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#does Michael no longer have daddy issues to the power of 10?
cuethe-laughtrack · 2 years
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The fact that Freddy Fazbear’s canonically exists in the Walten files universe, and the only difference is that there was no murder there absolutely delights me. Like,,, what do you think William is doing with his life if he’s not killing kids? Running a successful business? Not violating osha? Being a decent father? All very funny concepts.
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I have always been bisexual, an exhibitionist, and a submissive people pleaser from an early age and I struggled to live a genuine life by suppressing who I truly am. It was painfully obvious after the end of an emotionally abusive relationship with my boyfriend of 6 years that I was shattered by insecurities, self esteem issues, and regret. I was finally free and also nervous about being single for the first time in so many years. But the nervousness turned into excitement once I started dating men and created "friends with benefits" with a few. I am also a lingerie lover and collector, and I loved showing up for these arrangements with only stockings underneath a long coat, or getting down on my knees for him in a sheer bodysuit and thigh high boots as soon as he let me in the door. Throughout 2019, I dated a lot, had some very satisfying one night stands, experienced the most awkward dates, mourned my ex, cried a lot, laughed extensively, and joined the city night life party scene with a crew that felt like being in the Boogie Nights movie without the porn and the ending of course. They were beautiful, eccentric, artistic, edgy, talented, and wild and I lost myself in this new world I had been introduced too.
I was so busy with my new friends that I almost didn't pay attention to Michael. We had tiptoed around the same office for almost three years at a tech company in different departments. Through the office gossip whispers, I found he was recently single and I was in the mood to add him to my rotating list of men for fun. I had no idea that this person I initially was interested in for "vanilla dates" instead of wild parties would turn into the most passionate, wonderful, understanding, and exciting relationship of my adult life. Michael was older than me by 9 years, originally from northern California and was super fit, had a gorgeous smile, made me laugh until my ribs ached, and treated me like a queen in and out of the bedroom. There was a playfulness and intense spark with each other that was unmatched and I felt deliriously happy in his presence. We fell hard and fast for each other and spent our pandemic summer in his private pool, sipping cocktails, wrapped up in endless conversation, flirting, and playing often until the sun went down.
After about 6 months of dating, it was clear to me I could trust Michael with my heart and soul and as our conversations deepened, so did our sex life. One of the many things I loved about him was how open minded and non judgmental he was to me and others and I knew I could divulge and possibly explore one of my greatest kinks, DDLG. What does DDLG mean? DD or DD/LG is an acronym for daddy dom/little girl, a sexual relationship where the dominant is the "daddy" figure and the submissive plays the role of a "little." First and foremost, DDLG is absolutely not incest, pedophilia, or sex with minors, nor does it condone any of these things. DDLG is a perfectly healthy way to express yourself in role play and this type of relationship involves both care, power exchange. I liked to call myself "babygirl" in this type of play, and my dom was always "daddy." From my past experience with this type of relationship, I knew I wanted this fantasy incorporated into our sex life as well as our personal life. DDLG has many different shades from the most hardcore to vanilla.
We discovered the lifestyle together only after 2 years of dating. It was not something we were seeking at all but when a new couple we were getting to know started to open up about their own experiences of 10 plus years, we perked up. I was fascinated with this community and how they would welcome exhibionists like me! The couple was no longer in the lifestyle but they explained they would connect us to the right people.
I knew without a doubt, we could navigate this new world as a strong couple.
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avanneman · 5 years
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O My Democratic Party, Where the F*ck Art Thou?
Well, good question. If Happy Days aren’t here again, and they aren’t, life is better, definitely. To have the House of Representatives back in Democratic hands after eight long years is definitely a pleasure if not a treasure. As one representative put it “Being in the majority is a thousand times better.” Furthermore, the party’s position at the state level, particularly in the Midwest, except for Ohio, has improved from Obama disaster levels to “not terrible”.
The fantasized “blue wave” failed to materialize, of course, but the thirty-plus seat gain in the House is more than gratifying. It was beginning to seem that Republicans had a lock on the House similar to the Democratic lock that prevailed, with only two interruptions, from 1932 until 1994. But now it appears that the Democrats can win the House without both a hurricane and a war. And it also appears that the party has made significant, though still limited, progress from the woeful downticket performance of the Obama years, to which, as I’ve frequently complained, Obama himself contributed himself to a painful degree, both in terms of policy and administration. Now we’re starting to look like a normal party again.
So what’s next? I recently opined that Old Lady Pelosi held most of the cards, if not the answers, in the upcoming power struggles. It’s true that a number of new reps made it a talking point that they wouldn’t vote for Pelosi, but luckily for Pelosi if no one else, she faces divided forces. A lot of the talk against Pelosi is that she’s “too California” and that we need some Midwestern blue-collar muscle rather than Silicon Valley slickness to win in Trump’s America. But there’s another big batch of energy coming against Pelosi from the new kids, saying she ain’t woke, or at least she’s so old you can’t tell if she’s woke or dead. I confess I’m not up on which wave of feminism we’re up to these days, but obviously Nancy ain’t current with the current current, you know what I’m sayin’? So some are sayin’ she’s too coastal, and others are sayin’, not enough. And if you give an old war horse like Nancy an opening like that, she’s liable to run right through it, which is precisely what she is doing.
As I also previously opined, Nancy’s strongest card is the one she never flourishes in public, money. Decades of successful politicking have given her a whatever it is the kids call a Rolodex these days to die for. Nancy knows moolah, and she knows how to dish it out, but will her cash “moderate” the Democratic Party enough to keep Neoliberal Nancy in control? And even if it does, how much can Nancy do as a mere faute de mieux (aka “lack of a better”)? I think the big issue for the Democrats to address is income inequality, but the “answers” suggested by Bernie Sanders in 2016, and very popular with both the “blue collar” and “woke” wings of the Democratic Party, strike Neoliberal Alan as absolutely the wrong way to go.
The “unifying factor” for Democrats on the campaign trail in 2016 largely seemed to be “Medicare for All,” the original Bernie riff, which appeals to old Paleolibs like Thomas Frank and Michael Moore, who think they’re helping the party return to its New Deal roots, as well as the new kids, like the famously famous (and no doubt privately envied and resented) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would be rockin’ that socialism, if they knew what it was. The problem is, as representatives who actually represent blue-collar districts know, real blue-collar folks don’t want Medicare for All. They want Medicare for themselves, for those who have “earned it” and not for those who haven’t—you know, the “Government, hands off my Medicare” crowd, who love “white socialism” but hate “welfare”.1
“White socialism” includes employer-provided health insurance, which is, of course, highly subsidized, because it’s effectively tax free income, though most people tend to think of it as entirely free—at least it ought to be.2 I think, when push comes to shove, that voters with employer-provided health insurance will not be enthusiastic about either giving up what they have for whatever “Medicare for all” would be, nor do I think that those on the current Medicare program will be interested in “sharing”. Certainly, the Republican “war” on the Affordable Care Act should be reversed, and the Act itself strengthened, but the Democrats need to address the broader issue of income inequality, and income stagnation, beyond health care alone, if the Democrats are going to reclaim a respectable share of the “less than college” white vote. But how?
The Democrats’ dilemma is discussed, not too intelligently, in a recent post appearing in Slate, written by an unenthusiastic Jordan Weissmann, “Kamala Harris’ Big Policy Idea Is Even Worse Than I Thought”, going after the “LIFT The Middle Class Act” being pushed by California Senator Kamala Harris. Okay, the name’s not catchy, and it’s scarcely more than an expanded version of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it’s too generous, providing as much as $6,000 a year to couples with an income of less than $100,000 a year, but, to my mind, it’s very much a step in the right direction.
Weissmann’s first complaint–and his take is not nearly as “outraged” as the headline would suggest–is that too many U.S. households–almost 30% of them–are above the $100,000 a year figure to make this a winner. Bernie Sanders, he says, was smarter, promising free college tuition for everyone, even if your daddy is a billionaire. My reaction is just the other way–that we shouldn’t be boosting the income of households who are making more than the national average. Catering to kids who think that socialism means that everything is free isn’t going to win back blue-collar workers in the Midwest.
A bit surprisingly–and showing how the Democratic Party has “drifted”–Weissman doesn’t emphasize what would be an “old Democrat’s” immediate complaint–that the bill wouldn’t do anything to help the non-working poor, the group that so many liberals insist on always going to bat for–see, for example, the recent “outrage” over proposed changes in the food stamp program voiced by Paul Krugman.
It’s certainly “arguable” that the food stamp proposal, if it had passed, which it did not, could have been administered in a punitive manner at the state level, but the main criticism voiced by Krugman and others was the mere idea that poor people should be forced to do anything, that cutting benefits to an able-bodied person simply on the grounds that they refused to look for a job3 was the ultimate in Republican villainy. Many Democrats continue to insist on throwing themselves into the “welfare trap” that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan dug for them so long ago, while Weissman wants to dig a new welfare trap–welfare for the upper-middle-class. Harris, at least, is trying to craft something that will reach the “real” middle class.
Working to expand the notion, and respectability, of outright income redistribution should be a major Democratic endeavor over the next two years. The Earned Income Tax Credit, because it’s tied to employment, because it provides people with cash, because it’s “invisible” (unlike food stamps), and because it “travels” across state lines, unlike eligibility for most assistance programs, all make the EITC a near perfect vehicle for addressing the “shocking” fact that the free enterprise system, while the only system capable of creating the kind of economic growth that can actually provide a decent standard of living for all people, is not in any sense of the word “fair”. I subscribe, at least in part, to the various theories floating around arguing that the “happy times” of declining income inequality following the two world wars until recently were the product of a variety of factors extraneous to capitalism itself. Today capitalism is continuing to better the lives of millions, and even billions, around the globe, but while the globalizing of capitalism is great for the Third World folks,4 it’s “disruptive” here, now that U.S. corporations can no longer get away with charging monopoly (or at least oligopoly) prices and thus can no longer afford to pay monopoly wages.
The decline in wages for many Americans is popularly regarded as the result of imports, but in fact it’s the decline in bargaining power for American workers now that they are competing with a global work force almost as skilled and ten times larger. Automation, not imports, is destroying the old manufacturing jobs that paid union wages—wages that were high because of the unions, not because there is some magic to manufacturing jobs that lets blue-collar workers earn white-collar salaries. As the manufacturing jobs disappear, workers find new ones, but they aren’t joining unions. Unions have nothing to offer private-sector workers these days because they can’t protect them from international competition.
Hatred of international competition and immigrants drove the Bernie boom in the Democratic primaries in 2016.5 Pelosi’s California money, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s New York money, won’t fund a Democratic Party that runs on Bernie’s issues. If Democrats are going to be competitive in the big Midwestern states that they lost to Trump in 2016, they have to address the issue of income inequality, and a massive expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that it pushes millions into the middle class, is the most direct and effective way to do it, a way that is politically acceptable to lower- and middle-income whites, and a way that is compatible with coastal priorities—i.e., a globally competitive economy, which, if you actually care about reducing poverty worldwide, instead of engaging in moral posturing, is absolutely the only way to go. Unfortunately, “the left” is much more inclined to posture.
Income stagnation and growing inequality strike me as the great domestic issue that the Democrats need to address to recover some ground in the Midwest, particularly the rural areas, where we’ve been losing by massive margins, as I’ve discussed earlier. I obviously don’t think the party can win by going further left, which would only increase our margins where we’re already winning. Health care is closely related to income stagnation, since people are paying more and more for it. Whether cutting the rate of increase for health care costs—correctly identified by President Obama as the “real” crisis, rather than the increases in entitlement costs—can be dealt with in a politically palatable is a (very) open question. But at least proposing a meaningful plan of income redistribution tied to employment would put the Democrats in good position for a decent shot at unseating President Trump. And, barring nothing but good luck as a result of well-deserved investigations into this grossly corrupt presidency, we’re going to need all the good positioning we can get.
Afterwords I’m going to skip moaning about the dangers of getting into fights over impeachment (a terrible idea no matter what, because the Republican Party is as corrupt as Trump is, or rather as corrupt as Trump needs it to be) and engaging in excessive “wokeness”, since I have a general aversion to culture wars. There are a variety of other policies for increasing incomes for lower and middle income folks, which I’ve discussed here, and here. A particular policy, to be pursued at both the federal and state level, is the diminution and (dream on) eventual end to the “War on Drugs”, which gives hundreds of thousands of young black and Hispanic men criminal records while wasting billions on police, prisons, courts, etc. This is the best thing Democrats can do to improve the situation of blacks and Hispanics in this country.
I discuss “white socialism”—the deliberate tailoring of all the major New Deal programs to exclude as many blacks as possible—here in the course of a beatdown administered to poor, pitiful Paulie Ryan and here, in the course of an extended beatdown administered to the poor, pitiful Democratic Party. ↩︎
AARP has an ad showing old folks talking about the issues, and what this country “really” needs, and the closer is provided by an old broad who says in a grandly self-satisfied voice “affordable health care!”, as though the viewer is supposed to exclaim “Affordable health care! Affordable health care! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Because of course what people mean by “affordable health care” is free health care. ↩︎
The bill, which passed the House but never would have passed the Senate, had a number of waivers that made the bill sound much more “reasonable” (though, again, the impact of these provisions would likely depend on administration at the state level). But what enraged Krugman et al. was the notion that self-sufficient employment was considered a more desirable outcome that unrestricted welfare dependency. Because for Krugman et al. the real purpose of these programs is to allow “us” to prove how generous “we” are, not to improve people’s lives. ↩︎
Great, but, uh, massively destabilizing, for both First and Third World countries, which is why virtually everyone is seeking protection of some sort from global economic forces, often with strong nativist overtones. ↩︎
Sanders was, of course, not at all racist, but he did originally advocate shutting off immigration—an easy position to take in Vermont, one of the whitest states in the union, and very few immigrants, legal or no. Pressure from Hillary drove Bernie to the left on immigration. ↩︎
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Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Did Marchessault sign six-year, $30M extension too early?
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In the midst of a stellar playoff run, Jonathan Marchessault must be thinking that he signed his extension a little too early, right?
The conference finals have, to this point, been very good. Entertaining hockey pretty much all the way around unless you count Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, which was not very fun at all.
As you might imagine, the ultra-concentration on just one game per night leads people to ask increasingly specific questions about these remaining series, which I like because it’s nice to be able to really dig into this stuff and the meaning that springs from every win and loss, hero and goat.
Let’s just get right to it:
William asks: “Had Marchessault waited until the offseason to sign a new contract with Vegas, how much more could it have been for versus the six-year, $5 million per he ended up signing?”
I think this is an interesting question mainly because Marchessault is really just carrying on the high-quality play Vegas got from him all year.
The Golden Knights obviously have all the cap room in the world because they’re like $6 million below the ceiling for the season but that’s before all the guys they could LTIR and get cap relief for if they started going over the limit somehow. That’s why they were in the conversation for Bobby Ryan and Erik Karlsson at the deadline.
That said, Marchessault probably could have cashed in an extra mil or two, for sure, but six years sounds about right on the term. Moreover, when he signed that deal, he became the highest-paid non-LTIR skater on the team, tied with Reilly Smith. At that point he couldn’t reasonably demand more than what Smith was getting. After all, okay he had a great year with Smith and Bill Karlsson, but this is a guy who wasn’t even an NHL regular until he was 26 and, to the earlier point, he’s 5-foot-9, so you can see where teams, even his own, might be a little skeptical that he’d be worth the $30 million. (I think the skeptics would have been proven very, very wrong, but that’s beside the point.)
Marc-Andre Fleury makes $5.75 million against the cap, and the since-traded-for Tomas Tatar inexplicably pulls $5.3 million AAV. Smith and Marchessault settling in a shade below Tatar mostly makes sense.
Plus, you have to keep in mind that Nevada has no income tax, so that $5 million is actually worth more to him there than it would be elsewhere (he was, of course, a pending UFA). To put another way, one imagines Marchessault isn’t really going to miss the money he probably left on the table.
Michael asks: “This being a copycat league, do you see anything from the final four that could be a new trend developing?”
Let’s think about some of the best players on these teams. With the exception of Washington, there are a number of undersized star players on these teams. Jonathan Marchessault is probably the playoff MVP right now and he’s listed (perhaps a bit generously) at 5-foot-9. So is Yanni Gourde. Tyler Johnson is an inch shorter than that. Mathieu Perreault and Brayden Point are both 5-foot-10.
Obviously very few players are Patrik Laine where they’re giants who can skate like the wind, but I think we’re getting to an inflection point where there are just too many good teams powered by guys who are under 6 feet tall that you have to say teams will smarten up and realize that, in the modern game, you don’t need to be 6-foot-2 to be an impact player. It helps, obviously, if you can be effective at 6-foot-6 like Victor Hedman, or even 6-foot-3 like Mikhail Sergachev.
But I think (hope) we’re close to being past the point of “short guys have to prove they can play and tall guys have to prove they can’t.” Hopefully some day soon it’ll just be “guys have to prove they can play.” Because if things keep going like they have here, Marchessault being the Conn Smythe winner would mark the fourth time in six years a guy under 6 feet tall took the postseason MVP award home.
Mitch asks: “So was the Matt Niskanen Free Agency signing actually a good idea?”
Yeah.
Since he signed, he has arguably been the best defenseman on their team, John Carlson’s phenomenal contract year notwithstanding. He costs just $5.75 million against the cap, which is a bargain for a defender like Niskanen.
He’s having a great playoff (even if he isn’t scoring a ton; check the underlyings) and even if his regular season wasn’t great this year you have to look at how he was used to make things easier on other defensemen.
Since we’re all pretending like this is the best Caps team of the modern era, if the Caps don’t have Niskanen, I don’t think they get anywhere near this far in these playoffs.
The issue, obviously, is that he’s signed for four years after this one and that’s a long time given that he’ll be 32 in about six and a half months. If the Caps don’t win a Cup this season, what are their chances for doing it next year? Probably not great. And if they don’t do it then, they’re really not likely to improve in the remaining period of the Niskanen deal. At which point, they’ve gotten worse, he’s aged into his mid-30s, and people probably view the contract negatively.
But the Niskanen trophy case in terms of “engendering team success” is pretty good: Two Presidents’ Trophies and an Eastern Conference Final appearance at the very least. Seems pretty good.
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Tampa Bay Lightning center Steven Stamkos (91) during the second period of Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference finals hockey playoff series against the Washington Capitals Sunday, May 13, 2018, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)
Brandon asks: “Where does Steven Stamkos rank among the NHL’s elite?”
Obviously he ranks pretty high as a center, but he only played in 17 games last season while Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews really seemed to shake everything up in that time.
I wouldn’t say he’s top-5 at his position anymore. We’re three years removed from the 400-game stretch when he scored 250-something goals from age 19 to 24. Since then, he “only” has 72 in 172. That puts him tied for 49th in the NHL over the last three seasons and 13th in goals per game. But a big chunk of the guys in front of him (Malkin, Matthews, Crosby, McDavid, Seguin) score more goals per game and John Tavares, with less help, is 1/100th of a goal behind that pace. Plus Mark Scheifele seems to be emerging, and don’t forget about Sasha Barkov.
Stamkos is absolutely a top-10 center in the league, but I couldn’t in good conscience put him in the top five.
Just ballparking it, and without really digging into the numbers, I’d probably go something like McDavid, Crosby, Malkin, Matthews, MacKinnon, Tavares, Bergeron, Scheifele, Stamkos, Giroux for my top 10 right now? Something like that for sure.
Robbie asks: “The Jets look really good and are young. How long is their window going to be open, and are they just getting started?”
I guess I’m a little worried about their long-term prospects to some extent because a few of their really good players are 30-plus — Dustin Byfuglien is 33, same for Toby Enstrom, Blake Wheeler is 31 and Mathieu Perreault is 30.
These are players that, while not taking up a huge percentage of the roster, are also difficult to replace, and that’s especially true of Byfuglien. Who knows, though? The Jets have cap space to throw around once those guys slow down or have their contracts expire (Byfuglien and Perreault three more years, Wheeler just one.) Enstrom’s a UFA this summer.
But also: They have so many guys on RFA and entry-level deals that a bunch of that cap space is gonna go up in smoke in a hurry. This summer they need to re-sign Connor Hellebuyck, Jacob Trouba, and Josh Morrissey. Next summer it’s Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor. Gets expensive in a hurry, doesn’t it?
So those are two factors that could hold them back from being mega-competitive in the long term. But if they maybe don’t return to the Conference Finals for a while longer, it won’t be because they don’t have enough talent. That’s what makes Kevin Cheveldayoff’s job so interesting for the next two years.
Anderson asks: “If the Caps blow this, is it still a successful season?”
Depends who you ask. I’d say yeah but you know how these freaks out here can be.
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Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
All stats via Corsica unless noted otherwise. Some questions in the mailbag are edited for clarity or to remove swear words, which are illegal to use.
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