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theveryworstthing · 3 years

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So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class. I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace. I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway. This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

#long post #the addams family #Character Design #au #design challenge #i am incapable of doing a design challenge like a normal person #oh god i forgot the cut lol

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marvelsmostwanted · 4 years

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Can’t read the comments on political posts for self-care reasons so here is my blanket response to all of the people somehow still deciding whether to vote for Biden

I can’t relate to people who want to throw democracy out the window. If your worldview is so self-centered that you can’t comprehend that over 200,000 people are currently dead as a direct result of Donald Trump’s failure to contain the virus and inform Americans when he knew about it in February - a staggering loss that we have hardly begun to comprehend - and that he will put who knows how many more lives in danger if he wins again - such as immigrants and refugees at the US-Mexico border, women desperately seeking abortions if that right is denied to them, victims of COVID-19 because he will inevitably botch the distribution of a vaccine, DACA recipients who will get deported if it is repealed, victims of gun violence because there will be no gun control, those who will lose their lives without healthcare if/when the ACA is repealed, victims of hate crimes on the rise as his racist rhetoric increases, victims of unchecked racist police brutality, LGBTQ+ children and teens forced into conversion therapy in states where it is still legal, LGBTQ+ adults facing discrimination and hate crimes - then all I can say is for the love of God, try to think outside of your own little world and realize that this man is actively, right now, currently, destroying this country. We are not just well on our way down the road to fascism. Every day that this man remains in power, we are inviting it in. He has already done a nearly irreversible amount of damage. Completely irreversible, for some.

A non-vote, a third party vote, a vote for Trump - these are all acts of violence at this point, in my opinion. Vote for Biden like your life depends on it. If yours doesn’t, someone else’s does.

#sorry if that's too extreme for u but it's true #the closer we get to election day/doomsday the more i'm baffled that anyone is undecided #and the more i'm convinced that a lot of people who are 'undecided' are closet trump supporters #mine #biden 2020

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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It’s been a full month since Election Day, and Donald Trump still refuses to concede to Joe Biden. Instead, he continues to insist that he won, making baseless accusations of widespread election fraud and enlisting the aid of a comical crew of sycophants to press legal challenges to the vote totals in swing states—all of which have been laughed out of court. Trump’s ongoing efforts to overturn millions of votes have prompted a public debate over whether to describe his actions as a “coup” or something similar. This is just the most recent phase of a wider debate dating back to the beginning of Trump’s presidency over whether Trump represents a “fascist” or “authoritarian” rupture with the Republican Party pre-2016.

One of the leading critics of that interpretation has been Corey Robin, a professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of an influential and controversial 2011 book on the history of conservative thought, The Reactionary Mind. This week, I spoke to Robin about the Trump presidency as it enters its final months. In contrast to the popular conception of Trump as an incipient fascist dictator and a break with American liberal institutions and norms, for Robin, Trump threatens liberalism only to the extent that movement conservatism in general has over many decades, and is otherwise a weak leader whose power is largely constrained by broader political conditions. Whether or not one fully agrees with every point, Robin offers a provocative alternative to some of the more unhinged reactions to the Trump era from the self-proclaimed Resistance.

This interview has been lightly edited. It originally appeared in yesterday’s email newsletter, to which you can subscribe here.

David Klion: It’s pretty clear at this point that we are not going through an actual coup and that Biden is going to be inaugurated as president on January 20th, whether Trump wants to admit it or not. At the same time, nothing quite like what’s happening now has ever happened before in the United States. How would you describe what Trump and his dead-enders are doing, and how concerned should we be in terms of the stability of US political institutions?

Corey Robin: You can’t understand what’s happening now without a historical perspective on conservatism and the right. The right was born in response to the French Revolution, as a reaction against the democratic emancipation of the commoner. Across more than two centuries and many continents, the right has never lost that reactionary ethos.

But what the right learned, slowly, over time, was that to mobilize against a democratic and democratizing left, it could not simply assert a traditional, static, and familiar defense of hierarchy; instead, it had to mobilize a dynamic movement of the masses, a populist politics of the right to counter the masses of the left. That populism was never democratic, but it knew how to draw from the tropes of democracy to push back against democracy. It learned how to use the languages of racism, nationalism, imperialism, and sexism to give a broad circle of the masses a taste of privilege over their subordinates. The fruition of that long learning process—of using populist vernaculars against democracy—was the American right that emerged in response to the 1960s and the New Deal.

For all the talk of Trump’s populism and racism and nationalism, the fact is that he was far less successful at using those vernaculars to mobilize the masses than his predecessors on the right—Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush. Nixon and Reagan were re-elected with large popular majorities. Trump, like Bush, lost the popular majority the first time around, and unlike Bush, lost it a second time around.

What Trump and the Republican Party have grown increasingly dependent upon are not populism or mass politics of any sort, but rather the Electoral College, the Senate, and the courts. Historically speaking, this is a great—and terrible—reversion for the right, a return to the time when it depended not on its popular touch but on its control over anti-democratic state institutions. It makes today’s right a lot weaker than the right of the Reagan era, and makes it seem much more like the Tories of early 19th-century Britain.

This is why you now see Trump doing what he’s trying to do with the vote. The Republicans can’t win presidential campaigns the way they once did: Since 1992, they have won the popular vote exactly once. Their only hope now is a combination of the Electoral College and the courts.

Far from being concerned about US institutions being insufficiently stable or resilient enough to contain Trump or a similar figure, I’m far more concerned about the stifling stability and resilience of institutions like the Electoral College, the courts, and the Senate, and their ability to prop up Trump and the GOP.

DK: You’ve maintained from the beginning that Trump is actually a historically weak president, in spite of his authoritarian bluster. Can you elaborate on why you thought so back in 2017, how those predictions have been borne out since, and what makes Trump weaker than other recent presidents?

CR: I thought Trump was weak for two reasons, neither having anything to do with his skill or character, but with larger political forces and structures.

The first is that conservatism is an inherently reactionary politics that depends on the real threat of an active, emancipatory left: not the specter of a threat, not the discourse on Twitter, but an actual social movement that has taken state power and is engaged in a project of dispossession of elites. When the left is defeated or disappears, the right’s power ebbs. That is what has happened in the US. The left is, historically speaking, relatively weak, so it’s difficult for the right to get the juice it needs.

Trump’s presidency reflected that: Compared to the Republican presidencies of Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush, Trump’s was significantly less transformational, and its legacy is far less assured. Next to “law and order” and “the silent majority” (which Nixon made part of our political grammar), next to “the era of big government is over” (which Reagan bequeathed to Clinton as the ruling doctrine of the age), next to Bush’s war on terror and the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, none of Trump’s attempts to permanently transform the political climate—not of the Republican Party but of the whole political culture—seems even remotely comparable. With the exception of the tax cuts, Trump was hardly able to get much legislation through Congress; many of his executive orders will be undone by Biden; the only custodian of his legacy, ironically, will be the courts, which many had seen as the antidote to Trumpism and caretaker of the rule of law.

The second reason I thought Trump would be weak is that all presidents are elected to oppose or defend a larger political regime. A regime, in US political history, is the combination of ideology, interests, and policies that govern over an extended period of time. In American history, we had the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican regime, Jackson’s Democratic regime, Lincoln’s Republican regime, FDR’s New Deal regime, and now Reagan’s free market regime. Whatever the party of a specific president elected may be, he will be forced to operate under the larger regime’s assumptions and expectations of good governance. Bill Clinton was a Democrat, but he had to govern like a Republican; Eisenhower was a Republican, but he had to govern like a Democrat.

There are some presidents who are affiliated with a dominant regime, but the regime is vulnerable. Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter were those kinds of presidents, and they are considered to be among the weakest. From the moment Trump was elected, I thought he belonged in that Hoover/Carter category. The Reagan regime is increasingly unable to provide the answers and policies to govern the country, much in the same way that the New Deal seemed unable to offer answers during the 1970s. The fact of that weakness made Trump quite weak. Again, the fact that he was so unable to push through legislation, that his budgets were more liberal, in some ways, than Barack Obama’s, and that the Republicans, when they controlled all the elected branches of government, were not able to implement big parts of their program—all that suggests how weak the Republican regime is.

In the coming years, once the emotional context of Trump’s presidency fades away, I think more and more people will see just how weak he really was.

DK: The historian Timothy Snyder, among other prominent public intellectuals, has argued that Trump’s approach to the presidency resembles that of 20th-century dictators like Hitler or Mussolini. The obvious counter is that Trump is going to submit to the election result, but are people like Snyder completely off-base? Trump may be lazy and incompetent, and US institutions may be stronger than some predicted, but is it fair to characterize Trump and his hardcore supporters as far-right, illiberal, even fascist, and at the very least a test of how much strain the Constitution can endure?

CR: There is no question, in my mind, that Trump and his supporters are far-right and illiberal. I’ve said so from the beginning. One of my differences with Snyder and people who subscribe to the view that Trump is a fascist or authoritarian is that their desire to call Trump that often arises from a failure to understand conservatism more generally, which has always been a far-right and illiberal and anti-liberal form of politics. Many of the attributes people decry in Trump and his followers were primary features of the conservatism I was describing in The Reactionary Mind (and got a lot of flak from liberals for so describing). To my mind, the comparisons between Trump and Hitler or Mussolini come from people who only began thinking about American conservatism and the Republican Party when Trump came along.

I would also reject some of the premises of your question. The issue is not that Trump is lazy or incompetent, though he is. As I said in my previous answer, the real reason for Trump’s ineffectiveness has virtually nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the larger forces on the right that I discussed. Virtually any Republican president elected in 2016 (and I’m not sure anyone but Trump could have been elected) would have been as constrained in their effectiveness as Trump has been.

Conversely, I also think it’s wrong to say that the reason Trump didn’t prevail is that the institutions were stronger than people feared. This is part of an argument that is often falsely posed by liberals and the left: If you assert that Trump is weak and will fail, as I have said from the beginning, people assume that means that the institutions will constrain him. That’s nonsense: American institutions have often been the friend of the most authoritarian projects, as I argued in my first book, Fear: The History of a Political Idea. And in fact, to the extent that Trump’s politics had any juice at all, it was precisely because the institutions support that politics. Where would Trump be without the Electoral College or the Senate confirming his judges and justices—and where would Trumpism be under a Biden administration without the Senate and the courts?

It’s ironic to me that people would choose this moment, and Trump’s presidency, to assign the label “fascist” to the right, for what fascism is about, above all else, is a politics of strength and will. That’s why fascists traditionally loathe the constitutional order: because they think it constrains the assertion of political will. The irony of Trumpist/GOP politics is that it is completely dependent upon the constitutional order. In that regard, it’s almost the complete opposite of fascism.

DK: Okay, we’ve made it through the Trump era, almost, probably. But are we really out of the woods? How strong a president do you expect Biden to be, and is the US at any risk of drifting toward illiberalism in the foreseeable future?

CR: We’re definitely not out of the woods, but not for the reason I think you mean. What we’ve learned over the last decade—and what Trump’s bombast allowed many liberals and the left to avoid—is how much our political institutions constrain action. Assuming the Democrats don’t win the Senate seats in Georgia, we are going to reach the end of 2022 having endured 12 years of political immobility. That is, from Obama’s time in office after the midterms of 2010 to Biden’s time after the midterms of 2022, we’ll have had virtually no legislation dealing with any of the challenges of the day and a lot of executive orders that temporarily change things and then get undone by the next president. It seems so strange to me that people spoke so much of authoritarianism under Trump when what we’ve been seeing for years now, including the Trump years, is political impotence, the absence of political will. And without the left getting its act together, I don’t see that changing any time soon. That is something to be very worried about.

David Klion is the newsletter editor for Jewish Currents.

#jewish currents #fascism #trump #biden #history

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jorahssquire · 3 years

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Whether or not Trump successfully steals this election, he’s already stolen Biden’s victory -What it feels like to watch the challenge to Joe Biden becoming President Elect.

BY JOE BERKOWITZ

8 MINUTE READ

In my mind, the calendar always ended on November 3. Beyond some potential events and projects, that’s as far ahead as I dared imagine.

Whatever happened afterward would either be too horrible to contemplate in any depth, or would bring such tremendous healing relief that to consider the possibilities for even one second when they could still be taken away would be torture.

Only after the election would I allow myself to open the mental Pandora’s Box of what it would feel like to suddenly wake up each day in a world where Donald Trump is out of power and we could all take a breath and undo some of the harm he’d inflicted and maybe try to do some good.

I didn’t kid myself that a Biden administration would instantly solve the pandemic puzzle or bring the country together. At the very least, though, it would deliver consecutive days without a constitutional crisis.

It took until Friday, November 6, to understand that it was actually happening; that Biden was ahead by so much in Pennsylvania, his victory was all but assured. Some publications like Vox even called the election, though legacy outlets remained cautious. At that moment, I finally let myself comprehend the enormity of the moment and its attendant implications, but only a little.

I dipped a toe into a creek to test the water and ended up falling in entirely. All of what this victory meant finally started to truly dawn on me at once, and an ecstatic energy animated my very being. I let out an involuntary holler, and ran around my apartment, ending up on the balcony, where my joyous screams ripped through the calm of the day.

On Saturday, when the news finally broke that the win was official, my wife and I jumped and danced and made calls to family. We watched videos of New Yorkers and Philadelphians celebrating in the streets, and we went outside in Minneapolis to experience it ourselves, greeted by a cacophonous call-and-response of honking cars and applauding passersby. People were walking around in groups of five, brandishing glib and glittery homemade posters, drinking champagne straight from the bottle. There were the spontaneous revelers, mini-parades, and block parties of a rare religiously festive occasion. World leaders started congratulating Biden, who made a very normal if not particularly inspiring victory speech. It was a moment for the ages, complete with Rudy Giuliani’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco unfolding in the background, a reminder of just how ridiculous Trumpworld could be, and how it might feel to laugh at them now that they would no longer be in charge.

It was an ending and a beginning and it felt so amazing, I was glad I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine it when there was still a chance I might lose it. Then, by Tuesday, November 10—a week after the election—it was gone.

The victory hadn’t vanished entirely, but it was now tainted by the all too familiar crisis mode, another existential threat suddenly looming. I had expected Trump to be surly and uncooperative, and that he might not concede, so when those things happened, it was almost a relief to see how low and small it made him look. But my mistake was in thinking that the GOP didn’t really need him any more and would just let him twist in the wind.

Instead, by Monday it became clear that the bulk of the Republican party, including its leadership, were fully unified behind Trump. Everyone from Mitch McConnell to Ivanka Trump to Ted Cruz on down, all claimed a peculiar form of voter fraud that only affects the top of the ticket, and not the down ballot section, where Democrats lost as many as 10 House seats and failed to win the Senate. They’re all using the line that “every legal vote must be counted,” implying a surplus of illegal votes, only from Democrat voters. Bill Barr authorized an investigation into alleged electoral irregularities, causing a top lawyer at the Department of Justice to resign in protest. And finally, on November 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the country that, in the end, Donald Trump would prevail and remain president.

It was as if America had survived the climax of a horror move only to find out it was actually the beginning of a two-season Netflix series. That release of tension was instantly reversed, replaced with a deep spiritual exhaustion, and the feeling of being turned inside out and wrung dry.

No matter what happens now, whether Trump and the GOP succeed at stealing this election, under the paradoxical guise of preventing it from being stolen, they’ve already stolen our victory, and so much more.

One of the most excruciating aspects of witnessing this attempted theft is that it’s unfolding in exactly the way that experts predicted. Trump alleged in advance that any outcome in which he didn’t win would be the result of voter fraud, something he also suggested back in 2016. He also discouraged his own supporters from using mail-in ballots, despite the pandemic, because in his framing, they were so easy to manipulate. Democrats called out Trump’s maneuvering, and the fact that his appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy happened to be slowing down deliveries just before the pandemic election. Pundits speculated that Trump would claim victory based on the early, in-person votes, and that mail-in ballots would later erode his victory and that he would refuse to concede.

It was all so predictable that Bernie Sanders called every shot in advance exactly.

Considering all the Trump-inflamed scrutiny on would-be voter fraud, the election was heavily and thoroughly observed, including by an international panel Trump invited (which is now calling his accusations baseless.)

This broadly embraced charade relies upon tremendous bad faith. No legitimate evidence of voter fraud has been found—aside from the one Trump supporter in Pennsylvania who got busted requesting a ballot for his dead mom—let alone enough fraud to account for anything near the margins by which Trump lost. All claims to the contrary tend to be based on hearsay and shadowy evidence to support a preordained hypothesis.

The GOP is acting only on unearned suspicions and hostility. They clearly started with the conclusion that Democrats stole the election, and are now working backwards, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. They make broad statements that their observers weren’t allowed in, when they were, and that droves of dead people voted, when they didn’t. Disgraced scam artist James O’Keefe, who got busted in 2018 for trying to run a #MeToo sting operation on the Washington Post, is offering $25,000 rewards for testimony. All any takers have to do is lie and their voice will be worth more than the people’s voice, as long as enough soulless GOP jackals believe them.

So far, though, all of Team Trump’s cases are being laughed out of court. Either the judges outright toss them, or the hearings end with Trump’s defense admitting that they have nothing and are wasting everyone’s time.

Even the one “whistleblower” O’Keefe unearthed, and who set up a GoFundMe that raised over $120,000, has now recanted his testimony. (The personal fundraising appeal has since been removed.)

How on earth are we expected to accept, after four years of a presidency known for its dishonesty, that high-level officials can contest a legitimate election win on the basis of such amateur hour, fake fraud b.s.? Or that the GOP is owed the opportunity to kick the tires because of how unfairly they’ve been treated? Or that Democrats are just inherently suspicious and, according to Senator Lindsey Graham, can only win by cheating?

The nihilistic cynicism on display here is breathtaking. Trump decided the only way he could save face is to shroud his decisive loss in indecision, and delegitimize it in the eyes of his 70 million supporters. It’s the Birther conspiracy all over again, minus the racism.

The goal at this point might not even be to overturn the results, so much as just inject enough doubt into the proceedings that Trump voters refuse to believe the election wasn’t stolen. (Also, to raise money for Trump’s new leadership PAC and chip away at his debt.) Why would those voters accept the truth, when their leadership angrily swears otherwise? The best-case scenario now is that Trump supporters ultimately forego an actual street-level revolution for just angrily assuming the next administration is utterly fraudulent.

Some of their response depends on how this tumultuous post-game phase of the election ends. At the moment, Rupert Murdoch is dangling rumors of a historic book deal payday in front of Trump, which could cushion the blow enough to get him to go quietly. Or maybe he—in collaboration with McConnell, Graham, O’Keefe, and the rest—will find a way to invalidate the results. Or maybe the fraud allegations will only persist until a lawyer gives a damn compelling speech in a courtroom, and we get the full Aaron Sorkin ending.

Either way, Trump has stolen something from us that he can’t give back.

In addition to the fleeting feeling of victory, which already feels so long ago, and the sheen of legitimacy, he has stolen any naïve hope of Biden or anyone else uniting the country any time soon.

For a brief instant, I thought maybe if Trump was revealed as a bitter, sulking wannabe tyrant for all to see, we might start to agree on some things again. I had a modicum of optimism, which was bound to get crushed by the reality of a Biden presidency, but which felt incredibly refreshing.

It’s all gone now.

For the indefinite future, all those days in the calendar beyond November 3 now look identical to the days that preceded them: Constant chaos, frustration, lies, and irresolvable polarization.

Trump and his cohort have stolen this victory, stolen our optimism, and stolen Biden’s legitimacy.

Some of it can be restored, some of it cannot.

None of it can be forgiven.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Berkowitz is an opinion columnist at Fast Company. His latest book, American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, is available from Harper Perennial.

#GREAT Article #I'm not quite this cynical #YET #Trump completely sucks though #and the GOP absolutely disturb and disgust me #criminals and liars

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nickchivewright · 4 years

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Deliverance (1972) ☆☆☆☆

Ned Director: John Boorman

Writer: James Dickey

The film opens to the wide, expansive, mountainous regions of the Southern States of USA. We are tracking the cars of four friends who have banded together for one final canoe trip through a soon-to-be-gone region of the state. This region – including the river, a town, numerous houses and, outwardly, even its backwards inhabitants – will be flooded by an enormous artificial lake used to generate power for the local city. So the tone is set for Deliverance, a film which is principally about the inadequacies and ignorances of civilised, 20th century men in the wilderness; the mistakes they make, and their scrabbling to atone for these mistakes, often without any luck.

Ed, Lewis, Bobby and Drew arrive at the start of the river with both nervous fascination and patronising contempt for their surroundings, depending on the group member. They think they are alone, but they need volunteers to drive their cars back to the nearest town where the river ends. It turns out they are not alone. A selection of undesirables seep out of the surrounding forestry, and the few dilapidated houses, with disquieting stealth in order to meet the group. They are “mountain people”: filthy, inbred, and with all the physical and mental afflictions we might expect from inbreeding – and all carrying their own looks of contempt for these intruders.

Appearances can be deceiving, though, and through an impromptu ‘battle’, we quickly realise that the locals aren’t to be underestimated. Drew (Ronny Cox), the moral, sensitive heart of our group, is casually plucking at his guitar after the group has arrived at the river. He notices that a small boy, physically lame with an unnerving stare, is copying every note he plays. They begin to duel. (In fact, they play “Duelling Banjos”. A famous song before, the music has become inextricable with Deliverance now.) While Drew plays contentedly, smiling and looking in awe at the boy’s ability, the boy takes a more combative posture. At one point Drew gets lost in the song, and the boy thrashes his ukulele, without faltering, to finish the song and the duel. Ever the gentleman in defeat, Drew holds out a hand, only to be rejected by the boy. It wasn’t a game for him, it was a message.

The men begin their voyage downstream in two canoes. All the canoeing and stunts in this film were done by the cast themselves. This gives the audience a palpable sense of threat, because 3 of the characters – and, indeed, all of the actors – do not seem qualified to be in the rapids. It also means that there’s no need for any dubious editing: figures can move from the background to the foreground of the shot, over very real and very violent swirls of the rapids, and we can see that, yes, these figures in the canoes are indeed the lead actors of the film! This would never happen on film sets today but it makes a marked difference as a viewer. Similarly, Ed (Jon Voigt) really climbed a mountain face for one scene, and again, I cringed at this unmistakably real threat.

This realism also intensifies the now notorious rape scene. Squirm-inducing in 2020, it is hard to imagine how audiences reacted to this singular type of humiliation towards a white, male businessman in 1972. Halfway through the second day, Ed and Bobby (Ned Beatty) pull up their canoe to the river’s shore; the other boys are upstream somewhere. There is no music. The soundtrack is the familiar sound of insects and birds, unchanged since the first time the canoes went into water 50 minutes ago (film minutes). It is a serene sound of nature. Nature will continue to be the soundtrack over the next 8 minutes, as we watch two mountain men confront Ed and Bobby at gun point, forcing Bobby to strip naked. Bobby is then chased, exhausted, toyed with, ridden, forced to “squeal like a pig” and then, finally, raped. To have prepared the audience for this horror with a brooding soundtrack, starting from when they left their canoes, would’ve been obvious and less effective. By guiding the audience with a soundtrack, we remove one of the crucial reasons why the terrifying things that happen to us are so terrifying: there is no warning. Almost invariably, horror arrives in our lives unannounced, from medical diagnoses to rape. With everything else kept constant in the film to this point, such as the setting, pacing and soundtrack, we ask ourselves, how is this happening to them? Is this really about to happen? And our questions recede as the horror unfolds in front of us.

Shorty after, just before Ed is about to at the hand’s of these unsavoury mountain folk, Lewis (Burt Reynolds, of course) shoots the perpetrator through the heart with a bow and arrow, with the other mountain man narrowly escaping. Two questions then arise, one obvious and the other not so obvious: the obvious question is, in a region where everyone knows everyone, how long will it take before the mountain man brings his friends? The other is more subtle and might have been omitted in a lesser version of Deliverance, but is picked up here: what do they do with the body? While the other men seem to have made an implicit agreement amongst themselves already, only Drew remembers that a legal system and society exist outside of this sordid place, a fact so quickly forgotten by the others, to deal with these problems. Drew’s view is not shared by the others; and after a quick vote, it is decided that the dead man is to be buried and forgotten about – and nothing more is to be said on the matter.

As the men make their way back into the river and approach a new set of rapids, Drew, who’s been in a trance since the burial, willingly slumps into the water to his death. The whole affair is too irreconcilably wretched for him. His conscience has overwhelmed him. The men in the other canoe offer the opinion that he was likely shot by the other mountain man. Ed knows better, but in a curious case of self-denial, he begins to agree with them, and even looks for this phantom bullet wound when he finds the body later. It’s as if Ed doesn’t want to believe that their actions are so morally heinous to warrant such martyrdom. After all, as a moral person himself, where would that leave Ed?

The remaining men’s voyage down the river becomes more arduous and more dangerous. There is another death and there are more lies to go with it. They finally arrive in the local town, thoroughly defeated, but not without provoking the suspicion of the local police force. Their story is a little too fanciful to be believed. But they’re in luck, because the town is getting ready for its great burial, and it seems that the town’s imminent death is suppressing the Sergeant’s scepticism on Ed, Bobby and Lewis. At one point, the Sergeant concedes to Ed, “I don’t think you boys should come back. Just let this town die in peace”. In other words, you – and city boys like you – have done your damage to this town, just let the funeral commence; let the slate be wiped clean.

This sentiment of wilful ignorance is reiterated in perhaps the most touching moment in the film. Ed walks into the dining room of the place where he and bobby are rehabilitating. It is dusk, and Bobby is sitting round with several other people, laughing, eating and enjoying himself. It is a picture of warm, Southern hospitality. When Ed sits down, he is quiet and restrained. He says he’s hungry and politely accepts his meal, but within a few moments he has broken down into tears. Whether it’s the picture of Bobby so civilised and unscathed after the horror of the last two days, the hospitality of the locals, or an overwhelming sense of moral responsibility, we don’t know. And the locals – and Bobby – don’t want to know. For no sooner has Ed started crying than he has stopped crying. Let’s move on. The cornbread is delicious. Don’t concern yourself with mistakes, Ed, because they can just as easily be buried – or flooded.

28th May 2020

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deniscollins · 5 years

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Reefer Madness or Pot Paradise? The Surprising Legacy of the Place Where Legal Weed Began

Nearly twice as many Coloradans smoke pot as the rest of America. Since 2014 legalization, many use the drug responsibly, some do not. Among teenagers who have used it (must be 21 to do so legally), 80 percent are not current marijuana users. Should marijuana be legalized at the federal level: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Serenity Christensen, 14, is too young to set foot in one of Colorado’s many marijuana shops, but she was able to spot a business opportunity in legal weed. She is a Girl Scout, and this year, she and her mother decided to sell their cookies outside a dispensary. “Good business,” Serenity said.

But on the other side of Denver, legalization has turned another high school student, David Perez, against the warehouselike marijuana cultivations now clustered around his neighborhood. He said their skunky aroma often smacks him in the face when he walks out his front door.

These are the ripples of five years of legal marijuana. Colorado’s first-in-the-nation experiment has reshaped health, politics, rural culture and criminal justice in surprising ways that often defy both the worst warnings of critics and blue-sky rhetoric of the marijuana industry, giving a glimpse of what the future may hold as more and more states adopt and debate full legalization.

Since recreational sales began in 2014, more people here are visiting emergency rooms for marijuana-related problems, and hospitals report higher rates of mental-health cases tied to marijuana. At the same time, thousands of others make uneventful stops at dispensaries every day, like the hiking guide in the college town of Boulder who now keeps a few marijuana gummies in a locked bag to help her relax before bed.

Some families rattled by their children’s marijuana problems have moved, seeking refuge in less permissive states. But over all, state surveys do not show an increase in young people smoking pot.

And while low-level marijuana charges have plummeted, the racial divide in drug arrests has persisted. State numbers show that African-Americans in Colorado were still being arrested on marijuana charges at nearly twice the rate of white people.

“You don’t see drug-addled people roaming the streets, but we haven’t created a utopia,” said Jonathan Singer, who was one of just two state legislators who endorsed the Colorado ballot measure that made it legal for adults 21 and over to buy, consume and grow recreational marijuana.

Mr. Singer nodded to his 3-year-old, who sat in the back seat one afternoon as they headed to a picnic. “The fact that I’m willing to have this conversation in front of my daughter,” he said, “shows how much we’ve destigmatized this.”

The ‘Drug Talk,’ Rewritten

This is the world reconfigured by legalization — the world that 18-year-old Ethan Pierson grew up in. He was born the same year that Colorado’s first medical-marijuana law took effect. He watched dispensaries bloom along the commercial streets leading to his high school in suburban Lakewood.

“If you live in Colorado, it feels like somebody’s always smoking next to you,” said Mr. Pierson, who abstains.

Doctors, educators and state officials have been particularly worried about the effects of legalization on Colorado’s youth. Would a proliferation of recreational pot shops make marijuana seem innocuous to teenagers, despite studies showing that it is harmful to their developing minds? Would teenage pot use spike? How would it affect graduation rates and school discipline?

Five years in, surveys show that most Colorado teenagers are like Mr. Pierson: They may have tried it, but 80 percent are not current marijuana users. State surveys show that teenage marijuana use has fallen slightly since medical marijuana sales ramped up in 2009, and has been basically flat since full legalization.

But Mr. Pierson and other students and parents said that legalization had changed marijuana’s image and availability.

Older siblings or even parents can now buy it legally and pass it along. Classmates take Snapchat videos of one another smoking on the edges of school. Instead of dime bags, there is now a buffet of concentrates, tinctures and edibles — still illegal for young people, but easy to come by.

“It’s easy to conceal,” Mr. Pierson said. “They carry it around in their purse or pencil bag.”

Some school administrators say they are catching more students using marijuana and fewer drinking. School disciplinary numbers show that marijuana is a leading reason students are punished or handed over to the police. But the overall number of students being expelled for drug infractions has actually fallen since legalization, in part because Colorado lawmakers sought to get rid of “zero tolerance” policies at schools around the same time pot was legalized.

In a fourth-floor juvenile courtroom in Denver, where children stand in front of a magistrate on charges including curfew violations and fighting, the number of marijuana possession cases is thinning out. The share of teenagers arrested for marijuana offenses has fallen by about 20 percent since Colorado voted to legalize, but black youths and adults are still getting arrested at much higher rates than white or Hispanic Coloradans, according to a state report. In 2017, black people in the state were arrested on marijuana charges at double the rate of white ones, according to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.

Some parents said that marijuana was becoming too normal, another legally permissible health risk with slick marketing, like alcohol or cigarettes. But marijuana shops cannot advertise on billboards. They are required to check identification at the door. They are supposed to be located at least 1,000 feet from schools. Edibles can no longer look like gummy bears or fruit or be called “candies.”

To some parents, this is not enough. They say their children smell marijuana on hikes, and count dispensaries on their rides home from school. Before play dates, Ben Cort now asks other parents whether they keep marijuana in the house before his daughter visits a new friend’s home. Sujata Fretz, a physician in Denver, said she found herself having a conversation with her 13-year-old son about marijuana that was shaped by the proliferation of the industry.

“I’m forced to have a conversation with my kids because it’s more public and out there,” Dr. Fretz said. “I can’t just say, ‘Hey drugs are bad’ when it’s legal and there are stores that sell it. My goal is to get them to not use marijuana.”

‘Nothing Is Completely Safe’

The numbers seem clear: Nearly twice as many Coloradans smoke pot as the rest of America. The number of adults who use has edged up since legalization.

Now, the battle between legalization’s supporters and foes is focused on whether heavier pot use is hurting people’s health. It is a high-stakes question, and Andrew Monte, an emergency and medical toxicology physician and researcher at the University of Colorado Hospital, is on the front lines, trying to decipher what the numbers are saying.

Hospital data analyzed by Dr. Monte and others indicate that more people are arriving at emergency rooms for marijuana-related reasons. He has treated many of them. Some are heavy marijuana users with severe vomiting. Others are children who have eaten edibles, accidentally or not. They come to the E.R. disoriented, dehydrated or hallucinating after consuming too much marijuana.

“There’s a disconnect between what was proposed as a completely safe drug,” Dr. Monte said. “Nothing is completely safe.”

And researchers have reported that patients in the E.R. with marijuana-related cases were five times as likely to have a mental-health issue as those with other cases.

Five years of legalization have yielded stories of haunting deaths: A father of three who shot his wife dead after eating edibles. A young man visiting Colorado whose family blamed his suicide at a ski resort on the marijuana he had consumed. Rising numbers of drivers in fatal traffic crashes who test positive for marijuana (though a positive test does not necessarily mean the driver was high).

But none of the emergency-room visits tracked by researchers in recent studies ended with a patient’s death. And Dr. Monte, who has treated and studied so many cannabis cases, said that thousands of Coloradans every day safely use marijuana.

A retired farmer in Southern Colorado takes it as a balm for his aching feet. It was how a woman in Denver surmounted the nausea and pain after a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Veterans fought to use it for post-traumatic stress. Children use it for severe seizure disorders. It is how Alli Fronzaglia, who runs a women’s hiking group, relaxes before bed.

“It’s not wreaking havoc,” she said. “There are people using responsibly in Colorado.”

Stephanie Angell, 63, used to think she was one of them. Then she began smoking heavily every day, after she learned she had multiple sclerosis in 2014. She started smoking after waking up, and then gravitated to the thick, amberlike extractions that offer higher concentrations of psychoactive THC. Dispensaries offered specials, she said, like Edible Wednesdays.

“I began to smoke morning, noon and night,” she said.

Compared with the 72,000 drug overdose deaths in America in 2017, with the crimes and loss spawned by the opioid crisis, marijuana addiction, users say, can seem too innocuous to even merit attention. State health data have not shown a surge of patients seeking addiction treatment.

But Ms. Angell said her habit had left her life dull, like a worn pencil. She lost interest in cross-stitching and other hobbies and felt like she had to smoke before going to the movies or to dinner.

Ms. Angell still supports legalization. But she and other heavy users say the risks of marijuana dependence are real, and are being overlooked as medical and recreational marijuana spread to 34 states. While legalization efforts failed this year in states including New Jersey and New York, Illinois last week became the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana.

“There’s a real denial,” Ms. Angell said. “It’s a very subtle, subtle addiction.”

Planting and Busts

There’s a new kind of planting season in Pueblo County, home to wide acres of pastureland and green chile fields that elected officials want to remake as the Napa Valley of legal weed.

Law-enforcement officials say that legalization has also created fertile soil for black-market cultivations that pop up in basements. Legalization advocates said that regulating marijuana would starve cartels and illegal marijuana trafficking. But some officials say it has made the problem worse.

VERY LONG ARTICLE CONTINUES ...

#Marijuana

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braindamageforbeginners · 6 years

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Neuralgia/ADA/GOP-On-The-Run

Cycle 7, Day 19

First of all, next week’s my “week off,” which is usually just a blood-draw, however, because it also marks Dad’s birthday, which he’s intimated is supposed to be A Party of Special Magnificence, so I’ll be in the greater SoCal area during my “off week,” and, with my brother at hand in a festive mood, there’s a chance I won’t come to my senses until November. So, unless something goes spectacularly wrong at next week’s blood-draw, there’s a chance I’ll only update/write about random goings-on, or Dad’s giant, dragon-shaped firework (that isn’t a euphemism, I’ve been explicit that I want to see wizards, halflings, the whole deal).

Today, however, I’d like to draw some attention to my own physical disabilities (such as they are), why large chunks of the country aren’t ADA-compliant (I don’t even mean in a paved sense), and your very corrupt, local congressman, if you’re from a rural area (almost guaranteed).

So, even though I am automatically, federally-qualified as disabled (look it up under “compassionate allowances”). However, 80% of applicants eventually get disability coverage because - here’s a shocker - when people can’t do their jobs or survive normally, that tends to be noticeable, unless you have an extremely advanced neurodegenerative disease (in which case, you get to be president). And when I applied for disability, no one was, shall I say, directly unpleasant, but I got the very distinct impression that everyone would rather be doing something else. It wasn’t until I actually wrote my own condition down and told the social security rep to call their boss and give them that diagnosis that I got a bit of an attitude change. So, most disabled folks tend to be somewhat sensitive about it, because it is a pain in the ass (sometimes literally) and society is very much stacked against us. I actually wouldn’t even have given it much thought unless I had to fill out and file paperwork on it. Again, be kind and patient (that’s the general message), and don’t assume. I prefer to be called “crippled,” because I feel that word accurately captures both what happened to me, and and how it’s effected me.

To that, I also get passing privilege, because I can walk (though steep stairs and long sprints are out), and you’d only tell my left side is off if you were familiar with me. So, a neurologically-mangling injury usually occurs in one of two ways, externally (or externally-derived), which is usually what you associate with disabled vets, or internally (either due to clot, stroke, or cancer/tumor).. In the former type, you’d see nerve damage below the injury point. In the latter type, it’s a little harder. Everything in the brain is integrated - physically - it’s a little harder to keep track of the higher-order, Wile E. Coyote (Super Genius) functions, especially since you develop new neural pathways throughout your life. But, just for the physical functions, damage to the brain occurs on the opposite side of the body, and it’s a half-body thing (most of my left-side is unreliable in the right circumstances, but for day-to-day use, it’s just the lower leg and lower arm). And these can be anything from noticeable motor impairments to, in my case, “diminished sensation.” Again, I’m just speaking for myself, but neuralgia - the reduced/lost sensations and/or pain of nerve damage - is a killer for folks like me. In my own case, if you’ve ever had minor oral surgery or a filling where the dentist got a little careless injecting the novocaine, you’ll be familiar with the numbness issue. Your muscles worked just fine, but without sensation, it’s hard to orient them enough to get them to work. That’s a rather extreme example, and it’s not terribly accurate for me, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Again, unless you know me, it’s kind of hard to spot me (I only hobble on inclines). Unless you knew I’d been trained as a pianist for a number of years when I was much younger, you’d have a tough time guessing my left hand has trouble with buttons. And, fortunately, the legal definition of disabilities isn’t limited to “patient is mostly-functional, but severely reduced by previous-standards.” (I also really do spend an hour or two in the gym every day, if only because I want a body capable of absorbing and metabolizing every last damned drop of marizomib they can pump into me)(which, come to it, is probably some sort of admission of addiction). I am, however, going to start referring to my left arm as “my Grendel arm,” because, if I’m attacked by Vikings, I intend to let that side take the damage (again, it won’t be as painful because of that “reduced sensation” problem I run into when I’m very tired)(and, hopefully, when I’m on fire and being attacked by Norsemen seeking retribution for

Speaking of legal issues, now’s a good time as any to point out that vast swathes of the country are near-impossible to live in if you’re, let’s say, medically-compromised. Now, I realize that I’m a very special, special-needs patient/citizen in that my existence is dependent on technology that’s beyond the ragged, bleeding edge of most hospitals - most states, as it turns out. But that’s going to be true of just being able to access decent care in most places, even for something relatively simple, like the heart disease currently building up in the Boomers. And I bring that up because, in most places, your elected federal officials are actually working against your best interest. Frequently with your consent. And these are, in my experience, always in rural districts. The party of your representative isn’t an issue, I’d bet; the issue is whether you live in a zip code with a population density closer to Los Angeles, or Maine. Americans (or, health-industry lobbyists) made a hullabaloo about Obamacare (or, as it’s formally known, the Affordable Care Act - the ACA). However, for people like me, it did help knock down things that will kill Grandma and Granpa, like lifetime limits (I’ve reached and exceeded those probably ten years ago), and - this is big - prior conditions. These are both weasel terms used by insurance companies to reduce patient numbers. Again that wasn’t a major issue for me until an orange-haired idiot came into office, promising to change all that. At the time - these were in the intertumor years - I was living in Utah. Here’s an important thing to understand when someone is actively working to undermine your life expectancy; they’re not going to be honest about it. And, in my experience, elected officials from rural areas tend to have more in common with Boss Hogg than they do Mr. Smith, but that could be because the first Congressman I met “representing” me was Jerry Lewis (that was his nom de guerre)(but not his real name)(also not his real hair), who was almost hilariously sleazy, and consistently plagued by corruption accusations. Which, uh, I think, describes almost all of the Congressmen who represented that district. So, you can imagine my complete lack of interest at being pushed and prodded and shoved in front of a congressional underling at the sitting Congressman’s office (this was Chris Stewart - or his local office, BTW).

We will ignore the odd decorating decision to include a large photo of a bomber with an explosion on it - I guess it’d been made by a constituent. We were met by - as expected - an office underling. The hiring and firing and promoting of office staff in small districts is usually pretty sordid. That’s not some sort of slanderous accusation; all professional politicians are legally prohibited from directly employing their companies or family members. Most, like Ron Paul, figure out a workaround until those pesky Congressional Ethics reports come out. The assistant in front of us assured us - in the wake of GOP populism that’d swung in just a few weeks earlier, that the Congressman didn’t like his job, only did it because no one else was stepping up, and was all in favor of term limits and revolving door policies - basically, the sort of pep-talk I always look for in the medical industry when looking for a well-qualified specialist (”Yeah, he’s great at his job, but he dislikes it and is only waiting for an opportunity to get out.”). The assistant was not the Congressman’s chief adviser on health care (I can only assume that was some wildly unqualified lobbyist from Pfizer, but that’s pure speculation). You know what really sends out a message of professionalism and receptiveness to constituent needs? When a constituent calls to schedule an appointment to voice concerns regarding health legislation, and the person qualified to answer such things isn’t in the office. Anyway, even though the assistant didn’t have any answers to most of my questions, he assured us that the congressman didn’t want to cut anyone’s insurance, but thought that a free market - the standard BS filler that comes from someone who has never been thrown out of a hospital (yes, this happens, folks, it made headlines in Baltimore a few years ago). Upon later checking, the assistant had actually actively lied about both issues, based on the Congressman’s actual voting record. Again, I don’t think he’s alone, I just think rural Congressman who coast on for a career based on name recognition aren’t used to an informed, angry public making proper inquiries. At least have the guts to tell me it’s more immediately profitable to kill me than to keep me alive; we’ll have to agree to disagree, but I get it. To make a long story short, because of Utah’s combination of hilariously inadequate insurance coverage for people like me, and my stubborn refusal to settle for less-than-best when seeing neurology specialists, I’m no longer a constituent. Thank you, sir, you ran me off your land, kudos. But I’m certainly not alone. Again, the Boomers are at an age where they’re going to be dropping dead of heart disease, cancer, etc. That’s not some dire, emo warning, either, it’s just that they’re all in their 60′s or above, and, until 2013, almost half of the US was either uninsured or disastrously uninsured. I think the HMO system will last two dozen cases of wheeling grandma and grandpa into the cold street before it comes to an end. But what the hell do I know? I’m just a sick person who’s had to learn insane amounts.about the health insurance industry and pharmaceutical companies to make it this far.

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dipulb3 · 3 years

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Trump might have lost but his legacy lives on with congressional Republicans

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/trump-might-have-lost-but-his-legacy-lives-on-with-congressional-republicans/

Trump might have lost but his legacy lives on with congressional Republicans

“There is no abandoning Trump and his imprint on the party. There are ways to adapt it and make our message more tenable to folks. But I don’t think it is realistic to pretend he wasn’t President for four years,” one GOP House aide told Appradab.

As his path to 270 electoral votes was narrowing, Republican lawmakers struggled to disentangle themselves from the President’s cries that the election was rigged against him. Some Republicans rejected Trump’s claims and vowed to ensure that all legal ballots be counted. But others — even some who had once decried Trump’s antics — followed the President despite no supporting evidence.

“I’m here tonight to stand with President Trump,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Thursday night on Fox News.

“The election results are out of control. It’s like the whistle has blown, the game is over, and the players have gone home, but the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team’s side of the scoreboard,” tweeted Tommy Tuberville, who won a US Senate seat in Alabama on Tuesday.

Trump’s narrow loss makes it harder for Republicans to completely walk away from a President whose unpredictability tormented them at times but whose loyal following boosted them in races across the country this week.

“I think what Trump’s primary message was, the forgotten men and women, America first, in coal country or manufacturing, that is something that every elected official ought to take a look at,” Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Appradab. “He ran and said this is who I am. He is the same person today as he was when he came down that escalator,” in making his announcement in June 2015 that he would run for president.

Trump’s popularity may not have saved him in the end, but it did deliver wins for Republicans across the country. Democrats won a razor-thin presidential contest, but Republicans managed to win back a handful of seats in the House, and looked poised to maintain the Senate and make some inroads with minority communities that could make it much harder for the GOP moderates and Trump critics to dismiss the President’s message, strategy and legacy outright. Instead of abandoning Trump’s unorthodox policies on trade, tough line on immigration or direct focus on working-class voters, Republicans are already grappling with the reality that Trump has forever changed the party.

A Republican-led Senate and Democratic White House would provide Republicans an opportunity to work with Biden. But it also would give them a stopgap, a firewall and a way to dramatically contrast themselves with the Democrats’ agenda. Leadership jockeying on Capitol Hill will consume the lame duck session, but Republicans will also have to decide how to confront Biden’s presidency — whether to embrace areas of bipartisanship or firmly hold the line against Biden implementing his vision for the country.

Left in Trump’s wake are a handful of governors, congressional leaders and GOP senators who will spend the next weeks and months dissecting where the party and, depending on their aspirations, they themselves go next.

For Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who ran against Trump in the primary in 2016, the lessons of 2020 came early as he watched returns pouring in from his home in Miami-Dade County. A son of Cuban immigrants who once saw comprehensive immigration revisions as the path to expanding the GOP’s reach, he watched as President-elect Biden significantly underperformed where Hillary Clinton had been just four years ago. Clinton had beat Trump by roughly 30 points in the heavily Latino county in 2016. In 2020, Biden was on a path to win by just 7 points. Trump, a President whose language about immigrants, obsession with a border wall and policies had been seen by pundits as setting the GOP back with Latino voters for decades, made inroads — at least in some places. Two Democratic congresswomen in South Florida — Donna Shalala and Debbie Muscarsel-Powell — were also defeated by Republicans.

“We have spent many years in this country thinking ethnicity is the leading political identity of many Americans, and what we are learning is that their status as working-class Americas becomes their identity. That doesn’t mean the other issues are irrelevant, but they go side by side,” Rubio said.

If Republicans are to win the White House again, Rubio argues, the party should build on what Trump created with a multi-ethnic coalition and a focus on the economy that can appeal to the working class. Rubio says Republicans should also try to win back some of the suburban voters “who may be repelled by some of the harder edges of the messaging.”

“That hunger and thirst for political leaders who focus on those issues is not going to change,” Rubio said. “The question is whether someone not named Donald Trump is able to do what he has done.”

Pushed on if he would run in 2024 for president, Rubio demurred: “I think I have learned over the years that sometimes you cannot decide whether you want to cross a bridge until you know how many bridges there are as your options. Obviously I have run for president before. I wouldn’t rule it out in the future.”

For some Republicans who have watched as the party has been overtaken by Trump over the last several years, Trump’s loss comes with an opportunity — a chance to turn the page and return to expanding the coalition of voters Republicans can get in an election.

“Dust off the old autopsy,” former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who retired from the Senate during Trump’s presidency, told Appradab in a extensive interview, referring to the Republican National Committee’s 2013 report on what went wrong in the 2012 election and how to appeal to a broader swath of voters, especially minorities and women. “Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy. Globalism is here to stay and we have to deal with it.”

But even Flake acknowledges that Republicans have months and years of soul searching ahead.

“There is going to be a big segment that does think President Trump had the right message and he was flawed. You will have some like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz try to pick up that mantle,” Flake said, referring to senators from Arkansas and Texas. “But I just hope that Republicans as a whole realize that Trump is a dead end. There is no there there. You can only own the libs and get a certain percentage of the voters.”

Some conservatives on Capitol Hill disagree.

“I am not that nuts about the tweets because you are always asking me to defend them, and I don’t want to, but we needed someone like him because what most conservatives do share is a revulsion to the deep state, the swamp, and if anything resonated with people it was his message of draining the swamp,” Johnson said.

For Republicans, the immediate work of defining their party without the Twitter-obsessed, plain-speaking commander in chief will be carried out by their congressional leaders.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell retained his Senate seat handily Tuesday night in Kentucky and is widely expected to remain at the helm of the GOP conference in the US Senate. In his acceptance speech, McConnell didn’t mention Trump specifically, but did forecast the importance of the working-class vote to Republicans.

“I look out for middle America,” McConnell noted.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, used his news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday to boast about Trump’s successes for the party.

“President Trump had a very strong night last night. His vision for our country expanded our party,” McCarthy touted. “His efforts in reaching out to every demographic has positively changed the future of the GOP.”

Exactly what that future looks like, however, remains to be seen.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Kristin Wilson contributed to this report.

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vonnamoc · 4 years

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The Sabah Dispute, Philippines vs. Malaysia: A Comparison of Malaysian and Philippine Responses towards Sabah claims

This paper contains a two-country comparative analysis on the Malaysian and Philippines Responses towards Sabah (North Borneo) claims; With the Philippines having defective democracy and Malaysia having Electoral Authoritarianism as regimes. Philippines' historical claims, namely: Sulu Sultanate Treaty, Malaysia's referendum claims wherein the People of Sabah voted in union with the federation. Implicated by Morgenthau's Realism lens, A Qualitative methodology will be applied to tackle the past up to the current approaches. The first section will show the historical and legal validations of both countries. The second section will show the responses of both countries towards Sabah. The last section will show why these two countries are claiming Sabah using a realist lens.

Introduction:

The tension between two neighboring countries has been defined as unnatural as the dispute of Sabah (Northern Borneo) is still emerging up until this current Day. The commonality between these two countries has served as an incentive to bond and extend profitable ties (Paridah Abd. Samad, & Bakar, D. 1992). Who has the better claim, and why are they claiming Sabah in the first place? To solve this problem, I chose Morgenthau's Realism as the Theoretical Lens. Territory is also seen as a significant power base., A realist perception of territorial conflicts emphasizes that territorial claims happen for selfish purposes. According to Morgenthau (1954), the main direction that helps Political Realism find its way through the scene of International Politics is the idea of interest defined in terms of power. Because territory gives significant diplomatic and financial benefits to nation-states, geographical development expands states' strength (Liberman, 1993).

Although Morgenthau recommends that a typical nation is not frequently the more powerful, the more justice it controls, realists nonetheless be that power hit usually determines geographical representations (Fozouni, 1995, p. 483). A brief Historical background of Sabah started when the Sultan of Brunei formerly ruled this part of Borneo. In 1658 the Sulu Sultan helped contain an uprising there, and as a reward, North Borneo has been ceded to Sulu. In 1878 Europeans came to Southeast Asia to hunt for minerals, spices, and any rich resources that they could get. Two of these merchants leased North Borneo for 5000 Malaysian dollars. In 1963, Sabah gained its independence in a referendum; Sabah's people chose to join the Malaysian Federation. Today, Malaysia is paying $1000 to the Philippines since the Philippines maintained the signed contract from 1878, which was interpreted as a lease, whereas British and Malaysia regarded it as a land sale. Therefore, this essay will tackle both the Philippines and Malaysia's Historical and Legal Claims and discuss the benefits these two countries could attain if they could acquire Sabah. This study is interesting because the dispute's settlement is immediately linked to Malaysia and the Philippines' disturbing political relations. Its agreement, however, must depend on whether a strong case lives for the Philippines. While the primary case was legalistic, several causes have been unpredictably proposed to determine the Philippine case.

Interestingly, this study remains unsolved to this Day. On July 27, 2020, Philippine Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced to the world through social media platform Twitter stating, Sabah is not in Malaysia in response to the US embassy's Twitter statement about America donating hygiene kits to Filipinos from "Sabah, Malaysia." Hishammuddin Hussein, the foreign minister of Malaysia, opposed Locsin, describing the Filipino official's Twitter statement, an irresponsible comment that concerns bilateral relations. He also stated that The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Malaysia would demand the Philippines Ambassador to clarify. Both countries add fuel to the flame on September 15, 2020; The Philippines declared the plan to reactivate the North Borneo bureau. The Philippine Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. stated his judgment after recognizing that the rest of the world has forgotten our Sabah claim. He was insisting that the Philippines do not forget our terrestrial domain. In pursuit of ensuring what is ours, I have decided to reactivate the North Borneo Bureau after recognizing that the rest of the world has ignored our Sabah case, immediately exerting it as another country's territory. He then added that this dispute one of several international disagreements the Philippines can manage to lead in the Philippines' best interest without any risk of loss of any kind for our country since the Philippines' honor is included here. (Neil Arwin Mercado,2020 via Inquirer.net)

Historical and Legal Validations:

Philipines - Since 1704, the area of North Borneo was below the supremacy of the Sultan of Sulu. The area has been ceded to Sulu's Sultan by Brunei's Sultan into the account of his help in suppressing an insurrection. (Owen Rutter, 1958), Spain approved the Sulu's Sultan's sovereignty over this area through a trade treaty with the Sultan in 1836 (Jayakumar, S., 44, 1968). Great Britain also acknowledged such autonomy over the area by executing several treaties with the Sulu's Sultan in 1761, 1764, and 1769 (Jayakumar, S.,114, 1968). In 1878, the Sultan of Sulu signified a deed of the continual lease in courtesy of Alfred Dent and Baron von Overbeck, giving the particular latter benefits to his North Borneo area in the event of an annual rental of five thousand Malayan dollars due each year (Jayakumar, S., 22-23, 1968). This rental money is still being paid, although Great Britain calls it as "cession money" (K. G. Tregonning, 25, 1960). This cession money is still being returned for after the Sultanate was removed by the American-Filipino government early in this time, the attention of the rightful inheritors to the Sultan showed thick and needed some time. It was not until 1939 that North Borneo posted these fitted, and not till some time after the war, most of the successors seemed capable of accepting payments. Payment due to the dead successors are given into collateral accounts, and the Estimations each year covered $5,300 to which their heirs can lay right. On November 1, 1881, the British Crown awarded a Royal Charter to the British North Borneo Company. (K.G. Tregonning, 27, 1960). In justifying the grant of the Charter, the British Foreign Minister, Earl Granville. He declared very precisely in response to Dutch and Spanish objections that the areas "will be determined by the Company following the suzerainty of the Sultans of Brunei and Sulu, to whom they have accepted to give an annual tribute," and that "the British Government expects no sovereign benefits in Borneo (M. F. Lindley, 106, 1926) ." In 1888, a British Protectorate was formally founded over North Borneo. This was the political situation of North Borneo till July 16, 1946, when it was declared a territory of the United Kingdom. In 1915, the Sultan of Sulu signified the Carpenter Agreement whereby he acknowledged the United States' sovereignty within American Territory, but he held his freedom over North Borneo (0sgood Hardy and Glenn S. Dumke, 355, 1949). In 1939, Chief Justice C. F. Macaskie of the High Court of North Borneo declared a decision declaring the British North Borneo Company's responsibility to give what the Court described as "cession money" the successors of Sulu's Sultan. In an obiter judgment, though, the Court said: "It is sufficiently clear that the successor in the supremacy of the Sultan is the Government of the Philippine Islands ( Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs 11.)." In 1946, the British North Borneo Company agreed to transfer the Borneo's Sovereign Assets and Rights to the Crown of Britain (Jayakumar, S. 129-139, 1968). In 1947, Former Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison, then attending as specific foreign affairs consultant to the Philippine Government, examined this act of expansion and suggested that the "act of political aggression" be immediately revoked by the Republic of the Philippines (Letter of Harrison to Quirino, Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, 9, 1947)

Malaysia - June 1962 before the Government of the Philippines informed the United Kingdom of its case on Sabah, and in the coming December, the two recognized to resist discussions on the matter. The promulgation of the case made the Philippines a diplomatic dispute with the British, marked as a problem about their intention to convert the situation of North Borneo from a colony into a state of the enlarged federation of Malaysia (Michael Leifer, 62, 1974). The British government rejected the Philippine position given the significant need to form the Federal Republic of Malaysia, apparently to include communism in Southeast Asia ( Santanina T. Rasul, 91)". At the first ministerial conference on the case, held in London in 1963, a joint communique was published by the foreign ministers of Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia stated that the addition of North Borneo in the Federation of Malaysia "would not prejudice either the Philippine interest or several interests thereunder." This joint declaration was ratified by the three countries' presidents when they met later that year in Manila, and Ma Macapagal's participation in it jeopardized the Philippine interest in Sabah. The Federation of Malaysia came into actuality on September 16, 1963, and due to the physical territory of Sabah by Malaysia, the Philippine government declined to agree on diplomatic recognition, opposed to its solemn dedication in the Manila Agreement. When Soekarno started his "confrontation" versus Malaysia, Manila decreased its representation in Kuala Lumpur to the consular level (Malaya-Philippine Relations). Sabah gained sovereignty in 1963 when in a referendum, Sabahn's overwhelmingly voted to unite with the Federation of Malaysia (ASEANPOST, 2020)

The Philippines vs. Malaysia's actions and approaches:

The Philippines - In 1950, Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal, then a part of the Congress of the Philippines, forced using a presentation field in the House of Representatives, the legal system of a claim to North (Borneo Jayakumar, S., 14, 1968). Ironically, President Ferdinand Marcos recognized Malaysia's formation in 1966, soon after taking over political power in the Philippines. With the commencement of the five-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), there was a tacit arrangement between Malaysia and the Philippines that the problem is held in the pursuit of regional solidarity, and they accepted that it should be finally resolved through ASEAN (Paridah Abd. Samad, & Bakar, D .554-567 1992). Viewed by numerous as the originating time of Muslim separatism in Mindanao, the Jabidah massacre, which held a spot on Corregidor Island, involved eliminating Muslim trainees organized by the Philippine army in 1967, 1968 to invade and attack Sabah (Renée Jeffery. 2018). In 1962, the Congress of the Philippines collectively approved a Declaration wherein it articulated Philippine's case to North Borneo as existing legitimate and urged the President of the Philippines "to take the specific steps compatible with international system and law for its rescue (Jayakumar, S., 149, 1968). President Corazon Aquino proposed legislation to the Philippine Congress in November 1987 to abolish the territorial claim, though Congress did not move on the legislation. Though, the 1987 constitution seems not to constitute Sabah in its description as a Philippines territory. (Abuza, Zachary, 113-114, 2002). In 2013 Supporters of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III go to Sabah from Tawi-Tawi and obtain a community in Lahad Datu town to declare the clan's ancestral title on Sabah that directed to a draw with Malaysian security troops, ending in 56 rioters and 10 Malaysian security authorities. - ( Ana Roa, Inquirer Research).

Malaysia - The relationship between the two countries is further increased by the Philippine complaint of several interventions by Malaysian naval vessels and aircraft into Philippine airspace and area, especially in Langaan, Taganak, Turtle, Balabac islands Palawan, and neighboring areas. In 1980, 18 invasions were asserted to have been performed by Ma Malaysian naval vessels in April when a Malaysian Air Force C 130 disrupted Philippine airspace and twice buzzed a Philippine Navy ship. In September 1988, some parts of the Philippine Navy and the Senate nearly made an intense diplomatic dispute with Malaysia when misreading a Malaysian chart; they erroneously believed that the Malaysian government was poised to attach some islands of the Tawi-Tawi group. The false report of Malaysian intrusions into Philippine waters in the Sulu islands led to an anti-Malaysia tirade in the Filipino press. Malacanang Palace kept its control throughout the episode, but not without losing face over the unjust accusation. After that, the erring party's public apology did little to compensate for the created lousy publicity. Even though both states are ASEAN members, such blames of intrusions have further strained relations between them. (Paridah Abd. Samad, & Bakar, D., 554-557, 1992). The British have openly formed Malaysia and Malaya. They then used force against Tengku Abdul Rahman to oppose the Philippines and Indonesia conciliation progress at the Manila Conference and through the following United Nations "assessment" of Borneo's public judgment. The British therefore created Malaysia, the United Nations evaluation was unreasonable, and the Tengku, just as Sukarno says, gives himself to British "neocolonial" purposes by leaving to establish the different essential systems of Southeast Asian measurement of Southeast Asian operations. In another sign that Kuala Lumpur would not give up the oil and gas-rich Sabah, nine Filipinos expect the death penalty in Malaysian charge, including Hushin Kiram, a relative of Sultan Muedzul. Kiram was arrested in 2013 after commencing a disappointed takeover of Sabah, in the direction of his father Jamalul Kiram III, a pretender to the Sulu throne (FRANCESCA REGALADO, NekkeiAsia Research, 2020). The Philippines previously blamed Malaysia's groups for promoting secessionist tendencies among minority Muslim groups in Mindanao's southern island. However, the Malaysian government had acted as a negotiator between the Philippines and Muslim rebels and was helpful in the peace agreement between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. (Al Jazeera, 2020)

Discussion and Key Findings:

Realism Lens

Representing Malaysia's 12% and 25% of oil and gas supplies, Sabah has 1.5 barrels of oil and eleven trillion cubic gas feet. (FACTS Global Energy). Sabah's development of offshore oil has put around an estimated 227 million oil-equivalent containers. (Nov 2011 Reuters). Sabah remains leaning on Gas and Oil since the Gas and Oil production in Sabah remains its important giver to its growth Economically, although many years ago, fuel prices dropped after the global turndown. The state government announced through Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman, asserting that they are engaged and formed a lasting plan to improve oil and gas production and display one of the main factors to Sabah's growth and maturity future. (Daily Express, August 9, 2016). Sabah Oil & Gas Terminal and the Sabah-Sarawak Pipeline are significant expenses in the region to utilize Sabah's hydrocarbon resources. (Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific) Malaysia's best crude oil comes from Sabah. (Malaysia Energy Commission, 2016). At least RM140.9 million, including petroleum products like non-metallic mineral products and petrochemicals, has been approved investments additional on Sabah ( The Borneo Post, 2018). Four hundred jobs will be created for locals once Sabah's Ammonia-Urea plant project worth RM 4.6 billion in Sipitang will be fully operational (The Star Online). 3.6 billion containers of oil resources in January 2017 (the 4th highest in the Asia Pacific) has been held by Malaysia (Oil and Gas Journal). Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal (SOGT) is a terminal found in Kimanis, Sabah, in Malaysia. The terminal controls oil and gas production from West Coast Field, overlooking Sabah's west coast, which covers Sabah Gas Terminal, Labuan Crude Oil Terminal, and Labuan Gas Terminal. SOGT covers approximately 250 acres, with a capacity to handle up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil per Day, condensate (77,000 b / Per Day), and natural gas (1,250 per/day). (SOGIP, 2018). The Siakap North-Petai area is a satellite field engaged in 2014 to drawback to the Kakap field. It has a peak production rate of 35,000 b/d. Sabah's economic growth has been reliant on the oil, gas, and energy industry since it records more than 20 percent share of its Gross Domestic Product. In a realist sense, the oil and natural gas industry are the most valuable in the world. It, along with the coal industry, is what makes all other industries possible. The copious amount of electricity needed to run the modern medical, banking, IT, manufacturing, and education industries would not exist without coal, natural gas, and oil. The modern farming industry would not exist without the fertilizer made from natural gas or the diesel that runs the tractors. Excluding Malaysia and the Philipines' territorial factors, another significant factor why these two countries cannot let go of these claims despite it affecting bilateral relations of the two neighboring countries. Sabah Chief Minister Mohd Shafie Apdal said Sabah had many means that could be utilized for industrial expansion, including oil and gas, palm oil, and timber, and tourism that could add to the state's economic Growth (Bernama, March 2019). In nationalist ideology, realists indicate the position territory operates. It implies a change from the core concepts of rationalist engagement. Most realists acknowledge that particular territories, such as normal irredentism populated by the related nationality, have an essential purpose for nation-states. At the level of structural, realists emphasize the importance of power associations. Undoubtedly, the aspect that ends reflects state strength has been at the essence of the geopolitical analysis. In this custom, a state was seen as an existing organism that naturally grows and decays, collectively with its corresponding power position (Ratzel, 1923).

Notwithstanding the general denial of this biological comparison of state, it is usually considered that rising powers will present territorial needs and, conversely, that territorial claims will test a declining power. Hence, realists consider border differences as mere indications of the change in powers' stability (Spykman & Rollins, 1939, p. 392) and argue that changing power relations in the international system usually result in territorial redistribution (Gilpin, 1981, p. 38). Although realists may object on whether a strict scale or an apparent inequality in power connections is expected to cause territorial disputes, they will nonetheless recognize that power relations are essential when the existence of territorial conflicts is to be told.

Conclusion:

The Philippines and Malaysia are indeed two similar neighboring countries. Both are a member of the ASEAN; both are under corrupt governance wherein poverty is evident. Malaysia, although not corruption-free, has less corruption in the government compared to the Philippines. The Philippines is composed of thousands of islands. Building infrastructure to inter-connect them is much more expensive. Being part of continental Asia, Malaysia is also closer to big markets like China, India, the Middle East, Russia, and even Europe. The Sabah territorial dispute has been more than 30 years up to this Day, and I do not believe that it will be resolved any sooner. In this study, the Philippines has a better Sabah claim with its Historical and Legal claims.

The Sultan of Sulu, to whom the Sultan of Brunei gave Sabah a debt of gratitude for the former helping the last fight a rebellion, owns Sabah. The British Borneo Company rented Sabah from the Sultan of Sulu, and the rental agreement still exists, and Malaysia dutifully pays the annual rent to the Sultan of Sulu. The British gave Sabah to Malaysia when they withdrew from Malaysia, ignoring the rental agreement. The Sultan of Sulu, not being a state or a nation, gave its rights to the Philippine Government to pursue the claim. Former Phil President Macapagal worked for the Sabah claim, and Pres Marcos planned to invade it. After Marcos left, the succeeding Phil presidents did not pursue the Sabah claim. If the Philippines get Sabah back, its oil, minerals, and timber earn US$70B annually for Malaysia as against an annual rental of PhP70K. I believe that the government has a better chance of reclaiming Sabah if they recognize the Sultan of Sulu as a legitimate government. However, native people of Sabah started to recognize themselves as Malaysians and belong to Malaysia a long time ago when it officially became a country. It has been that way ever since with the political, social, and economic problems that the Philippines have, Sabahans will be more motivated to call themselves Malaysians. Specific approaches have been done but have been a disappointment. With the realist lens, it is evident what these two countries are fighting for behind each pride and political/nationalistic actions. It is the power that Sabah holds with its resources and minerals; also, whoever wins this dispute if that will happen will have the advantage with the giant elephant in the room, the West Philippine Sea. With the current issue on Mindanao, specifically, terrorism, is reclaiming Sabah a good idea now? Invading Sabah would never provide an end to the Moro problem. For as long as Islam presents itself as a political solution, the problem will remain unsolved, regardless of invasions and wars. Transform the World economy into a completely different model with different energy sources instead of a petrol-based mess, and you will see Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other international sponsors of Islamism-terrorism plunging into a Civil War and a subsequent crisis. That will be the end of the Moro dispute. The Sabah dispute heats up until this Day, especially with both countries openly claiming over social media. With the Realist lens and with what power Sabah holds, this dispute will end nowhere with how these two countries hold on to their pride and the power they are eager to win.

#comparativepolitics #sabah #philippines #malaysia

Reference List:

Al Jazeera, “Malaysia, Philippines in war of words over Sabah claim”, 2020 via

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/30/malaysia-philippines-in-war-of-words-over-sabah-claim/

Boardman, Eugene A History of the Pacific Area in Modern Times. By Hardy, Osgood and Dumke, Glenn S. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1949. Pp. 752. Maps, illustrations.

e-SOGCE online conference, “Challenges and Opportunities in the Sabah oil and gas industry” 2020, via

https://www.sabahoilandgas.com.my/key-facts

Fosberg, Thomas. "Explaining Territorial Disputes: From Power Politics to Normative Reasons." Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 4 (1996): 433-49. Accessed October 21, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/424568.

Jayakumar, S. "THE PHILIPPINE CLAIM TO SABAH AND INTERNATIONAL LAW." Malaya Law Review 10, no. 2 (1968): 306-35. Accessed October 21, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24862568.

Lindley, M.F. The Acquisition and Government Backward Territoy In International Law (1926) 106

Meadows, Martin. "The Philippine Claim to North Borneo." Political Science Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1962): 321-35. Accessed October 21, 2020. doi:10.2307/2146308.

Neil Arwin Mercado ” PH to reactivate North Borneo Bureau as Sabah issue heats up — Locsin via https://globalnation.inquirer.net/190898/ph-to-reactivate-north-borneo-bureau-amid-sabah-issue-locsin#ixzz6bTMDSgIO

Paridah Abd. Samad, and Darusalam Abu Bakar. "Malaysia-Philippines Relations: The Issue of Sabah." Asian Survey 32, no. 6 (1992): 554-67. Accessed October 21, 2020. doi:10.2307/2645160.

PARPAN, ALFREDO G. "The Philippine Claim on North Borneo: Another Look." Philippine Studies 36, no. 1 (1988): 3-15. Accessed October 21, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42633059.

Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, 1947

Philippines, Department of Foreign Affairs, Letter of Governor Harrison to Vice President Quirino dated February 27, 1947.

Regalado, Francesca “Malaysia's spat with Philippines over Sabah: Five things to know”, 2020, via https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Malaysia-s-spat-with-Philippines-over-Sabah-Five-things-to-know

Roa, Ana “SABAH: A TIMELINE”,2020 via https://globalnation.inquirer.net/189914/sabah-a-timeline

Rutter, Owen. British North Borneo. London: Constable and Company, Ltd., 1922. 404 pp.

The ASEAN Post Team “The right to North Borneo” via https://theaseanpost.com/article/right-north-borneo

Tregonning, H.G. "The Philippine Claim To Sabah." Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 43, no. 1 (217) (1970): 161-70. Accessed October 21, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41492022.

Tregonning, K. G. North Borneo. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1962, 272 pp.

#comparative politics #sabah #malaysia #philippines

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blousewriter43-blog · 4 years

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How much does a Lawyer make in Australia?CityAverage salaryLawyer in Sydney NSW 111 salaries$114,643 per yearLawyer in Melbourne VIC 135 salaries$108,637 per yearLawyer in Brisbane QLD 48 salaries$107,459 per yearLawyer in Perth WA 37 salaries$99,556 per year1 more row•5 days ago

When the general populace believes of lawyers the very first point that typically comes to mind is personal injury as well as plaintiff work, I always forget that. There's no much better decision than to NOT end up being a lawyer or doctor if you do not intend to do it.

In a lot of industrialized nations, the legislature has actually provided initial territory over extremely technological matters to executive branch management firms which oversee such points. Consequently, some lawyers have become specialists in management law. In a few nations, there is a special category of jurists with a syndicate over this kind of campaigning for; for instance, France previously had conseils juridiques. In other countries, like the USA, lawyers have actually been properly disallowed by statute from particular types of management hearings in order to preserve their informality.

Be cautious, however-- these BigLaw, partner-track positions can trigger exhaustion as well as other mental health concerns. While you were in law college, did you find that you liked the academics of law, the theory and the teaching of law? Law teachers function steadier hrs than lawyers, most of the times, however the competition is intense. They are handsomely awarded for their effort, also-- the typical salary for a law teacher is $128,000 with the high end getting to $194,000.

Some countries need an official apprenticeship with a skilled professional, while others do not. In the United States, the estates of the dead have to typically be provided by a court through probate. American lawyers have a successful syndicate on dispensing advice concerning probate law. The department of such job amongst lawyers, accredited non-lawyer jurists/agents, and also normal clerks or scriveners varies greatly from one country to the next.

What are lawyers called in Canada?

Common law lawyers in Canada are formally and properly called "barristers and solicitors", but should not be referred to as "attorneys", since that term has a different meaning in Canadian usage, being a person appointed under a power of attorney.

Advocaten In Nederland, Alkmaar.

A graduate of the UCLA School of Law, John Branca has actually had a lengthy profession as a home entertainment and corporate lawyer with a concentrate on standing for rock and roll acts and also independent capitalists. He has represented more than 30 participants of the Rock-and-roll Hall of Popularity and also gets on pretty much every checklist of premier entertainment lawyers worldwide.

Which type of surgeon earns the most?

The highest earners — orthopedic surgeons and radiologists — were the same as last year, followed by cardiologists who earned $314,000 and anesthesiologists who made $309,000. The lowest earning doctors are the family guys. Pediatricians and family practitioners make about $156,000 and $158,000, respectively.

Outside the class, Ginsburg invested a significant part of her legal profession as an advocate for gender equality and women's civil liberties. She won numerous triumphes suggesting prior to the Supreme Court, volunteering as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970's. Court of Appeals for the Area of Columbia Circuit in 1980, where she offered until her appointment to the Supreme Court by Head Of State Expense Clinton in 1993. The workplace culture of the Big Four is likewise a source of pride. For example, all 4 of the Big Four are placed in Lot of money magazine's 2015 checklist of the 100 Best Places to Work.

A lot of his lot of money was gained by representing substantial corporations, such as Xerox and also American Express, along with spending quality time as Wall Road banker. Given that opening their doors in 1882 Sparke Helmore law practice has come a long way, with nine workplaces open throughout Australia and over 950 staff members. They cover five areas of law including commercial and also company, commercial insurance policy, government, statutory lines of insurance and also work environment law. Johnson, Winter and Slattery are a company who work as lawful guidance for prominent Australian and International corporations in organisation tasks, conflicts as well as hard purchases.

What we share is deep-rooted neighborhood expertise as well as networks, a spirit of collaboration and also the drive to go beyond customer assumptions. We believe that clients today are seeking a legal adviser who is likewise a long-lasting organisation companion.

Law levels are marketed as a degree that you can use for anything, which is true. But when you remain in institution the cost of college does not weigh as long as when you are really paying for it. When I graduated from grad college, I assumed I would be so abundant. While I live conveniently and also have what I want and need, I'm no Paris Hilton or Donald Trump.

The WLG in their name is stylized from their founding company, Gowlings as well as Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co . Participate in among these universities and you're likely to get an excellent law level education. Clients emphasize that the team is "readily smart, recognizing what is important and what isn't," and also include that the lawyers "assume along with you on industrial agreements." " The lawyers can really manage a big workload and they always supply. They are actually nice individuals to work with and it is a genuine teamwork, they involve you in what they are doing." Wherever customers operate, we provide legal advice that is practically superb, commercially minded and customized to the scenario available.

covers personal financing, financial independence, spending as well as various other things for lawyers that makes you better. A practicing personal equity M&A lawyer and also the maker of Biglaw Capitalist, Josh couldn't find a location where lawyers were speaking about cash, so he created it himself. He spends 10 mins a month on Personal Capital monitoring his money and also is currently rejuvenating PeerStreet to find new real estate crowdfunding deals. However yet I'm still perplexed regarding what I view as an absence of abundant lawyers? I've emailed to and fro with a few of you as well as plan a collection of meetings to be released in the future (after all, we can all learn from how they've done it).

A popular champ for ladies's legal rights both in as well as out of the court, Gloria Allred is among the most prominent and famous females in the legal career today. In her four years in method, she has stood for a huge selection of clients in unwanted sexual advances, wrongful termination, women's rights, as well as employment discrimination situations. As the first High court Justice of Hispanic descent, in addition to the first Latina, selected to the bench, Sonya Sotomayor has actually damaged many barriers for females lawyers. Upon her graduation from Yale Law in 1979, she worked as an aide district lawyer in New York for four-and-a-half years prior to getting in personal practice in 1984.

Please note that all seminars are kept in Dutch unless specified or else. Our customers take advantage of our global reach and also scalability. We are generally identified market leaders in business purchases, financial & resources markets, administration & governing as well as disputes. Allen & Overy is a worldwide lawful experiment roughly 5,500 individuals, including some 550 partners, operating in greater than 40 offices worldwide.

When seeking a law office, you will require to see to it that it is trustworthy.

This is specifically what you need if you require aid with conflicts or specific Job problems connected to employment.

The most effective law office will certainly have labour law lawyers Alkmaar all set to make sure that these issues do not swallow you.

This is since not every one of these Alkmaar law practice might supply you with the experience, revitalizing, and also proactive lawful advice in addition to litigation.

In addition, lawyers are twice as most likely to experience addiction to alcohol and various other medicines. Public suspect of lawyers got to record heights in the USA after the Watergate detraction. In the results of Watergate, legal self-help books became prominent among those who wished to solve their lawful issues without needing to handle lawyers.

I'm mosting likely to discover the abundant lawyers and also highlight them on this blog site. I rejoice you brought up problems, due to the fact that it goes to the heart of my argument as well as problem. Lawyers created the very policies that tie us down and I wonder why that's the case. It's the similar issue I have with the partnership design where non-lawyers can not have equity in a law office.

Meg, I have not seen any of that information but I might be able to locate it, although what I 'd search for is for all lawyers typically. I wish to know just how I compare to my peers in BigLaw, however I haven't had the ability to discover this data anywhere. Makes me question if lawyers traditionally have actually been self-employed but just recently moved right into a W2 employee structure similar to what's happening to physicians currently.

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Who Is World's Best Lawyer?

1. Jerry Brown:Xi Jinping: Mr. Megyn has worked at some of the biggest law firms in the World. John is a former Secretary of State of the United States of America and a Boston College Law alumni. The man who has been labelled as the most powerful person in the World ranks number 9 on our list. More items•

In Germany, mandatory charge frameworks have actually made it possible for widespread implementation of inexpensive lawful expense insurance coverage. Lawyers working straight on the pay-roll of corporations, nonprofits, and federal governments usually make a normal yearly wage. Typically such work was executed in behalf of the inadequate, but in some countries it has actually currently broadened to numerous various other reasons such as the environment.

On a side note, he acts as the co-executor of Michael Jackson's estate. Best known for his daytime court reveal that competed 15 years, Judge Joe Brown received his law degree from UCLA. In 2014, he competed district attorney general in Shelby Region, but shed to the incumbent. Born in 1935, Jordan has enjoyed a long law profession that began after his college graduation from Howard University.

Law School Professors.

When beginning a company of when contracts require to be prepared, they are commonly necessary consultants. While this sort of task isn't flashy like a test lawyer, tax lawyers still bring in a respectable paycheck-- the mean pay is $99,000, while some make as long as $189,000 every year. Trial lawyers are the ones you see on tv and also on the silver screen-- they stand in courts and also argue instances before discretionary. There are less trial lawyers than there are law graduates that want to do this task, so competitors is usually strong. There is a decent payment for those who are successful, though-- the average pay for a trial lawyer is $120,000 annually, which some making upwards of $215,000.

When as well as where it matters most, our understanding of Dutch law combined within the latest deal structures means clients obtain the finest suggestions. The series networks our office's expertise into a program that provides clients lawful support in today's rapidly-evolving markets. The subjects covered include fads in M&A, financial and resources markets, administration & governing as well as disputes. The seminars are open to all get in touches with and clients as well as occur on the first Tuesday of the month from 8.00 to 10.00 am.

Lawyer jokes additionally soared in popularity in English-speaking The United States and Canada as an outcome of Watergate. In 1989, American lawful self-help author Nolo Press published a 171-page collection of negative narratives concerning lawyers from throughout human background. In some nations, like France and also Italy, lawyers have also formed profession unions. In contrast, common law lawyers have typically controlled themselves through institutions where the impact of non-lawyers, if any kind of, was weak and also indirect. The job structure of lawyers varies widely from one country to the next.

Judges are the lawyers that make decisions concerning situations in trial court. Normally, advocaat alkmaar takes years of experience and also potentially an election as well as political election process to come to be a judge in the United States, but that differs by state. Judges are normally generously compensated for their job-- the typical income is $130,000, with some making as much as $177,000 each year. Tax obligation attorneys deal with both businesses as well as individuals to address tax problems, help with estate preparation, or taking legal action against the IRS.

They operate in a large variety of markets consisting of aged care and also retirement, education and learning, monetary services, food and agriculture, government services, infrastructure and also more. Presently, they hold more than 430 staff members as well as 51 companions throughout their Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle workplaces. The company's operations in Canada use lawful solutions in locations such as work and also labor, copyright, general company law, as well as lawsuits. The company is noted for its toughness in advising on banking decisions, company disagreements, company technique licenses, worldwide mediation, and also realty.

Numerous lawyers and lawyers stop working to be clear and also clear of legal charges. Some lawyers will be able to provide a taken care of charge for an agreed quantity of job. Unlike other lawyers, criminal lawyers usually have a high degree of know-how in court appearance skills since they routinely appear in court for criminal cases. Some lawyers technique throughout all or most locations of law, consisting of residential or commercial property, household law, commercial law, website traffic as well as criminal law. The majority of people recognize that coming to be a lawyer requires years of university to gain a law degree, but many individuals don't recognize there are numerous kinds of law degrees.

Beginning in 1993 the firm has wasted no time in increasing throughout Australia, with four offices opening up in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane over seven years-- an exceptional achievement. McCullough Robertson is a leading Australian independent law office.

Aspiring lawyers typically need to pass the bar test in their future state of method. Passing prices for bench exam drop as reduced as 40% in some states, so solid prep work is vital.

Yet some client's stories are extremely depressing, very distressing, as well as downright gloomy. The head of state is supported by the Prime Minister's Office. The prime minister also picks the ministers that make up the Cupboard. The two teams, with the authority of the Parliament of Canada, handle the Federal government of Canada.

This doesn't put on every lawyer, however numerous lawyers are exposed to trauma. As I pointed out above, customers never pertain to us with satisfied news.

In today's world, lawful danger management is an essential part of running a company, going well past disputes as well as purchases. We use our knowledge and experience to aid our customers reduce risks as well as browse the pitfalls, on bargain and also off offer. " Altogether, the top 50 gives a typical image of the leading segment of the Dutch law landscape; it is either growing or losing terrain. The largest workplaces all increased in dimension, while re-positioning and restructuring is taking hold of the center market segment.

Therefore, it shouldn't be difficult for a lot of lawyers to become millionaires. I also think several lawyers aren't in the millionaire camp since they do not start with plans to end up being millionaires.

Top Law Schools In The United States & Canada.

Do you like the concept of operating in business of altering laws for the betterment of a whole state or nation? While a law level isn't an essential need to enter politics, it has commonly been seen as one of the most usual route recently. Members of Congress earn $174,000 per year, and some higher positions within Congress generate $194,000 every year. Alison Monahan discussed legal jobs for The Balance Careers. She is a lawyer and also founder of The Lady's Guide to Law Institution.

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nicksthoughtsonthings · 4 years

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Deliverance (1972) ☆☆☆☆

Director: John Boorman

Writer: James Dickey

Deliverance opens to the wide, expansive, mountain regions of the Southern States of USA. We are tracking the cars of four friends who have banded together for one final canoe trip through a soon-to-be-gone region of the state. This region – including the river, a town, numerous houses and, outwardly, even its backwards inhabitants – will be flooded by an enormous artificial lake used to generate power for the local city. So the tone is set for Deliverance, a film which is principally about the inadequacies and ignorances of civilised, 20th century men in the wilderness; the mistakes they make, and their scrabbling to atone for these mistakes, often without any luck.

This realism also intensifies what is now the film’s most notorious scene. Squirm-inducing in 2020, it is hard to imagine how audiences reacted to this singular type of humiliation towards a white, male businessman in 1972. Halfway through the second day, Ed and Bobby (Ned Beatty) pull up their canoe to the river’s shore; the other boys are upstream somewhere. There is no music. The soundtrack is the familiar sound of insects and birds, unchanged since the first time the canoes went into water 50 minutes ago (film minutes). It is a serene sound of nature. Nature will continue to be the soundtrack over the next 8 minutes, as we watch two mountain men confront Ed and Bobby at gun point, forcing Bobby to strip naked. Bobby is then chased, exhausted, toyed with, ridden, forced to “squeal like a pig” and then, finally, raped. To have prepared the audience for this horror with a brooding soundtrack, starting from when they left their canoes, would’ve been obvious and less effective. By guiding the audience with a soundtrack, we remove one of the crucial reasons why the terrifying things that happen to us are so terrifying: there is no warning. Almost invariably, horror arrives in our lives unannounced, from medical diagnoses to rape. With everything else kept constant in the film to this point, such as the setting, pacing and soundtrack, we ask ourselves, how is this happening to Bobby? Is this really about to happen? And our questions recede as the horror unfolds in front of us.

Shorty after, just before Ed is about to suffer his turn at the hand’s of these unsavoury mountain folk, Lewis (Burt Reynolds, of course) shoots the perpetrator through the heart with a bow and arrow, with the other mountain man narrowly escaping. Two questions then arise, one obvious and the other not so obvious: the obvious question is, in a region where everyone knows everyone, how long will it take before the mountain man brings his friends? The other is more subtle and might have been omitted in a lesser version of Deliverance, but is picked up here: what do they do with the body? While the other men seem to have made an implicit agreement amongst themselves already, only Drew remembers that a legal system and society exists outside of this sordid place, a fact so quickly forgotten by the others, to deal with these problems. Drew’s view is not shared by the others; and after a quick vote, it is decided that the dead man is to be buried and forgotten about – and nothing more is to be said on the matter.

As the men make their way back into the river and approach a new set of rapids, Drew, who’s been in a trance since the burial, willingly slumps into the water to his death. The whole affair is too irreconcilably wretched for him. His conscience has overwhelmed him. The men in the other canoe offer the opinion that he was likely shot by the other mountain man. Ed knows better, but in a curious case of self-denial, he begins to agree with them, and even looks for this phantom bullet wound when he finds Drew’s body later. It’s as if Ed doesn’t want to believe that their actions are so morally heinous to warrant such martyrdom. After all, as a moral person himself, where would that leave Ed?

The remaining men’s voyage down the river becomes more arduous and more dangerous. There is another death and there are more lies to go with it. They finally arrive in the local town, thoroughly defeated, but not without provoking the suspicion of the local police force. Their half-baked story is a little too fanciful to be believed. But they’re in luck, because the town is getting ready for its great watery burial, and it seems that the town’s imminent death is suppressing the Sergeant’s scepticism on Ed, Bobby and Lewis. At one point, the Sergeant concedes to Ed, “I don’t think you boys should come back. Just let this town die in peace”. In other words, you – and city boys like you – have done your damage to this town, just let the funeral commence; let the slate be wiped clean.

This sentiment of wilful ignorance is reiterated in perhaps the most touching moment in the film. Ed walks into the dining room of the place where he and Bobby are rehabilitating. It is dusk, and Bobby is sitting round with several other people, laughing, eating and enjoying himself. It is a picture of warm, Southern hospitality. When Ed sits down, he is quiet and restrained. He says he’s hungry and politely accepts his meal; but within a few moments he has broken down into tears. Whether it’s the picture of Bobby so civilised and unscathed after the horror of the last two days, the hospitality of the locals, or an overwhelming sense of moral responsibility, we don’t know. And the locals – and Bobby – don’t want to know. For no sooner has Ed started crying than he has stopped crying. Let’s move on. The cornbread is delicious. Don’t concern yourself with your crimes and mistakes, Ed, because they can just as easily be buried – or flooded.

28th May, 2020

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2whatcom-blog · 5 years

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Brexit Stephen Barclay says PM's deal is 'lifeless' if invoice fails

The prime minister's Brexit deal can be "dead" if the withdrawal invoice doesn't move within the Commons in June, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has mentioned. Mr Barclay mentioned the invoice - which paves the way in which for Brexit - can be thought-about by MPs within the week starting three June. He mentioned if the plan is rejected by MPs, the UK will face no deal, or Article 50 might be revoked - so no Brexit. However Jeremy Corbyn's spokesman has mentioned Labour wouldn't help the invoice if no cross-party settlement had been reached. Makes an attempt to discover a cross-party compromise started after Theresa Could's Brexit deal, the withdrawal settlement that was negotiated with the EU, was rejected thrice by MPs. Requested twice whether or not she would resign if her Brexit plan is rejected once more by MPs, Mrs Could mentioned the withdrawal invoice will "ensure that we deliver Brexit for the public". The PM mentioned she was positive that MPs "will be thinking of the duty that we have to deliver Brexit" when deciding whether or not to help the invoice. Authorities sources have instructed the BBC that there wouldn't be an extra try if the plan is rejected. The vote - which is able to happen when MPs return from half-term recess - would deliver the withdrawal settlement into UK regulation through the Withdrawal Settlement Invoice. Chatting with the Lords' European Union Choose Committee, Mr Barclay mentioned the Withdrawal Settlement Invoice (WAB) can be printed "as soon as possible". He mentioned: "I think if the House of Commons does not approve the WAB, then the Barnier deal is dead in that form and I think the House will have to then address a much more fundamental question between whether it will pursue... a no-deal option or whether it will revoke." Worldwide Commerce Secretary Liam Fox mentioned MPs should resolve "if they want to vote for Brexit or not". Bringing the EU Withdrawal Settlement Invoice ahead would permit the prime minister to push forward along with her ambition of delivering Brexit earlier than the summer time - regardless of the dearth of settlement to date within the cross-party talks, mentioned BBC political correspondent Iain Watson. Jeremy Corbyn's spokesman mentioned that except there was an settlement based mostly on "real compromise and movement by the government" then the invoice can be "based on the same botched Brexit deal that has been rejected three times already by Parliament". It is not precisely the identical thumbs up or thumbs down that one other significant vote can be. That could be a simple sure or no to the divorce deal that the prime minister negotiated with the EU. This time, it is going to be the Withdrawal Invoice which is a complete tome of latest legal guidelines that can be wanted to take us out of the European Union. The draft of that invoice remains to be being saved beneath wraps. Very, only a few folks have seen it. It is rather more detailed than only a vote on the settlement can be. In fact, that provides folks extra issues to object to. Though Theresa Could may need pleaded in cupboard that folks on all sides have to maneuver away from absolutism, and transfer to a temper of compromise, there's not a lot signal of it. As and when that invoice truly emerges, which will nicely - within the phrases of 1 cupboard minister - make issues worse earlier than they'll get higher. Brexiteer and Conservative MP Steve Baker mentioned bringing the invoice ahead "over the heads" of DUP MPs - on whom the federal government depends for a majority - would "eradicate the government's majority". "What is the government thinking?" he requested. DUP Westminster chief Nigel Dodds mentioned: "If the prime minister brings the withdrawal invoice to the Commons for a vote, the query can be, 'What has modified?'. "Until she will display one thing new that addresses the issue of the backstop, then it's extremely probably her deal will go all the way down to defeat as soon as once more." The backstop is the controversial a part of the withdrawal deal that goals to make sure an open border on the island of Eire if the UK leaves the EU with out securing an all-encompassing deal.

What's the Withdrawal Settlement Invoice?

The UK must move a regulation to implement the withdrawal settlement - the a part of the PM's Brexit deal which is able to take the nation out of the EU - in UK regulation. This can be a requirement beneath the phrases of earlier Brexit laws handed final 12 months. The laws would make the residents' rights a part of the settlement immediately enforceable in UK courts, and set their relationship with the EU's Courtroom of Justice. It would additionally permit ministers to make "divorce funds" to the EU foreseen beneath the present deal, and provides impact to the so-called backstop plan for the Irish border. MPs will have the ability to vote on amendments to the invoice, and this might permit ministers to make good on any compromise they attain with Labour within the cross-party talks. If the invoice is launched within the first week of June it's going to come seven days after the European Parliament elections - which Training Secretary Damian Hinds has acknowledged might be "troublesome" for the Conservatives. A state go to by US President Donald Trump and a by-election in Peterborough can even happen that very same week. Please improve your browser

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#2what.com #bill #brexit #deal #mps #uk #vote #withdrawal

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