#//I will take 'violently concerned child' for $500-

[truly-quirkless]

[ @themultiversebundle || DM'd to plot!]

It had been a relatively normal day..as normal as things got, now that Yagi and Fin had somewhat(?) befriended a strange Quirk-holder kid who went by 'Cody'. It had been maybe a week since the teen had started crashing in an empty dorm in the faculty's dorm building, and the two were out and about. They had gone to buy groceries since their supplies were getting low, and it was such a bright, peaceful day...

Until an explosion rang out from a nearby street. Almost on instinct, the two were rushing over- Fin with a hand on their hidden pocket knife, and Yagi on his own recently-acquired pocket knife (he may have been retired, but Hell if he'd go down without a fight). The two paused, however, as they came across the street in question... And the child currently going haywire.

"We needa calm that kid down...!" Before more damage was done. The duo let go of their handles,- Yagi rushing to knock a civilian out of the way before he could get crushed by a light pole, while Fin shot forward- hands latching onto two youths that were standing stock-still, staring at the scene.

"Y'gotta move, kids!"

[theinquisitxor]

A Day of Fallen Night mild spoilers:

I want to talk about Wulf and his pov + Old English Literature.

What we know:

The Kingdom of Hroth is largely a Scandinavian/Nordic inspired country.

In Priory, Inys is roughly equivalent to the English Elizabethan/Tudor era (the 1450s- 1500s). Fallen Night takes place 500 years prior. What era was England in in the early 1000s? The (end of) the Anglo-Saxon era.

While Inys during Fallen Night is definitely not set in an Anglo-Saxon era, I feel like there are definite motifs and similarities. The Hrothi used to raid Inys, but stopped after the marriage of Sabran and Barholdt. Wulf uses a saxe knife. The fens and monsters resemble those of Old English epics.

Aside the Anglo-Saxon & Scandinavian influences, I want to talk about the references to Old English literature:

Firstly, Samatha Shannon introduces Part 3 with a quote from the Old English (fragmented) poem, Wulf and Eadwacer.

it is:

wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre. / fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen… / Ungelice is us

This roughly translates to: Wulf is on one island. I am on another. Fast is that island set among the fens....We are apart.

Now, Wulf and Eadwacer is a notoriously difficult poem to translate and make sense of, for those of us who have studied Old English. It appears to be from the pov of a woman lamenting over the separation of a male person she loves (typically interpreted as a husband/lover, but it doesn't have to be) referencing an on-going violent event in the background. And! there a line about a child being left in the woods with a wolf.

But I think Shannon does something so neat here and she changes the meaning to fit for Tunuva and Wulf, and bases so much of Tunuva and Wulf's relationship/story on this small poem fragment!!

Secondly, during a titular scene with Wulf washing up on a beach, Wulf is called the seafarer. "By dawn, the lights had disappeared, and the seafarer was still alive" (pg 396). This is obviously a direct call to the Old English poem, The Seafarer. It's a melancholic, elegiac poem concerned with life and death, about a seafarer on a cold, wintery beach mourning the loss of his comrades. Sound familiar?

I just love this little attention to detail concerning Wulf and Fallen Night. Samantha Shannon is a brilliant, brilliant woman

[weabooweedwitch]

My sister is becoming such a hardcore alcoholic she's developing medical issues and doing brainless concerning really dirty nasty gross shit. the other week she found a random broken glass jar of pickles outside and literally brought it into our apartment to put the BROKEN GLASS in OUR KITCHEN SINK and. She ate the pickles she had no idea were out there for long or where they came from

It's after 2 in the morning on a weeknight in an apartment building and she has been continuously on and off the phone in our living room so drunk she's audibly burping and hooting and hollering and GASPING at like the top of her lungs and is continuously talking about me because she is trying to start a fight

Like literally actually not even a lie picture this: a woman who is 28 yeara old saying that she doesn't wash her hair because she dyes it (blue by the way, big shock there), so it is constantly visibly oily and greasy and literally leaving musty smells on the pillows she sleeps on. this woman then comes into the room where you are in and haven't spoken to her, haven't acknowledged her, and are clearly trying to avoid her and the person you are with is also avoiding her, and she's coming in not even needing anything, literally just coming in to tell you you're greasy because she has a disorder thar causes her to seek conflict and actually start fights where more people would walk away

Like literally actually she would be a small child and would go up to a grown alcoholic man who was known to have a violent temper and have an attitude directly to his face even knowing he hurt our mom because she literally WANTS to fight and she can't control it and actually it would be really sad if she didn't act like a white trash monster all the time

On Christmas she went to a bar and called my mom at like THREE IN THE MORNING to pick her up and a cop told my mom that a gas station attendant called 911 because she was so fucking drunk they were concerned and if my mom hadn't been able to come get her my sister would have been charged with a drunken disorderly, and if you ask her about it SHE JUST LIES, as if my mom wasn't directly told by a police officer what happened

It's just. It's so fucking hard because you have someone literally starting fights with you, like literally actually she got her feelings hurt and lunged at me and I had to defend myself and now she cries that I attacked her. I said something to hurt her feelings and she chased after me with a solid glass vodka bottle and was beating on my bedroom door screaming in rage while mom watched horrified. My mom and I are scared of her insane alcoholic mood swings and we want her to move out and we want to never hear from her again because all we hear from her is the same old story we've heard her entire life: Emily is getting drunk and emotional and constantly causing herself severe, significant problems

I have to keep working to help support my mom in case we get evicted because of, I don't even want to call her my sister anymore, but it's hard when she literally goes out of her way to try and run both of us down. Our mom is almost 60 with chronic physical pain and this loser will literally bully her for weed she doesn't even need, like literally actually waking her up for it. There's only a 20 pound difference between us and she acts like I'm over 500 pounds when she is the one who is binging so excessively when drunk that we started deliberately limiting the amount of food in the house and she just thinks we're being lazy and not going grocery shopping but it's because of her

We just want her to leave but she doesn't even realize how much money it would take to get her out of here so she's just terrorizing the entire building in the meantime. and the saddest thing is my father literally doesn't even care because my mom told me he actually never even wanted kids to begin with and it explains SO much about his behavior. He heard my sister and I gad a physical fight and he literally didn't even care, he just said we knew what my sister was like before we brought her here and we got what we asked for.

I guess we did? Because as sad as it is to say, she's literally the exact same as she was when she moved away from us over 10 years ago and we had just been expecting her to have grown up in all these years, and me and mom have realized the reason she even moved away was ultimately because she wanted to run away and do whatever she wanted and has been spiraling ever since

It's just sad. I'm still trying to cut her out of my heart because it only gets worse from here. If she doesn't get treatment she isn't going to survive and she doesn't want treatment and she doesn't want to survive either. And I have to keep telling myself and my mom.... that unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that. And it's hard.

[schneesisterss]

Do you have any head cannons for the other Dimitrescu sisters? I loved your takes on Cassandra!

thank you! <3 and Of Course I have headcannons for the other two. (though not as extensive as the ones I have for Cassandra bc you know... brain rot) BUT HERE:

Daniela:

ADD/ADHD representation

stims include, but not limited to: jumping, hard blinking, leg bouncing, word/phrase/noise repetition, and fidgeting with her clothing

and i’m also CONVINCED she gets the zoomies at random times of the day

Alcina, hearing loud and fast footsteps up and down her hallway at 3am: *sigh* “Daniela! Take it outside!”

followed by a loud THUMP and painful groan (she definitely ran into a wall)

hates loud noises but simultaneously has no volume control

especially when she gets excited

Cassandra has to constantly remind her to lower her voice

“AND THEN I TOOK MY KNIFE AND STABBED THE LYCAN IN THE NECK AND IT WAS SO COOL—”

“Dani, i’m standing right here, why are you yelling?”

she loves play-fighting with her sisters

Cassandra is more willing to entertain her than Bela but the both of them like to see their sister happy. so whenever they recognize Daniela getting antsy they’ll wrestle with her a bit

(Cassandra gets way to into it sometimes and makes Bela be the referee lol. Cass always ends up pinning her younger sister with a proud, competitive smile on her face. Bela let’s Dani win, but we don’t tell her that)

has the keenest senses of the three which makes her the best at stalking/killing pray

and since she can hear the best out of all of them, she unintentionally eves drops on conversations

so Daniela, bless her, has all the tea

tactile learner

will just. touch things

“Life hard, Mothers gown soft”

can get trapped in her own head and doesn’t know how to express to her family what’s bothering her

this can make her very reserved at times and she’ll distance herself for days on end

her mother is really the only person who knows how to get her out of that state. Alcina walks up the long flight of stairs to the highest point of her castle. her youngest daughter likes to come here sometimes when she needs the quiet. “Daniela? Are you up here?”

“Hello, Mother.” Alcina looks up to see her daughter lounging on a banister high up on the ceiling.

“What are you doing up there, my love?” Daniela rubs the fabric of her dress between her fingers. “Cassandra and Bela were arguing again. I don’t like when Cassandra yells.”

Alcina shakes her head. Those two were always going at it. She’ll speak to Bela about it later. “I haven’t seen you in a few days.” Daniela then grabs a fist full of her dress and tugs at it, blinking hard. “Come down for a moment. Talk to me, baby.”

and Daniela simply rolls herself off the banister and into free fall. Alcina, already prepared, catches her with ease and holds her bridal style against her chest. Daniela runs her hands over the sleeve of her mother’s dress.

Alcina gave her youngest child time to gather her thoughts, knowing it sometimes takes longer for her to be able to understand them herself. Daniela finally spoke up: “It’s been very loud recently. Around the castle. Small things, like footsteps or glasses clicking, they sound so loud in my head.” She covers her ears with her hands. “Even now I can still hear Cassandras voice through the castle, it’s pushing in my ears. My head hurts, Mother.”

Alcina gave her daughter a quick squeeze before setting her down. “Follow me baby, I want to show you something.” Daniela followed her Mother through the twists and turns of the castle until they ended up at a door that was just like all the others. It blended in and maybe that’s why Daniela has never noticed it before. “In here.” her mother guided.

Inside was a small library and lounge room. A fire place tucked in the corner and, of course, a wall a wine next to it. Daniela looked at her Mother questioningly.

“Listen.” her mother said, and Daniela did. She heard... nothing. Nothing outside of the quiet cracking of the fire place. “This room is sound proofed. Come here whenever you feel overwhelmed.” She leaned down to stroke her daughters head. “Just don’t tell your sisters I showed you my secret getaway room.” and with a wink, the tall woman exited the room and shut the door behind her.

The next day Daniela was at breakfast like nothing had changed. She didn’t even mind when Cassandra yelled at a maiden for breaking a plate, it only made her laugh.

(if you get overstimulated you KNOW what i’m talking about)

personal space? never heard of her.

loves to cling to Belas arm and Bela let’s her bc she thinks it’s just. so cute.

will also sometimes just crawl into her mothers lap and fall asleep. then Alcinas like: “well.. i guess i’m not moving for three hours”

Daniela: “if I run an jump at Cassandra, she’ll most certainly catch me.” *takes off in a full blown sprint*

Cassandra: “NO IM HOLDING HOT TEA—” *drops tea to catch Daniela* *proceeds to cuss her younger sister out, all while Dani is wrapped around her like a koala*

(this happens a lot. Dani will just... climb on Cassandra. piggy back rides, getting on her shoulders, wrapping her hands around her neck from behind and letting her feet drag on the floor, etc. Cassandra complains adamantly but never once moves to get her off)

Cassandra: “hey Dani, I dare you too—”

Bela: “Mother said Daniela isn’t allowed to accept dares anymore.”

Daniela: “apparently I have ‘no regard for my personal safety.’”

it takes a lot for Daniela to get genuinely angry, but when she does, it’s.... bad.

Very Very Scary when mad

turns into a completely different person that you Do NOT want to fuck with

dangerous and violent

much more dark and sadistic as compared to her normal personality

came home one night covered in blood and laughing hysterically. it scared the shit out of her sisters bc if they would try and get close, she’d slash at them with her weapon.

(this was one of the only times Bela had seen Cassandra genuinely worried and afraid for their sister)

when Alcina came to see what was wrong, Daniela, still laughing madly, swung at her too. Cassandra quickly shot out her arm and grabbed Belas elbow to stop her from getting involved. Bela whipped around with a growl but Cassandras glare and squeezing nails told her to back down. Mother can handle it.

Insane Laugh™️

thinks it’s funny to intimidate the maidens by showing her fangs and snapping her jaw

she often likes to find Bela when she’s reading a book to convince her to read to her (Bela almost always complies)

that’s it for Daniela. just a hyperactive baby with a murder streak <3 ONTO THE FINAL SISTER

Bela:

Mama’s (and I cannot stress this enough) Girl

needs constant reassurance that’s she’s doing a good job and yes this reassurance can ONLY come from her mother

INSOMNIAC

this girl never sleeps, pls baby you need some rest

she spends the time she should be sleeping reading books or running errands for her mother (whether Alcina asked her to or not)

she has read almost every single book in their giant library

Cassandra doesn’t understand this at all

“Why are you always cooped up in here?” Bela glanced up over the pages of her book at her younger sister. “This is the library Cassandra. Take a wild guess.” her voice was completely level and had no inflection. Cassandra gritted her teeth, “You think your so much better than me.” Bela sighed and closed her book. She didn’t want to do this again. “No. I don’t.” she said seriously. Cassandra eyed her for a moment then looked away, Bela saw the guilt on her face before she turned on her heal. “You’re so boring.”

because she reads so much, she is incredibly smart and just knows facts about random things

Daniela, daydreaming: “I wonder why grass is green.”

Bela, immediately: “the pigment that most grasses produce, Chlorophyll, absorbs almost all blue and red light and reflects green light which is why we see green. so I mean, technically grass is every single color EXCEPT for green.

Dani, confused as fuck: ....

Cass: “Bitch, how do you even know that?”

Bela’s sisters just end up using her as Google

“Hey Bela, how far away is the moon?” “238,900 miles.”

“Hey Bela, how many different climates are there?” “Twelve”

“Hey Bela, what’s the worlds deadliest poison?” “Botulinum... why?” “No reason.” “Dani. WHY?”

“Hey Bela, how much can I sell a human skull on the black market for?” Bela, concerned: “Cassandra why would—” “HOW MUCH?” “Well... are all the teeth still in tact?” “...No.” “Than only about $500.” “FUCK.”

“Hey Bela, I have this weird rash on my back and—” “Daniela. Do not finish that sentence. Go ask Mother.”

she is so quiet

and not just because she doesn’t talk very loud or even much at all. she’s just So. Silent. when she moves

just pops up in random places without anyone hearing her approach

even Daniela can’t hear her coming, which is saying something

Cassandra, minding her own business, drinking blood tea: .....

Bela, suddenly right next to her: “Hey I was wondering if— stop screaming, it’s me— have you seen Mothers lipstick? It’s missing.”

refuses any type of help with anything or else she feels like she failed that task

Never asks for help, Never asks for favors, and Never Ever will burden her Mother with any of her problems. Ever.

(Alcina thinks this is ridiculous. her eldest daughter pushes herself too hard.)

Anxiety™️

sometimes when her anxiety becomes too much she shuts down and becomes very indifferent to things around her. this has caused many fights between herself and Cassandra because Cass will get really fired up when all Bela does is respond with a monotone voice and blank stare.

overthinks literally everything and is a perfectionist

this makes her prone to panic attacks :(

when this happens she shuts herself in her room, not wanting to bother her Mother or sisters

Bela closes her bedroom door behind her and stumbles to her knees. she can’t seem to get air into her lungs no matter how hard she tried. she had failed. Mother asked her to bring her the head of that stupid man-thing, but somehow he knew their weakness.

how could he know? are Cassandra and Daniela ok? where are they? where is Mother?

Belas breathing was shallow and short, her chest burns as she presses her forehead into the ground. She claws the skin of her chest raw, leaving angry, red marks behind, desperately trying to open her lungs.

she stays as quiet as she can, only gasping few and far between. she will not be a burden. she should deal with the consequences of her failure. alone.

a sudden knock on her door makes her scramble backwards on her bottom till her back hits the opposite wall. then Belas worst nightmare, her Mothers voice.

“Bela?! Bela, is that you?” Alcinas words were rushes and worried. the door handle jiggled. “Bela, baby the door is locked, please let me in.” Bela covered her mouth and cried silently while her Mother begged to be let in.

the sound of snapping wood had Belas eyes flying open, her Mother had broken down the door. Bela shrunk into herself. She’s going to be so mad. I’m a failure. the ringing in her ears became so intense she couldn’t hear anything else.

large, soft hands cup her cheeks and a muffled voice through the air: “Bela, my love, you’re alright thank god. Are you hurt anywhere? Let me see.”

Bela pushed weakly at her Mothers arms and said between sobs, “I-I’m sorry, M-Mother.”

Alcina looked at her eldest daughter with confusion, she had no physical wounds, but the look on her face was heartbreaking. “What are you sorry for, my love?” this only made Belas breathing spend up even more, her face red from the lack of oxygen. Alcina quickly pulled her in close.

“Now Bela, listen to the sound of my voice,” she said it gently but just hard enough to grab her daughters attention. “I need you to copy my breath. Do it now, love, listen to me. Do what i’m telling you to.” Alcina took exaggerated breaths and noticed that instantly after her command, Bela had tried to follow, but the smaller girls breath was still choppy and small. Alcina rubbed a thumb across Belas cheek. “You’re doing so well baby. Keep going just like that. Good girl.” a smaller hand was placed on her arm and grabbed at her sleeve. “Good baby, use me to ground yourself. Keep breathing now, you’re doing so good.” Alcina kept whispering soft encouragements and praises until her daughters breathing was back to normal and she was laying limp on her chest.

Alcina moved the hair away from Belas face. “What a good girl, you did so well.” Bela squeezed her eyes shut and pushed into her Mother until her face was hidden. “I’m sorry Mother.” came a muffled apology, though her voice was much more steadier than before. “I failed you, I couldn’t stop the man-thing. He shot at the windows! He knows our weakness, Mother. What are we going to do? Where’s Daniela and Cassandra, are they ok? I should have stopped him for you I’m so sorry I—”

“Quiet.” Bela immediately seals her lips and looks away, already extracting herself from her Mother’s arms. She probably hates her. Alcina simple tugs her back and forces Bela to look in her eyes with a quick tap to the forehead. “Bela, I need you to listen to me very carefully.” Her daughters eyes go wide and she nods. “You have nothing to apologize for. This is not you’re fault and I will not allow you to think that way. Plus, the man-thing won’t bother us any longer, I took care of it.”

“But—” Alcina raises an eyebrow and Bela gives in, nodding hesitantly. “Good girl.” Bela exhales through her nose at the phrase and squeezes her Mother’s sleeve again. They sit like that for a few more moments, calming down.

Bela suddenly shoots up. “Daniela, Cassandra, are they—” “They’re fine my dear, Daniela got a little banged up, but Cassandra was already patching her up before I could even get close. We didn’t know where you were, that’s why I was so worried.” Bela relaxed and again nuzzled her nose into her Mother’s chest, took one more deep breath, then stood. “I’m going to go check on them.”

She steps through the now empty door frame and pauses. She spoke without turning around: “I won’t fail you again, Mother.” and shifts into a cloud of flies and disappears.

(am I projecting again? idk help)

can play the piano

no like you don’t understand, she is so good at piano

this girl has mastered songs by composers like Liszt, Beethoven, and Ravel

she’ll play for hours on end, if she starts a new piece she Will Not get up until she can play it through perfectly

she pretends not to notice Cassandra secretly listening to her play, hidden behind a nearby bookshelf

while her younger sisters always jump head first into a fight, Bela takes a more calculating approach. learning her enemies movements from afar before advancing and ending it in like 3 quick moves.

“Well Bela, if Mother asked you to jump off a bridge, would you?”

Bela, already climbing over the railing: “Hm?”

and there you go for Bela! my sweet child.. please learn self-care.

*ahem* I went overboard again didn’t I? WELP. I regret nothing. Give me more headcannons.

[hellacioushag]

**not sure if i’m blocked, but my post seems to have disappeared so i figured i would post again about this post from @offtorivendell about gwyn's age being problematic when shipping gwynriel:

i’m trying very hard to understand the intent behind this. because reading this whole thing, saying that gwyn is basically a young teen in fae years, sounds like an insinuation that anyone who ships her with az is ok with child abuse/pedophilia. i get you said this take is not to be hurtful and you would be respectful, but this is how it sounds.

let’s say for arguments sake this was a genuine concern when reading. that you are just a concerned gwyn fan who doesn’t want her to be in a compromising relationship. i’ll humor this post as best as i can.

the fact that she talked about how she was not able to participate in the great rite, not because of her age, but because of her location - being remote - leads me to believe she’s old enough to be in a sexual relationship with a fae male. considering the great rite doesn’t pair people up based on their age bracket and it’s just a fun orgy for the fae one can assume she could have paired up with a 20 year old fae, an 80 year old, a 578 year old... so claiming she’s too young for this doesn’t make sense. next.

alis and her nephews are urisks. they are not high fae or river nymphs. they age at a significantly slower rate. that alis quote was pointing out how difficult it is for her species and the high fae to reproduce. it was pointing out why both covet their young. the reason tarquin is considered a young high lord is he’s the youngest one and also he hasn’t had a chance to rule since he was crowned UtM. that’s why they talk about him being idealistic, he’s not used to court politics - which he admits when with feyre. he doesn’t have the cynicism the others have due to his age and time ruling. next.

rhys himself was 28 years of age when the war started 500 years ago. that means cassian, azriel, and mor were all around the same age. they were old enough to fight and have sex. cassian and mor had sex with each other, but no one claims they were too young to be having sex. cassian was in a relationship with a valkyrie, a seasoned warrior, during the war. i haven’t seen anyone write a post about how cassian was a victim of statutory rape. 28 is not a child in their world. next.

if we are putting this creepy feel onto gwynriel, that gwyn is too young for azriel, then we most definitely need to put that title onto feysand, nessian, elriel, elucien, feylin....literally every ship in this universe aside from elain x graysen and feyre x isaac hale (her mortal barn boy in case anyone forgot). having been mortal at one time does not exclude them from the “he’s too old for her” title. they’re all younger than gwyn. wow, what pervs. next.

azriel saved gwyn so there’s a power dynamic... ok so guess that means elriel is out. feysand too since feyre saved all of prythian. guess she’ll have to go to the continent for some lovin’. cassian, sorry nesta saved you so now she holds too much power over you. do you see how bad that argument is? saving someone does not disrupt the power dynamic. especially when these characters are equals. gwyn did not train for months and complete the blood rite not to be considered an equal to azriel. next.

gwyn sounds younger than everyone... ok, but she’s not. she grew up sheltered. her only sexual experience was violent. that’s why she doesn’t read smut as easily as emerie or nesta. reading adventure books does not make her a child. it speaks to her desire to be her own hero, to be a warrior, which she now is. and sorry, but truth teller is a pretentious af name. silver majesty >>> truth teller any day lol. as for the friendship bracelets, sure that was very “tweens at summer camp” moment, but it was to signify that gwyn has found a sisterhood with nesta and emerie. if we’re gonna use this as evidence that gwyn is too young then we can also use nesta making an imaginary friend real (the house) and nesta asking said imaginary friend to make a miniature pegasus. the entire slumber party scene had the tween girl feel to it, but you’re not claiming nesta or emerie as childish...

i don’t care what people ship. you want to ship elain and koschei go for it. you want a thrupple with mor, nesta, and the bone carver fucking have fun! i just don’t think it’s appropriate to make a post to talk about a ship that implies anyone shipping it would be supporting pedophilia. because this is essentially what you are saying. that gwyn is technically a teen in fae years so shipping her with az is problematic. i will give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did not mean to imply this, but it’s a bad take. let people ship what they want in peace.

[imagine-loki]

Soulbonds and Fairy Dust (rewrite)

TITLE: Soulbonds and Fairy Dust (rewrite) CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 3/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine one of the fae has been helping the Avengers, jumping in to help them on missions and vanishing before Shield can bring her in.  Loki joins the team and convinces her to come talk to the team and consider joining before Shield takes more drastic measures. RATING: M NOTES/WARNINGS:  This is a rewrite of the original work of the same name.  Also on AO3 here

“Hey!” she protested, tugging on her wrist, trying to get it out of Loki’s cold vice-like grip.  Unfortunately, he was stronger than she was.  And he was dragging her further into the building.  There was no question in his body language or the bruising grip on her that she wasn’t getting away.  Not without truly hurting him.  Whatever her words had sparked was riding him hard.  He wasn’t letting her out of his sight again.  

He also annoyingly still had her ring, so it would be a pain to flee now. She would just have to sneak back to claim her ring later, which was easier said than done when a magician was involved.  He ignored her protests and kept his grip on her wrist firm as he dragged her into the elevator at the back of the reception area.  He was silent the entire ride up the tower, and dragged her out into what appeared to be a living room with a huge tv and too many couches and comfy chairs spread around it. 

“Let me go!” she protested again, yanking harder against the hand holding her wrist.  She really didn’t want to force him through violence. His grip should not have been that strong on her overtop of her coat.  She didn’t want to force him to let she go, but she would if he didn’t knock it off and start explaining things. 

Soon.

“Please do not fight me, Lady Fae. This is important,” Loki told her firmly, but not unkindly, just in a tone that told her clearly that he expected to be obeyed. She noted that while he was holding her firmly, he wasn’t hurting her, not really.  He just wasn’t letting her escape.  It was almost as if he were afraid of losing her if he wasn’t physically holding onto her.

She huffed, “Fine,” she grumbled and walked with him into the common room.  Struggling wasn’t going to help matters any.  Not if she wanted answers or her ring back.

Thor was waiting for them in the common room and stood when they entered. He had been so excited when Loki had said he wished to meet the fae lady downstairs. He was glad Loki had finally wanted to do something, anything. That that activity had to do with another person was an even better sign.  Though Thor stiffened when he saw her wrist firmly in Loki’s grip; that was unacceptable behavior towards a guest. “Brother, that is not how you treat a guest…” he told Loki, his tone dry, but trying to keep the situation from turning violent. He didn’t care for how the fae lady was being treated any more than she did. 

Something about the two men’s interaction brought back a memory of two boys, one with black hair in a green tunic, the other was blond in a red tunic having some kind of argument. she were standing nearby huffing in exasperation at her silly boys. Not her sons, no, her friends. She had been the same size as them. 

Now where had that memory come from?

“Brother, now is not the time for you to berate me, you will understand my actions in a moment,” Loki told him, his voice calm as his hand remained clamped around her wrist, his grip not loosening at all, as if he were afraid she would disappear if he let she go. “Lady Fae, please inform my brother of your name,” he addressed her pleasantly, gently.  There was a sense of caring and something that could easily be mistaken for love.  Had they actually known each other.  

She huffed at Loki’s treatment of her and hoped there would be explanations soon. “My name is Sigyn, what of it?” she grumbled and watched Thor’s eyes go wide after she said her name. 

“You see why I did not wish to risk losing her again now that I have found her?” Loki asked his brother with desperation in his voice.  Thor nodded, but didn’t say anything yet as Loki turned to her and finally dropped her wrist. “I apologize for my rough treatment, lady. I was surprised when I heard you name. There was a young noble lady on Asgard by the name of Sigyn who went missing around 500 years ago, we presumed her dead. She had been my best friend,” he added that part softly and she weren’t sure she or Thor were meant to hear those words. She saw the haunted look and pain in his eyes and all she wanted to do was go hug him. 

That was a strange reaction for someone used to being alone. 

“You think I’m you missing Sigyn, though surely the name can’t be that uncommon…” she said softly, the pieces coming together from what he’d said so far. He thought her his long lost friend. She couldn’t just accept it without any form of evidence, though, so she had to bring up the question.

Loki shook his head.  “The name was never very popular on Asgard, and became nearly taboo to use after y-she,” he corrected quickly, very nearly saying ‘you’ to her.  He couldn’t let himself have that much hope, not yet.  Not without proof.  “disappeared,”

Sigyn wished she could remember more of her childhood, but she couldn’t yet. She’d had to hide the memories even from herself. A golden lady had taught she that piece of magic when she were a child. When she was teaching the black haired boy. 

Her memories were coming back slowly in the presence of these two men. 

“You told me earlier that you were taken when you were younger, you said 500 or so mortal years, and don’t remember where you’re from,” Loki added gently to the fae lady, to the lady who looked nothing like his Sigyn, but… still seemed so familiar.  He was also explaining for Thor’s benefit. The pieces were falling into place and it seemed more and more likely as the conversation went on. “The timeline fits, especially from a child’s memory…Sig was only 500 when she was taken from us,”

“True,” she agreed softly, “I had to hide my memories, even from myself to protect the people back home from the fae,” she added just as softly.  She had a feeling that with these revelations, she definitely wasn’t leaving their care. She had a feeling they were right, but there was no proof.  How could there be?

“Can you find your memories again?” Thor asked her gently, and gods he sounded so familiar, with that overly protective brotherly tone and the true concern in his words. 

She nodded, concentration in her eyes. “Given time I can, but not soon enough to answer your questions as fast as I’d like,” she explained, Loki nodded along, seeming to know exactly what magic she’d used to hide her memories all of those years ago. He was a magician, of course he knew, or had a good idea. 

Thor looked to Loki. “How do we find out the truth?” he asked Loki just as gently. He didn’t want Loki hurt if she wasn’t really his long lost best friend. The longer Loki was left to hope she was his Sigyn, the more broken hearted he would be if she weren’t.  And Loki had already tried to kill himself once in recent history. 

Loki considered that and both Sigyn and Thor could practically see the gears in his mind turning as he thought over the situation. “I would suggest I help her unlock her memories through magic, but I am not sure that is wise as I have never tried to look into the mind of a fae. I can contact Mother and see if she has any ideas,” Loki finally replied cautiously.  He didn’t want to take risks, not with this, not with potentially hurting his Sigyn. 

“Can you contact Mother from here?” Thor asked a bit incredulously. It was incredibly far from Midgard to Asgard, especially without using the Bifrost’s power. He wasn’t sure whether to believe Loki’s skill could truly reach home. “Is her ring enough of a clue? It is a noble lady’s ring, and they contain magic, do they not?” Thor was trying to come up with a solution that didn’t mean Loki had to contact Frigga between the realms.  He didn’t quite believe Loki could do it as easily as he was claiming. Loki was a known liar, especially when it came to solving a mystery he wanted solved.  And Loki was desperate to find out if she were his long lost best friend.  

Desperate was an understatement. 

“Mother and I are connected from any distance. She taught me my magic, you oaf. Yes, the rings have magic in them, spells to make sure they grow with the wearer and a protection spell on them. It protects them until they hand over the ring to the one who owns their heart,” Loki explained to his brother, though the fae took in the information as well.  The information was familiar, known, but still so new to her.

 Thor sighed and grumbled at his brother. “I am merely throwing out suggestions of easier ways to solve the mystery than trying to reach across the realms with magic.” The fae had been watching them silently, unobtrusively.  She was quite practiced at not drawing undue attention to herself and was taking in all of the ‘new’ information as they spoke. 

Loki’s eyes glazed over a little as he spoke telepathically with Frigga. Sigyn and Thor couldn’t hear the conversation, though Loki had to draw enough power and concentration that its as obvious what he was up to. /Mother, can you hear me?/ he asked her as he made the reach between the realms.

/I can hear you darling. Is there trouble?/ Frigga replied, concerned that Loki would be contacting her from Midgard.  There was no other reason she could think of for Loki to be contacting her over such a long distance except for some kind of trouble. 

/Not exactly…/ he paused, nervous to explain now that it was time to find out the truth. He didn’t want to lose the hope he had built that this fae lady really was his Sigyn. /There is a fae lady here who says her name is Sigyn, though we do not know if she is the same Sigyn Thor and I knew when we were younger, the same Sigyn we lost.  We could use you help in confirming the truth for her/ He really meant ‘for me’, but left those words unspoken.  He knew his mother would understand.

/Why would a fae lady be our missing Sigyn? Though that name is not common. It lost favor with the people after our Sigyn went missing/ she paused while she considered how to test the lady for Loki.  /Though it is easy enough for me to confirm or deny. I assume she is there with you. Have her perform a piece of Asgardian magic, if she can. I taught Sigyn when you were both children so I can recognize her magic, just as I can yours/ As long as Frigga was linked with Loki she would be able to feel the fae’s power.

Loki looked at Sigyn, which was more than a little weird with his eyes glazed with magic as they were.  “Lady Fae, would you be willing to perform a piece of magic for me? My mother will be able to confirm or deny you identity from that, since she taught Sigyn magic when we were children,” his voice was a little monotonous when he spoke while still in trance.

“A-alright,” she replied shyly.  She wasn’t used to dealing with, or really being around people.  She only had a couple friends on Midgard and liked to keep it that way.  She created a little illusion rose.  It was the first little spell she thought of and was the magic of her childhood, not from her powers as fae, somehow understanding the request from Loki’s question, though he hadn’t stated it. 

/That is our Sigyn!/ Frigga confirmed, sounding excited that she was back from the dead.  Of course she was excited.  Frigga adopted all children who came into her life, especially the ones who came into her children’s lives.

/Thank you, Mother/ Loki replied and ended the connection before it drained his powers too much to keep it open.  Even he had trouble holding the connection across the realms.

He turned to Sigyn properly and she saw unshed tears of joy in his eyes.  “Mother confirmed it. You are of Asgard and the same Sigyn we knew when we were children,” he told her, with joy in his expression, though she had the feeling he hadn’t experienced joy in a long, long while.  Sig and Thor both stared at him in disbelief, but it just clicked with her as the truth, fae could hear lies after all.  Though she vowed that she was going to regain her blocked memories as soon as possible to know for sure herself. 

But she remembered something… “You’re the same Loki, then?  The black-haired boy I studied magic with?” she asked softly, her own eyes glazed as she fought to remember. “And hammer brain the oaf?” she looked at Thor who rolled his eyes.  

“She remembers nothing else except that terrible nickname,” he grumbled and all three of them laughed.  

Loki looked like he was trying to remain proper and polite, but he was fighting and failing.  He rushed to her and after a moment of hesitation, a moment where she could tell him no to deny him the touch, he pulled her into his arms.  She remembered that his skin was always freakishly cold, though she couldn’t feel it through her coat.   “I thought I’d lost you forever,” he whispered as he held her to him.  

She slowly wrapped her arms around him, comforted by the feeling of old memories, even if she didn’t quite remember them yet. 

Still, being in his arms felt like home.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Goodbye 2019: A review of the lies that shaped the year

January

One Twitter user posted this thread, describing how there were “50-70 white men” wearing MAGA apparel who “surrounded us” and “sought to intimidate, mock and scare us” by “chanting ‘build the wall’ and “other trumpisms.” “The group was clearly looking for ANY opportunity to get violent,” they were “bumping into us and daring us to get physical.” Video was then clipped and shared on social media, the mainstream media spread the edited footage and within hours the story about “racist white MAGA hat wearing teens cornered an innocent Native elder while chanting build the wall” consumed the country.

Slate wrote an article comparing the student’s “cruelty” to Jim Crow mobs and neo-Nazis. BuzzFeed’s Anne Petersen tweeted how the students and Brett Kavanaugh are the epitome of “white patriarchy.” Kathy Griffin called for doxing the kids and Stormy Daniels in a now-deleted tweet fantasized about putting these children behind electrocuted walls. New York Times author Kurt Eichenwald wished that these kids should be doxed and denied work for the rest of their lives. Headlines included, “White students in MAGA hats taunt Native American elders,” “Covington Catholic High Student's White Privilege Didn't Win,” “White America, come get your children,” “White victimology, white privilege and the Covington Catholic rules of race,” “Boys Will Be Boys. Covington's Showed Yet Again Why Only White Boys Can Smirk Through That.”

The students and their families were doxed, harassed and threatened for weeks after. Covington Catholic High School was forced to close over security concerns. Then the original video was released that provided context: A group of Covington Catholic High School students went to the March for Life during a field trip to Washington, DC. While there, the students were confronted by the radical black supremacy group, Black Hebrew Israelites, where they were verbally harassed and racially abused, calling them crackers, fa*gots and told them to go find a school to shoot up. A black student was berated as a race-traitor and told his white classmates were going to harvest his organs. A Native activist later approached the kids and started continually banging a drum inches from their face. One student, Nick Sandmann, stood calmly in typical teenage bemusement. That’s it. That’s the story. Once it was realized not a single accusation made by the original poster or the media who spread it was true, everyone went silent, and despite many retractions, no apologies.

February

Empire actor Jussie Smollett was approached by two white men wearing Trump’s Make America Great Again caps and yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him before attacking him, dousing him with bleach and tying a noose around his neck, all while chanting, “This MAGA country!” Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Al Sharpton were among those calling it a modern-day lynching and evidence of the fear and hate black people live with. Harris and Booker even wrote an “anti-lynching bill.” Everybody gobbled this story up and quickly used it to push their idea that it said something more important about the state of race in the United States. Essentially they argued that Trump and his supporters are agitating for this kind of violence and, well, here it is.

Afterwards, Smollett proudly bragged how he had fought off his attackers to the loud cheers of a crowd, a true badass. He then appeared in an ABC interview where his eyes welled with tears as he recounted his traumatic experience and how defiant and inspirational he’s gotta be now. When asked why he thinks he was targeted, Smollett blamed Trump and his evil supporters.

But then some red flags started. 1. He held onto his sandwich during the attack and waited 45 minutes to call police. 2. When police arrived to take a report, Smollett asked that the officers turn off their body cameras. 3. He was still wearing the noose around his neck and wore it “like a tie” throughout their entire 40-minute interview. 4. He said he was on the phone with his manager when the attack happened but he refused to show his phone log to police. 5. He supposedly received a threatening letter a week prior to the “attack” which had child-like writing and drawings on it of his name and the word MAGA, and cliche magazine cutouts of letters pieced together to spell out “black fag.” In summary, we were supposed to believe white Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats were roaming around Chicago, carrying a noose, they saw Smollett, knew who he was, knew his show, his sexuality and singled him out for a lynching. 

As the police connected the dots, they found the whole thing was a giant hoax plotted by Smollett himself. When the “black fag” serial killer letter stunt failed to receive national attention, Smollett orchestrated the attack by paying two Nigerian brothers he worked with $3,500 to stage the attack on him while getting Subway. Chicago police spent days and worked overtime poring over security footage and devoting resources that could have been put toward real victims. On February 20, Smollett was charged with a class 4 felony for filing a false police report and was later indicted on 16 felony counts of false reporting. Smollett joined a long list of hate crime hoaxes since Trump took office. I can only assume because reality isn’t at all matching their delusion of the gloomy Nazi “MAGA country” they keep going on about, they’re forced to create these endless hate crime hoaxes to validate the delusion.  

March

After spending two years perpetuating allegations that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary and wet dreams of Trump being removed from office and even imprisoned, the entire left, every Democrat and the mainstream media were visibly shaken by Mueller’s investigation ending with zilch. When the news broke that there would be no indictments against Trump nor anyone associated with his campaign, and Attorney General William Barr had exonerated him, those who were so certain of victory and so locked into their conspiracy, were once again forced into utter meltdown mode. Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars, employed 19 prosecutors, more than three dozen FBI agents and an analyst and issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 280 demands for phone and email records and interviewed 500 witnesses throughout the course of the investigation. No evidence was found.

There was however a major abuse of the rule of law by Obama administration officials and Department of Justice and FBI employees, a shameful politicization of the Russia investigation by Democrats and an end of journalistic integrity by many members of the media who all did their best to delegitimize and undermine the election. The DOJ and FBI used unverified research to obtain a court order to surveil the Trump campaign, and thereby obtain access to past campaign communications. In applying for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order, the DOJ and FBI did not disclose to the secret surveillance court that the debunked Christopher Steele dossier (Trump/pissing prostitutes) was funded by the DNC and Clinton, the whole basis for the probe. The FISA application also did not inform the court of Steele’s bias and his desperation to keep Trump out of the White House. It was all a setup.

Since Election Day 2016, the Trump-hating political and media establishment have been in a cute relationship to achieve their desired end of destroying Trump. Their shared hatred of the man is indisputable. But the idea of them colluding in this information operation to maximum political and legal effect is altogether more disturbing. Russiagate put Trump’s presidency under a cloud of suspicion for more than half of his days in office, delaying his agenda through forcing the administration to expend valuable time and resources defending itself from the constant hounding. The Five F’s seems to be the Democrat’s only tactic, all they can do is deceive, degrade, deny, disrupt and hope that it all will eventually wear Trump down enough to ultimately destroy him.

April

On Easter Day, churches across Sri Lanka were targeted by radical Islamist suicide bombers. The Muslim terrorists walked into several crowded churches and murdered masses of people. They also targeted international hotels popular with Western travelers. The bombings marked the country’s deadliest violence in a decade, leaving 290 dead and over 500 injured. After the quick condemnation of white supremacy and Islamophobia after the Christchurch shootings a few weeks prior, the media and Democrats avoided at all costs condemning Islamic terrorism and recognizing the victims as Christians. A host of politicians such as Obama, Hillary Clinton and Julian Castro all refused to condemn Islamic terrorism and none called the victims Christians, while others such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Portland mayor Ted Wheeler stayed silent altogether. Christians being killed at the hands of Islamists goes against the entire left-wing doctrine, despite it happening all over the world. 

It’s not the only time we’ve seen the media and politicians cover for Islamic extremism. Under Obama, officials were so afraid of the phrase “Islamic terrorism” that they redacted the very mention of Islam and even Islamic State from the Orlando gay nightclub massacre transcripts, despite 49 people being killed and 50 others injured by a Muslim terrorist who had pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the UK, police and child protection workers were so afraid of the phrase “Islamophobia” that they ignored and refused to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child rape rings, allowing 1,400 young British girls to be raped with knives, bottles and their tongues nailed to tables. In Sweden, the police and media were so scared of “anti-immigration sentiment,” they covered up dozens of sexual assaults against teenage girls. Not wanting to make their new waves of Muslim refugees look bad, German media and the government also covered up mass sexual abuse across the country where 1,200 women were sexually assaulted and raped in just one night. Who exactly are we protecting by refusing to tell the truth and call something what it is?

May

Alyssa Milano, an actress who has been a valiant fighter for progressive causes, demanded for American women to undertake a “sex strike.” The idea is that women should not risk pregnancy until they have an insurance policy. Uh, so like exactly what Christian conservatives already believe in. There’s something funny about Milano embracing the banner of Christian conservatives in order to own Christian conservatives. Just like when Janelle Monáe advocated for women to go on a sex strike, saying that “people need to start respecting the vagina.” Once again, that’s what conservatives have already been screaming, respecting your vagina, respecting yourself, respecting sex and the good and bad product of sex. 

In championing this “revolutionary” concept of women withholding sex in order to attain bodily autonomy, Milano and her blue-check buddies unwittingly preached the same message you often hear during Sunday sermons, especially in youth groups. The Christian perspective posits that the way for women to attain bodily autonomy is to have self-control over your body and choices, to not give away your body so carelessly and to be aware of the consequences of sexual activity outside of committed relationships. Most Christians embrace Milano’s message, not just because the only women who’d participate and use sex as a political bargaining chip in the first place are those who probably need to reevaluate their sex lives anyway, but it also places greater meaning on sex and the power and responsibility of it, which again is another Christian view.

Milano, like many others, also referred to abortion as “reproductive rights,” which is a pretty new term that replaces abortion and is also much catchier on picket signs when used alongside “human rights.” The problem is the term isn’t even close to being accurate. Abortion has nothing to do with reproductive rights. By the time abortion is even a possibility, post-fertilization has already created a tiny human and the mother has discovered that she is pregnant. In other words, reproduction is already complete. That “right” to reproduction was already exercised when you gave it up, literally and figuratively.  

June

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried her best to compare Trump to Hitler by comparing illegal migrant detention centers to actual concentration camps: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” she tweeted. Ocasio-Cortez continued this claim during an Instagram Live video, where she said, “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. That is what they are. The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.” 

Of course, the claim that conditions at U.S. border facilities are anything like Nazi concentration camps or Japanese American internment camps is absurd. Detainees are not subjected to forced labor, malnutrition or executions. They also chose to enter these facilities by willingly coming to the United States and either illegally crossing or turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol, while obviously concentration camp inmates were forced to be there. Let’s not forget the little detail that any of the migrants may opt for voluntary departure at any time. I don’t remember concentration camps ever having that policy. Concentration camps detained and persecuted their own citizens because of who they were, not temporarily detained people who chose to illegally break into a different country. I don’t think there were many Jewish people trying to sneak into Nazi Germany. Even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement rejecting such ridiculous comparisons.

But it’s not just AOC driving this rhetoric. MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough showed photos of border officers escorting kids to showers and compared it to Nazi officers marching Jews into gas chambers. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden posted photos of the Auschwitz death camp, also comparing it to the temporary housing policy at the border. The New York Times published an article that called for U.S. Border Patrol agents to be doxed so they can be “publicly shamed" and “held accountable.” Almost the entire Democrat Party and mainstream media have made similar comparisons. Yet the CBP detention centers are not operating any differently today than they were during the Obama administration. The famous photos of caged kids are from Obama’s time in office. Even when the most anti-Trump news network CNN went to investigate, the kids had full bellies, they were watching soccer, playing video games on big flat-screen TVs, sleeping in comfy beds and participating in tai chi classes, rather than ya know, being caged, gassed and worked to death.

July

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal held a hearing on complaints from Jessica Yaniv, a man formerly called Jonathan who now identifies as a woman, after multiple small business beauticians refused to wax Yaniv’s penis and testicles. The defendant in the case was a young mother who operates in her family home, but there were also 12 other female beauticians Yaniv filed human rights complaints against which put some of them out of business while others paid settlements to save further legal action. Up until July 17, Yaniv’s name was fiercely protected by the Canadian government, as well as technology platforms like Twitter, which banned numerous women and some men who’d tried to warn others about his predations. But once the ban was lifted, it was revealed Yaniv had used “connections” to a band to help solicit advice from both women and teenagers on how to approach young girls and talk to them about tampons and menstruation in female washrooms. You can read the whole thing here.

Yaniv also recently tweeted shock to be turned away from a gynecologist. “So a gynaecologist office that I got referred to literally told me today that ‘we don’t serve transgender patients. And me, being me, I’m shocked... and confused… and hurt. Are they allowed to do that, legally?" I’m sure Yaniv will be taking gynecologists to human rights courts next for refusing to inspect anuses. We have to be careful to not misgender Yaniv as several journalists have been banned from Twitter for this crime against Yaniv. Any concerns about women being forced to touch male genitalia or biological men being allowed into women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, rape crisis shelters and prisons, you’re done for. This whole story resembles a new trend forming, such as the Christian cake shop owner who was sued for not wanting to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage: An individual from a politically designated victim class seeks out a service, intentionally from a small business owner who they know they can exploit, and the moment the businessperson declines - voila! A movement is born with a slew of lawsuits, powerful interest groups and media backing. 

August

Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix special was only uploaded for a few hours before the PC grievance mob went to work trying to sink it. Buzzfeed lectured Chappelle for his “truly vile” jokes and instructed him “to be more thoughtful.”  Salon spoke out against “the cruelty” and Slate compared him to that "uncle who doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how much he’s disappointing you.” While “Uncle Dave” was once cool, they say, his jokes in 2019 make you “wince.” Vice went a step further and gave a total trigger warning to its audience, writing "you can definitely skip” it altogether. As of today, “Sticks & Stones” shows a 38 percent score from media critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while 39,881 of viewers have given it a 99 percent audience score, reflecting the massive disconnect between the media and the general public and proving the only ones who are “out of touch” are themselves. This same pattern can be seen with “woke” movies too. Media critics sing their praises and hail their progressive activist messaging and pandering, yet in reality, these movies completely bomb.

Hollywood wants to water down comedy as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in doing so quickly turns into telling people what’s funny and what’s not and who can laugh and who can’t. Even the most devoted left-wing activist surely can see the problem. But a comedian like Dave Chappelle makes fun of everyone and doesn’t believe in a protected class during a stand up routine, as it should be. He also made fun of things that the right cares about, yet they still applauded the special as a celebration of comedy. But no, because Chappelle didn’t obey by their rules, because he didn’t stand on stage and call Trump a Cheeto (the pinnacle of left-wing comedy), he too must be one of those Nazis we keep hearing about. Chappelle isn’t running for public office. He’s a comic, and we’re not meant to seek the ultimate answers from him. It’s his job to talk about and then joke about current events, trends, what’s going on in the world, his only sin was talking about them a little too honestly. 

September

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations through teary eyes and gritted teeth, claiming that the world is about to end and how unfair it is that she has to save it. Throughout the melodramatic speech warning of “mass extinction” and attacking capitalism, Thunberg repeatedly declared “how dare you!” and “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” Sadly, she’s right. How dare a child from one of the most healthiest, progressive, wealthiest, safest and most peaceful countries known to man be indoctrinated to believe adults have failed her and the weight of the world is on her shoulders to save mankind from apocalypse. It’s not her fault.

It’s the fault of the schools who pile on the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster starting from kindergarten. It’s the fault of the ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, whether it’s hot or cold, rain, sun or snow, it’s all evidence of the end looming. And it’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly and desperate for votes to tell people that utopian visions of a world run on windmills is a pipe dream. And why the hell isn’t China being lectured by the Swedish teenager? Their emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world, but we’re the ones being told to ban straws, stop eating meat, roller skate to work and stop having kids? Really? Then again, it’s easier to go after countries which roll out the red carpet, gives her a platform and awards her with prizes in return for her criticisms. The real pollution culprits aren’t nearly as accommodating.

Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of AOC’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat and do in their personal lives. As Hawaii Democrat senator and climate change enthusiast encouraged fellow activists to think of climate change as a religion rather than a science, we can only hope that most Americans will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason we should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation, including her army of schoolchildren, can continue not having to suffer needlessly.

October 

Media outlets responded to Trump’s announcement of the U.S. military’s successful mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not met with much praise and excitement that the world’s most wanted terrorist leader had been stopped, but with anger and snark. Many media outlets, the Washington Post for one example, worked hard to spin the killing of Baghdadi into, somehow, a negative story for Trump, beginning with a look at Baghdadi as not as a brutal terrorist and murderer, but as an “austere religious scholar.” 

The Washington Post followed it up with a chain of negative stories: “Three ways the Baghdadi raid undermines Trump’s chaotic policy,” “Despite the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, some analysts question U.S. ability to prevent ISIS resurgence,” “The U.S. kills an ISIS leader. But Trump is giving the group a new lease on life.” They even complained how long Trump talked for and how using words such as “dog” and “coward” weren’t as presidential as Obama. Oh, and a Washington Post and CNN journalist tweeted how wrong it was for Trump to call al-Baghdadi a coward because it takes guts to blow yourself up rather than allow yourself to be captured...

If only it ended there. The Washington Post joined other media outlets including the New York Times in debunking the “doctored” and “faked” photo Trump tweeted of himself giving a Medal of Honor to the dog that chased down al-Baghdadi. White House reporter Steve Herman also debunked the meme by breaking news on Twitter, "I've requested details on this photo! There was no such a canine event on today's schedule!" He later confirmed in a tweet after speaking to a White House official that the meme was indeed Photoshopped. Jim Acosta of CNN also made sure everyone was aware, "The dog is not at the White House." The Huffington Post wrote, “A photo tweeted by Donald Trump is getting dogged by accusations that the pic is the very definition of fake news. The photo didn’t really happen,” then proceeded to show side-by-side photos to prove it was photoshopped. Everywhere the meme was called “fake news.”

Once the media confirmed that the very clearly photoshopped dog was not at the White House after all, and the meme was just a meme, they moved onto asserting the meme was insulting and disrespectful to the original recipient of the Medal of Honor, James McCloughan, which the photo was taken from. Yet when the meme was shown to McCloughan, he laughed and said he wasn’t offended and he liked it. Now that another outrage had fizzled out, the only thing that was left for them to complain about was... Trump hates dogs because he used the term negatively to describe the ISIS leader. Yep. 

November

Nine American Mexican family members were slaughtered in broad daylight in an ambush by a drug cartel in Northern Mexico, less than a hundred miles from the Arizona border. The family were traveling to visit family when they were attacked by the cartel which left three women and six children dead, including a pair of infant twins. As Trump voiced outrage over the attacks, condemning the violence and offering the Mexican government help to come down harder on the cartels, not a single one of the seventeen Democrats in the race issued a statement on the attacks. 

That’s probably because they’ve already established it’s racist and bigoted to point out that some Mexicans can do bad things and there’s gonna be some bad eggs illegally crossing the southern border, despite leading Democrats including Clinton and Obama holding the same view just a few years ago. Let’s forget those behind most illegal border crossings are actually rapists or in just one city, over just a few weeks, seven illegal immigrants were convicted of rape. For the record, Trump never called all Mexicans rapists. He said there are rapists among those being sent over, along with drugs and MS-13 members, all true. He also said in the very next breath that there’s also good people crossing. Now, it’s also racist to call MS-13 gang members “animals” despite them being known for beheadings, dismemberments and cutting out hearts. And now we know we’re not even allowed to talk about the epidemic of terrorism and violence along the border, even when nine American women and children are massacred as it runs counter to the new, insane Democrat narrative mocking the need for stronger border security or the need for borders at all. 

This is the latest incident that has shined a spotlight on Mexico’s growing crime problem as drug cartels have launched an insurgency in the failing country.  A month earlier, hundreds of gunmen stormed the city of Culiacan after Mexican National Guards arrested one of the sons drug kingpin “El Chapo.” In a stunning display, the Mexican president told his National Guards to surrender to the cartel and release El Chapo’s son. The day after the family massacre, more murders and bus burnings were unleashed on the city of Juarez. The mayor of Juarez said the chaos was the cartel’s response to police arresting suspects involved in an ongoing drug turf war. We’ll have to wait and see if the new Mexican president’s policy of “hugs not bullets” will end the endless territory being controlled by different armed groups, similar to the Middle East and Africa. Maybe love and giving into cartel demands will bring law and order back.

December

Democrats finally did what they’ve been promising to do since Trump won the election, they impeached their mortal enemy. The obsession with impeachment has little to do with anything Trump did, and everything to do with who he is. Democrats never expected to lose the 2016 election, especially not to Donald Trump, which humiliated them even more. And ever since, they have been trying every trick in the book to prove what a horrible mistake voters have made. Democrats have floated the idea of impeachment over fake Russian collusion conspiracy theories, drivel about porn stars and even the president’s criticism of his critics. All of them bombed. With time running out before the 2020 presidential race gets into full swing, they seized on the only thing they had left: bogus “concerns” with a phone call to the newly elected Ukrainian president.

The evidence Democrats have rallied on makes for the weakest impeachment ever launched in American history, highlighting gross abuse of congressional power and serving as a national embarrassment. The impeachment inquiry was kicked off by an unknown person during a phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. An unredacted transcript of the phone call was quickly released to the public, putting the conversation between the two leaders in plain sight for all to see in an unprecedented move. There was nothing to hide. Democrats and media outlets took slices from the transcript and came up with a story about Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid. Yet when Trump mentioned “do us a favor,” in the very next sentence, he referred to Ukraine looking into the 2016 election meddling after Mueller did such a poor job, it had nothing to do with Biden. Zelensky himself said there was no pressure and he didn’t even know about the military aid being delayed. 

But House Democrats still held four weeks of impeachment hearings and not a single piece of incriminating evidence to impeach the president of any kind of crime was found, whether it be a “quid pro quo,” “bribery,” or “extortion. In fact, to the contrary, witnesses called by Democrats actually exonerated the president of any wrongdoing. Ousted former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich blatantly admitted that Trump committed no crime. “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the president of the United States has been involved with at all?” “No,” Yovanovitch said. Former State Department Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was asked, “In no way, shape or form did you receive any indication whatsoever, or anything that resembled a quid pro quo, is that correct?” “That’s correct,” Volker said.

Despite clearly having no case against the president, Democrats still voted to deliver their promise, it was now or never. Unlike other impeachment cases, it wasn’t at all bipartisan, the House’s impeachment inquiry passed without a single Republican vote. In fact two Democrats joined GOP lawmakers in voting against the resolution, ironically making opposition to impeachment the more bipartisan vote. One Democrat even switched parties after he was pressured by his Democrat colleagues to vote against his will. Now, Pelosi is refusing to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. She knows Trump will be swiftly exonerated and claim another monumental victory, so let’s savor in the impeachment juices that nobody cares about for as long as we can. At least until the next “existential threat” or “constitutional crisis” they can whip up. 

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Paranormal Guide To The Tower Of London

The Tower of London is probably one of the most historic sites here in the UK, and with 900 years of rather gruesome history under its belt, if anywhere is going to be haunted, it is going to be here.

This cluster of towers was founded in 1066 as a part of the Norman Conquest of Britain, and, like the rest of its twisted history, the tower has figured within most major moments of our history; even today it still charts these moments within its mosaic of museums.

And despite being, you know, really fecking old, what the Tower is really famous for goes beyond being a government seat during times of crisis.

The infamous phrase ‘sent to the tower’ is the reason that this tourist attraction, is, well, a tourist attraction.

Some of the most significant historical figures have been, um, accommodated here, and subsequently executed (it only got, like, 2 stars on Trip Advisor). This includes Elizabeth I, who was lucky enough to actually leave with her head, and her mother, Anne Boleyn, who wasn’t quite as fortunate.

And thus, the many centuries enriching its walls, and the general deathiness of the place confirms its qualification of ‘haunted’, but its contemporary role as a tourist destination has certainly ensured it earned an A* for being creepy as fuck.

But it turns out that the rumours of its dead residents have emerged across a pretty wide span of time, and due to the variety of people who have spread such rumours - from guards to yeomen, to visitors and local Londoners - these spirits have strong claims to back their residency. Even if they aren’t great at paying rent…

Anne Boleyn

This former Queen is well travelled.

She might not have done a gap-yah in India, or had an emotional experience with an Elephant in Thailand, but she is one of our most treasured ghosts because her spirit is reported, like, basically everywhere.

But her most #iconic haunting occurs here, at the site of her death.

Her story is known for its politically motivated and tragic end, but all you have to know here is that she was beheaded for adultery (fun fact: among the men she was charged with sleeping with was her brother). Indeed, it is her distinct lack of a head which makes her famous not just as a historic figure, but also as a ghost.

She is often spotted wandering the site of her execution, or even leading a ghost procession down a chapel aisle.

But, like I said, Anne is a cultured woman, and thus, at major historical sites where she was once present, she is often seen without her head. One notable tale even claims a ghostly horse drawn carriage pulled up to one such site and dropped her off.

Each of the horses - and Anne herself - were headless.

Arbella Stuart

Another significant female ghost - who just so happens to win the award for the most paranormal activity (congratulations?) - is that of Arbella Stuart.

And she also carries quite a story to her grave.

Essentially, Arbella married someone that wasn’t approved by the king, so she was put under house arrest in the Queen’s tower, and subsequently murdered for her crimes.

That makes sense, right?

But her tragic story doesn’t end here; it manifests itself in spirit form by attacking female visitors in the room she was once imprisoned in. One recent visitor claims their wife felt several vigorous pushes in the back whilst staying in a holiday rental room at the Tower, and one nearly sent her across the room.

The owners of the rooms often express concern when women book to stay there due to the frequency and nature of these violent attacks.

The Countess of Salisbury

Murders are obviously popular causes of hauntings, and due to the nature of the Tower of London, this site is crawling with the victims of history. And it is our next ghost who suffered this all too common fate.

But her execution was rather more traumatic.

In attempt to save herself, the Countess of Salisbury ran from her executioner, but I’m afraid she just wasn’t quite fast enough.

He caught up, and he finished the job.

Her hauntings attempt to recreate this execution, whether it’s the echoes of her screams, or the shadow of an axe against the walls. And it is this haunting which truly represents what makes the Tower Of London quite so gruesome.

The Princes in the Tower

Our final murdered ghosts – similar to Anne Boleyn – also feature in their own historic episode.

Rumour has it that the ghosts of two young boys in old fashioned clothing are other seen wandering the site, and clutching each other in fear.

It is claimed that these are the ghosts of ‘The Princes In The Tower’ who were believed to have been murdered by Richard III, an act which makes this infamous king, well, infamous.

Sir Thomas Beckett

The tale of terror is quite so intriguing because it widens the span of the reported hauntings of the tower.

It is claimed that when Traitor’s Gate was being built, the locals often witnessed the ghost of Beckett, who died a century beforehand, take it down brick by brick.

In response to this blatant act of vandalism, the King, Edward I, ordered it to be rebuilt as St. Thomas’ gate, confirming that the interest in the site’s paranormal activity has spanned no less than 500 years, and leads us all the way up to this Tumblr post.

Now we turn to the less #relevant ghosts, and despite the lack of names and absence of backstories, they don’t fail in keeping this historical site spooky.

First up, we have the most interesting - albeit one of the weirdest ghosts - to haunt fayre London towne.

It’s a ghost bear.

The story goes that a guard saw a bear made of smoke in The Martin Tower, and following this sighting, he died 3 days later.

And although this certainly figures as a peculiar tale, it is believed that this was the ghost of a polar bear gifted by the King of Norway to the King of England. Indeed, this present even had a chain leash so he could fish in the River Thames, which surely would’ve shocked anyone to death, whether the creature was alive, or not.

The men by the fireplace have also been spotted by guards, or more specifically yeomen. One claimed that back in 1980 he saw 2 medieval men smoking pipes by a fireplace, and one of these men even stared right back at the undead intruder.

On that note, it turns out that most of these sightings have been by the guards or yeomen themselves, which does support their validity; they will know the site quite well, and thus the chances of them being confused is significantly reduced.

Our final ghost is that of the White Lady in – and no surprises here - The White Tower.

As the oldest building, it will have witnessed every scrap of history that has taken place here.

But her apparition isn’t quite as terrifying as the events that have shaped its history.

One might get a whiff of her perfume, or perhaps the odd child will see her waving to them, nevertheless, this more mellow spirit is just one of the many that still reside at the Tower Of London.

[screw-fandom-urls-anyway]

concerned father here. My son has recently got into the game called Fortnite? I've spent well over $500 on this game and its becoming a problem. Apparently the game is down right now and its causing a lot distress for my child. He keeps taking my newspaper and tries to "full piece" me. I don't know what this means but I'm starting to think its something associated with the devil. He won't come with us anywhere unless we take a "launch pad" to get there. Its starting to get worse by the hour and I don't know how much longer I can take this. His legs, arms, and hands are shaking violently yet he refuses to take any type of medicine unless its a "big pot" or "chuggies." Someone please help me.

I don't care. I'm not the one you want for this, possible scammer.

[thecheekybrunette]

I feel like i always message you about Big Kids, Young Adults, but can i have a commentary for Chapter 6: Slight reform, from "A few minutes later, the screech of brake pedals rattled.." to "Jungkook took a shaky breath. “Sure.”" its a bit longer than 500 words but i hope you dont mind. That whole scene is one of my favourite things uve ever written, its such a realistic & heartrending look at what happens when a troubled childs anger first breaks and i remember when read it i cried a lot :)))

You sure can! I am so sorry for the wait! (Also thank you so much for the high praise! I am so glad you thought so well of it, I really appreciate your positive feedback!) 

Here is the passage: 

A few minutes later, the screech of brake pedals rattled his bedroom windows. He could hear his brothers rushing out the door. Jimin and Hoseok were laughing loudly about something, and Taehyung was humming the same tune Jungkook had heard Yoongi practicing on the piano earlier. Jungkook buried his face in his pillow.

A few minutes later, there were footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door was thrown open. “Rise and shine, Jungkookie! It’s time to greet the day!” Seokjin said, stepping into his room.

“I’ve already greeted it,” Jungkook answered in a gravely voice.

Seokjin –who was already rooting through his dresser to find him some clothes to wear- turned to face him. He looked surprised. “Oh, you’re up already?”

Jungkook nodded, his eyes fixed on a loose thread on his comforter. It had little roads and buildings printed on it. When he was little, he and Seokjin would take turns lying underneath it while the other drove little matchbox cars across the roads on their backs.

Jungkook scrunched his eyes closed.

“Well, that’s good! If you hurry, you can make it to first period on time,” Seokjin said. He put a stack of clothes on Jungkook’s hip. Jungkook rubbed his face with both hands, his guilt magnifying. Seokjin seemed to notice something was the matter because he sat on the edge of his bed a moment later. “Jungkook? Honey? Is something wrong?”

“Stop asking,” Jungkook muttered into his hands. He felt Seokjin’s fingers start combing through his hair.

“What’s that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I said stop asking. Stop being nice to me,” Jungkook said a little louder. Seokjin’s hand pulled away fast, as if he had been burned.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You... You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” Jungkook snapped, blinking his eyes open to stare at Seokjin. His dad looked crestfallen for some reason, but Jungkook had a feeling it was his fault. “Yesterday, I made you cry, and you’re still being nice.” Jungkook wanted to stop sounding angry, but he couldn’t get rid of the edge to his voice. He bit his bottom lip, frustrated. Meanwhile, Seokjin’s expression softened a little bit.

“I can’t help but be nice to you. You’re my Kookie,” he cooed, planting a couple kisses on his forehead. For once, Jungkook didn’t squirm away. Seokjin pulled back a little, his eyebrows furrowing together. “Sweetheart, what’s going on? It isn’t like you to be so slumped like this.”

Jungkook grunted. He felt slumped — like he couldn’t lift his body from his mattress even if he tried. “I wasn’t nice to you,” he repeated.

Seokjin’s concerned face relaxed with an amused smile. “You know, most people apologize when they feel guilty,” he said gently.

Jungkook’s face immediately screwed up at the thought. He didn’t want to apologize. But as he stared up at Seokjin and thought about his dad driving toy cars over his back while he was falling asleep, he crumbled a little bit. He was so tired.

Jungkook’s bottom lip wobbled. He tried to keep it still, but the more he tried not to cry, the worse he felt. “I’m really sorry,” he managed to choke out just as his shoulders started to shake. He let out a sob so violent, he thought his body would shake apart, but his dad caught him before he could.

“It’s okay,” Seokjin promised. “It’s okay, you’re okay. I understand.”

Jungkook shook his head against his dad’s chest. His shoulders were so tense he was worried they would snap in two. It wasn’t okay. He had broken Seokjin’s heart over and over again without caring. He didn’t deserve to be in this house, he didn’t want to be here. “F-Forgive me,” he stammered out.

“You didn’t even have to ask,” Seokjin promised. He settled them into a more comfortable position. Jungkook was humiliated to be seen crying like this, but if anyone was going to witness it, he was glad it was just Jin.

Jin had always been gentle with him, always cradled him close and kept him safe. Jungkook was embarrassed to be crying, but he was happy for the excuse to have Seokjin hold him for the first time in a long while.

His hands clutched at Jin’s t-shirt.

“You know,” Seokjin started, one hand playing with the hair at the nape of Jungkook’s neck, “You were the first of all the boys to start regularly calling me and Namjoon ‘dad.’ I think Jimin had said it once before you, and Yoongi had mentioned it a couple of times, but you were the one who came home from school one day and said, ‘Dad, I’m home!’”

Jungkook sniffled.

Seokjin continued. “I think you heard all the kids at school calling their parents mom and dad and realized that ‘Jin’ and ‘Joon’ weren’t quite the same.” Seokjin dropped his head to bury his nose in Jungkook’s hair. Jungkook didn’t pull away. “I know that it’s hard for you and that you’re really confused and scared. Growing up isn’t easy. But yelling at everyone isn’t going to solve anything, and I think that pushing everyone away is hurting you more than it’s hurting me.”

Jungkook shuddered. “I’m not pushing everyone away,” he muttered, his tears mostly subsiding. He wanted to stay close to Seokjin, but his pride made him pull away. “I don’t know what I’m doing. But... but I am sorry.”

Seokjin offered him a knowing smile. “You don’t have to know,” he promised. “We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

Jungkook took a shaky breath. “Sure.”

A few minutes later, the screech of brake pedals rattled his bedroom windows. He could hear his brothers rushing out the door. Jimin and Hoseok were laughing loudly about something, and Taehyung was humming the same tune Jungkook had heard Yoongi practicing on the piano earlier. Jungkook buried his face in his pillow.Okay so for this part, I wanted to show how like... the other members of the family all get along and seem really happy. Like Jimin and Hoseok are sharing a laugh, and Taehyung and Yoongi are sharing music, and like... physically they’re extremely separate. They’re downstairs, leaving the house, and Jungkook is upstairs stuck in his room. So like... I wanted to show that contrast? And Jungkook is also aware of it, hence why he buries his face in his pillow. It’s like... he hears his brother’s laughing and singing and he’s upset but doesn’t know why? But the reason is, he’s just upset that he doesn’t belong and that he’s pushed everyone away. 

A few minutes later, there were footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door was thrown open. “Rise and shine, Jungkookie! It’s time to greet the day!” Seokjin said, stepping into his room.This is how my mom would wake up my sister when she wouldn’t wake up for school. (My sister had POTS, though, she wasn’t trying to skip like Jungkook.) 

Jungkook nodded, his eyes fixed on a loose thread on his comforter. It had little roads and buildings printed on it. When he was little, he and Seokjin would take turns lying underneath it while the other drove little matchbox cars across the roads on their backs.I do this with a kid I babysit, and I thought it would be a nice addition! It’s nostalgic where like... matchbox cars are pretty universal and everyone knows how nice it feels to have a toy car roll on you (why is that such a good feeling?) but it’s also kind of unique to Jungkook and Seokjin. 

He put a stack of clothes on Jungkook’s hip. Jungkook rubbed his face with both hands, his guilt magnifying. I distinctly remember wanting to add a lot of tactile imagery in this particular part. I thought I needed something physical to make the emotions stand out a little more. Maybe that’s crazy? (I have so many intentions behind my writing, you think it would be better than it actually is.) 

Jungkook wanted to stop sounding angry, but he couldn’t get rid of the edge to his voice. He bit his bottom lip, frustrated. Being angry is so much more comfortable for Jungkook. It’s a survivalist mindset, to be mad, and that’s why he’s so stuck in it. He’s afraid to be vulnerable, and anger is a good front. That’s all breaking now, though. 

He felt slumped — like he couldn’t lift his body from his mattress even if he tried.All that anger is a front for d e p r e s s i o n. As Dr. Phil would say, take out the word “angry” from the dictionary and you’re left with depressed, scared, or frustrated. 

Seokjin’s concerned face relaxed with an amused smile. “You know, most people apologize when they feel guilty,” he said gently.Seokjin can read Jungkook like a book. But also he knows better than to push too much? Especially because it’s not often that Jungkook is vulnerable, and like... I think Seokjin is taking the opportunity to be honest with him and to point him in the right direction, but he’s also being careful not to upset him. Like he’s not demanding an apology because Seokjin knows this moment isn’t about him, it’s about Jungkook. But he also knows Jungkook is probably having trouble naming what he’s feelings because -as we’ve learned- Jungkook has no self-awareness, he just fronts all of his emotions with anger. 

But as he stared up at Seokjin and thought about his dad driving toy cars over his back while he was falling asleep, he crumbled a little bit. He was so tired.He loves his daddy and he misses him :( 

Jungkook’s bottom lip wobbled. He tried to keep it still, but the more he tried not to cry, the worse he felt. “I’m really sorry,” he managed to choke out just as his shoulders started to shake. He let out a sob so violent, he thought his body would shake apart, but his dad caught him before he could.He misses his dad so much, but he doesn’t have to. Seokjin is right there. He has always been there and always will be. He’s going to hold Jungkook together no matter what. 

“It’s okay,” Seokjin promised. “It’s okay, you’re okay. I understand.”Seokjin already forgave Jungkook the minute it happened. Even if he got upset, like... he knows Jungkook is young and lost. He would never hold a grudge against him, it really is okay. Seokjin still loves him. 

Jungkook shook his head against his dad’s chest. His shoulders were so tense he was worried they would snap in two. It wasn’t okay. He had broken Seokjin’s heart over and over again without caring. He didn’t deserve to be in this house, he didn’t want to be here. “F-Forgive me,” he stammered out.I just don’t think Jungkook understand that Seokjin really IS his dad. Like Jungkook is his son. Sometimes kids do things to their parents that they don’t mean; or that they do mean and are just mislead about? Seokjin knows that, but Jungkook doesn’t, so the guilt is crippling. He doesn’t understand that Seokjin will take him back with open arms again, and again, and again because he loves him. Because he really is his dad. Like Jungkook doesn’t have to worry about missing him, he is going to be there forever, I can’t emphasize it enough. 

Jungkook was humiliated to be seen crying like this, but if anyone was going to witness it, he was glad it was just Jin.JUNGKOOK. LOVES. HIS. DAD. THE. MOST.

His hands clutched at Jin’s t-shirt.This and like... wanting to be held? Jungkook is still a child. He still wants to be nurtured, he still wants affection from his dad, and he’s going to get it, lucky for him. 

“You know,” Seokjin started, one hand playing with the hair at the nape of Jungkook’s neck, “You were the first of all the boys to start regularly calling me and Namjoon ‘dad.’ I think Jimin had said it once before you, and Yoongi had mentioned it a couple of times, but you were the one who came home from school one day and said, ‘Dad, I’m home!’”Jungkook hasn’t really known any other parents, so I thought it would make sense for Namjoon and Seokjin to become “dad” before anyone else. 

“Growing up isn’t easy. But yelling at everyone isn’t going to solve anything, and I think that pushing everyone away is hurting you more than it’s hurting me.”Again, Seokjin is going to use this moment of vulnerability not to like... call Jungkook out and chastise him, but hopefully guide him to some self-realization. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”Jungkook is pushing everyone away, but he can’t really understand that because like... he’s jealous of his brothers being close and he wants to be part of them, and he wants to be close with his dads. He doesn’t understand that you can push people you love away, like pushing people away doesn’t mean you hate them, it means that for some reason, you’re trying to protect yourself from what you see as a threat. And I think Jungkook sees caring as a threat right now.

[patriotsnet]

Are There Republicans Running For President

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-republicans-running-for-president/

Are There Republicans Running For President

What Is A Voter

Trump says there is ‘tremendous support’ for him to run for president again

The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created voter-nominated offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.

Most of the offices that were previously known as partisan are now known as voter-nominated offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only partisan offices now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed the re-election of incumbent Donald Trump, the 2020 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Among them are former Republicans who left the party in 2016 or later due to their opposition to Trump, those who held office as a Republican, Republicans who endorsed a different candidate, and Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the presumptive nominee. Over 70 former senior Republican national security officials and 61 additional senior officials have also signed onto a statement declaring, “We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

A group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservativesincluding from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations have formed The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform to, “focus on a return to principles-based governing in the post-Trump era.”

A third group of Republicans, Republican Voters Against Trump was launched in May 2020 has collected over 500 testimonials opposing Donald Trump.

‘i Made A Decision To Live My Life In Service’

Brock Pierce is a former child actor who appeared in the Mighty Ducks franchise and starred as the president’s son in the 1996 comedy First Kid. But thanks to his second career as a tech entrepreneur, he’s also probably a crypto currency billionaire.

Why is he running for president? Partly because he is deeply concerned by the state of the country.

“I think that we lack a real vision for the future – I mean, what kind of world do we want to live in, in the year 2030? What is the plan? Where are we trying to get to, you know? You have to aim for something. And I see mostly just a lot of mud being thrown around, not a lot of people putting forth game-changing ideas. It’s getting scary. And I have a view of what to do.”

For the last four years, Mr Pierce has focused on philanthropic work in Puerto Rico, where his foundation recently raised a million dollars for PPE to give to first responders.

Asked what America’s priorities should be for the next four years, he suggests the country stops pursuing “growth for growth’s sake”, and measures its success by how well life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are upheld.

“I have many liberal tendencies, just like I have conservative tendencies,” Mr Pierce says. “And I think it’s time we take a collective breath and a brave step into the future, because all of these ideologies have something to teach us.”

‘We don’t like either candidate’

And if he doesn’t pull it off? Mr Pierce says he has offers.

Former Colorado Gov John Hickenlooper

Hickenlooper joined the field in early March, seeking to parlay his success in growing Colorado’s economy while passing environmental regulations and gun control laws into a successful presidential campaign. In a launch video, he spoke further of healing the nation’s political divisions.

“One thing I’ve shown I can do, again and again, is create teams of amazingly talented people and really address these issues that are the critical issues facing this country,” he said on “Good Morning America.”

He also announced he was suspending his campaign with a video.

“While this campaign didn’t have the outcome we were hoping for, every moment has been worthwhile and I’m thankful to everyone who supported this campaign and our entire team,” he said in the video posted to .

Who Wants To Run For Governor As A Republican In 2022

Pennsylvania Republicans have been battling with Gov. Tom Wolf since he unseated incumbent Tom Corbett in 2014. Many of them are eager to take Wolfs place, but there is no clear frontrunner this early in the race. Several Republicans have already announced their bid, and a few others have hinted or shown interest in joining what is expected to be a crowded primary. Thus far, its hard to find a Republican candidate without some sort of ties to former President Donald Trump. 

With a heated race to fill U.S. Sen. Pat Toomeys seat next year, the GOP will have to be strategic about what candidates it wants to back for the Senate and for governor. Potential candidates will also have to weigh their options and decide where they fit best and can compete.

There are plenty of names that could be added to this list in the coming months, but here is our second iteration of potential Republican candidates for 2022. A couple of candidates have been added since the last edition.

Running

Former U.S. Rep Lou Barletta

Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale

Gale was the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy for governor back in February. An avid Trump supporter, he has criticized the Pennsylvania GOP and pledged to be a conservative populist. Hes also caught attention for and saying Trumps presidency was sabotaged. 

Former Corry Mayor Jason Monn

Pittsburgh attorney Jason Richey

John Ventre

With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibitionthe Run For President

Return to Rise to National Prominence List Previous Section: The New Lincoln | 

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the least known of all of the contenders for the Republican Partyâs nomination for president. Heading the list was former New York Governor William H. Seward, with the politically awkward Governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio a distant second. Conservative Edward Bates of Missouri was considered too old, and many Republicans seemed uncomfortable with the popular but unpredictable Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune.

To overcome his disadvantage, Lincoln adopted an unobtrusive publicity campaign. The timely release of his published debates with Stephen A. Douglas and brief autobiographies and a carefully orchestrated speaking campaign in New York and parts of New England all worked to Lincolnâs advantage. The nomination and the subsequent campaign were left largely to trusted handlers, but even after his election was secure, Lincoln maintained a dogged silence on national issues prior to his inauguration.

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Research suggests Trump’s rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Since then, some defendants prosecuted for hate crimes or violent acts cited Trump’s rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence. In May 2020, a nationwide review by ABC News identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence by mostly white men against mostly members of minority groups. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection for his actions prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters who acted in his name.

: James K Polk Vs Henry Clay Vs James Birney

The election of 1844 introduced expansion and slavery as important political issues and contributed to westward and southern growth and sectionalism. Southerners of both parties sought to annex Texas and expand slavery. Martin Van Buren angered southern Democrats by opposing annexation for that reason, and the Democratic convention cast aside the ex-president and front-runner for the first dark horse, Tennessees James K. Polk. After almost silently breaking with Van Buren over Texas, Pennsylvanias George M. Dallas was nominated for vice president to appease Van Burenites, and the party backed annexation and settling the Oregon boundary dispute with England. The abolitionist Liberty Party nominated Michigans James G. Birney. Trying to avoid controversy, the Whigs nominated anti-annexationist Henry Clay of Kentucky and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. But, pressured by southerners, Clay endorsed annexation even though he was concerned it might cause war with Mexico and disunion, thereby losing support among antislavery Whigs.

Enough New Yorkers voted for Birney to throw 36 electoral votes and the election to Polk, who won the Electoral College 170-105 and a slim popular victory. John Tyler signed a joint congressional resolution admitting Texas, but Polk pursued Oregon and then northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War, aggravating tension over slavery and sectional balance and leading to the Compromise of 1850.

How Donald Trump Could Steal The Election

Ted Cruz First GOP Candidate Set to Run in 2016 Presidential Race

The president cant simply cancel the fall balloting, but his state-level allies could still deliver him a second term.

About the author: Jeffrey Davis is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of Seeking Human Rights Justice in Latin America, and the forthcoming book Constitutional Tyranny.

Even under a normal president, the coronavirus pandemic would present real challenges to the 2020 American election. Everything about in-person voting could be dangerous. Waiting in line, touching a voting machine, and working in polling stations all run afoul of social-distancing mandates. Already, Maryland, Kentucky, Georgia, and Louisiana have postponed their presidential primaries, while Wyoming, New York, and Ohio have altered their voting procedures. Of course, other democracies face similar problems; the United Kingdom has postponed local elections for one year.

But under President Donald Trump, the possibilities for how the coronavirus could wreak havoc on the election are all the more concerning. This is not a president who cares about the sanctity of the electoral process. After all, he has never seemed particularly concerned about Russias efforts to manipulate the 2016 outcome , and he was impeached for demanding Ukrainian help in his reelection efforts.

New 2020 Voter Data: How Biden Won How Trump Kept The Race Close And What It Tells Us About The Future

As we saw in 2016 and again in 2020, traditional survey research is finding it harder than it once was to assess presidential elections accurately. Pre-election polls systemically misjudge who is likely to vote, and exit polls conducted as voters leave the voting booths get it wrong as well.

Now, using a massive sample of validated voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has . It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did notand why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Bidens success.

The Biden campaign reunited the Democratic Party. Compared to 2016, he raised the share of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted for the Democratic nominee by 6 points, from 85 to 91%, while increasing the Democratic share of liberal Democrats from 94 to 98%. And he received the support of 85% of Democrats who had defected to 3rd party and independent candidates in 2016.

How Trump kept it close

Despite non-stop controversy about his policies and personal conduct, President Trump managed to raise his share of the popular vote from 46% in 2016 to 47% in 2020. His core coalition held together, and he made a few new friends.

Longer-term prospects

Statehood And Indian Removal

Republic of East FloridaSeminole WarsAdamsOnís TreatyFlorida TerritoryAdmission to the UnionList of U.S. states by date of admission to the UnionCracker

Defense of Florida’s northern border with the United States was minor during the second Spanish period. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against U.S. territories, and the U.S. pressed Spain for reform.

Americans of and began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of and . Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities and the Floridan government, they were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to immigrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as .

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish authorities. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the garrison at , and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “���.

What Is A Typical Presidential Election Cycle

The presidential election process follows a typical cycle:

Spring of the year before an election Candidates announce their intentions to run.

Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year Primary and caucus Caucus: a statewide meeting held by members of a political party to choose a presidential candidate to support. debates take place.

January to June of election year States and parties hold primaries Primary: an election held to determine which of a party’s candidates will receive that party’s nomination and be their sole candidate later in the general election.and caucuses.

July to early September Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.

September and October Candidates participate in presidential debates.

Early November Election Day

December Electors Elector: a person who is certified to represent their state’s vote in the Electoral College. cast their votes in the Electoral College.

Early January of the next calendar year Congress counts the electoral votes.

January 20 Inauguration Day

For an in-depth look at the federal election process in the U.S., check out USA In Brief: ELECTIONS.

Contribution Limits For 2021

Additional national party committee accounts Donor $109,500* per account, per year Candidate committee $45,000 per account, per year PAC: nonmulticandidate $109,500* per account, per year Party committee: state/district/local Unlimited transfers

*Indexed for inflation in odd-numbered years.

PAC here refers to a committee that makes contributions to other federal political committees. Independent-expenditure-only political committees may accept unlimited contributions, including from corporations and labor organizations.

The limits in this column apply to a national party committees accounts for: the presidential nominating convention; election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings; and national party headquarters buildings. A partys national committee, Senate campaign committee and House campaign committee are each considered separate national party committees with separate limits. Only a national party committee, not the parties national congressional campaign committees, may have an account for the presidential nominating convention.

**Additionally, a national party committee and its Senatorial campaign committee may contribute up to $51,200 combined per campaign to each Senate candidate.

Nj Primary Elections 2020: The Five Republicans Who Want To Take Over As Us Senator

Colleen ODea, Senior Writer and Projects EditorNJ Decides 2020Politics

Five Republicans are vying for the chance to try to do something no one else has been able to do in almost a half-century: Convince New Jersey voters to elect a Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Cory Booker now sits.

It has been 48 years since New Jersey voters have sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate, and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly a million. In 2018, Republican and former pharmaceuticals executive Bob Hugin spent more than $39 million, including $36 million of his own money, and lost by 11 percentage points to incumbent Bob Menendez, who had been considered vulnerable after his trial on political corruption charges ended in a hung jury.

Statewide races are the toughest ones of all for a GOP outnumbered by a million more registered Democrats in the state, said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. But even before party registrations were so lopsided, Republican Senate candidates have fared more poorly here than almost anywhere else in the nation. Since New Jersey last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1972, the GOP has lost a staggering 15 Senate races in a row, he said.

Withdrew Before The Primaries

The following individuals participated in at least one authorized presidential debate but withdrew from the race before the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016. They are listed in order of exit, starting with the most recent.

Name

The following notable individuals filed as candidates with FEC by November 2015.

Name

Additionally, Peter Messina was on the ballot in Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Idaho.Tim Cook was on the ballot in Louisiana, New Hampshire and Arizona. Walter Iwachiw was on the ballot in Florida and New Hampshire.

Jerry Moran: Senator Kansas

Senator Jerry Moran arrives for a meeting about the Republican healthcare bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017.

Trumps second endorsement of the 2022 campaign season is Jerry Moran, the Republican incumbent senator from Kansas. He was the first member of Congress to receive an endorsement from the former president.

Moran voted with most Republican senators to acquit Trump of his impeachment charge of inciting the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Ron Johnson: Senator Wisconsin

Former GOP Rep. Joe Walsh: ‘I’m going to run for president’

WASHINGTON, DC FEBRUARY 25: Senator Ron Johnson speaks during a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing regarding wages at large corporations on Capitol Hill, February 25, 2021 in Washington, DC. The committee is looking at why many low-wage workers in America qualify for public benefits even though thousands of them are employees of large corporations.

Trump announced his endorsement for Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson before he has even announced a re-election bid. Johnson, 66, has represented Wisconsin in the Senate since 2011.

Even though he has not yet announced that he is running, and I certainly hope he does, I am giving my Complete and Total Endorsement to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.  He is brave, he is bold, he loves our Country, our Military, and our Vets, Trump wrote in a statement. He will protect our Second Amendment, and everything else we stand for.  It is the kind of courage we need in the U.S. Senate.  He has no idea how popular he is.  Run, Ron, Run!

This list will be updated as Trump announces new endorsements.

: Benjamin Harrison Vs Grover Cleveland

In 1888 the Democratic Party nominated President Grover Cleveland and chose Allen G. Thurman of Ohio as his running mate, replacing Vice President Thomas Hendricks who had died in office.

After eight ballots, the Republican Party chose Benjamin Harrison, former senator from Indiana and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Levi P. Morton of New York was the vice-presidential nominee.

In the popular vote for president, Cleveland won with 5,540,050 votes to Harrisons 5,444,337. But Harrison received more votes in the Electoral College, 233 to Clevelands 168, and was therefore elected. The Republicans carried New York, President Clevelands political base.

The campaign of 1888 helped establish the Republicans as the party of high tariffs, which most Democrats, heavily supported by southern farmers, opposed. But memories of the Civil War also figured heavily in the election.

Northern veterans, organized in the Grand Army of the Republic, had been angered by Clevelands veto of pension legislation and his decision to return Confederate battle flags..

Sen Mitt Romney Of Utah

A Gallup poll last March found Romney, 74, has a higher approval rating among Democrats than Republicans, so you might figure he doesnt have a prayer in taking his partys nomination again. A February Morning Consult poll, though, had Romney polling ahead of Republicans like Pompeo, Cotton and Hawley. So, youre telling me theres a chance? Yes, a one-in-a-million chance.

The 2012 GOP presidential nominee and his wife, Ann, have five sons. He graduated from Brigham Young University and Harvard Law. Romney is a former Massachusetts governor, and the first person to be a governor and senator from two different states since Sam Houston, who was governor of Tennessee and a senator from Texas. Romney is this years JFK Profile in Courage Award recipient.

Former Vice President Mike Pence

If youre curious how the former vice president might handle the fact that many of Trumps supporters think hes disloyal for certifying the 2020 election, his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on June 24 laid out his argument.

Pence opened the speech with one of his favorite lines, in which he calls himself a Christian, conservative and Republican, in that order and then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes praising Trump and the work of the Trump-Pence administration. We made America great again in just four years, he boasted. Then he finally touched on the attack. Jan. 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol, he said.

Pence said he would always be proud that elected officials reconvened to finish certifying the election after the riot, and he said he understood why many were disappointed in his tickets loss last year: I can relate, I was on the ballot. He also positioned his view on the election as one informed by Republican patriotism and love of the Constitution.

The Republican Party will always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise, he said. Theres almost no idea more un-American that any one person can choose the American president. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.

: Andrew Jackson Vs Henry Clay Vs William Wirt

Democratic-Republican Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832 with 688,242 popular votes to 473,462 for National-Republican Henry Clay and 101,051 for Anti-Masonic candidate William Wirt. Jackson easily carried the Electoral College with 219 votes. Clay received only 49, and Wirt won the seven votes of Vermont. Martin Van Buren won the vice presidency with 189 votes against 97 for various other candidates.

The spoils system of political patronage, the tariff, and federal funding of internal improvements were major issues, but the most important was Jacksons veto of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. National-Republicans attacked the veto, arguing that the Bank was needed to maintain a stable currency and economy. King Andrews veto, they asserted, was an abuse of executive power. In defense of Jacksons veto, Democratic-Republicans labeled the Bank an aristocratic institutiona monster. Suspicious of banking and of paper money, Jacksonians opposed the Bank for giving special privileges to private investors at government expense and charged that it fostered British control of the American economy.

The Anti-Masons convened the first national presidential nominating convention in Baltimore on September 26, 1831. The other parties soon followed suit, and the convention replaced the discredited caucus system of nomination.

Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Though controversial, Hawley, 41, is a fundraising machine and hes quickly made a name for himself. The blowback Hawley faced for objecting to Bidens Electoral College win included a lost book deal and calls for him to resign from students at the law school where he previously taught. His mentor, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, said that supporting Hawley was the biggest mistake Ive ever made in my life.

Still, he brought in more than $1.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 5, according to Axios, and fundraising appeals in his name from the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in more cash than any other Republican except NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Just because youre toxic in Washington doesnt mean you cant build a meaningful base of support nationally.

One Republican strategist compared the possibility of Hawley 2024 to Cruz in 2016. Hes not especially well-liked by his colleagues , but hes built a national profile for himself and become a leading Republican voice opposed to big technology companies.

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, April 3, 2021

Ontario ‘pulling the emergency brake’ with third COVID-19 lockdown as cases rise (Reuters) The Canadian province of Ontario will enter a limited lockdown for 28 days on Saturday, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise and more dangerous virus variants take hold, the premier said on Thursday. The lockdown for Canada’s most populous province will fall short of enacting a stay-at-home order. Ontario’s third lockdown since the pandemic began will shutter all indoor and outdoor dining, although retailers will remain open with capacity limits. Schools would remain open, Ontario’s education minister said on Twitter.

Starving for more chips in a tech-hungry world (AP) As the U.S. economy rebounds from its pandemic slump, a vital cog is in short supply: the computer chips that power a wide range of products that connect, transport and entertain us in a world increasingly dependent on technology. The shortage has already been rippling through various markets since last summer. It has made it difficult for schools to buy enough laptops for students forced to learn from home, delayed the release of popular products such as the iPhone 12 and created mad scrambles to find the latest video game consoles. But things have been getting even worse in recent weeks, particularly in the auto industry, where factories are shutting down because there aren’t enough chips to finish building vehicles that are starting to look like computers on wheels. The problem was recently compounded by a grounded container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, choking off chips headed from Asia to Europe. It threatens to leave a big dent in the auto industry, which by some estimates stands to lose $60 billion in sales during the first half of his year. “We have been hit by the perfect storm, and it’s not going away any time soon,” said Baird technology analyst Ted Mortonson.

The U.S. system created the world’s most advanced military. Can it maintain an edge? (Washington Post) As they conduct bombing and surveillance missions around the globe, today’s U.S. military pilots rely on aerial refueling aircraft built as early as 1957, when the Soviet Union dominated American security fears, the average home cost $12,000 and “I Love Lucy” was debuting new episodes. The cost of keeping those aging jets in the air has grown sharply while the military awaits a next-generation refueling plane whose rollout has been repeatedly delayed by design and production issues. The Air Force’s two-decade effort to field a 21st century tanker, one of several premier air systems whose development has been beset with problems, is emblematic of the challenges Pentagon leaders face in seeking to maintain the U.S. military’s shrinking edge over its chief competitor, China. The United States, once the world’s undisputed military superpower, has been struggling for years to efficiently update its arsenal and field new technology in cutting-edge areas such as hypersonics and artificial intelligence, at a time when some senior officials warn that China could be within five years of surpassing the U.S. military. “It’s like the Pentagon is finding itself staring in the rearview mirror in the face of oncoming traffic,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

The reason many Guatemalans are coming to the border? A profound hunger crisis. (Washington Post) The team of nutritionists looked at 11-month-old Dilcia Cajbon, her ribs visible through her skin, and they knew immediately. “Severe acute malnutrition,” said Stefany Martinez, the leader of the UNICEF team, as the child was lifted onto a scale. Like many in this rural stretch of Guatemala, Dilcia’s family was down to one meal a day. Storms had flooded the nearby palm plantation, the biggest source of local employment. As more and more Central American families arrive at the United States’ southern border, the municipality of Panzós offers a stark illustration of the deepening food crisis that is contributing to the new wave of migration. So far this year, more unaccompanied minors processed by immigration agents are from Guatemala than any other country. Analysts and U.S. officials refer obliquely to “poverty” as an underlying cause of that influx. But often the reason is far more specific: hunger. Guatemala now has the sixth-highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. The number of acute cases in children, according to one new Guatemalan government study, doubled between 2019 and 2020. The crisis was caused in part by failed harvests linked to climate change, a string of natural disasters and a nearly nonexistent official response.

Venezuelan military offensive sends thousands fleeing (AP) ARAUQUITA, Colombia—A new campaign by the Venezuelan military near the country’s lawless western border is sparking a surge of refugees, with thousands defying the spiking pandemic to pack into makeshift shelters and tent settlements in this Colombian town. The sudden outflow is amplifying a renewed wave of Venezuelan refugees and migrants—the world’s second-largest group of internationally displaced people—from the broken socialist state. Concern is also rising about mounting tensions between the left-wing Venezuelan and right-wing Colombian governments, which are blaming each other for the uptick in violence in Venezuela’s western Apure state. The Venezuelan military launched a campaign two weeks ago against a rogue faction of Colombian guerrillas in this jungle region along the Arauca River. The guerrillas, known as the 10th Front, appear to have run afoul of the government in Caracas, which allegedly has had long-standing profit-sharing and protection deals with other leftist fighters in the area engaged in narco-trafficking and extortion. The Venezuelan government “doesn’t seem to be defending its sovereignty, but protecting its drug-trafficking business,” Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano told Colombian National Radio last week.

Food bank, charities busy in Algarve as pandemic ravages Portugal tourism (Reuters) Carla Lacerda used to earn a good salary selling duty-free goods to holidaymakers arriving at Algarve airport in southern Portugal, but she lost her job last August due to the COVID-19 pandemic and quickly ran out of cash to feed her two kids. The 40-year-old now receives around 500 euros ($587) per month in unemployment benefits, leaving her no option but to join the queue for food donations. Lacerda is one of thousands of people whose lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, which has ravaged tourism across the sun-drenched Algarve region and left its popular beaches and golf resorts largely deserted. Algarve’s food bank, which has two warehouses in the region, is now helping 29,000 people, almost double the number before the pandemic.

Italy may be in Easter lockdown, but the party’s on at sea (AP) Italy may be in a strict coronavirus lockdown this Easter with travel restricted between regions and new quarantines imposed. But a few miles offshore, guests aboard the MSC Grandiosa cruise ship are shimmying to Latin music on deck and sipping cocktails by the pool. After cruise ships were early sources of highly publicized coronavirus outbreaks, the Grandiosa has tried to chart a course through the pandemic with strict anti-virus protocols approved by Italian authorities that seek to create a “health bubble” on board. Passengers and crew are tested before and during cruises. Mask mandates, temperature checks, contact-tracing wristbands and frequent cleaning of the ship are all designed to prevent outbreaks. Passengers from outside Italy must arrive with negative COVID-19 tests taken within 48 hours of their departures and only residents of Europe’s Schengen countries plus Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria are permitted to book under COVID-19 insurance policies. Passengers welcomed the semblance of normalcy brought on by the freedom to eat in a restaurant or sit poolside without a mask, even if the virus is still a present concern.

Pakistan, India peace move silences deadly Kashmir frontier (AP) The machine guns peeking over parapets of small, sandbagged concrete bunkers and the heavy artillery cannons dug deep into Himalayan Kashmir’s rugged terrain have fallen silent. At least for now. The Line of Control, a highly militarized de facto border that divides the disputed region between the two nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, and a site of hundreds of deaths, is unusually quiet after the two South Asian neighbors last month agreed to reaffirm their 2003 cease-fire accord. The cease-fire, experts say, could stabilize the lingering conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Kashmiris say the rare move should lead to resolution of the dispute.

Myanmar’s military shuts down Internet (Washington Post) Myanmar’s military government ordered broadband Internet shutdowns Thursday amid ongoing violent suppression of opposition to its ouster of the country’s democratically elected government. The escalation came as the country marked two months since the army’s toppling of the civilian-led government, which has faced widespread public resistance despite the military’s lethal response: More than 500 civilian protesters have been killed and more than 2,000 arrested since Feb. 1, according to local activists. The United Nations’ special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, on Wednesday warned that “a bloodbath is imminent” if the international community did not act to quell the violence. Last Saturday marked the bloodiest day since the coup, with troops reportedly killing over 140 protesters in more than 40 locations across the country.

Train derails in eastern Taiwan, killing 48, injuring dozens (AP) A train partially derailed in eastern Taiwan on Friday after being hit by a parked truck that had rolled down a hill onto the track, killing 48 people. With the train still partly in a tunnel, survivors climbed out of windows and walked along the train’s roof to reach safety after the country’s deadliest railway disaster. The crash occurred near the Toroko Gorge scenic area on the first day of a long holiday weekend when many people were hopping trains on Taiwan’s extensive rail system. The train had been carrying more than 400 people.

Egypt expects $1 billion in damages over stuck ship in Suez (AP) Egypt is expecting more than $1 billion in compensation after a cargo ship blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, according to the top canal official. Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, head of the canal authority, said that the amount takes into account the salvage operation, costs of stalled traffic, and lost transit fees for the week that the Ever Given had blocked the Suez Canal. “It’s the country’s right,” Rabei said, without specifying who would be responsible for paying the compensation. The massive cargo ship is currently in one of the canal’s holding lakes, where authorities and the ship’s managers say an investigation is ongoing. Rabei said that if an investigation went smoothly and the compensation amount was agreed on, then the ship could travel on without problems. However, if the issue of compensation involved litigation, then the Ever Given and its some $3.5 billion worth of cargo would not be allowed to leave Egypt.

Cellular turnover (Scientific American) A new study published in Nature Medicine takes another shot at the rate of cellular turnover in the human body. Basically, your individual component cells have shorter lifespans than you do as a larger organism. Fat cells last an average of 12 years, a muscle cell lasts 50, blood cells live anywhere from three to 120 days, and the cells lining your gut make it less than a week. On any given day, an estimated 330 billion cells are replaced, so about 1 percent every day. Over the course of 80 to 100 days, about 30 trillion cells will turn over, equivalent to about one “you.”

[phgq]

Recruited at 17, surrenderer tells woes inside NPA

#PHnews: Recruited at 17, surrenderer tells woes inside NPA

BUTUAN CITY – Hatred, lies, and failed promises. A young female combatant of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) said these were the things she encountered during her two "grueling" years within the communist rebel movement, forcing her to yield to government forces on Nov. 9 this year. Leilan (not her real name) said she was 17 when lured by NPA recruiters into the movement, enticed by the promise she would be sent to school for free, as well as financial support for her family.   Unlike the other cases of surrenders involving NPA rebels, her case was unusual in many ways. First, police and military authorities had to travel some 500 kilometers to fetch her and her child from North Cotabato to bring her to Surigao City, her hometown. Her "extraction" also required some degree of secrecy and careful planning because the NPA leadership hid her at a secure location, on orders of her squad leader who impregnated her. “The promises of a good life, free education will really entice you to join the movement. After agreeing to join them, I, together with other young recruits, was radicalized through indoctrination and teach-ins on their ideology, propaganda, and hatred to the government,” the Army's 29th Infantry Battalion (29IB) quoted Leilan as saying. Before joining the NPA full-time, Leilan narrated that she was first asked to join the underground mass organization in her hometown, participate in protest rallies, and other activities of left-leaning groups that have known ties with the communist rebel movement. “I also served as a courier of the armed group before formally taken in as a regular NPA member,” she said. She was then assigned to the Sandatahang Yunit Pampropaganda 16B (SYP16B) of Guerrilla Front (GF) 16, under the NPA's Northeastern Mindanao Regional Committee (NEMRC). After several months inside the movement, Leilan said she slowly realized that the promises made to her by the leaders were false. “There was no support to the family, no education. That’s my realization inside the NPA movement. The movement only gave me daily miseries, hardships, and fear,” she said. She said she was worried about what the leaders would do to her if she asked to leave the movement. Adding to the fear was her mounting concern that she would die if their poorly-equipped unit would clash with government forces. Several times, Leilan said she would ask if she could take some time off but was immediately refused. Her break, she said, came when she got impregnated by her squad leader, who ordered that she be hidden somewhere in North Cotabato until she gives birth. Leilan said she arrived in North Cotabato in December last year and gave birth there in August this year. “The situation of Leilan was relayed by her parents to the members of our Community Support Program (CSP) Team assigned in Quezon, Surigao City. It’s a good thing that Leilan maintained contact with her parents here in Surigao,” 1Lt. Edmar C. Colagong, 29IB civil-military operations officer, told the Philippine News Agency Saturday. Leilan was first apprehensive about connecting with the Army as NPA leaders told her that soldiers would kill her if she got caught. “The CSP team and her parents finally convinced her to surrender after days of negotiations,” Colagong said. “For security reasons, we have to conceal the exact barangay and town where we fetched Leilan for her surrender." Lt. Col. Isagani O. Criste, 29IB commander, praised Leilan for her courage. “Leilan is a living example of the human rights violations committed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the NPA, and their political arm, the National Democratic Front (NDF),” Criste said. There was no question that the NPA deceived Leilan, who was still a minor when she was recruited, Criste said, adding that her "dream of attaining education went for naught through lies by the CPP-NPA leadership." Another top military official in the area, Col. George L. Banzon, commander of the Army's 901st Infantry Brigade, called on Surigao del Norte residents to help the government shield the youth from the recruitment of the NPA. “The communist terrorist group (CTG) are opportunists who capitalize on the vulnerabilities of our youth, and the case Leilan was a classic example of this. By luring her to join the violent armed struggle, the CTG deprived her of the opportunity to have a better future,” Banson said. Military officials said Leilan is now being enrolled to avail the government's Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (ECLIP) for her to attain opportunities that she was denied while fighting for the NPA. The NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Recruited at 17, surrenderer tells woes inside NPA." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1121819 (accessed November 16, 2020 at 01:29AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Recruited at 17, surrenderer tells woes inside NPA." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1121819 (archived).

[toshootforthestars]

(NYCLU on twitter, link to video) (alt. source)

On Mr. Watkins

As bosses did little, Syracuse cop coerced women for sex, they say; ‘I was terrified’

Ex-Syracuse cop who had sex on the job ‘doesn’t yet want to plead’ in tampering case, ADA says

Activists hammer Walsh with demands, frustrations in marathon police reform meeting

The meeting took place almost exactly a year after a similar episode at St. Lucy’s Catholic Church. Advocates — many of whom were at City Hall Thursday — unloaded frustrations and stories of police brutality to Walsh and Buckner at that meeting, following the violent 2019 arrest of Shaolin Moore on Grace Street.

Moore was dragged from his car and punched during a stop for loud music. Buckner deemed the use of force appropriate, drawing backlash from some in the community.

Thursday, several speakers referred to that 2019 meeting. Andrew Croom, an attorney with Legal Services of Central New York, said he presented a 17-page document to the mayor at that meeting detailing well-researched changes needed to the department’s use of force policy.

After a year, he said, there had been no follow-up on that.

“For the past year you’ve talked about the use of force policy,” Croom said. “But when we show you it’s not enough, nothing happens.”

The department revised its use of force policy last spring, but activists say it still needs to improve to include language about protecting human life.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir, director of the local chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, led the meeting. He spoke before and after each attendee and often challenged or corrected the mayor and the police chief.

Speaking for the groups, he demanded radical change to overhaul the police force — an institution he said evolved out of white supremacy.  “Business as usual is over,” he said.

Abdul-Qadir promised that activists would not ease the pressure they’re exerting, nor would they stop protesting until significant change is evident. The desired changes include cutting millions of dollars from the police department’s annual budget and forcing officers to live in the city.

The annual budget for police is $49.5 million, which is about 20% of the city’s $253 million overall budget.

(Trevon Logan)

(Asher Vollmer)

(source)

…

Me: 

Syracuse is in dire, dire straits, and it’s solely due to failed leadership, City, County, and State.  Just absolute zero fucks.

No one in charge in Syracuse, from cops to the water department to DPW to the Mayor’s Office to the Onondaga County Legislature, no one in charge gives a single fuck about Syracuse or the people that live there. A few examples:

Lead paint is a problem in Syracuse.  STILL.

Look what Syracuse Fire Department did back in 2017.

The Syracuse Citizens Review Board struggles to do its job.

The Syracuse PBA is just as you’d expect.

Here’s a brief summary of the 2010′s in Syracuse. Here’s another one.  Remember the Syracuse Billion proposal to rebuild the collapsing water system in Syracuse?  Never went anywhere.  No progress with Mayor Walsh, seen being scolded in the video above.

Yes, the surrounding tony suburbs are all racist as fuck.  Many people that work in Syracuse (and for Syracuse) live OUTSIDE Syracuse, and the argument that Syracuse’s municipal payroll props up the ‘burbs is a good one.  Sure, the argument already seems to be “iTs A dRoP iN tHe BuCkEt” yet imagine what this is like in bigger cities, like NYC?

Don’t get me started on Interstate 81.  (The mega-project has stalled.)

There’s this reddit thread…

Finally, read this...

The Atlantic:  How to Decimate a City (Nov. 2015)

Neighborhoods like this one, in the south part of Syracuse, have historically been poor, but residents here say they’ve seen things worsen in the last decade. Darlene Sanford, 38, runs a daycare in her great-grandmother’s spacious 19th-century house near the highway. Sanford remembers walking to the black-owned small businesses that lined the streets here when she was a girl, but most of them have disappeared.

Although most of the houses on Sanford’s street have well-mowed lawns and manicured bushes, she now feels a sense of unease. A few weeks ago, she had to call 911 after a man living next door was targeted in a drive-by shooting, just after Sanford had put the younger kids in her care down for a nap. She no longer leaves her house at night. She’s thinking of leaving the city entirely.

“Over the last few years, it’s been pretty tough,” she said. “The violence has gotten worse.”

The week before I visited Syracuse, seven people had been shot in four days, including a public-bus driver whose cell phone blocked the bullet.

“We see a lot of generational poverty here,” Rebecca Heberle, who runs the local Head Start program for PEACE Inc., a nonprofit in Syracuse, told me. “People face so many challenges—their power has been turned off, they have infestations, they need money for food, formula, diapers, a bus pass.”

It wasn’t always this way.

Search for Syracuse in the rankings of cities with the highest poverty rates in America, and the city has moved up every 10 years like an underdog racehorse gaining on the winner (or in this case, the loser). In 1969, the city’s poverty rank was 72nd in the nation of cities with a population of 100,000 or more, with 14 percent of its residents living in poverty. By 1979, it had snuck up to 44th, with a poverty rate of 18 percent.  By 1989, it was tied for 26th with a poverty rate of 23 percent.

The story of how poverty became one of the defining characteristics of Syracuse is specific to the city and the region, but in some ways it is illustrative of the many policy decisions that have made all American cities more segregated by race and income over the last 15 years.

Like many cities in the north, Syracuse became home to a growing African American community in the post-World War II years, as migrants fled persecution in the South and came north looking for jobs.

Many settled in the 15th Ward, a neighborhood adjacent to downtown. Clarence “Junie” Dunham, who is now 81, lived there in an apartment with no hot water, at a time when a milkman still delivered bottles from a horse and buggy.  Dunham’s parents and their friends had moved to town from the south, and many had little beyond a middle school education, but they worked in the factories and farms in the region and made a good enough living. There was poverty then, he told me, but he remembers that time fondly, largely due to the existence of a close-knit black community that socialized around Wilson Park, a square of green grass and trees in the center of town.

But to outsiders the majority-black neighborhood was “slum land,” ripe for redevelopment because of its proximity to downtown, according to Joseph F. DiMento, who was born and grew up in Syracuse and is now a professor of law, planning, and policy at the University of California-Irvine School of law.

In the early 1950s, a small group of builders proposed that the city obtain “slum land,” clear it, and get it ready for development—for private industry to do so would be too costly, they said, according to DiMento, who authored a paper on so-called urban renewal in Syracuse.  “Racial barriers have created an overcrowded condition that many experts felt may some day lead to troubles,” The Syracuse Post-Standard wrote in an article in 1954.

At the same time, the city was working to get a piece of some of the money made available in the 1956 Federal Highway Act, which authorized money for the construction of the Interstate system.

A strong highway network, city leaders argued, would make Syracuse one of the largest cities in the country because people would be able to easily commute to downtown from outlying areas. In 1956 the state approved a $500 million bond for a project that would raze the 15th Ward and erect an elevated freeway that bisected downtown. That this construction would destroy a close-knit black community, with a freeway running through the heart of town, essentially separating Syracuse in two, did not seem of much concern to local leaders.

They wanted state and federal funding, and were willing to follow whatever plans were proposed to get it.  “The city was almost unimaginably passive about these decisions,” DiMento told me.

“Rather than fostering a sense of neighborhoods, city officials viewed distinctive city sections as expendable or blighted areas needing to be razed,” DiMento wrote in his study of the construction of I-81 in Syracuse.  

Today, I-81 runs north to south through the city; its most prominent part is a 1.4 mile section of elevated highway that separates Syracuse University from downtown and the city’s high-poverty South Side. Underneath the elevated highway, the streets are dark and clogged with cars trying to get on the road, and next to it are some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

It runs over Wilson Park, the place Dunham used to play as a child, and over the blocks where he and his childhood friend Manny Breland used to collect scraps to take to the junkyard for extra money.  “That’s where I used to live,” Breland told me, pointing to a stairway in a parking garage that abuts the freeway.

[patriotsnet]

Are There Republicans Running For President

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-republicans-running-for-president/

Are There Republicans Running For President

What Is A Voter

Trump says there is ‘tremendous support’ for him to run for president again

The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created voter-nominated offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.

Most of the offices that were previously known as partisan are now known as voter-nominated offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only partisan offices now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed the re-election of incumbent Donald Trump, the 2020 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Among them are former Republicans who left the party in 2016 or later due to their opposition to Trump, those who held office as a Republican, Republicans who endorsed a different candidate, and Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the presumptive nominee. Over 70 former senior Republican national security officials and 61 additional senior officials have also signed onto a statement declaring, “We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

A group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservativesincluding from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations have formed The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform to, “focus on a return to principles-based governing in the post-Trump era.”

A third group of Republicans, Republican Voters Against Trump was launched in May 2020 has collected over 500 testimonials opposing Donald Trump.

‘i Made A Decision To Live My Life In Service’

Brock Pierce is a former child actor who appeared in the Mighty Ducks franchise and starred as the president’s son in the 1996 comedy First Kid. But thanks to his second career as a tech entrepreneur, he’s also probably a crypto currency billionaire.

Why is he running for president? Partly because he is deeply concerned by the state of the country.

“I think that we lack a real vision for the future – I mean, what kind of world do we want to live in, in the year 2030? What is the plan? Where are we trying to get to, you know? You have to aim for something. And I see mostly just a lot of mud being thrown around, not a lot of people putting forth game-changing ideas. It’s getting scary. And I have a view of what to do.”

For the last four years, Mr Pierce has focused on philanthropic work in Puerto Rico, where his foundation recently raised a million dollars for PPE to give to first responders.

Asked what America’s priorities should be for the next four years, he suggests the country stops pursuing “growth for growth’s sake”, and measures its success by how well life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are upheld.

“I have many liberal tendencies, just like I have conservative tendencies,” Mr Pierce says. “And I think it’s time we take a collective breath and a brave step into the future, because all of these ideologies have something to teach us.”

‘We don’t like either candidate’

And if he doesn’t pull it off? Mr Pierce says he has offers.

Former Colorado Gov John Hickenlooper

Hickenlooper joined the field in early March, seeking to parlay his success in growing Colorado’s economy while passing environmental regulations and gun control laws into a successful presidential campaign. In a launch video, he spoke further of healing the nation’s political divisions.

“One thing I’ve shown I can do, again and again, is create teams of amazingly talented people and really address these issues that are the critical issues facing this country,” he said on “Good Morning America.”

He also announced he was suspending his campaign with a video.

“While this campaign didn’t have the outcome we were hoping for, every moment has been worthwhile and I’m thankful to everyone who supported this campaign and our entire team,” he said in the video posted to .

Who Wants To Run For Governor As A Republican In 2022

Pennsylvania Republicans have been battling with Gov. Tom Wolf since he unseated incumbent Tom Corbett in 2014. Many of them are eager to take Wolfs place, but there is no clear frontrunner this early in the race. Several Republicans have already announced their bid, and a few others have hinted or shown interest in joining what is expected to be a crowded primary. Thus far, its hard to find a Republican candidate without some sort of ties to former President Donald Trump. 

With a heated race to fill U.S. Sen. Pat Toomeys seat next year, the GOP will have to be strategic about what candidates it wants to back for the Senate and for governor. Potential candidates will also have to weigh their options and decide where they fit best and can compete.

There are plenty of names that could be added to this list in the coming months, but here is our second iteration of potential Republican candidates for 2022. A couple of candidates have been added since the last edition.

Running

Former U.S. Rep Lou Barletta

Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale

Gale was the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy for governor back in February. An avid Trump supporter, he has criticized the Pennsylvania GOP and pledged to be a conservative populist. Hes also caught attention for and saying Trumps presidency was sabotaged. 

Former Corry Mayor Jason Monn

Pittsburgh attorney Jason Richey

John Ventre

With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibitionthe Run For President

Return to Rise to National Prominence List Previous Section: The New Lincoln | 

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the least known of all of the contenders for the Republican Partyâs nomination for president. Heading the list was former New York Governor William H. Seward, with the politically awkward Governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio a distant second. Conservative Edward Bates of Missouri was considered too old, and many Republicans seemed uncomfortable with the popular but unpredictable Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune.

To overcome his disadvantage, Lincoln adopted an unobtrusive publicity campaign. The timely release of his published debates with Stephen A. Douglas and brief autobiographies and a carefully orchestrated speaking campaign in New York and parts of New England all worked to Lincolnâs advantage. The nomination and the subsequent campaign were left largely to trusted handlers, but even after his election was secure, Lincoln maintained a dogged silence on national issues prior to his inauguration.

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Research suggests Trump’s rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Since then, some defendants prosecuted for hate crimes or violent acts cited Trump’s rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence. In May 2020, a nationwide review by ABC News identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence by mostly white men against mostly members of minority groups. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection for his actions prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters who acted in his name.

: James K Polk Vs Henry Clay Vs James Birney

The election of 1844 introduced expansion and slavery as important political issues and contributed to westward and southern growth and sectionalism. Southerners of both parties sought to annex Texas and expand slavery. Martin Van Buren angered southern Democrats by opposing annexation for that reason, and the Democratic convention cast aside the ex-president and front-runner for the first dark horse, Tennessees James K. Polk. After almost silently breaking with Van Buren over Texas, Pennsylvanias George M. Dallas was nominated for vice president to appease Van Burenites, and the party backed annexation and settling the Oregon boundary dispute with England. The abolitionist Liberty Party nominated Michigans James G. Birney. Trying to avoid controversy, the Whigs nominated anti-annexationist Henry Clay of Kentucky and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. But, pressured by southerners, Clay endorsed annexation even though he was concerned it might cause war with Mexico and disunion, thereby losing support among antislavery Whigs.

Enough New Yorkers voted for Birney to throw 36 electoral votes and the election to Polk, who won the Electoral College 170-105 and a slim popular victory. John Tyler signed a joint congressional resolution admitting Texas, but Polk pursued Oregon and then northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War, aggravating tension over slavery and sectional balance and leading to the Compromise of 1850.

How Donald Trump Could Steal The Election

Ted Cruz First GOP Candidate Set to Run in 2016 Presidential Race

The president cant simply cancel the fall balloting, but his state-level allies could still deliver him a second term.

About the author: Jeffrey Davis is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of Seeking Human Rights Justice in Latin America, and the forthcoming book Constitutional Tyranny.

Even under a normal president, the coronavirus pandemic would present real challenges to the 2020 American election. Everything about in-person voting could be dangerous. Waiting in line, touching a voting machine, and working in polling stations all run afoul of social-distancing mandates. Already, Maryland, Kentucky, Georgia, and Louisiana have postponed their presidential primaries, while Wyoming, New York, and Ohio have altered their voting procedures. Of course, other democracies face similar problems; the United Kingdom has postponed local elections for one year.

But under President Donald Trump, the possibilities for how the coronavirus could wreak havoc on the election are all the more concerning. This is not a president who cares about the sanctity of the electoral process. After all, he has never seemed particularly concerned about Russias efforts to manipulate the 2016 outcome , and he was impeached for demanding Ukrainian help in his reelection efforts.

New 2020 Voter Data: How Biden Won How Trump Kept The Race Close And What It Tells Us About The Future

As we saw in 2016 and again in 2020, traditional survey research is finding it harder than it once was to assess presidential elections accurately. Pre-election polls systemically misjudge who is likely to vote, and exit polls conducted as voters leave the voting booths get it wrong as well.

Now, using a massive sample of validated voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has . It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did notand why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Bidens success.

The Biden campaign reunited the Democratic Party. Compared to 2016, he raised the share of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted for the Democratic nominee by 6 points, from 85 to 91%, while increasing the Democratic share of liberal Democrats from 94 to 98%. And he received the support of 85% of Democrats who had defected to 3rd party and independent candidates in 2016.

How Trump kept it close

Despite non-stop controversy about his policies and personal conduct, President Trump managed to raise his share of the popular vote from 46% in 2016 to 47% in 2020. His core coalition held together, and he made a few new friends.

Longer-term prospects

Statehood And Indian Removal

Republic of East FloridaSeminole WarsAdamsOnís TreatyFlorida TerritoryAdmission to the UnionList of U.S. states by date of admission to the UnionCracker

Defense of Florida’s northern border with the United States was minor during the second Spanish period. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against U.S. territories, and the U.S. pressed Spain for reform.

Americans of and began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of and . Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities and the Floridan government, they were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to immigrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as .

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish authorities. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the garrison at , and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “”.

What Is A Typical Presidential Election Cycle

The presidential election process follows a typical cycle:

Spring of the year before an election Candidates announce their intentions to run.

Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year Primary and caucus Caucus: a statewide meeting held by members of a political party to choose a presidential candidate to support. debates take place.

January to June of election year States and parties hold primaries Primary: an election held to determine which of a party’s candidates will receive that party’s nomination and be their sole candidate later in the general election.and caucuses.

July to early September Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.

September and October Candidates participate in presidential debates.

Early November Election Day

December Electors Elector: a person who is certified to represent their state’s vote in the Electoral College. cast their votes in the Electoral College.

Early January of the next calendar year Congress counts the electoral votes.

January 20 Inauguration Day

For an in-depth look at the federal election process in the U.S., check out USA In Brief: ELECTIONS.

Contribution Limits For 2021

Additional national party committee accounts Donor $109,500* per account, per year Candidate committee $45,000 per account, per year PAC: nonmulticandidate $109,500* per account, per year Party committee: state/district/local Unlimited transfers

*Indexed for inflation in odd-numbered years.

PAC here refers to a committee that makes contributions to other federal political committees. Independent-expenditure-only political committees may accept unlimited contributions, including from corporations and labor organizations.

The limits in this column apply to a national party committees accounts for: the presidential nominating convention; election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings; and national party headquarters buildings. A partys national committee, Senate campaign committee and House campaign committee are each considered separate national party committees with separate limits. Only a national party committee, not the parties national congressional campaign committees, may have an account for the presidential nominating convention.

**Additionally, a national party committee and its Senatorial campaign committee may contribute up to $51,200 combined per campaign to each Senate candidate.

Nj Primary Elections 2020: The Five Republicans Who Want To Take Over As Us Senator

Colleen ODea, Senior Writer and Projects EditorNJ Decides 2020Politics

Five Republicans are vying for the chance to try to do something no one else has been able to do in almost a half-century: Convince New Jersey voters to elect a Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Cory Booker now sits.

It has been 48 years since New Jersey voters have sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate, and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly a million. In 2018, Republican and former pharmaceuticals executive Bob Hugin spent more than $39 million, including $36 million of his own money, and lost by 11 percentage points to incumbent Bob Menendez, who had been considered vulnerable after his trial on political corruption charges ended in a hung jury.

Statewide races are the toughest ones of all for a GOP outnumbered by a million more registered Democrats in the state, said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. But even before party registrations were so lopsided, Republican Senate candidates have fared more poorly here than almost anywhere else in the nation. Since New Jersey last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1972, the GOP has lost a staggering 15 Senate races in a row, he said.

Withdrew Before The Primaries

The following individuals participated in at least one authorized presidential debate but withdrew from the race before the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016. They are listed in order of exit, starting with the most recent.

Name

The following notable individuals filed as candidates with FEC by November 2015.

Name

Additionally, Peter Messina was on the ballot in Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Idaho.Tim Cook was on the ballot in Louisiana, New Hampshire and Arizona. Walter Iwachiw was on the ballot in Florida and New Hampshire.

Jerry Moran: Senator Kansas

Senator Jerry Moran arrives for a meeting about the Republican healthcare bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017.

Trumps second endorsement of the 2022 campaign season is Jerry Moran, the Republican incumbent senator from Kansas. He was the first member of Congress to receive an endorsement from the former president.

Moran voted with most Republican senators to acquit Trump of his impeachment charge of inciting the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Ron Johnson: Senator Wisconsin

Former GOP Rep. Joe Walsh: ‘I’m going to run for president’

WASHINGTON, DC FEBRUARY 25: Senator Ron Johnson speaks during a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing regarding wages at large corporations on Capitol Hill, February 25, 2021 in Washington, DC. The committee is looking at why many low-wage workers in America qualify for public benefits even though thousands of them are employees of large corporations.

Trump announced his endorsement for Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson before he has even announced a re-election bid. Johnson, 66, has represented Wisconsin in the Senate since 2011.

Even though he has not yet announced that he is running, and I certainly hope he does, I am giving my Complete and Total Endorsement to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.  He is brave, he is bold, he loves our Country, our Military, and our Vets, Trump wrote in a statement. He will protect our Second Amendment, and everything else we stand for.  It is the kind of courage we need in the U.S. Senate.  He has no idea how popular he is.  Run, Ron, Run!

This list will be updated as Trump announces new endorsements.

: Benjamin Harrison Vs Grover Cleveland

In 1888 the Democratic Party nominated President Grover Cleveland and chose Allen G. Thurman of Ohio as his running mate, replacing Vice President Thomas Hendricks who had died in office.

After eight ballots, the Republican Party chose Benjamin Harrison, former senator from Indiana and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Levi P. Morton of New York was the vice-presidential nominee.

In the popular vote for president, Cleveland won with 5,540,050 votes to Harrisons 5,444,337. But Harrison received more votes in the Electoral College, 233 to Clevelands 168, and was therefore elected. The Republicans carried New York, President Clevelands political base.

The campaign of 1888 helped establish the Republicans as the party of high tariffs, which most Democrats, heavily supported by southern farmers, opposed. But memories of the Civil War also figured heavily in the election.

Northern veterans, organized in the Grand Army of the Republic, had been angered by Clevelands veto of pension legislation and his decision to return Confederate battle flags..

Sen Mitt Romney Of Utah

A Gallup poll last March found Romney, 74, has a higher approval rating among Democrats than Republicans, so you might figure he doesnt have a prayer in taking his partys nomination again. A February Morning Consult poll, though, had Romney polling ahead of Republicans like Pompeo, Cotton and Hawley. So, youre telling me theres a chance? Yes, a one-in-a-million chance.

The 2012 GOP presidential nominee and his wife, Ann, have five sons. He graduated from Brigham Young University and Harvard Law. Romney is a former Massachusetts governor, and the first person to be a governor and senator from two different states since Sam Houston, who was governor of Tennessee and a senator from Texas. Romney is this years JFK Profile in Courage Award recipient.

Former Vice President Mike Pence

If youre curious how the former vice president might handle the fact that many of Trumps supporters think hes disloyal for certifying the 2020 election, his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on June 24 laid out his argument.

Pence opened the speech with one of his favorite lines, in which he calls himself a Christian, conservative and Republican, in that order and then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes praising Trump and the work of the Trump-Pence administration. We made America great again in just four years, he boasted. Then he finally touched on the attack. Jan. 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol, he said.

Pence said he would always be proud that elected officials reconvened to finish certifying the election after the riot, and he said he understood why many were disappointed in his tickets loss last year: I can relate, I was on the ballot. He also positioned his view on the election as one informed by Republican patriotism and love of the Constitution.

The Republican Party will always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise, he said. Theres almost no idea more un-American that any one person can choose the American president. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.

: Andrew Jackson Vs Henry Clay Vs William Wirt

Democratic-Republican Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832 with 688,242 popular votes to 473,462 for National-Republican Henry Clay and 101,051 for Anti-Masonic candidate William Wirt. Jackson easily carried the Electoral College with 219 votes. Clay received only 49, and Wirt won the seven votes of Vermont. Martin Van Buren won the vice presidency with 189 votes against 97 for various other candidates.

The spoils system of political patronage, the tariff, and federal funding of internal improvements were major issues, but the most important was Jacksons veto of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. National-Republicans attacked the veto, arguing that the Bank was needed to maintain a stable currency and economy. King Andrews veto, they asserted, was an abuse of executive power. In defense of Jacksons veto, Democratic-Republicans labeled the Bank an aristocratic institutiona monster. Suspicious of banking and of paper money, Jacksonians opposed the Bank for giving special privileges to private investors at government expense and charged that it fostered British control of the American economy.

The Anti-Masons convened the first national presidential nominating convention in Baltimore on September 26, 1831. The other parties soon followed suit, and the convention replaced the discredited caucus system of nomination.

Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Though controversial, Hawley, 41, is a fundraising machine and hes quickly made a name for himself. The blowback Hawley faced for objecting to Bidens Electoral College win included a lost book deal and calls for him to resign from students at the law school where he previously taught. His mentor, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, said that supporting Hawley was the biggest mistake Ive ever made in my life.

Still, he brought in more than $1.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 5, according to Axios, and fundraising appeals in his name from the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in more cash than any other Republican except NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Just because youre toxic in Washington doesnt mean you cant build a meaningful base of support nationally.

One Republican strategist compared the possibility of Hawley 2024 to Cruz in 2016. Hes not especially well-liked by his colleagues , but hes built a national profile for himself and become a leading Republican voice opposed to big technology companies.

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

[selenelavellan]

Safe at Home

Part One

Part Two

Dirthamen/Ethvhenas belongs to @feynites

It takes another month for the spirit to spend less than two thirds of its day asleep.

Which Selene doesn't mind so much, really, because it means she has plenty of time to do her usual work undisturbed. Her potions get brewed, her salves get made, her garden gets tended. 

The tricky part is always when she gets a patient.

Often times, the spirit falls into a deep enough sleep that she has to carry it into the hidden space behind her closets false wall. Which would not be such an issue, except that it has become a very cuddly spirit, and she always ends up having to disentangle herself from its various tendrils before swaddling it inside of her heated blanket and settling the plank of wood back in place. Only then can she safely open her door, and Selene is worried it is making her suspicious to her more familiar patients.

“You took an awfull' long time to open your door,” grumbles Captain Din'Durgen as she enters, tucking her helmet safely beneath her arm.

“Sorry,” Selene apologizes with a bow. “I've been getting more distracted with my work lately. Haven't been keeping as neat a house as I should, and I didn't want you seeing what a mess it was.”

The captain frowns, pale brown eyes scanning over the contents of Selenes home; a pile of unwashed teacups in the sink, mounds of herbs drying on her table, books piled high at the foot of her bed beside a pile of blankets and laundry that need to be washed, and a broken pot still smashed beside her fireplace from when the spirit had woken from a violent dream.

“This is clean to ya'...?” The captain mumbles beneath her breath.

“So!” Selene proclaims before the captain can start digging through her piles and wondering why she has books made for children in her 'recent reading' pile. “What brings you by today? Are you feeling unwell?”

Din'Durgen straightens at the reminder of her duties, clearing her throat while turning back to face Selene. “Ah, yea'. I mean, I feel fine. I'm jus' here on official businesses today. Our Lady Sylaise is throwin' a festival for her 500th weddin' anniversary. Wha' with her brothers people less willin' to travel outta their own territory, she's lookin' for people to make up the difference. Though' maybe...maybe you migh' be interested in goin'.”

“Oh,” Selene says, relaxing a bit “No, I don't think that's a very good idea. I always do poorly in situations that...public. Besides, my shape shifting skills are below par; I'd be a poor addition to her contingent.”

“Well I mean-” The captain clears her throat again, eyes darting nervously up to the ceiling. “I was thinkin' that ya’ maybe wouldn' go with the contingents. Maybe you would go with someone else. Someone who uh-Who thinks ya’ don' need the shapeshiftin' ta look good in the fashions.”

Selene blinks, watching Din'Durgen struggle to keep her embarrassment from leaking too far out of herself.

“Someone like a Cap'ain, maybe...?” Din'Durgen finally manages, holding more tightly to the helmet in her arm than she means to.

Oh.

OH! Selene realizes.

“That's...” Selene shifts awkwardly on her feet. “A very...generous offer. But I think I'll have to decline, if that's alright.”

“If you're worried abou' bein' allowed back into the city, I've already gotten a permit. So long as you stay with your designated escort-”

“'Designated escort'?” Selene interrupts, eyes narrowing. “I'm not a danger to the city, or a child.”

“It's not-I mean you remember wha' happened. Your name is still on the short list for sacrifices, y'know tha'. They won' let you just wander freely aroun' the city after tha'.”

“I know what happened,” Selene says coldly. “And I'm not interested in returning to the city. Thank you for the offer captain, but I have to decline.”

Din'Durgen lets out a sigh. “Selene, I'm not tryin' to be cruel. One good nigh', on the arm of a city captain? Things migh' finally get looked past. You coul' finally start to rise up again, get a good home, maybe even petition for a child one day-”

“I like my home,” Selene says. “And I'm not interested in 'rising up'.”

“I like you, Selene. If you worked at it, we could form a name as a team. And I know, it's intimidatin' to get asked like this by someone in a higher ranking class than you'self, bu' I'll be kind! I won' make you do nothin' you're not comfortable with, and I can get you nice things! You could still work here if you wan' of course, bu' you'd have a nice home ta go back ta at the end o' the day.”

“I've already given you my answer, Captain,” Selene insists as she opens up her front door. “Unless you're planning to push the 'rights' our difference in rank allows you, I have other matters that need my attention.”

Captain Din'Durgen swallows, looking down at the floor in shame as she places her helmet back on.

“Thanks for ya' time,” She says politely as she steps through the doorway “My apologies if I offended ya'.”

Selene frowns, feeling a tiny tug of guilt in her chest at her own reactions. “I could use a few days of space then, if you mean that.”

The captain nods, giving a deep bow before finally disappearing back onto her route.

Selene swings the door shut with a resounding click. She lets out a deep sigh of frustration, then hears an uncomfortable rustling coming from what seems to be her closet.

Moving quickly, she takes out the false back, helping the spirit to untangle itself from the blanket as it climbs up her arms and onto her shoulders.

Several sets of eyes look up at her, worry and concern radiating off of it.

“Did you have a bad dream again?” Selene asks as she replaces the wood once more.

The spirit shakes its semblance of a head from side to side in denial.

“Were you worried when the captain came in again?”

The spirit vibrates slightly, an unsure noise coming out of it as it tightens around her, watching as she starts assembling a salad for lunch in the kitchen.

“Don't worry,” Selene assures them “She's harmless. Unless you're a child of the stone of course, but that's...You're not a stone child are you?”

The spirit shakes its head once again.

“Then so long as you stay hidden, she won't hurt you. I wouldn't let her hurt you anyways. I mean, sure, she's a way higher class than I am, with her fancy armor and her house with bedrooms and things and if we were in the city this would be much, much trickier and if I confronted her physically I could be killed easily. But out here,” Selene indicates out the window with her head, towards the forest. “There's more room to breathe. I could still overstep I suppose, but we're at least a half day from the nearest eluvian. Worst case, we could make a run for it through the forest. There are some older paths that've been overgrown from the division of territories. I found them when I first started exploring out here; we could probably make it all the way to the ocean in a week, avoiding the crossroads and the dreaming...”

She trails off, mind wandering to thoughts of flight and freedom and what might be waiting on the other side of all that water.

The spirit nudges her hand, still holding a fist full of blueberries and snaps Selenes attention back to the present.

Selene shakes the thoughts out of her head, dropping the berries into the bowl and tossing them in the salad alongside the other ingredients. She mumbles a quick apology, handing a smaller bowl for the spirit to hold, and a second for herself. The spirit slides off of her shoulders, carefully moving the herbs from her table over to the windowsill to finish their drying as she places the salad down on the table, and they each take a seat across from each other. Selene fills each of their bowls, eating her own slowly as she watches the spirit form a large beak-like structure, pecking and eating at their own helping quickly.

“You need a name,” She decides as they bat a blueberry around their bowl, struggling to get it into their mouth.

The spirit looks up at her curiously.

“Do you have a name already?” She checks.

A wave of unease washes through the room, as the spirit begins to shrink and shake its head vigorously.

“Would you mind if I gave you one then?”

The spirit nods slowly, waiting with concerned eyes for her to decide.

Halani maybe? No, that's too on-the nose. Falon, too, is too vague.

“How about Ethvhenas?” she offers.

The spirit shifts around in its seat, before letting out a happy sounding chirp in acceptance.

“Ethvhenas it is then,” Selene agrees, thankful to have an actual name to call them. “Would you like seconds?”

Ethvhenas doesn't answer, instead disappearing from their stool only to reappear in Selenes lap, curled up and yawning and swatting curiously at an empty bottle hanging from her belt. She pulls a basket of yarn out from beneath a nearby cupboard with her foot, snatching up a ball of rainbow colored string. She shakes it briefly in front of their face, and all eyes snap towards it with rapt attention.

Selene tosses it towards the mattress, watching with amusement as Ethvhenas jumps after it. They swat at it, then immediately jump back as their wings outstretch in a threatening manner when it changes color at their touch. After a moments hesitation, they move towards the yarn again, touching it and letting out another pleased chirp when it shifts in color once more.

Selene smiles at them, pleased that they've found some manner of exercise that doesn't overexert them too badly. The last time she had tried to get them to exercise in the yard, they had become overly interested in the roots of her freesias, and she had spent an hour panicking when they disappeared beneath the soil before finally discovering them passed out on top of her chamomile, covered in dirt and bruises and scrapes.

This is a much simpler solution for everyone involved, really.

Still, she notices them glancing back at her every few minutes, as though assuring themselves she hasn't left them somehow. Still unsure how Ethvhenas had become so injured in the first place, Selenes stomach twists at the possible implications. Were they betrayed by someone? Another spirit maybe? Laying a trap for them for....something?

Whatever it was, Ethvhenas seems to be recovering well. It's difficult to gauge accurately, because Selene is unsure what their recovered state actually is, but they seem happier, certainly. They have more energy when they are awake, and have even been trying to help her clean her home. Their nightmares have lessened, and even if she lost her favorite pot in the process, it hasn't actually struck out at her in any way, and it's level of affection for her seems to have only grown.

Which...could be an issue down the line.

She should probably come up with a long term plan past 'hide injured spirit for undetermined amount of time'.

Ethvhenas dashes past her, yarn rapidly changing in color as it bats it from tendril to tendril, a large length of it wrapped around its center mass. They seem unbothered by it, and Selene supposes that its not as though you can choke when you don't have a windpipe, so she leaves them be.

Time to start cleaning, she decides.