#i think the other half of the delegation (or at least the other senator) would be significantly older than them. they're both so young | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starkergames · 4 years

Photo

Title: New Years Artists: @lilsoshie (Sketch), @iammagicfishhook (Lineart), @marveling-marvelous (Color) Writer: @darker-soft-starker The years will change and people will change as much as they stay the same. Some changes though, Tony finds, he really doesn’t mind.

Fic below the cut

Some things never change.

Like, being riddled with nerves whilst attending big events.

Or, the little ticks he’s adopted to mitigate the uneasiness, like bouncing his leg up and down, firing off questions to anyone in earshot like, do you think they’ll have sushi at this thing, I have a craving.

Or Pepper singing along to whatever is playing on the car ride over, and Morgan answering his inane questions with things like, ew, sushi.

Some things do change, though.

Like, coming back to life after five years of being dead.

Or being delegated to the backseat next to his daughter, despite the honourable resurrection. Or having his wife remarry in the years following his death.

You know, typical resurrection things, like realizing that the entire world and everyone you knew has changed.

Tony’s got a thing about control. Always has. He likes to know, has to know, all of the variables. He thought he knew all of them before he snapped his fingers and prayed to the stones in his gauntlet.

Here’s the thing about infinity stones: they’re sentient. They like balance.

They’re also assholes with a perverted sense of symmetry.

Somehow, perfect balance and perfect symmetry translated into bringing Tony back to life after five years. Or, being suspended in the ether that was neither life, nor death, the holding cell between worlds.

That was the airy-fairy, hand-wavey way that Strange explained to him. Sparkles and mystery. But Tony doesn’t remember any of it. The not being alive. One moment his heart was giving out, the next he was clawing himself out of the earth.

That was pleasant.

Emerging dirty and naked to find he’d missed five years of his life was also a barrel of laughs. Missing five years of his daughters growth, finding out his wife had moved on? Hilarious. Best cosmic joke to have happened to him yet.

Though, Tony supposes this is how the recovered Snap victims felt, after. Chasing and chasing the years that were missed, feeling as if they will never be completely caught up.

But that was months ago, his resurrection. Reawakening. Whatever. Seven months and three and a half weeks, if he’s counting. He’d say he isn’t, but he definitely is.

He’d used the time mostly caught up on the life of his friends and family, shed his tears. He’s lamented Steve, grieved over Natasha all over again. Wondered why the divine equilibrium didn’t include her sacrifice.

But he’s learned to be okay. He’s living back at the re-built compound with Clint and Wanda and the old-new crowd of super-people that populate the place he used to call home.

He doesn’t don the suit, hasn’t since he came back, worried that the moment he activates the housing unit that it will all be over, and Morgan will lose her father for the second time.

He’s a consultant, now, for the new team. Financier. Benefactor. It’s very boring.

“You sure you want to go to this thing,” Tony says again, stretching his legs so his knees hit the driver's seat in front of him, where Peppers’ new husband sits. “You don’t want a quiet one at home? Ring in New Years with the llamas?”

“Morgan wants to go,” Pepper repeats, peering back to smile at her daughter. “Right, sweetpea?”

Beside Tony, Morgan looks up from her hand-held video game and nods vehemently, smiling brightly. Tony feels betrayed by her enthusiasm.

“Are they paying you to say that?” he leans in, whispering close to her ear. “You can tell me Morgasboard, name your price. I’ll beat it.”

His daughter flicks her gaze between her mother and Tony. She leans into her father and whispers loud enough for the entire car to hear, “Uncle Peter is going to be there. I haven’t seen him in forever.”

Tony sighs exaggeratedly, nodding along, even though he knows she saw him two weeks ago.

“Forever is a long time,” he agrees.

That was another change that Tony feels weird and wonderful about.

Somehow, in the time that he was six-feet-under, his former protege had become something akin to family to his daughter. Which, if he’s honest, in the years after the Snap, was the goal, the dream as he skipped through time with the Avengers, the proverbial what if that drove him to say yes that one, final time.

Happy families, he’d thought. What else could two wayward orphans hope for?

Tony’s at least glad that Peter got that part of the deal. That Morgan got Peter.

Even if Tony didn’t really have either, after.

“Uncle Peter could go back to the compound or the penthouse with us,” Tony offers, nudging his daughter. “You could ask DUM-E to be your new years kiss.”

“You have a speech scheduled, right, babe?” Peppers husband, Greg, cuts in. He was hired as CFO of SI three years ago and it was heart eyes at first sight, Tony is told. He watches as Greg frees one of his grubby hands from the steering wheel to reach across the console and squeeze her knee.

“Sure do,” Pepper smiles, snaking her hand down to clutch his, squeezing their fingers together.

Tony’s not jealous. No, really. He’s adjusted, he’s over it.

But he’s still Tony Stark, so he’s unapologetically petulant. And it’s Pepper, what kind of ex would he be if he didn’t properly field the prospects of the one woman he truly loved?

Feigning a stretch, he kicks his feet out again and jolts the driver's seat, delight welling up when Greg huffs irritatedly. Morgan giggles as if it’s some kind of game, and all the adults pretend that it is to please her.

The unimpressed stare from his ex-wife caught through the rear-view mirror does little to dampen his satisfaction.

It’s the little wins, Tony thinks, as they pull up to the building, paparazzi huddling around the rope barriers that flank the red carpet, flashes firing through the tinted windows as they come to a stop.

Just because some things change, doesn’t mean he has to.

It’s that mentality that gets him through the dreaded, interminable walk from the car to the ballroom entrance. This is old hat, he tells himself as he waves to the crowd. You could do this with your eyes closed. God, he used to be so good at pretending to care about this kind of crap.

Reporters brandish their network-issued microphones at him, at his family. Fans shoulder against security, all of them yelling out in a cacophony of noise he might call white were it not the sound of his own name, in all of its iterations.

Although he’d rather make a beeline straight to the ballroom he stops and greets a few fans, shakes a few hands, high-fives a few kids. After a slew of signings and selfies the comparatively calm interior of the ballroom is blissfully welcomed. The quartet supplying tunes in the far corner is a reprieve.

So is the way that Pepper clutches Greg’s hand and leads him away at the same time Morgan clutches Tony’s. She looks back and says, be good. Tony doesn’t know if she’s directing it to him or their daughter.

Socialites swan around them, but Tony just looks down at his daughter and smiles. He squeezes her tiny fingers.

“You wanna dance, Morgarita?”

Her serious expression turns gleeful as she drags him to the centre of the room to dance without a shred of shyness.

She’s a lot like she was before he died. Smart and mischievous, cute as a button. But she’s markedly different, caught in that pre-teen phase where she’s gaining modicums of independence. Tony’s getting used to not needing to make all her meals or do her hair for her. He kinda misses it.

Little things. It’s always the little things.

She’s taller now, too. That was a change, to have his daughters head rest against his chest when she hugs him. She’s too tall to be picked up, too proud when Tony offers. So she wraps her arms around his midsection and they sway together on the dancefloor.

Only a few couples are dancing. The night is still young. But, like anything in high society, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Which means most guests are mingling, telling each other how beautiful and fabulous they are, filling the room with so much re-circulated pomp and hot air the room is practically a hotbox.

Of course it’s a business event as much as it is a philanthropic one, so not even Tony can avoid the inevitable schmoozing that comes along with it. When Morgans tired feet demand a break they seek out seats and snacks - and they too, are sought out.

To his ire, associates come and go like a conveyor belt to shake his hand, politicians and socialites thank him for reversing the Snap, the Blip, the Click, the Dusting, all of the stupid names and his daughter is sitting right there, growing more and more morose at each mention of the worst thing that ever happened to her.

So Tony looks down at his daughter, mid conversation with a senator and says, “Hey, sweet child of mine, wanna go to the dessert table?”

She perks up at that and is off like a rocket to the other side of the room where swathes of mouth-watering sweets are spread over an eighteen foot table.

Tony follows her beeline without saying goodbye to the senator, mentally rubbing his hands together at the grub. He’s sure he will pay for directing his daughter to a trove of sugar and hyperactivity. But desperate times.

Who is he kidding. He’s going to need all the sweet stimulation he can possibly consume to get through this shit-show himself.

When he catches up Morgan already has chocolate smeared on her lips. Fancy desserts perch daintily upon gold lined plates, on tiered stands. Thin streams of velvety, liquid chocolate trickle out of apex fountains, flakes of edible gold cover the setting.

She points excitedly with messy fingers to the ones she wants Tony to try. He should resist, right? He’s really isn’t supposed to eat dairy. That, along with his faulty levels of serotonin, was something the all powerful stones failed to fix. Which was really just plain lazy, if you ask him.

But he spies a flamboyant looking fruit-pastry and thinks, fuck it.

Then he sees a yellow-treat that makes his mouth water and thinks, I can work it off tomorrow.

He reaches over and crams an entire portugese egg tart in his mouth, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk. Morgan laughs, tipping her neck back in unbridled delight.

“Do it again!” she says, bouncing on her feet.

He does. And then again, and again.

Which is how Peter Parker finds him no more than ten minutes later.

“Mr. Stark!”

Tony nearly chokes in his haste to chew and swallow the pastry when Peter swans into view, dressed to the nines and grinning a mile wide. He hears Morgan gasp delightedly beside him, running off to catch up with the younger man while Tony tries not to quietly asphyxiate.

Swallowing roughly, Tony gives him a thumbs up.

Several feet away, Morgan throws her gangly arms around Peter. She buries her head into his chest, just like she does with Tony, brown hair cascading over her shoulders as she embraces him tightly. Peter settles his arms around her neck and leans down to kiss the crown of her head, whispering something to hear that Tony can’t hear.

There’s a weird pang somewhere behind his ribs at the sight.

He swipes his half-empty flute of champagne and downs the remainder in one gulp to cover it.

“Mr. Parker,” Tony greets, rocking on his feet when his daughter and former protege walk back to him hand-in-hand. “Didn’t know you owned a suit in your size.”

The younger man holds his free arm out, twisting it to test the fit. It’s a grey suit with a maroon dress-shirt, tailored to perfection. It looks new.

Peter smiles. The action has creases forming at the corners of his eyes; a small, subtle nod to the years Tony missed. Gone is all of his baby fat, his face angular and defined. He holds himself with more self-assuredness, even now.

He wouldn’t say it aloud, but Peter grew up handsome.

Worse, he grew up to be Tony’s type.

“Oh, this? I didn’t pick it - but it’s nice, right?”

“Yeah. You, uh,” Tony swallows roughly, eyeing the man from head to toe. “You look good. You clean up well, kid.”

Peter rubs the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly at the compliment.

“Thanks, Mr. Stark. You - you too. You look... good. Really good.”

Peter meets his gaze, his cheeks a furious shade of pink.

The motion of the room slows as he watches the sparkle reach Peter’s eyes. Everything in his peripherals becomes dull, unfocused. His own heartbeat jackrabbits against his chest and his sure his face is doing something without his permission.

Tony’s throat clicks when he swallows.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter nods, stepping closer.

Now, Tony thinks, staring at Peter’s face, the earnest smile still tugging at his lips. Now is the time he would say something to curdle the mood.

Peter being a full-fledged, rent-paying adult adult is new. Being on an even footing with Tony as a person and a professional is new. There’s so much new about him that Tony still has to learn.

There’s plenty that has stayed the same. His soft-spoken, courteous nature, his ethics.

But Tony can read the unfamiliar in Peter’s posture as much as he does the carefully curated vocabulary, how he stops himself from stammering into subjects he might have stepped into, before. The barely-there lines of age around his eyes, the confident squaring of his shoulders.

And how Tony finds that his imperfect teeth compliment the ever-wayward hairs of his eyebrows - and how all of it, all of Peter, is now somehow charming, rather than awkward.

“How have you been, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, stuffing his hands into his pockets and shuffling forward

“Good,” Tony says, lips stretching onto the first genuine smile of the night. He’d try to tug those corners down, were it not for the infectious way Peter’s mouth does the same. “You?”

“Good, yeah. Super busy.”

“That’s good. Good to keep busy, as they say.”

“Yeah,” Peter nods. “It is good. Keeping busy. And how are you? -- Wait, shit, sorry, I already asked that.”

“This one keeps me going,” Tony tugs on a lock of Morgan's hair, taking mercy on him. “You been too busy to see the news about Spider-Man? I know you’re a fan.”

Peter steps closer again, clasping his hands behind his back, smiling coyly as those around them perk up in interest.

“Which news?”

“Taking down Kingpins empire. Fisk behind bars.”

“Oh, I think I heard something about that.”

Tony nods.

“What a guy. New York’s never looked cleaner. Although, take that from a guy who hasn’t seen the city for five years.”

“That’s some high praise,” Peter says, wringing his hands together as he nears.

“He’s a hero,” Tony looks to his daughter. With an affirmative nod of dark hair she concurs.

“I think he’s just a regular guy,” Peter huffs, snorting when Morgan giggles knowingly.

Before Tony can inch closer, maybe to do something impulsive like what his hands have been itching to do and grip the lapels of Peter’s suit jacket, the moment is broken by a nearby cry.

“Peter! There you are!”

Sweat beading along his receding hairline, a heavy arm slung over Peter’s shoulders, Otto Octavius swims into view, nodding politely at Tony and Morgan.

“You’re a slippery one, Parker,” he says, shaking Peter’s shoulders. “Been looking for you.”

“Otto, this is --”

“ -- Got some guys that want to meet you,” Octavius interrupts, thick fingers squeezing Peters bicep. He leans in and and whispers in a way Tony is sure is meant to be discreet, “They’re keen to meet the brains behind the project; come say hi.”

Another change Tony never counted on was the trajectory Peter’s life took after his passing.

Peter never went to MIT like Tony had dreamed for him. He went to Empire State University.

Pepper informed Tony that she in fact had reached out prior to his graduation and offered him a position. But Peter had declined. He hadn’t said why, but he’d chosen to work under Otto Octavius at Octavius Industries instead.

One thing that Tony learned in his short time back in the land of the living was that Otto was infamously proud of his new employee and favoured immensely.

It’s what Tony would have wanted for Peter, really. Doing what he loves, being given the respect his intellect and kind heart deserves. He seems to be happy and all grown up. As if Tony needs the reminder.

It’s just that Otto was always an insufferable do-gooder. Save the trees, save the bees. ALl noble notions that Tony agrees with - but Otto is like the human personification of a PETA ad. He’d never been a fan of Tony’s, even after he reformed, literally.

Still, do-gooder or not. There’s something about him. Something that Tony doesn’t like. Just a vibe he has. He’s got good instincts after all of these years and he knows he’s got a solid hunch. There’s something about that man, he knows it.

It’s got nothing to do with the proprietary hand Otto has on Peters shoulder, like the younger man is just a thing to show off. Or how Tony wanted to be the one doing that.

It’s got nothing to do with the way Peter’s suit perfectly fits his frame, or how the maroon and grey compliments his clear, milky skin.

It’s definitely not related to the way Tony’s heart beats just a little bit faster when Peter is in the room.

Yeah.

“Um, I’ll just be a minute,” Peter smiles apologetically at the Starks, eyes softening at Morgans pout. “I won’t be long, you owe me a dance little miss, remember?”

Tony waves dismissively at him, reaching for another flute of champagne from a passing waiters tray. He swallows another generous mouthful, bubbles burning on their way down.

With Morgan munching on a gold flaked cheesecake at his side, Tony watches as the young hero is led away. Otto’s hand on his back, guiding him to make nice with some university hacks. Five years ago Peter would have fumbled through these introductions. He would have gone bright red and blurted some weird factoid to make conversation.

But he’s polished now, Tony watches. Not perfect, but his posture says confident adult, not awkward teenager, like the last time he wore a suit around Tony. This suit really does fit him like a glove. His handshake looks strong, too. Firm.

Were Peter’s hands always that big?

Tony sips his champagne, observing the girth of his former mentee’s fingers. It’s not until he feels the burn of Morgans stare on the side of his face that he breaks his gaze.

“What,” he says.

She points a chocolate covered finger at his face.

“You know how I feel about people holding up one finger at me. If you’re gonna do it, it should be the middle one.”

“You like him.”

Tony huffs, rolling his eyes. “Of course I like him. He’s your Uncle Pete.”

“No, dad, you like like him. You want to be his boyfriend.”

“What -- I do not,” Tony says, casting her an incredulous stare.

“You do. You want to marry him,” she says, scrunching up her face and making kissy noises.

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“I --” he huffs, gesturing to the room at large as his words run away from him. “Do not. I’m the adult. You’re the child. I’m right, you’re wrong. Case closed.”

“Dad.”

“Fine, here,” he fishes out his wallet from his back pocket and slips a crumpled fifty out. He waves it in her face. “Take this and never speak about it again.”

“Can I speak about it to mom?”

He slips out another fifty and hands it to her.

“No.”

She smiles, neatly folding the notes and tucking it into her little bag. Tony stuffs another tart down his throat, knowing he’s been played.

She really is his kid.

----

It’s not that Tony doesn’t know.

He knows.

It’s familiar after decades of experience. That weird feeling he gets. The fluttering of his heart, the topsy-turvy motion in his stomach, were he any younger he might call them butterflies.

He just doesn’t get it.

There’s a lot of things that were jarring when he awoke, soil under his fingernails as he tore through the earth in the desperate search for oxygen. He remembers waking up, confused and naked, body restored to the moment before he snapped his fingers. He remembers stumbling onto a rebuilt compound, unable to speak, learning that the entire world had moved on and changed without him.

With FRIDAY as his guide Tony had seen all of the monuments and the altars in his name, fresh bouquets propped against them, even years after his death. The adoration and the glorification immortalised in murals and statues, in grants in his name, in tell-all books.

They’d even made a shitty movie about his life.

The actor who played him was too short and the woman who played Pepper wore a wig. It was funny. Not like, funny haha, but funny in that uncanny, meta photo-within-a-photo kind of way.

But when Peter had come to the compound that first time and they talked after they both finished crying -- it was different. And every time after, it was different.

It was… awkward. At first, they didn’t know how to be around each other, automatically falling into old molds of mentor and protege. It was almost immediately clear that their old roles weren’t going to work -- too much between them had altered to fit back into the old model.

They needed to recalibrate, and quickly.

Their dynamic did change. If Tony thought about it long enough, innocently enough, he might dare to call it a friendship.

He would, but there was that feeling in his chest. Beat, beat, bang.

It was a work in progress, to reconcile the flutter in his stomach with the Peter now, with the Peter that was, before. A man who had lost all his baby fat, who was old enough to have colourful stories and a wealth of life experience, who had remarkably broad shoulders looked damn good holding a wrench.

It was the hands.

They looked very dexterous. Capable.

But that didn’t stop him from spiraling into deep, existential pockets of despair as he wondered if the stones really thought it was best to revive him so he could actively thirst over someone he used to be responsible for.

Peter is barely fifteen years older than his daughter. He’s lost count how many real and missing years are between them now between death and the Snap. Five a piece.

He can’t tell his road-runner heart if that’s better or worse, though.

But, too high on the adrenaline of seeing Peter, he forgets to tell his body to stop, to remind his stupid heart that this one is not available.

----

Sometime after eleven the gala is in full swing. The mood perks right up in anticipation of the New Year.

Most of the remaining guests are pleasantly tipsy by this point, if not outright drunk. All of the stirring speeches have been made, Peppers included.

Tony tried to listen, however got distracted by - well, anything. But the effort was there. Something about giving and starting the year fresh, clean slates.

The relaxed atmosphere has more couples dancing on the floor. The Mayor and his wife stumble over each other, moguls and A-Listers mingle and take selfies against attractive backdrops.

Even Morgan grew tired of Tony’s ornery approach to the evening, departing with a kiss to his cheek to dance with her mother.

Tony forgets, sometimes. That people expect something of him, something more. Like his resurrection was divine intervention, and if the universe intended him to be here, surely it was for a purpose higher than acting like a morose old man, hiding in the corners of ballrooms.

It’s just. He doesn’t know where his place is anymore.

Norman Osborne stops by to crow about his latest achievements, his contract with the NYPD to provide surveillance towers all over the city. Tony’s seen them. They’re hard to miss.

“Design’s a little archaic, don’t you think? Not very discreet. A pettier man would say you were overcompensating for something.”

He’s not really paying attention as he’s speaking, too distracted by the debacle before him.

Harry Osborn and Peter dance together in the centre of the room, leaned in close to one another and snickering at what the other has said.

They look loose and comfortable around one another, as if they were old friends. Or something else.

Peter leans in close to Harry’s ear to whisper something, the flush on his face creeping down his neck. In one swift movement Tony throws back the rest of his champagne, wishing the liquid would drown him, stomach turning to cement.

Whatever Norman says in response goes unheard.

With the crowd dispersed, Peter catches Tony’s eye and waves exuberantly, nearly hitting Harry in the face.

Tony raises his glass, wincing.

At least some things stay the same.

“They roomed together at ESU,” Norman breaks Tony out of his musings.

Clearing his throat, Tony tries his best to appear indifferent. Why should he care? That’s right, he doesn’t. Not even remotely.

“I see.” Play it cool, he thinks. “They look close, are they —?”

Nailed it.

“No. They tried, but it didn’t work out. Harry’s engaged now.”

“Huh.”

“But Peter is always welcome in our home,” Norman drawls. “He’s like a second son, really. Wasn’t he your protege once?”

Osborn is so smarmy. All at once Tony remembers why he hates this man and his dumb, weathered face. His covetous tone makes Tony want to hurl, or send a suit to the nearest Oscorp building and play rain of fire.

“Good god, imagine if he was your son,” Tony says blithely. “As if you need another one of those to mess up.”

Norman huffs.

“You’re hardly the authority on raising well adjusted children, Stark.”

Ire spears up hot to his throat, but before Tony can deliver a withering reply, he’s interrupted by the arrival of Pepper and Greg.

Morgan trails behind, dragging a laughing Peter with her by hand. She weaves her thin body through the crowd, having pulled the man away from his dance wearing identical grins.

He watches his daughter cut through swathes of the elite in a trail of chiffon, delight clear in the laughter that follows her. Tiny heels clack against the polished ballroom floor, and Peter indulges her mischief, catching Tony’s eye and winking as they near him.

It’s the first time he’s seen his whole family look truly carefree since he came back.

And Tony is where he should be. An inscrutable mass against the beige, peeling wallpaper.

The look of distaste on Normans face as he walks away is enough to dampen some of his churlishness as his family form before him. Pepper makes small talk with Peter and Greg smiles awkwardly at a passing senator. Morgan dives for a profiterole before anyone can stop her.

For a moment Tony feels like he’s in a McDonalds playground instead of an upper-class charity event.

Pepper must have had a hand in choosing Morgans dress, Tony thinks, because it has pockets. And, watching her as the adults talk, she sneaks handfuls of tarts and truffles into the grooves of her dress. Tony wants to laugh, to wink at her conspiratorially at the same time he wants to tuck her into bed, new years or not.

Morgan beckons Peter closer to the sweets table. The younger of the two piling her favourite sampled sweets onto a napkin and thrusts them towards Peter, fervently requesting that he try them, they’re so good, Uncle Peter.

“Not everyone wants dessert for dinner, little miss,” Tony reminds her, swiping a napkin off the table and wiping the melted chocolate off the corner of her mouth.

“I’m not a baby, dad,” she complains, taking the napkin from him.

He forgets that too, sometimes.

Peter smiles between them, delicately plucking a single strawberry off one of the offered miniature flans and popping it into his mouth.

Lust spears through him so suddenly Tony sways on his feet. Fuck.

His daughter and ex-wife are right there.

“Mr. Stark. Would you - uh,” Peter breaks off to swallow audibly. “Would you like to dance?”

Otto is by the bar. Harry, by the French Ambassador. Tony is in his self-made corner of the room, nibbling on vol-au-vents and sashimi to pass the time.

He can smell Peter’s cologne and his sweat when he steps closer and sheepishly offers his hand and Tony’s entire damn body wants to just reach out and interlock their fingers, to pull Peter close and breathe him in. Never has Tony wanted to bury himself in another body before and not come back out, not like this.

Tony would consume all of what Peter had to give, if Peter let him. The offering look in Peter’s eyes say that he would let him.

“I… uh,” Tony begins, searching for a quip to cover his falter. Smiling at his companions, Tony smooths his hand down his tie, pretending the curious looks of concern are just the alcohol. “I need fresh air.”

“Tony --”

“Mr. Stark --”

He waves them off and smiles apologetically at Peter.

“-- I’ll just be a sec. Is it hot in here? Is anyone else hot? I’m like, sweating here, wow. It’s just pooling under the armpits. I’ll just be a minute, excuse me --”

The crowd parts for him like the red sea as he marches through it in search of the nearest door. But he’s never felt less powerful in his entire life.

Or lives, as it were.

----

Outside, the air is blissfully fresh and cold. The rooftop is far less crowded than indoors, only a few patrons lean against the railing, cigarette smoke curling up from their fingers, some in quiet conversation with another.

There’s a carefully constructed pyramid of wide, vintage wine glasses brimming with champagne. He’s careful not to topple the entire thing over when he goes to reach for one. Overheated, even as the winter wind nips at him, he takes his drink and finds a quiet corner to sulk in.

Perching upon a stone bench away far away from the others, Tony tips his head up at the starless sky and huffs.

What the hell does he think he’s doing?

The New York City skyline is alight before him in all its glory, but the memory of how Peter’s face dropped flashes across Tony’s mind on a loop. He looked taken aback. Hurt even.

Shame wells up low in Tony’s stomach and doggedly stays there.

It’s for the best. Right? It has to be for the best. Peter deserves the best and Tony is not that.

It’s not right for him to want to fit himself into Peter’s life when he seems to be happy and successful without Tony - there’s one thing he knows unequivocally about himself is that he would ruin that. Ruin Peter, one of the few good things he has left.

His heart doesn’t get the memo.

Because when he closes his eyes, all he imagines is the way Peter’s firm body would feel against his. What it would feel like to curl together on the sofa, in bed, under the sheets. How his curls would tickle the underside of Tony’s chin, and what it would be like to trace the lines that branch from his eyes when he smiles, or to stroke the narrow slope of his nose as he sleeps.

It’s wrong.

It’s wrong because Tony doesn’t fit there. Not there, nor in all of the places he used to. He’s not Iron Man or a businessman. He’s not a husband or a full-time father. He’s not even Peter Parker's mentor.

What he is, for all of his resurrected glory, is an afterthought. A spectre, hovering in the fringes of all of the places he used to be the centre of.

He smiles, raising his glass to the smoking couple as they nod politely at him.

It’s fine. He’s happy that everyone is happy.

But it’s been months. He ain't Jesus, but surely by now he’d find some sense of purpose.

“Mr. Stark?”

When Tony opens his eyes Peter stands before him, clutching a perspiring glass of wine.

Tony doesn’t want to notice, but he does anyway. The look of concern written on his face is unmistakable, even in the dim lighting of the rooftop, the nearby flamelight serves to deepen the frown lines on his young face.

“Are you alright, Mr. Stark? Sorry to follow you out here, you just seem kind of...”

“Surly?” Tony guess. “I’m fine, kid. Just had a few too many. Didn’t want to hurl all over the drapes. No need to worry.”

“I was gonna say overwhelmed, but yeah,” Peter says, shifting closer until Tony’s bent knees hit the top of Peter’s thighs - his stomach swoops, again. “I’m gonna worry anyway.”

“Yeah, well, happy New Year,” Tony says dryly, knocking their glasses together.

Peter taps his smart-watch with a finger.

“Still got five minutes before that. Can’t break into Auld Lang Syne yet, Mr. Stark.”

“We could if we were in Halifax,” Tony counters. The younger man tilts his head agreeably and Tony calls the easing of tension from Peter’s shoulders a win.

“Let’s stick to New York.”

“Sure,” he agrees. “You don’t have somewhere you’d rather be? You got four-something minutes.”

“Right here, actually, if that’s okay with you.”

Tony doesn’t know if that’s frankness or fiction, but he smiles all the same, patting the slab of stone he’s sat upon invitingly.

“Well, come aboard, Mr. Parker.”

Without pause, Peter hoists himself on the bench with a single hand, delicately balancing the glass of champagne with the other. He shuffles to get comfortable, swinging his legs as he settles.

The firelight catches onto the curve of Peter’s curls, slicked down into wilted tendrils from the sweat dotting his hairline.

His heart is positively thunderous in his chest. He raises his hand to soothe it and at once, sickeningly, painfully misses the comforting heat of the arc reactor.

“You wanna talk about it?” Peter asks, after a moment.

Tony smiles wryly, mostly to himself. Of course, there’s nothing that escapes Peters notice.

“Trust me, kid. There’s not much to say.”

“I somehow doubt that,” Peter says, fishing something out of his pocket and handing it to Tony “I, uh, thought you liked those. I took the last one.”

It’s a portugese egg tart, Tony notes, warmed slightly from Peter’s body heat. Fuck. He does like them. They’re his favourite.

Tony pretends like his heart isn’t swelling to the point where it feels it's going to burst and breaks the tart in two, passing over the other half to Peter.

“Thanks, kid. Try some.”

They eat their halves in relative silence, save for the sound of chewing and Peter’s shoes hitting the stone as he swings his legs. But the mood grows quieter, noticeably pensive after they finish eating. It makes Tony’s skin crawl.

“You know,” Peter says softly, as if raising his voice would shatter the moment, “you’re not the only one to come back to find years lost. To find the world different. I know it’s not easy. Especially on nights like this.”

Tony swallows roughly, chasing it with a mouthful of champagne.

“You seem to have managed well.”

Peter huffs. “Oh yeah, real well. God, you don’t even know how --” his voice breaks off, voice wet with emotion. He looks away, throat bobbing as he gathers himself. “You just -- you don’t know.”

The moment feels fraught with enough gravity that it would bring the moon down between them.

“Hey,” Tony chides, trying to diffuse the heavy emotion with what levity he could utter. “Come on now, it’s supposed to be me out here maudlin. Don’t steal my thunder, Charlotte's Web.”

“Sorry,” Peter says, cracking a smile. “I’ll try to pencil in sad hours for later.”

“Appreciated.”

A comfortable silence settles between them. A woman, visibly drunk, passes them and raises her glass to Tony, the liquid sloshing out from the glass and down her arm. She doesn’t seem to notice, smiling and stumbling away.

That would have been Tony ten years ago (in his lived years). On the weekends without Morgan, sometimes it still is.

“Got any resolutions, Mr. Stark?”

Tony snorts. “Shit, kid, I don’t know. Take Morgan to Saturn. Run for president, get back on the Cosmo’s Bachelor of the Year.”

“Most people just join a gym.”

“I didn’t come back to life to break my hip on a treadmill,” Tony says, offended. “What about you, Peter Rabbit?”

Peter takes a sip of his drink as he visibly deliberates. Wayward drops of champagne gather at the corner of his mouth before he scoops them with his tongue, eyes drifting to the glittering skyline.

“Yeah. I’m trying to get this guy that I’m into to take me seriously.”

Tony hums, stomach dropping.

“Some guy, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve known him since I was fifteen and I’m like, super into him, but he still sees me as a child.”

His stomach swoops back up.

“Well,” Tony clears his throat, daring to hope, “this guy’s an idiot if he can’t see you for the man you are. You’re a catch.”

Peter shrugs, inching closer as he adjusts his balance. Their hands are nearly touching and Tony can feel the heat radiating from the man's body and he hates himself for it, just a little bit, he’s too old to feel like a kid with a crush again.

“He’s not an idiot. Well, he is, sometimes. Not all the time.”

“You sure this guy is good enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Peter nods, looking out at the skyline again. “He’s just lost. I can wait.”

“What if he’s not right for you?” Tony says, throat closing unexpectedly. “What if he’s not worth the wait?”

Peter shuffles closer.

“He has been so far,” he says, bravely extending his pinkie so it curls atop Tony’s. In the cool night air the touch of skin against skin is scorching. “Worst case scenario has already happened. I’ve already lost him in the worst possible way. I could do without him calling me kid all the time though.”

“He makes no promises on that.”

“I thought as much.”

“You deserve better than lost, Pete,” Tony says around the lump in his throat. For a moment he can’t speak, the memories of electricity ripping through his body in a moment of love much like the feeling he has now. “You deserve the best.”

But Peter doesn’t say anything. He tugs on their linked pinkies to intertwine their fingers, resting them in the interstice of their pressed thighs. Tony doesn’t miss how Peter’s palms are damp against his, how they tremble ever so slightly. It’s grounding, to know Peter is as nervous as he is.

When he gets brave enough to stroke the back of Peters hand with his thumb some of the mired shame melts away.

“Deserve is subjective,” Peter says, squeezing Tony’s fingers. “And I decide he is the best.”

“What if he wants you back,” Tony whispers, shifting closer on the stone until their sides are entirely flush together. “But he has nothing to offer you. Doesn’t fit in with your life.”

“What about what I can offer him?” Peter clutches his hand tighter, raising it to his lips and pressing a soft kiss on the back of Tony’s hand. “What if I'm there while he finds his way?”

“Pete.”

“You have time, Mr. Stark. You can figure the rest out as it comes to you.”

“And until then?”

“You go with the flow.”

“How?”

“Like this,” Peter whispers, pressing their lips together in a chaste kiss.

Closing his eyes, Tony leans into it and lets himself fall. Peters lips feel soft, pillowy, the kiss chaste and unassuming. When Peter pulls back he looks dazed, which is silly, because that was a tease for Tony.

Eyes on the glistening bow of Peter’s lips, he wants to dive in and tug it between his teeth. So he does.

“That’s -- yeah,” Tony says, sliding their noses together, “Were you -- were you always this confident?”

“I’m not confident,” Peter replies, kissing him again, pulling back to exhale shakily against Tony’s lips. “Holy cow. That was, like, a super big risk for me. Wow. Did I fool you? Are you fooled?”

“Bamboozled,” Tony says, staring at Peter’s lips again. “Just to confirm, I’m the guy, right? Resolution guy?”

“Y-yeah. Yes.”

“Good,” Tony says, cupping his cheeks and kissing him again.

Fireworks bathe the couple in an electric array of neons, and crowds can be heard cheering from all around them. Tony pulls away to see Peter illuminated in brilliant colour, lips wet and swollen.

“Is this okay?” Peter reaches his free hand up to cup Tony’s cheek. “Is it weird? It’s a bit weird. Right?”

“It’s weird. But weird-different,” Tony amends. “Good different, right?”

“Right.”

“I should, maybe, keep kissing you to be sure.”

Peter’s answering grin against his lips vivifies the lights exploding around them.

To the soundtrack of waning fireworks, Tony gets lost in learning how Peter kisses, the shape of his lips, how the heat of his tongue feels against his own.

Struck suddenly by a memory Tony pulls away from Peter to groan.

“What?” Peter queries, flushed and panting. “What’s wrong?”

“I literally paid Morgan a hundred bucks to not tell you I was hot for you.”

Peter balks, staring at Tony as if he were stupid.

“Um, I have enhanced hearing, remember? And she told me, like, two months ago.”

Tony squints.

“That little brat.”

——

The knowing smiles when they walk back into the ballroom from their family is a little uncalled for. Morgan is asleep in Peppers lap so she isn’t even awake to crow about her victory.

But the way Otto splutters as his eyes dart between the bruise on Tony’s neck and their joined hands is deeply worth it.

“Happy New Year, Mr. Octavius!” Peter beams, swinging their hands together.

“And - and you. Mr. Parker.”

“Sorry to drop this on you last minute, would you mind if I get another ride home?”

“Well, I --”

“Let me compensate you for the cab,” Tony offers, dropping Peter’s hand to wind his arm around the younger man's waist, pulling their sides flush together. “It’s the least I can do. Don’t worry, Peter’s ride will be very enjoyable.”

“I take it you’re not coming back to the penthouse,” Pepper cuts in, sharing a look with Greg.

“Yeah,” Tony nods, already pulling Peter away. “When Morguna wakes up from her beauty sleep tell her she owes me a cut of the winnings, okay? Good. Happy New whatever.”

They stop by the dessert spread on their way out.

-----

Their taxi driver sends them scalding stares from the front seat.

It’s fine, Tony will compensate him generously in tips. Though, if he were the driver, he’d probably be pissed too.

For all of his stealthyness as Spider-Man, Peter is not quiet right now. He bucks into Tony’s touch, rubbing his crotch against Tony’s hand. He breaks their kiss to moans lewdly into Tony’s mouth, breath hot against his face.

“Oh god,” he exhales shakily, tugging on Tony’s tie to bring their lips together in a filthy kiss.

“Good?” Tony mumbles against his lips, grinding his palm down harder. Peter nods, tilting his head back to groan as Tony’s mouth latches onto his neck. The creamy skin is mottled with teeth marks and barely blooming hickies.

Tony sucks and and laves his tongue over the heated skin to hear how his breath hitches, those high ahh-ahh’s that fall breathlessly out of his mouth, to hear him moan --

“M-Mr. Stark!”

Tony winces, pulling back.

He sighs. “Kid, if we’re doing this, you really gotta call me Tony.”

In an instant Peter’s face turns stony, somehow looking stern despite his swollen lips and wrinkled shirt. He looks like a petulant pitbull.

“If we’re doing this you really gotta stop calling me ‘kid’, Tony.”

Tony undoes the first button of Peter’s dress shirt, then the second, parting the folds of fabric to get a view of his collarbones.

“I suppose I would be amenable to such amendments, Peter,” he nods, “on the condition that you let me take you on a date.”

As Tony snakes a hand over the curves of his clavicle, Peter’s deft fingers undo the knot of Tony’s tie until it lies loose from his neck.

“I would be amenable to that. Conditions accepted.”

“Fantastic.”

“Yeah. I’m going to kiss you again now.”

“Okay. Yeah. Good.”

-----

With a heavy arm slung around his midsection, Tony finds out what Peter’s body feels like curled around his body when he wakes up the next morning.

There are a lot of little discoveries on New Years Day.

Like the feeling of Peter’s morning wood pressed pleasantly against his ass. Or how Peter squints adorably as he wakes up, as if he were confused by his own consciousness, his bedhead a mad nest of curls. Or how much Tony doesn’t mind the humid exchange of morning breath.

“Do you always take your first dates to bed?” Peter queries over breakfast, the ghost of a teasing smile on his face.

“That was not a date,” Tony points his fork at him. Scrambled egg falls from the utensil onto the table. “And we didn’t even have sex. That’s misleading, mister.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Tony sniffs.

“You’ll find out when we have our first date, won’t you? Friday at seven. Yes or yes?”

Peter sips his coffee to hide his smile, but Tony still sees it.

“Yes.”

-----

They got their date.

Six months after the New Years festivities comes Morgans eleventh birthday.

Tony’s had a lot of dates with a lot of people, including Peter, but nothing quite trumps this.

It’s a double date. With his ex-wife and her new husband. Plus twelve other kids and their parents at a McDonalds.

All four are seated at a table, Peter to his side, squirming on the terrible, hard chairs while Pepper and Greg sit opposite. Several servings of burgers and fries lay cold between them. Mostly melted McFlurries ooze off the provided plastic spoon when disinterestedly stirred.

It’s terribly romantic.

Morgan wanted McDonalds with her friends for her birthday, and before the big move to middle school. It fell on date night.

The garishly decorated diner is alive with the sounds of yelling and laughing, kids and their siblings running after one another, pushing each other down slides and following each other through narrow, plastic tunnels.

Tony’s never really been a double date kinda guy, particularly when it involves the mother of his child and his new, twenty-something lover. It was stilted in the beginning, made more awkward by Tony’s foursome jokes, but Peter keeps the conversation afloat, dipping the congealed fries into Tony’s melted ice cream.

He rubs Tony’s lower back as he speaks. Soothing, grounding circles that inadvertently keep Tony in the present.

Peter likes being in constant contact, Tony found. Now that he has the permission. Whether its holding hands, a casual grip on Tonys knee, his thigh, his back.

It’s… actually nice. Maybe because he does it too.

It’s not always about comfort though, Tony concedes, as Peter’s hand dips a little lower, brushing over the swell of his ass.

They share a knowing look.

Tony knows now, what that odd twinkle in Peter’s eyes mean. That little pervert. He knows it in the way Peter bites his bottom lip, as if canary feathers are about to flutter out of his guilty mouth. He wants to lean over and kiss the look right off them.

Greg keeps a close eye on the playground, loafers tapping anxiously on the tiles when a kid pulls a daring move and nearly misses their landing.

He’s not the worst, Tony concedes, wearily assessing the other man. He cares for Morgan which is a plus. But he’s greying gracefully and is genuinely so nice and humble that Tony can’t help but test him every now and then. How earnest can he truly be with Tony stealing a fry here and there and knocking his knees ‘accidentally’.

The conversation turns to Morgans transition to middle school. Pepper thinks she’ll outgrow her peers in months and will pursue a more scientific-focused academic curriculum.

It’s one of those rare, transient moments of life that Tony’s here to witness. He’s getting used to feeling like everything is going to be okay, like maybe he wasn’t brought back just to be a part of another fight. But there’s a lingering anxiety, he just doesn’t know how to deal with without a solder or a suit to tinker on.

He’s working on it though.

“Should we manhandle her highness back in for the cake?” Tony asks, hand snaking down to squeeze Peter’s firm thigh.

Peter, not missing a beat, sends him a smirk that says I’ll manhandle you.

It’s only right that Tony tightens his grip on Peter’s thigh, smiling proudly to himself when Peters breath hitches.

A kid knocks into the back of Tony’s chair, screaming as they run towards the playground. Tony winces, the moment broken.

“Need I remind you two that we’re in a family establishment,” Pepper stresses.

“Yes,” Tony rolls his eyes, gesturing to the playground of rambunctious, screaming children. “How could I forget.”

“Tony.”

“You heard her, Pete, keep it safe for work. You’re making people uncomfortable,” Tony says, clamping down tighter on Peter's leg. Speaking to the couple, he gestures to Peter with his thumb. “Real horndog this one. Insatiable.”

“Me?” Peter says accusingly, jaw dropping.

Pepper raises an eyebrow cooly. “Please, Tony. Don’t think Morgan hasn’t told me about the time she walked in on you two. One time you told her you were checking each Peters temperature. With your long thermometer -- honestly, Tony. Try not to traumatise our child.”

Peter visibly colours at the mention.

“Wait,” Tony says. “That little -- I paid her twenty bucks not to tell you that.”

“So did I,” Peter frowns. “And I gave her the rest of my Reeses to seal the deal. Ah, crap.”

“You got played,” Greg snickers. Tony hates him again.

He nods at Pepper.

“She gets that from you.”

Pepper smiles, unbothered, looking every ounce the image of class as she raises her plastic cup of milkshake to them.

Tony sighs, not even mad.

Some things never change.

-- Thank you to our wonderful artists and writer who participated in the first Starker Games! <3 <3 <3 this is fabulous and we hope you enjoyed yourselves!

#Starker #starker games #starker fanart #PeterxTony #TonyxPeter #New Years

135 notes · View notes

letterstomycountry · 4 years

Text

Manufacturing Liberal Consent

Image via TPM

Noam Chomsky wrote a book with Edward S. Herman in 1988 called Manufacturing Consent. It is about how media outlets are controlled and manipulated by people in positions of power to influence public opinion.

I couldn’t help but think back to Chomsky’s message in Manufacturing Consent as I took stock of the media coverage of this year’s Democratic primaries, which has been uniformly awful.

Take, for instance, the popular narrative that after Joe Biden won Michigan that the Bernie Sanders campaign is all but over. Headlines include:

Sanders not dropping out but where does he go from here?

Bernie Sanders will stay in primary race despite losses in key states

Campaign Says Bernie Sanders Will Not Drop Out Immediately Despite Michigan Loss

Defiant Bernie Sanders vows to soldier on in US campaign

The bleak picture painted by these headlines suggest that the Sanders Campaign’s chances of victory is slim. But that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Right now, Joe Biden has 864 delegates. Bernie Sanders has 710. So Bernie is roughly 150 delegates behind. And there are still over *2000* delegates that haven't been awarded yet.

So why are so many pundits saying Bernie Sanders' campaign is basically over and has failed to “win key states” when the Obama campaign was even further behind in 2008? Why the slanted media coverage?

The answer seems pretty clear:

You can see that strikingly today where there is huge debate about Sanders being a socialist. “How can we have a socialist president?” In fact, Sanders is what would be called a moderate social democrat in most other societies. In other societies, the word “socialist” is not a curse word — people call themselves socialists and even communists. In the United States, there’s a stigma attached to it by massive propaganda going way back to 1917. Such huge propaganda efforts to demonize the concepts of socialism and communism (saying it means the “gulag” or whatever) is again pretty much unique to the United States. It’s a barrier to introducing even mild New Deal–style social-democratic reforms.

This stigma is largely a type of manufactured consent, however. When you ask people if they agree with the policies Bernie Sanders is proposing, polls consistently show that the majority of people approve of his policies.

Polls also consistently show that the Bernie Sanders campaign is the best suited to defeat Donald Trump in the general election.

So why do we continue to hear how dangerous it is to nominate Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential candidate from media outlets? Why are people like Chris Matthews freaking out on national television? Why are moderate democrats calling for the primary to be “shut down” when there’s still a relatively small gap between the candidates?

This is how the rich and powerful manufacture consent. They use their influence over media outlets to ensure that a certain narrative is reinforced. And frankly, I have to say that this year’s coverage of the Democratic primary has been uniquely demonstrative of that fact. Never before has it been more plain that people in charge of powerful institutions are using their large bank accounts and ability to influence media programming decisions behind the scenes to try to sway public opinion in a specific direction by making certain narratives about politics appear to be "common sense" among the intellectual class.

How else can we explain the fact that we have been bombarded with opinion pieces over the past year telling us how Bernie Sanders isn’t electable, despite poll after poll showing that Bernie Sanders does better against Trump than any other candidate? How else can we explain the fact that nearly all the other moderates in the Democratic primary dropped out in near-perfect synchronicity just before Super Tuesday in an effort to shore up support for a single moderate candidate?

The DNC has made it publicly apparent that they want to stop Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination. Some reports suggest that Barack Obama made several calls telling the other candidates it was time to drop out and get behind Joe Biden. Whether that specific factoid is true or not, who knows. But given the DNC’s very publicly announced bias towards Sanders, it seems probable that there was an organized effort to get the moderate candidates to coalesce around a single moderate.

And so the DNC has now forced Joe Biden upon us. A man who--not unlike our current President--apparently has trouble not touching women without their consent. A man who is showing signs of deteriorating cognitive ability. A man who is so gaffe prone that his own surrogates are trying to limit the number of public appearances he makes to avoid more media gaffes. A man who, despite signaling support for the #metoo movement and women’s rights, once said this about Roe v. Wade:

“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”

And even if you ignore all this, imagine how Donald Trump--a master of verbal misdirection and appealing to the electorate’s baser instincts on the bully pulpit--will manhandle a Democratic presidential candidate who recently tried to quote a well known phrase from the Declaration of Independence and forgot it halfway. This is to say nothing of the ammunition Trump will have during the general election given that the Republican led Senate is now proceeding with an official corruption probe into Joe and Hunter Biden’s private dealings.

Despite all this, establishment Dems are doing their best to manufacture consent for Joe Biden. And by every indication they are doing a hell of a job. Before Super Tuesday, Biden’s performance was abysmal. But once he became the only moderate left in the race, and suddenly received a storm of endorsements from other establishment politicians, he was suddenly electorally competitive. Add to this a little bit of voter suppression designed to discourage young voters from participating, along with the emotional resilience of the “problematic Bernie Bro” mythology that has been empirically demonstrated to be false, you have an excellent full court press designed to manufacture consent for Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Keep this in mind as the primary campaign continues. And keep it in mind this Sunday when Joe Biden debates Bernie Sanders. Better yet, think about all of this if Joe Biden gets the nomination, because if he does, he will almost certainly lose to Donald Trump in November. Not just because he is a weak candidate, but because nominating Joe Biden is the end of the Democratic party as we know it.

Progressives have made it clear that they are sick of being lied to and used to support Democratic candidates who then flip the script once they are in office. They are tired of being black-mailed into supporting candidates like Joe Biden, who told a room of wealthy donors last year that “nothing will fundamentally change” if he is elected President.

The media has done a fantastic job of making Joe Biden seem like an electable moderate. But “our needs our not moderate.” As we speak, New York City can’t close schools to prevent the Corona Virus from spreading because over 100,000 kids in the NYC school system are homeless and depend on meals from school to get enough food for the day. But since nothing will fundamentally change if Biden is elected, it sounds like he will not show half as much determination to solve this problem as he showed in opposing federal busing to end segregation in the 1970′s.

Remember that Al Gore lost in 2000. John Kerry lost in 2004. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. And recall that Obama won in 2008 by appealing to young voters, who are much more supportive of progressive policies than older voters. Despite this, the Democratic party has once again--just like in 2000, 2004, and 2016--made it abundantly clear that it would rather run a weak establishment moderate and lose, than run a progressive change candidate and win. Why? Well, at least that way, wealthy democratic donors get to keep their yacht money.

#politics #joe biden #democrats #2020election #primary #2020primary #bernie sanders

73 notes · View notes

theculturedmarxist · 4 years

Link

5 February 2020

The day-long delay in the reporting of voting results from Monday night’s Iowa Democratic caucuses is an unprecedented event, even by the sordid standards of American capitalist politics.

For some 20 hours after an estimated 175,000 people had participated in caucus meetings, the Iowa Democratic Party refused to report a single vote, claiming technical difficulties in the app used to report the precinct caucus totals to party headquarters.

When partial vote totals were finally released at 4 p.m. Tuesday, local time in Des Moines, it was for only 62 percent of the nearly 1,800 precinct caucuses. State party chairman Troy Price refused to explain how the 62 percent had been selected, or what distinguished these from the 38 percent not yet reported. He brushed aside repeated questions about when a final count would be ready.

Whatever the specific intentions of the Iowa state party leaders, every action they have taken in the caucus crisis has been to the detriment of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and to the benefit of former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg. The former naval intelligence officer has been declared the winner of the caucuses by the media because, in the results tabulated for 62 percent of precincts, he placed first in the obscure category of “state delegate equivalents,” the metric highlighted by the state party.

In the same tabulation, Sanders won the most votes, both in the initial count and in the second round after “unviable” candidates—those with less than 15 percent support—had been eliminated. Moreover, much of the unreported vote is from college and factory towns where the Vermont senator posted his best results. It is quite possible that Sanders will also lead in delegate equivalents once a final count is reported.

In previous Iowa caucuses, results were tabulated and made public within two hours of voters arriving at the precinct. The candidates proclaimed the winner in the last four contested Iowa caucuses all went on to win the party’s nomination: Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. But there were no media headlines Monday night and Tuesday morning about Bernie Sanders winning the most votes in Iowa in 2020.

Nor were there blaring headlines about the debacle for former Vice President Joe Biden, once the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, who finished a poor fourth in the tally reported Tuesday afternoon. Biden may actually finish as low as fifth in the final count, since Senator Amy Klobuchar trailed him by only a small margin.

It is impossible to say at this point exactly what is behind the delay in reporting from Iowa. However, the claim that all that is involved is a “glitch” in a reporting app—produced by a highly-connected Democratic Party technology company—raises more questions than it answers. The media, which readily swallows incredible tales about Russian “meddling” in American politics, was quick to denounce any questioning of the motives for the delay as a “conspiracy theory.”

The whole process is highly suspect and suspicious, ripe for political manipulation. The delay in the Iowa results, moreover, followed by only a couple of days the cancellation of a final poll by the Des Moines Register, after the Buttigieg campaign complained that at least one caller for the telephone survey had omitted their candidate’s name. The highly influential poll was expected to show a sizeable Sanders lead across the state.

It would be naive to separate the alleged “technical glitches” in the Iowa vote reporting from the broader political context. The weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses were dominated by a concerted campaign against Sanders, which included the intervention of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and other figures in the party establishment, as well as the corporate media, all claiming that the nomination of a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” would have disastrous consequences.

This anti-Sanders campaign demonstrates that the Democratic Party establishment is just as hostile as Donald Trump to the rising militancy in the working class and the growing support for socialism among both working people and youth. It is not Sanders himself, but this shift to the left among the broad masses that is a nightmare for all factions of the capitalist ruling elite.

The Democratic primary campaign has seen the formation of two groups of candidates—a left wing headed by Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, and a right wing comprised of Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Each has drawn the support of about half the party’s prospective voters.

The US ruling class makes use of the two groups of candidates for different purposes. The Sanders-Warren wing is to contain the leftward movement among workers and youth and divert it back within the confines of the two-party system. The Biden-Buttigieg-Klobuchar wing is to wield the real power within the party, take the nomination, and serve as the replacement for Trump if the ruling class determines that such a change is necessary.

The evident crisis of the Biden campaign has led to increasingly heavy-handed efforts to develop some other alternative for the right-wing faction: the huge fundraising for Buttigieg, the media boomlet for Klobuchar, and, most importantly, the entry into the race of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose entire campaign is aimed at supplanting Biden and blocking the nomination of Sanders or Warren.

Significantly, after the scale of the Biden debacle in Iowa became clear, Bloomberg, who has already spent more than $300 million on campaign ads, announced that he would double his ad buys and double his paid staff in the run-up to the “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses on March 3. Bloomberg could well spend $1 billion of his $58 billion fortune to secure for himself enough delegates to play a major role in the Democratic nominating convention.

The events surrounding the Iowa caucuses demonstrate the bankruptcy of Sanders’ claim that it is possible to reform the Democratic Party and even turn it into a vehicle for social reform and a weapon to combat the political influence of the billionaires. The truth is that, no less than the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is a political institution of the capitalist class. There is no more chance of “reforming” the Democratic Party than of “reforming” the CIA, the Pentagon or Wall Street itself.

The role of Sanders in 2020 is not fundamentally different from the part he played in 2016, when his “insurgent” campaign ended in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the chosen candidate of the bankers and the CIA.

His response to the attempt of the Iowa Democratic Party to rig the caucus result was notably low key. He told reporters that it was “not fair” to suggest that the procedure followed by the state party might be suspect.

His closest campaign aide, Jeff Weaver, denounced the Biden campaign for questioning the conduct of the state party. “I do want to urge people in the interest of not discrediting the party, that folks who are just trying to delay the return of this because of their relative positioning in the results, last night, I think that’s a bit disingenuous,” Weaver said. “Those results should be rolled out as we get them.”

The complacency being promoted by the Sanders campaign is staggering. The fact is that on February 4, no one knew the results of the first contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. One can easily envision a situation where on November 4, only nine months from now, the results of the US presidential election as a whole were unknown, or under challenge, or being openly defied by a president who has repeatedly declared his intention to stay in office well beyond the constitutional two-term limit.

What is most significant about the crisis over the Iowa caucuses is what it says about the level of crisis within the state apparatus. The United States seems incapable of running an election. As the Democratic Party primaries begin, the Trump impeachment is about to end, a process that has revealed extraordinary conflicts within the ruling class over foreign policy.

Underlying everything is a level of social antagonism that cannot be adjudicated electorally. Social tensions are so extreme that the traditional mechanisms of democracy are breaking down.

Whatever the outcome, whoever is selected as the Democratic Party nominee, it will resolve nothing. Every effort of the working class to advance its interests within this process is futile.

There is only one campaign in the 2020 elections that seeks to alert the American people to these dangers and mobilize the working class and youth in a political struggle against the capitalist class in defense of jobs, living standards and democratic rights, and in opposition to imperialist war. That is the campaign of the Socialist Equality Party and its candidates Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice president.

Patrick Martin

#iowa caucus #bernie sanders #berniecrats #sanders for president #bernie sander for president #democratic party

3 notes · View notes

thestagthatlovedthewolf · 4 years

Text

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Jen!!!! I hope your day is going great and you’re enjoying Hawaii and that the rest of your holidays are amazing!!! And I hope this year to come brings you all the dreams, and I can’t wait to see you in person in a few months and tell you that!!!

Love you, and here you have some Star Wars to celebrate!! Set post The Rise of Skywalker, and not very ship specific, more friendship that could lead to something, but hints of Rey/Ben, Rey/Poe, Poe/Finn, Rey/Poe/Finn, Rose/Connix and Poe’s obvious crush on Leia ;)

Happy Birthday!!! Enjoy!!!

***

Leia had made it seem so easy.

And Poe had spent his fair amount of time looking and observing her - she was careful and sure of her decisions always. Poe not so much.

He could be sure of his decisions, and Finn was more careful than him, so maybe together they were maybe half the general, General Leia had been.

So they made their decisions together, they had learned to listen to others as well, people who had been alive for much longer than they had. Chewbacca had been the first to remind them that peace was nothing like war, but much harder, everything needed to be done, so they did not end up that way again.

Rey helped with that. She had taken to traveling the galaxy, dealing with the remainder of the First Order forces that kept persisting. She had BB8 with her, but Poe had wanted to go as well - his charm would be good with people, he was sure. And while Rey was a great Jedi and a force to be reckoned with, her people skills weren’t nothing to write one about.

But Rey told him no with every offer he made, and he didn’t understand why, not until Finn spoke with him. She wasn’t alone in these trips, it was her chance to spend her time with Kylo Ren, or Ben, as Rey called him, and accept his help to stop the First Order’s eff to continue.

Poe worried about Rey and that she was living too much in the past, Finn didn’t think so, he said it as normal, that the Force allowed her to be connected to the past, present and future, and Finn was now an expert on it, supposedly. Poe still didn’t understand this Force thing.

To be honest, there wasn’t much Finn knew about the Force things, but at least he could feel Rey, and tell him when she landed home.

“Thank you, Finn,” he said, before yelling that he would send Rose to help him, as he took off to meet Rey where she lander.

Poe ran across base finding the old renovated x-wing, Chewbacca was already there checking on the ship and Rey, lifting her off the ground for a big hug, while BB8 noticed him first and rolled to him.

Poe knelt down to greet him as he beeped about their travels, he was never very open and he found all the Force ghosts strange, but he and Rey looked after one another always.

“I promise I didn’t let him get into any trouble,” he heard Rey’s voice as he finished checking over BB8.

“He seems to be in good shape,” Poe mentioned standing up, as BB8 rolled off, with a few sounds that they chose to ignore. “How was the trip?” he asked as they went back to base.

“There will be no more troubles coming that way.”

“And that means?”

“Tell me how things were here?” she said, ignoring his question.

“We’re preparing elections. We’ve sent people all across the galaxy to find representatives from the planets, and to convince them that the new senate won’t be blown up.”

“People are scared,” Rey said. “But the Resistance was built on hope, people will still hope for a fair ruling.”

“There’s another question,” he told her and Rey could read his look - he was going to say something she wouldn’t like. “Someone needs to go scouting for a place for the new Senate,” Poe said. “I was thinking we could take Finn, Chewie and the Falcon out.”

“The Falcon?”

“Chewie spends his days working on that thing, but he can’t go there alone, not after Solo, and General Leia... and now that Baron Calrissian has gone away too and left the ship behind...”

“You’re doing this for Chewie?”

“Someone needs to do it, why not us.”

“But someone needs to look after the Resistance,” Rey argued. She knew Poe was dying to pilot again, but this was not a good idea.

“I am!! By finding us new leaders.”

“You and Finn are Generals.”

“Good ones, who can delegate. You can’t argue that General Leia didn’t delegate.”

“Not the leading of the Resistance.”

“Rose and Connix are better at leading than I am, they keep this base in shape. And we all know Commander D’Acy is the one who does all the work.”

“It still doesn’t seem like a good idea, you and Finn--” But Poe interrupted her, before she could say anything else, throwing an arm around her shoulders and asking.

“Why not? How can you say no to a good old adventure? Come on?” he asked, throwing her a smile, which she already knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. But she wasn’t giving in yet, so she answered that she would think about it.

Poe smiled as she took off to hug Finn, knowing she wouldn’t say no to this trip.

#star wars #poe dameron #rey skywalker #the rise of skywalker #star wars the rise of skywalker #kylo ren #ben solo #bb8 #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #star wars fic

3 notes · View notes

my-insanity-is-an-artform · 6 years

Note

Rexani5 - enemies to lovers.

My friend, easy as pie and this got way longer than I thought it would.

To set the stage, let’s say Anakin wasn’t allowed to become a Jedi or left at age 12.

He is, of course, followed by Obi-Wan because I live for that banter and BrOtp

Anakin returns to Tatooine and at the age of let’s say 16, leads and wins a slave rebellion (and becomes the leader of Free Tatooine at 17 much to his dismay and Obi-Wan’s amusement)

Since Tatooine is out in the Outer Rim, the Core and Senate really do not care one smidgen. They have the beginnings of the Separatist Crisis making waves. What does one little planet matter?

It very much matters after over two years later when it comes to light that Free Tatooine has a very strong sense of community and will not stand for Slavery. Anywhere.

Slavers have gone missing. Planets that make profits from slavery have found themselves with their leader mysteriously murdered. Even the criminal network have rumours of bounty hunters winding up dead on the Hutts’ doorstep after being sent after Skywalker and those around him

(Anakin is a little insulted his bounty is only half a million credits.)

A great many planets have entered into an agreement with Free Tatooine to wipe out corruption and slavery.

Orn Free Taa, in a moment of consciousness, announces Ryloth’s alignment with Tatooine. (Greedy, corrupt bastard he may be, but he does love his people who have been the target for slavers for generations.)

This results in a very tense three-way stand-off between The Republic, The Separatist Alliance and The Freedom Coalition.

The Separatists did try to get The Coalition on side but swiftly told where to stick it.

The Clone Wars do not break out primarily because neither the Separatists nor the Republic can afford to fight a three-way war.

They are also very aware that the Freedom Coalition can, thanks to an alliance with various pirates, private security firms and support that would have been on one side or the other but have chosen the Coalition.

Even the neutrals are smaller.

Sidious is fuming.

It nearly breaks out when both the droid and clone armies are found but Speaker Shmi Skywalker sends a message to both sides that promises swift retribution if either side engages.

The Separatist have known connections to the Hutts and various slaving organisations.

The Republic has the Clones. Enough said there.

This doesn’t mean that either side won’t take pot-shots at each other for a year or so.

So we come to the part where our trio meet.

Captain Rex of the 501st is sent with a squad to scout on Tatooine and bring any information about the leader to the Republic. His team comprises of ARC Troopers Fives and Echo, Kix, Jesse, Hardcase and Dogma.

Everyone was a little surprised at Dogma’s inclusion but the guy proved to be very sneaky and Echo’s influence has loosened him up a bit.

Fives and Rex have been hovering on the edge of something for a while now but Rex doesn’t want to start anything while he’s still Fives’ superior officer.

Fives thinks that’s a load of Sith spit but is willing to wait.

Scouting team lands on Tatooine no problem.

Okay, slight problem. They disturb a Krayt dragon.

Fortunately, they are saved by the arrival of a blond male native who uses various calls to scare off the dragon and rescue the group.

The charming smirk and casual demeanour means Fives falls a little bit in love at first sight.

Echo is starting to believe his batchmate just has a thing for blondes who look good shooting things.

The stranger asks for their names and can clearly see they are all clones but he doesn’t comment on it. Just nudges them back to their ship and suggests they leave all while smiling charmingly and genuinely asking about themselves.

They’re just packing up and preparing to report a mission failure when Fives gets the guts to ask the stranger for his name.

“I’m Anakin Skywalker. Have a safe trip home, fellas.”

Anakin Skywalker, leader of Free Tatooine and of the Freedom Coalition, Chainbreaker, Slaver Killer, probably the most dangerous man in the Galaxy, and the man they were sent to spy on. And he’s just letting them go?

Rex is very confused.

Fives is too busy staring at Skywalker’s ass as he leaves and the cute bewildered look on his captain’s face.

Echo comes to the conclusion Fives definitely has a thing for authoritive blondes who look good shooting things.

The second time they meet is on a battlefield.

The Freedom Coalition refuses to fight the clone army so they usually just take out the Admirals or Generals.

The clones are a little infuriated about this.

Some, however, take advantage and surrender. Slick of the 212th was one such clone who turned himself over to gain his freedom.

Anakin winds up facing Captain Rex in an attempt to kidnap Admiral Yularen.

Anakin really doesn’t want to hurt a fellow ‘slave’.

Rex just wants to take this guy in.

It ends with Anakin getting grazed by blaster fire and Rex with a small concussion.

Anakin finds himself very intrigued by the clone captain and by the ARC Trooper who brazenly cussed him out when he arrived with back-up.

“You know most people just talk to the ones they are crushing on. Not stalk them.”“Shut it Obi-Wan. We can’t all just flirt our way in and out of fights with Commander Cody.”

So it goes like that for a while. Anakin shows up, Fives and Rex face off against him. There’s banter involved. Anakin makes the mistake of saying something vaguely flirtatious to them once and then disappears for a month. Fives proceeds to use that line every time they see Anakin thereafter. Rex pulls them both back on track. Sometimes the clones win the fight, others Anakin wins.

Remember, Anakin, Rex and Fives all believe they are fighting for the right cause. Rex does try to make the case for pro-Republic but can’t answer when Anakin asks him if the Republic is as good as he thinks it is.

There is one time that an explosion goes off and Anakin almost sacrifices himself to hold back the blast. Neither Fives or Rex take the chance to take Anakin into custody. Instead, Anakin finds himself in a coalition medbay with a note asking him not to do anything so stupid ever again.

Eventually, the Separatists make a bid and declare open war. Grievous and Dooku are sent after Anakin and Obi-Wan in an attempt to throw the Freedom Coalition into disarray.

What they didn’t expect was the Delegation of 2000 had managed to cut a deal with the Coalition, present it to the Senate, got it passed and was able to create a treaty between the two states.

Clone Rights are still hotly debated but under the treaty, no clone can be decommissioned for any reason and any clone has the right to a fair trial. Small victories but necessary ones.

Grievous and Dooku’s forces are met with not only The Freedom Coalition’s fleet but also the 501st and 212th.

Anakin is very relieved to see both Rex and Fives come charging to his rescue.

He is also swooning a bit because it’s almost like a scene straight out of Love Under Adleraanian Skies.

Fives watches as Anakin decapitate three droids and Rex shoot off the head of a forth and decides Yes, these are the men I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Rex comes to a similar conclusion as Anakin gently force-heals a blaster burn on his bicep after the fight while Fives hovers worriedly behind him.

Dooku and Grievous die in the Final battle.

During clean up, several transmissions are found to Dooku from a Sith Lord. The transmissions are tracked back to Coruscant. To the Chancellor’s Office to be precise.

The Freedom Coalition has been trying to track down exactly who has been leaking intel, arranging numerous kidnapping attempts and secretly attacking their forces for a good couple of years.

Dooku’s intel also shows that while he arranged most of that, it was under orders.

So basically

(I hope you like this. I spent 10 minutes making it and 15 giggling over it.)

Anakin, Obi-Wan, a few Jedi Masters, three Senators and a squad of clones confront Palpatine over the evidence.

The result is several explosions, a dead senator, two dead Jedi, a dead Sith Lord and a Republic Senate thrown into chaos.

Sidious tries to activate Order 66 but fails since the Freedom Coalition does a full check up on any defecting clones and found the chip ages ago. They developed a virus that made them null with plans to remove them asap.

The Freedom Coalition graciously takes over providing aid to the war-torn worlds with a warning to the Senate they will only return to the Republic if certain conditions are met. The Senate agrees.

One of which are complete rights for all clones.

In this world, Anakin loses his arm to Sidious after pushing Fives out of the way of a strike. That allows Rex to shoot him in the head and then for Anakin to shove a lightsaber through his heart. Fives shoots him as well “just in case sir.”

When Anakin wakes up with his new arm, it’s not Fives but Rex who presses a relieved kiss to his lips. Fives does follow up almost as soon as Rex pulls away.

Anakin is a bit too dazed to think properly and as such promises not to do that again.

At least not without them.

They spend the rest of Anakin’s stay in medical actually talking about where they want this to go and their feelings.

Since Anakin isn’t emotionally repressed and is allowed to make attachments, it goes a lot better than it would have otherwise.

Rex gave into Fives’ not-quite-pestering after the Final Battle and both started plotting how to bring Anakin into it.

Either way, Echo and Plo Koon’s padawan, Ahsoka Tano, make a lot of money when the relationship is revealed.

Rex, Fives and Anakin all get married in a lovely ceremony on Tatooine with Shmi, Obi-Wan and the 501st in attendance.

Hondo shows up with a bottle of vintage wine as a gift and to take photos to flog on the black market.

Obi-Wan gets busted in Commander Cody’s bed with said Commander the next morning.

Hardcase discovers the joys of fireworks and makes several friends Rex rather wishes he hadn’t.

Fives discovers Anakin’s butt really is as firm as it looks and that Rex will go red if both he and Ani whisper naughty things into the captain’s ears.

AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Bonus Round: Alternative Ideas Include -

Sith! Anakin, who prefers not to kill the clones out of some sense of kinship, is fighting against the Republic and comes across Captain Rex and ARC Trooper Fives. Instead of killing each other, each are intrigued by the other. It ends up with Sidious exposed and Darth Vader gaining two loyal bodyguards/lovers.

Fives is a superhero in a world that dislikes them, Anakin is a supervillain (though more Megamind, Less Joker) and Rex is a cop who wants arrest both.

Pride and Prejudice au with Anakin as Elizabeth, Rex as Darcy and Fives as a weird blend in the middle.

#Rexani5 #rexani #Rex5 #Ani5 #Star Wars #Clone Wars #I enjoyed this #I enjoyed it a little too much #kinda wanna write this now #but i got like 12345678 other fics to get done first #enemies to lovers #flaim-ita

206 notes · View notes

patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

How Many Republicans Voted For Affordable Care Act

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-voted-for-affordable-care-act/

How Many Republicans Voted For Affordable Care Act

Regulatory Action To Destabilize The Aca

House votes to repeal Affordable Care Act

When GOP lawmakers failed to repeal the ACA in 2017 , the Trump administration started looking for ways to chip away at the law via regulations instead. As mentioned above, the administration has opted to significantly reduce the federal funding that was being used to help people enroll in plans offered through the exchanges. But there have also been some regulations that have further undermined the ACA-compliant markets, mainly by making it easier for people to enroll in plans that dont meet the ACAs requirements for individual and small group coverage.

In June 2018, the Trump Administration finalized regulations that allowed self-employed people and small businesses to join association health plans without having a commonality of interest or a purpose for the association other than obtaining health insurance. This regulation has been struck down by a federal judge and although the case is being appealed, the Department of Labor has confirmed that association health plans based on the 2018 regulations cannot currently be marketed to sole proprietors and small businesses.

The Trump administration has issued regulations that allow employers to reimburse employees for the cost of individual market coverage. In addition, employers have the option of reimbursing employees for excepted benefits via an excepted benefits health reimbursement arrangement.

Eliminating Health Care Penalties

The Affordable care Act, required most Americans to be enrolled in Health Insurance since it was made affordable, otherwise a penalty would be induced. Effective 2017, congress attempted to eliminate financial penalties that were related to complying with the mandated law that every individual needs to be enrolled in Health insurance, this law however did not become effective until 2019. This policy is still valid, the penalty for having no health insurance was reduced to 0$. Individual mandates effects the decisions made by individuals regarding healthcare in that some people will not enroll since health insurance plans are no longer mandatory.

On March of 2020, the nation has undergone a global pandemic, however, several Republican-led states and the Justice Department are making the case for invalidating the ACA. This will cause at least 60 million people to not be able to afford being hospitalized, or treated which increased the number of COVID-19 cases nationwide.

A Final Vote Isn’t The Whole Story It’s Like Researching Your Ancestry And Going No Further Back Than Your Mother And Father

The day after she was one of three;Republican;senators to vote against;her party’s proposal to repeal chunks of the Affordable Care Act, Susan Collins of Maine posted a press release that said:;”Democrats made a big mistake when they passed the ACA without a single Republican vote. I don’t want to see Republicans make the same mistake.”

It was a nice nod in the direction of bipartisanship. But it also perpetuates a deceptive narrative, repeated often by Republicans,;that they were completely excluded from the process that resulted in Obamacare. While it is true that no Republican voted for the final bill, it is blatantly untrue that it contains no GOP;DNA. In fact, to make such an assertion is like researching your ancestry and going no further back than your mother and father.;

Not only were Republican senators deeply involved in the process up until its conclusion, but it’s a cinch that the ACA;might have become law months earlier if;the Democrats, hoping for a bipartisan bill, hadn’t spent enormous time and effort wooing GOP senators only to find themselves gulled by false promises of cooperation. And unlike Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s semi-secret proceedings that involved only a handful of trusted colleagues, Obamacare, until the very end of the process, was open to public scrutiny.

More:Spare America a do-over on health care. Seize the bipartisan moment.

POLICING THE USA: A look at;race, justice, media

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

Republicans Win Fewer Votes But More Seats Than Democrats

Republicans controlled the post2010 redistricting process in the four states, and drew new lines that helped the GOP win the bulk of the House delegation in each. Republicans captured 13 of 18 seats in Pennsylvania, 12 of 16 in Ohio, nine of 14 in Michigan, and five of eight in Wisconsin. Added together, that was 39 seats for the Republicans and 17 seats for the Democrats in the four proObama states.

The key to GOP congressional success was to cluster the Democratic vote into a handful of districts, while spreading out the Republican vote elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans won nine of their 13 House seats with less than 60% of the vote, while Democrats carried three of their five with more than 75%.

One of the latter was the Philadelphiabased 2nd District, where 356,386 votes for Congress were tallied. Not only was it the highest number of ballots cast in any district in the state, but Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah won 318,176 of the votes. It was the largest number received by any House candidate in the country in 2012, Democrat or Republican. If some of these Democratic votes had been unclustered and distributed to other districts nearby, the party might have won a couple more seats in the Philadelphia area alone.

The Closest House Races of 2012

NARROW DEMOCRATIC WINNERS

Vulnerable Gop Senators Vote To Protect Affordable Care Act From Trump Lawsuit

Six Republican senators, five of whom are up for re-election in 2020, sided with Democrats on Thursday in a procedural vote to block the Trump administration from supporting a lawsuit that would dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Why it matters: The final vote on the motion was 51-43, failing to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to pass. But the move by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer forced several vulnerable GOP senators to go on the record on whether they support the lawsuit, which could strip protections from pre-existing conditions for millions of Americans.

The state of play: Sens. Susan Collins , Joni Ernst , Cory Gardner , Martha McSally and Dan Sullivan all voted with Democrats and are facing close re-election fights. Sen. Lisa Murkowski also voted in favor.

Sens. Steve Daines , Thom Tillis and David Perdue are facing tough re-election races, but voted against the motion.

Flashback: All six GOP senators who supported Thursday’s bill voted for the 2017 tax bill that set the latest Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act in motion.

Of note: Four of the Republicans to break rank were women nearly half of the nine female GOP senators in Congress.

While Murkowski is not up for re-election until 2022, she opposed President Trump on quickly confirming a Supreme Court judge to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and has publicly opposed the Trump administration on several occasions.

You May Like: What Is The Lapel Pin Republicans Are Wearing

Join Govtracks Advisory Community

Were looking to learn more about who uses GovTrack and what features you find helpful or think could be improved. If you can, please take a few minutes to help us improve GovTrack for users like you.

Start by telling us more about yourself:

We hope to make GovTrack more useful to policy professionals like you. Please sign up for our advisory group to be a part of making GovTrack a better tool for what you do.

Young Americans have historically been the least involved in politics, despite the huge consequences policies can have on them. By joining our advisory group, you can help us make GovTrack more useful and engaging to young voters like you.

Our mission is to empower every American with the tools to understand and impact Congress. We hope that with your input we can make GovTrack more accessible to minority and disadvantaged communities who we may currently struggle to reach. Please join our advisory group to let us know what more we can do.

We love educating Americans about how their government works too! Please help us make GovTrack better address the needs of educators by joining our advisory group.

Would you like to join our advisory group to work with us on the future of GovTrack?

Email address where we can reach you:

Thank you for joining the GovTrack Advisory Community! Well be in touch.

Changes Required By The Affordable Care Act In 2011

A provision goes into effect to protect patients choice of doctors. Specifics include allowing plan members to pick any participating primary care provider, prohibiting insurers from requiring prior authorization before a woman sees an obstetrician/gynecologist , and ensuring access to emergency care.

Young adults can stay on their parents insurance until age 26, even if they are not full-time students. This extension applies to all new plans.

All new health insurance policies must cover preventive care and pay a portion of all preventive care visits.

A provision goes into effect that eliminates lifetime limits on coverage for members.

Annual limits or maximum payouts by a health insurance company are now restricted by the ACA.

The ACA prohibits rescission when a claim is filed, except in the case of fraud or misrepresentation by the consumer.

Insurance companies must now provide a process for customers to make an appeal if there is a problem with their coverage. ;

NOTE: In January,;2011:;eHealth publishes 11 guides on the top;child-only health insurance coverage;that examined differences in implementation in numerous states.

Don’t Miss: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Poll Finds Startling Difference In Vaccinations Among Us Republicans And Democrats

A Washington Post-ABC News poll has found a startling difference between Democrats and Republicans as it relates to COVID-19;vaccination.;The poll found that while 86% of Democrats have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, only 45% of Republicans;have.

In addition, the survey found;that while;only;6% of Democrats said they would;probably;decline;the vaccine, 47% of Republicans;said they;would;probably not;be inoculated.;

The poll also found that;60% of unvaccinated Americans believe the U.S. is;exaggerating;the dangers of;the;COVID-19;delta variant,;while;18% of the unvaccinated say the government is accurately describing the variants risks.

However, 64% of vaccinated Americans believe the government is accurately describing the dangers of the;delta variant.

Iran fighting COVID 5th wave The variant is having a;global impact.;Irans;President;Hassan Rouhani;has warned that the country is on the brink of a fifth wave of;a COVID-19 outbreak.;The;delta variant of the virus, first;identified;in India, is;largely;responsible;for the;rising number of hospitalizations and deaths in Iran, officials say.

All;non-essential businesses have been ordered;closed;in 275 cities, including Tehran, the capital.;Travel has also been restricted between cities that are;experiencing;high infection rates.

Reports say only about 5% of Iranians have been vaccinated.;

The Number Of Times Every Senate Republican Voted To Attack Preexisting Condition Protectionstheir Rushed Supreme Court Confirmation Will Be The Latest

How Senate Republicans’ ‘skinny repeal’ bill failed

The coronavirus has underscored how important it is that the American people have comprehensive, high-quality, and affordable health coverage.;More Americans than ever are;relying;on the Affordable Care Act for coverage; and yet, President Donald Trump and Republican attorneys general are suing to take away this critical lifeline in the middle of the pandemic. If the ACA is repealed, more than 20 million Americans could lose health coverage and 135 million could lose critical protections that prevent insurers from denying people coverage or charging them more for having preexisting conditions such as diabetes, cancer, and even COVID-19.

This case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court just one week after the election, which is why the president and Senate Republicans are rushing to install another rubber stamp for their political agenda following the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgdespite just four years ago having opposed filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election. This rushed confirmation push is;opposed;by the American people and comes while voting in the election is already underway.

This analysis provides a comprehensive look at how many times Senate Republican incumbents have voted to weaken the ACAs protections for preexisting conditions and makes clear why voters do not trust their efforts to push through a lifetime appointment that would put Americans health care at risk.

Table 1

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans In The Us Senate

Opposition To Obamacare Becomes Political Liability For Gop Incumbents

In the 2014 elections, Republicans rode a wave of anti-Affordable Care Act sentiment to pick up nine Senate seats, the largest gain for either party since 1980. Newly elected Republicans such as Cory Gardner in Colorado and Steve Daines in Montana had hammered their Democratic opponents over the health care law during the campaign and promised to repeal it.

Six years later, those senators are up for reelection. Not only is the law still around, but its gaining in popularity. What was once a winning strategy has become a political liability.

Public sentiment about the ACA, also known as Obamacare, has shifted considerably during the Trump administration after Republicans tried but failed to repeal it. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, which has led to the loss of jobs and health insurance for millions of people, health care again looks poised to be a key issue for voters this election.

Reminder: Obamacare Passed Without A Single Republican Vote

Back in 2009 and 2010, Democrats controlled the White House and the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare through without a single Republican vote.

The Washington Post said of the Obamacare fight at the time It has inflamed the partisanship that Obama pledged to tame when he campaigned for the White House and has limited Congresss ability to pass any other major legislation.

In December 2009, the U.S. Senate voted 60 to 39 for Obamacare. The Washington Post reported The Senate bill passed without a single GOP vote.

In March 2010, the U.S. House voted 219 to 212 for Obamacare. 34 House Democrats and all of the House Republicans voted against Obamacare. The NO votes were the only bipartisan votes.

President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010.

President Obama embraces HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after signing the health insurance reform bill, March 23, 2010.

Democrats ignored the plans offered by Republicans at the time including the House GOP plan drafted by Rep. Tom Price and The Patients Choice Act of 2009introduced by U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. and Richard Burr and U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes .

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Isans Are Split On The Supreme Court Overturning The Aca

In June 2020, the Trump administration issued a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ACA. The brief was filed in support of an ongoing challenge to the ACA by a group of Republican attorneys general in California v. Texas, a case that challenges the legality of the ACA in light of the zeroing out of the individual mandate penalty in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Acts. The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18 and the possibility of the Senate confirming a new Justice appointed by President Trump before the presidential election has brought heightened attention to the potential outcome of this case and the future of the ACA. In October 2020, a majority of the public said they do not want to see the Supreme Court overturn the 2010 health care law, and eight in ten said they do not want to see the ACAs protections for people with pre-existing conditions overturned. There are partisan differences on both questions, with the majority of Democrats and independents saying they dont want the Court to overturn the ACA or pre-existing condition protections. However, among Republicans, three-fourths say they want to see the ACA overturned, but two-thirds say they do not want to see pre-existing condition protections overturned.

Figure 2: Majorities Do Not Want Court To Overturn ACAs Pre-Existing Condition Protections, Republicans Want Entire Law Overturned

Russia Sanctions Headed To Trumps Desk Will He Sign

Some GOP senators worried the measure would go back to the House, where leaders would put it on the floor, pass it and send it to Trump who has said he would sign whatever lands on his desk when it comes to Republican-passed health care legislation.

Before the vote, at 10:43 p.m. ET, Trump was rooting them on in a tweet: Go Republican Senators. Go!

Afterward, it was a different story, with the president tweeting at 2:25 a.m. ET that those who voted no had let the American people down.

Its somewhat ironic that McCain was the one to derail what seemed like a sure Trump victory . After all, Trumps comments about the former prisoner of war were among the earliest to land the then-candidate in controversy.

Hes not a war hero, Trump said in 2015 of McCain. He was a war hero, because he was captured. I like people who werent captured. Hes been losing so long he doesnt know how to win anymore.

That was likely never lost on McCain.

Read Also: When Did The Parties Switch Platforms

Recommended Reading: Donald Trump Republican Or Democrat

Actions To Hinder Implementation

Under both ACA and the AHCA, CBO reported that the health exchange marketplaces would remain stable. However, Republican politicians took a variety of steps to undermine it, creating uncertainty that adversely impacted enrollment and insurer participation while increasing premiums. Concern of the exchanges became another argument for reforms. Past and ongoing Republican attempts to weaken the law have included:

Dont Miss: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Requirements For Health Plans And Insurers

See also: Health insurance policy cancellations since Obamacare

Coverage

The Affordable Care Act prohibited individual market insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. This policy is known as guaranteed issue. Guaranteed issue regulations had already existed for insurers selling employer-sponsored health plans, and the ACA extended this rule to the individual market as well.

The law also required insurers to allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until age 26. Insurers were also required to allow people in the individual market to renew their health plans each year unless they did not pay their premiums.

Benefits

The ACA required individual and small group health plans that were offered both on and off the exchanges to cover services that fall into 10 broad benefits categories, called essential health benefits:

Ambulatory patient services

Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices

Prescription drugs

Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment

Laboratory services

Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management

Pediatric services, including oral and vision care

Premiums

The ACA placed restrictions on the way individual and small group insurers set a plan’s premiumThe amount a consumer is required to pay for a health insurance plan. Premiums are usually paid monthly, quarterly or annually.:

Medical loss ratio

Stabilization programs

Don’t Miss: Which Republicans Stormed The Scif

0 notes

statetalks · 3 years

Text

How Do Republicans Feel About The Wall

Half Of Republicans Believe False Accounts Of Deadly Us Capitol Riot

How do Hispanic Americans truly feel about the border wall?

7 Min Read

WASHINGTON -Since the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have pushed false and misleading accounts to downplay the event that left five dead and scores of others wounded. His supporters appear to have listened.

Three months after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to overturn his November election loss, about half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists trying to make Trump look bad, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.

Six in 10 Republicans also believe the false claim put out by Trump that Novembers presidential election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud, and the same proportion of Republicans think he should run again in 2024, the March 30-31 poll showed.

Since the Capitol attack, Trump, many of his allies within the Republican Party and right-wing media personalities have publicly painted a picture of the days events jarringly at odds with reality.

Hundreds of Trumps supporters, mobilized by the former presidents false claims of a stolen election, climbed walls of the Capitol building and smashed windows to gain entry while lawmakers were inside voting to certify President Joe Bidens election victory. The rioters – many of them sporting Trump campaign gear and waving flags – also included known white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys.

DANGEROUS SPIN ON REALITY

They Just Come For Show

The four House Republicans were unfamiliar with the history of the fight over Santa Ana.

It was not addressed by the Border Patrol agents who led the morning excursion. And by the time E&E News connected with Chapman, the delegation had departed the refuge for a briefing on Border Patrol activities at the local headquarters of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Later, when asked whether Westerman thought the environmental impact of installing a wall at Santa Ana and in other refuge areas was a necessary sacrifice to stop the flow of illegal immigration, the lawmaker said it didnt sound unreasonable.

One hundred and fifty feet kind of sounds like what the right of way would be on a levee, but I dont know, he said. Obviously, if youre going to build a wall, theres going to be clearing. And from what Ive seen, stories Ive heard about human trafficking, the rapes, the deaths yeah, I think its worth building the deterrents.

At the National Butterfly Center a 100-acre nature preserve that was also exempted from having a border wall built on its land in the same 2019 spending package Executive Director Marianna Trevino Wright said she thought the GOP lawmakers were ignorant by choice.

I think they have no idea, Trevino Wright asserted. They come just for show. Theyre not interested.

The real litterbugs, she contended, were the officers with Border Patrol.

There’s Something Happening Here

But he uses a different touchstone: Occupy Wall Street, the left-leaning anti-establishment movement that blossomed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

“This is Occupy Wall Street Part 2, but this time it is on their turf, and there are real financial consequences,” he said. LeGate, who received a $100,000 Thiel fellowship to drop out of college and start a company when he was 18 years old in 2013, has been watching the WallStreetBets Reddit discussion for several years.

He said he is seeing increasing frustration and anger, which is exploding in the Covid pandemic era and it is bringing together the traditional political left and right.

“People were willing to take a risk on Trump and now they’re willing to take a risk in the markets,” he said. “A lot of people just want to see the world burn right now, and they’re enjoying watching it happen.”

He said he’s already seeing people on the WallStreetBets Reddit page looking for new targets and there are two themes. First, they’re looking for highly shorted stocks where big hedge funds might have a lot of leverage. And second, they’re looking for nostalgia plays to bring back the companies from their youth. That’s why Nokia, Blackberry and Blockbuster are all getting attention.

Border Walls In The Middle East

One major proof of concept that Republicans supporting a Mexican border wall cite is the success of similar walls in the Middle East. For example, walls along the Israeli-Palestinian border reportedly cut down illegal immigration between the countries. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who is also the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, stated that he was impressed with a system of fences he had inspected along the Israeli border with Palestinian territories. Johnson stated Im always looking for best practices. Its been incredibly effective. They had thousands of illegal immigrants; its down to the teens.

House Republicans Propose $10 Billion For Trumps Border Wall

House Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a plan to provide $10 billion for President Donald Trumps border wall with Mexico, a bill unlikely to clear the Senate but which could fuel a shutdown fight in December.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul said his panel will vote on the legislation next week. The bill also would add 10,000 more border patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers, tap the National Guard to patrol the southern border and target people who have overstayed visas.

Now that we have a partner in the White House who has made this a top priority, its time to send a bill to President Trumps desk so we can deliver the American people the security they have long demanded and deserve, McCaul said in a statement.

The bill represents Republicans opening salvo in both the looming year-end government funding fight and high-stakes negotiations over undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

It almost certainly wont pass the Senate, where at least eight Democrats would be needed to clear a 60-vote threshold.

Partisans Approve Their Partys Approach To Shutdown Negotiations Disapprove Of Other Partys

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 76% approve of how Trump is handling shutdown talks, including 50% who say they strongly approve of Trumps approach. In contrast, just 4% of Democrats approve of Trumps handling of the negotiations, while 93% disapprove .

The overall pattern is similar in views of Republican leaders in Congress: 69% of Republicans approve of their partys leaders handling of negotiations, while just 10% of Democrats approve.

And while about seven-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners approve of the way Democratic leaders in Congress are handling the shutdown negotiations, just 11% of Republicans say the same.

Republicans Pray For A Border Crisis To Bring Biden Down

Joe Biden and his programs are popular. Republicans cant lay a glove on him. So theyve settled on immigration as the way to drag him into the mud.

Guillermo Arias/Getty

Republicans are crazy about immigration. No, really. The issue makes them loco. Just listen to the things theyre saying. Many of them have lost touch with reality.

Or maybe Republicans are crazy like a fox. The GOP seems to have once again pinned all of its hopes for retaking powerin this case, by winning back control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections and possibly regaining seats in the House of Representativeson the immigration issue. If either of those things happen, Republicans will be in decent shape to try to retake the White House in 2024.

President Joe Biden has only been in office for about 60 days, and Republicans who want to attack him and his administration dont have a lot of material with which to work.

Thats what some of the current fearmongering over the situation at the U.S.-Mexico borderabout half of itis all about. The other half is made up of good ol fashioned nativism and racism. Thats one reason why Republicans act like the prospect of what could turn out to be 100,000 would-be refugees from Central America mostly women and children is the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Here we are again. And the same Republicans who were quiet and subdued when former President Donald Trump confronted this same problem now cant stop talking about this being a crisis.

Republicans Spent Two Years Resisting Trumps Border Wall What Changed

Since the government shutdown 25 days ago, Republicans have largely defended the need for a border wall. While there appear to be some cracks in support, most are standing by the presidents insistence on funding.

As recently as September, The Washington Post described it this way:

The same Republican lawmakers who rushed through the tax bill Trump wanted, confirmed his first Supreme Court pick and are fighting to defend his second, and have remained largely deferential amid multiple scandals, have taken a far different approach when it comes to one of Trumps most memorable campaign promises deeming the wall to be impractical, unrealistic and too costly.

Most GOP lawmakers didnt come right out and say that, of course.

Instead, for the first two years of Trumps presidency, GOP lawmakers avoided the wall debate completely. In September 2017, USA Today took on the laborious task of surveying every member of Congress to determine their position on Trumps wall. At the time, the White House was requesting $1.6 billion to begin wall construction. The survey found that just 69 of the 292 Republicans in Congress said they supported Trumps funding request. Three outright opposed it, but the majority avoided answering the question directly.

Shortly after Trumps inauguration, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham , Trumps onetime nemesis turned close ally, told Politico that the border wall is probably not a smart investment.

Every Congressperson Along Southern Border Opposes Border Wall Funding

How would Republicans build Donald Trump’s wall? BBC News

Nine congressional representatives serve the districts that line the 2,000-mile southern border. They are men, women, freshman politicians and Washington veterans. The Democrats among them span liberal ideologies, while one of them is a Republican.

But they all have one thing in common: each is against President Donald Trump‘s border wall.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a multi-bill package that provided funding for federal agencies and reinstated Department of Homeland Security appropriations without offering any new border wall funding. All nine of the politicians serving in districts along the border voted in favor of the bills, which were an effective rebuke of the Trump administration’s request for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.

“It’s a 4th-century solution to a 21st century problem,” said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat and one of the lawmakers along the southern border who voted against funding the wall.

Gonzalez doesn’t oppose border security. He said, “Nobody wants stronger border control than me.” But he’s against adding to the existing border wall because he doesn’t “think it brings real border security and it comes at a major cost to taxpayers,” the lawmaker said Tuesday in a telephone interview with CBS News.

“At the time I thought we were going to be able to have a reasonable conversation,” Gonzalez said. “I had no idea it was going to get this crazy.”

Everybody Look What’s Going Down

Holmes believes the key to understanding the power of this new movement is the gamification of investing melded with an anti-elite fervor. Sticking it to hedge funds and potentially making a lot of money is, simply, fun. And if you believe its also the right thing to do, and thrive on the engagement of a community of like-minded traders, so much the better.

“When things really get going is when the fun meets the purpose,” Holmes said. “This is the perfect storm of those two.”

His warning to Wall Street is: understand this. Be willing to scrutinize yourself. This not going away, and it is probably bigger than you think.

“People need to take the time to understand the social dynamics of this. What are the problems that have created this class of retail investor who seek to completely destroy your industry, and how do you remedy that?” Holmes said.

Holmes said he has spent the past decade watching American politics turned inside out. An earlier generation of politicians spent their time raising money at country club ballrooms from hundreds of donors writing $500 or $1,000 checks.

But now they spend their time on the internet raising money from millions of donors making $5 and $20 contributions. In politics, the retail money turned out to be bigger much bigger — than the institutional money. And that’s driven massive political spending inflation: the big Senate campaigns that once cost $15 million now cost $100 million.

There’s Battle Lines Being Drawn

But what explains that nostalgic impulse in the midst of a revolution? It is the same emotion that animated the MAGA movement which, after all, stood for make America great, again. It is a desire to return to an earlier time that the members of the movement remember as better than today.

“There’s a feeling I sense across society that people want to go back to a simpler time,” LeGate said. “No one likes Covid. People don’t feel the economy is fair. Everything looks better in hindsight.”

And he argues that efforts to regulate trading will feel to Reddit traders more like suppression, and could fuel more anger.

“If someone on Main Street loses half their portfolio in a day, nothing’s going to happen. But if a hedge fund does, they literally stop the trading,” he said. “I myself question whether this is really about protecting the individual investor or protecting the hedge fund.”

Public Disapproves Of How Shutdown Negotiations Are Being Handled

Most Americans offer negative evaluations of the way that the nations political leaders in both parties Donald Trump, Democratic congressional leaders and Republican congressional leaders are handling negotiations over the shutdown.

Overall, just 36% of the public approves of how Trump is handling negotiations over the government shutdown, including 23% who say they strongly approve. About six-in-ten disapprove of Trumps approach to the negotiations, including 53% who say they strongly disapprove.

Views of how Republican leaders in Congress are handling shutdown negotiations generally parallel evaluations of Trump. Six-in-ten Americans say they disapprove of the way Republican congressional leaders are handling negotiations, while just 36% say they approve. However, fewer Americans characterize their views of GOP leaders handling of negotiations as strong approval or disapproval than say this about the president.

Public views of Democratic leaders handling of the shutdown talks are somewhat more positive than views of Trump or GOP leaders. Still, more disapprove than approve .

Intensity Of Trumps Support Increases

Also in the poll, 46 percent of voters approve of President Trumps job performance, which is consistent with the other NBC/WSJ polls over the past year and a half.

But other numbers in the survey his strong job approval ticking up to its all-time high, his positive rating jumping to its highest level since after his inauguration prompts GOP pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies to call this Trumps best NBC/WSJ poll in three years.

Still, 49 percent of all voters say they are very uncomfortable about Trump when it comes to his re-election bid in 2020.

Thats compared with 43 percent who are very uncomfortable with Sanders, 36 percent with Warren and 35 percent with Biden.

Klobuchar: Trump’s Actions Are Like A ‘global Watergate’ Scandal

Today, as Democrats in the House of Representatives move toward bringing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, with the next Judiciary Committee hearing of evidence set for Monday, few Democrats are still clinging to the hope that Republicans will reach a breaking point with Trump like they did with Nixon.

“I really don’t think there is any fact that would change their minds,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News.

Why? Two key changes since Nixon: a massive divide in American political life we hate the other team more than ever before and a media climate that fuels and reinforces that chasm, powered by Fox News on the Republican side.

Himes said he was “a little stunned by the unanimity on the Republican side,” especially among retiring lawmakers who don’t have to worry about surviving a GOP primary had they gone against Trump. “We’re in a place right now where all that matters to my Republican colleagues is the defense of the president,” he added.

No Republican congressmen have said they support impeachment. In the Senate, the entire GOP voted to condemn the impeachment inquiry, except for three moderates: Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The three have stopped short of saying they support Trump’s impeachment, however, and it would take at least 20 Republican senators to vote to convict him in a Senate trial for removal to succeed.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Questions Ahead Of The Democratic National Convention

Andrew Redleaf, founder of the hedge fund company Whitebox Advisors, has been a Republican donor in the past. He gave to the campaign of 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He calls himself a libertarian conservative who favors free trade and immigration.

This year, he’s given money to the Lincoln Project, a group of conservative never-Trumpers who are running scathing ads against the president in swing states.

“I’d like there to be a right-of-center, limited-government party … which is not the Trumpist Republican Party,” Redleaf says.

Redleaf is wary of Democrats and has no particular affection for Biden.

But the former vice president is a known commodity on Wall Street and is widely seen as a more centrist, acceptable alternative to more liberal Democrats who ran for president, such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Biden has also been a top recipient of financial industry money for decades as a senator from Delaware, home to financial and credit card companies.

“He’s not somebody that the industry is particularly afraid of,” Bryner says. “So I think that we would see them kind of hopeful that he would be a more moderating influence, whereas Trump can be quite unpredictable.”

Widening Party Divide Over Expanding The Border Wall

El Chapo financing Trump border wall is a yes vote: GOP lawmaker

Public views of a U.S.-Mexico border wall have changed little over the past three years. But the partisan gap has widened, as Republicans have become more supportive of a border wall, while Democratic support has declined.

Currently, 58% of Americans oppose substantially expanding the wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, while 40% favor the proposal.

Since early 2016, roughly six-in-ten Americans have opposed building or expanding the border wall .

Yet partisan differences are now wider than they have ever been. Today, 82% of Republicans and Republican leaners favor substantially expanding the wall along the U.S-Mexico border. Over the past year alone, Republican support for expanding the border wall has increased 10 percentage points . Over the same period, the share of Democrats who favor expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall has declined from 13% to 6%.

Conservative Republicans and Republican leaners overwhelmingly favor expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall . Moderate and liberal Republicans are somewhat less supportive .

Overwhelming shares of both liberal Democrats and conservative and moderate Democrats oppose expanding the border wall.

As in the past, opinions about expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall are divided by race, education and age. Whites are more than twice as likely as blacks or Hispanics to favor expanding the border wall.

Why Do Republicans Behave The Way They Do

Why are the Republicans so mean-spirited when it comes to the poor and so indulgent when it comes to the rich?

Why are the Republicans so mean-spirited when it comes to the poor and so indulgent when it comes to the rich? Thats the incessant question as posed by liberals today about the partys now enacted tax reform. Not only does the bill include another attack on Obamacare, but it provides the pretext the need to reduce deficits to go after other long-held goals, the end of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

The answer should be obvious by now. Republicans behave as they do because they can get away with it! Its no more complicated than that.

Contrary to liberal opinion, Republican politics isnt out of the mainstream provided we push the clock back sufficiently. A political economy without social services and entitlements is in fact the default position of the capitalist mode of production from its inception. If recent comments from Republican Sens. Orin Hatch and Charles Grassley sound like characters from a Charles Dickens novel their barely disguised contempt for the working poor that should come as no surprise. Such attitudes were almost de rigueur for ruling elites in capitals long ascent. The constant refrain of the rich Why should we be taxed to pay for the education of the children of the irresponsible poor? explains why public school education became a widely accepted norm only in the 20th century.

How Dems aided and abetted

What Republicans And Democrats Have In Common On Wall Street Regulation

The Democratic and Republican parties disagree on most major issues. When it comes to Wall Street, however, it’s a mixed bag. Take the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

Democrats believe the bill has reined in the type of out-of-control behavior that led to the near collapse of the banking industry in 2008 and prevented a similar crisis. Republicans have criticized the legislation calling it “the Democrats legislative Godzilla.” They feel the financial regulations have made it too difficult for small lenders and community banks and has indirectly slowed the growth of small businesses.

Regulation of the financial services industry has been a major issue not only in the current presidential election but in house and senate races. Democrats believe that the electorate largely sides with them that banks have overstepped and that they can use their position to win votes and take back the Senate. Republicans currently hold a majority 54 votes. Because of gerrymandering rules, Democrats will have a tougher time retaking the House.

Dodd-Frank was intended to increase transparency and accountability in the financial services industry and to protect consumers. Among other things, the bill created a new consumer protection agency and standards for a number of common financial services products.

A Shift In Immigration Thinking

Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois is one of the Houses most outspoken Democrats on immigration reform, and she understands this shift, and believes it is essential. Lives are at stake and the lives of Dreamers are more important to me than bricks, Gutierrez said. If advocates would reject any money for Trumps wall in exchange for freedom and legalization and eventual citizenship for the Dreamers, I understand their choice, but for my part, I would lay bricks myself if I thought it would save the Dreamers. For me, the very real attacks on legal immigration are far greater threats than bricks and drones and technology on the border.

This shift has also led Democratic views on a border wall to soften in general. As Trump has become less demanding, Democrats have begun to consider what type of barrier, and what size, they would be willing to agree to if push came to shove. The 2,000 mile wall that Democrats had feared would be a looming symbol of America turning inward on itself is becoming something closer to the 2006 plan; some new barriers, some new monitoring technology, and that is somewhat agreeable to Democrats, especially if they can garner support in other arenas in exchange for it.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-do-republicans-feel-about-the-wall/

0 notes

yourgeminiprince · 6 years

Text

Graduation... Now What?

Before we begin, quick background:

I've been in post-secondary education for almost 8 years now. In the time I've completed 3 programs and about to complete my degree as my fourth. Now what?

Let the thoughts begin:

In a short couple months, I will be graduating and not be going back to school, anymore. While formal education has been fun I want to begin the new chapter of my life. So I decided I've learned enough about the world through college and university.

To be honest with you all I was super excited, over the top to be finally done with school! But now... It's almost here and I'm kind of freaking out! Okay line up a job, get the job, work, go on vacations with your vacay days, find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, get married, have a couple kids, make sure you take care of them, get promotions, reach the top of the ladder and then... you know, do the life thing? I guess...

See it seems so simple but my brain never likes to just shut up so instead of making it simple... Let's make it more complicated Dhan!

Questions my brain started making me ponder...

Won't you want to make a decent income after going to school for so long? You have to maximize income.

What if no one hires you?

What if you take a job and you hate it every single second of your being?

Don't you have to make a new resume for every job you apply?

Cover letters?

How many people are you competing with for that job?

Couldn't you have just been a doctor if you were going to be in school this long anyway?

Aren't you going to pick a job that you're passionate about?

I think you guys get the jiff of it...

I love my brain, really do! Got me through a lot of educational programs but holy does it ever make me overthink every single aspect of my life. I'll be honest with you, I am a little scared of the future. I don't know what it holds, or where it leads.

But...

Yes, I'm freaking the f*** out... but as much as my brain puts me into these situations of overanalyzing and thinking it also keeps making me think until I figure some of it out. At least I have to or I'm never going to sleep on time/properly.

So since I've been freaking over this stuff for months, it's also been on my mind for months. Every day I come closer to a conclusion that'll solve my self-induced anxiety. So here are some of my solutions:

Solutions:

I have been in school for a long time, yes, but I have learned not just what my programs taught me... But I have also learned a lot about myself. Let's make it simple:

I have been part of teams and always try to lead. I got leadership skills! Hahaha! But no for real, I'm the type of person that'll take on a whole project myself if no one else wants to but I'll also delegate responsibility (Even knowing I'll probably be doing most of it myself... I remember my 40-page marketing research paper that only 1 person in our 5 man group submitted anything more than a copy paste from Wikipedia the night before it was due.) I wrote 39 pages of that 40-page report in a night... We got 70% which was like 40% of our grade... I'll never forget that night since then I've just always assumed I'm doing everything. As great of a leader as I am, I've also learned there are others that can lead to, and as much as you may want to be the one running things, sometimes it's okay to let them lead as well. There are responsible people out there and I have had a great group I could rely on. Everyone in this union study group was on top of their s*** to put it frankly. I wasn't leading it but did it feel good to be putting our entire project together with a group that wanted that end goal as bad as I did.

How is that a solution Dhan? wtf are you talking about? Let me explain...

Whatever a job may want they also what certain skills that would fit their company. I'm great with working with a team, I'm not saying that to toot my own horn... much... but when you're looking through jobs and they say 'needs to have leadership skills as you will be managing your own team and projects'. I got that. I would be a great addition to that company.

Now yes, there's always more but this is how I calmed my brain down. I focused on what I've done and how I can apply that to the real world in these jobs.

Another quick example:

The first day of school, I'm talking to everyone. I have no issues with approaching random strangers and becoming friends by the end of our conversation. There are people that can never do that... I have undying confidence. I have social skills of a public speaker and the friendliness of a puppy.

Now let me link these 2 examples together: Teamwork.

Huh? Dhan... what the frack are you talking about?

You know how people say you should find a job you're passionate about? (The first question my brain brought up) I always had a hard time figuring what I was passionate about... I like a lot of stuff but not always one more than the other. I've worked real estate on the side and I love it because I get to meet new people every day and interact and learn about them. There was always a hint of something I felt like that was missing from it.

When I went to university I ended up being elected to a cabinet. I didn't know anyone and I was a little older than everyone around me so "OMG Brittney we're going to get so smashed tonight" wasn't really what kind of vibe I wanted to be around...

Side note: When I say vibe I mean the kind of people I wanted to be surrounded with. I didn't feel like carrying Brittney and her friend home as they throw up everywhere. I was way over that phase. Back to the post:

When I joined this team of passionate individuals that were running around getting events done, filling in shifts for one another, solving issues. I got to be part of all of that and I loved it. I got to also be part of Senate and discuss and learn such important things. At the end of it all, we all came together to discuss what was happening and what everyone needed to know. We'd discuss important topics about what was happening in the school and voted on what to do next. Also made a lot of good friends in that way too, which I wouldn't have met if I never was on the committee with them.

What I realized is, I want to be part of a team more than anything. My passion is tackling a project, or a committee and come out on top (I'm competitive as f*** xD). That rush of getting everything done before the deadline, coordinating parties to have everything supplied, reading 80 pages before heading into a committee in a few days and discussing/debating on one side. That was something I enjoyed and loved and didn't mind spending all day trying to figure things out.

Now passion about a certain subject may not be foretold to my brain yet, but I know which direction to head. For me, that was enough to let me get sleep. I'm great at figuring s*** out after stressing about it for a bit. Problem-solving skills ;) haha!

For you:

You all have a lot of skills that you don't even realize or take for granted. When you're going to work for someone those are going to come more in handy than that essay you wrote for that history elective you took. If you know how to figure shit out on your own and not be a s***ty person you'll be miles ahead of a lot of people. You have to know you have walked into classes not knowing a single thing about it and passing well at the end of it. You can tackle anything loves! :)

Now What?

Now, I'm applying for jobs, looking up resumé references for that certain field and adapting them to my own taste. I'm calling up places trying to figure out who to make the cover letter to instead of 'To whom it may concern'. But sometimes... no luck and end up using it cause I gotta move onto the next application.

Starting to go to interviews and making it more of an 80/20 interview. I let them ask whatever questions they like and ask my own if it relates to their previous question or bombarding them with all of mine at the end.

Now, I'm searching for a job that'll let me get that team aspect even if it's once in a while. That's what I want and just like through school, I hope I find that certain subject I'm passionate about. Until then, I'll be happy to go find a company and give 120% of Dhan-ness! I want to go in and work hard to open more doors for myself and also... start paying off those pesky student loans hahaha. But like I always say, to figure out who you are you have to experience as much as you can that peaks your interest. Even if it's volunteering or having to work for free from 6-10pm.

Also instead of focusing on a million things that your mind keeps pondering, just make goals that you want to reach. It's hard for it to ponder when you're feeling good about reaching a goal :D!

Such as:

Pay off student loans

Get your bench press over 135 already (My chest has always been my weakest :$)

Try to move up a position in the company you work for every year or 2.

Find love (She's out there right? :p)

Spend more time with the family

Learn more tutting and more cheoro, in general, to add to your dance arsenal

Train to run a half marathon

Write more (Hence this blog)

Finish up school (duh, but I just wanted to reach 10 already)

So when I finish school, that's one goal reached. Makes me feel good! Next would be finding that job with the aspect of teamwork then having that to pay off the student loans. Getting the bench up is my personal goal and running cause I'm reading Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the greatest race the world has never seen By Christopher Mcdougall (NOT A SPONSOR OR AD! Just reading it!) and it's got me wanting to run and helping me reach that goal of training to run half a marathon.

IN CONCLUSION:

My mind wonders... and ponders... More than I'd like but instead of letting it make me feel overwhelmed I'm just taking it one step at a time, reminding myself I know what I want and I have the skills all ready to take on any task that may come at me. The goals help tremendously with keeping my brain from pondering dooming questions cause it's like B**** WE WORKING TOWARD IT SO SHUT UP :)! And I'm starting to get my sleep again on time... kinda... if I'm not binging Netflix at night... (Don't start a new show before bedtime... remember this advice!)

BYE :)

2 notes · View notes

theliberaltony · 6 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

During her decade in national politics, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been profiled, ad nauseam, by any number of very important publications: The New Yorker, New York Magazine (a couple times), Vogue, The New York Times.

But her 2012 interview with Self magazine, three years into her Senate tenure, is among the most compelling and useful texts for the Gillibrand close-reader. In a span of 599 words, the senator manages to ruminate on fitness tips (her 40-pound postpartum weight loss being the ostensible reason for the story), touch on the difficulties of being a working mother, name-drop several across-the-aisle friendships, and plug, in the most deft of humblebrags, her tireless spirit: “I approached losing weight the same way I’ve approached any other challenge throughout my life: I figured out exactly what I needed to do to succeed and dove in. I was determined.” Through Self, Gillibrand was cleverly reaching beyond snoozy news stories to a voting public that would perhaps remember a young senator who talked food-journaling and breastfeeding.

But the interview also offers an oblique insight into Gillibrand’s ever so determined and calculating rise in Democratic politics: At the time, Gillibrand had a standing weekly squash date with Sen. Al Franken. Yet five years later, she was the first Democratic senator to call for Franken to resign, and became, by no accident, the face of a movement to clean House (as it were) of harassers in public office.

No one was off the table, including — or perhaps especially — political patrons. Gillibrand said Bill Clinton, husband of the woman whose Senate seat she inherited, should have resigned from office. That led Clintonworld capo Philippe Reines to tweet, among other things, “Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.”

But Gillibrand’s appetite for biting the hands that feed her might actually be just what brings her success in the Democrats’ all-but-free-for-all scramble for leadership. She sniffed out the direction of the party months, even years ago, and has been tacking hard to the left ever since. She is attuned to the base, fluent in the new mediums of activism and, perhaps most importantly, knows how to spin. Who is Kirsten Gillibrand and what does she want? The latter is easy to answer: She likely wants to be president.1 But the former — who exactly is this woman whose moment it is we’re all living through — takes a bit more to parse.

The Gillibrand biography has, at this point in her career, reached a calcified, rote state that is particularly advantageous to politicians: maximum schmaltz, minimum actual insight. Generally, what you’re meant to take away from a Gillibrand bio paragraph in a profile is this: raised in regular old America; strong female role models growing up (including a grandmother who seemed to be Albany’s own LBJ); driven; Dartmouth; fancy lawyer (but let’s not linger on that too long); loves her kids; loves God; loves working across the aisle.

She has been charged in print on not one, but two occasions with being less-than-reflective.

The New Yorker called her “not given to soul-searching,” while New York called her “not inclined toward introspection.” FiveThirtyEight is neither given nor inclined to say much more than that Gillibrand might just be well media-trained, or perhaps she’s the kind of person who really does just plunge ahead. Just a political animal with a goal in mind, as she told the good people of Self.

She’s sensed the identity politics vehicle of the era, and has settled into the driver’s seat for a long haul.

At her essence, Gillibrand would seem to be not an ideologue, but an operator. In order to win she has evolved her positions, changed her mind … flip-flopped, in less polite terms. She used to have an “A” grade from the NRA, when she represented a conservative upstate district in the House, and she was against protections for sanctuary cities. One New York immigration group, incensed by her 2009 appointment to the Senate, issued a press release noting “she strongly supported throwing more resources toward ineffective border enforcement but appeared to oppose any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.” Progressive members of New York’s congressional delegation were so incensed by her appointment, they threatened to run against her.

In 2017, things are different. Gillibrand supports a path to citizenship, and has called Trump’s border wall a “hurtful, terrible policy that will never work.” In 2016, she wept in an interview while discussing her former stance on guns. She has voted against Trump’s positions more often than any other senator and is the sole member to vote against every one of the president’s Cabinet nominees. Gillibrand is a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders’s single-payer health care bill, widely seen as a new Democratic presidential litmus test. In the House, where she served from 2007 to 2009, she was among the least liberal members of the Democratic caucus, ranking 209th out of 241. But in the Senate, she has skewed left. In the last Congress, she was the seventh most liberal member of the 46-person Democratic caucus.

So what to make of this impressive litany of flip-flops, her ease in changing her mind? It would appear that Gillibrand is a Democrat above all else. As the party has shifted left, so has she.

In other words, she is good at politics, if by politics we mean sensing the direction of the populace, capturing their sentiments in rhetoric, turning that rhetoric into votes, fundraising off those votes, gaining power and popularity, running for re-election, winning, and doing it all over again.

And the membership of the Democratic Party has, after all, gotten a whole lot more liberal during Gillibrand’s time in office, a trend that is only likely to continue. In 2008, according to Pew, 41 percent of Democrats called themselves “moderate” and 33 percent said they were “liberal.” By 2015, the ideological balance had flipped in the party, with 42 percent of Democrats calling themselves “liberal” and 38 percent “moderate.”

As of 2015, 49 percent of millennial Democrats identified as “liberal,” meaning that it’s smart politics to evolve left. Gillibrand is on to something. When people write that it is Gillibrand’s moment, it largely has to do with her capitalizing on the #MeToo movement to call out harassers. (After Trump’s taunting tweet, for instance, her office sent out a fundraising email.) But Gillibrand has been at the political fore of feminism’s resurgence for years. Well before this year, she made waves advocating for changes to the way the military prosecutes sexual assault, and she has introduced a paid family leave bill every year for the past five years.

She’s sensed the identity politics vehicle of the era, and has settled into the driver’s seat for a long haul. A recent poll showed that 64 percent of Democrats thought that sexual harassment was a very serious problem in the country, and 86 percent of women college graduates thought it represented a serious problem in society. Should Gillibrand run for president, that group, which continues to lean ever more Democratic, would be an important constituency.

And while many public figures are tone deaf on Twitter or have fallen victim to equivocating on behalf of allies (as Nancy Pelosi has), Gillibrand understands the moral absolutism required to survive in the Twitter age. “I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping, you are having the wrong conversation,” she said at a press conference calling for Franken to resign. “You need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is OK. None of it is acceptable.” Polls showed that about half of Democrats thought Franken should leave.

So if her 2020 viability as a candidate is attached to the cultural reckoning over harassment and women’s empowerment, would Gillibrand still face the challenges Hillary Clinton had as a female candidate?

Any election she’s in will feature gendered lines of attack, but Gillibrand’s advantages go back to the kind of assured wielding of soft power she showed in that Self magazine interview. A generation younger than Clinton, Gillibrand has had the luxury of refining her power, allowing it to reside not just in the Senate chamber, but also in the facts of her womanhood. Iron ladies aren’t entirely in vogue; relatability is. And the senator from New York has made her empathy something central to her persona — it might have even helped her get her current job. Then-Gov. David Paterson told The New Yorker that she was a great comfort to him after an “SNL” parody centering around his legal blindness. “I’ve never mentioned to her really why I picked her, but that incident played a role,” he said.

Empathy might have helped her rise in politics, but it’s that operator’s sense that has likely helped keep her in it. In the last week of a hard-fought 2006 election to Congress, a police report about a domestic violence incident involving Gillibrand’s Republican opponent surfaced. Gillibrand, New York Magazine later noted, “has never denied that her campaign was the source of the leak despite being asked about it several times. She defeated Sweeney by six points.”

Politics can be a nasty line of work, and Kirsten Gillibrand is good at politics. Maybe that’s all a person needs to make their moment.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

27 notes · View notes

skywalkersapprentice · 7 years

Text

Day 20- Happy

The most important lesson Ahsoka learns from Padme is that battle armour is more than the weapons you carry.

rating: g

pairings: none

word count: 2026

(read on ao3)

Now that we’re 20 fics in, I just wanted to thank everyone who’s liked and reblogged and commented on them! I wasn’t even sure that I would get this far, but it’s honestly been fun pushing myself to write so much every day. Comments and reblogs make this easier, so thank you. :)

“Senator Amidala,” Ahsoka said, breathless as she entered the office. “Sorry I'm late.”

Padme looked up with a warm smile. “It's alright, Ahsoka. I'm not quite ready to go yet anyway.”

Ahsoka considered herself lucky that the Senator she'd been assigned to shadow for a day was Padme. She was quick to forgive and understanding of the fact that Ahsoka knew very little about politics. It would make the day go by much faster than if she'd been assigned to someone like Senator Burtoni or Orn Free Taa.

“Please hold still, milady,” her aide said, bending over Padme. She was applying a light red pigment to Padme's lips and Ahsoka stepped forward, curious. She knew what makeup was, of course, but she'd never seen anyone put it on. It looked more complicated than she'd originally thought- there were several brushes laid out on Padme's desk, and beside those were more colourful tubes and bottles.

Padme saw her looking. “Normally I do this at home,” she told her, “but today's debate was moved ahead by an hour, so there wasn't time.”

“I had no idea that there was so much of it,” Ahsoka commented, scanning the supplies on the desk. She recognized nail polish and lip pigment, but that was all. Did Padme do this every day?

“This is just the basics,” the aide said with a small grin. “You should see what she has at home.”

“Ahsoka,” Padme said slowly, as if something was dawning on her, “have you ever used makeup before?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I've never needed to. My assignments aren't typically the undercover kind.”

“Undercover,” Padme repeated. “What about in your own time?”

Ahsoka didn't know how to explain to the Senator that Jedi were discouraged from having personal possessions. They strove to stay humble, hence the simple robes and tunics most Jedi wore. Makeup could be seen as a source of vanity, and that was also against the Jedi way. “You... could say that it's never come up before.”

The aide stepped back, setting a brush on the desk. “There. All done.”

“Thank you, Teckla.” Padme turned to Ahsoka. “How do I look?”

Ahsoka studied her for a moment. She still didn't really know what to look for, but Padme's eyes seemed darker and there was colour in her cheeks. The lip pigment was mild, yet flattering. “You look... ready to take on the Senate,” Ahsoka decided.

“Don't put it all away just yet,” Padme said to Teckla, who was beginning to pack the brushes into a case.“After the debate, I have a free hour for lunch.” She looked up at Ahsoka, eyes twinkling. “Think you'd be interested in a makeover?”

Ahsoka hesitated. “I... I shouldn't.” It wasn't that she didn't want to- quite the opposite. It sounded fun, and she appreciated that Padme wanted to take the time out of her day to do that for her. But would she be betraying the Code if she did?

Padme seemed to read her mind. “Being a Senator is more than just debates and bills, Ahsoka. If Master Skywalker wants to you learn about politics, well... looking the part comes with the job.”

Sometimes, Ahsoka forgot Padme was a politician. This was not one of those times. “Maybe I'll let you explain that one to him,” she said dryly, and Padme grinned.

“Is that a yes?”

Well, Ahsoka thought, if it was part of the job...

“Yes.”

Try as she might, Ahsoka still didn't understand much of what the debate was about. The Senators seemed to use a lot of words to say very little, and often, squabbles broke out among the delegates. Ahsoka stood beside Padme throughout the debate, arms crossed, and tried not to let her mind wander. She would take battle droids over this any day.

But, this was what Padme had dedicated her life to, and Ahsoka respected her enough to at least try to pay attention.

“I'm sorry you had to come on a day like this,” Padme told her with a sigh as they filed out of the Senate chamber several hours later. “This is a rewarding job when things get done, but sometimes, it's just a lot of empty talk.”

“It seems like every job has it's ups and downs,” Ahsoka said. It was true of her own- it was rewarding to free planets from separatist control, and devastating to lose thousands of men in the process. She was beginning to understand that there was a different kind of war being fought in the Senate- a war between greed and compassion.

“Later, I have a meeting with a journalist that I'd like you to sit in on,” Padme said, “but for now, let's take a break.”

And that was how Ahsoka found herself sitting angled towards Padme on the couch in her office, the makeup case open on the table in front of them. Padme was regarding her options carefully.

“Well, none of my base creams and powders are the right colour for you,” she said, “but the eye and lip makeup should work just fine.”

Ahsoka glanced at the array of colours. The options were almost overwhelming. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was a little girl on Naboo.” Padme began with a thin brush, dabbing it in a container of bronze pigment. “When I became Queen, I had handmaidens to help me get ready. I still know how to do my own makeup, of course, but it's been a while since I had someone else to practise on.” She laughed a little at the expression on Ahsoka's face. “You don't have to be nervous. I know what I'm doing, I promise.”

“At least one of us does,” Ahsoka said, closing her eyes as Padme brought the brush up to her face. She felt exposed like this, vulnerable in a way she wasn't sure she was comfortable with. It was almost like a trust exercise, although she'd never done one quite like this. “Why do you wear makeup, anyway?”

It was one thing she couldn't figure out. It was just so... unnecessary. What was the point?

The brush was withdrawn from her eyelid, just for a moment, and then it was back. “As I said earlier, it's part of the job. As a Senator, I have to look the part.” She moved the brush to Ahsoka's other eye. “But I do enjoy it. Naboo is a very artistic world, and makeup is one aspect of that. You should have seen my makeup when I was queen.”

The Naboo were known for their elaborate dress and hairstyles. It made sense to Ahsoka that they also expressed their creativity through bright eye and lip colours.

“Many worlds have their own methods and styles,” Padme continued. “There isn't just one way to wear it. In fact, half the fun is experimenting with colours.”

“Experimenting? Now I feel like I should be worried.” She wasn't though, not really. Once she'd gotten past the initial foreign feeling, it was... actually kind of nice. Just sitting down and talking while Padme did her makeup brought forth that sense of normal that she rarely felt anymore. There was no pressure here, just the small concern that she would look ridiculous with makeup on.

And if that were the case, it could always be washed off.

“You look great, Ahsoka. Trust me.” Padme gently tilted her head down so she could line her eyes with a pen of some kind. She used a spiky brush on her eyelashes, directing Ahsoka to look up, then applied something foreign to her lips. She sat back to admire her handiwork, wearing a satisfied expression.

Ahsoka blinked, assessing herself. Her eyes were heavier. Her lips felt strange. She touched her fingers to her cheek, wondering if she looked as odd as she felt.

“Come with me,” Padme said, and led her across the room, to the mirror mounted on the far wall. Ahsoka approached slowly. What if she hated it? What would she tell Padme?

Her fears were dashed as soon she was close enough to see her reflection.

Her eyelids were painted in an array of bronze and light orange shades, with just a hint of rose gold. The bronze contrasted nicely with the white of her eye markings. Her eyes looked darker, more defined and her lashes were longer. Her lips were dark red, the same colour as her dress.

Her first thought was that she looked older.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel...” Mentally, she tried out a few different words. Different. Surprised. Happy. “Confident.” It was a different kind of confidence than she was used to. It wasn't the loud confidence of being sure of herself and her abilities, but the quiet sort of confidence that came from taking pride in her appearance.

She knew she couldn't do this again. It wasn't the Jedi way to take pride in the way she looked.

But she couldn't help the smile that crossed her face as she locked eyes with Padme's reflection. “Thank you, Padme.”

Padme smiled back at her. “Glad I could help, Ahsoka. You look beautiful.”

It wasn't a word she'd ever associated with herself before. But as Ahsoka looked in the mirror, she found herself believing it.

“I think I see now, why you like this,” she said, turning around. “I feel so... different. But not in a bad way.”

Padme nodded. “When I was younger, one of my handmaidens likened makeup to battle armour. Once it's on, nobody can really touch you.”

It was a good way of looking at it, Ahsoka thought. Every day, she woke up and donned her boots and her weapon and went to war, while Padme dressed in elaborate outfits and makeup and fought a battle of words.

“I wasn't sure I was going to learn anything today,” she confessed. “I'm glad I was wrong.”

“So am I,” Padme said warmly. She put her arm around Ahsoka's shoulders. “We have twenty minutes left before my next meeting. So- how do you feel about nail polish?”

17 years later.

Jedi didn't take pride in their appearance. Jedi didn't wear makeup.

But Ahsoka had not been a Jedi in a very long time.

She didn't often seek comfort in material things, but she found the act of applying makeup to be relaxing. It had taken her a while to realize that she could be a warrior and still wear nail polish and eyeliner, but now it was simply a part of who she was.

In battle, the light glinted off both the metal of her saber and the red of her nails. In meditation, the light orange eyeshadow she preferred became visible.

Padme Amidala had taught her how to do these things, and she often thought of Padme as she painted her nails, or when she saw a certain shade of lip pigment. She thought of her now, as she put the finishing touches on her eyeshadow.

Padme, who had been there when Ahsoka needed advice and a hug. Padme, who had taught her about politics and how to navigate being a young girl in a hard galaxy. Padme, who for all her political skills, had been unable to hide how fiercely she loved Anakin Skywalker.

Padme, who had died around the same time he had.

She didn't want to assume the worst. But given what she now knew about Darth Vader, it was impossible not for her heart to feel heavy with the possibilities.

She was leaving for Atollon within the hour. From there, she would travel with Kanan and Ezra to Malachor. Although she wasn't sure what awaited them there, suspicions lingered in the back of her mind.

Somewhere, deep down, she already knew.

Padme had called makeup battle armour. Once it's on, nobody can really touch you. Ahsoka hoped that were true, because she would need to be untouchable, both inside and out, to win the fight ahead.

Ahsoka finished with a shade of dark red for her lips. She looked in the mirror and nodded to herself. The battle armour was on.

She straightened her shoulders, and went to war.

This was inspired by the fact that it looks like Ahsoka is wearing red nail polish in Star Wars Rebels. It also looks like she has eye makeup on. Maybe she doesn't, but I /love/ the idea of this strong female warrior also enjoying wearing makeup.

Also, research did not unveil much about makeup in the Star Wars universe, so. I tried.

#starwarsfictober #ahsoka tano #padme amidala #the clone wars #star wars fictober #writings

51 notes · View notes

jwhouk · 4 years

Text

Voter Fraud is NOT a Problem in the USA

(NOTE: I originally wrote this a couple of years ago when the first wave of “voter fraud” claims came out of 45′s mouth. I’ve updated it with information about mail-in ballots.)

First things first: Voter Fraud is NOT a problem in the United States of America. If you don't believe that, you probably aren't going to read anything more that I'm putting out here, but you should. There is a solid, valid argument that goes along with my assertion, and yes – it does involve math. If you don't like math, either… well, that's all well and good, but try and tell that to someone you owe money to.

Okay, here's the dealie-doo: in 2016, the United States of America had a total population of 322,762,000. That's 322.7 million people, and that is a lot of people. That is also an estimate, thanks to the US Census bureau, who are really good at making guesses at things like that – mostly because they use methods that have been shown to work for over 200 years now, and have improved with every decennial census that has been used in the country since 1790.

They have also managed to estimate that, for the 2016 Presidential Fall election, there were roughly 250,056,000 million eligible voters – those who were 18 years of age or older, and were eligible to vote under the requirements laid out by Federal laws (citizenship, legal status, etc.). That is, for those of you who are still counting, 77.5% of the entirety of the US Population.

A little aside here: whenever you see someone throwing out a duplicate double-digit percentage (11%, 22%, 33%, and so on up to 99%), you should mentally reduce that to "X out of 9," where X is the digit in question. For example, 44% is 4 out of 9. It works out, trust me (though obviously there's a bit of a rounding thing for numbers greater than 55%).

Back to our percentages: 77.5% means that essentially seven of nine people in the United States are eligible voters. That's a pretty good amount; it would mean that the two who aren't eligible are that way because they aren't yet old enough to vote, or they aren't yet citizens (though they live in the country). It's probably more the former than the latter, though.

Okay, back to the 2016 election. In the election to select the 45th president of the US, the number of actual voters is put at 138,847,000. (No, I am not going for an exact figure, because an exact figure has not been made available. If you can give me an exact figure that is better than 138.8 million, let me know with multiple citations so I can look it up myself.) 138.8 million is 55.5% of eligible voters – which isn't a great turnout compared to other countries (some of where voting is compulsory and/or mandatory). Back to our rule of nines, out of nine eligible voters, only five voted. The other four either didn't want to vote, didn't care about voting, were prevented from voting due to registration obstacles, or they weren't aware they were eligible to vote. Of the five that voted, it's likely that two voted for Mrs. Clinton, two voted for Mr. Trump, and the one remaining one flipped a coin when they went into the voting booth.

Another aside: consider that 138.8 million is about 43% of the entire population of the United States. That goes back to the rule of nines to mean that four out of our nine people chose our president. The other five probably chose to complain loudly about the whole process, but that's another story.

All right, this is where we get into the meat of our argument: voter fraud. Now, how much voter fraud would be significant, if it happened in the United States? Consider this: the difference in the overall popular vote was 2.1% between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. Essentially, if half of those votes were considered fraudulent, you'd say there was a good case for fraud, right?

Guess what: I'd completely agree. 1% of the vote is enough to sway elections, and I can prove it. Remember what we said about voter eligibility and actual vote counts. 1% of eligible voters in the US comes out to 2,500,560, while 1% of actual votes cast comes out to 1,388,470. Those totals are roughly similar to the cities of Houston and Dallas, Texas, respectively. So – if every single person in two of the largest cities in Texas committed voter fraud, you'd probably have a pretty questionable election.

Let's get that number down to something more "real": there are, according to that big flag with the stars and stripes on it, 50 states in the United States. 1% of the two numbers (Eligible Voters, what I'll abbreviate here as EV; and Actual Voters, abbreviated AV) would be 50,011 EV/state and 27,769 per state. Of course, 50,000 is about one tenth of the population of the least-populated state of Wyoming, but we are talking averages here.

Another way we could look at this is by county (or parish or unit). Counties are pretty well understood as separate districts, so what would our numbers be for those? As there are 3,242 counties in the US, 1% of an average county would be 711 EV and 428 AV. You should realize that your average county's population, though, is about 99,556. That doesn't work for either county that I have lived in since 2016: Lincoln County, Wisconsin, had an estimated population of 27,900 in 2016, while my current home county of Maricopa in Arizona is the fourth most-populous county in the US at 4,307,000.

Incidentally, Maricopa County had about 1.5 million votes cast in the 2016 election, while Lincoln had 14,700. That's about 35% of the population versus about 53%. Odd how the smaller the county is, the higher percentage of people vote.

A better way to look at this would be by a number that determines the actual winner of the presidency: the congressional district. (You do remember your basic civics class, where the Electoral college was explained to you, right?) There are 435 congressional districts in the United States*, which means that the average district has 741,900 in population, with 574,800 of those eligible and 319,200 who actually voted in the 2016 election. Guess what – that means that, based upon congressional district, you'd assume that a one percent voter fraud per district would be roughly 3,192 votes.

* - Geez, yet another aside: there are, indeed, 435 congressional districts. There are also congressional delegations from Washington DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, and several other overseas territories of the United States. These delegates do not count when it comes to the Electoral College, which directly selects the President. Oh, and in case you forgot: each state has the same number of electors as its entire congressional delegation – which includes the two senators from each state. That means that the lowest number of electors one state may have is three.

Okay, now we have a number that we can chew on. Think about your congressional district; do you think that fraudulent voting of around 3,100 votes would make a difference as to whether or not your congress-critter got elected? Hint: in my current district (Arizona 5th) it wouldn't. Rep. Andy Biggs won his election over Talia Fuentes by 90,244 votes. It also wouldn't have mattered in the Wisconsin 1st district (Paul Ryan won that seat by over 123,000 votes in 2016), nor in my old district, Wisconsin's 7th (Sean Duffy won re-election by 84,775 votes in 2016).

Now I know what you may be thinking: the difference between Hillary and Trump was 2%. Okay, go ahead and double that 3,192 number to 6,400. It still wouldn't mean a thing for any of the three races I mentioned. Remember: Duffy's win was by 84,775 votes. That's over 13 times the number of fraudulent votes needed to change things. (And remember, we're still assuming all of the fraudulent voters voted Democrat, by the way.)

So our next question is this: how many cases of actual voter fraud are there in the United States? And is it significant enough to suggest that the process needs fixing? The answer to the number of cases of voter fraud is (obviously) controversial, as many outlets suggest that the number is in the single digits. However, there was an assertion by the Heritage Foundation (a conservative policy think-tank) that there were around 1,132 cases of voter fraud in 47 of 50 states. Now, I don't like digging around too much on websites, but this seems to be a reasonable number to consider – as well as a good starting point. Let's assume that this is accurate, and that extrapolated out to all 50 states the number would be around 1,200 (actually 1,204, but it's nice to deal with round numbers).

So – 1,200 total cases of voter fraud in the US. How significant is that, compared to what we've already figured out? (Congratulations if you've already realized the answer.) 1,200 is less than one third of 1% of the actual voters in the 2016 election… in the average congressional district. Compared to the 138,847,000 actual votes cast in 2016, the number is 0.001% (one-one thousandth of a percent) of all votes cast. That means that 99.999% of all votes cast were NOT fraudulent.

What exactly does that look like, though? Well, here's a little thought experiment:

The NFL's Cardinals have known exactly two homes since moving to the state of Arizona in the late 1980's. They first called themselves the Phoenix Cardinals after moving into Arizona State University's football stadium, now known as Sun Devil Football Stadium. Years later, the city of Glendale in the west Valley built a domed stadium for the Cardinals. Initially known as the University

of Phoenix Stadium (for the for-profit school that offered online classes), it is now State Farm Stadium.

The two stadiums are the largest capacity sports facilities in the Phoenix metro area, at 63,400 for State Farm Stadium and 53,599 for Sun Devil Stadium. Combined, they have a total capacity of 116,999.

Now, here's our thought experiment: say we put blank, opaque envelopes on each seat in both stadiums. Inside all of them are white cards that say "OK" on them – except for a few that are red in color and say "FRAUD" on them. The number of these cards that say "FRAUD" on them are the same percentage of fraudulent votes to non-fraudulent ones from our figures above.

So – how many envelopes would have red cards in them?

The answer: ONE. (The actual ratio would be 1.0146, but it's essentially rounded down to one here.)

Now, let's go back to our assumption of two percent of the vote being fraudulent. The number of red cards in our scenario would go al the way up to 2,340 (actually 2,339.98).

But here we are – two empty stadiums with only one red card between them. Not 2,340, but one.

If the percentage of fraudulent votes in an election are around 1-2% of all votes in that election, it may very well effect the election. 0.001% most definitely won't.

I'll say it again: Voter Fraud is NOT a problem in the United States of America. Anyone saying anything else is trying to convince you that the very legitimacy of democracy is fraudulent. If you don't trust voting, you don't trust democracy.

– – – – –

WAIT! What about mail-in and absentee mail fraud?

Okay, yes, there has been reports of voter fraud by mail. But this total is part of that 1,200 number we threw out there earlier. Of the alleged 1,200 cases of voter fraud, about 491 of them were by mail or absentee ballots.

Here's where I'm going to be really, really generous for our voter-fraud fanatics; let's assume that there would be 491 more cases of voter fraud per district, in addition to the existing numbers we have already listed. Essentially, we'd be suggesting that there would be huge voter fraud because of mail-in balloting.

Remember our 1% number from the chart above? Well, I hate to disappoint, but even with nearly 500 fraudulent ballots added, it would still mean a less than 0.16% total of all ballots submitted. (Actual total would be 0.1547%.)

And that total we picked out earlier? 1,204 cases of voter fraud? It would balloon to 214,789 – a bit more than the population of the city of Des Moines, Iowa.

And yet it still wouldn't have affected the 2016 Presidential Election – even if we look at the total per state (4,295.8) or by district (493.8) or even by county (66.3 – which might actually be close to the number of fraudulent votes in all of Maricopa County… over the last 50 years).

There are a lot of checks and balances to a proper means of voting by mail. Here in Arizona, you register to vote when you apply for a driver's license (or a state ID), and in that application you can choose to be put on the Permanent Early Voting List – where they send your ballot to the address listed on your license.

Besides the requirements for voting being pretty much the same across the board – two or three forms of approved ID and a verified voting address so you can be placed in the right district and/or precinct – the ballots have to be sealed, signed and dated on the back of the return envelope. Once received by the county recorder's office, they are recorded but not counted (that happens on election day). You can even check online to see if your vote was received.

Obviously, if they receive two votes from the same named person, there will be an inquiry – and that would be checked relatively easily.

So – I'd say that if anything, that 214k total would be way out of left field for most county clerks (or equivalent). I'd argue that, at most, our 1,204 fraudulent vote total would likely only go up to maybe 1,700 or so (2,000 tops) in a scenario where everyone voted by mail or absentee.

So, do I need to say it a third time? Okay, I will: Voter Fraud is NOT a problem in the United States of America. Any other claim is simply scaremongering or trying to discount democracy in favor of something more sinister.

- - - - -

WHY VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES

2016: Total Pop (USA) = 322,762,000

Eligible Voters = 250,056,000 (77.5% total population)

Actual Voters = 138,847,000 (43.0% total pop, 55.5% eligible)

Per State: 6,455,240 Total Population, 5,001,120 eligible voters, 2,776,940 actual voters

Per District: 741,982 population, 574,841 EV, 319,189 AV

Per County/Equivalent: 99,556 population, 77,130 EV, 42,828 AV

1% of EV = 2,500,560

Per State = 50,011 (50 states)

Per District = 5,748 (435 districts)

Per County = 771 (3,242 counties/equivalent)

1% of AV = 1,388,470

Per State = 27,769

Per District = 3,192

Per County = 428

Cases of Voter Fraud (Heritage Foundation, alleged over 47 states) = 1,132 (0.001%)

Per State = 23; Per District = 3; Per County = 0.3

Voter Fraud Cases extrapolated out to 50 states = 1,204 (0.001%)

Per State =24; Per District = 3; Per County = 0.4

Actual Voters/Voter Fraud Ratio: 115,321.43 : 1

State Farm/Sun Devil Stadium Capacity = 116,999

Ratio Voter Fraud/NVF to Stadiums = 1.0146

#novoterfraud nomailinfraud

0 notes