banks charged to students with bank accounts. Also the administration plans to eliminate automatic billing for textbooks and ban schools from pocketing leftover money on student's meal plans.
The Department of Interior announced $120 million in investments to help boost Climate Resilience in Tribal Communities. The money will support 146 projects effecting over 100 tribes. This comes on top of $440 million already spent on tribal climate resilience by the administration so far
The Department of Energy announced $750 million dollars in investment in clean hydrogen power. This will go to 52 projects across 24 states. As part of the administration's climate goals the DoE plans to bring low to zero carbon hydrogen production to 10 million metric tons by 2030, and the cost of hydrogen to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen produced by 2031.
The Department of Energy has offered a 2.3 billion dollar loan to build a lithium processing plant in Nevada. Lithium is the key component in rechargeable batteries used it electric vehicles. Currently 95% of the world's lithium comes from just 4 countries, Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Only about 1% of the US' lithium needs are met by domestic production. When completed the processing plant in Thacker Pass Nevada will produce enough lithium for 800,000 electric vehicle batteries a year.
The Department of Transportation is making available $1.2 billion in funds to reduce decrease pollution in transportation. Available in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico the funds will support projects by transportation authorities to lower their carbon emissions.
The Geothermal Energy Optimization Act was introduced in the US Senate. If passed the act will streamline the permitting process and help expand geothermal projects on public lands. This totally green energy currently accounts for just 0.4% of the US' engird usage but the Department of Energy estimates the potential geothermal energy supply is large enough to power the entire U.S. five times over.
The Justice for Breonna Taylor Act was introduced in the Senate banning No Knock Warrants nationwide
A bill was introduced in the House requiring the US Postal Service to cover the costs of any laid fees on bills the USPS failed to deliver on time
The Senate Confirmed 3 more Biden nominees to be life time federal Judges, Jasmine Yoon the first Asian-America federal judge in Virginia, Sunil Harjani in Illinois, and Melissa DuBose the first LGBTQ and first person of color to serve as a federal judge in Rhode Island. This brings the total number of Biden judges to 185
#Thanks Biden#Joe Biden#Democrats#politics#US politics#good news#nex benedict#abortion#taxes#climate change#climate action#tribal communities#lithium#electronic cars#trans rights#trans solidarity#judges
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