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theladyofrosewater · 10 days

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Okay the video game poll is over and idk if people went with their actual favorite or just whatever game they had heard of bcs the botw/skyrim option won so for every option that got more than one vote I'll describe what I think that game would be like in order of how many votes it got.

OPEN WORLD STYLE ADVENTURE 36.4%: You play as Irene's reincarnation and wake up outside of Phoenix Drop with no memory of who you are and after the tutorial section of phoenix drop you're basically on you're own to somehow defeat the big bad Shad, however you get a special ending if you beat the game in under two hours and use batshit tactics you can technically customize your character but it's only hairstyles and tattoos. There WOULD be a speedrun based on who could place something weird like a bomb or a pumpkin on the Irene statue in Scaleswind

STORY BASED JRPG 18.2%: I've never played a jrpg I'll be honest but Jess stole a lot of stuff from final fantasy anyway! might as well complete the circle. But one thing I image is that defeating the jury of nine and the high priest is the main goal with Katelyn being the only recrutable one. 22% of the game is just sorting gear bcs the game has lootflation. 50% is just putting your guards in pretty outfits. the rest is side quests.

MINECRAFT MOD PACK 15.2%: Okay we could totally do this ourselves in fact people have tried I'm pretty sure, the hardest part would be making the map and making sure the NPCs functioned normally but you'd basically just play through MCD with all the mods jess used (with more quest markers to keep you on track) I imagine it would only go up to half a season at a time though just to keep track of everything and make it less cluttered.

BASICALLY JUST STARDEW BUT BETTER COMBAT 10.6%: exactly what it says on the tin. It's Stardew but you're the lord instead of the farmer. You can pick which village you choose to rule and you get a different story/marriage candidates depending on each one. The combat comes from battle campaigns technically doesn't have an end since Stardew can go on forever.

VISUAL NOVEL 9.1%: Just the normal story of diaries with maybe a bit of puzzle solving to spice up gameplay, It would be a comic book art style and different chapters would have a new art style for tone purposes+ hiring more artists and would only have like three endings plus a secret forth one for 100% completing it.

HADES-STYLE ROGUE-LIKE 3%: I'm surprised not a lot of people picked this option but IMAGINE IT. You play as Laurance and you've gotten better at resisting the call and so you set out to escape Shad's domain but have to battle limitless foes and keep fighting the call at every step of the way. succumbing to the call makes you start over but you won't give up! The bosses would be other shadow knights, maybe Gene, Sasha and Zenix to replace the furies. Zane and Janus(shush I know he's not one but I needed a second person) could replace Theseus and the Minotaur and Shad would obviously replace the final boss. Vylad could probably replace Thanatos or something too.

DATING SIM BUT CURSED 3%: You are Irene Aphmau and you absolutely MUST pick someone to spend the rest of time with! except it resets if you don't pick right, it resets and resets and resets. but if you do pick right they keep dying, and dying, and dying. and even if you change everything they keep dying and dying andyingandying-

#theladyofrosewater #minecraft diaries #mcd #aphblr #if I knew how to code/had the motivation I would probably make one #alas I am so shitty at coding and finishing long term projects #can you tell I have ideas

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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Bipartisanship has always been important to Kyrsten Sinema, the Senator from Arizona. Though she’s a Democrat, she has styled her career, it is often said, after “maverick” John McCain and prides herself on her frequent partnerships with Republicans. Her social media accounts and official statements often tout that she’s working “across the aisle,” trying to bring both sides together.

Well: mission accomplished!

AARP/Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research

These numbers, from a new Arizona poll commissioned by the AARP, are pretty remarkable! Her unpopularity “crosses the aisle” like that of no politician I’ve ever seen. A solid 54% of Arizona Republicans don’t like her. And 51% of independents don’t like her (her best result!). As for Democrats? Arizonans of Sinema’s putative party simply do not like her, to the tune of 57%. (And that’s a distinct improvement from her 80% disapproval rating with Democrats in January!)

Name a demographic group, and Sinema is viewed unfavorably by a majority of them. Women? 55% unfavorable. Men? 53% unfavorable. White voters? 56% unfavorable. Hispanic voters? 54% unfavorable.

She’s not very popular with college graduates (53% unfavorable), but unfortunately she’s even less popular with people who haven’t graduated college (55% unfavorable).

Voters 50 and over? Her unpopularity with them is also 50 and over (54%, specifically). But young people also don’t like her (55% unpopularity).

Basically, what I’m saying here is that to an extent that seems without precedent, Arizonans of every race, creed, gender, and political persuasion don’t like Kyrsten Sinema at basically the exact same rate. If you polled a critical mass of Arizonan Hindus, firefighters, octogenarians, or contact lens wearers, I expect you’d find that between 51%–59% of them dislike Kyrsten Sinema, too. Good thing she’s not up for reelection this year!

Is there any reason to highlight these poll numbers, other than that they are funny? Yes! In January, my colleague Christina Cauterucci tried to figure out what exactly Sinema was trying to, like, do. What’s the game plan? She seems set up for failure in any 2024 primary. Her willingness to tank major parts of the Democratic agenda is so established now that even her role in helping the recent Inflation Reduction Act pass did not make a majority of her Democratic constituents like her. And while Arizona Republicans briefly warmed to Sinema when she skipped the Jan. 6 Commission vote, it’s not like they would ever vote for her in a Republican primary—not as long as the GOP can scrape up at least one Nathan Arizona–type blowhard with a MAGA hat and a pulse.

Cauterucci, in January, highlighted a rumor that Sinema was attempting to set herself up for a run for president in 2024 as a straight-down-the-middle candidate. If this happens, these poll numbers suggest that she may, indeed, be the one candidate who can truly unite America.

#us politics #news #slate #sen. kyrsten sinema #arizona #approval rating #democrats #2022 #bipartisanship #bipartisan #aarp #sen. john mccain #john mccain #polls

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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NBC News: Warnock gets early vote edge over Walker in Georgia Senate runoff

NBC News: Warnock gets early vote edge over Walker in Georgia Senate runoff.

“Seeing what Herschel Walker has said and the approach that he takes with his campaigning — to me, it just seems like a very obvious choice,” said Gomez, who said she plans to vote for Warnock on Tuesday. “What I really appreciate about Warnock is that he tries to appeal to both sides.”

Meanwhile, Walker held a series of rallies in the rural outskirts of the city, where he needs to run up the score to withstand the onslaught of Democratic votes in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and was set to close with an evening rally in suburban Cobb County.

“Everyone says: Gosh, why did Herschel get in this? What has this been like for me?” Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, said to a crowd on Monday. “And you know what? Our country’s worth it. It doesn’t matter what it’s like. It doesn’t matter if you get attacked.”

“He loves this country. He loves God. And he wants to fight for our country,” she said. “We don’t want to wake up like Venezuela.”

Warnock is entering the runoff from a position of strength. He leads among likely voters by 4 percentage points in a CNN poll published Friday, and by 5 points in a UMass Lowell poll out Monday.

An early vote that topped 1.85 million showed other positive signs for Warnock, with Democrats enjoying a 13-point edge — larger than the party’s 8-point lead in November’s early vote, according to TargetSmart’s model.

But Walker is widely expected to win more of the votes cast on Election Day. The question is whether he’ll win it by a wide enough margin to overcome his deficit heading into Tuesday.

Robert Trim, a Cobb County Republican who ran unsuccessfully for a state house seat last month, said he’ll vote for Walker on Tuesday, because a 50th GOP seat is “critically important” for committee power and denying Democrats unilateral subpoena authority.

But Trim conceded he’s pessimistic about Walker’s chances, comparing his run to former Republican Sen. David Perdue's failed runoff bid in 2020, when he lost to Ossoff.

“I don’t feel very confident,” Trim said in an interview. “I never have felt confident in where he’s positioned. So I’m probably less confident now than I was before.”

He said Democrats clinching Senate control “probably does sap some energy” because “most voters don’t understand” why an extra seat for the GOP minority changes the dynamics in Washington.

Image: Georgia Prepares For Runoff Senate Election

Residents wait in line to vote early outside a polling station on Nov. 29 in Atlanta. Alex Wong / Getty Images

On TV, Walker is running an ad that shows him standing with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who handily won his re-election bid last month. Kemp is a foe of former President Donald Trump, whose early endorsement of Walker propelled him in the Senate race. But Trump, who became the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1992, has not campaigned for Walker in the runoff.

Walker “needs to win Election Day by double digits,” said Cody Hall, an adviser to Kemp, who said the Republican candidate will have to outperform his advantage from November's Election Day. “He’s gonna need to do better than that margin, which his team realizes.”

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cognitiveinequality · 2 years

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Your Push For Permanent DST Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad.

(NOTE: this is a long post and I am not putting it under the cut because I am feeling particularly bitchy tonight and so pls feel free to just hit “J” on desktop to skip past this if you’re not in the mood, but I would very much like this on the record. Ahem.)

If you are one of those people who advocates for "year round DST" I need you to take several seats while I explain to you why you are completely wrong to please reconsider.

Oh, you don't like losing an hour of sleep? BITCH, ME EITHER. But the answer is NOT a shift forward an hour all year, and here's why:

1) It "saves" literally nothing:

Don't be fooled by the term "Daylight Saving". Most of us associate DST with long days of summer, and "who wouldn't want that???!" we ask ourselves, as we scowl at the clock and chug coffee to wake us up every morning for weeks after losing an hour. But you and I both know permanent DST won't magically create sunlight, no matter what doublespeak politicians use to win votes. I understand that "keeping it this way all year!!!1" is a lot more attractive when you’re sleep-deprived and when the days are already getting longer. And isn’t it funny how that’s exactly when the loudest advocates always seem to crop up to sell this terribad idea... I wonder why that is...? 🤔

Did you know that the biggest industries pushing for year round DST are recreational outdoor sports like golfing? They think that an extra hour of daylight in exchange for one less hour of morning light is more likely to put money in their pockets. No matter what politicians like Marco Rubio tell you, the push for year round DST is not about a better quality of life, it's about the bottom line of their corporate lobbyists.

And get this: American politicians have already had their chance at this and it blew up in their faces. If you're younger than 50, you probably didn't know that the U.S. already TRIED year-round Daylight Saving Time.

During the OPEC crisis of the 70s, the Nixon government passed a "temporary, year-round DST" that started Jan 6 1974. The idea was that it would "save energy" — with the NYT citing "experts" at the Federal Energy Office who anticipated "a national saving of 100,000 to 150,000 barrels of oil a day." Do you know what happened? People quickly figured out it was all baloney - a Department of Transportation study at the time concluded that the change actually had minimal impact on saving energy and might have actually increased gasoline consumption.

People in 1974 immediately figured out the change wasn't a good one, and it showed in polling. There were a multitude of articles and opinion pieces through that winter calling for an early end to the 16 month experiment with much of the concern focused on the fact that longer, darker mornings meant parents were suddenly sending their kids to school in the pitch dark for months on end. And the parents probably weren't exactly relishing their morning commutes, either, because....

2) It's bad for your brain:

Sun in the day and darkness at night are the main signals that adjust the timing of our body clock, and our bodies use light cues to regulate a TON of internal processes, from hormones to heart rate. And one of the things that science is still trying to fully understand is its heavy influence on mood.

I'm no doctor/researcher, but from my reading the basics seem to be: Light stimulates your hypothalamus - the brain's main regulator of a ton of important functions, including the production of hormones linked with circadian rhythms and mood. This means that the timing of your exposure to daylight — usually 100 to 1000 times brighter than indoor light — can make a significant difference in how your brain functions.

There's a school of thought among researchers studying Seasonal Affective Disorder who believe that SAD patients are actually experiencing a "phase-delay" of their circadian rhythm that throws their brains out of sync with their regular schedule and contributes to depression, partly because of the timing of melatonin secretion. Studies have shown that early morning light exposure is critical to those people — it’s theorized that the light tells those brains to "speed up" their circadian rhythm to match the clock.

Other SAD studies have looked at the role of serotonin, dopamine, and other hormones stimulated by light levels, and while no one has quite cracked the code on their complex relationship to the disorder, there are consistent, repeatable results that show that light therapy is one of the most effective treatments for seasonal depression. But — and this is the important part, for our purposes — the light has got to be morning light. More, brighter light in the middle or at the end of the day does virtually nothing to alleviate SAD symptoms.

But don't take it from me - let's hear from the fine folks of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, from their position statement on permanent DST:

DST is less well-aligned with intrinsic human circadian physiology, and it disrupts the natural seasonal adjustment of the human clock due to the effect of late-evening light on the circadian rhythm. DST results in more darkness in the morning hours, and more light in the evening hours. Both early morning darkness and light in the evening have a similar effect on circadian phase, causing the endogenous rhythm to shift to later in the day. There is evidence that the body clock does not adjust to DST even after several months. Permanent DST could therefore result in permanent phase delay, a condition that can also lead to a perpetual discrepancy between the innate biological clock and the extrinsic environmental clock, as well as chronic sleep loss due to early morning social demands that truncate the opportunity to sleep.

(hmm... "phase-delay".. where have I heard that term before?? 🤔🤔🤔)

3) You might not like it as much as you think you will.

Like I said at the start, the association with long summer days holds great appeal for most - me included!! And we've already covered how less morning light will likely cause serious mental wellness issues for many. But maybe you think "ehh... maybe Minnesotans and Alaskans have to worry, but we'll probably be OK where we are...."

Know this: If a shift to permanent DST was enacted across the U.S., those in most states north of the Oklahoma panhandle would would not see sun until after 8 a.m. from late November until the middle of February — already super fun — but the real chaos begins when you realize that the sun rises even later the further west within your time zone you go.

Switching the clocks ahead an hour in the winter means someone in Boston might see the sun around 8:00 am during the darkest parts of winter — already kind of sucky — but if you're in, say, Louisville, KY (right on the western edge of the Eastern Time zone) even though you're hundreds of miles further south, don't expect to see the sun rise in December/January until nearly 9:00am.

For months.

Fun!

(And not for nothing, but multiple studies have found that the further west people live within a time zone, the more health problems they may experience and the shorter they live on average. With some theorizing that these outcomes have links to the greater disconnect in circadian rhythms caused by the misalignment of ‘body’ time to ‘clock’ time. Neat!)

So is there any answer? I hate messing with my body clock twice a year!

Bitch, me too! And once again, I will turn to the pros at the AASM:

It is the position of the AASM that the U.S. should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of a national, fixed, year-round time. Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.

(emphasis mine)

Like the pros at the AASM above say, just keep the clocks on standard time.

Sure, we'll get a little bit less evening light in the summer, but that just means fireworks and sparklers can start earlier, fireflies will be visible sooner, and patio lanterns can glow a little brighter — a small tradeoff for millions being less likely to stick their head in the oven or drink themselves to death from seasonal depression.

#in conclusion #Daylight Savings is a land of contrasts #Standard Time 5 eva!#sorry for the rant #this has been eating at me for YYYYYEEEEEEARRRRS #and the increasing blithe calls to ''just keep it permanent dst already!!''#make my fucking ass twitch #cog rants #DST #long post #daylight savings #yes i don't have sources for every link...#im tired and I accidentally closed some incognito tabs OK?#just know I fully looked this shit up #pls

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robertreich · 4 years

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The End of Trump’s Fifth Avenue

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," Trump boasted in 2016.

Trump’s 5th Avenue principle is being tested as never before. So far, more than 214,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, one of the world’s highest death rates -- due in part to Trump initially downplaying its dangers, then refusing responsibility for it, promoting quack remedies for it, muzzling government experts on it, pushing states to reopen despite it, and discouraging people from wearing masks.

Yet some 40 percent of Americans have stuck by him nonetheless. They’ve remained loyal even after he turned the White House into a hotspot for the virus, even after he caught it himself, and even after asserting just days ago that it’s less lethal than the flu. A recent nonpartisan study concluded that Trump’s blatant disinformation has been the largest driver of COVID misinformation in the world.

They’ve stuck by him even as more than 11 million Americans have lost their jobs, 40 million risk eviction from their homes, 14 million have lost health insurance, and almost one out of five Americans with kids at home cannot afford to adequately feed their children.

They’ve stuck by him even though more Americans have sought unemployment benefits this year than voted for him in 2016, even after Trump cut off talks on economic relief, even though he’s pushing the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act, causing 20 million more to lose health insurance.

Trump is in effect standing in the middle of 5th Avenue, killing Americans.

Yet here we are, just a few weeks before the election, and his supporters still haven’t budged. The latest polls show him with 40% to 43% of voters, while Joe Biden has a bare majority.

The most egregious test of Trump’s 5th Avenue principle is still to come, when he tries to kill off American democracy. He’s counting on his supporters to keep him in power even after he loses the popular vote.

He’s ready to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife with “fraud like you’ve never seen,” as he asserted during his debate with Biden -- although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

He’ll likely allege fraudulent election results in any Republican-led state which he loses by a small margin – such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.

Then he’ll rely on the House of Representatives to put him over the top.

“We are going to be counting ballots for the next two years,” Trump warned at a recent Pennsylvania rally, noting “we have the advantage if we go back to Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state.”

He was referring to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that if state electors deadlock or can’t agree on a president, the decision goes to the House. There, each of the nation’s 50 states get one vote.

That means small Republican-dominated states like Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming (each with one House member, who’s a Republican) would have the same clout as large Democratic states like California (with 52 House members, 44 of whom are Democrats).

Trump does have the advantage right now: 26 state congressional delegations in the House are now controlled by Republicans, and 22 by Democrats. Two — Pennsylvania and Michigan — are essentially tied.

But he won’t necessarily retain that advantage. The decision would be made by lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on January 3 -- three days before they’ll convene to decide the winner of the election.

Which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is focusing on races that could tip the balance of state delegations – not just in Pennsylvania and Michigan but any others within reach.

“It’s sad we have to have to plan this way,” she wrote in a letter to her colleagues last week, “but it’s what we must do to ensure the election is not stolen.”

Trump’s 5th Avenue principle has kept him in power despite deprivation and death that would have doomed the presidencies of anyone else. But as a former New Yorker he should know that 5th Avenue ends at the Harlem River at 142nd Street, and the end is near.

#trump #coronavirus #trump campaign #voting fraud

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luckyladylily · 2 years

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Gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering BAD

But also it's more complex than you think. Like we should absolutely do some of those laws to make it less obviously bad, but the problem with gerrymandering is that there are several potential end possibilities in getting rid of it and they all have major different effects.

Let's say there is a state with 4 congress seats and a 75R to 25D split (Utah, but a bit simplified). How do we determine what is fair?

There is the statistically representative district, which is the idea that every district is representative of the whole as much as possible. So every district is cut up so they have a 75/25 split. In this case, it will always mean R wins in every case, us progressive Utahns never get anything. But it also means that in a near 50/50 state every race is competitive.

Another model attempts to cut up districts such that the result will be a similar split in reps to the population. In Utah, that would be 1 dem, 3 rs. But this basically ruins the very concept of an election by rigging it in the first place, towards what some people might call a pre determined "fair" outcome. Elections become non competitive.

We could do it by obvious geographic boundaries, but that's a crap shoot on who it favors politically and who it screws over. It is pretty much certain that it won't be representative in the end no matter what, but at least it is based in something real.

So gerrymandering bad, but maybe the entire concept of Congressional districts is stupid as fuck and needs to be done away with for something that isn't inherently unfair trash.

I like the idea of congressmen being chosen state wide instead of by district via ranked vote, but that becomes a heavy cognitive burden for voters in large states with many people and congressmen.

So I don't have the answer except congressional districts as they exist are inherently shit. I presume other countries have tried other things. Maybe we can check that out.

BUT now let's talk about the US senate. It's not gerrymandered in the classic sense, but the way it is put together is insane and completely unfair. I calculated it once, people from Wyoming have about seventy times as much voting power for the senate as people from California over what is, arguably, the single most important institution in our country. Controlling the senate is more powerful than controlling the presidency. And, effectively, a Californian gets 1 vote for it and a Wyoming resident gets 70. It is incredible bullshit that is literally ruining our country. If you thought the electoral college was bad imagine that jacked up to 11.

We can overcome the inherent system bias in selecting the president. It is impossible to overcome the inherent system bias in electing the senate. It is only because the US citizenry overwhelmingly favors the left that a deadlock tie is even possible. It might be possible to get one or two more seats for a slight majority that allows democrats to get something done.

The fact that the republicans aren't locking down the senate every single election despite their enormous technical advantage shows you how incompetent and hated they are by the average American. And yet they have the fucking audacity to claim that giving DC citizens senators is a democrat power grab and have instead purposed that the DC population be absorbed into a different senate group in order to ensure the overwhelming republican advantage remains in place. And they still can't win, so they try to rig it even further with voter suppression laws.

The worst voter suppression in the country doesn't happen in gerrymandered congress districts or at polling places. It's the very structure of the us senate.

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fuckyeahtx · 3 years

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Letters From An American

Today in Fuck Abbott and the GQP Harder Than Ever Before Welcome to Fucking Gilead Edition

September 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last night at midnight, a new law went into effect in Texas. House Bill 1927 permits people to carry handguns without a permit, unless they have been convicted of a felony or domestic violence. This measure was not popular in the state. Fifty-nine percent of Texans—including law enforcement officers—opposed it. But 56% of Republicans supported it. “I don’t know what it’s a solution to,” James McLaughlin, executive director of the Texas Police Chiefs Association, said to Heidi Pérez-Moreno of the Texas Tribune when Republican governor Greg Abbott signed the bill in mid-August. “I don’t know what the problem was to start with.”

Texas Gun Rights executive director Chris McNutt had a different view. He said in a statement: “Texas is finally a pro-gun state despite years of foot-dragging, roadblocks, and excuses from the spineless political class.”

The bill had failed in 2019 after McNutt showed up at the home of the Texas House Speaker, Republican Dennis Bonnen, to demand its passage. Bonnen said McNutt’s “overzealous” visit exhibited “insanity.” "Threats and intimidation will never advance your issue. Their issue is dead," he told McNutt. McNutt told the Dallas Morning News: "If politicians like Speaker Dennis Bonnen think they can show up at the doorsteps of Second Amendment supporters and make promises to earn votes in the election season, they shouldn't be surprised when we show up in their neighborhoods to insist they simply keep their promises in the legislative session.”

That was not the only bill that went into effect at midnight last night in Texas. In May, Governor Abbott signed the strongest anti-abortion law in the country, Senate Bill 8, which went into effect on September 1. It bans abortion after 6 weeks—when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant—thus automatically stopping about 85% of abortions in Texas. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Opponents of the bill had asked the Supreme Court to stop the law from taking effect. It declined to do so.

The law avoided the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to abortion before fetal viability at about 22 to 24 weeks by leaving the enforcement of the law not up to the state, but rather up to private citizens. This was deliberate. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained in an article in Slate: “Typically, when a state restricts abortion, providers file a lawsuit in federal court against the state officials responsible for enforcing the new law. Here, however, there are no such officials: The law is enforced by individual anti-abortion activists.” With this law, there’s no one to stop from enforcing it.

S.B. 8 puts ordinary people in charge of law enforcement. Anyone—at all—can sue any individual who “aids or abets,” or even intends to abet, an abortion in Texas after six weeks. Women seeking abortion themselves are exempt, but anyone who advises them (including a spouse), gives them a ride, provides counseling, staffs a clinic, and so on, can be sued by any random stranger. If the plaintiff wins, they pocket $10,000 plus court costs, and the clinic that provided the procedure is closed down. If the defendant doesn’t defend themselves, the court must find them guilty. And if the defendant wins, they get…nothing. Not even attorney’s fees.

So, nuisance lawsuits will ruin abortion providers, along with anyone accused of aiding and abetting—or intending to abet—an abortion. And the enforcers will be ordinary citizens.

Texas has also just passed new voting restrictions that allow partisan poll watchers to have “free movement” in polling places, enabling them to intimidate voters. Texas governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign that bill in the next few days.

Taken together with the vigilantism running wild in school board meetings and attacks on election officials, the Texas legislation is a top red flag in the red flag factory. The Republican Party is empowering vigilantes to enforce their beliefs against their neighbors.

The law, which should keep us all on a level playing field, has been abandoned by our Supreme Court. Last night, it refused to stop the new Texas abortion law from going into effect, and tonight, just before midnight, by a 5–4 vote, it issued an opinion refusing to block the law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent read: “The court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

Texas’s law flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents, she points out, but the Supreme Court has looked the other way. ”The State’s gambit worked,” Sotomayor wrote. She continued: “This is untenable. It cannot be the case that a state can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry."

The Supreme Court has essentially blessed the efforts of Texas legislators to prevent the enforcement of federal law by using citizen vigilantes to get their way. The court decided the case on its increasingly active “shadow docket,” a series of cases decided without full briefings or oral argument, often in the dead of night, without signed opinions. In the past, such emergency decisions were rare and used to issue uncontroversial decisions or address irreparable immediate harm (like the death penalty). Since the beginning of the Trump administration, they have come to make up the majority of the court’s business.

Since 2017, the court has used the shadow docket to advance right-wing goals. It has handed down brief, unsigned decisions after a party asks for emergency relief from a lower court order, siding first with Trump, and now with state Republicans, at a high rate. As University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck noted: “In less than three years, [Trump’s] Solicitor General has filed at least twenty-one applications for stays in the Supreme Court (including ten during the October 2018 Term alone).” In comparison, “during the sixteen years of the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, the Solicitor General filed a total of eight such applications—averaging one every other Term.”

So, operating without open arguments or opinions, the Supreme Court has shown that it will not enforce federal law, leaving state legislatures to do as they will. This, after all, was the whole point of the “originalism” that Republicans embraced under President Ronald Reagan. Originalists wanted to erase the legal justification of the post–World War II years that used the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states. It was that concept that protected civil rights for people of color and for women, by using the federal government to prohibit states from enforcing discriminatory laws.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have sought to hamstring federal power and return power to the states, which have neither the power nor the inclination to regulate businesses effectively, and which can discriminate against minorities and get away with it, so long as the federal government doesn’t enforce equal protection.

Today’s events make that a reality.

Worse, though, the mechanisms of the Texas law officially turn a discriminatory law over to state-level vigilantes to enforce. The wedge to establish this mechanism is abortion, but the door is now open for extremist state legislatures to turn to private citizens to enforce any law that takes away an individual’s legal right…like, say, the right to vote. And in Texas, now, a vigilante doesn't even have to have a permit to carry the gun that will back up his threats.

During Reconstruction, vigilantes also carried guns. They enforced state customs that reestablished white supremacy after the federal government had tried to defend equality before the law. It took only a decade for former Confederates who had tried to destroy the government to strip voting rights, and civil rights, from the southern Black men who had defended the United States government during the Civil War. For the next eighty years, the South was a one-party state where enforcement of the laws depended on your skin color, your gender, and whom you knew.

Opponents have compared those who backed the Texas anti-abortion law to the Taliban, the Islamic extremists in Afghanistan whose harsh interpretation of Islamic Sharia law strips women of virtually all rights. But the impulse behind the Texas law, the drive to replace the federal protection of civil rights with state vigilantes enforcing their will, is homegrown. It is a reflection of the position that Republicans would like women to have in our society, for sure, but it is also written in the laughing faces of Mississippi law enforcement officers Lawrence Rainey and Cecil Ray Price in 1967, certain even as they were arraigned for the 1964 murders of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner, that the system was so rigged in their favor that they would literally get away with murder.

When they were killed, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were trying to register Black people to vote.

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banana-with-a-bow-tie · 3 years

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The purpose of this post is not to argue that Biden was, or was not, fraudulently elected in the 2020 president election, but to keep a biblical perspective.

Sources report that 47% of American voters believe that large-scale fraud handed the election to Biden/Harris. Nevertheless, 49% say that fraud was unlikely. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll reported that 67% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats surveyed believe that voter fraud gave Biden election. However, the same survey showed that 19% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats disagree. In either case, dozens of millions of voters believe that there was fraud, and dozens of millions believe that there was not. Numbers do not prove whether or not it happened. The point here is that a huge swath of the US population believes that voter fraud helped usher in the next president.

It’s likely that someone you sing next to in church believes that there is ample evidence of fraud, and is grieved about it. Disdaining them as crazy conspiracists is not the best approach (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4-7, Col. 3:12-17). After all, if you’re a Christian, you believe that a peasant Hebrew crucified as a vile criminal will one day appear in the sky standing on clouds.

So for those who do feel that there was fraud, what would Scripture suggest you do? Even if there was, here are a few considerations from God’s word on the issue.

God is sovereign over unrighteousness

“In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider— God has made the one as well as the other So that man will not discover anything that will be after him” (Eccles. 7:14).

Though he is not pleased with it, God is sovereign over all sin. If there was fraud, though it would grieve God, he is sovereign over it. God remains in control even in the most wretched times (Lam. 3:37-38). He was sovereign over the wretched rule of Egypt (Exod. 2:23-25), the wicked rule of Israel’s enemies in Judges (Judg. 2:14), the evil of the Assyrian deportation (2 Kings 17), the wickedness of the Babylonian exile (2 Kings 25), the unrighteousness of Herod and the Romans (Matt. 2:15), and he was even sovereign over the treacherous treatment of His own Son: “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). Despite all of this evil—often committed by governing authorities—God was never de-sovereigned by it.

“His sovereignty rules over all” (Ps. 103:19).

2. The Lord is still on the throne

No evil agenda, large or small, has ever successfully removed God from his throne. And evil men and nations have tried. They’ve done everything in their power, with satanic and demonic reinforcements, to dethrone God. It hasn’t happened and it never will (Ps. 93:1-5). The permanence of the Lord’s position on the throne of the universe is laughably unthreatened by even the greatest evils of man.

“The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, 3 ‘Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!’ 4 He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (Ps. 2:2-4).

The sovereign, supreme rule of the God of the Bible is no more threatened by unrighteous doings and agendas of earthly rulers than his rule is threatened by a cockroach coughing in a Los Angeles sewer.

“The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake!” (Ps. 99:1).

3. God will use unrighteousness for good

One of the ways that God proves he is sovereign is by orchestrating evil for good. We have history to prove that: Joseph’s suffering and saving a nation (Gen. 50:20), Pharaoh housing the messianic nation and its growth, the cross of Jesus Christ, and countless examples since then. Throughout history, God has masterfully moved the evil of man and government to accomplish his purposes, the greatest of which was the cross. Jesus was the recipient of unprecedented civil corruption, and God did a pretty decent job at ensuring that worked out well. We might not see how God orchestrates evil for good this side of heaven, but he’ll take care of it (Rom. 8:28). God is trustworthy.

4. Jesus is still building his church

The church has survived the harshest storms wicked men have to offer. She was birthed into the Roman Empire, who actively opposed her existence. Despite three centuries therein of persecution, her growth continued. Satan and his world have always hated and resisted the church. Even so, she has spread from Israel, to the Roman Empire through the Apostles, and to places like Africa through the Ethiopian Euncuh, the New Hebrides through John Paton, Burma through Adoniram Judson, China through Hudson Taylor, the middle east through Samuel Zwemer, and the list goes on. It’s almost like unrighteous circumstances helps the church thrive. Whatever the case, the church will never die out because Christ builds it (Matt. 16:18).

5. We are still to be about the kingdom of God

Unregenerate enemies attempted several times to distract Nehemiah and God’s people from sticking to the essential task of rebuilding the wall (Neh. 6:4). What they did was wicked. But Nehemiah and crew stuck to the main thing (Neh. 6:3-9).

In these New Covenant days, there are no less enemies and distractions that seek to pull us down from the wall. But we must keep the main thing the main thing. The kingdom of God is that thing. Regardless of what happens, our sovereign God would have us give ourselves completely to involvement in our local churches, godliness, disciple-making, prayer, love, and the word. Let us not get down from the wall (1 Cor. 15:58).

6. God will uphold justice perfectly

God is a perfect, omniscient God. Nothing escapes his notice. He is perfectly good, too, which means evil will not prevail. Regardless what someone appears to get away with, they will stand before God in the judgment (Rom. 12:17-21, Rev. 20:11-15).

7. We are all liars and sinners

An election fraud allegation is to say that lying occurred; massive, consequential lying. Among the list of things God hates, lying is mentioned twice (Prov. 6:16-19). However, people are lying every day; politicians, employers, employees, nobodies, and neighbors. Everyone lies. Lying can no more be separated from humans than their shadow. “Let God be true and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4). That means we, too, have lied. No one is exempt. God is the only One who has never lied nor will ever.

Our lies may not be as socially consequential as others, but God is the one we stand before. On top of being liars, we are all atrociously unholy before the holy God of the universe (Rom. 3:10-19). This God requires perfection (Matt. 5:48). So, we have nothing to offer God except wickedness and weakness in and of ourselves. Due to our nature and doings, we stand guilty and unacceptable before God. Since we have all sinned against a holy God, an individual who never orchestrated widespread voter fraud deserves to spend eternity in the same hell as someone who did (Rom. 2:1-5).

8. Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave

However, God did not leave us to ourselves. Moved by his own compassion on sinners, and not because of anything good or righteous in us, God looked upon us with pity (Rom. 3:10-12, Eph. 1:3-6). Incredibly, our offenses against God in thought, word, nature, and deed did not move him to justly boot us all into hell. No, far from it. He radically humbled himself by joining human nature to himself and was born a baby (Phil. 2:5-7). Though he deserved unceasing worship from every human, Jesus received scorn, hate, and a humiliating and brutal crucifixion (Phil. 2:8). He received all of this on purpose in obedience to his Father’s plan to atone for the sin of his people (John 10:18). Though thoroughly sinful, Jesus so loved his people that he referred to them as, “My sheep” (John 10:26-27). Jesus then rose from the grave victorious, validating his saving work for his sheep. This is a great love, indeed. And it has everything to do with those struggling with the unrighteousness around them: we’ve all sinned, Jesus died and rose for us, and our greatest need has been met.

9. We are to pray

As every human nation and government will be filled with unrighteousness, God now calls his people to pray.

“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Tim. 2:1-2).

We are to pray for so many encouraging reasons: God hears (Ps. 65:2), God answers and works through prayer (1 Sam. 1:10-11, John 15:7), we are commanded to (1 Tim. 2:1-2), it shows that we are depending on our sovereign God (Luke 11:8), and it is an act of worship whereby God brings glory to himself (Rev. 8:3). If we find ourselves in the rut of angst at times, let us pray. We are to pray and pray and pray, and not lose heart (Luke 11:5-8, 18:1-8; Thess. 5:17).

10. Heaven will be great

Jesus often mentioned that we are to live for our permanent, future, unseen, and eternal home with him and all the redeemed (Matt. 16:24-27). While being present and prayerful, this world is passing, visible, dying, and temporal (1 John 2:17).

In heaven, there will be no voter fraud. They’ll be no voting, for that matter. Why should there be? The forever King will be the single most loving, wise, righteous, just, and perfect Individual in the universe, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ (Isa. 9:6-7, John 1:17, Phil. 2:8-11).

“And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one” (Zech. 14:9).

Of course, more could be said here. As God’s people, we are abundantly furnished with what we need to face these rocky times in a manner pleasing to him. Whatever happens, may the Lord’s church abound in faithfulness and fruitfulness.

#long post #but an important one

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

So, nuisance lawsuits will ruin abortion providers, along with anyone accused of aiding and abetting—or intending to abet—an abortion. And the enforcers will be ordinary citizens.

Today’s events make that a reality.

When they were killed, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were trying to register Black people to vote.

—-

Notes:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/437665-texas-gop-leaders-drop-constitutional-carry-bill-after-gun-rights

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/16/texas-permitless-carry-gun-law/

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1033068542/texas-voting-restrictions-bill-abbott-republicans

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/texas-abortion-supreme-court-roe-wade.html

Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DCBREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals, the Supreme Court REFUSES to block Texas' six-week abortion ban. Opinions here:

s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclo…

3,936 Retweets5,180 Likes

September 2nd 2021

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/1/21350679/supreme-court-border-wall-trump-sierra-club-stay-stephen-breyer

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/11/21356913/supreme-court-shadow-docket-jail-asylum-covid-immigrants-sonia-sotomayor-barnes-ahlman

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #Texas #repressive legislation #abortion #women #women's rights #equal rights #voting rights #Texas Taliban

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snkpolls · 3 years

Text

SnK Episode 66 Poll Results (for Anime Only Watchers)

The poll closed with 102 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results for the Anime Only Watchers’ poll. If you wish to see the results for the Manga Readers’ poll, click here.

Anime only watchers, beware of spoilers if you venture over to the manga readers’ poll results.

RATE THE EPISODE 96 Responses

“Assault” got fantastic reviews from anime watchers, with the majority (93.8%) ranked the episode a 4 or a 5. No one seemed to have negative feelings about the episode this week.

can't wait for the next

epic

amazing

BEST

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ACTION MOMENTS WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 96 Responses

The most favored action moment among anime watchers, at 29.2%, was seeing Eren using Porco’s titan as a nutcracker to defeat Lady Tybur. Following closely behind, at 27.1%, people most enjoyed Armin’s reintroduction as he blew up the harbor with his Colossal atomic blast. 24% most enjoyed seeing Mikasa fillet Porco’s legs, and a small 9.4% felt the most hype when Sasha and Jean helped take the Cart Titan and the Panzer Unit out of the fight.

armin supremacy

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MOMENTS MADE YOU FEEL THE MOST EMOTIONAL? 95 Responses

In contrast to the action were the scenes that made us feel some emotions. 25.3% were most emotionally affected at Mikasa’s sorrow watching Eren doing something cruel to another human being. 26.8% felt the most for Armin in this episode as he looks down on the horrific aftermath of his explosion. 12.6% empathized most with Reiner as he made himself wake up despite still wishing to die. The remaining scenes that got people choked up, in order: Finally getting to see Hange again, Porco’s pleas as he’s forced to kill Lara Tybur, Gabi and Falco yelling out for Reiner to save Porco and help them, and Falco pleading with Jean not to kill Pieck.

Hange <3

ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW EERIE DID YOU FIND THIS IMAGE OF THE WAR HAMMER TITAN? 94 Responses

MAPPA drew an eerie shot of the War Hammer Titan near the beginning of the episode as she takes her final blow against Eren. Overall, people seemed to be neutral about the image, though more people found it to be closer to the stuff of nightmares than those who did not.

REGARDLESS OF HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT GABI’S CHARACTER, HER SEIYUU TRULY WENT ALL IN ON HER SCREAMS FOR REINER. ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW BONE CHILLING WAS HER PERFORMANCE? 93 Responses

The majority of anime viewers were taken aback by Gabi’s seiyuu’s performance, with 64.5% ranking it a 4 or 5. A smaller amount (14%) were less impressed by the acting and found the screams more annoying instead. 21.5% were more or less neutral.

Gaby's scream were... So desperate, so real.... I was chilled to the bones.

SOME FANDOM SPACES SEEM TO BE MORE POSITIVELY RECEPTIVE ABOUT THE CGI IN THIS EPISODE. WHERE DO YOU FALL ON THE SPECTRUM? 94 Responses

Overall, the reception to the CGI this episode has vastly improved over last week. 82% total felt that MAPPA’s use of CGI was a big improvement and that they continue to get better at it. Only 5 people felt more continued disappointment this week.

EREN MENTIONS THAT LARA TYBUR IS CRYSTALLIZED LIKE ANNIE, AND THAT HIS TEETH ARE USELESS AGAINST THAT. DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE SURVEY CORPS HAS TRIED TO HAVE ANNIE EATEN? 93 Responses

In general, respondents didn’t want to make a call either way about whether the Survey Corps has tried to have Annie eaten or not, with 40.9% voting a simple “maybe.” 34.4% believe that Eren’s words insinuated that he has experienced an attempt to eat a crystallized shifter before, while 24.7% feel certain that Annie has been left untouched all this time.

WE SEE EREN TRANSFORM FOR THE THIRD TIME IN A SHORT PERIOD IN THIS EPISODE, A STARK CONTRAST TO THE BEGINNING OF SEASON 3 WHEN HE COULDN’T DO SO WITHOUT HIS TITAN SEVERELY DEPLETING IN STRENGTH. WITH THIS, ALONG WITH HIS ABILITY TO REGENERATE QUICKLY BY HIS OWN WILL, HOW IMPRESSED ARE YOU WITH HIS MUCH IMPROVED ABILITY TO HANDLE HIS TITAN POWER? 92 Responses

Eren has improved vastly in terms of controlling his titan power since the earlier seasons of the anime. 73.9% altogether felt very impressed with his improvement, while 18.5% didn’t think it was any big deal at all.

Eren is such a badass. I am totally proud of him.

ZEKE CRYPTICALLY DECLARED THAT EREN IS “NOT HIS ENEMY.” WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS MEANS? 90 Responses

We haven’t had a lot of insight into Zeke’s thoughts and feelings much this season, so hearing him declare Eren as not being his enemy may have taken some by surprise, though he quickly follows this statement up by stating Levi comes first. 34.4% of viewers believe that this was a heartfelt statement and that it has something to do with Zeke telling Eren back in Shiganshina that he was going to save him. 22.2% believe it was a dismissive statement and that Zeke didn’t see Eren as a threat so much as he wanted to deal with getting Levi out of the picture first. 15.6% took this as a signal that Zeke’s loyalties may not be with Marley at all. The remaining respondents have already been spoiled about future plot developments.

WE FINALLY GET TO SEE ARMIN - AND HIS COLOSSAL TITAN! WHICH COLOSSAL TITAN DESIGN DO YOU PREFER? 96 Responses

This episode marks the first time we get to see Armin’s Colossal Titan form, so we asked which design fans prefer between Armin and Bertolt. It came close, though the slight majority think that Armin’s Colossal design is just a bit better than Bertolt’s classic mascot design.

ARMIN ASKS, “ARE THESE THE SIGHTS THAT YOU SAW, BERTOLT?” DO YOU THINK HE HAS SEEN SOME OF BERTOLT’S MEMORIES? 90 Responses

The majority (62.2%) believe Armin’s words prove that he has seen some of Bertolt’s memories over the last few years. 27.8% aren’t sure and simply voted “maybe.” A small 10% feel certain that Armin hasn’t seen any of Bertolt’s memories and can merely only speculate about the horrors Bertolt witnessed as the Colossal Titan.

LEVI TOOK DOWN ZEKE RATHER EASILY. IS ZEKE DEAD? 89 Responses

Just about everyone, aside from those who are already spoiled about future happenings, believe that Zeke went down way too easily for it to be true. 55.1% believe that he has gone completely unscathed from Levi’s attack one way or another. 10.1% believe that he’s at least injured, just not dead. A small handful don’t want to make a call either way and just a tiny sliver of the pie believes that Zeke may actually be dead for real.

It is a plane

JEAN’S THUNDER SPEAR DOESN’T HIT FALCO AND PIECK. HE QUESTIONS HIMSELF ON WHETHER IT’S BECAUSE OF HIM OR BECAUSE OF THE STEAM PIECK EMITTED. WHAT DO YOU THINK? 89 Responses

We’ve seen Jean struggle to kill another person before, so it’s not surprising to see him struggle with it once again when said person is just a child begging for the carnage to stop. 65.2% of respondents feel that the reason the thunder spear missed was ultimately due to Jean’s hesitation and unwillingness to harm an innocent child. 22.5% believe he had steeled himself to kill Falco but was only thwarted by Pieck’s steam. Some feel unsure about what ultimately affected the outcome, though some write-ins think it’s a combination of both.

I think it's a combination of both, I think that the steam and his reluctance to kill an innocent child is what caused him to completely miss.

I think both

both

Both?

WHO IS ONYANKOPON? 89 Responses

Hange and Armin were seen in the blimp with a new character named Onyankopon piloting it. But… where did he come from? 43.8% seem to believe that he is someone from another nation that has allied with the Survey Corps. 20.2% suspect that he is originally from Marley but has chosen to switch sides, and only 13.5% think that he’s a Paradis native we’ve never seen before.

I have no idea!!!

Jesus himself

WHERE DID THE SURVEY CORPS GET THE BLIMP? 89 Responses

Just as much as the new character is a mystery, so is the acquisition of an entire blimp! 30.3% believe that the blimp is something borrowed from an ally nation. 22.5% believe that it is stolen from Marley itself. 15.7% aren’t sure what to speculate, and only 11.2% believe that Paradis managed to figure this one out themselves.

WE SEE EREN’S TITAN SWALLOW THE BLOOD FROM LARA TYBUR. WHAT DO YOU THINK, DID HE SUCCESSFULLY STEAL THE WAR HAMMER TITAN’S POWER? 89 Responses

Nearly half of respondents are confident that Eren succeeded in his task to take the War Hammer Titan from the enemy. 25.8% think he most likely did, but are feeling confused as it’s been previously stated titans only transfer their power via spinal fluid. A small handful suspect there’s a possibility that Porco managed to swallow the necessary component to take the War Hammer instead of letting Eren have it.

Probably not, the titan that swallowed Eren whole in season 1 didn’t get his powers

%50 eren eat warhammer or %50 porco.

OVERALL, HOW DID IT MAKE YOU FEEL TO SEE EREN DOING SOMETHING SO COLD HEARTED? 90 Responses

Eren as a character has seemed a bit colder since the time skip, so we were curious about how people felt watching him assault Liberio and take out Lara Tybur the way he did. Reception of Eren’s actions is definitely a mixed bag. 27.8% are enjoying this new side of Eren, feeling he’s the “MF’ing GOAT.” 22.2% aren’t really sure how to feel about Eren’s actions yet and may need more context before making a final judgement. 20% just feel sad seeing Eren doing something so horrific, and 16.7% have lost any positive opinion they may have had about Eren at all.

Love to see Eren being a savage<3

Being given his rationale for his actions makes him a much more compelling character and I appreciate his gray morals more

It made me hate him, the way it felt to watch the Colossal and Armored Titans in Season 1.

Such is life

I think his character development is going in an interesting direction and I'm excited to get a more clear picture of why he's doing this in future episodes

I mean he always seemed to have a steak of evil in him since before. Kid killed people remorselessly, even if it was to save a girl. It was surprising from an audience point of view, but with his character, maybe it shouldn't really be too surprsing.

FALCO MENTIONS THAT PIECK’S BODY CAN’T HEAL FAST ENOUGH. DO YOU THINK SHE’LL MAKE IT OUT OF THIS ALIVE? 89 Responses

Pieck did not have such a good time this episode… Explosive injuries all around. When it comes to her fate in the next episode, a plurality (46.1%) seems to believe she’ll make it out alive, in contrast to 9% who think she’ll perish. Just under a quarter (23.6%) can’t be certain and 21.3% note that they’ve been spoiled already.

WHEN REINER AWAKENS, HIS ARMORED TITAN APPEARS TO TAKE ON A DIFFERENT FORM. THOUGHTS? 93 Responses

Reiner’s so handsome :3 and so is his Titan form this episode. An interesting development! What could it mean? Just under 50% seem to believe it represents how broken his soul is, 19.4% are just like the writer of these text blurbs and think the Titan form is cute. A little over 17% think it’s simply a rather cool structure and finally, a small minority are just yearning for his old form to return.

lol weird combination of reiner and titan i.e. when titan dies he ded

I'm just wondering why it looks so different.

squidward

Handsome squidward lol (I honestly don't have feelings on it either way)

why does it look like that 😭

Meh

Maybe he's weakened? The armors in his arms were also malformed.

DO YOU THINK PORCO WILL DIE NEXT EPISODE? 90 Responses

Porco was not treated well by this episode… Sheesh. Will the next episode do better by him? Well, just under 29% think he won’t die, at least. An equal amount of people believe he will, in fact, perish and were also spoiled about his fate (23.3%). 24.4% simply aren’t sure. Such an even pie chart!

THE NARRATIVE HAS LAID OUT A CLEAR FOUNDATION TO ALLOW THE AUDIENCE TO EMPATHIZE WITH CHARACTERS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM. WITH THE DEVELOPMENTS OF THIS ARC, WHICH SIDE OF THE CONFLICT DO YOU FIND YOURSELF EMPATHIZING WITH THE MOST AS A WHOLE? 90 Responses

Sympathy and Empathy for everyone! When it comes to solely empathizing with one half of the cast, the results are rather close! 22.2% find themselves solely (or rather largely) attached to the old Survey Corps, in contrast to 21.1% who happen to solely (or rather largely) be attached to the new-ish Warriors. On the other hand, when mentioning the more “differing” options, 48.9% of responses noted that they find themselves more attached to the SC, while still caring for the Warriors, in contrast to the 7.8% stating the opposite.

I've grown to love the Warriors throughout this season but watching them get wrecked one by one like that was simply incredible...especially that dumbass Porco, he took the fattest L ever Idk how its possible but every episode gets better than the last one. Bless MAPPA!

Fuck the Warriors

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

It was Fire, finally Levi could take his revenge from zeke

Easily one of the best in the series. Mappa really found their feet with the CGI and it was clearly a mammoth task due to all the different titans and ODM scenes. Everything was so much cleaner this episode. I have not yet been majorly spoiled, so seeing Eren use Porco to kill Lara was literally so energizing, reminded of how I felt when I first watched SnK. Did everything go a little too smoothly for the Survey Corp? Yes. I want to believe our friends will win, but i have my doubts. Im excited to see how this battle will play out because I have know idea where it's heading.

Good god can Eren kill Gabi next she's freaking annoying xD

One of the Panzer Unit's members had in his cart area thingy.

Gave me what I wanted

I've never so afraid and sad while watching this series

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 91 Responses

Thank you again to everyone who participated!

#snk poll #snk polls #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #snk #aot #snk spoilers #snk s4

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Part III of my series about the changing face of L.A. Click for Parts I and II.

I ended Part II with a look at how L.A. County’s Hispanics are habitual nonvoters. Let’s pick up seamlessly from there, in Compton. Compton used to be so black (over 85%) that at my high school we had a litany of “Compton so black” jokes.

…

Today, the birthplace of “gangsta rap” be not black at all. At last count (prior to the 2020 census), it was 68% Hispanic and 27% black, and I’d bet my house that the new figures will show that the Hispanic number has risen beyond 70% and the black has dropped below 25%.

Compton so Mexican its city hall’s a Home Depot parking lot.

Now dig this: In a city that’s roughly one-quarter black and almost three-quarters Mexican, of the eight elected officials (mayor, city attorney, city clerk, treasurer, and four councilpeople), only one is Hispanic. All the rest are black. And it gets better. That one Hispanic councilman won his election by just one vote, and our Soros-backed DA is prosecuting the guy for fabricating the one vote that put him over the top. Turns out the bean only ran because a black guy who’d lost his primary made a deal with him to run in his stead in exchange for giving the failed black candidate a lucrative city commissioner position if he won, and together they faked the winning vote.

Can you wrap your brain around that? The city is 70% Hispanic, and the only Hispanic council member, who only ran because a black dude made him, won by just one vote, and that vote had to be faked.

Get my point now about Hispanics not voting?

I mean, imagine a city that’s 70% black, but only one out of eight city officials is black. And then the county DA tries to nullify the vote that got that one black elected. There’d be riots! Neighborhoods would be burned to ash. Don Lemon would be screaming about “equity,” and the Biden Justice Department would be investigating the DA.

But Mexicans don’t care. They’re fine with letting the black minority pretend to be da Emperor Jones. That’s how little participatory democracy matters to them. And Dems have no desire to “enfranchise” Compton Mexicans because blacks are their most reliable and manipulatable minions. Never trade a slave for an independent contractor. Plus, as I discussed last week, when Mexicans do vote, it’s all over the map. As Newsweek contributor Richard Hanania pointed out regarding polls that show California Hispanics divided 50/50 on the Newsom recall (blacks are 65/35 against it), “I feel like it’s fun living in a state with many Mexicans because you get a wildcard aspect to politics. Keeps things exciting.”

…

So what we know is that Mexi voting ambivalence is resilient. Would it be equally resilient to rightist coercion? Who knows; no rightists out here are testing the waters. The Hispanic rejection of affirmative action was due in large part to a general dislike of blacks. And in February when the black- and Jew-run L.A. school board defunded all campus police and redirected the $25 million LAUSD security budget to a program to fund the education of only black students, the discontent among L.A. Hispanics was palpable. Blacks make up barely 8% of LAUSD students (Hispanics comprise over 70%). Hispanic Twitter exploded with fury over the “black-only” payday coming at the expense of campus security, and the L.A. Times was forced to admit that Hispanic support for campus cops was massive, especially compared with support from non-Hispanic whites (a whopping 67% to 54%).

So did our local “Republicans” try to make hay out of that? Of course not, because to do so would risk offending blacks, and the GOP establishment has sworn a blood oath that it shall never allow itself any forward motion that might jeopardize its (zero) chance of “winning the black vote.”

There could literally be one black man left in L.A., and the GOP would sacrifice everything for his favor.

…

So, our Mexicans are untested, and our rapidly decreasing blacks, our gradually increasing Asians, and our moneyed and influential secular Jews are a lost cause. What about our non-Jewish non-Hispanic whites?

Ay yi yi, they’re the woist of all. The leftist ones represent the bottom of the barrel of self-hating “please genocide me before I enslave again,” “I hope my son goes tranny so that my foul DNA might dead-end with my progeny’s amputated penis” wastes of space. The mostly non-Jewish white upscale deep-blue city of Manhattan Beach, for example, is filled with self-flagellating WASPs who spend their time trying to make their safe city less safe by “giving land back” to blacks who were supposedly racisted out of town in the 1920s.

And now Manhattan Beach is regularly visited by black criminals, from serial rapists to boardwalk thieves to a home-invasion attempted murder just a week ago. I’m sure the guilt-ridden Robin DiAngelos of Manhattan Beach excuse these crimes as justified reparations owed to noble negroes.

…

Worse still, our “rightist” whites—those who choose to be activists—are just plain batshit crazy. Our MAGAs are violent, self-destructive, foolish, and dim-witted (I’ve covered this before, and I’ll be revisiting it next week in a column that’ll post on the eve of the gubernatorial recall).

…

In largely red Beverly Hills (and surrounding Westside areas), the Persian, Israeli, and Orthodox Jews, who are not suicidal, are holding the line against the violent crime and property crime that still disproportionately come from blacks (ironically, as the county’s black community shrinks, the thugs are forced to venture beyond their comfort zone in search of victims, rather like how bears become more bold as their natural habitat shrinks). But what of the areas that are largely Hispanic? Well, our Hispanics (as the Times pointed out) have a more positive view of police than our whites. That’s something often overlooked by those who claim to study criminality in racial or ethnic groups. It’s never just about criminality; it’s also about acceptance of policing. Whites who dismantle the criminal justice apparatus are as much to blame for rampant criminality as low-IQ thugs. Portland is an example of how poisonous such whites can be; violent crime in that city isn’t the result of a huge population of blacks but a huge population of self-hating anti-cop whites.

…

Our Hispanics occupy a middle ground: between black and white on the criminality scale (not as high as the former, not as low as the latter), but better than both groups on acceptance of policing. Half of L.A.’s cops and sheriff’s deputies are Hispanic, and our sheriff, Alex Villanueva—an unapologetic kick-ass crime fighter—survived the George Floyd purge last summer because his fellow Hispanics backed him against the blacks and whites who sought his ouster.

A county can weather criminality if it allows rigorous enforcement. L.A. had a lower murder rate than it does today back when there were more blacks but also more enforcement. Now that blacks, leftist whites, and secular Jews have decided that enforcement equals genocide, the last hope for the county lies with the Westside Persian/Israeli/Orthodox Jews and the Eastside beans.

There’s a logic to this, as those groups mingle more than you might think. Be it as nannies, gardeners, construction workers, warehouse personnel, or restaurant staff, the Westside is where many Mexicans go to work every day.

As one of those Westside Jews (though an outlier, as I’m “red” without being Persian, Israeli, or Orthodox), I would absolutely throw in with the beans as opposed to the leftist whites or the MAGA whites. Both groups, like blacks, have become suicidal. And suicidal people are dangerous.

Yes, Mexis have gangs, and you don’t want to walk down certain Eastside streets at night. Big shit; no one has reason to except those who live there. In the 1970s those areas were worse when they were black.

But Mexicans do the scut work around here, they don’t riot when one of their own is arrested (indeed they arrest their own), and they aren’t dangerously self-destructive.

I’ll take it.

Not that I have a choice; it’s the way it’s gonna be, demographically, whether I like it or not.

But it’s not the worst-case scenario, or even the second-to-worst. And these days that’s good enough.

#david cole #taki's magazine #los angeles #compton

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Minneapolis Braces for Verdict in Floyd’s Death (NYT) MINNEAPOLIS—Around midday last Monday, Samir Patel received a phone call from his friend, a dentist: Gunshots had rung out, his friend told him, and the contractors who were rebuilding the office he lost in last year’s unrest had fled. He was boarding up, and he told Mr. Patel he should move quickly to protect his own business, a dry cleaning shop. Elite Cleaners, Mr. Patel’s shop, is on a side street, not far from the shell of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station house, which burned last year in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The surrounding community of Lake Street, a corridor of immigrant-owned businesses—taquerias, furniture shops, liquor stores and cafes—was devastated by looting in the days of protests and the riots that followed. The city has said that the unrest led to $350 million in losses, with more than a thousand buildings either destroyed or damaged. As the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer charged with murder in the death of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, draws to a close, the city is on edge, fearing that a not-guilty verdict would bring anger, chaos and destruction once again.

New migrant facilities crop up to ease crowding, again (AP) For the third time in seven years, U.S. officials are scrambling to handle a dramatic spike in children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, leading to a massive expansion in emergency facilities to house them as more kids arrive than are being released to close relatives in the United States. More than 22,000 migrant children were in government custody as of Thursday, with 10,500 sleeping on cots at convention centers, military bases and other large venues likened to hurricane evacuation shelters with little space to play and no privacy. More than 2,500 are being held by border authorities in substandard facilities. So many children are coming that there’s little room in long-term care facilities, where capacity shrank significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, minors are packed into Border Patrol facilities not meant to hold them longer than three days or they’re staying for weeks in the mass housing sites that often lack the services they need. Lawyers say some have not seen social workers who can reunite them with family in the U.S. Both Donald Trump and Barack Obama faced similar upticks in Central American children crossing the border alone in 2019 and 2014. The numbers have now reached historic highs amid economic fallout from the pandemic, storms in Central America and the feeling among migrants that Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor.

Students’ struggles pushed Peru teacher to run for president (AP) As schools across Peru closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pedro Castillo tried to find a way to keep classes going for his 20 fifth- and sixth-grade students. But in his impoverished rural community deep in the Andes, his efforts were futile. Seventeen of the students didn’t even have access to a cellphone. Tablets promised by the government never arrived. “Where is the state?” Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press after a day of planting sweet potatoes on his own land. It was the last straw for Castillo, who over 25 years had seen his students struggle in crumbling schools where teachers also cook, sweep floors and file paperwork. He’d already dabbled in activism with the local teachers’ union and helped lead a national strike in 2017. But now he went further, tossing his name into a crowd of 18 candidates in Peru’s presidential election. Defying the polls, the elementary school teacher came first in the April 11 voting, albeit with less than 20% of the overall vote. The stunning result gave him a place in June’s presidential runoff against Keiko Fujimori, one of Peru’s most established political figures and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. It is her third attempt to become president. Castillo’s unlikely campaign comes at a turbulent time for the South American nation that has suffered like few others from the COVID-19 pandemic. It recently ran through three presidents in a week after one was removed by congress over corruption allegations. Every president of the past 36 years has been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned. One died by suicide before police could arrest him.

New direction needed: EU launches website for citizens to discuss its future (Reuters) The European Union launched on Monday a website for citizens to debate the future of the 27-nation bloc as the exit of Britain, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of nationalism force the EU to reflect on how it wants to develop. The website, available for contributions in the EU’s 24 official languages, is part of what EU institutions call the Conference on the Future of Europe—a forum for debate to help identify issues the EU needs to address in the changing global context. “The conclusions of the conference could be the backbone for reforms in the Union in the future,” one of the leaders of the initiative, member of European Parliament and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a news conference. The website prompts debates on subjects including climate change, the environment, health, the economy, social justice and jobs, the role of the EU in the world, values and rights, the rule of law, security, digital transformation, democracy and migration. Citizens can also launch their own topics.

Cheating at Greek universities (Foreign Policy) Greek universities are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their students as remote learning takes the place of traditional education. Professors have noted surprisingly high marks from previously poor students, raising suspicions that the students may be using underhanded tactics. “Result averages are up, and people we haven’t seen in years are showing up for exams because the system makes it easy to cheat,” Kostas Kosmatos, an assistant professor of criminology at Thrace’s Democritus University told AFP. Sofia, a psychology student, admitted to have taken two exams “on behalf of two of my friends and nobody realized.” Resourceful students have created technological workarounds to boost their chances during exams, crowdsourcing answers in live chats with students at the University of Crete even enlisting a linguistic expert to help them during exams. “But even he got a verse wrong,” Angela Kastrinaki, dean of the University of Crete’s literature department, told AFP. “So I got 50 papers with the same mistake. It was funny.”

Russia Expels 20 Czech Diplomats as Tensions Escalate (NYT) A day after the government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russia’s military intelligence agency for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be ejected in response. The expulsions signal further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an intensity not seen since the Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to a large-scale hacking of American government computer systems. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the Czech accusations “absurd” and accused the government of being an American puppet. “In an effort to please the U.S.A. following recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this instance even exceeded its overseas masters,” the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Montenegro’s billion-dollar dilemma (NYT) Few Europeans thought it was a good idea for Montenegro to take a mammoth loan from China to build a highway. Now the tiny, mountainous country is asking the European Union for help to repay the debt—and the answer, so far, has been no. The situation in Montenegro is the latest skirmish in an escalating global push for influence by China, which has made inroads in economically weak countries by offering loans that demand loyalty to Beijing but otherwise have few strings attached. Montenegro’s first debt payments are due this summer. The $1 billion loan is nearly a fifth the size of the country’s entire economy. Montenegrin leaders say they won’t miss their loan payment this summer even if no E.U. aid is forthcoming. European officials said they wanted to help Montenegro but were searching for a palatable way to do so. Linking the aid to the loan too directly could be politically difficult, since many E.U. officials do not want to be in the position of effectively paying down a Chinese loan that E.U. leaders warned against in the first place. “China has been filling any opening it felt it could,” said Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank. “Local capitals were hungry for cash, particularly on big development issues like infrastructure. And the Chinese were willing to go places where Western institutions were not.”

Afghan Women Fear the Worst, Whether War or Peace Lies Ahead (NYT) Farzana Ahmadi watched as a neighbor in her village in northern Afghanistan was flogged by Taliban fighters last month. The crime: Her face was uncovered. People silently watched as the beating dragged on. Fear—even more potent than in years past—is gripping Afghans now that U.S. and NATO forces will depart the country in the coming months. They will leave behind a publicly triumphant Taliban, who many expect will seize more territory and reinstitute many of the same oppressive rules they enforced under their regime in the 1990s. The New York Times spoke to many Afghan women about what comes next in their country, and they all said the same thing: Whatever happens will not bode well for them. Whether the Taliban take back power by force or through a political agreement with the Afghan government, their influence will almost inevitably grow. In a country in which an end to nearly 40 years of conflict is nowhere in sight, many Afghans talk of an approaching civil war. “All the time, women are the victims of men’s wars,” said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. “But they will be the victims of their peace, too.”

Hard-line Islamists take 6 Pakistani security personnel hostage amid deadly clashes (Washington Post) A hard-line Islamist group on Sunday took six Pakistani security personnel hostage after days of deadly clashes in the northeastern city of Lahore over a French satirical newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad and the arrest of the group’s leader by Pakistani authorities. A senior police officer and two paramilitary fighters were among those taken after protesters surrounded a police station and stormed the compound, according to Lahore police spokesman Arif Rana. A week of violence across the country has left at least four dead, according to the protesters. Police officials say thousands have been arrested. The tensions driving the protests, led by the Islamist party Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan, have been simmering for months after French President Emmanuel Macron honored a teacher who was beheaded last year in France after he showed a class the cartoons depicting Muhammad. For many Muslims, depictions of the prophet are blasphemous and deeply insulting. Macron’s comments sparked protests across the Muslim world last year.

India’s capital to lock down as nation’s virus cases top 15M (AP) New Delhi was being put under a weeklong lockdown Monday night as an explosive surge in coronavirus cases pushed the India’s capital’s health system to its limit. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a news conference the national capital was facing shortages of oxygen and some medicine. “I do not say that the system has collapsed, but it has reached its limits,” Kejriwal said, adding that harsh measures were necessary to “prevent a collapse of the health system.” Similar virus curbs already have been imposed in the worst-hit state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The closure of most industries, businesses and public places Wednesday night is to last 15 days.

Pacific Ocean storm intensifies into year’s first super typhoon (Reuters) Strong winds and high waves lashed the eastern Philippines on Monday as the strongest typhoon ever recorded in April barrelled past in the Pacific Ocean, killing one man and triggering flooding in lower-lying communities, disaster officials said. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas, according to provincial disaster agencies. The core of Surigae, or Bising as the storm is known locally, is not expected to hit land. But with a diameter of 500 km and winds reaching 195 km per hour, parts of the eastern islands of Samar experienced flooding, while several communities lost power. The first super typhoon of 2021 foreshadows a busy storm season for the region in the year ahead, experts say.

Lebanon’s crumbling capital (AFP) Beirut’s roads are riddled with potholes, many walls are covered in anti-government graffiti and countless street lamps have long since gone dark. At night, car drivers creep cautiously past broken traffic lights and strain their eyes for missing manhole covers, stolen for the value of their metal. Many parking metres have been disabled in protest over an alleged corruption scandal, while cars are parked randomly on sidewalks. To many, the dysfunctional capital has become emblematic of a country mired in its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war after decades of mismanagement and corruption. Much of Beirut’s infrastructure started falling apart long before last August’s massive portside explosion killed more than 200 people, levelled the waterfront and damaged countless buildings. Amid the crisis, the Lebanese currency has collapsed and continues its downward slide at a sickening rate that in itself is deepening the problem. As the currency has dived by more than 85 percent on the black market, wary contractors are steering clear of any municipal repairs that are paid for in Lebanese pounds.

Eleven dead, 98 injured after train derails in Egypt (Reuters) Eleven people were killed and 98 injured on Sunday in a train accident in Egypt’s Qalioubia province north of Cairo, the health ministry said in a statement. The train was heading from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura when four carriages derailed at 1:54 p.m. (1154 GMT), about 40 kms (25 miles) north of Cairo. More than 50 ambulances took the injured to three hospitals in the province, the health ministry said. The derailing is the latest of several recent railway crashes in Egypt. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in March when two trains collided near Tahta, about 440 kms (275 miles) south of Cairo.

South Africa wildfire (Washington Post) Cape Town ordered precautionary evacuations of communities living along the edges of city landmark Table Mountain on Monday as firefighters struggled to contain a fire that gutted historical landmarks, including the oldest working windmill in South Africa and a library housing African antiquities at the University of Cape Town. The fire started Sunday morning near the memorial to colonial leader Cecil Rhodes and quickly spread uncontrolled beneath Devil’s Peak in Table Mountain National Park in an area popular with weekend hikers and cyclists. By Monday morning, strong southeasterly winds, which were expected to reach more than 30 miles per hour (50 km/h) later in the day, had pushed the fire toward densely-populated areas above Cape Town city. Well-known tourist sites, such as the Table Mountain aerial cableway, were temporarily closed. Heavy smoke engulfed the city forcing the closure of a major highway and other nearby roads. Hikers, park visitors, visitors to the nearby Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and hundreds of students from the university campus were evacuated on Sunday.

NASA’s Ingenuity Makes First Powered Flight On Mars (NPR) “Orville and Wilbur would be proud. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight on this planet. The flight itself was modest. The 4-pound helicopter rose 10 feet in the air, hovered briefly, and returned to the Martian surface.

#headlines #news

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theunvanquishedzims · 3 years

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Calming my post-election anxiety with sweet sweet logic

So Trump is a wannabe dictator with crazy screaming fans who are headed toward violent armed meltdowns. What’s to stop him from going full dictator and refusing to leave office?

I’m glad you asked!

You see, the major difference between wannabe dictators and actual dictators is ALLIES. Dictators are surrounded with tight security, aided by the military, cheered on by media that they control, and are either helped, encouraged, or just ignored by other countries with the power to stop them.

Trump has charged the Secret Service money for the privilege of protecting him and his family since day one. You remember the first year, when his wife and son refused to move to the White House so the Secret Service had to RENT FLOORS in TRUMP’S BUILDING to be close to them? And how his extended family went globetrotting and the Secret Service had to accompany them? And when Trump himself insisted on hosting people at his golf club, he made the Secret Service RENT GOLF CARTS from TRUMP’S CLUB to follow him while he went golfing?

The end result was that halfway through the first year of his presidency, the Secret Service could not pay their own wages. Because half their yearly budget had gone straight to Trump’s pockets. And that’s just financially. I think we all remember how the White House came down with Covid and Trump still insisted on Secret Service agents driving him around to wave at people. He has not been kind to the people who are sworn to protect him. These people have had a front-row seat to his circus since 2016. When the time comes from Trump to leave the White House and Biden to take over, I doubt they’ll betray the country out of loyalty to Trump. If anything, they’ll be the ones to drag him out.

As for the military, Trump insulted and fired four generals from his administration staff. He said on multiple occasions that soldiers who get captured or killed are suckers and losers. He refused to visit a cemetery to honor the dead because it was raining. He tries to pander to the military by massive increases in defense spending, but that money goes to capitalists who make weapons and war technology, not the soldiers or veterans. (He also hypocritically accused military officials of being in bed with those same companies.) In a poll of 1000 service members 50% said they disliked Trump. Overall, he doesn’t act like a leader, and the way he skirts responsibility (like taking charge during the pandemic) doesn’t appeal to a group that functions on trust in their leadership.

A proper dictator would have spent the last four years cozying up to his generals and making sure they knew the financial and social benefits of answering to him personally, not the office of the President. And while Trump did adhere to the adage “find a foreign foe” to unite people against, he badly misjudged what most US citizens consider “foreign.” He hasn’t found a villain that we would root for the military taking down, and the people he targets (Latinx, Blacks, immigrants, and people in countries our military has already devastated) are not a minority he can turn the majority of the country against, especially with how many of the former two serve in the military themselves. When the time comes for him to leave office, the military might be the first to cut ties with the wannabe Dictator-in-Chief.

Now, the media. They’ve been treating him like a joke candidate since day one, but after he was actually elected and took office they’ve started to take him more seriously. He’s gotten his catchphrase “fake news!” to catch on, but that doesn’t change the fact that under his administration news reporters have been harassed, illegally arrested, and generally poorly treated by Trump, especially if they’re women. He’s trashed talked everyone, with Fox News being the last bastion of semi-legitimate news that openly supports him (and their credibility has taken a big hit over it.)

Despite this support, in recently months Trump has been increasingly dumping on Fox, even throwing the mediator they provided for the debate under the bus, and risking alienating them in the process. If his supporters listen to him and start considering Fox part of Big Fake News, it might possibly be the death of Fox, leaving most of his supporters adrift and isolated from their source of right-wing news, and sending the more extreme fringes into the arms of conspiracy theory websites. (I’m not saying this is bad, being cut off from Fox and its toxic stream of “information” can actually help rehabilitate the right.)

Honestly, I don’t think Trump ever had a shot at controlling the media like a dictator would, mainly because of social media. He’s in love with attention, and Twitter has provided him a nonstop stream of it. No other President has threatened, insulted, promoted, or hinted at war over social media the way Trump has, and he gets so much direct feedback and interaction with the public and the world as a result. He could have leveraged that by buying the company (through a shell corporation, obviously) and setting it up as The One True Source of Information, manipulating public perception of him and his administration by keeping a tight grip on what information he let out.

But he’s just. Not. That. Clever. He blurts out everything that crosses his mind, leaving his administration to play clean-up on his messes, put out fires he keeps pouring gasoline on, and claim he’s joking when everyone knows he’s testing the limits on what he can get away with saying. He took advantage of the direct communication with legions of supporters, but seemed to forget that his detractors had equal access and would absolutely call him out on things he definitely said, it’s right there on his Twitter account, they have the Tweet pulled up on their phone right now. Instead of operating a single state-run media outlet while crushing all free press and limiting internet access like other dictators, he’s mooned the world’s cameras and acted surprised when they put his saggy butt on tv. “Fake news! That’s not my butt! THIS is my butt! [image attached]” he tweets. “Twitter is so biased, they haven’t censored any of Sleepy Joe’s photos!” he later tweets.

And lastly. The key to a dictatorship’s success. To prevent outside intervention, the country a dictator runs must be unimportant and ignored, wealthy and well-connected, or scary and well-armed. Minor warlords are the former, Putin is the latter, Trump might have weaseled his way into being the middle. But at the end of the day, America’s whole thing is new leadership every four years. It was revolutionary to replace a lineage of kings and queens stretching generations with a non-royal elected leader who only held office for four to eight years, but we’ve stuck to that for 200 years and everyone’s used to it by now. It would take a charismatic and powerful person to move the American people towards abolishing such a basic tenant of our democracy, and despite the mob mentality that lead a small portion of his supporters to chant “sixteen more years!” in the heat of the moment, Trump is not that charismatic. He’s not that smart. He’s not that well-connected. He’s not that savvy. He’s not that good at politics. And he’s not that powerful.

(I was going to say something here about him being the laughingstock of the world’s leaders and shouldn’t expect any outsiders to help him stay in power, especially since his tax returns came out and showed he owes people a ton of money that he doesn’t have, but this post is long enough so let’s cut to the chase.)

Trump is a greedy, small-minded man that has clung to power by appealing to the worst in humanity and scraping away at the best. But he hasn’t succeeded. He’s a sad old man who will say anything to be loved, and I don’t think he even knows what love is, so he’ll settle for attention. He doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have an army, and the only allies he has are using him as a political pawn to further their own interests. They will cut him loose the minute he stops being useful.

Now, the bad part: crazy screaming fans. Fringe groups on the internet. Mobs chanting “sixteen more years!” Men with guns and bombs and kidnapping plots, men trying to get into voting centers to destroy the election, men driving trucks with black flags that say FUCK YOUR FEELINGS, TRUMP 2020 (available on Amazon for $11.99, I wish I was joking.) I have no idea how many people in this country genuinely love Trump. It is hopefully significantly less than voted for him. There are some big issues in this country that are make-or-break, and unfortunately by reason of running Republican Trump has aligned himself with some of them.

There are people who hate everything about Trump, but he put a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court so they’re voting for him. There are people who are uncomfortable with Trump, but they’ve forgiven their grandpa for saying worse at Thanksgiving dinner, so they’ll vote for him. There are people who don’t know a single thing about Donald Trump, but they see (Republican) next to his name on the ballot, so they vote for him. None of that means those people will side with him if he tries to make a move towards dictatorship.

Now there are people who love Trump. They’ve heard and seen the vile things he’s said and done, and are genuinely okay with it, because they are full of hate and rage and want to change the world to put themselves on top. I do not know how many of these people there are. I know they exist all over the country, not just in red states. I know some of them have guns and want a reason to use them, because they’ve been talking about it for decades. I don’t know if we can trust the police to side with us over them if fights start breaking out. (And I pray pray PRAY people de-escalate any fights, because monkey see monkey do, and one news report of a MAGA extremist shooting someone can inspire a hundred copycats can lead to full-on civil war like we've never seen.) I know we need to be careful the next few months, to take care of ourselves and watch out for the more vulnerable in our communities.

And above all, I know this: Trump is not going to keep this country. He got it through trickery and deceit and foreign influence and national indifference and people not taking him seriously. We’ve learned. We’ve grown. We’re taking him seriously now, and we will not let him take what we’ve already told him he can’t have. The election is over. He’s a loser. He’d better start packing his bags. Because he’s not staying in office.

#politics #long post #best case scenario: he tries to rehabilitate his rep as a man of the people #by pushing massive amounts of money into direct stimulus #funds it by cutting the military budget in half #everyone gets several thousand dollars next month #he screws over every white collar criminal he ever had help from #exposes a lot of corruption and behind-the-scenes stuff #and pardons every convict in jail on weed charges #''he really drained the swamp'' everyone says admiringly #''only took him four years and an impeachment''#then he gets convicted of crimes and runs away to Russia #where he's found dead in a snowbank #because PUTIN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND YOU USELESS LUMP #Melina inherits everything and never sets foot in the US again #the Obamas send her a gift basket every Christmas #at least one of his kids runs for president #and gets laughed out of the party #the kid in question might be Ivanka who gets a concerning amount of radfem votes #it's definitely not Barron though #(watch me eat those words in 21 years)

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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13 Keys to the White House: 2024

Historian Allan Lichtman has produced an astonishingly accurate system for predicting presidential elections; although first implemented in 1984, going backwards it correctly accounts for every election since 1860, with the only hiccup coming from the hotly contested 2000 election. He predicted Gore would win, and he wasn’t entirely wrong, there was just some brotherly nepotism and Supreme Court fuckery. Anyway, his system posits 13 yes or no scenarios about the state of the union; if at least 8 are true then the incumbent party wins another term, less than 8 and the challenging party wins. Simple.

It’s pretty early in Biden’s term to tell for sure, but we can make some soft predictions that we can refine over the next few years before solidifying in 2023 or 2024.

Midterm gains: after the midterms, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House than they did in the previous midterms. Almost certainly false. 2022 will see new districts drawn by the predominantly Republican statehouses, giving them an immediate advantage. Democrats have a razor thin majority as is, it’s never been this close to tied before, I can’t see them holding on when you take into account new census data and partisan gerrymandering.

No primary contest: is there no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Almost certainly true. Like him or hate him, Democrats are stuck with Biden. There hasn’t been a serious primary challenge in either major party since Reagan tried to take on Ford in 1976.

Incumbent seeking re-election: the incumbent candidate is the president. Again almost certainly true. There was an unspoken agreement that Biden would only run for one term, considering the fact that he’ll be 82 at the end of it, but o think he thinks he’s in for the long run now. If he does in office, Harris will become president and run for re-election herself, so the only way this would flip false would be if Biden just decides not to run again. In that case, the #2 might also flip false because I could see a weak senator like Joe Manchin running against Harris to get out of his own impending failure in West Virginia.

No third-party: no significant third party challenger. Too soon to tell, though I’m leaning towards true. The last nationally successful third party candidate was Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. He didn’t win any states, but he split some states nearly in thirds; Clinton and Bush and Dole all won states with less than 50% of he vote because Perot split the ticket. In 2000 Ralph Nader lost New Hampshire for Al Gore, giving it and the presidency to George W. Bush, and the same thing happened with Jill Stein in 2016 in the Midwest. Spoilers don’t need to be major on the National scale to have significant effects in specific states. Lichtman only flips this one false when a third party candidate wins 10% of the vote, so I’m going with true.

Short-term economy: the economy is not in recession. Probably true, but still too early to tell. We are either in the middle or nearing the end of a covid recession, I can’t see it lasting three more years without recovering at least a little, especially with the $2 trillion stimulus package they just passed. The economy is random, but if you look at a plot of unemployment since the Great Depression you will see that it consistently trends up under Republicans and trends down under Democrats. Trump was the only president is recent history to actually destroy more jobs than he created, so Biden could. It have inherited an easier path to victory. He shouldn’t be able to fuck up when the bar is so low, but I’m not holding out hope.

Long-term economy: real pet capita growth equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. Probably true, too soon to be sure. We’re so deep in the hole after Trump that any even remotely upwards tick will count as growth. I can’t see us dipping deeper than 2020 anytime soon, but then again that’s what they said in 2008, so who even knows?

Major policy change: the incumbent administration effects major change in national policy. False, I can call it now with utmost confidence. With Manchin and Sinema protecting the filibuster, Biden will get absolutely nothing substantive done in his first two years. He’ll end up losing one or both houses in the midterms, accomplishing even less in his next two! If he loses the Senate, it’s all over. It’ll be 2016 2.0, no more appointments, no more nominees, complete and utter obstruction until the Republicans take back he presidency and fill all the vacancies themselves.

No social unrest: no sustained social unrest during the term. Too soon to tell, but maybe true. 2020 was an anomaly, a once in a generation thing like 1968, so many crises all compounded together; the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the wild fires, the hurricanes, utter chaos. I don’t see 2024 being as bad, but don’t quote me on that.

No scandal: incumbent administration is not tainted by scandal. Who knows?!? Biden seems pretty white bread/plain vanilla/mayonnaise, but Republicans insist he’s the most corrupt politician since their own guys (Trump and Nixon; lowering the bar for all their successors). They milked Benghazi for years and found nothing, but still tanked Clinton’s integrity going forward, I’m sure they’ll try to milk whatever BS They can find on Hunter Biden, especially if they retake the House or Senate. Whether any accusations will stick is up in the air, but I could see Republicans impeaching Biden just because they can.

No foreign/military failure: incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign/military affairs. Who knows? Biden’s foreign policy isn’t significantly different than Trump’s, so there’s no telling what could go wrong. The Saudis will keep cutting people’s heads off, North Korea will never disarm itself, Iran will probably arm itself, Afghanistan will drag on forever, and I can smell war brewing in the Caucasus, Venezuela, and Bolivia. The future is as clear as milk.

Foreign policy/military success: incumbent administration achieves major success in foreign/military affairs. Probably not, but too soon to tell. Succeeding is very different from not failing, so 10 and 11 aren’t necessarily linked. You can not fail AND not succeed, they’re not mutually exclusive. I don’t see anything good happening overseas for a very long time. If we pull out of Afghanistan, the power vacuum will pave the way for ISIS 2.0, so our hands are tied there. Our best bet would be to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, but then we’ll just be back to status quo anteTrumpum, zero sum gain.

Charismatic incumbent: the incumbent party nominee is charismatic or a national hero. False, false, a million times false. Biden isn’t even beloved by his entire party, let alone the country; Republicans hate him even more than they ought to just because he wears a blue tie instead of a red one (his policies are so middle-of-the-road inoffensive to them that they shouldn’t have a problem with him, but Trump told them to, so they do). If Biden dies or refuses to run, Harris is even more divisive because she’s a woman and a disingenuous liar (she pretends to be super progressive, but she’s a cop, a Clintonesque moderate through and through). Obama in 2008 was a breath of fresh air which got very stale by 2012; 2008 was lightning in a bottle, and neither Biden nor Harris could ever dream of catching it again. They’re nowhere near as nationally beloved as the Roosevelts or Kennedy or Reagan.

Uncharismatic challenger: the challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. True, true, a million times true. It will almost certainly be Trump again in 2024, and he is even more despised than Biden. Sure, he’s beloved by his own party, but they make up less than half of he country. He never had majority approval and lost the popular vote twice, he’s a loser! If by some miracle he chooses not to run, the Republicans will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to appoint a successor. They’ll want one of his kids to run, maybe even his daughter in law who is looking to run for senate in 2022, but they’re tainted by affiliation to the Gonad Lump himself; they’re all the same. Ted Cruz sucks ass, Ron DeSantis might actually have an intellectual disability so I feel bad making fun of that piece of shit bastard, I pray that Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz suffer debilitating brain aneurysms on live TV, Nikki Haley is a nobody, and Lauren Boebert and Majorie Taylor Green are too regional to have national appeal (though Green will probably run against Raphael Warnock in 2022, so she will almost certainly be a senator by 2024). There are no nationally beloved politicians on either side of the aisle, so I would expect Republicans to cheat like they tried in 2020 to stop black people in swing states from voting.

So, the tally stands thus:

3 are certainly true

4 are probably true, leaning uncertain

2 are uncertain

1 is probably false, leaning uncertain

3 are certainly false

Democrats need 8 true to win, Republicans need 6 false to win. Right now, Biden had a slight edge because it is historically difficult to defeat an incumbent, Trump just sucked. I don’t see a rematch being significantly different, I suspect Biden would still win the popular vote, but Trump could eke by with the electoral college like he did in 2016, especially now that Republicans are taking over the judiciary in Pennsylvania (they’re changing the rules so that judges are elected in gerrymandered districts instead of statewide races). You saw how hard Republicans fought in 2020, they’re not going to change tactics in 2024, they’re gonna double down and try even harder next time. Fewer polling places, fewer drop boxes, shorter early voting, shorter hours, more stringent ID laws. Their MO is systemic voter suppression because their rhetoric has become too toxic to win on a national level. The majority of Americans vote against them in almost every election, general and midterm, but they continue to rule in the minority.

Something has got to give, this can’t go on forever, eventually the situation is going to boil over, be it in a civil war or a constitutional convention to overhaul the entire country; neither are probable, and either outcome would almost certainly hurt people of color in predominantly conservative states.

Biden thought he would be an arbiter president, he thought he would be able to unite the country, heal the divide, being both sides together under mutual compromise, but he failed to understand that Republicans hate him on principal. Doesn’t matter how much he tries to appease them, they still hate him because they have to hate him, even if they agree with him. It would be political suicide for any of them to side with Biden on anything, Trump has already vowed to support primary challengers, his presidency was the final nail in the coffin of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is dead, it hasn’t been alive in decades, and the only people who call for it are the minority party.

Trump is hard liquor, unappealing to anyone but his alcoholic voters; Biden is diet ginger ale, inoffensive and boring, nobody really wanted him, he only ran to try and settle everyone’s stomachs, and he hasn’t been very successful yet. He honestly believed he would be a neutral alternative for the alcoholics; that level of optimism would be adorable if it weren’t so pathetic. It’s gonna take a lot more than 12 steps to break the country’s addiction.

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scotianostra · 4 years

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Happy 77th Birthday to The Big Yin.

The comedian and actor Billy Connolly was born on November 24th 1942 in Glasgow, into a poor and not altogether stable family; he left school at age 15 and served as (among other jobs) a shipyard worker, a paratrooper in the Territorial Army, and a welder, the latter including a stint building an oil rig in Nigeria. Shortly after his return, Connolly quit working and, supporting himself with the money he'd saved, concentrated on learning to play folk music on the banjo and guitar. He became a regular on the Glasgow folk scene, instantly recognisable with his wild hair and beard; he drifted in and out of several bands before forming the Humblebums with guitarist Tam Harvey in 1965. Gerry Rafferty (later of Stealers Wheel and "Baker Street" fame) joined sometime later, and the group built a following with their live performances, which spotlighted Connolly's humorous between-song bits.

As Rafferty's songs became the Humblebums' primary musical focus, tensions among the members escalated; Harvey departed, and Connolly and Rafferty recorded two albums in 1969 and 1970 before disagreements over Connolly's concert comedy split them up in 1971.

Connolly soon began performing around Scotland and northern England, concentrating more on comedy but still mixing occasional folk songs into his act. 1972 saw the release of Connolly's first album, Live, and also the debut of The Great Northern Welly Boot Show, a musical play Connolly co-authored with poet Tom Buchan based on his experiences in the shipyards of Glasgow. The show was a hit in Edinburgh and London, and Polydor signed Connolly to a recording contract. In 1974, his Solo Concert album sparked protests from the Christian community over a rowdy routine in which Connolly described the Last Supper as if it had taken place in Glasgow; all the publicity only helped his career, and he was quickly becoming one of Scotland's favourite entertainers.

His 1974 follow-up album, Cop Yer Whack for This, became his biggest hit yet, going gold in the U.K., and the comic take on Tammy Wynette's "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." became a surprise number one hit single in 1975. That same year also saw Connolly put in star-making appearances on Michael Parkinson's chat show and at the London Palladium. He consolidated his success with a rigorous touring schedule over the next few years (including the massive Extravaganza tour of the U.K. in 1977), and continued to release comedy recordings on a regular basis into the '80s.

During the late '70s, Connolly began taking on acting roles in television and film productions, and tried his hand at playwriting, with somewhat less success. His first marriage dissolved in 1981 amidst an affair with comedienne Pamela Stephenson (whom he would later marry in 1989, the same year he shaved off his trademark shaggy beard). Taking up residence in London with Stephenson, Connolly continued his comedy career while taking on more theatrical and television roles.

Toward the late '80s, his appearances on American television became more frequent, which -- along with an unsold pilot for a Dead Poets Society series -- helped Connolly land a gig replacing Howard Hesseman on the high school honour-student comedy Head of the Class in 1990. His highest-profile American exposure was short-lived, however, as the series was cancelled after just one season; however, Connolly was back on American airwaves in early 1992, starring in the sitcom Billy. It too was cancelled after a short run, and after appearing in the film Indecent Proposal, Connolly returned to the U.K. (though he still officially resided in the Hollywood Hills).

In 1994, he hosted the acclaimed series World Tour of Scotland, which explored the flavor of contemporary Scottish culture. It proved so successful that Connolly hosted two further exploration-themed BBC series: 1995's A Scot in the Arctic, in which he spent a week on a remote northern Canadian island, and 1996's World Tour of Australia. Lent a new respectability, Connolly appeared in BBC Scotland's historical dramas Deacon Brodie and Mrs. Brown, the latter of which also featured Judi Dench and was released worldwide to much acclaim. n 2012, Connolly provided the voice of King Fergus in Pixar's Scotland-set animated film Brave, alongside fellow Scottish actors Kelly Macdonald, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, and Kevin McKidd. Connolly appeared as Wilf in Quartet, a 2012 British comedy-drama film based on the play Quartet by Ronald Harwood, directed by Dustin Hoffman. In 2014, Connolly appeared in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies as Dáin II Ironfoot, a great dwarf warrior and cousin of Thorin II Oakenshield. Sir Peter Jackson stated that "We could not think of a more fitting actor to play Dain Ironfoot, the staunchest and toughest of dwarves, than Billy Connolly, the Big Yin himself. With Billy stepping into this role, the cast of The Hobbit is now complete. We can't wait to see him on the battlefield."

In September 2013, Connolly underwent minor surgery for early-stage prostate cancer. The announcement also stated that he was being treated for the initial symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Connolly had acknowledged earlier in 2013 that he had started to forget his lines during performances, adding later he was finding it hard to remember how to play his banjo.

In 2017for his 75th birthday Glasgow bestowed upon Billy three 50 foot murals , to add to the many murals in the city, in 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups. He once again topped the list on Channel 5's Greatest Stand-Up Comedians, broadcast on New Year's Eve 2013.

Recently Billy has spoken about his Parkinson's saying that he now walks "unsteadily" and that his "hearing is going". He admits he would love to go back on stage but that "I don't know if I can do it with the state my mind is in." he appeared on Radio 2's Chris Evans show and told him "I don't think the way I used to," he went on..."....and steadily more symptoms come and it's incurable. It's not going to end. As a matter of fact, I had a Russian doctor in New York who said, 'You realise this is an incurable disease?'"And I said, 'You got to get a grip of yourself, stop calling it an incurable disease, say we have yet to find the cure. Give the guy a light in the tunnel.'"

Billy retired from his stage shows oficially last year, but he has kept himself busy, he hit our screens with a new series of his Great American Trail, which will follow him as he replicates the route taken by Scottish immigrants who came to America in the early 18th century. He also brought out a new book, called Tall Tales and Wee Stories, to launch it Billy's face was projected on to buildings in Galsgow and Edinburgh, as seen in the pics. The other pic is The Big Yins own art projected onto MacLellan's Castle in support of World Parkinson’s Day 2019. In November 2019, The Evening Times named Connolly as The Greatest Glaswegian as determined by a public poll.

In the independence referendum held in September 2014, Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. Connolly has previously expressed support for the union, this was no surprise to many, he has been friends with the Royal family for some years. However he said recently....

"Politically, [Scotland] is in extraordinary shape, It's beginning to stand alone, and they won't take crap anymore. They don't want to settle for whoever England votes for. Asked directly if he would support Scottish independence in the event of a second referendum, he replied: "I don't know. If Scotland would like it, I would like it."

I'll leave these poignant words of Billy's to end this post...Billy said he viewed old age as an adventure that was preparing him and "It doesn't frighten me - it's an adventure and it's quite interesting to see myself slipping away, as bits slip off and leave me, talents leave and attributes leave. "It's as if I'm being prepared for something, some other adventure, which is over the hill. I've got all this stuff to lose first, and then I'll be at the shadowy side of the hill doing the next episode in the spirit world."

#scotland #scottish #glaswegian #actor #comedian #writer #singer #musician

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